Allahabad Trip

I was in Allahabad for 3 days for a cousin's wedding. It was my first UP trip and below are some things from that trip that I will never forget:

1. Guns, guns and more guns- have never seen so many guns at one place. Shotguns, pistols, rifles, AK-47, sten guns. There was even a warning at the entrance of one hotel - "Carrying all forms of arms and ammunitions is strictly prohibited"
2. Hospitality - People really worked hard to make our stay comfortable. Special thanks to nanha, bangali and... forgot the 3rd guy's name :D
3. Nicknames- Everyone has a nickname.
4. Paneer - The best paneer pakoda I have ever had. Also, it was like paneer everywhere.
5. Buses - I think Allahabad stopped receiving buses in 1970. In age, the buses gave serious competition to the oldies of my family.
6. Band, baja and dance - It is an amazing feeling to lose all your inhibitions, go into a trance and just dance.
7. Dhoti and Kurta - Weird feeling to wear a dhoti for the morning functions and kurta for the evening ones. (It was one of those East meets South marriages)
8. Filthy station - Was shocked to note that Allahabad station is filthier that Kurla station
9. Bahubalis - Half the people in the city looked like a bahubali straight out of Omkara.

The stories of your palm

When I see those palms of yours, I see each line telling a story - fate, heart, money. Much like the flowers of a garland. Each distinct but together. Each a different story but of one person.

I Love You

So sweetheart, this is the point when I am supposed to say "I love you" and you are supposed to burst out tears of happiness and say "I love you too", but none of that is happening tonight cos I am too drunk to do stupid things :)

The future of India

A few weeks back,on the eve of Independence day, I was sitting in an auto near Thane station, waiting for the signal to turn green. At that time, a car sped by in the opposite direction, and a small tri-colour plastic flag fell out of the car's window. The flag glided in the air for a few seconds and gently landed in a small puddle of water. A street urchin selling flags in the signal saw this and dashed off towards the flag, leaving his wares in the corner of the road. He was helped by the traffic constable, who whistled for the cars to stop and give way to the kid. The little one lifted the flag, wiped away the muddy water from it, folded it neatly and kept it in his pocket. He again darted off, this time towards his ware and the next whistle from the constable let the cars continue. The future of India rests securely in such children and constables who stop their daily life for a few seconds to save a plastic flag.

How to evaluate discount offers

A post I wrote for the Saledekho blog on evaluating discount offers by focusing on Need, Cost, Discount amount, Location and Duration.

The cell that defines you

With so much options in the Indian cell-phone market these days, what should a buyer do. The buyer should FLOCUS (Features, Looks, Offers, Cost and USage). Read the complete article that I wrote for Saledekho.

Start-up names

For the last couple of weeks I have been stumbling upon websites (mostly those of start-ups) whose names I just can't spell when I hear it for the first time. Examples: here and here. I am sure that these start-ups are run by smart folks and that they will create amazing stuff and make substantial money out of it. I am also sure that if I ask these guys why they name their website this way, I will get an answer which will not be as outrageous as their URLs. Still, I feel that I should list down the criteria that I would consider when naming a company:

• It should be pronounceable

When I tell someone on the phone/skype "go to blah blah", I don't want to spell out my URL. It should be simple and evident. Good example of that is dropbox and a really bad example is kyazoonga.

• The domain should be available

If you are creating say an online marketplace for books, don't even bother to look for domains like bookbazaar, because, it would have already been taken or squatted.

• It should not be very long

Long URLs always have their own set of problems. Not being able to remember the URL is just one of them.

• It should be self explanatory

I would like to minimize the time and website real-estate spent in explaining the use of the website. Towards that end, a meaningful URL would go a long way. Example: Blogger. You blog in Blogger. Simple. Another good example is moneycontrol and tinyurl.

The droplet and the world

When you look at a droplet of water hanging on to a window sill, you see the world staring back at you in reflection. A realization dawns. The world is so small that it is completely reflected in the droplet and the droplet is so large that is encompasses the world. This realization is the beginning of an awakening. An awakening to the fact that size is irrelevant. Size doesn't matter. What matters is only the thought. The thought of the droplet and the world.

Management by Crisis

Management by crisis is the idea of addressing a problem only when it becomes a crisis. Typical symptoms in the IT industry include:

• You keep getting crisis all the time (most obvious one)
• Everyday is like trench warfare - answering stink mails, having icy conference calls with customers, having meetings to decide on strategies before calls, etc

• Everyone works hard all the time and yet the customer is not happy
• A bomb greets you everyday in office. While leaving you get the satisfaction of difusing it. Next day there is another one to greet you

• projects seem to be 
  perennially in  critical stage

• Wrong people get appreciated
• People who handle escalations smoothly get appreciated, but,the ones who ensure escalations never come up in the first place get ignored

• Schedules go for a toss because of "urgent" issues
• Classic example : Initial plan of monthly movement to production gets replaced by daily production patches to fix "critical" bugs

Somethings leadership lessons to learn from IPL 3

• The end does not justify the means
• Great brand, more crowd & interest, more money. Everyone was happy except for the people who cared about the way it was done.

• You can only make a limited number of enemies
• Try to make partnerships and grow rather than bulldozing
• Don't take anybody for granted - everyone has a value and a nuisance value

• "Knowing people" will not bail you out when you screw-up

• Failure is always an orphan and instead of parents, it has a fall guy

• Being patient and sitting quiet to fight another day is most times better than going down all guns blazing
• Shashi Tharoor's response Vs Lalit Modi's response

Introspection time

This month end, I will finish one year since graduating from Great Lakes. So, time to look back and jot down (in no particular order) some of the things I learnt in B-School and the year after that:

• When under strong emotion, don't take a decision
• Be it anger, frustration, elation... wait till you cool down and then think about what you want to do

• Change the changeable and accept the unchangeable
• Makes life simple and helps you stop wasting time on meaningless pursuits

• While manufacturing/running something, if you are making a loss for each unit produced, then aggressive expansion will only increase your losses
• For example, Reliance Retail will make profit only if each of it's store makes profit. It will not make profit be opening 1000 outlets in one year. 
• This is very useful in analyzing companies that talk about expansion & capturing market share without talking about profits and sales figures (Example: Airline Companies). 

• Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the result of other people's thinking
• Read the whole speech here. Very inspiring stuff.

• Don't let your dreams be high-jacked by the incompetence of the people around you
• Many times, we don't get to choose our surroundings, and end up being surrounded by demotivated and lazy people. However, that shouldn't make us give up on our dreams.
• It takes lots of effort and hard work to get the habit of being an achiever and only a few slack-offs to lose it.

• Be sincere, not just serious

• Networking is useful only when you are competent
• No amount of "knowing people" can land you a job/raise/change unless you are competent and deserving.

• Separate out the symptom from the problem
• 90 hour work week is the symptom. Fear to delegate is the problem.

• You need very few things to live a contended life. The rest are wants

• To understand a company look at it's cash flow
• Though I use both twitter and dropbox, still, as an investor I would put my money in dropbox which acquires customers and makes money rather that twitter which just acquires customers.
• Also, I might get good returns faster in Airtel or Idea Cellular where money keeps moving rather than in Tata Communications which has great assets, but, slow money churning.

• And of course the most important and oft repeated one.. There is no substitute for hard work

Some productivity improvement tips

Its a nice 4-day weekend, and I just didn't feel like wasting it. So, thought of writing a post on things that I do in office to improve productivity.

• Listing and prioritizing 

I always have about 20 activities pending and time for 10 of them. So, till I put up a structure to delegate and get work done from others, I like to keep a "to-do" list (day-wise) with the most important and urgent activity on top. This not only helps me remember things, but, also helps me in estimating completion time for all activities.

• Being in the flow

Some of the activities I do, requires me to have tremendous concentration and so I like to be in a flow when I am doing it. The biggest obstacles to this are e-mails and chat pings. So, I normally put a schedule to check my e-mail (maybe once every hour) and respond to pings only if it is urgent or important. 

• Maintaining a proper office timing

I like to reach office before most people arrive (to get some work done productively) and leave at a specific time. This limitation on the time spent in office forces me to respect that time and makes me push myself to achieve more in that limited time. This also helps me maintain some sanity in the work-life balance front :)

• Pushing yourself to achieve more

Which brings me to the next point of raising the bar. If I feel that I can do x activities in one day, then I set myself a target of doing 20-30% more. This is of course with the implicit assumption of not compromising on quality.

• Enjoying what you are doing

I am a strong believer of the theory that the greatest employee incentive is giving work that the employee enjoys. Though there is always some necessity to do boring/routine/mundane work, but, on the whole if the work is not enjoyable, then the productivity automatically goes down. Then the problem is not about productivity & efficiency, but, about the work itself.

What other companies should learn from Apple and Google

Those two seem to have got everything perfectly correct.....happy customers, great cash flow, great brands, pretty decent future, etc. So what do they do differently?

• Understand what the customer wants, before the customer understands it
• This is similar to the idea generally conveyed, when people talk about visionary product, market research, being ahead of the market, being ahead of the technology curve, etc
• This comes by taking a long hard look at how people behave and use products.. thats it

• Provide what the customer wants in a no-nonsense manner
• Google.com does not have a help link for a very important reason... it is not needed
• Ensure that using your new product does not require the customer to climb a steep learning curve

• Tell a consistent and simple story for the product
• Remember those Mac Vs PC ads.... Mac is cool, Mac is simple.. that is the story

• Great product does not guarantee great money
• Even great products have to be marketed correctly, priced correctly , sold correctly and phased out correctly

• Deliver on your promises
• Classic example of how not to do it is Windows Vista... delayed launch, stripped away features, and a bad product too
• In the current environment, when you delay a launch, you not only lose market share, buzz, etc but also the WOW effect. Your prized features end up being common when you eventually release.

5 Visible symptoms of bad project management in IT

I think there are many, but, the below 5 are the easiest to recognise:

1. Politically correct team meetings
The whole team claps for the "best employee of the month", everybody agrees to work harder for the customer and to improve the customer satisfaction index.

• No open thread-bare discussion happens on the last escalation/schedule slippage/fire fighting.
• No meeting agenda
• Team goals are not clear
• No action items with responsibility, accountability & deadlines (esp. a strong NO to follow-ups)

2. Huge gap between estimation and execution
Classic example of this would be:

• Why did 3 guys slog it out in the weekend? 
• Because we had some "production issues" and next version release in the week. 
• Wasn't this known when the project started? 
• How many times has this happened before and what did we learn from it? 
• How are we ensuring that this doesn't happen again?

3. "Perennial resource constraint" because wrong people are doing the wrong job


4. Inability to distinguish between good and bad developers

• Number of hours billed & lines of code typed become indicators of capability
• The best and the laggards are treated equally. 
• No chance given to either to improve further. 
• This often leads to the good ones leaving when the first opportunity is available.

5. Religious adherence to processes and templates at the expense of..... well everything else

•  The whole work stops when we have a time-sheet/audit report/"process enhancement document" to fill.
• Good leadership requires a healthy disregard for processes that are bureaucratic & the ones that don't achieve the goals of the organisation in the correct manner.

Are these happening in your team?

Two years of laziness

I realised a few days back that I haven't written anything on my blog for a little more than two years. Twitter and laziness are to be blamed for that :) BTW: you can follow my tweets here.

Facing the typical problem of not knowing what to write, I started thinking about what all has happened in my life since the last blog. Here it goes:

•  Completed a MBA from Great Lakes

• Went through the recession while in school, not knowing where life was headed (easily the most harrowing time of life) -- learnings from that experience in a different blog soon

• Went through some more roller-coaster rides in life

• Made some great friends in Great Lakes (alliteration unintended)

• Moved from Hyderabad to Mumbai

• Got introduced to the world of ERPs

• Started thinking along the lines of "what is the calling in my life" :)

• Decided (today) that I will write atleast one story and one blog post every week

So, till the next post... bye.

On a rainy day

When a person wants to unshackle from bondage, barriers and fences can only stop him physically, for his mind is already set free when he decided to unshackle. Such was the case with Kamlesh. Sitting next to the window grills, his mind had already left the class-room. Class IV A, room number 403. His mind was in the cloudy dark sky. Seeing the lightnings form. It started coming down with the rain drops, all the way down till they hit the edge of the asbestos roof, and then split into a thousand drops. Some hitting the window pane, some hitting the ground, and others making the grasses look greener.

With his mind, his eyes also spiraled down from the black sky to the concrete floor. His tongue instinctively touching the broken front teeth, which had got banged on the floor last week. Of course, he was proud of it. Cos, he had made Laxman's nose also bleed that day. And more importantly, he hadn't cried. At least not till he had reached home. The dull monotony of the English poems was only broken by the occasional lightning and the steady downpour. He wanted to reach out his hand and feel the drops in his palms, but, then the teacher would scold, so, he kept them in. Inside his pockets.

He was waiting for the bell to ring. To go for recess. To go and get wet in the rain, when suddenly he heard the teacher call out his name. "Kamlesh, Kamlesh. The principal wants to meet you". And Hari the peon was standing next to the teacher. To take him to the principal's room.

"What does the principal want from me? He has never called me before. Is it because I got D in 4 subjects? Yes that must be the reason", Kamlesh thought. He had heard a lot about the principal's anger, especially at those children who don't study properly. Walking on the corridor, behind Hari, Kamlesh could feel the sweat dripping from his palms. Hitting the ground, much like the rain drops. Suddenly, he realized how dark it was, outside the class, like the darkness in his thoughts. Yash had been to the principal's room some days back. And he had come out crying. And he had not spoken for the whole day, only sobbing, sitting silently in his place. His knees and hands had thin red lines. Were they the marks of a cane? "Hari Uncle. How many canes do you get for a D?" he asked. He didn't get a response.

"What if he tells me to kneel down in his room? What if Laxman sees me? He would surely go and tell everyone. Who would want to talk to me then? How can someone even talk to a student who gets punished by the principal. I don't talk to Yash". These thoughts brought tears in his eyes. He wiped them off with his sweaty palms and entered into the principal’s room. There he was sitting. The bald man. In the big revolving chair. To his left, on the shelf were all the trophies won by the school. He remembered the football trophy which the school won last year. The others were just a blur. Behind his chair was Mahatma Gandhi and chacha Nehru's photo. With the cap and the bright red rose. "Chacha Nehru liked children so much. If he had been our principal, he would never cane anybody", Kamlesh thought, holding back his tears, wiping away the sweat from his hands and almost extending them. Waiting for the canes to come and rip his skin.

Right at that time, he saw uncle Kishore, standing to the right of the principal. "Beta, is this your uncle?”, he heard the principal's booming voice. And Kamlesh nodded in consent. "Ok. He is here to take you home. Your parents met with a small accident and they are in the hospital. Don't worry. Nothing serious. They will be back home in the evening. Now, pack your bags and go home with uncle". Kamlesh suddenly realized that he wasn't getting punished. And he wouldn't be sitting for the English and Maths class too. He could also go out in Kishore uncle's car. In this rain. A smile came to his face, only to be broken by the thoughts of his parents in hospital. And those long held tears burst out from Kamlesh’s eyes.

(The idea for this story was given by my friend Nag)

A poet's dream

Kavi Pratap Singh was a very worried man. He distinctly remembered the raja's words--"Ten days from now, in the glory of the full moon light, you will present to the court, the poems and couplets describing the beauty of Princess Indrani, the third daughter of Maharaja Kamnath Singhji. The Maharaja himself would grace the occasion and so would the princess. I entrust upon your young shoulders, the mighty task of impressing the Maharaja and the princess with your oratory skills. And remember.... failing in your duties would be a personal insult to me and to the Maharaja".

It was natural for the raja to ask Kavi Pratap to present the couplets, for his fame in the arts was matched only by the fame of the Maharaja himself. But today, Kavi was tensed and distraught. For it was the 9th day and not even a word had been written. He could see himself getting diminished in the eyes of the Maharaja like the dying candle light on the table. The candle was casting dark shadows of Kavi on the walls, and somewhere in the darkness of the shadow, he saw his future. Bleak and pale. He could see the shame coming. The shame of not able to live up to the raja's expectations. The shame that the raja would face, because, the best poet in his kingdom could not write about the beauty of Indrani--the raja's heartthrob. Who knows, the Maharaja might even reject the raja's proposal--for who would like to send their daughter to a land devoid of any art and artist? Kavi scribbled something on the paper:

Thee not knows when god gave us this boon.......
When he shone your brightness on this soil as the moon........

He instantly crumpled the parchment and threw it away. What was happening to him? Where was the spark in him that had made him write great epics? He remembered those times, when he used to compete with great poets from far away lands. When wit and beauty of verse were his companions. Those days seemed hazy today. Today, all he could see was shame and failure. He grabbed the pot of madira and gulped it. He felt the sweetness, but, only in his throat, not in the heart. He needed an inspiration and he was devoid of one today. Why today, ever since Kamini, his loved one, had passed away to the nether world, he had lost all happiness. Life was merely an existence, waiting for the day he could join her. He looked around him, and saw all the filth and the parchment pieces. It reflected his sorry state of being. All those parchments that could have been the greatest poem ever written about love and beauty were lying torn apart. Much like his inner self. He was exhausted. His hands were paining and his head was throbbing. His face, which once used to radiate confidence and intellect, was unshaven and haggard today. He had not slept for five nights now and he knew that if he did not do something tonight, there might be no night tomorrow. His aching body cried for him to take rest. "Sleep for sometime. Maybe you would feel refreshed enough to write something, when you wake up". To fight this anxiety and depression, he decided to listen to his body for sometime.

And what a sleep that was. As soon as he fell asleep, he dreamt of Kamini. He dreamt of his soul leaving his body and saw his body lying in the bed, lifeless. He was being transported to some far-off place. he was flying with the birds, high up in the sky. Soon, he was higher. He could see the moon and the sun. He could see other stars, and, gradually he felt one with them. It was a strange feeling. The kind of feeling that he used to get when he was with Kamini. The sensation, where distances simply evaporated and beauty was all that he could see. He flew higher and this feeling disappeared. Suddenly, he was afraid. Where had all the stars gone? Where was everybody? Why was he alone? Instantly, as if to answer his questions, he saw Kamini. First his eyes couldn't take her beauty and they wriggled in pain. She was radiating a golden hue. She was like the sun itself, brightening every object surrounding it. He had not seen anything as beautiful as the pearls around her neck. Each looking like the moon itself. Her golden brown hair had been let loose and shone like the sunrays filtering through the clouds at dusk. There was something divine and pristine about the beauty of her face, that mere mortals like him could not comprehend. She didn’t speak, but, their minds spoke.

"No, this is not the nether world, dear. Though death visits everybody, it has not visited you today. You still have a lot to achieve in your world. Of what purpose would be your existence, if you didn't help two hearts beat in unison? Give the raja, the poetry that he wants and enjoy the pleasure of helping someone to reach out to their loved one."

"But I can't write. My heart is no more a heart. It is but a black stone which radiates only despair. I will only bring shame to the whole kingdom."

"Nah, my dearest. Love cleanses everything on its path. Our love will cleanse your heart too. Come let us go to your world ".

With this they started flying down again, and at the next instant, they were in Kavi's house. Together they talked and thought and wrote about love. The words kept flowing and the inkpot never ran dry. Kavi had never felt such content. The content of true love. Of being with your loved one. The content of knowing that there's a heart out there, which beats for you. After ages, he felt happy. The happiness of knowing that one's work would unite two lovers. Soon, the poetry was done, and it was time for Kamini to go. Kavi wanted her to stay with him, in this house, in this world, but, he knew that this world was not her's anymore.

"Do not be sad, dearest. For we shall meet again, and, when we meet again, we would be together till the end of eternity."

With this, she left and Kavi woke up. It was already morning, and, the sunrays were filtering through the half-closed window. He felt a sense of happiness after ages. What a wonderful dream it had been. Now he was ready to write the poems. He was ready to face the court. Tonight would be his night, when his verses would help the raja win over his love's heart. He got up and went to the desk, to start writing, but, the poem had already been written. He read and the verses rhymed and reverberated with love. He was speechless. His mouth went dry, and all he could mutter was

"Thank you, oh angel with the golden radiance. Thank you, kamini."

My 4th speech at Toastmasters

The purpouse of the 4th speech is to use simple & small sentences, rhetorics, quotes, similies & metaphors,etc.

Good afternoon everyone. Today, I am going to talk about my best friend Suresh. Actually all of us here have met him at least once. At least once, we have lived his life too. Infact, we are living his life right now. If you are wondering who he is, let me give a clue.

He doesn't have a face. He doesn't have an identity except a series of numbers called as an employee id and another series of words called as project name. If you are still not sure who our friend is, then just look around yourself. You will find him everywhere. Our friend Suresh is a software engineer in a multinational company.

A few years back, our friend joined an engineering college. Why did he join an engineering college? Of course because, that's what everyone does, isn't it? Become a doctor or an engineer. The four years spent at the engineering college were hellish for Suresh. He didn't like what he studied. What he liked he couldn't study. Our friend wanted to study history. He wanted to study about the great kings. The Ashokas and the king Arthurs. He wanted to study about the great battles. The battles at Waterloo and at Plassey. "But what would you do after studying that?" his father had asked, and, Suresh had no answer. So, quietly and obediently, stifling his inner longings, Suresh studied engineering. He studied about balls rolling and the forces acting on it, and, about how to represent figures in two dimensions from front and top, and, about how Sodium and Chlorine reacted to form salt, and, about how to use integration and differentiation.

He of course excelled in engineering too. For he was judged on his ability to remember things, not, on his ability to love and cherish things. When he reached the third year of engineering, one day his father asked him. "Son, what do you want to do now? Do you want to do an MBA or MS? Or do you want to do an MTech? Or do you want to work?", and, Suresh had no idea. What he actually wanted to do was study history. Study about the great revolutions that took place. Study about how our fore-fathers fought for independence. He replied, "Dad, I want to study about the independence movement. I want to understand the values that make this country unique. I want to go and see the temples and mosques and churches and Buddhist monasteries, that make-up this country's culture". His dad laughed and said "You can do all that once you have earned sufficiently and have retired. Why don't you join the IT industry? Kumar uncle's son Arvind works in a software company. He earns so much. He has so much respect in society", and, so Suresh ended up attending the interview of the first IT company that stepped in his college campus.

"Where do you see yourself five years down the line?" they asked him in the interview. He wanted to reply "I see myself sitting in the British Council Library, reading about Troy and the Spartans and the Athenians. I see myself as a professor, teaching students about the Chinese and the Ming dynasty. I see myself as a torch spreading the light of knowledge and banishing darkness", but, he replied "Five years from now, I should be leading a team of motivated individuals, who are passionate about their work, and who would work as a team to effectively deliver on services without any compromises on quality", and, of course he got selected, because, that is what everybody wants to hear. Isn't it? He finished his engineering and joined the company. He had a training where, 300 more clueless engineers like him were huddled in a nice, big conference hall and given lectures about the company's Vision, mission and values. He was told to be proud of the fact that he was a member of a fifty thousand strong family. He could only compare this family to the 2nd world war Russian army. Big and respected. Respected not for quality, but, for quantity. With passing days, the boredom in the lectures only increased, for they would teach about Java - the programming language that was changing the world, and, he wanted to learn about the history of the Java volcano in Indonesia.

Just when Suresh thought that he could bear it no more, the training ended, and he was told to go to Chennai. Suresh wanted to come here, to Hyderabad, so that he could see the shield, seal and jewels of the Nizam. So that he could see the beauty of the Gloconda fort. He wanted to understand more about how the Hyderabad princely state joined India, but, reluctantly, he had to agree to go to Chennai, because, he had no other option. Well that was two years back. Yesterday, I was talking to him, and he was telling that he was doing some Java development work now, which would seem like a great job to most people, but, that he was not happy. "Why?" I asked him. He replied that, he doesn't see any challenge in his work. "I mean, I do some real development work. My boss is happy with my work. My client is happy too, but, I find it mundane." He also said that he was planning to go for higher studies, do an MBA to climb up the proverbial corporate ladder. "But what about your passion for history?" I asked him. He had no answer. The passion was still burning in his heart, but, he had become too busy working for material comforts in his life, that the passion was just that - a passion, deep inside and nothing else.

Our friends Suresh is a very dedicated and hard-working man, mind you. I am sure he will succeed in whatever endeavor he takes up. He will succeed. He will earn well. He will have a lot of respect in society, but, would he be happy?

This is the normal career path that most of us follow. Study something because everybody does that, join an industry because, society respects it, manage people because, that is the established sign of success, but, deep down inside, are we happy? When we retire, would we look at our lives with content and happiness, or would we think that our children should not suffer the fate that we suffered, so, let us "guide" them in finding the right career. I think, we all need to look at the Suresh in ourselves and see if the path we are taking is leading us to where we want to go or not. So, let us all think and contemplate and see if we are taking our life to places, or is it society and people's opinions that is doing that job?

My 3rd speech at Toastmasters

Gave it long time back (read "a couple of months"), and have been thinking of posting it also for a long time. Finally doing it today.


The main idea of the 3rd speech is to "get to the point" wherein the speech is supposed to have one central idea and multiple supporting ideas.

Good Afternoon everyone. I am Krishnan Subramanian. Let me start off by taking a quick poll. A couple of questions.

1. How many of you cross the Cyber Towers signal (Cyber Towers is a famous landmark in Hyderabad) while coming to office? (Almost everybody raised their hands)

2. How many of you have seen small children begging near that signal? (Almost everybody raised their hands)

3. How many of you feel that instead of begging, the children should be studying in school and should be playing with other children in the evenings? Basically, how many of you feel that they should have a life better that what they are having right now? (Almost everybody raised their hands)

When so many of us feel that those children should be having a better life, then why are those children still begging on the streets?

That is because, all we do is give lip service. We all agree that those children should have a better life, but, none of us are ready to actually go and do something about it. Ladies and gentleman, today, for my speech, I don't have any speech topic. All I want to do is give instances where we indulge in lip service, and, all I want you to do is, think about it.

So, what can we do for the children? The first and most natural thing thought that comes to our mind is - "give them some money to alleviate them from this poverty". But, do u think that it is money that they need? Can't they get that from begging too? Do you think that the money would actually go into their pockets? Giving money is the easiest thing to do, but, what they actually need is compassion and love. They need to feel that - "yes, there is somebody out there who cares for us", and, how do you do that? Go and talk to them. Make them feel like a normal individual. Stop avoiding them. Convince them that begging wouldn't help them in the long run. Help them join a good child welfare institution, where somebody would love them. If you do this today, so that they can stand on their own legs tomorrow, then you have truly alleviated them from poverty and misery.

One of the core values in TCS states - "respect for individual". Now, we all respect individuality, don't we? We all respect every individual's ideas. We all respect an individual's contribution in a team, but, do we equally respect all individuals? I mean, do we treat our team-mates as respectfully as we treat our managers? To take it further, do we give equal respect to our manager and to the boy who cleans the floors here in TCS? In restaurants, do we treat the waiters respectfully? Is it because, they are providing us a service and so we are superior to them. If that is the case, then just think how we would feel if our clients treated us the way we treat waiters and cleaners? Is it that the waiters and cleaners cannot influence our lives in a negative way, so they can be treated as inferior to us? So what I am trying to say is that we need to treat every individual respectfully in letter and spirit. In terms of respect, there should be no difference between a big shot in our company and a lowly placed person.

Well, I could keep on talking about such instances from our day-to-day life where we indulge in lip service, but, what I am asking you to do is - THINK. From now on, think before every action you take, think before every action that you decide not to take, think before every sentence you utter, think about your feelings, think about your emotions, and follow what your conscience says. Thank you.

Reached 500

I reached a small milestone today with my 500th scrap in Orkut. I still remember that time when I had joined Orkut(my friend Jayram had invited me). I was wondering at that time if anybody would bother to scrap me(cos, in my friend circle, I am really not known to be a very social person),but, in the course of the last 500 scraps, I have not only reached out to a lot of my class-mates and friends, but, have also found some friends with whom I have had almost no contact for more that 10 years. I also made many new friends and fans(27 as of last count), and am really looking forward to my 1000th scrap.

Do check out my earlier post on why I like Orkut.