Moth? Butterfly? you can call it unidentified flying object, I call it “jeevi”. The wood is teak, it costs a future these days.

I said Chempakam, dad says Arali. He also said how much it costs a kg. I’d thought he was a romantic like me.

Cats are sad animals, they say cats dream of those good old days when they were lions. Hehe, two white lions then they are so afraid of me

P.S: I have purposefully omitted my dog’s snaps for Privacy reasons

P.P.S: Any comment which makes fun of the snaps will be moderated

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You want me to take initiative. You want me to cooperate, voluntarily, with others around me. You want me to learn continuously and bring the benefits of that learning to my work, to my job, to the company, to its success. How do we get into those behaviors if around me it is the smell of the place you create?

If you’d asked these questions to your organisation, you would find the below interesting.

Sumantra Ghoshal in an article written shortly before his death, dwells on revitalising people and “the smell of the workplace”. He illustrates how organisations wading through those slog overs of satisfactory underperformance with controls that constrains, could revitalise its workforce with stretch and discipline.

Generally, adults do not change their attitude. They do so only in response to profound personal tragedy, profound personal grief. Otherwise, things happening in office, trying to get manufacturing competitive advantage etc, do not change attitudes – not of adults.

That being the case, we have a problem. I really believe, revitalising manufacturing, revitalising a business, revitalising a company, takes, among other things, the revitalisation of people.

He compares the smell of Downtown Calcutta and the Fontainebleau forest in France and explains why most large companies in India end up creating “Downtown Calcutta” inside themselves.

So every year, in July, I used to come to Kolkata for almost a month. Why July? Because that is the only time my children had a sufficiently long break. The whole point was to keep them in touch with my parents. Think about it — downtown Kolkata in July. The temperature is over 100�F with humidity of 98%.

The reality was that I felt very tired during most of the vacation. Most of it I spent indoors and a lot of it simply in bed.

I used to live in Fontainebleau. It is a pretty little town, 40 miles south of Paris. What makes it outstanding is that around it is the protected forest of Fontainebleau, which is one of the prettiest forests in all of Europe. You enter the forest in spring, with a firm desire to have a very leisurely walk and you cannot.

There is something about the smell of the air, about the trees, that will make you want to run, jog, jump up, catch a branch, to throw a stone, to do something. You will find that even though you entered the forest to have a leisurely walk, you are doing something else — and that is the essence of the issue of revitalising people.

Sumantra explains how management creates Constraints and Control…..

What is the smell when it is a part of a large organisation? Constraints. Top managements — you — are very wise, have lots of information, have good people. So, by products, by customers, by markets you create great strategies. You also work very hard — sixteen hours a day, eighteen hours a day. You take all the decisions, know exactly what needs to be done.

But what does this mean for those working in the shop, in the factory, sixteen levels below you? How does your hard work boil down for me? Constraints — that’s what comes down to me.

All the systems that top management create — human resource systems, manufacturing systems, planning systems, budgeting systems — each by itself is totally justified.

However, collectively, what does it feel for me, sixteen levels below, down in the factory floor? That I have to comply. All those systems hang like a black cloud over me. So I start asking myself, why does my boss exist? Not just my boss, why does the entire management infrastructure exist?

As far as I am concerned, they exist for one reason and one reason alone — to control me. To ensure that I do not do the wrong thing.

The job becomes a contract. The budget is a personal contract, transfer prices are contracts, relationships between colleagues and departments and divisions are all contracts.

That is the environment – constraint, compliance, control, contract – that is the smell of the place. And yet what is the behavior top management wants from me?

instead of Stretch and Discipline, along with Support and Trust

This is the point where Stretch begins: beyond the immediate ability to achieve. It is enormously worthwhile, it gives an enormous sense of pride.

Stretch is the antithesis of constraint; as opposed to compliance, there is discipline. This is not to say we don’t need systems — not at all. 3M, one of the companies I find fascinating, has a rigorous system; Intel has rigorous systems, Richard Sheffield, a small company as is it, has rigorous systems.

and illustrates how, in Philips

A determined management team that inherits a ‘Downtown Kolkata in Summer’ syndrome can transform the place into a ‘Fontainebleau Forest in Spring’ in a reasonable period of time.

That is the real challenge before top management. True competitive advantage is the tremendous unused potential in our people. Our organisations are so constructed that most employees are asked to use 5% to 10% of their capacities at work. It is not a matter of hours or effort. It is the capacity.

You can read the full article at Rediff. What is the smell of your workplace?

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When a woman does ascend through the glass ceiling into the White House, it will be, in part, because of the race of 2008, when Hillary Clinton broke through the glass floor and got down with the boys.  (link to Full article below)

Do you remember the final scene in Wolfgang Petersen’s classic Air Force One, when they haul Harrison Ford over and the pilot quips “Liberty Two Four is changing call signs – Liberty Two Four is now Air Force One!”. Was I thrilled?

All of us (me in plural) continued to stay away from a US election campaign which has no chance of delivering a handsome white male in Pennsylvania avenue. Doesn’t every US president we’ve seen look a bit like Harrison Ford, say things like “The dead remember our indifference. The dead remember our silence.”

And now there seems to be a winner, atleast one person made the Time Cover

While everybody is writing volumes on where Clinton went wrong, there is this interesting piece in NYT which answers a lot of chauvinists including me. Hillary’s Achilles heel was the White male vote which never favoured her. The last few primaries saw a reversal of the trend. Why would white males vote for her? 

Susan Faludi’s interesting and revealing take on Hillary’s stepping across an unstated gender divide, transforming herself and breaking the glass floor,

While the populace might concede the merits of the female reformers’ cause, it found them repellent on a more glandular level. In that visceral subbasement of the national imagination — the one that underlies all the blood-and-guts sports imagery our culture holds so dear — the laurels go to the slugger who ignores the censors, the outrider who navigates the frontier without a chaperone.

Full article here

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Rajagiri college in Kochi in their relentless pursuit towards excellence in social sciences has announced the list of MBA admits for 2008-2010. Its said that in HBS, you have to define your place in the first few weeks, there is a lot of introspection. Rajagiri does that for their students even before classes begin. Yes, Johnny Tony in the second bench is an RCSC MBA and you are a Merit MBA.

And in their Relentless pursuit towards excellence they have been accredited with a Five Star Rating by UGC-NAAC and Reaccredited A+

This indeed is A+ category.

Am I dumb, is this how admissions work? Wouldn’t one combined Final list do for the Class of 2010. Can we be a little more sensible? These admits will be spending their next two years together, and the college is not really doing them a favour. My colleague says this is outright discrimination. Don’t know, skipped lunch again, wtf!

Thank God Its Friday!

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And the saddest part of the sentence is that full stop after the don’t. I could wish all day and all night for a comma or a semi-colon or a haywire to hang on. But at this point of time, the author regrets that I couldn’t be included. Thats it. Some shine and some don’t. Call it anything you want, like ding, like somebody hung up without even talking.

Some people shine and some don’t. Yeah.

Curious. I work in a valley surrounded by green hills, hills green with coconut palms in the day and dark and threatening during the night. That night, one hour past midnight, I was driving home. Do not ask me what I do till then, nobody knows, neither do I. At the circle where bike accidents occur every other day, I saw something crossing the road. A little black object crawling slowly across the road. I’m not afraid during night times as much as I am during day. So I slowed the bike, removed my helmet and welcomed the visitor.

The circle is a spectacle to begin with, five neon lamps wash the place with their heady glow, the place including the road is orange in color. Literally. The black tortoise finally stopped a few feet from me. I park the bike and stare at this new intrusion into my life. A new messenger. Otherwise of everything in this world a black tortoise! and it appears before me in an orange junction. I know I have to read symbols if I ever need to be an alchemist, I didn’t want this mother of all omens to pass. I wanted the universe to conspire to get things done for me.

“What are you doing here?”, I wanted to know, there was no one around to be embarrassed.

My upbringing is so conservative that, if the tortoise replied, my life would have been destroyed then. I can’t handle shocks without self-destruction. I’m a masochist in certain ways. The tortoise didn’t reply, helpfully.

I looked at my destiny’s point person for a few minutes. Once in a while when it withdrew its head like a coward into its black shell, my optimism tinted with white horror in the realization that this could be just another mortal tortoise. Then the head came out and I was hopeful again, there was some message waiting for me there, finally my confusions were about to get cleared. I’m the second most optimistic person in the world, you, who expect something worthwhile from this curious incident of a tortoise in the night time can take the cake.

Black tortoise, dark moonless night and a place that shines with orange light. What was the message? The place shined, but my eyes got accustomed, ennui set in, the message remained elusive. Of everything, a black tortoise. Black tortoise, dark moonless night and a place that shines with orange light. What could it mean. It meant go. I started the bike tired of the pointlessness, leaving the cornered tortoise to its own confusions on where to go.

I needed a purpose in life, and this was my chance. All I asked for was some order, some meaning to all that was happening and not happening, and what I get is a dark, blank, indifferent silence of the Universe. I did have faith. I believed. I even consciously disregarded the fact that there was a stream flowing quarter mile from where I found the tortoise. I denied my logic to have faith in a tortoise story, because I needed a myth to move on.

The sad part is we need myths to move on. Like that man up in the dusty Deccan mountain, with a cave full of pamphlets – one for each of us with our destiny written on it. Or else settle down with that Almanac which tells you why you are special, why the moon, Neptune and Saturn were wherever they were when you were born. Or sleep on the terrace to spot that shooting star. Or wait for the red mail van to come around the corner. Or keep searching on google till you find your niche.

I’m sorry I couldn’t do to you what Coelho did to people who shine, they anyway would have. Like faith did to my class topper, he anyway would have topped the class. And we are left praying in front of sanctums, asking for boons which no one can give. Rather asking for boons which we are never sure of. There is no destiny because there isn’t one. Perhaps we could ask for a little humility, to understand that there is no script already written, to stop searching for it and come to terms with the truth that some people shine, some don’t. The earlier, the better.

And dear Freud, you would be analyzing the state of my dreams by now. Lack of direction and self-esteem compounded by a false sense of superiority and misplaced aspirations in an underlying mosaic of negativism, lack of talent and sheer escapism. Maybe, maybe not, maybe why don’t you go fuck yourself. No hey, I’m sorry. I’m all yours to analyze my self-help guides of good living, but right now I’m not free. The truth will set me free. But right now, I’m getting fucked by the truth from all sides. Maybe the truth will set me free, some day.

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From Rediff, on being happy at your job. Good read.

Yet what impressed me most about her satisfaction was how it contrasted with the dissatisfaction of almost all my other contemporaries. One word describes how most of us in our late 40s are coping with far more interesting jobs: badly.

A couple of weeks ago another cheering piece of work was published by scientists at the University of Warwick showing that happiness over a lifetime is U-shaped. It looked at thousands of workers in 80 different countries and found that most people start off happy, and then slide towards misery, reaching a trough at 44. By our early 50s we start to get happy again and by our 60s and 70s happier still.

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Obama’s American dream speech is interesting, excerpts

America is the sum of our dreams. And what binds us together, what makes us one American family, is that we stand up and fight for each other’s dreams, that we reaffirm that fundamental belief – I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper – through our politics, our policies, and in our daily lives. It’s time to do that once more. It’s time to reclaim the American dream

Talkies editorial opinion is clearly influenced by this conversation about White people from Good Sheperd,

Joseph Palmi: Let me ask you something… we Italians, we got our families, and we got the chuch; the Irish they have the homeland, jews their tradition; even the niggas, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?

Edward Wilson: The United States of America, and the rest of you are just visiting.

Lets not take United States away from the white male and I hope on Super Tuesday, the handsome white male reigns. He came second yesterday btw, a new wave as his email says.

and hey! HNY

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Ariyaan Raja Mannan will succeed Thevan Rajamannan as the ‘Raja’ of the Mannan community in Idukki district. The 26-year-old ‘king’ is the 16th Raja of the community and is the youngest to ascend the throne. The selection is a complex process involving ‘psychic revelation’ and acceptance among the ‘Kaanis,’ leaders of various Mannan ‘kudis’ (villages) who play a pivotal role in the administration of the Mannan community, which follows the matrilineal system.

The uniqueness of this election is that, interested candidates can do nothing but pray for getting elected. Congress party did the same in Gujarat it seems, but that election works in a different way. I’m happy that Modi got re-elected. Otherwise we would have taken democracy for granted. A leader like Modi who relies on a high decibel message of development and xenophobic nationalism can be countered only by a strong ideological opposition which cuts through his message. Congress party in Gujarat lost, but the sad part is they lost it completely.

Did they really believe Sonia Gandhi won the 2004 elections for them? Is that why the elections became Sonia vs Modi, with Rahul to go with. Sonia and Rahul don’t win elections for you, YSR Reddy wins elections. Remember the undefeatable Babu Naidu (we all wanted him as our Chief Minister, didn’t we). YSR led a two year long mass campaign against Naidu, it was YSR’s mass appeal that gave Congress its 29 seats in Andhra. It was those 29 seats which re-wrote the national destiny in Delhi.

Every year is a 2004, but you need a leadership which braves the deccan heat in 2002 and 2003 taking out “Pada yatra” and “Jaitra Yatra” to the people, which taps into the anti-establishment mood. Sadly for the Congress there was no 2005 or 2006 in Gujarat, and Madam flying down and waving to the people does not change that. Chandrababu Naidu was not defeated on election day, Modis die by a thousand wounds.

and the best Birthday gift to Vajpayee, atleast now he can “show his face”

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O&M’s ad for Madhya Pradesh Tourism - Hindustan ka dil dekho. Makes you feel you want to visit the place and that was perhaps the purpose of the ad. Nice one!

Hindustan ka dil dekho…

Incredible India

P.S : Eklavya is India’s entry for the Oscars. Incredible India

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Outside Kanakakunnu palace – Nishagandhi was full

Legislature – dim lights, Photography banned

Museum road, Merry Columbus

Secretariat – North Block

Secretariat – Outsider’s view

Usha Uthup at Chandrashekaran Nair Stadium – same old stuff

Trivandrum Corporation

Kanakakunnu

Lights of the city

Check Out : Full stream of photos

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