The Other Side of Life

Since my readers seem to have enjoyed the previous post on my travel stories, I decided to regale you with some more. And this set of stories, just *had* to be shared. So, you know how we often talk about social media marketing? How India is now a super-power? How rural India is fast catching up with its urban counterparts? How social media's next target would be the upcoming rural areas, where Internet penetration is increasing? Yes? I am also one of them who talks about this. A lot. Its a part of my job description. We quote statistics and we say rural incomes are increasing, hence, it makes a strong case for making malls in rural India.  One trip to these villages is enough to debunk all theories, throw all statistics into a dustbin, crush these good looking presentations and throw back your head and laugh! :D I am not saying there hasn't been any development. I am just saying, us Strategy people need to slow down. The pace of things in rural India i  s  ...

Half is all I ask for. Half the Perfect World..with.. No Powerpoints. Not even if I am good at making them. No Excel. No Outlook. In fact, no Microsoft Office. No Internet Explorer. Lots of instances of Chrome. Youtube. Random net surfing. Travel Sites. Rather, lots of travel. Beaches. Long Drives. Sunshine. No rains. March-like weather, for the entire year. Long vacation.   Holidays. Leaves. Since its my perfect world, make that leave from vacation to go work. Why not, flexible work  play hours. But, good pay, haan? Bonus. Good appraisal. No performance pay. No performance required. No business jargon. No templates. Work only if you love it. Else, just sit at home. No pressure. No graphs. Good health. But no pressure to stay fit. Eat. Loads of fruits. Chips. Nachos. No milk. No paneer. No dal makhani. Pizza yes. Ice Cream. Sitaphal. French Fries. Everyday. Subway too. Bhindi. Fry? Yes. Music.  Nickelback. What? I like Nickelback. Rockstar.  Good old...

People often ask me this question, "Do you travel for your job?".  Immediately my mind spirals into a vortex with scenes running in my head. Of batch-mates' Facebook check-ins in Dubai, New York, London, Amsterdam. Of check-ins in the Heathrows and the JFK Airports. Of fancy pictures on the top of Burj Al Arab, on the Greenwich Line, of snow and snowstorms. Of shopping in Hong Kong.  And then, like a switch pressed, I suddenly see scenes of Long highways, green fields, thatched huts. I shake myself out of the reverie, politely smile and say, "Not much travel." The fact is, I cannot do Facebook check-ins for the Pasiyadongris and Lunawadas and Dedh Gaons. So, yes, I travel quite a lot, and I travel across the country side, over highways, into villages, talk to farmers, see a side of India most young people have no idea of and no, I do not hate it! :D The thing with travel like this is, you get a new perspective on everything. I know it isn't ideal, bu...

Believe me when I say this, I did a lot of research before writing this post. I went through each one of your blogs to understand the nomenclature. By general consensus, the nomenclature seemed to be a mutual and exclusive subset of: Set = {Dude, P, Partner, Murali, Hero, AB, He} I then systematically went about exploring options and wrote down pros and cons. Like for instance: Since there can be only 1 Dude, we have to strike that off - Dude P is unrelated. *I* could be called P, though. So P. Partner. Interesting. But I might have to cut that out on account of the fact that it reminds me too much of office jargon. So Partner . The Man. Too stereotypical. Man. M or eM. Hmm. Has a nice ring to it. But, I don't know. eM sounds a bit doubtful. Like umm? So  M or eM. The Boy. I like this. But on second thoughts, why give him the advantage of always sounding young? Nope.  The Boy . And so, after analysing many more such names, I finally singled out a name....

*Mush post alert* See. The thing is this. We are all filled with cynicism. And why not? Bad roads, bad weather, bad politicians, bad news anchors, bad job, bad salary, bad boss, bad, bad, bad. Its easy to be cynical. But you know, it could have been a lot worse. Why? Oh well. So much more could have gone wrong, right? We owe the normalcy in our life to many more unknown hands, than we are willing to admit! So I decided to start my new year on a thank you note. A thank you to a few of these unknown faces, who make my life comfortable, despite all the cynicism. Hope the good-will reaches, to at least some of them! :) #1 On My List Already posted this on Indigo's Facebook page. I have a message for the crew of 6E-174 (Flying from Mumbai to Delhi). Would be great if this could be passed on to them.   On the last day of the year, a cancelled flight is bound to make people angry. But your warmth and sincerity made the journey so comfortable. At the end of the flight, you guys stoo...