Life in Progress

Am I Back

2011-09-24T22:38:00.000+05:30

And if I am, will I owe Michael Arrington any royalty?

The right to preach

2011-06-28T22:50:00.002+05:30

Priests have a right to preach. After all, they lead a celibate life, go through a rigorous study of the texts, and then are selected through a tenuous system. Why do people who don't go through all this, confer unto themselves a right to preach?

Inner peace

2011-06-01T15:42:00.003+05:30

I'm sure that many of the best minds in the world write or make movies. Earlier in life, I condescendingly thought that those who couldn't hack it in real life wrote books or made movies, soon learning, as I took off my boots (from inside my mouth) that these projects themselves when well executed had a higher impact on a Human Wellness index than did a lump of machinery on the GDP.

Now, most of my inspiration come from movies, animated ones at that, intended to entertain and ingrain moral into kids. So, to borrow from Kung Fu Panda 2, like Master Shifu, I'm searching for inner peace at an old age.

Inactivity

2011-02-25T14:18:00.003+05:30

Sometimes inactivity can be more productive than a frenzied attempt to stay busy. In the recent past, I have witnessed many examples which attest to this hypothesis.

Stated simply, it is like folding a bad poker hand and waiting the next turn, or letting an outside ball fly past you in cricket.

If you're running a fund with a long only mandate, then you stay put in a turbulent market and wait for things to settle before picking stocks.

In ones' life too there could be long periods where activity may prove counter-productive. at such times, work doesn't produce results or worse still causes damage; efforts don't yield earnings; farming doesn't yield crop.

All this is counter-intuitive to a young, career oriented mind to whom, at first sight, inactivity is tantamount to laziness. It is only wisdom and experience that helps reconcile this line of thinking.

Perhaps that is why a large-bellied and usually reclining Buddha always smiles and is considered wise.

Discipline

2010-12-01T23:10:00.004+05:30

No matter how talented, a key ingredient for success, for proficiency before that, is discipline, in thought, word and action. This discipline is important in thought - a stray and wandering mind that cannot hold on to an thought long enough will most certainly fail to hold a powerful thought or idea, which is the beginning of any successful venture. An undisciplined tongue will chase away well-wishers and make foes argue back with increased vigour, will render the holder incapable of rousing support or sympathy. Finally undisciplined actions will mean insufficient practice, poor proficiency and success if any, will be accidental.

Read today - do not make someone your priority, if you are only an option in his eyes. even good friends have inflated egos, posture unnecessarily. Don't deify them.

Money where the mouth is

2010-11-30T12:34:00.002+05:30

Yesterday, i realized yet again, that I'm not a customer to Facebook just as I'm not to my newspaper. I'm 2 times 10 to the power of minus 7th percentage (0.2 millionth of a percentage point) of its inventory. Now Facebook isn't going to charge me for usage. Then through Facebook, I read The Economist Newspaper. I'm part of its inventory too - why because I'm subject to the advertisements that it sells. Unlike Facebook, The Economist, or FT, and suchlikes want me to pay for being their inventory. I won't. Today, I donated to Wikipedia - someone for whom PLUs (people like us) are the customer in two ways - mind you customers twice over and not paying inventory! The information helps almost everyone who uses wikipedia to hunt for information and secondly wikis can be set-up by those who want to showcase (or showoff) their knowledge. Don't pay to be inventory because it doesn't pay to be paying inventory.

Slowing down

2010-11-29T23:23:00.003+05:30

In my teens / preteens, I was a prolific writer. In fact I wrote a 32 page novel. Since then, I've slowed down. Damaged brain cells? I don't think so. What happened then? Something also happened in online Poker - my chips levels stagnated. My midriff's expanding, I'm not exercising, not drumming, not walking, not doing anything intense. I've been lining more than my share of 0.27% of my life on facebook. Wake up!

Frog in the well

2010-10-18T14:57:00.004+05:30

Mrs. X is the promoter of an educational institution that she started over 2 decades back with nothing more than a vision, some family savings and a small bank loan. After 2 decades she has built an institution that is credible and really sought after by the who's who in her city.

Now as she approaches institutional investors to help grow the business, I am worried. I am reminded of why I left the institutional funding business. After condescending to meet and review this case {"Oh! don't you know, we get 5 unsolicited business plans each day, where do I have time??"}, these "employed" money-managers will find out 10 shortcomings in the business and hasten to remind everyone how smart they are and how they will add value and scale the business.

Little do they realize that this franchise has been built by waking up at 5.30 am everyday, showing up at initially a small rented campus and doing the day's work honestly and diligently. From a humble beginning to a reasonable success, through hard work mostly and little else.

Funny thing is that many of these money managers themselves came from humble beginnings, worked their way through scholarships and hardships and having "reached there", seem to forget where they came from.

No different from Indian politicians or even the naxalites (a violent communist group in India), who start a movement to eliminate corruption, repression and injustice and whilst in power, become exactly what they started against. For example, I read an interview of a former naxalite woman leader who mentioned how she was "used" by the men and had to comply to stay alive.

I quit {my Private Equity employer, I wasn't a naxal ;-)}to try and find myself again. One of my "well-wisher" friends tried to shake me out of my well, rather aggressively. He can't possibly understand how someone can get out of the rut that he is in and live happily ever after. Well, I'm a frog in the wishing well.

Friends

2010-10-13T17:09:00.003+05:30

Don't worry about staying in touch with friends. They will call when they need you.

THE TRUE FIRST INNINGS

2010-05-06T23:46:00.001+05:30

Today (oops, a few days back) I turned forty. For most of the last decade I was sure that I only wanted to retire at 50, live until about 60. Today I am convinced that I have at least another 40 very exciting, productive and meaningful years to go.

It has sometimes helped that my personality is like dough, absorbing a lot of influences and molding my thoughts, words and actions in the manner of the person or thing that catches my fancy at that particular time. At times, that dough may have dried its water off, thus appearing a rigid impervious lump. But I’m delighted that the dough is again turning moist, permitting new learnings to creep in while strengthening / reinforcing old thoughts, deeds, and habits.

I only recently realized that my life has been reasonably successful, meaning I am reasonable and a qualitative definition of success could lead it to mean anything. The greatest skill I possessed is a fertile imagination, meaning that there was a series of tales of heroism and success with me as the central character. If I had the diligence to write them down, I’m sure a few would have sold as movie scripts. The second best skill I had was imitation. When combined with imagination, it helped me appreciate a lot of diverse elements and actually led me to believe that I excelled at a lot of things, something I was far from.

With skills like these, who needed shortcomings? I did and my inability to focus attention reached the limit of what one might call an ADHD syndrome. And I was intelligently lazy, both of which combined with my two skills above meant that I did not study anything deeply or rigorously enough to achieve mastery.
So what’s different in the second innings (or the “true first innings” as my dear friend, business partner and mentor called it).

I’m back to school, subjecting myself to serious study. What am I studying – Poker for instance. I can’t imagine why I did not learn Poker earlier. But perhaps just as Marcus Tullus Cicero (quoted by Charles T. Munger) extols old age, at a younger age in my life, I might not have fully appreciated that Poker is not about winning or losing, it’s about patience, tact, craft and playing the game well.

“Yes there are two paths you can go on, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on” ~ Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin….. I’m not changing myself, mostly rediscovering and importantly resolving to only be myself hereon. So I’ve resolved to resume drumming, become again the voracious reader like I was born, smile more like I did as a child, write as well as I did in my youth, and speak my mind as I always did inside my head.

If you’ve reached here you are a) two of the three most important people in my life (the third will wonder what I was smoking when I wrote this), b) possibly a friend (my def.: someone whom I respect, admire and love and all of this is switched on all the time without necessarily meeting or talking to frequently or even once a year) or c) simply curious.

In any case, you will wonder why am I writing this? The earth has in excess of 6 billion people, can possibly hold upto 12, yet shows signs of collapse already. Why? I think it is the weight of the egos and the facades that people put up that results in about 12 billions’ worth of load. So this note is just to tell you where I am coming from. I will hopefully shed all my unproductive ego and break the façade and thereby reduce my burden on this earth.

Secondly, this note is to thank you, whether for being a friend, a significant associate or that bully who beat me up at school, thank you for helping shape my life and giving me experiences, the skills and the resources for the next forty.

making sense

2010-02-22T23:07:00.002+05:30

It is not the size of the post that matters. Neither does the need to make it funny, outrageous, profound or meaningful. What matters is that you tried.

19 at 39

2009-08-18T05:44:00.004+05:30

I spent last month doing what I'd wanted to do for a long long time. How I wish I had done this 20 years back and how I wish I had planned this better and how I wish I had written a daily blog? None of that. After a long time, I was living, by the day, by the hour and the minute.
This was my solo backpacking trip, at least that's how it started out. Two weeks out of four, I had friends for company. For the other two, I had myself. Well almost, as there were bartenders, med students from Brazil, a biologist from Canada, an electrician from australia, guides from Ireland and Portugal, a Japanese culinary instructor, you get the drift.
Inspired by Discovery travel & living and books such as the four hour workweek and the seven day weekend, the need to take off for a month had become a must-needs-do-to-be-able-to-breathe-again. Would I survive without the "normal" 12 hour workday, 3 hour commute, 3 hour family man, 6 hour other important things (sleep, plan for the future, introspect, etc...), was the foremost question at the beginning. I did not know what I was trying to achieve, more importantly, I was happy with said state of ignorance of goal.
At times I was hoping to relive some of my youth (?), at others do what I had missed in such youth. At times I wanted to experience the must do spots and sights, click the must take pictures, eat and drink the must imbibes. At many others I wanted to go where no man had ever gone before, possibly I was nearing Captain Kirk's age.
So what did I achieve from the trip you may ask? Or more realistically, how was your trip? Nice, awesome, I would be expected to answer. The next question might be where all did you go? Italy, France, Belgium and Netherlands I would answer. The last statement you made might be 'Post some pictures on Facebook'. I'd mumble about doing it when I had the time and so on.
If you've reached this line, there's a small chance that you're still interested in the answer to the first question above. I'll say then that I feel 19 at 39. but more about that later.

A taxing democracy

2008-10-17T01:25:00.004+05:30

In its report published in November 2006, entitled "Economist Intelligence Unit's Index of Democracy 2006", the Economist newspaper ranked India at 35th out of 167 countries with a score of 7.68 on a maximum possible 10, and in a category called "Flawed Democracy". Of 5 headline factors, the two that brought down India's score were "Political Participation" and "Political Culture".
“Participation”, according to the newspaper, entails "...the active, freely chosen participation of citizens in public life. Democracies flourish when citizens are willing to take part in public debate, elect representatives and join political parties. Without this broad, sustaining participation, democracy begins to wither and become the preserve of small, select groups."
Governance is India is improving. Hitherto largely focused on populist measures, there is a palpable drive towards effective nation-building. As an example, today, the authorities announced the phasing out of taxis older than 25 years and autorickshaws (a 3 wheel contraption unsuitable for the faint-hearted and guranteed to convert atheists. Ride one to understand what I mean) older than 15 years, for environmental reasons. The taxi-drivers' and autorickshaw-drivers' unions promptly called a strike leading to large-scale suffering of the common office goers and general public. The strike was a self-righteous claim of potential loss of livelihood and the right to protest such a loss. For the decades that their inefficient contraptions have been at work, these drivers have received subsidized fuel at the cost of the taxpayer, many of them actually cheat the public through tampered meters, are rude, drive dangerously and often refuse an inconvenient fare, and their inefficient engines have raped the environment for years. Democracy succeeds when even such a bunch has the right to protest. “Participation”, and hence democracy, fails because the general public suffers not just years of indignation but such strikes too, in silence. India has several classes of minorities: classified by religion and sect. These have been recognized to ensure access to basic human and democratic rights and preferred access to economic rights for their upliftment. The "taxpaying employed" in India are (an unrecognized and) an unfortunate minority because of their self-imposed inability to exercise their democratic rights.

Happy Endings

2008-10-16T00:02:00.003+05:30

Life is beautiful. While Darwin taught us that the fittest survive, I think it was Sir Richard Attenborough who said in Jurassic Park, "Life will find a way". There are at this point in time, about 6.2 billion people on earth, most of whom are finding a way out of poverty and eking a livelihood.
I'd like to mention two of these from one profession, both masseuses. I came across both in chance encounters, not going to them for their profession, but rather chatting with them as part of my education in anthropology and the fact that people pour their hearts out to me so much, to make me sometimes suspect that I don't have a face but instead, a large sympathetic ear in its place.
One was, let's call her Y from China. Y is a divorcee with a 6 year old son. She worked in a bank in the Eastern provinces of China, I forget where now. She turned to giving massages with a happy ending to tourists into Hong Kong. I remember her face when she narrated what she does, saying "I don't like it, I don't like it" with a grimace. When I asked her why she still does it, she said "I want to pay for my own house". She has a boyfriend working for the HK S.A.R. government who does not know what she does and she hopes they will get married someday. I wish her well. Another is T from Mumbai, someone who worked with a transport company in a clerical position and was lured by an advertisement promising, yes, a royal pay packet of US $ 300 p.m. She has a family of 5, her father, mother, a younger brother and sister. She did not know what a "happy ending" massage entailed (for the uninitiated - a happy ending is a hand job) and said that she does this because she would not like her sister to be in the same profession and she feels responsible for the family. She offered me her services, saying she will do a "handshake", but I politely refused and hoped god will bless her, while shaking her hand.
The lives of 6.2 billion people must be worth something. I don't know how many of these lives are motivated with the need to achieve something, in their own way, all must be. For some, it may be survival, like the children who beg at Mumbai's traffic lights and who may be getting beaten black and blue if they fail to earn. There are others who feel a sense of responsibility, like T, who I think could have just said "F" it, my father should worry about being the breadwinner. And there are others like Y who chase a dream, her own house.
With different upbringings, or social contexts or different brain-wiring, these motives in life would differ. More than 9 out of 10 movies that I have seen have had a happy ending. For T and Y, and the children on Mumbai's streets, I hope that they have a Happy ending and their Life will find a way.

Living in the past

2008-10-15T00:38:00.000+05:30

As we move home yet again, I was clearing up boxes of paper accumulated over the years. The mandate to me was simple, halve the volume as we are moving to a home half the size of our current one (which incidentally is about 2/3rds the size of our last one).
Nostalgia ran through my head as I reminisced about the large sit-out areas on our last house overlooking trees, whose names I wish I had learnt, in a pristine area of the city. Moving to a crowded suburb of Bombay, some of this was already forgone. And moving to another crowded area in Bombay, more would be.
But back to the boxes which contained articles, presentations, concept notes and much creative work of the past years that I had accumulated in perhaps weak narcissist moments that refuse to go away. With a heavy hand reluctantly disobeying a heavier heart, I managed to retain my econometrics achievements while trashing some organization design blah-blah. Trivia such as "in 3500 years of written human history, only 277 have not seen war" was shredded in favor of "covariance (x,y) = E (Ux - Uy) - xbar ybar" and suchlike.
After a resounding success at my mandated result, I now wonder what might be the plausible use of retaining whatever material is retained. Do I want to impress someone, say my daughter, a child of 6 who no doubt has a firm opinion on my character, my temperament, and a fair assessment of "my worth". The rest of my family? they are older than 6 and ostensibly less impressionable. The rest of the world? who will need to be invited home, offerred a nice drink and when drunk out of their wits, papers slunk into their hands which they may not make sense of...
Naah. Forget about the past, I says. Let me diligently write the future on a blog which will, like water, find its own level. Hopefully, someday Google's data servers will not need to run into a smaller home and I don't get a notice to delete some of the posts. Should that happen, however, just tapping the delete button will be a lot less heavier on the heart than shredding reams of handwritten paper.

Indignant today

2008-10-14T01:20:00.000+05:30

What a way to start a blogging life, with indignance....Today I was perturbed while reading the economist newspaper, one I revere very much. In the "Leaders", it said that more of government intervention is required, even at the cost of the taxpayer etc....

Now I am not the Dick who Fuld the world, au contraire, I lead the honest taxpaying life, believing that the taxes I pay while forgoing my aspirations of owning a Ferrari will improve the economic and social well-being of my countrymen. So to say that my ilk should sweat the next couple of years in uncertainty while the investment banker &$@#*%ds who have accumulated the Beamers and beachfronts will laugh at their bailout, is f&%^$#@ injustice. A whole lot of them should be tried not unlike war criminals, and sentenced to the severest punishment that can be conceived.

And, when socialist intervention is the order of the day, these Dicks' assets should be siezed and auctioned off to pay the national burdens incurred in the economic rescue plans being written now and such Dicks should live in penury, possibly imprisoned.

While on my way to work, I did not have my car and driver today. In Bombay (Mumbai)'s October heat the day's indignation heightened when I thought that my taxes of last year could buy me at least a Merc C-class as a second car. The indignation was worsened when I saw a girl who could not be more than 4 and a younger boy squatting on the road, nearly naked in the dusty, grimy and squalid Mumbai, knowing fully well that my taxes were not changing lives....

The happiest thought of the day was that my daughter who had wrangled from me the promise of buying her a new toy (a housekeeping set - broom, mop, etc!!!) without a collateral bargain to fulfill from her side, mentioned that she would donate ten of her existing toys to an orphanage. There's still some hope for this world in the future.