Doodhwala...Dhobi..Postman..and Terrorist

"Please welcome the newest member of our urban community. You have no choice but to accept his presence. Guess what.. there are many of them ruling you!"

I sit here at my office which is within a kilometer radius, and right in between two places where there are commando operations happening for the last 36 hours.

Fortunately for me, there is a safe route between these two flash-points which leads to my office. Over the last couple of month's this is the second time, mumbai has been brought to a halt by activities which make the word violence seem musically calm. Everytime the newschannels have misinterpreted the hungry daily wager going to work, as the "spirit of mumbai" with amazing resilience... Welcome to reality..

A reality where 26 people less than 26 years of age can rise from the sea and hold the entire city to ransom. They can easily bypass the numerous metal detectors which do nothing more than... Beep... and of course give kickbacks to its procurers.

They can stock arms and ammunition at any location, including the spare refrigerator space in five-star locations. They are all around us.. Someday they may enter with battle tanks.

If you are beginning to think, i am practicing writing the next sequel of " War of the Worlds"... look around yourself. The outlaws who make our laws. And the helpless machinery that tries to implement it. The net result: We have Terrorists with easy entry and exists. If they die, they are martyrs of their men.. If they get caught, until proven guilty(read infinity), a privilege of our proud lawkeepers, they are given great tax-funded facilities. They may eventually be released and may be elected as our leaders (Ref: Abu Salem and Md. Afzal Guru)

The only way to be prepared for this is accept..that we have a terrorist like a milkman.. who is protected either deliberately or through our systemic lacunae. Either ways.. he exists. He has nothing personal against you, your religion, your family life. Perhaps he likes the colour of your blood.

When you leave your home for work, Pray hard. When you spend time with your family and friends, shower your love, as though the very next moment.. you would be gone!

The Joy of learning - by teaching

A rewarding third term as a budding B-school visiting faculty is nearing its completion. Through my participation in this noble profession, I breathe my passion of sharing whatever little i know, in its complete or incomplete state without any inhibition of being dubbed stupid :)

The students of our generation and that too in BSchools are much smarter, their curiosity and sincere inquiry does keep even the best faculty member on his/her toes.

When my passion got extended to the classroom, i discovered the fact in the statement - "Learning begins when you make an attempt to teach". Yes you sure do, since you cannot teach anything unless you go through a revision and reflection of what you know at that point in time. When you get conscious of what you know, you compare your knowledge with whats actually happening around you. In that process, you dig deeper, you learn further, you clear your misconceptions, you plead ignorance at times, and in the process .... you truly learn.

My heart today is once again filled with deep gratitude to the batch of my friendly students at VIT Management institute, an upcoming B-school in mumbai with a brilliant first batch of students waiting to graduate. They made me feel at home and sailed me smooth through my teaching curriculum. Their response has instilled deep confidence in me giving me immense energy which will power me in all spheres of my life.

Thank You students... And Thanks to the Classroom of life which enrols you in the womb and graduates you in the tomb :-)

PS: thanks to Harekrishnaji for reminding me to update my blog!

King Long - BRTS1- Independence day celebrations

An informal group of commuters fondly named - "Yaatri Group" celebrated Independence Day on their favorite 7.15 AM BRTS 1 route BEST AC bus. On the same day, the group of which i am a member too celebrated my second most memorable birthday ever (first one was hosted by my wife :-) Varsha, last year and this year's coming up.) The celebration included the whole bus decked up for the occassion and me singing a Patriotic and a light hindi song. The plan for the decoration and the actual work was carefully organized with the actual operation of decoration happening today early morning at the Thane Cadbury depot.

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Get your own

The recently introduced luxurious King Long buses by the BEST has come as a boon to travellers between Thane, Dahisar and the Mumbai City. The speciality of the 7.15 bus is however the beautiful way in which commuters have bonded with each other and making that one hour plus morning commute worth waking up early to. The group besides bonding amongst themselves have actively partnered with the improvement efforts of the BEST.



They have been in regular touch with BEST officials giving constructive feedback (not disappointing rants) to them, while praising them for the new efforts. The staff that mans the bus in the morning is a part of the group too.

With long stressful work hours, better service like that offered by the BEST, powered by active and loving informal groups makes life in mumbai exciting as ever!

Happy Independence from travel woes... its getting better!

Jai Hind.

Go Mumbai smartcards - which way is it "Go"ing

"Go Mumbai smart card - go anywhere in mumbai and travel smart" read the punch line of the one page leaflet that the employees of kaizen systems were aggressively distributing at Kurla station. And where it said that, there was a rubber stamp impression that said. "for central line only".

I have been a user of the GO Mumbai smart cards, sourced by Kaizen Systems, which has been around for sometime for BEST buses. It has been I have been using the card to purchase my monthly pass for the coveted BRTS service which use the chinese chariots (read purple king long buses) and occassional red hot boxes (read the old AC buses).

A few back the same card extended its service to train ticket bookings. Much to the confusion of the commuter, the card even today is operational only on central railway. The arrangement is taking its own sweet time on western railway due to god-knows-what reason. Commuters wanting to travel from say mulund to churchgate can use the smart card for their journey only halfway till Dadar, which defeats the purpose of using the card.

What i fail to understand is when we boast of hi-tech systems that cut queues and save time, why can't we have smooth and simultaneous implementation across the Railways? Is central and western Railway not a part of the same Indian Railways or are they as separate as Indian and Pakistani railways?

Unless we answer this question, we would just be a bundle of cards with a different machine at every station to pay with.

Patti, Patni aur Woh (foreign body):

Patti, Patni aur Woh (foreign body):
Two days before my anniversary, my right eye which usually nags a lot, started watering profusely. I thought it was the usual one-eyed computer vision syndrome which my doctor had named the symptom as, after running out of his clinical logic. But this time around the deluge of tears wouldn't stop even after shedding about a litre of tears.

I was forced to retire hurt from my workplace that day where my colleagues avoided my stares thinking it was contagious conjuctivitis. The usual doubts were raised by my peers - "who did you wink at in France? Maybe she is remembering you". I began to wonder, I had stared at so many pretty damsels as i walked through the beautiful country, who would recall me so painfully?

The next day i was on the opthalmologist's table, served for breakfast. "Its the same old right eye, doc" I remarked. "But not the same ailment this time" said the doc who was operating on my right eye for the third time. The first time, it was a sty, second was some particle and now.... "A foreign body appears to have scratched your cornea and fallen off. Did you scratch too hard?" said doc.

I was itching to ask.. "Was the foreign body french?". But before i could even think of that. My eye was medicated and bandaged, and i was left with "Patti (bandage), Patni (my wife counting down our anniversary) and Woh (the foreign body whoever she was)

Monsieur Nagoiseur's Tour de france

June 4 - 14 2008.. Would spell a nice ten days at france, my first ever trip to the west. Not the first foreign trip though. My first one was Nepal, and then Thailand.

I will be attending a conference hosted at a place south of the historical city of Normandy. The place where i will be staying is built upon a heritage structure where once a castle stood. The venue is a distant place, 160 Kms from Paris, a smooth blend of heritage legacy equipped with technology - high speed wireless broadband, i am told.

Radio Idli version 2.0 launched

This post concerns one of my dearest projects, an achievement of my life so far - www.radioidli.net. This is a website and a project dedicated to my talented community

"We need to have our own site and total control on our content" urged Sankalp in a chat few months back.

Unyielding and stubborn as i am, i defended my choice to stick to blogger and the other free platforms that the Internet God - Google and the other angels like esnips provide.

Radio Idli had achieved early fame through a couple of press coverage by DNA and Indian Express, and a television interview by CNN IBN. Its popularity within the Saraswat community it served, grew with some good contributions. It won the support of professional performers, community institutions and the listeners at large.

My debate with Sankalp that evening ended with an indefinite tag... "Lets see".

Few months later, Sankalp decided to book our own custom domain name - RadioIdli.net (as against the older radioidli.blogspot.com). A couple of more months later, he came back saying that he had got an irresistable deal for hosting which was customized for a multimedia web 2.0 initiative like ours.

Thats where the making of Radio Idli 2.0 began. Sankalp and I both then started a journey towards selflearning of freely available open source applications that could help create a very strong medium. The journey which continues till date has been very exciting and enriching.

The first result of the same has been launched - Radio Idli Version 2.0.

Watch a community come alive on the internet - http://www.radioidli.net

Interview with K. V. Kamath

I had the fortune of taking a one question interview of Shri K. V. Kamath. He was at a community function arranged to felicitate him for winning the Padma Bhushan award.

He was very approachable and had good memory since he immediately traced our last meeting at a marriage function. He also remarked that he had visited my community blog - http://www.Radioidli.net to find the video clippings of the marriage.

You may find the photographs here: Http://picasaweb.google.com/radioidli
Today the same blog will carry his felicitation snaps and of course the interview.

Web 2.0 arrives at my workplace

Finally the day I was waiting for is here. One of the reasons why my company hired me is finally taking shape. Two of the best websites run by my employers which have been in existence well before the dotcom bubble and survived the burst, finally got curious about implementing social bookmarking to increase the reach of their wonderful articles.

The discussion happened over a small meeting two months back. And after thorough research we finally have the social bookmarking buttons added to select sections of the website. All this while i have been reading about the jargons of Folksonomy and the role of these sites like Del.icio.us and Digg as tools to increased salience on the internet. This is for the first time i would get to see it working, which i hope will work wonders on our website.

This is a small victory for me.. the larger one will be determined by the actual outcome of this.

cheers! nagesh

Senior Prisoner's of the Mad City

From MUMBAI Nagariya

 

I was on my way to my office today, going through the same “exercise” schedule that most mumbaikars go through. My empathizing mumbaikars would take less than a gasp to guess that i am talking about the local train journey towards Mumbai CST.

I am one of the few fortunate ones armed with a first class pass. That doesn’t discount any crowd, ironically second class is sometimes much more penetrable. However whats assured in the Fi(r)st class is that most of your co-passengers have had a bath and very few stink of a concoction of sweat blended with mustard oil. Ahh now that was quite an elaborate description of what it takes to be a local train sojourner, boarding the train midway during peak rush.

During one such routine morning adventure i noticed a very rare occurence. Right in the middle of the crowded compartment, there was an empty pocket of roughly 1 sq. ft, towards one of the side supports of the doorway. I was beginning to wonder what was that Moses’ spell that kept the Nile of passengers apart. Just when a young student took courage to breach that space, pat came a voice “Please stay away, railways has not made additional space around this side support to accomodate one more man”. The voice traced itself to the center of the no-man’s land. In the gray light that fell in that space through the crowd, i could see a reflection from a neat bald head with traces of gray hair.

As the crowd waiting to get down at Dadar junction pushed me further, i discovered this senior citizen standing paranoid and passing warnings at anybody who came close. He held a pink newspaper, going with the fashion of the first class, but that served more like a virtual fence to him, serving like a curtain that helped him keep his private space.

The crowd cleared off a bit at Dadar junction, where “uncle” (thats what Mumbai calls senior people with respect) chose to have his last argument. He rudely asked the person in front of him to move away, when he did not, Uncle brushed aside offering his place to the dumbfounded co-passenger. There was a near-chaos with people wondering whats going wrong.

I found all of these exchanges pretty wierd until i looked deeper into the eyes of the old man. Old age is meant to be second childhood, and imagine having your child in the middle of a wild herd. The long journey from perhaps thane or beyond, till the Terminus would be a grave hell for the senior person, and i am sure there are many like him who are driven to the business district daily to sustain their livelyhood in this Mad city. Call them prisoners of destiny or captives of the city pace, they continue their struggle armed with perhaps just a newspaper and their paranoia.

As the terminus approached, there was enough space between me and uncle, though close enough for my smile to go across. Hope situations allow him to smile back soon!

IBM marches towards enterprise 2.0 offering

Here's an interesting report by network computing about IBM

IBM Introduces Latest Set Of Web 2.0, Collaboration Tools

The web2.0 parade is now gathering pace with even corporates looking at employee-generated content seriously. While there are companies on the web2.0 bandwagon that make us wonder if they are part of bubble 2.0! This is one of the first instances where i am seeing a large enterprise solution provider adapting towards web 2.0.

Wikis and blogs, which so far were used at an individual level and in informal groups, are being looked upon as strong corporate tools. These can help employees participate in drafting policies, sharing research, developing new product designs.... all of these from anywhere in the webbed world! (this phenomenon has been termed as Enterprise 2.0).

With these tools that empower employees towards building their companies brick by brick, or should i say click by click, corporate democracy will have a changed meaning!