Home Sweet Home

“Veetai Katti paar; Kalyanam panni paar”, this is how a Tamil saying goes to elucidate the intricacies involved in performing a wedding and building a house. I personally felt that this was kind of an exaggeration given the fast moving nature of the world. I was proved wrong very recently, but the final outcome was my “Home Sweet Home”

Building a house of his own was my dad’s dream for almost 2 decades and it was eluding him for all his life. This was because he was moving to different places; thanks to the nature of his job. Finally he decided materialize it about 4 months back. The journey began there and there were a lot of ups and downs during this 4 month period.

Ours is a two-bedroom independent house in a residential area in Udumalpet (for those of you who do not know Udumalpet, it is a 2 hour drive from Coimbatore). A lot of planning and debates and fights have gone in to the construction of this house of ours, as ideas were pouring from various corners. My dad wanted to keep the house straight and simple with a “no frills attached” tag; but I and my brother in particular had different ideas.

Although our contribution in terms of the plan and the construction was very less, both me and my brother took pains in getting the home a “no complaints place”. We took utmost care in making the home beautiful and at the same time not to affect the sentiments of our parents.

With me being placed in Hyderabad and my brother in Mumbai it was difficult for us to oversee the developments and the way in which our home was coming up; but technology helped us a lot in sending the designs and colors that we desired for different rooms of our home and in-turn made my dad techno-savvy.

Finally the d-day came and when the final moment came my dad was a “proud man”. I have never seen him so happy and feeling proud of his work, but yet modest after seeing his longstanding dream come true. All those people who built their houses will definitely agree to this.

That’s not the end of the story. I’ll follow-up this blog with the small tour that I and my friends made to Top-slips and all the fun that we had there.

Traffic - The Hyderabadi Ishtyle

Every time I move into a new town/city I keep getting the feeling that, “If someone can drive/ride a vehicle in this traffic, they can make it a cake-walk in any other place of the world”. This has happened to me 5 times till date and still counting…

As a young boy, I used to travel in my dad’s bike or car in the streets of Coimbatore; that was way back in the late 80’s and used to get a feeling that the traffic there was intense and my dad is doing a real great job driving there. Then I moved to Madurai, a place where most of the public infrastructure was developed by the Pandya Kings. The streets of Madurai were comparatively of lesser width and adding insult to injury, the general public used the platforms and even part of the road for shops. This made it difficult for the commuters to find their way through the city. This was where I started riding a bike and the same feeling crept in to my mind; “I am doing an awesome job and I can do this in any part of the world”.

I became a little older, moved to Chennai for a job and by that time Chennai was not the same city which I saw in the late 90’s. The radius of the city had increased manifold and the traffic – needless to say. I started my career in a sales profile and I had the tough task of not only driving the sales for my company but also to commute in the hot sun of Chennai and the mindless traffic of that humongous city. I had to get ready at least 30 minutes earlier than the usual time needed to reach the destination in time, because of the traffic. There in Chennai, speed does not matter; a guy with a Pulsar 180 and a guy with a TVS 50 will be traveling at the same pace due to the intense traffic congestions. Nostalgia again, “I am doing an awesome bla bla bla”.

I used to hear a lot about the traffic situations in Mumbai from my friends, colleagues and through the media. I also had a chance to visit Mumbai on a couple of occasions for official reasons and the traffic there was again a shock for me. Long lanes filled with honking vehicles, but by far the most disciplined traffic I had seen till date.

Then I moved into the mother of all traffic congested cities. HYDERABAD!!! Yes, believe me, it is Hyderabad. This city which came to the limelight due to the rapid growth in IT companies is now being brought to the limelight again for a different reason. The first time visited Hyderabad I was amazed by the wide roads and the smooth flow of traffic. But that was the last time I had that thought in my mind. It was literally a paradoxical situation of traffic and road-side drama when I permanently moved to this “city of pearls”. The traffic sense of individuals in this city is the most “uncalled for” types and by this I am not sparing anybody. Let it be a two-wheeler rider, car driver, auto-wala, city government buses, you name it and they violate traffic in one way or the other, and let me tell you it annoys me a lot.

There used to be a comedy by Vivek (well known Tamil Cinema comedian); “We’ll put the right indicator (in the vehicle), indicate that we are turning left with our hand and keep going straight by confusing one and all around us”. This is what happens in Hyderabad in the literal sense. Lane discipline, traffic lights, yellow lines, zebra crossings, free-left turns, one-way; you can bet with at least 60% of Hyderabadis to get all of them correct. Although I am exaggerating the situation here, this is very much closer to reality.

To add more to the traffic conditions of the city, most of the traffic lights do not work even at 10 AM in the morning, the traffic constables are mere spectators and you wear a Helmet in this city and you are even eligible of running down people with your vehicle. Cabs operated by IT companies are driven only by Schumachers, Hamiltons and Alonsos; All bike riders are Cappirossis and Melandris. All auto-walas are "top-gun pilots".

Some interesting facts about the Hyderabadi Ishtyle of driving (from my observation):

• 1 out of 100 commuters stop before the stop line in a signal
• At least 1 out of 10 vehicles break red signals
• 6 out of 10 block the road on a “free-left” intersection
• 1 out of 10 take a right turn from the left hand side of the road by disrupting the on-going (straight) traffic
• 8 out of 10 police constables are afraid to stop vehicles not adhering to traffic rules

Best of them all:
A police constable tries stopping a two-wheeler rider for not wearing a helmet, the guy points the helmet locked at the rear of the bike and pushes off. Cool tactics, huh!!!

A beautiful and busy city like Hyderabad deserves more than this from the commuters and city police. It has to come either from the commuters themselves or the city police has to take some strenuous actions to bring the city’s traffic under control, else the development that the city saw in the past 5 years will just be history in the next 5 years.

To Kill a Mockingbird!!!

“It is a competitive world”

Sure, you would agree with the first sentence of this blog. The world has become increasingly competitive because of various factors. The world here refers to all the various aspects, arrays and fields available. May it be business, countries, economies, brands, people, sports, corporate etc. the competitiveness between the players has increased multifold. Everyone wants to outfit the other and emerge as a leader.

Due to the increasing competition the aggressiveness of the participants has also augmented and these days rather than winning over the competition, “running over the competition” has become the name of the game in today’s world. You or me as an individual would have definitely seen such instances in our work environment, where people would want to “eliminate” the competitor by a mere hook or crook. Although there are other factors that supplement this attitude of the accomplice, the “attitude” by itself is what drives this phenomenon.

Let us not take any serious examples of the business environment or a nation (which is brought to daylight by the news & media), but I have a live case to present to you. This has created waves in the sports columns of many a newspaper and sure it has to. This is the “Indian Cricket League” (A Zee Telefilms entity) which was formed as a competitor for the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India).

For a very long period we (me and a lot of people whom I know) have been criticizing the functioning of the BCCI and the day has come when someone actually came forward to “bell the cat”. There is a lot of support for this new initiative and many old stalwarts of cricket have come forward to support the genesis of the ICL. Seasoned cricketers in the likes of Brian Lara, Tony Greig, Kapil Dev, Kiran More and also a ring of new blood that includes Ambati Rayadu, Vinay Kumar, Anirudh Singh (All of then represented the U-19 Indian team).

But look at what is being to this enthusiastic new comer. It is being battered and trashed by the “big boys” of the Indian Cricketing Tyranny league. They tried killing this ambitious lot right at the time when this “league of extraordinary cricketers” (a little exaggerated, but…) was formed; they failed, and now they are beginning a new innings with a vengeance to halt this provocative enterprise. They have literally threatened the names associated with this league and they have christened them as “outlaws”.

What the hell is happening here? Is this the way to deal with competition? Any ambitious new-comer is here to achieve something new; something their predecessors were not able to achieve or to set a new benchmark for their successors. If you do not have the guts to face your competitor, better get out of the way so that he/she/they can do what you were not able to?

I have always been from a different school of thoughts; “Respect thy enemy (competitor as well)”. If you begin to respect your enemy or competitor you will be able to discover a lot of hidden talents within yourselves that will equip you to perform better, rather than to use (misuse) your power and authority or play mind games with your upcoming competitor and get him out of the scene.

Some Trivia:

And now why this title; this was an inspiration drawn from the best-selling novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. One of the characters in the novel explains:

“Although they can "shoot all the bluejays they want," they must remember that "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird". It is a sin because mockingbirds do no harm. They only provide pleasure with their songs: "They don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us"

Serious Siddhuisms

Siddhuism - This new word came into existence a couple of years back and all the credit goes to Navjot Singh Siddhu, the guy with a “big mouth” and a “short fuse” from Punjab. All his statements of sarcasm and ridicule have evoked by-far the loudest of laughter, but there always is a serious element and philosophy behind his words. So, another guy from Tamilnadu with a “sharp tongue” and (again) a “short fuse” (yeah, that’s me) is trying to consolidate these Siddhuisms from various other people as well.

• Ravi Shastri says “A team is like Chicken Biriyani; it is not always about the chicken and the rice”. Does not need much of an explanation, yes this statement was uttered by him when there was a discussion about individual performances in the Indian Cricket team.
• One of my US counterparts says “Don’t piss on my legs and say that it is raining”. Not able to decode the statement, this came from the American dude when he was being annoyed by someone and that “someone” told that it was all for the “greater good”
• Back to the originator’s words: “You cannot make Omelets without breaking the eggs”. You’ve gotta break a couple of hearts or even more to achieve your objective
• One more from the horse’s mouth, “Fattest pigs go to the butcher first” a simple way of explaining Darwin’s theory of “Survival of the fittest”
• And finally my personal favorite, which you would have already seen in this blog; “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think its hell”

It seems to be simple words told in a flow, but speaks volumes when these simple statements are interpreted the way we want them to sound like. Cool!!!