C Ashwath - A Tribute

As my wife, her cousin from Washington DC and myself were driving back to N R Colony on 29^th Dec’09 from Columbia Asia hospital, the only thought that struck all our minds was why did he have to depart on the day he had arrived!! Coincidentally, he was born on the same date that he breathed his last.

His live performance that I sat through till the very end was in APS College. He went on stage to perform just one more time at Ambedkar Bhavan. The run-up to the function at APS College was unique in many respects. He was brought in style in a horse drawn open carriage. His wife and his grand daughters were by his side in the carriage as it slowly moved from Ramakrishna Mission at Gandhi Bazaar to Dodda Ganeshana Guddi and then wound its way to the college grounds to the beat of Dhol Kunitha. Dhol is a percussion instrument, and this dance form is a traditional art form – Janapada Nritya.

The first song “Jaya Bharatha Jananiya Tanujathe” had everybody on their feet. Written by the well known poet Kuvempu, music for this song was composed by C Ashwath on a catchy tune and to the beat of a soldier’s march past; this popular number is sung in the assembly halls of all Kannada medium schools.

Midway in the program after all the distinguished dignitaries from the world of Literature and Poetry had spoken, Ashwath also spoke a few words with nostalgia…it all began 60 years back in this school Acharya Pata Shala (APS), he said about the start of his education. It was with fond remembrances that he spoke of belonging to the community in N R Colony, the love and affection shown by the people in this part of Bangalore where his roots lay, people who had showered heaps of accolades on him during his career spanning few decades. Although impromptu, his speech was quite emotional and it gave me the eerie feeling that he was perhaps running against time.

Noticeably, he did not appear to be his normal self; he looked quite pale and tired and seemingly lost in his own thoughts; hopefully absorbing the presence of such a large and lovely gathering. He thanked people for the love, affection and adulation they had showered on him and went on to add as he always has said that an artists success can only be measured by “Pull” the artist can generate during such open contact performances.

The aura of a celebrity at home can be overwhelming at times, especially if it’s a person like C Ashwath; he was like a coin with an identical face on both sides. What he was at home, he was outside as well. With an eye for detail, if he was a highly demanding leading artist in his group, so was he at home, equally demanding for perfection in everything that was done at home! With absolutely no patience for shoddy work, whether at practice or on stage, it was the same expectation from his near and dear ones at home. If his close colleagues and supporting artists were in awe of him, so was the family; always on tenterhooks on when he would fly off the handle, in case he found something wanting.

He was truly looking forward to the program organized on the 29^th Dec’09 at Ravindra Kalakshetra. 18 prominent singers, virtually from the who’s who in the Kannada music world had lined up to perform on stage alongside him. It had all the promises of a great event and combined with a book release, the show was expected to be truly spectacular. It was painfully sad to see this desire of his cut short so abruptly.

It is the cherished dream of all those who make it big in their lifetime to make a dramatic exit while at their peak performance. It was indeed dramatic and ironic at the same time. Ravindra Kalakshetra, the place he had chosen to celebrate his 70^th birthday amidst his colleagues in the music world had to be converted hurriedly into a makeshift venue for conducting a tearful farewell.

C Ashwath was given a state funeral amidst relatives and hundreds of admirers. A state police contingent reversed arms and offered a gun salute as a mark of respect to the illustrious son of Karnataka. Earlier during the assembly proceedings as the news trickled about C Ashwath’s death, elected members unmindful of their political affiliations, spoke highly of C Ashwath’s achievements and particularly the prominence he had brought for Kannada as a language.

Being a celebrity, he had the uncanny ability to rally all his relatives around the aura he had created. Presuming that the 29^th Dec’09 performance would be out of the world, almost all his immediate family members including those residing in distant places including the US had made a beeline to Bangalore. It was as if he had created a platform for all his near and dear ones to come together – something that he loved doing. Being less visible during his innumerable performances, he jokingly pulled my leg saying he would force my place of work to shut down should they deny giving me a day off on 29^th Dec’09.

He would perhaps be remembered as a one-man army in the field of Sugama Sangeetha, Folk Music and Bhava Geethes. C Ashwath was principally responsible for scores of people making a career in singing through the platform he created for them to perform. Almost all of them carry fond remembrances of their experiences with him on stage and how he catapulted them to fame. With allegiance to none and no die hard followers behind, his life was dedicated to the verse and the scintillating music that he composed. And this reminds me of Albert Camus and his quote, which so aptly describes C Ashwath: "Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend." I am sure C Ashwath would have added: Observe, Learn, Repeat and Innovate!!

Mumbai Meri Jaan....

But for a brief visit to IIT, Powai at Mumbai, soon after completing college at REC Trichy, I did not know much about this city. All fantasies and memories of this great city was through Hindi movies and I particularly remember Johnny Walker's song & dance in the 1956 yesteryear hit movie "CID" - Yeh hai Bombay Meri Jaan....!! Incidentally, Johnny Walker (nee Badruddhin J Kazi) was a bus conductor in BEST, Mumbai and was spotted by the great actor of Waqt fame: Balraj Sahani, who then recommended him to Guru Dutt. Johnny Walker went on to entertain people in over 300 movies.

I wasn't able to get a seat in an MTech program at IIT, Powai, but was offered a seat to carry out research in the Chemical Engineering Dept. as an Asst. Research Associate - it did not sound exciting and I politely declined. Eventually I went on to join Graphite Industries Ltd. at their Bangalore unit, which I had been offered through a campus selection program. GIL manufactures Graphite electrodes for melting iron & steel scrap in Electric Arc Furnaces. Calcined Petroleum Coke (CPC), the raw material for manufacturing these electrodes is a waste product from the petroleum refineries - solid carbon remnants after extraction of various grades of oil from crude petroleum. This was my first exposure to an industry and so was my tryst with pollution control equipments in this factory.

On my 23rd Year and on the 23rd of April 1982, I left for Mumbai from Bangalore and joined Batliboi Ltd. in their Air Pollution Control Division, hoping to make a career out of cleaning polluted air. We were a batch of 16 trainees and after the initial orientation in the Head Office at Mumbai, we were packed off to Udhana, a suburban extension of the diamond & textile city of Surat. Although the word 'attrition' was unknown those days in the industry, Batliboi took extra care to induct their Graduate Engineer Trainees under the supervision of a very experienced and retired trainer. Any 25 year old young engineer would have paled in front of this energetic septuagenarian. His energy levels and worldly knowledge was absolutely amazing!!

The training and induction program was spread across 3 full months and included all aspects as was necessary to make us complete and whole human beings. We brushed our 5 years of engineering in the relevant fields required by this industry, learnt a great deal on written and spoken communication skills, besides getting sound advice on everything that would make us good human beings first. The experience was refreshing and wholesome, and my only regret was that I lost 3 of the 14 weeks program. Surat used to be a notoriously filthy city in the state of Gujarat, known for breeding and spreading all kinds of diseases. I was forced to return home to Durgapur to recuperate from a severe bout of jaundice.

Unlike my other colleagues, who went back to their home cities post the training, I was the odd one detained at Mumbai, since the Pollution Control Division operated only out of Head Quarters in Mumbai. It was a bit of a shocker as I had fancied myself returning to Bangalore. It was a double whammy of sorts, as I had to move out of the company provided accommodation to something of my own, as well. With help from my father's batch-mates and friends at Durgapur Steel Plant, I was able to find myself a shared accommodation at a place called Laxmi Nivas in Matunga. An exotic name of the Indian Goddess of Wealth given to a 4 storied chawl having 15 to 20 rooms in each floor. The then booming cotton mills in Mumbai attracted people from far and distant Indian states and these chawls served as a low cost abode for families. More fashionably known as studio apartments now, this kind of building construction is pretty common in Dubai as well, the only difference in luxury being common vs private washrooms. People living in chawls have little or no privacy, but the proximity of rooms lends a friendly atmosphere with support networks similar to familial relationships. This urban landmark has been glamorized in Bollywood movies like Katha, Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, Chakra, Nukkad etc. The most significant contribution of these chawls has been the encouragement of a culture of tolerance amongst the various ethnic groups and people from different religious backgrounds.

Honestly, there would no wars or strife's if people across the planet saw the world as their Nukkad!! So much has been spoken and written about Obama bending backwards, while bending forwards to bow as a mark of greeting and respect when he recently visited some Asian countries. Why on earth would that be considered a weakness!! From his position of strength as the first person of the worlds strongest and most resilient democracy, the humbleness with which he is addressing vexed issues, made complex by the short sightedness of a group of stray human beings, is extremely commendable. Barriers break when we talk with humility!! Hopefully, the ideals of our very own Father of the Nation - Mahatma Gandhi, will be President Obama's guiding light and bring him the elusive success, we the ordinary mortals living in every nook and corner of this world deserve as a fundamental right - the freedom to lead a peaceful life of co-existence.

Back to my Matunga days, this was also the time I started visiting the Kannada Association and enrolled myself as a tabalchi. I had learnt to play this Indian percussion instrument during my school days upon the insistence of my father. I never guessed how useful this fine art would turn out to be when I was grudgingly attending the weekly classes conducted by the "School of Music" at Durgapur. By playing a musical instrument or being a percussionist, one could become an instant success in college cultural festivals and get catapulted to instant fame!! It had the same magical effect in Kannada Association; we formed a small troupe and this ensemble would end up giving 30 minute capsule programs on all the festivals. We also landed ourselves a chance to record a 15 minute capsule program for Bombay 'B' services of All India Radio. The recording was later broadcast on a late Sunday afternoon. For once, we could call ourselves as Radio artists.

Another good thing about this Association was the arrangement to run a canteen at a no profit, no loss basis. The food was tasty, suiting the taste bud and the wallet. Quite a few of us bachelors would gather every evening, spend time at the well stocked library, mingle amongst familiar faces, have a nice sumptuous meal and head home. It had become a routine of sorts.

The suburban trains are the lifeline in Mumbai. The Central and Western railway networks are perhaps comparable to the main arteries in a human body. The entire city can come to a grinding halt if these two networks suspend operations for whatever the reason. So extensive are the routes and its usage that it is shut down for track maintenance work only for 3 hours in a 24 hour cycle. Only the taxi operators exceed this by making themselves available 24/7/365 days. My memories of using the services of taxi in Mumbai has always been pleasant. First, they would never refuse to accept a passenger, no matter how near or how far the destination. Second, they would go strictly by the meter. Their meters were quaint and ancient with steps of 10 paisa. The local corporation would determine what would be the multiplication factor based on the prevailing fuel costs. Although, each of the cabs carried a chart with an old vs new rate, it wasn't really necessary as the calculation was simple. The beauty of the system was no cab driver asked for an extra buck even if the travel was at an unearthly hour, when typically the suburban trains would come to a brief 3-hours halt. Though this rule did not apply to the passengers boarding a cab at the International airport, by and large there were little or no issues with transportation at any point of the day or night. Salaam to our Mumbai Taxiwala's!!

We were in for a major surprise....sometime between October and December of circa 1982. We suddenly faced a complete power black-out in Mumbai and its suburbs. We eventually understood that the state of Gujarat had overdrawn from its assigned quota of power on a particular day from the Western Grid and this led to a drop in the frequency of power - beyond the specified variation of +/- 2.5 Hz. Once it falls below the allowable range, the power plants automatically shut down to save itself from extreme damage. One of them shutting down has a cascading effect on all the other power generating stations. Within matter of minutes all the power stations came to a grinding halt.

With roughly 8 to 15% of the power generated in a Thermal Power Plant being consumed for running its own equipments; to re-start, these thermal power stations need external power to kick them into action. It is then left to Hydel stations to supply the starting power. With power from Tata's Khopoli Hydel Station (last of the 6, 12 MW generators was commissioned in circa 1911), the thermal power stations were brought back to life one after the other and power was restored eventually to Bombay and its suburbs between 12 and 24 hours.

With no suburban trains, the buses and taxis were bursting at their seams. Mumbaikars, with their large hearts decided to take this in their stride...and walk they did to home sweet home. Matunga for me was just 15 KM's from the Fort area where our office was located. It was a cake walk compared to the other folks who must have trudged 30 odd KM's to reach home. No one was complaining...the next morning we had all the people reporting into work. Trains were back on their tracks, as power was back on its lines.

We should shower praise on Mumbaikars on their professional and clinical approach to issues. Out here, people look for opportunities to bring everything to its original state of equilibrium. The city is a perfect picture of an organized chaos. A newcomer may wonder how things ever move at this place...one may wonder how could anyone get into the already overcrowded train...Well! It is a matter of positioning, you see!! One needs to plonk oneself in the sea of humanity that is waiting to get inside a local train and that's it. Although the halt is brief for 20 or 30 seconds at each station, the positioning finally matters. One of life's most important lessons is taught in a train ride: Ride with the wave and not against and you will be at peace with yourself.

We have completed one year of freedom from the dozen odd terrorists that stormed this wonderful city. After loosing a near and dear one, it is absolutely incorrect to say that the pain will go away with time...the scar remains forever like an indelible ink. Perhaps, the pain just becomes dull by getting spaced apart in time. People have to get back to their routine and restore their equilibrium and try and pick up the threads of their life once again. Like the lifeline suburban trains of the city, after the brief halt at a station, one needs to re-start and pick-up speed to do a catch-up.

And, that is Mumbai, Meri Jaan!!

Salaam Mumbai!!

Emails...

When Keith Ferrazzi, Writer/Author of 'Never Eat Alone' and Who's Got Your Back' repute says emails are an opportunity to strengthen relationships, I would seriously urge people to give this a very serious thought.

Honestly, how many times have we sent or received a curt one-liner without a formal address and a signature line and compared such email communication to that written in a more formal tone and diction? Which do you think made a more positive and lasting impact? We would be doing injustice to ourselves if we, under the guise of being busy and perennially short of time accept that one-liner or brief messages creates a deeper impact.

I for one, would surely be faulted for writing elaborate emails with a formal beginning and an end, besides the mid-portion text containing the detailed explanation. My supposedly brief and to-the-point notes sent through "Short Message Service" or SMS, also tends to be very verbose and long. For sure, the telecom service providers must be thrilled at my 'not-so-short' messages that more often than not, reaches its maximum character limit, impacting their revenues in a positive sense.

Just a decade back, when I started work in the BPO industry, I copied the email form, written and practiced by clients. There would be no pleasantries and the messages would start and stop abruptly. This was a complete departure from what was followed internally. The client was not complaining and as long as my emails with the client did not get shared or copied internally, I was on a roll.

This caught notice of one fire-brand HR folk and I got a dressing down. I was caught unawares and so much was my surprise, that I was tongue-tied and did not know how to react. Nevertheless, I mustered some courage to defend myself saying that I had picked this style from clients. This irked the person all the more and I was further admonished for not respecting the organizational culture of writing emails in a very formal note and tone. I sulked for a full day before deciding to gather my thoughts together and give the feedback its due attention. I did go on to change my style and there has been no looking back, since.

Here are a couple of tips for developing and building a lasting relationship for mutual benefit.

• It pays to make your subject line catchy, attractive, short and meaningful to the context of your contents. Conversely, never leave a subject line blank as it communicates sloppiness, laziness or a lack of respect for the reader's time. Also, take care to change the subject line if it has a trail of three or more subjects or if the status has altered.
• A slick 'thank you' note at the end of your visit to whomsoever you have met with a mention of a list of things discussed along with a list of things that you wish to achieve with time lines, post your visit is always greatly appreciated. This may also be followed at the end of an important call.
• Nurturing and maintaining relationships is of paramount importance. You may be writing to the same person over and over again; show respect at the beginning with pleasantries and include a salutation or a simple 'thank you' at the end. Read and re-read your emails and edit before sending.
• Replying to emails on your blackberry on the go can be a different challenge altogether. More often than not, emails are read in a hurry, understood partially and replied without giving adequate thought. There is a good chance in giving an incomplete reply with scant regard for language and spelling, giving the message a sloppy look and feel.
• While an email is a great medium to send a compliment and more people must adopt this in their everyday life; one needs to exercise caution. There should be a genuine, from the bottom of your heart compliment and most importantly this message should be a one-on-one. A 'reply all' takes away the charm of the compliment - the focus shifts to self rather than the recipient as it becomes a tool to impress rather than express.
• When using abbreviations or acronyms, be sure your audience has knowledge of the same, else, as a matter of courtesy expand for easy understanding.
• Use blank lines to separate paragraphs and do not use tab key when you start a new paragraph.
• Your writing style says more about you than you realize. Your composition skills are quite reflective of your knowledge and abilities. If you are consistently making typo errors, using unconventional punctuation, spelling words incorrectly and so on, you will not come across as a person who knows what he's doing. Neatness counts!

Lastly, using the inverted pyramid is the best form of writing. Your most important statement should appear in the first paragraph, followed by supporting details.

Cheers!!

Dear Dad...

It seems like yesterday that dad replied to my very first letter to him...I started my letter with a simple Dear Dad...!! It was a term that I myself was not familiar with!! Those days, the influence of the West was more through books and magazines, not movies or travel. It was hence strange to start with a set of alien words to me as we, my sisters and I usually referred to my father as "Anna", or elder brother in Kannada.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had decided that I would be an obedient son and write at least two, if not three letters a week. Dad & mom suffered from lack of communication from both my sisters when they graduated from school to college and moved to Mysore and Kolkata. I would watch them silently suffer from the lack of communication. And so, deep in my mind, I was firm that I would not like them to go through a similar pain. I decided to fault on excessive communication instead.

It was quite an interesting day when I entered the college to get admitted, all on my own. Parents of my fathers generation, I guess, were far more adventurous and willing to take chances, than parents of today. Why else would my dad leave me on my own to join the college at Tiruchirapalli, 1,600 KM's away from my cozy home at Durgapur? Not knowing the language was another hurdle that I had to cross. It was a nightmare during broad daylight as, after getting down at the station, I had to switch buses at the Main Guard Gate (City Center) to reach college. After meeting the Principal and later the Registrar, I was asked to join by filling a set of myriad forms and pay up the fees. To my utter disbelief, when I submitted all the relevant forms and triumphantly handed over all the money I had, the cashier nonchalantly said that it was short by Rs. 40 from the bare minimum of Rs. 960, which included caution deposit and the annual fees. My heart just sank at the prospect of being denied a seat in the most prestigious college amongst the REC's for want of Rs. 40. Although at my wits end, I gathered enough courage to ask the cashier for a hand loan of Rs. 40 with a promise that I would repay as soon as my dad sent a money order. My logic was innocent and simple: I would any way be a college student and the cashier could always trace me from the college roll number assigned against my name in the register. Well, to my bad luck he politely refused saying that I would have to try my luck elsewhere at borrowing money. The only positive thing was his promise to hold the seat and the roll number until I returned with the balance.

I sat at the footsteps of the imposing Admin. Building for a good 30 minutes wondering 'what next' and faintly recollected my father speaking about a colleague of his at Durgapur getting transferred to BHEL Tiruchirapalli. BHEL's Boiler Division, manufacturing seamless stainless steel tubes was situated just 4 KM's from my college, but towards the city. I decided to give it a try and locate him at the plant. I was stopped at the main gate being still a minor at 16. The Chief Security Officer was a big help as he quickly located the name and telephone number of my uncle (any colleague or acquaintance of my dad was always referred as an uncle!). With bad luck, now firmly entrenched on my back, the CSO informed that my uncle was away on an official tour to New Delhi. Having come this far, the last thing I wanted was to give up! Quite often I had heard my dad talk about his own PA a number of times and decided that my uncle, who was in a fairly senior position, should be having one likewise. I made another request to the CSO asking that he allow me to talk to his PA, all the while praying that he be available at his desk and not disappear for lunch. The CSO must have wondered who this rudderless and wandering teenager was and who he would con next. He however masked his emotion pretty well and with a somber expression on his face readily obliged. He must have been gleefully thinking that this call too, would fetch no results, like in the past. This time, aha! I was lucky and Bingo! I was talking to my uncle's PA. The excitement and relief at my new found victory was so strong that what came out of my mouth was a confused string of words that sounded like gibberish and made no meaning to the PA. He was however patient and took control of the call by asking some basic and simple questions. Having satisfied himself with my identity, he asked me to pass on the phone to the CSO and left instructions that I be given Rs. 100, on a returnable basis of course! Triumphantly, I walked back to the campus and the rest is history.

This was the story of my first letter to my dad - not that I wanted to move him to tears, but tell him that I was able to find a way out of a situation. Ten days later I received an MO from my dad for Rs. 250 with a short congratulations note on having successfully crossed life's first hurdle. My predicament coupled with the cultural and language shock must have shook him too, as my mom summed up years later that she had seen tears in his eyes when he read my first letter.

My dad's command over English was pretty well known amongst his friends and colleagues and after he died while still serving at the steel plant, I heard from his PA that his dictations were absolutely immaculate; perhaps the best amongst the various people he had worked with. There would be no shorthand and no draft...it would be a direct dictation with his steno-typist hammering the keys of the typewriter and churn out letters that required no correction. Compare this to the ease with which we make corrections while typing on the computer keyboard these days! Have clarity in your thought process, my dad would repeatedly say, with a single minded determination to do it right the first time!

It was an absolute pleasure reading his letters. His lucid style of writing and the easy flow of words, the choice and diction seemed as if he had planned long hours before penning those letters. I tried imitating his style and the best I could achieve was to copy his hand writing and not his style in writing. I had carefully preserved all his letters during my 5 year stint at the college, but lost the entire bunch when we moved from the old house to the new one at Durgapur. This has been singularly the biggest loss in my life so far.

I started my career with Graphite India in Bangalore, moved to Batliboi in Mumbai and finally settled at Kolkata for 10 years. While I lost all his letters written to me during my college days, those written during my early working life are safely preserved to this day and with technology advancement, I have even scanned these and stored them in the hard disc of my computer. To this day they are a big source of inspiration.

I consider letter writing as the best form of communication, as one gets to understand each other so well. Indeed, seven years of our letter writing brought us very close as we learnt to express our feelings and thoughts; something that seldom happens between a father and son. This made us respect each other that much more! I understood him first as a person and then more as a friend than a father.

As a kid, the earliest that I remember of him was the time he would teach me arithmetic and algebra in particular. It all seemed so easy when he would sit down with me, trying to help me understand, that forming an equation and solving for particular conditions was more a test of English than just mathematics. While it was cool with him by my side, on my own I would get that sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach when I couldn't make sense of the English, let alone complex quadratic equations. Never known to be harsh to us kids, he would loose his patience when he found that I could not find solutions to simple equations and a whack on the back of the head would be his fitting finale, summarily dismissing me as a 'good for nothing idiot'.

I used to be a quiet, insecure and immensely shy person as a kid. Being a no. 3 can have its own challenges when the two above are talkative girls, one very smart and intelligent and the other having the gift of the gab. If asked a question by any of the visitors to our house...and this is quite common in townships when friends of parents drop in to spend some time in the evenings, I would either remain mum or look the other way. It kind off conveyed the impression that either I did not care or was an absolute dumbo...my dad used to get upset at this behavior. He did question me a few times but then just gave up saying some kids are good at talking and some good at writing...but I was good at none!! I would become a recluse was his final verdict, if I did not make the right efforts!

He would review our performance by going through the question paper after each examination and ask questions about our answers. During one such review I got a whack for a true/false set of question. Our teacher had cleverly used English to confuse the students...lucky for me I had got it right, but while reading the question my dad got it wrong! I mustered enough courage to point this out to my dad but got a second whack on the back of my head...he said "this is for taking back the earlier whack!" That was the first time I realized, what's laughter with tears in the eyes!!

My eldest sister had picked up his reading habit and I in turn used to copy my sister...I would try and read what she read. I tried my hand at reading Hindi novels too...those written by Gulshan Nanda...some of his stories were later made into Hindi movies as well, Kati Patang, a yesteryear hit released in 1970, is an example. With no TV and computers around those days, books and comics were a favorite pass time. Tarzan, Mandrake the magician and MAD were my favorites. Enid Blyton and Capt W E Jones were my favorites authors during childhood and later Agatha Christie, Nick Carter, Earl Stanley Gardner, Alfred Hitchcock to name a few...Radio Ceylon was another attraction those days and the Wednesday 8 PM slot lasting for an hour was the most widely heard radio program called "Binaca Geet Mala and the RJ was the inimitable Ameen Sayani. His voice had a magical lilt and his talk show interspersed with the weekly hits or chartbusters was a treat to hear. The beauty of this show was, if a song appeared in this show for 18 consecutive weeks, it was given a grand sign-off as a sartaj geet with a signature tune played on the trumpet. Another typically Radio Ceylon thing was renowned K L Saigal's a song played as the last one of the 30 minute "Bhule Bisre Geet" every morning and "Loma Time" being announced precisely at 8 AM. Loma used to be a brand of facial moisturizer, available in the 60's and 70's...I don't see it on the shelves of the malls these days.

My reading habit continued during my college days, RE Trichy had a very well stocked library and through a close friend and batch-mate got introduced to A J Cronin, Somerset Maugham, Daphne Du Maurier, Taylor Caldwell, Mario Puzo, Ayn Rand, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Lawrence Sanders, Isaac Asimov, Alister MacLean, Fredrick Forsyth, Irving Stone etc. My father suggested that I read Nevil Shute's books. In a couple of his books the main characters were engineers and this made a special appeal in my mind. His novel 'Trustee from the Toolroom' and 'No Highway' are by far the best I have read so far.

All the same, I felt my dad was the greatest when it came to writing. I remember reading his reply to my sister's yet-to-be-father-in-law to the subtle question on the height difference between my sister and her would-be husband: 'So what if she is short, I'm sure she will reach great heights!' He had carefully selected a birthday card for my eldest sister - his favorite child and it read: 'Whenever I build Castles in the Air, there will always be room for you.' He went through considerable pain when my sister was adamant on pursuing BA in History when he was more than willing to put her through a medical college. I recollect the heated arguments that each would put forth at the dining table every night and with neither relenting, both failed ultimately to achieve their objective. It was a historical blunder trying to impose his academic pursuits on his rebellious daughter. With this experience fresh in his mind, he completely relented to the wishes of my 2nd sister who not only got what combination of subjects she wanted, but also the city of her choice - Kolkata. when it was my turn, he was quite thrilled when I told him that I would follow his footsteps and get into the engineering field. Being No. 3 had its advantages too...learn from the others mistakes!!

My dad was not in favor of the private sector; he had a socialistic bent of mind and was an admirer of Indira Gandhi and the politics surrounding nationalization of the industry, banks and insurance companies. He firmly believed that only the Govt. had the money muscle to invest on developments and that the private sector was just bent upon hoarding and amassing personal wealth. It used to be interesting to sit with his friends in the evening hours after their return from the plant listening to them talk of the Govt. Politics, Development, Education, Movies and Books. There was never a dull moment or boredom. My dad was also a great admirer of Lal Bahadur Shastri and his slogan "Jai Javan Jai Kissan" created during the 22-day war with Pakistan in 1965 had caught his fancy. During the food crisis, while leading the country as the 2nd Prime Minister of India, to encourage people to evenly distribute food, he urged his countrymen: If one person gives up one meal in a day, some other person gets his only meal of the day. My dad, a true patriot, decided for all of us that we should forgo dinner at least one day every week, on a Saturday and so it was...!! Apart from emphasizing a green revolution, Lal Bahadur was also instrumental in kick starting the white revolution. Based on the success of AMUL in Khaira district of Gujarat, he was instrumental in the formation of NDDB - the National Dairy Development Board.

Just recently, as I went through the motions of performing his annual ceremony, these bits of random thoughts kept streaming in my mind. More a friend than a father, he would ask a few pointed questions during my weekly visits home to Durgapur from Kolkata, and patiently listen to whatever anecdotes or stories that I told him from the events in the past week at office. Reflecting on this part of my life, I feel that it is important for us to have a mentor who will just give a patient ear, listen to us when we pour our hearts out and not use it for any manipulative purpose. How I wish I could write to him again the same three letters that I used to write every week and eagerly await to receive his reply; as always starting with: My dear son.......

Origami and Childhood Pranks - All Harmless of Course!!

Origami is a Japanese word for "folding paper". It's resemblance to similar sounding words in English brings a completely different and misleading picture in the mind though and this can be pretty comical.

In this ancient Japanese art, the trick is to use one sheet of paper for creating objects without using scissors or knives. I have not seen kids using this art form at all. These days, I guess it is all about computer games that encourages shooting, killing and extreme violence. Destruction versus Creativity during our times. It used to be a fun thing and a rage in our good old days - late 60's and early 70's. New notebooks used to disappear in no time, much to the dismay of parents. Sheets would be torn neatly from the back side of notebooks and converted into various kinds of planes and missiles in the classroom and our teachers would have a harrowing time trying to find out the source of these paper contraptions.

Indian kids took a few concessions from their Japanese counterparts I guess, and cutting and tearing was generally accepted for making more effective flying objects with the purpose of mildly hurting folks for sheer fun during childhood days. One smart kid; smart in the wrong sense I guess, introduced the art and technique of using elastic bands to launch these paper missiles. They were indeed lethal as they traveled like bullets and for a good 90% of the distance in a straight line. One could aim quite accurately at the targets and Bingo! they would be spot on each time and every time. Nylon bands, what we see these days were not available in our days and invariably, the elastic bands available in the market were slim round portions cut from a cycle tube. They were not very flexible and would snap easily. It was primarily used as a substitute for colorful ribbons by girls to tie their hair. My sisters used to stock these bands made out of black cycle tube and lucky for me, this was my perennial source of supply. I am sure after reading this blog, my sisters will now be able to understand where all those packets of black bands disappeared. As long as they do not chase to clobber me now, 40 years later, I am fine. They surely cannot punish me for a childhood prank committed 40 years ago - can we say 'untimely filing of a confession'?

One black tube band was never sufficient to get the speed and momentum on these paper missiles. Another bright spark found a way to combine two or more of these bands to form a long elastic string and these became ideal launching pads. As long as it remained a childish prank and no harm was caused to fellow kids, it was fine. I was however a bit adventurous and wanted to use this to scare the hoards of crows flying around making a racket with their cacophonic caw! caw, every morning! Houses in Durgapur were built on huge plots of land; typically a 1,500 square feet built area would be on a land measuring 90' by 120'. With ample space for gardens all around, every house in the township had all kinds of fruit bearing trees like guava, mango, Jamun (Indian Blackberry), Jackfruit, besides the neem trees and the curry leaf bushes. Sparrows and crows were the most common residents on these trees and occasionally the owl, koil, parrot and pigeons would make flying visits. Come to think of it, I haven't seen many birds around in Bangalore; the rapid urbanization and chopping of trees have made the winged visitors run for cover elsewhere and what a pity! Only squirrels are visible these days with their cheep cheep calls. It is fun to watch them walking precariously on the telephone and cable lines between houses, balancing itself beautifully.

Returning to my childish prank, which eventually turned out to become a nightmare; one of my stray paper missiles launched with the use of a string of 4 intertwined elastic bands, whizzed past a crow which was a regular visitor to the mango tree in our backyard garden. I never imagined that birds could have a strong memory. Although, a bit startled at first with a paper missile flying past its beak, the crow obviously recovered from shock and quickly traced its path to see who had caused this disturbance. With another missile in my hand, it obviously put two and two together and then for the next week or so, I became the hunted and crow a hunter. It may sound a bit bizarre, but these birds seem to have a pretty decent memory. Luckily it was short lived, similar to the RAM in a CPU. Each time I stepped out of the house, it would come swooping on me and I must have a tripped on quite a few occasions trying to side step while looking up to see where and when the bird would strike next, to take revenge. This was straight out Alfred Hitchcock's movie "The Birds" released in 1963, based on the book written by Daphne du Maurier. This went on for a week or so until the RAM lost its power and the memory faded leaving me at peace!

Talking of memory, the human brain which weighs just 1.5 kilos has a staggering 80 to 100 billion neurons and twice that number of glial cells which provides nutrition support to the neurons. Even while asleep the human brain continues to handle traffic that would swamp all the world's telephone exchanges. Although very small in comparison to other organs, it demands 20% of the oxygen inhaled and a fifth of the blood the heart pumps. These 80 to 100 billion neurons are interconnected - some as many as 60,000 times. These neurons or nerve cells transmit nerve signals (electro-chemical impulses) to and from the brain at speeds up to 200 mph.

The most striking feature is the back-up system. Memory is stored in various places. This amazing feature helps a person to recover even after a stroke. Even if one part of the brain is destroyed, the remaining part, over time takes over the job by setting up compensating networks of nerve connections. With time, stroke victims return to a near normal life - speech may return, movement in limbs return. Incidentally, brain nerve cells are the only cells in the human body that do not reproduce. A baby is born with a full complement of these 80 to 100 billion gray nerve cells.

Alzheimer's disease is the name for progressive cognitive deterioration. The short term memory loss or amnesia becomes steadily more pronounced with the progression of illness. Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system affecting speech and motor skills. During epileptic seizures, there is disruption in the generation of electro-chemical impulses as the neurons begin firing all at once and at a much faster rate.

While doctors and engineers have successfully mapped the brain to understand its complex operations, what still eludes mankind is the behavior different people display for a similar set of inputs. It is still very unique to each human being; hence, if there are 7 Billion people on this earth, we have 7 Billion different minds!! Is there a possibility for peaceful coexistence and mutual respect?

Diwali Gift

Last night while returning from Kolkata, Hiro and I without discussing with each other felt an apprehension when we heard a feeble voice on the PA system from the cockpit of Jetlite flight S2 364 on our return to Bangalore. We were not sure whether it was the pilot or the co-pilot we heard. It was an otherwise uneventful flight; it took off on the dot and commenced its decent into Bangalore exactly 20 minutes prior to touchdown. I noticed the pilot making a correction in the flight path just before touchdown and that caused some unknown anxiety and before we knew what was happening, the plane landed on all its wheels with a massive thud. Every passenger must have let off a shriek or a scream involuntarily. It made quite a few jump off their seats, so hard was the landing.

I quickly thanked my engineering fraternity for having designed the fuselage and the hydraulic wheel suspension strong enough to take such a massive impact from a careless nincompoop of a trainee pilot. It was so strong that the pilot did not have to either fire the retro or apply the mechanical brakes. It lost all its power and speed in that instant of impact. On a very warm day, with the runway getting heated by continuous sunlight, the temperatures can reach dangerous levels. Had this kind of landing taken place on a hot afternoon, say in Jaipur or nearer home at Madurai, the tyres would have probably burst.

Obviously nothing like that happened, the very fact that I am writing this piece kind off endorses that all was well in the end. The co pilot must have been shaken too and tried to turn this to humor when he said that it was a bad landing not because of a trainee, but because Jetlite wanted to give a cracker of a landing as a gift on the eve of Diwali. With our heart in our hands, it sure was a Diwali gift, to our families, though!

One interesting fact is the speed at which the aircraft makes contact with the runway during touchdown. The velocity of approach can sometimes reach about 300 km/hour, and a great impact in the horizontal direction is imposed on tyres of the wheels. This impact is referred to as an accelerating impact. Upon landing, the surface of a tyre of a wheel sometimes melts to raise smoke.

The black tyre marks that you see on the head of the runway are nothing but molten tyre material which sticks onto the runway. This tyre material sticking to the surface can be dangerous as it can make other landing aircraft to slip on its surface, especially on a very hot afternoon or when it rains.

If you recall, in the recent past a Concorde caught fire while taking off and crashed. Investigation revealed that the wheels collided with a metal piece lying on the runway causing the tyre to burst and a broken part smashed into the fuel tank, thus starting a fire. Engineers are now working on a suspension system that will prevent a tyre from bursting even when it collides with an object on the runway.

While commercial aero planes are considered path breaking in the list of mankind’s inventions, the amount of carbon dioxide it releases into the atmosphere is phenomenal. On an average, aircraft emission accounts for 3% of carbon dioxide emissions; the most significant greenhouse gas. This figure is likely to reach a whopping 5% in the next decade.

Another interesting fact for those of you with a scientific bent, a 1.5 degree increase in the average day time temperature, because of global warming will thin the air to such an extent that the runway would be required to be extended by 17 to 20% for the aircraft to get the float to lift off. This means new runways will have to be built longer and existing ones extended with more fuel being burnt to get the float to lift off. It is indeed a vicious cycle. One can imagine the painful changes in design that this will entail. Most airports are built within city limits where no further expansion is possible and some like in New York and Hong Kong are built on the edge of the sea. There will be a time in the not so distant future when Airlines would settle for smaller payload aircrafts and carry less of cargo.

Back home, fire crackers lit during Diwali can be a source of air pollution as these emit toxic gases besides carbon dioxide. 95% of the crackers come from a town called Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu and this is a Rs. 1,600 Crore business. There is very little authentic research done on how much effect the crackers have on global warming, but it certainly leaves thick smog in the air and with the pre-winter chill, the plume tends to hang low for a long time making it terrible for all those who suffer from lung related diseases. What can be certainly avoided is the loud decibel level cracker bombs that can even cause an increase in BP and deafness. It is a good feeling when I hear the younger generation wanting to stay away from bursting these crackers and wanting to go green. We all must take an equal responsibility…Planet Earth is not ours to stake a claim…we have merely borrowed this from our children.

A relatively harmless but effective way is to light up the house with diyas, giving the dwelling a bright and elegant look. Celebrating Diwali is all about heralding triumph over evil, light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance. It is a time to reinforce friendship, unite society and bring the family closer. It was a pleasant surprise to see Barack Obama, recently conferred with the Nobel Prize for Peace, lighting the ceremonial lamp at the White House amidst the chanting of Vedic Mantras. Not to be left behind, Brown in UK, likewise participated in a similar function at London ushering an era of brotherhood through intelligent use of religion.

Cheers and Wish you all a very Happy Diwali.

Food for Thought!! Pieces from my mind...all my own, of course!!

Folks,

When I see our people flaunting their laptops and their PDA, Blackberry’s etc I am reminded of the yesteryears and honestly, we don’t have to look too far into the past. Sam Pitroda had not appeared in the domestic political scenario and we had an ancient and archaic telephone network that generally worked to your disadvantage. If you were extremely lucky and got through to hear the ringing tone at the other end it would invariably end up at the wrong number. The increased palpitation for having finally got through to the person would be short lived and the excitement would deflate like a punctured balloon. Such was the dependability of the so called wired telephony network.

I still distinctly remember the palpable excitement with which we, my sisters and I, observed the linesmen draw two sets of thin gauge GI wires from the nearest telephone pole to our home. Our joy new no bounds when the black telephone instrument manufactured by ITI out of Bakelite was finally connected to the set of wires. The instrument was pretty heavy and it took an effort to hold the handset for long. More often the shortest and the longest sentence used to be the word ‘Hello’ and nothing beyond. In our lives those days we must have chanted the word ‘Hello’ a million times or more, but each time the excitement would be fresh with an expectation of hearing another voice on the ear piece, but in vain. Both my sisters were lucky, though…they would talk for hours with their friends and my parents forever would be asking them to put the handset down, lest an important or an emergency call from the Plant would not get through to my dad. They had a huge number of friends, as Durgapur had attracted talent from all over the country.

Establishing a Steel Plant at Durgapur was the dream of Jawaharlal Nehru to make India self sufficient in basic infrastructure. He had adopted a socialistic pattern in building our nation and indeed that was the need at that point in time. Eminent Engineers and personalities from various walks of life had gathered in this distant village called Durgapur, a place selected by the then Chief Minister of Bengal Dr. B C Roy for starting an Industrial revolution on the banks of river Damodar. At one time, Durgapur with its sheer size and number of large and heavy industry was often called as the ‘Ruhr of India’. The Ruhr is an Urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany with an Industry backdrop. With 4435 km² and a population of some 5.3 million, it is the largest urban agglomeration in Germany and 4^th largest in Europe after Moscow, London and Paris.

As the saying goes that Life goes on in circles…it was a full circle when I came back to Kolkata in 1982. After graduating from Durgapur in Higher Secondary, I went on to do my Chemical Engineering at Trichy, worked for a brief 9-month period at Bangalore, then at Mumbai for a year and half before heading home to Kolkata. Work life at Kolkata was quite eventful. I was part of the sales team within an SBU (Strategic Business Unit) selling air pollution control equipments like bag houses and electrostatic precipitators for Steel, Power and Cement industry. Project sales can be very different. The minimum price of the equipment we sold as a project from “Concept to Commissioning” – C2C was easily a Crore of Rupees and I am talking about circa 1980 to 1992. We would end up talking to Assistant Engineers, Procurement Engineers, and even to the Managing Director at the customers end to help them take a decision. Obviously the gestation time was huge from the first quote to getting or losing an order. It could even take a year and half for that final decision.

You can then imagine the sheer number of visits we made to talk to our customers. With phones virtually non-existent, the next best thing was a Face-to-Face (F2F) discussion. We were forever on the move!! Our brief case would be ever ready with the basics for survival. A hard box with a stainless steel band around it, the VIP or Aristocrat as it used to be called, God alone knows how many unknown Indians would have gone for a knee replacement because of these hard brief case. Perched neatly in our hands it would hit the onrushing and unsuspecting fellow human beings in a crowded bus or a train. Looking back at the past, the absence of telephones honestly made us talk to our customers more F2F and we spent quality time with them during office hours and if acceptable, outside office hours as well. We would get to know a number of people in their departments, knew how the hierarchy worked and who would eventually influence the decision makers.

Let me however, get back to the point…I am certainly digressing from my original thought process….in a lighter vein, did I have one?

I wanted to talk about the black-out of information in the family once we moved out of town on duty. Having a phone at home was a luxury we couldn’t afford as we were in the early days of building a career. It came as a shock, when I told my wife, just a week after marriage that I would be traveling out of town. First question was, “Where and how will you travel?” Her heart sank when I said I had to first go to Delhi by flight and then by a train to Chittorgarh, in Rajasthan. To her next question, “When will you return?” I did not have any clue! We were always given an open ticket, since it was impossible to gauge the requirement of time for a decision by the customer and secondly it would cost a bomb those days to change a flight option. The time span between ‘Bye Bye’ before starting and ‘Hi’ after returning was always a big question. The good part of the story is that we survived, and we ended up selling very well!!

Compare this to “Now”….I send an sms after reaching the airport – the speed at which our folks zip on the way to Devanahalli airport will prove the old adage right…..that there are more people dying on their way to the airport than those flying!! Then the sms after reaching destination, at the end of the day in case of a stay back or just after landing back….so on and so forth. In spite of an information overload, we tend to worry these days and less of talking happens.

All the gadgets in the world will not come anywhere near a F2F conversation and for building a rapport with customers. We have learnt to flaunt them, in fact, go to the extent of saying that we cannot achieve anything without them, but touch your heart and think, has this brought you closer to your customers in the real sense? Do you really know what he or she wants from your organization?

I am not for a moment saying that we should not graduate to own these smart gadgets. But, to say that work will be hampered and nothing will get done without these instruments is hard to understand. Before the PDA arrived, a laptop was a ‘must’. With the arrival of PDA, laptop was forgotten. Once these are shut down in the office, it is switched ‘ON’ only after returning to the office the following day. PDA’s aren’t used to their capacity either. Only emails which require a very urgent attention get to be answered in an sms style abbreviated text with scant respect to language or the flow of content.

The above is only a small example of how things are shaping up here in India and hence, the question! Are we Indians getting more and more expensive to operate and thereby pricing ourselves out? In the Year 2000, the slogan for outsourcing work to India was “Come for Cost and Stay for Quality”; can we say that this slogan still holds good or have we somewhere lost control on costs? Are we thinking about what the customer wants and at what price points or, are we happy stating that we are like this only! Take it or leave it!

What worries is the slow change in our mindset about Customer Satisfaction. Gone are the days when we were more than willing to sacrifice ourselves to keep our customers happy and satisfied with our output. We were more than willing to put in additional hours of work to complete a job in hand. Is that fire still burning or has it got doused? Remember, we as a country took pride in our speed of response and the no-nonsense approach to work, similar to other Asian countries. We were once upon a time workaholics, but not anymore. We were known to perform multiple tasks, save on manpower costs with less dependence on technology.

While affordable technology and gadgets have arrived, the old values and the ethos seem to have taken a back seat. Is it then time for us to re-look at ourselves and re-define our goals and objectives with respect to ‘Operational Effectiveness’? While the answer is an overwhelming ‘YES’, the issue is who will show us the direction. While it is easy to point a finger at others, remember, when we do point a finger, three of them point back at us and ‘THAT’ is our answer.

Cheers!!

Leaders are Readers!

Friends,

Reader’s Digest is a storehouse of information, in case you can tap into!! Sometimes, they come out with special editions containing gems from their earlier publications – what I call “Masterpieces”. I picked the following from an article ‘The Puzzle of Personal Excellence’ written by Dianna Booher. Dianna is CEO of Booher Consultant, a communications training firm.

In one of her articles she has made an important observation: Leaders are readers!! An excerpt:

Stay informed: Chief Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes said, “Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” When I started my consulting and training business, I read everything I could find on the subject. Only high school seniors know it all. The rest of us have to read and learn.

When a US team traveled to Japan in the 1980’s to study the Toyota production system and the innovative Japanese just-in-time concept, they met with the system’s creator, Taiichi Ohno. When the Americans questioned him about what inspired his thinking, he laughed, “I learned it all from Henry Ford’s book.” The book he referred top was Today and Tomorrow; written by Ford and published by Doubleday in 1926. Leaders are readers.

Someone said of us knowledge workers, “Wealth was once measured in gold. Now it’s measured in what we know.” Stay alert and informed. Read voraciously.

Cheers and Best Wishes!!

Pieces from my Mind!! All my own, of course!!

Indeed 11^th April 2008 at Chennai was an unusual evening on our way to the airport. With the departure time beyond 8:00 PM we, Siby and I thought it would be a normal evening with just a few busy signal crossings on our way to the airport. But not willing to take a chance, the over cautious approach that I take when it comes to traveling, we left early by Chennai standards at 7:15 PM. Karthikeyan wanted me on a call with Ranga and that took us a minute beyond 7:15 PM. While we were on the call, I sent Siby an SMS to get ready and head towards the car.

To our dismay, the car driver had chosen to take a small detour of the surroundings as we had not informed him that we would be leaving at 7:15 PM. By the time we located him and he was able to get the car to the front gate of our office, precious minutes were just gone. The traffic was unusually dense that evening with no apparent reason. We tried asking the driver in our broken Tamil whether we would reach in 45 minutes….he readily said yes. As if it were a statement coming from God himself, we believed him and got into some serious conversation about the Humana visit and what else we could do for the client to earn further support for our expansion plans. When the cab was standing still for a good 5 minutes at a signal crossing, I began to panic. It was the same clammy feeing one gets when watching a horror film when you do not know what to expect next!! Flashes of doubt whether I would be able to reach the counter 30 minutes before the flight take-off kept appearing on my mind.

Siby, as usual, kept assuring me that it would be absolutely okay and we would reach in time. Since it was an Air Deccan flight, I thought maybe Siby was right. Seldom does an Air Deccan flight take-off on time!! Prabhakar in the meantime had reached the airport with our distinguished Humana guests from a trip to Pondicherry. He called in to confirm whether Siby was on the way to airport. We asked him to check at the Air Deccan counter whether the Chennai to Bangalore flight was departing on time? Surprise! Surprise! – it was indeed scheduled to fly on the dot at 9:00 PM. Fate was perhaps being cruel to me...this was another stray thought that crossed my bewildered mind, now fraught with pessimism.

After a long and a seemingly endless drive we finally reached the airport with 25 minutes left for the flight's departure. Would I make it…God it seems, enjoys once in a while playing a cruel game with his followers and believers. Between the flight and I, there was this devil at the counter who said, 'Impossible, the counter is closed.' We lost precious minutes explaining that the roads were congested and we were held up in traffic snarls. Aha!! Remarked the guy at the counter, 'pray, tell me how did the others traveling in the same flight manage?' Although it wasn't the time to give a lecture on time management, much less listen to an unknown Indian teaching the basics of keeping time from Air Deccan guy at the counter, well I had to. He was unrelenting and so were we, as stubborn as we could be.

This went on for a good 15 minutes until Siby asked him why he was being so adamant. His reply was "go and see the 'Q' at the security check". There were at least 150 people waiting for their chance to get through security clearance. Not wanting to be browbeaten by a nondescript guy at the counter, we ventured by telling him that we would manage the crowd and sail through the gate and that responsibility was just ours, not his. He spoke to his counterpart inside the plane which was in its final phase of preparations for take-off. Imagine our relief when the guy at the plane said. 'Send him in.' Our friend, was still unrelenting, he was getting some kind of a sadistic pleasure through this denial process: two guys wallowing in front of him requesting that one of them be accommodated. Tables apparently, had turned for Air Deccan I guess. It was time to tell people that Air Deccan meant business and that it was ready to shed its earlier image of a laidback airline meant only for holiday makers where time was not a premium.

We gave in and told him to hand over the boarding pass only after I got through the cordon of people at the security. While I was running, Siby had already reached at the head of the 'Q' and had made an earnest appeal to people at large to accommodate a colleague of his and allow him to pass through, ahead of the bunch. Couple of folks at the head of the 'Q' decided to play good Samaritans and allowed me to slip in. Only then did our friend hand over the boarding pass.

Rest is history. On hindsight, it was pretty comical…could we have avoided? I don't think so. I came to know from the other passengers in the flight that Friday evenings are a nightmare. Chennai has a huge floating population, thanks to the economic awakening that India is going through in the last 3 to 4 years. This floating population heads home during weekends. Coupled with a plethora of low cost carriers now crowding the Indian skies, all roads lead to Chennai airport every Friday. I am not going to Thank God anymore, if it's a Friday!!

Did I have an alternative? I am sure, there was. I could have traveled the next day by the same airline or could have bought myself another ticket in one of the three remaining flights to Bangalore the same evening. The 'Joy of Flying' (pun intended!!) in the same Air Deccan flight (now christened Kingfisher Deccan) which appeared seemingly impossible, was sweeter than tamely buying another ticket and building a plausible story to get the bosses approval for wastefully spending another Rs. 4,000.

Cheers!!