The Terminal

I watched this movie called, "The Terminal" today. Should have done this long back as this is a Steven Spielberg + Tom Hanks Combo. But as someone says, its never too late to do the right thing. I luckily spotted the DVD at Ankur's place after a sumptuous meal.

Overall, the movie is wonderful. There were moments in the movie when I just wanted it to get over as I could not see the trouble Tom Hanks finds himself in. He plays the role of an individual who is exceptionally skilled, wants to help others and fears the idea of being dishonest. Not many people I know have even one of these three qualities. Some of the scenes are beautiful like the one where Tom Hanks takes Catherine Zeta Jones for dinner. His interactions with this immigration officer also beautifully shot. I fell in love with them. Those of you who have not seen this movie must watch it.For it is an epitome of how beautiful human beings can be. All of us would die to be this character played by Tom Hanks. He is loved by everyone in airport where he is stuck for more than 9 months.

Steven Spielberg has shown similar qualities of human beings in Schindler's List, Empire of Sun among many other movies.

Taking the spirit of this movie forward, If we were all to aim for bringing smile on the face of one person around us, we would have done humanity a great favor. I know few such people and I am in love with them.

Simple Pleasures of Life....

I could not resist writing this. While most of the people I talk to around me, I find them to be restless and perhaps not happy (Me certainly included). I found two occassions when I find myself at complete ease and happy.

- the first one being the time for Chai, early morning at around 0630 AM. My friend called this Morning Bliss when I told her about this pleasure. While I do not make Chai myself (I guess the event would not make me that happy then) I usually go out and have a chai at some chai wala or a restaurant in the mornings. I must confess I love this moment of the day.

- the second one being, listening to Abhilasha Venkata Chellum in the TV Program, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing Superstar in Yr 2010. She is an embodiment of what perfection can do to human mind. She has brought me more happiness than perhaps anything else I have done this year.
Somebody else who had similar impact on me in the past is again a singer from Zee TV' Sa Re Ga Ma Pa in Yr 2005. Nihira Joshi then had the same impact on me.
For those of you who want to listen to Abhilasha, visit the following link.
http://srgmpss.zeetv.com/abhilasha-venkata-chellum/videos/sa-re-ga-ma-pa-singing-superstar-sep-11-episode-abhilasha-performs.html

God Bless Abhilasha, Nihira and of course the Chai wala....

Hope all you find your own small pleasures in life...

How Long can we do the same?

How long can one do the same thing continously? This question hit me while was watching this Program called Left, Right & Centre on NDTV 24/7. The host of the show Nidhi Razdan is one of my favourites and I can discuss why in a separate blog. But I wondered how she could host shows on weekly basis which had very similar content, not technically but the arguments presented are similar.
Its not just her, If you look at most of us, we do the same thing every day. We start our the day the same way perhaps, the continue with the usual routine of emails, food, gossip etc
A bit of search in newspapers revealed this behavior further. Indian National Congress has picked up the point of Right Wing Terror in their National Meeting. BJP has strongly denied any such possibility and instead accused Congress of doing this to divert the attention from corruption charges. Does it sound familiar? I bet it does. We have been listening to same arguments for such long time in politics that It does not bother me whether I am following news or not. Even Maths allow for discontinuities wherein we should see some shift in behavioral patterns. I enjoyed the points Arun Shourie made ( Read through the interview given to Shekar Gupta in Walk The Talk at http://www.indianexpress.com/) not because they revealed too much but because he said something which was different from usual party line. What we need is perhaps not a lot of honesty, integrity etc from our politicians but a commitment that at least 10% of time they would talk more based on the merit of the issue.
However moving out of politics, we need to inculcate this behavior in our lives as well. We should aim to spend a little (a little) bit of time daily on things beyond the usual. I must confess I am not good at this but would try in future. Don't give the same arguments when posed with a challenge, issue by others. Do not ask for the same options when asked for what would you like to eat? Perhaps when you want to you buy some shirts etc for yourself try completely different colours.
Try being a little different....I guess it will feel good.....This should hopefully reflect in the way our society (which we constitute) would start behaving.

Aalasyam Amrutham Visham

Somebody very famously said, "Aalasyam Amrutham Visham" which is supposed to mean If one does not do what he is supposed to do when needed, he is bound to loose. The more used Hindi version is "Ab Pachtane se kya faida Jab Chidiya Chug Gayi Khet".

Looking at both these sayings, I realize two things instantly.
(a) We need to be focussed on not just doing the right things but right things at right time.
(b) Its important that one capitalizes on all the opportunities in terms of timing one gets because these are beyond the control of the individual.

My personal experience has been that while these sayings very clearly explain why I may have lost on few (quite a few) things in Life, I am not sure If It would change the way I would go about my life in future. Its due to a phenomena which I exemplify & is called "Laziness". Its not that I am lazy all the way, I believe If I set out to achieve something I give my 100% most of the time but I most of the time do not choose to set myself for anything meaningful. Someone said the same to me recently and I realized it is so obviously true. I have suddenly realized that all this needs to change but again let me see where I get to from here. I am not very hopeful because of my past record in this space.

Goals....What are they?

Arise, Awake and Stop not till the goal is reached is one of the most famous messages conveyed by Swami Vivekananda. I wonder what was he thinking when said this. What Goal was he referring to when he said this. Did he mean this for anything and everything we do? Those of us who believe in logic, science, reasoning would say yes. Its conventional wisdom that harder we work, closer we would be to goal. But what about people who are not clear on the goals they should pursue. Even Swami Vivekanada did not have a solution for them I guess. In this context I envy those who are clear on what they should pursue. Here, I have got a very empirical (no way of proving the same) observation to make. All those I have met and are not Indians (have got quite an opportunity to do so thanks to my job) seem to clearer on their ultimate goals. The clarity with which they seem to go about their lives amazes me and of course I envy them for the same. The ease with which they go about their professional work & of course pursue personal interests is pretty cool. I have been trying (by that I mean contemplating) on what I want to do in future. Must say not easy. Have tried putting it down on paper (my usual trick to get closer to answers). Hope to crack this and action the same for myself........

Some interesting feedback....

I got two different individuals giving me feedback. One of them suggested that I am someone who is suited for work/roles which involves lot of analysis. I am good with numbers and can possibly see a lot of patterns around the same.

Somebody else said that I operate between extremes. I can extremely arrogant at one go and completely self deprecating on the other.

I also gave myself some feedback wherein I said that one of the thing which needs improvement in myself is the amount of enthu I bring to something I take up.
That's it for today. More later....

The Power of Rationalization

A bad day

Today is one of the worst days of my life. No that something drastically wrong happened to me but its a combination of factors. One of them is my general dis-illusionment in life. I am not specifically clear on the my plans going forward and I find myself in a very peculiar situation. On the one hand I am not clear on what ever little work I am doing and on the other I am not clear on the next steps I should take.
Second problem is I am a bit unclear on whatever little I am trying to accomplish in my job. I am not happy specifically with my efforts in this space.
Thirdly, a slightly embarassing episode happened today which exposed me big time on my lack of grip on the information. All these added to problems of my dis-illusioned mind. I am a bit unhappy overall & I am looking for some divine intervention to solve all this.

Flexible Working Time

Flex Time or "flexible working hours" is the new mantra in organizational set-ups these days. There are two dimensions to it, "flexible timings for office hours" & "Working from home instead of office". There is a general belief that employee productivity and employee satisfaction improves when they are given that opportunity. I have been thinking about this myself and understand why this would be the case?. Flexible office timings are fine as far as my thinking goes and is practiced even If we do not have a policy around the same. This is a must in the globalized world we all work in today.

But recently, a friend of mine spoke about “working from home for one day of week” as a way of improving productivity; I started to think about the same. Employee satisfaction is bound to go up as any employee would love to be in a situation where he (she) can spend more time with his ( her) family. But the more intriguing part is "Why would employee productivity improve?”

A simple point is happy or satisfied employees would mean more productive employees. In theory this is an excellent idea. but in practice this does not work. If one can work from home one day of the week for example, why not work completely out of home for the full week? I know of organizations which do this as well. My take on this is, there are organizations which can work from home for the full week and there are organizations which cannot. It is not about one day of the week but about can we work from home or not? A Call Centre or IT services or Management Consultancy Firm can have its employees working from home completely. A manufacturer, R&D firm (Microbiological institute) etc cannot afford to do so. My critics would argue that even a manufacturer has got activities which possibly can be done from home like making a report or learning a new skill online. Then I would suggest that we should leave it at the discretion of employee to decide when he (she) wants to come to office in the whole week and not say one day of the week is available for working from home.

There is another dimension to the working from home. Often points like special needs of women employees (even men at times) which need them to spend more time with family mean that this policy of working from home once in a while is a good idea. I would like to humbly disagree and say that people should exercise the option of taking leave for this purpose. Statistics show clearly that organizations where we have an option of en-cashing leaves, employees never take them & choose to take cash instead. Working from home once in a week seems like a way of ensuring that I have three holidays per week while getting the same money from organization.

Critics who are even more intelligent would argue that In any case delivery is fixed and how does it matter even If employees work from home. The answer clearly lies in the point on how much employees deliver today. All organizations have this constant discussion on employee productivity and in a very subtle way this would actually go down over a period of time If one day working from home were to implemented. This is where rational human behavior would take it to.

To sum my thoughts on this, I would like to say that I am not against the thought of “Working from home”. We either let this happen for all days or not based on the nature of work. Partial roll out of idea which says that one can choose to work for one particular day of the week from home does not make sense.

Visit to Durban

I am currently in Durban Airport as I write this. My flight has got delayed by 2-3 hours. Interestingly I am quite ok with this delay as I quite like Durban. I have been here for last 5 days and I have enjoyed my stay here thoroughly. The food is good. We visited excellent restaurants & a game reserve. I was pleasantly surprised by roads, buildings & most importantly the beautiful harbour Durban has got. One thing however which I noticed and was not expecting was the tension between whites & blacks here. You still notice locations where White Men & Women would not be found, not because they do not want to as in Apartheid era but now more because they are scared. I visited Shopping areas which had both Whites & blacks and then shopping locations with only blacks.

It was interesting to note the newspaper content & TV content while I was here, the problem between whites & blacks is still clearly evident. However the heartening part is If you were to talk to people on street (Blacks or whites) they have moved further and are happy to live together. I am pretty sure Durban is going to turn into a beautiful cosmopolitan city in future.

Overall, South Africans are lovely people, both black & white and I have thoroughly enjoyed my stay here.

Pondicherry: Time well spent......

I was at pondicherry from 22nd Feb to 26th Feb. I was there for official work which went very well. Would not discuss the official work , although it was also very enjoyable. I reached Chennai Airport on 22nd Morning and we took a vehicle to Pondicherry. I must say, after boring food in Mumbai, I thoroughly enjoyed Pongal, Medhu Wada and Idli's I ate daily. This combined with Filter Coffee was the perfect food for me. We stayed in at Hotel Anandha Inn. It was nice, the room was good and of course was a welcome break from my home at Sakinaka, Andheri.
We managed to go out for dinner on every day we stayed there. We went to this location called, Hotel Promenade on the second day we were there. Nice Roof Top restaurant, Would recommend it If you want good ambience. Food was average though. On the evening of 25th, We went to a Ganapathy Temple. Its been long time since I got a chance to go to temple and I felt good while I was there. We had food at a decent place then. Then I joined Vijay while he was visiting few old freinds of his. It was at a Cafe & I was particularly impressed by the location. Had a Good Coffee. Vijay was his usual best with his sarcastic comments. I really like them.
We returned via East Coast Road, stopped at Mahabalipuram, returned to Mumbai. I made my attempts to book a ticket to Hyd, could not suceed and I am back at Home, Sakinaka

Learning to learn

Learning is possibly the only trait which differentiates human beings from other animals. We have this ability to assimilate knowledge and apply the same later for solving complex problems. We all notice that children are extremely good with this and as we grow up, we tend to loose this key ability of ours. It is those of us who continue to learn even after growing up, make a difference to our lives and those of others. Infact human history is a clear evidence that non linear growth has happened in his case due to assimilation of this knowledge and move/conquering new frontiers in development.

So why do we loose this important ability and how can we ensure that we do our best in this space? As far as loosing this ability is concerned, My personal experience is that it happens to most of us as we start believing that "learning" process is meant for children and what we know is good enough for what we do. Just imagine an accountant being told that he(she) should learn his(her) accounts again after working for 5 Years. but we must note that as part of job we continuously learn new tricks/gain more knowledge. Those of us who work in jobs where we have this opportunity are lucky as this forces to learn or else we would become redundant. A great example are sportsmen, they learn all their life. So how do we ensure that adults continue to learn as they do when they are children:

1. Ensure that they are on jobs which force them to do new activities and hence forces them to learn
2. Ensure that any learning process demonstrated by adults is rewarded. In the world of jobs a good example is possibly Software industry. Herein certifications are rewarded by the management with suitable rewards
3. Good Teams, nothing works better as an incentive to learn then having someone around who can demonstrate visible leadership in learning. People tend to follow that person out of sheet jealousy.
4. Finally, possibly the most important part is to ensure that anything one does counts as far as learning is concerned. It is here where contemplation/reflection either individually or in teams after completing activities/projects matters.

Once we get a team or group of people to start learning and ensuring that they do not repeat the same mistakes due to absence of knowledge. They start delivering newer things and finally bigger output starts flowing out. This would ultimately lead to non linear growth.

Every organization which craves for growth (higher than conventional) ones needs to focus on learning or more importantly "learning to learn".