Random Thoughts

it seemes that my cycle has the potential to be the heroine of many of my blogs. first of all, it went defunct on the very day i bought it and brought it to my dorm. and i swear it wasn't my fault at all, other than the fact that i allowed my dormmates to drive it. it has 12 gear combinations, and when you have 16 out of 18 engineers in your dorm, your cycle ceases to be a newly-wed bride (as i would have liked them to believe) and instead becomes an engineering challenge. within a span of 15 metres they used to change the gears some 20-25 times. so what happened later on, didn't come as a surprise at all. next evening i dressed up myself in full jogging suit and went to my cycle only to find out that the gears had been locked up, the chains didn't exactly match up with the gear teeth on the rear wheel and of course, i couldn't even move the gear-shifter along its full length. i could only put it on the 5th and 6th positions, it didn't go beyond it.

i called up the cycle shop and found out that the shop is closed on sunday. so i tried again on wednesday (dont blame if for not calling earlier, i really have a busy schedule on monday and tuesday) and talked to the shopkeeper. here is how the conversation went.

Me: hello, i am Rahul, talking from IIM, Vastrapur. my cycle has got its gears locked up and so i
can't paddle the wheels. could you send a technician ?

Shopkeeper (giving me a true example of the diminished customer value after he/she makes a purchase): But sorry sir, we don't send technicians to the customers. they have to bring it to our
shop.

Me (using my most mellow and humble voice, as if i am sitting in an i-bank interview): yes i know, but actually i can't paddle the wheels and i will have to take the cycle to ur shop by walking on foot. and you very well know, that my institute is around 3 kms from ur shop. so it would be really nice if you helped me out of my situation.

[what i didn't say to him that i can, and actually do, run 5 kms in 20 minutes. but that wouldn't have helped my situation, would it ?]

Shopkeeper (like Queen victoria deigning to grant a wish to a humble page): ok i understand your situation. normally we don't agree to such requests, but since you are from IIM, i will send a technician tomorrow.

[this is the first time my institute's brand name has helped me in getting some work done. most of the times, as soon as the shopkeepers know that you are from IIM, they will hike up the prices. the autowallahs in front of the institute take circuitous routes to any place you want to go, and take twice or thrice the fair amount. everybody in the campus knows this, but is helpless since he/she doesn't know the route.]

i waited the whole day tomorrow, and as i had feared, the technician didn't turn up. i called the shop yesterday, and i had thought about a word or two about professional ethics that i wanted to tell the shopkeeper. here is how the conversation went:

Me: hello, this is Rahul from IIM, Vastrapur. you were supposed to send a technician today, but
nobody turned up.

Shopkeeper: Sir, actually today it rained very heavily here.

Me: And......? (yes i know this, you bastard. it was raining inside the campus walls also. here too it is too hot these days, and thankfully we don't get any step-motherly treatment from mother nature.)

shopkeeper: so, the water has entered the basement of the shop. and all the people in the shop are busy taking out the water. we don't have anything but bucket and mugs, and we hope to finish this work by tomorrow evening. so i am very sorry, but please bear with us.

so folks, this is a humble begining of the story of my cycle. i went out for my first ride today in the evening and had quite a few interesting incidences. but that i will post later. if you talk too much one day, you won't have anything to speak the next day, isn't it?

i was just talking to a guy, Rishabh Shah, on orkut while i came across his "about me". these lines, in particular, caught my eye:

1. Nobody dies a virgin, for life screws us all.

2. Work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt, and dance like noone is watching. - Randall G Leighton

3. I am what I am, take it or leave it.

the third line actually is taken from adidas. Adidas wrote this in its advertisements featuring one american basketball star (don't remember his name) when he was attacked in NYC.

well, this post is not so serious as it seemes from the caption. these days i have been keeping myself alive from songs of Radiohead (previously this honour has gone to Pink Floyd, GnR, Bon Jovi, and of course no to mention, the one and only, U2). i was listening to one of the Radiohead's songs "Faithless the wonder boy", and suddenly it came to my mind that the opening melody looks very familiar to the famous song of Grease, the 1978 hit of John Travolta. of course, the context and lyrics of the two songs are very different, but still the similarity between the opening melodies and background sound is too hard to miss. do we see signs of plaigarism, or simply "musical impressions", as Anu Malik would have preferred to say ?

just listened to this song of Radiohead after i went to a discussion forum where people just couldn't stop praising this song. the song, well, is good though not not better than my favourite one. here are some of the lines -

and true love waits
in haunted attics
and true love lives
on lollipops and crisps

i don't know what Thom Yorke (the lead singer) was thinking when he wrote that, but to me it seems as if he is just denouncing the whole enigma behind true love. true love flourishes only in haunted places and flowers. in this man-made world, it mellows as soon as it sees the power of money. those who try to save their love from being destroyed, do lose their career, their life and their peace of mind over this. to some it may be the sole power of love which forces a lover to fight against all odds. to me, it is just plain folly.

it is indeed unfortunate that two of my posts are on strategy, a subject which i absolutely hate. today one of my friends scrapped me on orkut to ask for a book on "strategic management". he has joined his firm recently and is working on the strategy devision of the company. so, he wants to "brush up" his funda before starting any seriuos work. his request has forced me to think of two questions:

1. what is strategy, really ? is it some subject which one can learn in a textbook like finance or
mathematics, or is it just plain vanilla common sense ?
2. even if one assumes for a moment that strategy can be learnt by a textbook, what should be the characteristics of an ideal book ?

first let's talk about the first question. i seriously don't think that strategy can be learnt in a textbook. the logic is plain, and simple. strategy works on the same principles as a good portfolio selection in equity investment. suppose somebody is an avid investor and has been searching for ages to find an algorithm which insures maximum return while minimizing the risk. he finds it somehow, goes on to become very rich and soon starts bragging about it. now when too many people know about this, everybody starts to invest in the same portfolio. the result ? soon the returns on the portfolio dwindle, and it becomes unattractive (there have actually been some examples of this. French & Famma once reported that the return-risk ratio for the small-cap companies was frequently was frequently better than the blue chip companies. some time after their research paper was published, the phenomenon was found to have become extinct). strategy also suffers from the same curse. unless there is a monopoly, we can assume that there are enough numbers of firms working in an industry (a monopolist doesn't need a strategy, does it ?). there are several conditions that affect all the firms in the industry, since they pervade the working environment. in financial jargon, they are called "systematic" risk that the firms face. now if all the firms start thinking in the same way to deal with those problems, obviously all of them will make no progress. after all, if all the athletes in a 100 m race run at the same speed, nobody wins, and everybody loses. if a textbook exists, and all the firms employ blue-eyed MBAs who read those books, everybody will use the same principles. needless to say, such a textbook can't be effective for long.

now about the second question. even if i do assume for a moment that such a textbook exists, what should that book be? should they deal at a theoretical level without getting into the specifics, like porter's value chain or porter's five forces, or should they be specific to the industry which they are dealing with? i think neither of them will be optimal. the best way is to read the history of successful companies and take lessons from them. reading the autobiographies of their CEOs also is one good way. after all, who could have thought of cheap furtniture before IKEA ? and who could have thought that one day Intel will be known more for its processor than for its memory chips ? these are the radical decisions (or strategic inflexion points, as Intel ex-CEO Andrew Grove says in his book "only the paranoid survive") which one should look for, and learn from them. textbooks look good only in the cupboard of a marketing executive, not anywhere else.

There is only one thing which is worse than being put in a Nazi concentration camp, and that is to sit through an SFI class. those 70 minutes are absolute torture, and they are complete proof that extreme boredom can kill you. the moment the professor starts to speak you start looking at the wall clock, hoping that perhaps looking at it will make it blush and it will start to run faster. but no !!! all your effort, all your attention goes totally in vain. the only way to survive is to take your mind elsewhere. you try to do that, but the brain also gets so chocked by the global things being spoken by the prof that it also refuses to move. finally 70 minutes get over, and you start congratulating yourself on living to see another day. but there is one positive side to it, however, though it is sarcastic. this class should be attended by everybody who doesn't have a science background or wants a proof of the Einstein's relativity theory. time moves so slowly that you start to wonder if Einstein also had to sit through any such class to get inspiration for this theory.

here i am putting some lines and/or phrasesthat were said by the prof. i hope that even reading them will make you sick and you will start feeling some sympathy for those poor souls who actually have to listen to them.

1. competitive convergence

2.achieving organizational fit through moving from strategic drift to strategic renewal.

3.we should always try to achieve symphony instead of cacophony.

4.a firm envisions its future by defining its BHAG - Big Hairy Audacious Goals.

5. Envisioned future has three components:
what
when
where
"what" is the most important one.

6.you should rather have a positive BHAG than a negative BHAG.

7. a business model is not about making money, instead it is about defining the mission and
achieving the vision.

8.strategy is not a single-layered birthday cake, instead it should be prepared as one prepares a
multi-layered wedding cake.

9. theory of busines rests on the top of a pyramid whose components are:
theory of business
business model
strategy formulation
strategy translation
strategy communication
strategy implementation
strategy initiatives
individual initiatives
strategic outcomes

for me, these jargons are as familiar as a greek song. i don't care if the pyramid of the theory of business is inverted. in fact i don't even care for this stupid theory.

so i am back in ahmedabad now after chilling out for 2 months in delhi. even though the wordk load is considerably lesser than what i had in the first year, it still seems so hectic when i compare it with my daily routine in delhi. and right now i am glad that i have found some time to write a new post.

this post is about delhi, and all those wonderful people i met in that big city. frankly speaking, academically my 2 months' stay in delhi was a complete sham. i didn't do much work, and whatever i did is dwarfed in front of the summer internship projects done by other people. one of my friends actually used to work for 20 hours a day and he got only 3 days off during 2 months. i won't be wasting any time and space ruminating over the supposed loss of time, coz as somebody has said "one seriuos thing that one should always remember is that nothing is to be taken so seriously."

however, non-academically these 2 months have been most eventful for me. they have added many firsts to my life. for the first time i went to Rishikesh and did white-water rafting. for the first time i did a 24-hour journey by train without getting any berth where i could sit or sleep. and of course, for the first time i also travelled by metro train. one may find it silly, but when i hear about the "comfortable ride" that my friends had when travelling by local trains in Bombay, i think the metro was quite a blessing for me. and for the first time i also thought seriuosly about proposing to a girl, something which until then i was pretty sure i wouldn't do ever in my life. i have decided to write short comments on different people i met. some comments will be cheesy, some drab, and some may be funny. but for better or for worse, i will try to put my honest remarks. after all, blogs are not supposed to be politically correct, are they ?

vikas - there are very few people who i like to spend time with, and you are one of them. if god ever asks me to get an elder brother, i would choose you without thinking twice. i don't know of any other guy who has as much responsiblity as you have, and still manages to have a smile on his face. you seem to be a little unlucky in love, but i pray to give you a good girl. i will always remember the heart-to-heart talk we had after sipping 6 pags of bacardi.

suman jee - a very innocent guy, who goes at great lenths to make people comfortable. you gave me a living example of how much men care about their hair, or the lack of it. :) and yes, i can never forget the words you said to the girl he proposed - hum ahaan ke chaahai chhiyai

gurpreet - a true sardar, who loves chicken, life, and PJs. talking to you used to make me reminiscent of my engineering days. i wish you retain your great sense of humor, and we remain good friends.

jasjit - a true maggu and workaholic, who is destined to rise to great levels in her professional career. there are very few girls around these days who care to spend money judiciously, and you are one of them. in fact, i won't be surprised if your husband becomes a millionaire after getting married :). i wish you all the best for your presentation and your future.

subrato - you are one of those who do what they like, and like what they do. publishing a book and working with some of the well-known economists is something that everybody aspires for, and you have done that. i wish you go on to become an academician and comes to my campus as a faculty. but before that, i do request you to do something about your intellectual PJs which go OHT (over - head transmission) :).

vartika - you are beautiful (Preity is pretty, isn't she?) yet down-to-earth, and have great sense of humor though know when to draw the line. you would look better if you adopt the hair-style of Preity. :)

shivani -you are cheerful and are great fun to be with. you carry herself with so much innocence that one may start to think that this girl may not have anything to do with any time of studies, leave an arcane subject like economics. it actually took me a while to realise that you actually are the topper of your university. you do seem to be a little confused in what is it exactly that you want - money & investment banking, or a chill life. i am sure that you will do well whatever you choose, and wish you good luck for your stay in LSE.

kavita - one saves the best for the last. i have been impressed by many, but there are very few people who i really admire, and you are one of them. though we have very little in common in our perspectives, i hope you remain a good friend. i wish you good luck for your professional as well as personal life.

till now, mostly i have met people who were my batchmates in kharagpur or ahmedabad. they give good company, but don't give any diverse opinions. their perspective is the same as the way i usually think, because of similar backgrounds. i hope that the friends i have made in Delhi remain my good friends, and i can count on them if and when i get into trouble.

First of all, I thank my friend who pointed out that people who don't have an account on blogspot can't put comments on my blog. I have rectified this and hope that from now on I will get to see at least a few comments.

Rakhi Sawant has become the bete-noire of the self-styled moral police these days. Media is blowing her supposed misconduct out of the proportion and suddenly she is being treated as a woman who represents everything that is wrong with the entertainment industry today.

my question is, is it really justified? after all, she is just a woman who is there in a profession, like all of us, and has to endure everything that goes with it. it doesn't matter whether she likes it or not. she is perfectly correct when she says that if she would come on stage wearing a sari and projecting a demure look, nobody will even look at her. she is getting ridiculed just because she is trying to make money for herself and is honest about it.

but the larger question is, do we really have the moral authority to make judgements on whether she is doing right or wrong? there is nobody in this world whose conscience is clear. as I have written earlier in my blog, innocence comes dirt-cheap in this world. it only takes a few pieces of paper to buy that. people lose their integrity every day, every day an honest young man/woman falls victim to the lure of money. just because you can't see the devil doesn't mean that he doesn't exist. and just because you fail to see your own shortcomings doesn't mean you will act St. Peter of the heaven.

and this is precisely what is wrong with our society today. I make no bones about saying that our society has been long dead, for a society is a place where humans live. we have been transmogrified into robots with hearts of stone. everyday i pass through a sub-way on my way to the office in Cannaught Place. CP is the hub of private companies in Delhi, you will find all types of swanky cars and fashion-conscious people here. there in the subway an old woman sits near the stairs. she is too weak to say anything, and so keeps a plastic glass on the floor for people to drop some coins as they go by. every day in the morning i count the number of coins when i pass her by, and every day in the evening, without fail, i find that the coins haven't changed since the morning. and what is more heart wrenching is that, with every new person coming down the stairs, i have actually seen her face lit up with expectation. isn't she the mother, or the grandmother of somebody like us? how can we just forget to think about an old woman who is old enough to be our grandmother?
our humanity, or the lack of it, hasn't spared even children. just behind my office building there is a small garbage ground. small girls, barely 6-7 years old, who should be playing with dolls and reading fairy tales, rummage through the area throughout the day. most often they are wearing little, if any, clothes and i am yet to see a single girl who is wearing a slipper. what will happen if some stray piece of glass pierces her feet? will her parents be able to afford even the doctor's fee, leave the expense of medicines? isn't she the daughter, the sister of one of us? that girl's eyes, if you look into them, are vacant as a delapilated castle. her dreams have long gone dead, she has known no God. she will be raped several times, by several people, by the time she will reach 18. with all probability, she won't reach 50 and if her fate is so poor that she actually does, she will be forced to spend the rest of her life sitting near the staircase of a subway, with a plastic cup on the floor.

I've travelled extensively in Bihar by the ordinary coaches in the trains. several times i have seen little girls who are carrying their younger brothers in their arms and are going from one bogey to the another for begging. Once a little girl came to my bogey (she was carrying her younger brother) and stood before the passengers. after some time she slowly and sheepishly spread her hands, and looked at each of us. however, she didn't utter a single word. obviously, she was too proud to beg (children have a very sense of pride and honour, even though adults don't notice it most of the times). everybody just stared at her as if she didn't exist, as if she weren't standing there at all. the girl, quite used to all this, started to turn away. just then the train jolted and the girl lost her balance. she fell on the ground but nobody even offered a hand to save her from falling. she fell, and the crash on the floor must have given pain to her knees for many days. but even while falling she did manage to keep her hands over her brother in order to protect him from any injury.

my point is, is it the way we, the 8 people in that bogey, were supposed to behave (there were women, too)? that poor little girl had more humanity in herself than 8 educated and supposedly civilized people. people are prepared to see their mothers and sisters dying on the streets, but start hollering when they see someone uncovering herself in public to get some money, to survive. they crib about the sourness of fruits that are hanging from a tall tree, but don't care to give even a faint trace of light to those who are condemned to die, and to live, in the shadows.

is this double standard justified? it might seem quite strange, but i do find similarities between Rakhi (Sawant) and a sage. a sadhu renounces all material aspirations and keeps his morality intact. Rakhi has done exactly the opposite. she makes no bones about being an opportunist woman, doesn't care about moral ground and want to buy everything that money can buy. at least she is better than the mediocre society she is living in.

Today I was told by one of my friends that she is actually not that bad as I think.

this is not the type of statement that i have heard often in my life. i am a polite person, and there have been times when i have gone out of my way to make people comfortable around me. also, i generally don't cast aspersions or make judgements on other people's character. when one is responsible for one's own actions, any other person has no moral obligation and/or right to give his/her comments.

i may have made some remarks to her or told sth to other people, but they all were just for fun. and i am sure other people also took my words just as ordinary banter. but what has struck me most is the seriousness with which she has taken my comments. does her personality depend on the way i think? will she cease to be an innocent girl and turn into a devil-woman if somebody thought so ?

I don't blame her. probably the humans are made as such. there is an old saying in sanskrit that in money and power, a man always compares himself with others. even i have been a victim of this self-destructing ego. but the question is, is it all really necessary? get a goal in life, and give all you have to achieve that. in that process, if you find someone who likes you and cares for you, you are lucky. others who meet you for some fleeting moments and try to cast you in your own mould, just don't listen to them. they are not worthy of your attention. this is the character that Howard Roark has in Ayn Rand's famous fiction "The Fountainhead". i know it is difficult. i alone know how many times i have tried to be like him and have failed miserably. i am getting ridiculed by my own opinions (because i am the culprit of making comments at my friend), but this is the truth. it takes guts of steel to ignore the ridicule of others and be yourself. but just because cooking is difficult one doesn't stop eating, isn't it ? in this world, only those succeed who live life for themselves, and enjoy doing so. not those who try to change themselves according to every other person they meet.

and just think how much the world would get simpler if people just stopped trying to change others and accepted them as they are. the wife will think," so what if my husband does't find me attractive any more? my job is to make him happy, and i will be happy doing just that". husband will think," so what is my wife has got little plump in past few years? she still cares for me, and i will love her for that". half of the lawyers in the world will have to change their profession. or take a case of a teenager. many parents spend sleepless nights because they think their children find them outdated and don't care for them any more. imagine a world where the son will think ,"so what if my father doesn't understand my situation? it is my responsibility to give him respect, and i will do just that." the father will think," so what if my son is inexperienced and is getting a little brash? i will still give him my advice, whether he listens to it or not."

let's hope that one day the world actually gets so simple, and lovable.

just yesterday I saw the new video of Kailash Kher's new single "Tauba tauba yeh, teri surat ". the video was decent, and to my surprise, actually had a storyline which has become very rare these days. the story goes something like this - at the start a pretty woman is shown who is going to the college and some of the sadak-chhap guys are leering at her. she goes to the class, and instead of reading books all her attention is towards the curly-haired professor who seems to be quite oblivious to her swooning. after some time, the professor goes out of the institute, and takes a ferry to go on the other side. there he sees one pretty, but slightly plump, woman and his eyes get wider !!! (the actor's eyes actually get wider in this scene, and in my opinion it is the most hilarious scene in the video). the woman in turn then goes to a recording studio......
by now you would have anticipated the story. there in the studio the woman sighs by looking at her co-worker who in turn is trying to pataao some other girl. thus, a chain-like structure is formed which binds strangers, though i agree the binding force is just infatuation, and so very short-lived.

this video has reminded me of the famous theory of "six degrees of freedom". first propounded by a Hungarian writer in 1929 and later proved empirically in 1967, this theory says that everyone in this world is connected to everybody else through a chain which has not more than 5 links, or intermediaries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation gives some interesting information on this). for example, it means that a small farmer in the Basauli village of Patna district can meet Amitabh Bachchan if only 5 people agree to help him !!! it seems quite strange, but i have tried it on myself and it actually works.

but this theory also raises some interesting questions. why is it that some people have to spend their entire lives searching for their perfect partner when they are only 5 links away from him/her ? it reminds me of the famous metallica song: so close......yet so far.....