HOUSE OF THOUGHTS (HOT)

As I told earlier the gang grew by a member –
Aswath. The time was Jan 2006 and the period had become more hectic than ever! Like Ghajini Mohamad, we had attacked CAT / GMAT and had miserable results. We were really tired of writing exams after exams with no positive result! We felt our minds needs to be refreshed for fresh round of attack, so planned
Goa – Kannan was after this
Goa idea like hound-dog! Later we settled for Munnar, Kerala – here my beloved friend Bala played his role and we could not make it. So we settled for another alternative Mangalore & Bangalore!  

We reached
Bangalore early in the morning by 430hrs. The travel from Chennai was really pleasant because of the KSRTC’s Volvo – awesome hospitality! Bala was the organizer of hotels & transport in
Bangalore. A horrible surprise was awaiting us; we alighted from the bus & called Bala – bloody hell he was happily sleeping & didn’t pick up the call. Cursing him we got into a hotel opposite to Majestic terminus. Because of my ability to sleep anywhere comfortable, I did not feel like sleeping in the hotel. The other two slept like a log of wood!

I wanted to visit my sister’s family in Rajaji Nagar and get back to hotel for
Bangalore tour with the guys! I got ready and left the hotel by 530hrs. Though the area was popular it was a maze of concrete. Auto driver & I found it difficult to find the place – after 6 years I was going to
Bangalore. Finally I found the house & it was a great relief – Imagine I began the day without a coffee, was just waiting to have one!

It was 615hrs when I entered the house and had the most wanted thing – COFFEE! Wow! Narasus Coffee na Narasus Coffee thaan! Sister was preparing tiffin for the school going kids – Raj (11^th) & Sanju (7^th). I like the kitchen in her house (as it is only warm place!) and had the usual chat. As I had to join the guys back in hotel I could have only a small bite (5 chapatis, 2 Rasgullas, 1 Coffee and some biscuits) and left the place thanking her. (Man, the break fast was too good – felt like having more but for want of time!)

Got back to hotel by 745hrs, Kannan & Asu were getting ready for break fast. As they wanted company joined them for breakfast (Kamat restaurant’s pongal was too good). We roamed around
Bangalore till 1400hrs and took Qualis to leave for Mangalore. Bala maintained his ‘Bala Standard Time’ and we left by 1700hrs instead of 1500hrs.

This time we loaded enough of eatables to keep us (I didn’t eat much!) occupied. Qualis gave us enough room to crawl, fight & sleep. Bala was acting as the local guide and did a great job! Except for him, we three had no clue of Kanada – Atleast I &
Aswath had a passable hindi but Kannan….(ssshhh…he doesn’t know hindi) he he

  We had booked our place in Summer Sands, Ullal, Mangalore – a beautiful place. The journey to Mangalore was exciting & enjoyable. We were going through ghat section and the road was not so good after TUMKUR – Bala told us that we cannot have good food after this place, I was happy enough to take up the opportunity.

We had the regular dosas and idlies. A special idli made out-off rava. Everyone liked the item and had plenty of it – we or rather
Aswath didn’t know the consequences! We started again and the driver handled the twists & turns very adeptly. As we were handling twists & turns,
Aswath stomach started to play tricks on him – natural calamity + other complications – haha, told him to keep a check on Rava idlies! Who listens to advice?!

We reached Summer Sands by 0000hrs the next day and was pleasantly surprised to see the size of the rooms / house. It was awesome & very huge and well furnished. The hospitality even at that time of hour was pleasant. We took rest for the night and planned to wake up early to see the sun rise!

When others were thrilled to see a huge place, Bala on the other hand was happy to have the TV for himself! I do not know what’s there in a TV at 0100 or 0200 hrs in the morning! Haha!

We woke up by 0600hrs and started to enjoy the resort’s hospitality. Everything about the place was very good and we did not come out of the resort place for the next two days.

We were either in the beach or swimming pool or reading novel under the shade of palm trees!

The whole trip was very eventful & enjoyable. Really very nice to has such friends!

Soon will write about other trips & tours!
South Africa, Kenya & UAE!

I want to build a frame work for my future article “Is business a necessary evil?” through brief articles on the urge of mankind to grow (economically) at any cost. ‘Rajasamand’ is the first of many such.  

Rajasamand is a (marble) district in Rajasthan (erstwhile
Udaipur district). This district has large deposits of marble in
India and hence lot of mining & cutting related industry sprang to life in early 50s’ and 60s’. Economy of the place boomed and lot of migration happened from agricultural work to industrial work.

If we dig into history of Rajasthan we will find that a lake was built in 1600s’ to provide irrigation & drinking water to the public – the lake was called by the name ‘Rajasamand’ It’s beauty has been well documented (you may google!). Even surprising is the fact that it acted as a floating re-fueling station for flights from
Karachi.

Hmm, ok the reality now is! (Look at the photo).

The dry condition can be blamed on Rain Gods but when there was rain did the lake got fed? Only little bit as the channels that fed the lake were blocked by effluents from the marble industry. Also the amount of water that these industries consume is a staggering amount (lakhs of liters / day) from the lake.

Just look that the greed of mankind or shortsightedness of him! Nature takes a backseat for him when it comes to paper money!

 - Can anything be done?

This photo brings back wonderful memories of a mischievous boy (an imp!).Until this moment (even after 20+ years) I am the proud person to hold on to the title of ‘THE MOST INNOVATIVE MISCHEVIOUS KID’ in our family Have I changed a bit now?! Don’t know!

The people in the photo competed for the title but in vain Let me see if any one in future can make me timid!

While writing this piece, loads and loads of memories are coming back – I am happy that I enjoyed my childhood!

I was reading few articles in INFORMATION WEEK magazine; it was a purposeful browse about Google & its strategy. I found some interesting facts and so this article. We see & find Google to be simple & cool to use but behind the seeming simplicity is a mash-up of internally developed software, made-to-order hardware, artificial intelligence, obsession with performance, and an unorthodox approach to people management!  

Frugality is in Google’s culture – surprising? It tries & achieve maximum output out-off its servers. For this they do lot tweaking of open source code (there is another reason for them to use open source), developing their own software (Map Reduce, Big Table etc) and even working closely with chip manufacturers to increase aggregate throughput and performance per watt! (Google about CORE DUO stuff you will find more about the performance measures). This is all for us who demand speedy reply to our queries!

Tidbits :

MapReduce - a programming model to simplify processing and create large data sets;

BigTable - a system for storing and managing massive amounts of data; Sawzall, an interpreted programming language for analyzing large data sets in a distributed computing environment;

Google File System - a distributed file system for data-intensive applications;

Google Workqueue - a system that groups queries and schedules them fordistributed processing.

People in Google tweak lot of products including kernel of linux to achieve maximum output with high reliability. [They created their own web server instead of using APACHE servers]

Surprisingly they are not using their own software for one thing – FINANCE! They are using Oracle finance for this!

What’s all this to do with management? When we learn about strategy there is always a thing about

 in-house work & outsourced work. When I see what’s currently Google is doing, it is doing more of in-house (where performance is P1) than relying on third party.

Since Google works on open source (for strategically important areas) getting details about its number of users or any other resource is hard. Number of data centers & servers with Google is also a question of contention – depending on who counts it & how it is classified is said number of servers with Google varies from 2.5 lakh to 4 lakh plus and it is increasing. (I will be soon writing about Datacenters).

This is an excellent learning for me as to how to keep even physical asset hush-hush.

More on Google to follow!

Happy Tamizh New Year  to all of you!!!

Love,

Srivaths

We have heard about Gandhigiri and we enjoyed Lage raho Munnabhai too. The movie is about love, ahimsa and comedy – it was a block buster and everybody made money & are happy. Great going! So people of
India like Gandhigiri – hmm. Now, let us see the reality. This brief article is about a woman who has been on fast for the past SIX years, in this period she has not taken water or food voluntarily. She is being force fed – it has been like this for the past SIX long years & because of fasting she has lost all the qualities of a woman (medically). She is from Manipur and fighting for a cause. Do we know about her? Ok…I can guess the answer, now more about her.

I watched a documentary in CNN-IBN on her and was totally taken aback. Forget seeing, I have seldom heard about such STRONG WILLED women. She has gathered so much support and popularity that power centers are worrying (just like British were afraid of Gandhiji). 24 X 7 she is under medical supervision.

I can keep going writing about her but it would be better off if the readers can search about her. We have to learn a lot from her. Her name is Sharmila Irom.

God bless her with peaceful life!

- Her WILL has a place in my house of thoughts (H.O.T)

I have three best friends two are from my college and otherone my colleague - Kannan, Bala and Aswath. All four of us made a trip to Bangalore & Mangalore in 2006 about which I will write about soon. 

We entered the corporate jungle in 2002 and three years had gone by with no real break, so three of us (Kannan, Bala & I) decided to take a tour.
Lot of deliberations happened over email & phone. Since Bala was in Bangalore we were looking at a convenient place. We first decided to do it in Jan 05 but as in any corporate life things were hectic and we planned in Apr 05 during Tamil New year’s time.  Our destination was Ooty and Topslip (valparai). Since it was season beginning we booked our rooms in a decent place. Bala and myself started from Srirangam and Kannan from Chennai. We met in Coimbatore. We planned to cover Topslip on Day 1 and return to Coimbatore that night. Day 2 and Day 3 would be in Ooty. Day1 : We started by 7 in the morning in INDICA. It was really refreshing for us and a real break from the hectic corporate life. Drive and climate was really too good. Funny things started happening to Bala, every now and then he would stare at the tender coconuts and would insist in having atleast 2 or 3 in every pit-stop! We warned him that the climb is going to be tough (Topslip is known for its steep inclines and hair-pin bends) as always it fell on deaf ears!!! Result – As you know  In PK Tea estate there is a Balaji Temple with beautiful lawn and scenery. We had good darshan and since we wanted to reach the temple before the afternoon closing time we didn’t take many photos. Kannan had brought his digital camera and we kept clicking it while coming down! We didn’t leave a single waterfall or tea/coffee estate; every now and then we would stop by to enjoy the nature and attend to nature’s call  End of day1 we were tired and slept of early.  Day 2 and Day3 :We started off early by 5.30 am and were accelerating hard before the traffic slows us down. Journey to Ooty was much more enjoyable than Topslip. This time Bala learnt to control his urge to have tender coconut instead concentrated on potato chips – Result As u all know  We paid visit to a temple on our way to Ooty and crossed black thunder. The scenic beauty that surrounds black thunder was awesome. It was groove after groove of trees and cool breeze was blowing – IT WAS JUST AWESOME!  We reached Ooty early by 8 am. After a brief rest (mainly to the car) we went to ooty lake and botanical garden. We were enjoying the natural beauties and also the beauties out there. Bala’s Basic Instinct came to life here also and started to look for a potential partner Sorry Bala ha ha! Wanted to take a boat ride in the lake but the waiting time was more than an hour so left the place with just a click! Ah now I remember Kannan took horse ride (hmmm…as he was afraid for most of the time…he didn’t allow the horse to move…) so technically he just sat on the horse and made me take a picture!  The best part was we took walk in the old lake road (it is closed for traffic). It is a km plus walk but worth it. There was absolute silence except for momentary bird chirpings. You should have a look at the size of the trees, my god so massive and beautiful. We were just completely enthralled by the beauty! We returned to the hotel and took rest. Here comes my part of comedy, I had to get some audio cassettes for the trip to a dam nearby. I  went, bought and came back with a cassette. As these guys were resting they didn’t have a look at the cassette. The next day, driver played the cassette eagerly – damn it was a HINDI Remix of some kind of some unknown songs! Kannan who has a natural love over Hindi (he doesn’t like) literally threw me out off the car. To add to the insult, the driver traded the cassette with another driver and got another cassette! You should seen Kannan’s face ha ha! We only went for the dam and only I took bath there – these guys were scared to bones! Return journey was good and we entered the corporate jungle again with full josh!

Will write about our trip to Mangalore & my overseas travel soon! Bye

Bala – A cool guy, a great dancer, a movie buff (seriously he even watches Ajith’s movie J) and a person with high energy level. 

Balaji R – He is one of the few who make me laugh, you would just enjoy his company. IT head of ADCOM. Super Singer and lot more. 
 

Neha – Oh my GOD! This girl rocks when she dances and an altruist by nature. Though she is in India she works in American Standard Time J. She seems to be innocent (but she is not!) and she has been my bakra. Will soon post a video J 

Vasu – She gave me the name VATSA. She is awesome character with very very high energy level. The decibel level in Great Lakes shoots up when she is around! Her project for Brand Management brought laurels to her..he he J  Nagi / Nagu – We both have one common thread, we SLEEP in class – whenever Professor speaks. A finance wiz and dedicated person. He is a PICASA man (reason?! J) 

Sainath – An intellectual person. He hardly laughs. Point to be noted he is not lured by girls – so he says!!! 

Balapradeep – THE GURU 

Gaurav – Amazing GUGU. He plays with numbers like anything and he is known for his mumbaikher’s language! He found a pair in junior crusaders!!! He he 

Srivathsan Raghavan – Smart guy!

Gokul - Mr Maddy

Shriram - Fun loving guy & unfortunately I have been at the receiving end most of the time - through his mimickry

Committee work is part of
Great Lakes culture and lot of people take this work seriously. So for the past one year I have been part of 20+ member team. We started our work from May 06 and it is still going on (Apr 07) – it started off with Meet the Dean session and it is coming to an end with orientation program to Junior Crusaders.

Team showed confidence in doing a real job than a facilitation of various activities. We were part of negotiations with vendors (IT, Video & Media planners), testing of the products and even recommendations for policy frame works – list goes on! In the process we were exposed to praises, criticisms (internal / external), abuses, PR issues and even our integrity was questioned. Since the team was strong from within we survived and it was a good learning too.

When I wanted to write about ADCOM, Balv can’t be missed! So little bit about this fellow J

In our team we have one OVER enthusiastic guy who would go to any extent to finish a job – he won’t think whether it is the committee’s job or not! We call him ‘Balv’. We take decisions in an informal set-up mostly in HUDDLE (the control room for ADCOM) and here is where fights (figuratively) happen. Whenever it comes to doing an activity I and balv would always have arguments (filled with not so good words!!). Arguments were always about ‘WHOSE JOB IS THIS?’ though he would agree that it is not ADCOM’s job, he would insist on doing it so that no goof-ups happen but I would take the other side. Now he has come down a bit but has taken up another activity now – CAN’T CHANGE THIS GUY!

In the coming weeks will write about other interesting characters in my team!

As you can guess, I would be definitely writing about my Appa  & Amma. But the person who is going to be written about was, is & would be a guiding factor for our family and especially for me.

The life of this person started off like this (pre-independence days) – a Sanskrit scholar in an Agraharam in a village, active participant in Ahobila math (Vaishnavites), a single father for two kids (a boy & a girl). His expertise in religious area, Sanskrit & a great heart for poor earned him respect in the heart of the then Jeer of Ahobila math.

During early 1960s this person became the head of AHOBILA MATH (the holy pontiff, His Holiness Sri Sri…). As the norms for any Jeer, he traveled throughout
India and spread the name of the Lord Vishnu. He settled in Srirangam (No.1 in 108 Divya desam) in 1970s.

There came an occasion where Sri Ranganathar’s Temple in Srirangam was not getting enough funds / donations to run it properly. Temple administration depended on devotees donations. But during those days number of devotees who visited the temple was less and hence the temple could not be run properly.

Temple administration would seek the help of nearby temples to atleast take care of day-to-day operations. A day came when those funds also stopped. All operations virtually came to a stand still in the temple. What could be done? Who is going to help? These were some of the questions the people of Srirangam had in the mind (with no answer).

It was the time this man decided that he should act and he acted. What did he do? And how did he do?

When I connect the dots, I find how great this person was in strategy & marketing. He wanted to increase the devotee traffic to Srirangam which would solve the revenue problem for the temple. This was one of the reasons for the creation or erection of
ASIA’S TALLEST TOWER (256 FEET) – SRIRANGAM RAJA GOPURAM!

 His charisma and good heart brought lot of funds to build the Raja Gopuram. The problems he faced were from many quarters international (Srilanka), Tamil Nadu government, Politicians, threats, etc

In these situations he stood by his decision taken for the people. He was threatened that he would be arrested if he is not cooperative (stopping the construction). Even though he was 70 years plus of age, he brushed aside all the threats and boldly proceeded with the construction of the RAJA GOPURAM.

The construction was completed in late 1980s. The activity associated with construction and constant buzz about the gopuram attracted lot of devotees, tourists. This started generating revenue for the temple and now Srirangam temple is one of the wealthiest temples in
India.

Though I was barely 7 years of age when Sambrokshanam for the gopuram was done, I vividly remember this GREAT MAN walking, talking to people, blessing them. He was, is & would be a great source of strength for me & my family.

He is none other than the 44^th Jeer of the Ahobila Math. And I am proud to say that my family was very close to him & as a kid I have experienced the POWER, CHARISMA & AURO of this great man!

(This is just one of the great things done by H.H. the 44^th Jeer)