The 'ugly' face of Gujarat!

Parzania was a movie which I wanted to watch for quite some time now. I knew no matter how much the director would try to get the public to get a feel of what happened in the Gujarat riots, he would be unsuccessful. However, the thorough effort made to make the movie should be commendable. I still remember the cover page of the India Today issue during the riots!

27th February 2002, I was in Ahmedabad (આપનો અમદાવાદ - Our Ahmedabad, ગરવી ગુજરાત - Proud Gujarat) my parents' place, the place that has made me to what I am now, the place where people like to be in peace, the place of complete freedom, the place of least fear, the place I love the most and claim to be the best city in India; around 4PM when the news floated all around that the Sabarmati express was set ablaze in Godhra railway station, it was horrendous to hear more and more details about the incident. Later, people discussed about the bodies coming to Ahmedabad and everybody almost was sure that things would get worse and it would result in a communal violence - how long? how strong? Whether it would be of similar intensity of the one in the early 80s? No one knew...but all knew that the coming few days or weeks would be far from peaceful.

28th February, 2002 - all expected and unexpected unpleasant things started to happen in full swing, curfews imposed in almost all of Ahmedabad, the entire air of complete freedom turned in air of extreme fright. I went up the stairs of our building to the terrace to see actually what the city is like - there was smoke seen in all 4 sides & 4 corners of the rectangular terrace that I was standing in, of different shades of black and grey all around, - depending on the intensity of the fire, depending on what was burnt or how much was burnt or how many were burnt may be! Almost every known place was in the news to have got burnt - the very own Topaz restaurant, Kabir restaurant, the Paldi area, the Vasna area and more, and more - almost the entire city & the entire state actually!

I heard, saw and read about Narendra Modi being involved in this most remarkable incident in the history of Gujarat and India. Modi, is an icon I respect very much, admire very much - when his speech comes on television, I and my entire family make sure that we watch it and we feel good listening to him. I have witnessed the development of Ahmedabad - the roads in and outside the city (when you see flyovers constructed to accomodate 4 times the current traffic, when you drive on NE-1 which is a part of the 5,806 km long Golden Quadrilateral and reach Baroda from Ahmedabad in just 1 hour), the other facilities (absolutely no power cuts, various transport schemes like BRTS and so on to put forth)!

I never denied Modi's involvement in the 2002 happenings but I always thought someway if it wasn't true. I was reading through the Tehelka reports 'Operation Kalank' and watched a couple of videos (do read through and you would feel fearful churning in your stomach), wherever there was Modi written along with Gujarat riots 2002, I would hope it wasn't something that I don't want to see. But I wish it wasn't true. I don't trust any politician for that matter and everyone would be involved in some or the other happening like this, and more may be. It is probably just that Modi's was proved to be true? And rest weren't proved yet?

To all those who drove the massacre, shame to be called humans, forget about appending the adjective 'civilized'!

If only there was no gravity!

I am into my 2nd week of the yoga classes. Okay, it is tough!

After a couple of minutes of stretching hard exercises in sitting position, the instructor commands to lie down in shavaasan & relax. What a relief!

Then another command follows - "lift your left leg up, 10 degrees above the ground - well I think it is practically impossible to lift it just about 10 degrees above the ground. But I keep the Mathematics teacher in me not pop up these ideas into my head and try to follow, lifting up my legs trying to keep the measurement precision as high as possible.

And the instructor wants us to hold that position for 20 seconds - first, lifting the legs up without any support of your hands is a challenge, and the 10 degrees and then holding the position - isn't that quite too much! Everytime, I am trying these postures, I feel Oh God! All this only because of one thing - gravity? It only this concept wasn't there - no overweight problem, no running after exercising options to shed those kgs (actually pounds!), and no pain inflicted on ourselves trying to maintain these postures fighting to defy the gravity :-)

And, what would have been in Ramdev baba's plate if gravity wasn't there at all!

Now, that is Addiction!

Sometime in early Q4 2010 - when I was traveling in the cab, this song happened to play in the radio. I radio signal was quite bad and I just could hear very few words - 'amplifier', 'woofer'... and a few beats. 'Oh God! What a song!', reacted my cab-mate. She meant, 'what a pathetic song!' And when she explained me what the lyrics mean, I just didn't know how to react to this, I just felt how can someone write such lyrics!

A few days later, one very dear colleague of mine pinged me the YT link for this song & said 'hear this!'. I opened the song and the amazing scenes and the ferrari were fine, but the music overtook the attention. I played the song - once, twice, thrice - and the entire day for more than 10 days, a month, and more! It was then when I realized YT doesn't have a 'Repeat' button :)

A couple of months later, I downloaded the entire album of Imran Khan from songs.pk website. I didn't hear the songs for a month after the download except the Amplifier again. Then one fine day, I felt like playing the songs just to explore how they sound to the ears. It was then, and now - I do hear songs everyday, old Mannade, Kishore Kumar, Mohd. Rafi and new ones of Mohit Chauhan, Vishal Shekhar and so on. The work goes slow, then I feel, 'Ok, now let me put the trump card on' - and I put on the album Unforgettable of the one and only Imran Khan...what a sense of fulfillment!

It is then when I write the most complicated Excel formulae, to make the best of the slide formats, and complete most of my work, and write my blog posts too :-)

Now, I want to call it Addiction!

The best of the songs I like are - Aaja we Mahiya, Gora Gora Rang Tera and of course Bewafa because I like the lyrics - but Bounce Billo, Hey Girl and all others are too good too, if lyrics are ignored, and it doesn't matter!

Air India next Continental?

The best thing in the MBA courses is a bunch of case studies, mainly from HBR ofcourse! It is said that 'Strategy' is the most used & most misunderstood word. I guess so.

We had a course named 'Operations Strategy' - aren't these two words exact opposites of each other in meaning? Operational excellence or efficiency is something that shows the results in the income statement i.e something that can be measured in numbers almost with an immediate effect - an assembly line is refined at an automobile manufacturing unit & it produces more vehicles - immediate numbers. Whereas any strategic initiative taken doesn't show immediate impact in numbers, and probably never would show as high impact in terms of numbers as that by operational efficiency, but it makes an amazingly powerful non-measurable impact - things like just addressing the staff in your restaurant by name; this is where I face the biggest paradox of my life - disliking the subject I am most interested in: Mathematics! And I dislike agreeing that Maths fails to measure the most important parameters, anything that cannot be measured in numbers. We could dig deep into these - operations vs strategy & maths not being useful enough, may be some other time.

One of the cases that we studied in this course was of the turnaround of Continental Airlines - a classic case [Click Here to download the case, thanks to Google I found the pdf] of how small things make a great impact and how consistency in certain practices take a drowning company to a path-breaking one.

Why I was thinking of strategy is because of a couple of Air India's announcements. Recently I went to Toronto & chose Air India for various valid reasons. What an awful experience I had! You could read in detail Here if you want to enjoy the details. I just want to tell them if they don't want to serve, better stop serving. I read the news of Air India wanting to turnaround, and achieve similar heights probably as that of Continental per the captain's statement. And then I read another news piece about the company cutting down the operating costs. Woo! Has the first step itself gone wrong, shouldn't the first steps in an attempt to turn around be focussed on strategic initiatives which probably would cause a hike in operating expenses initially & then with loads of seamless efforts, eventually profits would be made.
Can Air India do the turn around? Well, nothing is impossible so to say and I am very pessimistic about believing that this company can do a turnaround, but definitely extensively intense efforts are needed.

Let's wait & watch!

The roar..MULTIPLIED!

What A Match!!! What A Win!!!

Experiencing this win and in such a match with a couple of records broken, in this age of internet and accessibility especially in the world's fastest growing economy - WOW! Really great in many ways!!

What it is to see almost a billion and a half people happy together, for a consistent number of hours, days, weeks, months and may be years! - yes, at least for the next 4 years the wonderful memories of this big win would bring smiles on this mass of people certainly. Some statistics should start finding patterns in improvements happening, I seriously think.

They did it for Sachin, they did it for team India - no they did it for the country, India. This piece in Mint on saturday said that it is a misconception that India loves cricket, no. India loves India and cricket is a means to do that! What a wonderful statement by Aakar Patel here. True that India loves India and that is why the hatred creeps in too, not liking things happening around is probably because of our love for the country which makes us possessive about it and we want good things to happen to it & in it.

Let the celebrations continue in our heart though they might have ended explicitly! Let the 'roar' be at its peak as much as possible & all through!