Encounters with Art of Living

With all the controversies surrounding Sri Sri Ravishankar's 'attempt on life' I am reminded of the few encounters with his Art of Living classes and its evangelists.

The first and most interesting incident occurred while I was traveling with my friend Murali from Thiruvananthapuram to Bangalore in the slow moving 'express train' - Island Express. The journey is pretty boring and long. After some time, we started chatting with the fellow travelers in the adjoining set of next 8 seats.

We were in our 2nd year of engineering, and a young man working in the then dream field of IT held our attention. After chatting on general topics, he slowly moved on to religion and spirituality. Then he began his sales pitch by saying 'Life is an art, you must master the art to have a proper life'. Then he said that the only way to master the art of life is to join the preliminary course at Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living course. With his skills, he had almost convinced the other 4-5 people sitting there to join the course at 1500 rupees. Seeing the crass commercialization of Hinduism, we got piqued and started picking on his statements and presenting counter statements.

During this, he made a mistake of saying 'Why are you folks thinking like this - if a girl tells you I love you, you believe it, whereas if someone tells you he hates you, you don't believe it'. We picked on this and said, no, its the other way round - if a girl tells I love you, she may be saying it with ulterior motives, whereas if someone says I hate you, it is more likely to be straight from the heart and hence more trustworthy. Others who had earlier agreed to join the preliminary course agreed with this point of view. We then went on to say that everything is a part of living, and even art of living is a part of living, playing on silly rhymes.

By this time everyone dropped their plans to join the Art of Living course much to the irritation of our evangelist friend. He more or less threw us out from there but that didn't give him any brownie points with those who had dropped the plans to join the course. At Coimbatore station when we stepped out to have tea, this dude ran away from us when he found we were headed to the same tea shop on the platform.

My second encounter with an Art of Living evangelist was when this distant relative of mine, himself an instructor of the preliminary course, took 'pity' on my living conditions (!) and took me to a higher level instructor. To solve my 'problems' (all in the imagination of my relative) he needed a picture of Sri Sri to be gifted to me. The simplest way to escape was to accept the pic, which I did, and later in turn gave it away to another Sri Sri fan in my extended family.

I do not know Sri Sri personally, nor have listened to his discourses. Whatever may be his real knowledge/powers, his followers are definitely taking religious commercialism to new lows

How Indian IT growth has affected Indian Science

It all started with a tweet I had retweeted a few days ago - "IT has destroyed Indian science as much as it has contributed to its economy" - Prof. C. N. R. Rao", to which my friend Nithya Babu responded by tweeting "Indian science? do we have such disciplines that have offered people jobs? In a country with no social security?? hmmm". The response to that could not be compressed into 140 characters, and hence this post.

I have nothing against Indian IT, and has been a beneficiary of its success until recently. And I fully agree with Nithya that any degree that does not create jobs other than teaching posts (mostly in the same university, for the same course) is of no use. But we humans have a tendency to look for immediate benefits (short term returns) and tend to move to fields that apparently give better salaries.

It is true that IT and ITES has given jobs to thousands of graduates in India in the last decade who otherwise would have not found any job, and in that way helped the economy a lot. But then it has also led to a large scale migration to the IT sector from sectors which do generate jobs, but are not as well paying as IT currently is. For example, most of engineering graduates, irrespective of their field of specialization in engineering, have joined IT. Even the IT companies were also happy to take up students who had spent the last 4 years learning to design homes into their fold to make them write code in COBOL for financial applications. It is not that studying civil engineering does not get them jobs - even the buildings that the IT companies operate out of need civil engineers and architects to build them.

Such a skewed migration would hit the economy in a big way after some time, and I don't know how easily and soon this would get corrected by market forces. As a society, there is a real need for all types of work, and the society does not need everyone to be in IT. What is worse, the initial easy life of an IT engineer makes one too complacent to be good at anything else. Also, since a lot of business comes from the US, an ITian is more likely to know which coast of US California is, than knowing where Sikkim is on the Indian map (in some extreme cases, not even knowing that Sikkim is a part of India).

Somewhere we need to get out of the obsessive mentality (in boom times, no one gives you a damn if you are not in IT, in recession times no one gives you a damn if you are in IT). India as a nation and society as a whole needs civil engineers, mechanical engineers, nuclear physicists, doctors, astronomers, language teachers, accountants, - the list goes on.

On a public holiday...

... stay at home and sleep! At least that's what I learnt on the birth anniversary of the father of our nation. After having "wasted" the last 2 or 3 public holidays by lazing at home, I & wifey decided to venture outside and watch a movie. Since we had not planned in advance for the movie, most of the cinemas were sold out, and we therefore tried our luck at Mayajaal.

At Mayajaal though we reached at 1:30 pm, we could get tickets for only a 5 o'clock show. We decided to make most of the available time by going to Mahabalipuram. As soon as one enters mahabalipuram panchayat, they collect Rs 20 as entry fees. Driving further towards the beach the traffic was very heavy with frequent jams, as everyone seemed to have come out for the holiday. We had to turn back as there was absolutely no space to even stop the car, let alone park. Thus we came back to Mayajaal having donated Rs 20 to Mahabalipuram panchayat and without seeing anything.

At Mayajaal also the crowd was huge, and the atmosphere was just like any Rs 20 ticket theatre. The only consolation was the goodness of the movie "Unnai Pol Oruvan" though I liked its Hindi original "A Wednesday". But then that's for another post

The Ten Percent Driving Factor

I've recently discovered that I am bored 90% of the time. It is the other 10% of the time when I get excited that keeps me going.

This 10% has come from different things at different times. The key is in having something to make up the ten percent, which drives the 90% boredom out.

Wedding Sari blues

"There are only four types of saris. The cream ones, the blue ones, the green ones, and the maroon ones." said my friend Sethu, circa 2002. I'm in total agreement with him. I am still clueless when my mom gets confused over buying one from two saris, both of which look the same to me!

With the wedding preparations getting into the groove, I am being bombarded with questions about the sari for the bride. One conversation with my cousin (sister) went on like this: -

Chechi [elder sister]: Have you bought the sari?

Me: Yes, mom said she bought it in Trivandrum

Chechi: What's the colour?

Me: athu onnum ennikku arinjooda chechi, ammede aduthu chodikkanam [I dont know all that, must ask mom]

Chechi: So you didn't get to see the sari?

Me: No, it was bought after I left Trivandrum last. Anyway, as far as men are concerned, all saris are the same

Chechi: That's not true. If you see a beautiful lady in sari, wouldn't you turn your head?

Me: That has got nothing to do with the colour of the sari.

Chechi: It has.

Me: No, it is just what's inside the saris that make us turn our heads!

Chechi: njan ariyathe paranjatha, ini avarthikkilla [I asked unknowingly, please forgive me, I wouldn't repeat this!]

Poor Chechi. Her impression about me as the studious quiet guy would have been shattered. There was more fun due for me. The same evening I chatted with one of my female friends. It also went on similar lines: -
Friend: Amma said ur mom said saree edukan povukayanennu, edutho? [my mom said your mom is going to buy wedding saris, did you guys buy?]

Me: eduthu. [Yes, bought]

Friend: what colour

Me: what color? how dare u ask me such a question?

me: u definitely are bringing shame to our years old friedship

Friend: poda, tell me...

me: i dont know!!

Friend: don't tell me u didnt ask

me: amma bought sari yesterday. Her family bought a violet one, so this one is probably not violet

Friend: :)), poda, u didn't ask alle[right]? koranaga [monkey]

Me: how come it took u so long to realize?

Chennai MRTS

The first time I traveled in the overhead Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) in Chennai around three years ago was out of curiosity. My home state of Kerala doesn't have metro rail in any of its major cities, let alone one that runs on elevated tracks.

[pic: Mylapore (Thirumayilai) MRTS Station]

I became a more frequent user of the MRTS after I shifted my residence to Adyar area, which made Kasturba Nagar station just 5 minutes walk from my house. By then railways had extended the service to Velachery and increased the frequency to once every fifteen minutes. This mode of transport made an excellent alternative to the slow, crowded MTC buses, and the extremely expensive autorikshaws (one has to shell out anywhere between 100 and 150 to travel from Chennai Central to Adyar). At Rs 6 per ticket, and a travelling time of just 20 minutes, MRTS trains are a relief, the only grouses being that the services stops before 9 pm, and that most stations are in bad shape. The station at Kasturba Nagar (at Madhya Kailash signal) sports modern looks (at least most part of it), though the one at Indira Nagar is pathetic. Now that the usage rate has gone up, I hope that railways begin to keep the stations properly maintained and well lit.

[pic: MRTS track near Mylapore]

One-ways and a new definition of Bangalored

Do one-ways really solve traffic problems? If my personal experiences in Chennai and Bangalore are anything to go by, they do not. They simply divert un-necessary congestion to more places.

Take the case of Little Mount- Raj Bhavan - Halda triangle one way system in Chennai - I personally feel that this arrangement has only made life difficult for pedestrians. The waiting time avoided at the signals have been replaced by waiting time in front of Little Mount court for pedestrian crossing. And if there is no policeman around, then it is impossible for a pedestrian to cross the road, as the road is very wide and all vehicles speed up on this road. In the evenings, the road from Raj Bhavan to Halda Junction (towards mount road) is congested as was the case before the introduction of the one way system.

Similar is the case with TTK road/CP Ramaswamy Road, though I think it is too early to take a call on this.

Traffic has somehow tremendously increased in the last two years and I find more and more roads in Chennai becoming one ways, like it happens in Bangalore. I would like to add a new definition to the term Bangalored (the real one being this whereas my definition is based on personal experiences) - "the feeling you get when you carefully plan your trip from one end of the city to another, only to find at a crucial junction that it had been made a one way overnight! And that you would need to drive at least 2 km extra to overcome this hurdle".

3rd Day's Play - thru chat

Below is an excerpt from a chat I had with my friend (who is now pursuing higher studies in the USA), about my experience at M A Chidambaram cricket stadium, Chennai, on 28 March 2008

Me: 42 fours, 5 sixes
Friend: !!!
thalle kalippu [cannot be translated, other than to an extreme expression of surprise]
Me: the shots look a lot better when u see directlyand this innings was without flaws - unlike his earlier triple ton
Friend: wow
Me: no lives gifted by the SA team
Friend: I'm very very happy for you... and a bit sad/jealous that I couldn't be there with
you...
Me: :D
u shlda been here
u may not believe - i did mexican waves, used bottles to drum-cheer, boo-ed,
cheered....
Friend: ha ha ha...
Me: esp to see history made, the typical sehwag shots
as far as i can compare based on hearsay - its like watching rajini movies 1st
day 1st show in a b-grade theatre
Friend: he he he
Me: crowd was amazing man
we never had expected a triple ton this morning
Friend: ::)
Me: when sehwag was on 95, he played a lofted four to get to 99then one dot - u musta felt the crowd roar, and then say oh...when arnd 50k ppl do itit is something
Friend: mmmm ::)
Me: and then another lofted four to get to 103
Friend: and the inevitable roar
Me: the whole 50k were on their feet... rather in air!
Friend: ha ha ha including you
Me: the same happened for 200
Friend: wow
Me: ya incl me! then for 300, it was likefrom 291 - massive six to 297
Friend: wwwow
Me: then two dots...that time the stadium was shouting 'sehwag, sehwag...'
Friend: mmm
Me: and then three singles
Friend: ha ha ha
Me: followed by deafening roar
Friend: he he he he
Sabari: one protean spinner bowled almost the whole day
Friend: ?
Me: that chap kept on bowling a difficult line (described by many as a negative
line)
Friend: who was the poor guyohh really
Me: name's harris... i didnt know him till today
Me: a few overs later, sehwag was hitting him all over the field, with reverse
sweeps
Friend: ha ha hahow long did this go on for?
Me: most of the afternoontill stumps
Me: there was a huge contrast between dravid and sehwag
technically the wall played well
Friend: and I'd say Dravid did the right job too
Me: but it stopped us from watching the little master
Friend: ahangaaram paadilla
His role was to give shewag company and rotate the strike, which he'd done admirably well
Me: he took 68 from a painfully slow 168 balls
Friend: it would have been utter foolishness to try to score faster with Shewag going the way
he was
Me: :D
true
Friend: I'd say Dravid did his job very
any other player in his position would've done the sameFriend: maybe expcept for an aussie
Me: but for purely selfish reasonswe wanted the little master and the bengal tiger on the field before EOD
Friend: ha ha haah angaaaram
Me: dravid wld waste away a full over with dot balls, playing perfect textbook shot,
rotating the fielders with each ball
next sehwag wld face the same bowler and punish him to fence with panache
Friend: he he he kshemi nammude dravid alle onnu kshemi
Me: pattilla the crowded cheered whenever sachin was showed on the screen all padded up ;-)
Friend: :)potte tto
Me: the first 50 partnership between them, dravid made 7
Friend: ha ha ha
Me: in the second 50 partnership, he made 4!!!!
Friend: what patience!
Me: ya, patience of the crowd!
Friend: he he he eggchatly
Me: saw gopumon also in the nets
Friend: ?
Me: gopumon - for the un-initiated - is the pet name of one and only sreesanth....
popularized by malayala manorama
malayala manorama had headlines screaming something to the effect that gopumon
saved teh twenty20 for india
Me: for the last over catch
Friend: !!!my god
Friend: embarassing
Me: saw bengal tiger and jumbo jogging around the ground after the days play, before
the police shoo-ed us away
Friend: mmmm
Me: irfan pathan and robin singh gave some fielding practice to the ball boys during
the session breaks
Friend: mmm
Me: btw u wldnt mind if part of this chat finds itself in an update to my blog?
Friend: No, I don't
Me: :D
Friend: :)Somewhere during this chat, you became a kid again
Me: i was one for teh whole day!

Watching a cricket match - directly

There are a few updates due from me, including about my wedding next month – but then this post can’t wait. I watched Sehwag hit the triple ton, at Chepauk! The experience can’t be properly described in words – one has to be there to fully understand the feelings.

It’s been more than three years since I relocated to Chennai, and I missed quite a few matches – the first one I bought ticket for was washed out in the floods of 2005. Though I had to wait another three years for it, it was worth the wait. And the chance came all of a sudden too – since I was in Thiruvananthapuram for the past ten days (as my Grandpa had a surgery – that’s another post pending), I was not following cricket. I realized about the match only yesterday when I was back in Chennai. So I made quick plans this morning to go and watch the 3rd day’s play of the first test match between India & South Africa.

I was lucky to get ticket – the stadium was packed (surprising for a test match). Then came the wonderful feat by Sehwag – scoring 300 a second time in his career. The mood inside the stadium was exhilarating, cheering on the team in whatever means possible. It was interesting to note how people who were total strangers could execute Mexican waves in seconds. Some others improvised on horns and other ‘instrumentals’.

It was disappointing not to see Sachin Tendulkar play as India lost only one wicket throughout the whole day. The crowd was disappointed with Rahul ‘Wall’ Dravid. Though he played his role well, his slow innings was frustrating. Moreover, this meant we couldn’t get to see Sachin, Dravid & Laxman play. The crowd cheered whenever Sachin was shown on the screens, and sometimes boo-ed when Dravid played dot ball after dot ball.

India had a great day, piling 460+ runs for the loss of just one wicket. We had our consolation when we most Indian players, including Sachin came out for net practice. It was a day well spent, and I fully enjoyed the day forgetting everything else.

When the hunters become the hunted

MBAs, especially those majoring in Marketing Management are supposed to influence others' buying and increase sales, and not by buying things on their own, right?
Sometime last week, we had a course in Consumer Behaviour, where we looked at various ways of connecting to the buyers' emotions, and about providing an 'experience' as opposed to a 'product'.

[That week, at Sathyam Cinemas, during advertisements before the movie began:]

Me: That ad was wonderful right? The emotion of happiness felt was conveyed excellently. Brilliant piece of creativity!
My Friend: Was it? To me it was just an ordinary ad. Maybe because I don't have an MBA

[Two days later, dinner is planned with friends (who also are part of the same consumer behaviour course) at a restaurant in Adyar]

My friend, suddenly calls me up on phone: Sabari, change of plans... we're not going to that restaurant... We'll have dinner at Cafe Coffee Day...
Me: Coffee Day? Dinner???
Friend: Yes... come fast...we're almost there.... click

At coffee day, I ask him: Why suddenly dinner at coffee day? Don't tell me you were inspired by the case study on 'Starbucks Experience'...
My friend grins.

Are MBAs more gullible consumers?

Bengaluru

In the last few years, I have been making short visits to Bangalore, visiting friends. Now it is my first long stay in Bangalore - for a month long internship.

The work involves extensive travelling, and I seem to be learning the geography of the city the hard way - by driving around.

Hopefully this one month will allow me to catch up with a lot of friends.

So Far So Good

It is now close to three months since my one year MBA began. These three months have been quite interesting, with me slowly finding the groove. Initially it was tough to get back to studies mode after three years of work.

Looking back, I miss the following about my office: -
- My Team, and my friends
- The monthly paycheck: There is no longer the feel good factor whenever the date nears 30th!
- Coffee and snacks breaks
- Leave (such a thing is not in the dictionary of a fast track MBA program)
- Playing TT in the evenings

But these are more than compensated by the following at my b-school: -
- Making new friends, meeting new people
- the very fact of being back at school. At 24, this is the closest I can get to school life
- reliving school college style: studying only on the eve (sometimes only mornings) of exams, watching movies on the day before exam, etc

It has been great going so far, and the grades are also looking fine so far. I am hoping to carry forward both the fun part and the grades part throughout the year :-)

Finding Myself

One thing I knew even before joining a b-school was that making decisions forms the key to almost everything. Especially when it comes to making decisions which can have life long impacts. As someone who always let things “fall in place” than decide, it does not feel good when confronted with more and more decision making – deciding on major specialization, minor specialization, topic for empirical study, topic for Autumn internship, what not.

The underlying question, the answer to which could simplify a lot of decision-making, is what I want to do in life for a profession. Something which I would love doing, and give me a comfortable (not luxurious) pay. An industry where I don’t feel like a misfit, in spite of being above average. Something that would also give me enough time to spend with my family, similar to what my parents could give me.

Introspection only adds to the confusion. When I was in fifth standard, gazing at the night sky through the simple telescope I made with my father’s help, I dreamt of being an astronaut, dreaming of walking in space. In 6th standard, after reading about the Wright brothers and their aeroplane, I dreamt of making my own single seater and flying it.

An overdose of newspapers fascinated me, and bringing out a handwritten gossip tabloid in my class, I felt like a natural journalist in seventh standard. Eighth standard saw me conform to the standard Malayali ambition of becoming a doctor. In ninth standard, after having assembled a stereo cassette player I was sure that I wanted to be an electronics engineer.


In tenth standard, reading the adventure tales of James Bigglesworth by Capt W E Johns, I wanted to join the Indian Air Force as a pilot – a dream cut short by flat feet and myopia. For 11th standard, I didn’t even consider the non-science streams (the general perception in Kerala is that only those who don’t get science stream go to arts and commerce). When it came to choosing between Biology and Computer Science, arbitrarily I chose computer science because I didn’t want to learn biology (that despite being born to two avid botanists). The same repeated two years later, when I chose Computer Engineering.


Through my years in engineering, I could compile a list of jobs I would not want to do, Software Engineer topping the list. Upon finishing engineering, a computer engineer couldn’t be anything but a software engineer, hence I spent three years in the IT industry, often feeling like a misfit, in spite of being an above average programmer.

I needed a change, and here I am, in a b-school, trying to figure out where to go from here. One comforting feeling is that I am not the only confused soul around here. I do feel good that at least I know and accept that I am confused, whereas there are many who don’t. It remains to be seen whether things continue to fall in place, or whether a b-school will make me more proactive.

Back to School

This post has been in the offing for quite some time, but due to many reasons never got typed in.

After nearly 3 years in the IT industry, I am going back to school. School, and not college because I am joining a one year fast track MBA program, which packs so much into a single year that there are no breaks, holidays, or weekends.

No more monthly visits to God's own country or home sweet home. No more the luxury of eating food cooked by Amma once a month. No more 'decent' pay of the IT industry - back to student life, 'thozhil rahitha vidyarthi'(unemployed student) as we say in Malayalam. To use an exaggeration, joining a jail for rigourous imprisonment where there is no parole!

On the brighter side, this course would open up a lot more avenues and wider options in my professional life. What remains to be seen is whether this one year turns out to be fruitful in finding myself - something that never happened for in the IT industry.

Blogging Via E-mail

Looks like blogspot.com has a very desirable feature - to make a
post, all one needs is to send an email.

Checking out whether this would work.

The Migration

People migrate from one city to another, from one house to another, from one company to another....
In this age of IT, migration is also reflected in cyber space - we migrate email ids.....This is the first time I am migrating a blog page - from sabarinath.rediffiland.com . Whether I stay here for long, or go back to iLand - its too early to comment.
For a beginning, I may be carrying forward content from my iLand blog - those which I consider as my favourite.