I was having a discussion with my friend/colleague Amit Shinde about the quality of things, and he brought up this topic of expiry dates. Fortunately for us, here in India, we now – at least – have an expiry date for most food stuff sold on the primary economy. The underground economy – or System D as it is known – is so vast and so uncontrolled that the government cannot even dream of regulating it.
But Amit’s concern was much beyond perishables. He mentioned his iPlugs for example (I’m not a Apple guy and don’t know if they call the iPhone earplugs that). He said that although there was no visual damage, they weren’t performing as they did. After all, everything has a shelf life – which may or may not be straight-forward to predict.
Take vessels for example. The old copper & brass vessels – now costly souveniers – have served families for years. There even exists a maintence process to extend its life. But the non-stick we use today in our fast lives is not built for centuries. Who knows how the coating disintegrates or how the lower layers react with oil/soap. I’m sure there is a point at which it has to be discarded – which is left to the consumer’s discretion. And when it comes to Indians, experimenting overage tolerances on expiry dates
Last year I began drafting a theme for the year 2011. I called it ‘Being my own superhero‘. Although I did work on those lines and achieve quite a bit, the post remained a draft all year. Here’s a snippet:
I really can’t make sense of what’s going on in life. Sometimes I feel I’m being overly optimistic about things – like the sole warrior fighting all odds. Are will & determination enough to survive tough times? Can & should one person bring about change in so many people? make them realize things? help them think right? I really don’t know. But I’m going to try. Because if I don’t, someday I might curse myself for having lost a chance to make things better for myself & those around. So I’m taking this chance to be a super-hero – my own super-hero. That’s the theme for 2011. And I will try to have one each new year to set a direction to life. Cheers!
This year I thought I’ll publish it in time. But before everything else, here’s wishing you & your family a very happy, prosperous & healthy new year. But here’s what is going to really make it a ‘new year’:
Its New Year. Welcome it with a new vision, ambition & persona. Stop worrying about things that don’t matter. Respect & love people selflessly. Don’t do things that make you feel sorry. Then its a Happy New Year! Cheers
And continuing on those lines, this year’s theme is: Unf*#k your mind. Everyday I meet sane people who are bogged by the pressure exerted on them by those people around Continue reading Theme for 2012: Unf*#k your mind→
I have been seeing updates on Facebook about this new song called ‘Kolaveri Di‘ . Initially I thought it was another aspiring artist like Wilbur Sargunaraj (whos branding & success can be a case study for creative agencies). Since it was Rajnikanth’s son-in-law Dhanush, it surely demanded some respect. Meaning killer or murderous rage in Tamil, also referred to as the Soup Song, it has gone viral on social networks. A Tamil friend of mine played the song to my ears today, and since then I’m hung on it. Posting the lyrics below for your reference 😉
Lyrics:
yo boys i am singing song
soup song
flop song
why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di
why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di
rhythm correct
why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di
maintain this
why this kolaveri..di Continue reading Not Kolaveri Di after hearing it→
The theme for my life over the last year or so has been ‘change without choice’. Things & people, out of my control, are forcing a change in my life – all for good. A fortnight back my web account was locked for some abusive script – probably my Facebook app that was looping indefinitely. Other ‘happening’ things spared little time to fix my blog. Last week, I recovered the data, massaged it to match the WP3.0 structure and got a new setup running on a new host – took around 10 hours in toto. Please help by sharing bugs & performance issues.
I’m writing after a couple a months and, as always, a lot has happened since. In my post ‘The not so ‘Shiney’ future of men‘ based on the Shiney Ahuja rape case, I had mentioned that apart from strong opposition, we need to have a non-tolerant attitude towards offenders. But the recent Kenan-Reuben murders are a gory, discouraging result of such opposition. Its a shame on part of law & enforcement, Continue reading And we’re back, for the global common good→
Mumbai has given me my friends, education, bread, happiness & sorrow – I love it. But with that it has given us traffic & pollution – 2 things unavoidable in this city. Despite of the patient Gaurav Samant driving me to work on that crazy JVLR, both of those rankle me everyday. But over the last couple of months, I’ve come to conclude that the traffic problem in Mumbai is a mere flow-rate issue. I might have lost touch with the intricacies of fluid dynamics, but the flow rate concept is simple enough to recollect & apply here. Wider roads have more cars flowing per second (wider area allows high velocity, hence higher flow rate). And its exactly the opposite on narrower roads. When 2 roads come together to form a road narrower than the sum of their widths, theoretically cars would have to go faster to keep the flow-rate constant. But I wish Mumbai roads allowed this. Such joints are usually where traffic clogs due to damaged roads & lack of driving sense.
Yeah, I know its been quite some time since I wrote. Difficult time that made me look 20 years older. Naah, don’t get at my hair. Never mind. Things are better now. But some things haven’t changed. Traffic sucks with an average car buyer spending 7.5 lakhs (39% up since ’06), while we’re speculating the ill-effects of the Nano. Markets are volatile, gold is more valuable than ever. While the house buyer is speculative in the pretense of builders, BMC & the government fighting each other, property rates are only going north. Terrorism is testing our patience & resilience, while Kasab celebrates his birthday in a country that’s at the behest of robbers & killers. What are we doing? Creating circles on Google Plus, letting potholes break our spine, and gathering papers to file IT returns (btw, filling thru Sahaj takes less than 15 minutes & rupees) So here we are justifying while our assets are being killed & burnt in the name of tax.
But what are assets? Things that can make us happy & sad. Things in which we invest time, money & energy for a better future. Things we won’t let go easily. Gold, stock, property for example. But don’t you think assets cover people, promises? And as someone rightly argued, your own body (as a plant)? People & promises that have the power to make you smile, and reinforce confidence to audaciously embrace challenges. And so is your body, Continue reading Do we kill our assets?→
Strange! Why would I share the reciepe for failure? This is not a failure blog. We’re all born to suceed, its our birth right (Indians love this phrase, don’t we). But as I’ve said before, sometimes its more important to know what you don’t want or shouldn’t be doing, than what you should. I’ve spent the last few days studying how people fail, or call for their doom. They follow what I call the ‘recipe of failure’. These are things that guarantee failure – in ways that may not always be sensed/realized, but things that create long term damage that cannot be compensated by a few benevolent acts. Here 7 things to avoid at all costs:
1. Playing the blame card, always
If you get into a habit of blaming someone or the other for everything that happens in your life, you’re doomed! Trust me, there’s no softer way to put this. You can’t pull-off your entire life scapegoating & harassing others just to feel marginally better for your own irresponsible acts. And neither does that mean you blame yourself for everything, learn to deal with situations. If you work hard, you can get-away with blaming for good & still feel good about your mistakes & failures.
2. Deferring/Avoiding introspection
Sometimes we defer introspection in the fear of reconciling a wrong doing with the conscience. It takes great will to look into your faults or accept criticism, but its the only way to make yourself better for you & others around. Learn to accept criticism.
3. Acting fearless
Yea, everyone wants to be dauntless & reckless. But somewhere you need to fear someone: yourself, God, someone. This is the only check on your actions, and you must stand up to them – right or wrong – in a genuine way that leaves scope for improvement (and not just to show-off your bollocks; and ladies, whatever your counterpart of that is)
4. Lack of Patience
Everything takes time, and when they say ‘everything happens for good’ there is a certain logic to it. If something bad happens, then something good is surely going to happen to keep the natural balance. When it happens, you will feel that its the good that happened out of the bad. Yea, life kinda fools you, but its not too bad either. What you should remember is not to give up any virtue and allow negativity to set in. Because when you, the “goodness” counter is reset, and have to start fresh.
5. Pathological Distrust & Negativity
Quite a few people begin by distrusting people, some never do. This is what Ivan & me had coined few years back. Pathological distrust: what bosses or a company Continue reading Recipe for Failure→
To be very honest, I don’t see a reason why someone should stray away from innovation. Thinking ‘New’ keeps your idea muscle toned for tough challenges. But here’s 3 reasons why you should innovate all the time: not just on the professional front, but also in relationships. After all, as LinkedIn says, relationships matter.
1. Not all ideas from the past scale
Storyboard
There could have been some things that worked very well for you in the past. But everything changes with time, ideas get stale, and they won’t always scale to match the situation – if at all they still work. A 20 picture photo album might have made for a lovely Valentine’s day, but that does not mean that a 200-slide story board – full of pictures and promises – can save a relationship. You have to think fresh! Eat Subway if it takes that 🙂
2. Not all ideas click (plan for failure)
What I tore & stitched back 🙁
I once had to put some things together in a paper bag (like the McDonalds carry bag – sorry can’t think outside food), and snail mail it. I had to attach a note, and trying to be creative, I decided to use the inside of the bag. So, I cut the edges of the bag to make it one long sheet of paper (kinda rotulus), wrote the message on it (in black so it would be noticed) and stitched it back with tape. Outcome? It hit the trash can – unnoticed. I failed to deliver the message. Don’t be shy of failure, the world today is chasing failure, and the Tata’s are even giving out awards for failing. But make sure you have enough alternatives to compensate for the failure, without really having to start over.
Make yourself a promise: I will always have 5 alternate ideas or planned for 5 un-happy scenarios (what does not fall on the happy path) before executing an idea
3. Competition is catching up fast
Need I say more?
Conclusion:
Innovate or perish. Sharpen your axe. Work out your idea muscle. Have coffee, or Subway, or whatever helps you think. Do something special for that special one: be it your better half or your project/product. It’s up to you to save it!
Marginalia: If you are planning to make them coffee, remember that if you make a heart with Hershey’s on it, it will sink. Instead, try rangoli (sprinkling) with coffee powder.
Share/Tweet: @prasadgupte: 3 reasons you should keep innovating, even in relationships http://bit.ly/e2uxLh
I’m a cleanliness freak – to the extent of cleaning up my Facebook wall. Over the last week, there’s been a lot of spam with wall messages that read: “Hahaha! Mine is hilarious. Check out yours”? Familiar? Yes, that silly app which tells you how you would look in the future. I never tried it, but tired of the requests, I urged friends to avoid it via a FB update. 13 people liked it, but I only hope its the latter of these 2 messages it conveys: how awful I look, and how useless that app is. (I take everybody’s privacy too seriously, hence some masking)
I was at the departure area at CSIA – stuffed with Hot Dogs to avoid starving on the low-cost flight. Since I can’t dose off just about anywhere, I knew that my mind would be restless & I had to keep it busy. It was a long journey followed by another leg of train travel. While looking for TTD, I spotted a book store. I don’t read books, in fact I haven’t finished anything other than the Godfather – so this was a bad bad idea! But this was my chance to walk into a book store, flaunt my (non-existent) eclectic taste of business & management books, and trade some hard-earned money for a few useless reward points. Yes, sparing those tied to retail stores, most other reward programs are useless. Moreover, StanChart charges 50 bucks to deliver what you bought out off the few hundred points you gathered after spending a fortune. I did buy Screw It, Let’s Do it & Hacking Work (feel free to borrow & make those unturned pages feel good). I hurried the transaction as my flight was boarding, and I also had to hit the loo. (No no, they don’t charge for pissing on-board, but still)
We’re digressing; so let’s skip loo details and come straight to the point. As I was walking out of the loo, I saw a family friend walk in. Roughly twice my age, I’ve known the man for years – and he’s probably known me since birth. His not being an extrovert and my being bad at small talk made it very difficult to strike a conversation. Besides, all our past interactions have been restricted to exchanging greetings. My flight was boarding and he too didn’t notice me. I moved on, boarded my flight and the rest of that is history, etched here.
Rest in Peace
I never thought about it again until a couple of days back: I was told the man is no more. He was burned to death in a serious accident – to the extent of being unidentifiable. However high the fetch time of my memory is, I couldn’t ignore the last time we had crossed each other – at the airport. That was my chance – my last chance – to talk to him & wish him well. I tried excusing myself with the ‘flight boarding’ reason & even tried remembering the (n-1)th time we had spoken, which was too far to fetch. I said sorry to myself and prayed for the man’s soul, and the family he leaves behind. That’s all that could be done now.
I’ve always believed that each day could well be the last. We should thus say good bye to loved ones, and smile when we leave our homes. I had skipped something off my own doctrine, and it could not be undone. It has started to make me edgy. So I enforced that policy (much like a network admin does): no matter who, I’m not sparing any chance to greet people or smile. I kept that when I saw a granny in the market today – I went all the way just to say Hello. I didn’t want to repeat that mistake again.
Boats in the rain
When you die, you don’t want anyone to say: he was good, but the last time he crossed me, he was too busy to notice me! Do whatever it takes to talk to people – you might never see them again. Call people again if they don’t return a call, take a train to meet someone or wait hours in the sun just to see them, or just say a hello when you see people. Kiss you spouse & children every morning, kiss them before sleeping. Take every chance to smile at people & do nice things to them, in your own little ways that affect them. Be your own super-hero. Sometimes life and people remind me of paper boats we sailed in the rains: for some time they’re in your control, but when they start drifting away – they’re gone for good. Do everything you can when you’re in control.
