Dependency

Google has been making a lot of changes ever since it launched google plus - trying to integrate all existing functions. Gmail was revamped recently with quite much publicity but very quietly, Google has revamped Google Reader, a reader which has enabled me to read so many things on one platform. Now after revamp, the facility which enabled it to be viewed on my non-android phone has been discontinued and now it takes more time to open articles and to read things on this platform. The seamless reading experience is gone. There being not many good alternatives to this reader, I have to change accordingly now in the way Google wishes to.

Sometimes I wonder how much dependent I am on this company. My job exists because of google since it empowers a novice like me to get relevant information. Had google not been there, the job would have to be done by a much more experienced person. Its like I am too much dependent on the products of this company.

Generally to avoid overdependency on one particular vendor, OEMs develop alternate vendors. Big chemical firms help develop alternate source of raw materials by investing in smaller companies. Investment is done in a lot of instruments to avoid overdependency on one particular instrument and possibly also maximize returns. So, everywhere possible, we try to develop alternatives thereby avoiding dependency, enhancing competition and improving service/product.

But in the case of Google the entry barrier or the technological and data barrier is very high for a new search engine and similarly developed product. I cannot envision even one search engine even close to Google. Alternatives of Google Reader all have major issues with integration and quite a lot of them do depend on google reader for feed as well. There seems no alternatives to these widely used product.

I can't imagine what hell will break when google fails to function even for a single day. So much dependence.

Damn.

Today, we adjust according to them because we have no alternatives. Who knows Google will start charging for conducting searches in the future. What shall we do then?

Its high time someone develops a viable alternative to these useful applications so that if anything undesirable occurs to Google, our lives aren't affected.

Having no other option I have now adjusted my phone according to the new url settings and read but the experience is in no way same. May be thats the price I am paying for not using Android operated phone.

Erosion of shareholder value

Here's an example of how shareholder value is destroyed by PSUs on a continuous basis.

I've come to a conclusion that PSUs do not have the shareholders value in mind at any point of time.

 MOIL:  Share price since its IPO.

If this is what is going to happen, I would prefer there is no disinvestment in the PSUs. 

Heights is how the hell did the lead book managing bankers ( IDBI Capital, Edelweiss Capital and JP Morgan India in this case) manage to price the shares so high. One should learn from these companies to create a hype, make the pitch and sell a useless product with audacity. These I believe are the pure markting companies, guess even better than those FMCG companies. These bankers know how to use their brand power to mobilize money.  A perfect way for government to get public money.

I was thinking of investing in MOIL but thankfully I didn't do so because of my habit of delaying.
No investing in PSUs.

On Bus conductors

I've now got used to traveling by BEST buses in Mumbai for daily commuting and have been observing and talking to the bus conductors about their life and experiences. I used to think that the job of a bus conductor is quite simple but looking at the mental and physical effort put in by them, I have come to a conclusion that the job is really a tough one, especially on crowded routes like Sakinaka where the buses are perennially overcrowded.

The job of a bus conductor not just issuing proper tickets to the commuters but management of a lot of things simultaneously, especially during short crowded routes.He has to see that bus waits for adequate time at bus stops, interact with people with all sorts of background for tickets, not allow the bus to be overcrowded, resolve quarrels, give directions to people to reach their destinations and move back and forth the crowded bus aisle where it is nearly impossible to move. The working conditions are pretty harsh with space barely enough to allow him breathe. At times, they get pretty much worse than a factory worker too.

Their work involves problems like getting exact change especially during mornings when everyone is helpless, getting on time for the next assignment, the union issues, manager (HR) issues who cannot understand traffic conditions and schedules things quite impossible to achieve, etc. The introduction of new ticketing system has made matters worse especially when 1 out of 7 ticketing machines doesn't function as required.
All this for a salary starting with around Rs. 12k/ month and a yearly increase w.r.t an inflation adjusted index.

Yet, despite all these harsh work conditions, the bus conductors, most of them, are some of the most humble people around. Most of them love talking to and are glad to discuss all about their jobs and the BEST when they have free time. "It was very smooth & enjoyable some years back when it wasn't so crowded" said one of them while describing change in their work loads.
This Khadi clad public servant, who is is taken for granted by people, remains one of the many unknown faces who make our life comfortable.

Makes me wonder how come the younger generation which has more hospitable working conditions & better salaries are not be so humble.

I simply love this scene from  'Swades' where a combination of stars depict the simple plough.

Crib

There are times in life when you start thinking about your life and your future. A time when one starts questioning the decisions made by him during crucial junctures of life - future determining decisions. Sometimes I think, I'm generally only operationally sound yet that basic strategy of life (to be followed) is missing and I am taking life as it comes without adequate planning. How different would life be had I accepted the US university offers or had done a PhD or had taken up the bank job offered at my B-School or had not left my first job. Destiny it seems always has different plans, especially for me. I did masters in operations, finance management and, thankfully,  landed up in a marketing job. Never has the normal course of action taken by peers been my course. While it is nice to hear of such absence of strategy in movies (like Jab we met, znmd, etc), implementing it becomes an issue especially when you have financial obligations and peers who are doing way better than you in this regard.

Wonder what life has in store for me in the future.

Arranged marriage

One of the tougest decision in life is deciding whom to get married to - especially when you plan to get married in an arranged manner. I call it the biggest gamble in life. It is very difficult to judge a person and decide whether you want to spend the rest of your life with that person in just 2 or at max 3 meetings with that person.

I have now been in this arranged marriage market of my community for quite sometime and found that it is extremely difficult to take this risky decision especially in my community.

Now that I am currently based out of Mumbai, my parents are looking for bride from Mumbai. While it may be true that I like Mumbai, I do not like it anymore than the growing and enterprising Sangli. I may or may not continue to stay in Mumbai for the rest of my life. But its wierd that girls (whom I met) insist that they want to be settled in Mumbai -reason being that Mumbai is a place they have been brought up and that Mumbai is a land of opportunities and blah blah.. I might even consider thinking about this demand if the girl has a decent enough job and is planning a career in the corporate world. But for a girl with not too many ambitions of a corporate career, such a demand is not justified - especially when the reason they give is that they do not want to be away from their parents. Even I stay away from my parents and my house back home. I will try to be settled in Mumbai / Pune but it is not a given. Putting such a condition for marriage is way too much.

One more condition I saw which the girls' parents put forth is that the boy with whon their 'princess' will marry should own a house of his own in Mumbai/Pune. This is just too much. How can anyone expect a young boy who has just started his career to own a house in Mumbai? Why should the boy own a house? Can't their 'princess' stay in a rented house? Kahin raaste mein toh nahi rakhne wala mai usko. Why do they want the boy to take up a huge debt or money from his parents? One side they want the boy to be independent with a job and on the other hand they want him to be too much dependent on his parents for buying a house.

One more thing I found wierd was that it is the oy who has to visit the girls' place. (May be this is the system only in my subcaste). Also, when the boy goes to visit the girls' place, she appears in the living room for a very short duration only to serve some coffee or snacks (almost always not prepared by her). The boys parents get to only see her for a while - no conversation with her possible in that short span. The onus of judging the girl entirely falls on the boy when he is allowed to spend some time with the girl alone. So, the whole purpose of taking parents along for judging the girl is defeated.

I intend to change some of these things if not all when I go for the exercise next time.

Should have chosen one amongst the 100 odd girls at my B-school :P
Anyone reading this is advised to strictly go for a love marriage.

Working with promoters

Working with the promoters of an organization on a daily basis has a lot of advantages like being a part of the larger picture, getting to know how business decisions are made under uncertainities, getting to interact with important people of the organization, getting to know their management style, etc.
While all of this is true, it also has some disadvantages:
1. The promoters do think along a lot of things simultaneously and it becomes difficult at times to catch up, especially when you have promoters who do not give away all the information to the managers. While reporting to them you have to be thorough with not only the current work but also work done previously. You never know when their mind will race from one project to another, from marketing to strategy to operations and finance.
2. Promoters generally do not reveal the complete picture to one person, specially to a newly joined person. Hence, it becomes most important for him to keep a track of all the current happenings of the organization through networking and work accordingly in a dynamic manner.
3. I have generally observed that promoters have a firm grip on numbers. One must be sure before passing on numbers to them. They quickly do mental calculations and use thumb of rules to come at approximate answers. Also, one must be very careful while passing off numbers because major decisions are taken based on these numbers. So, whatever work you do must be carefully done.
4. One must be very careful when disagreeing with the promoters. They are the ultimate authority in the organization. (Except the shareholders of course) it might lead to serious consequenses. Also, the work assigned must be done in as timely manner as possible, else getting into wrong books of a promoter can be detrimental.
5. Working with promoters and getting to socialize with them is a great experience in itself - you get to go at expensive places, know about their lifestyles, etc. But here the employer-servant distinction clearly becomes visible and might also cause inferiority complex at times.
6. Promoters generally work under uncertainities. They have to take decisions using limited amount of information. A person reporting to a promoter has to do the hard task of collecting the data good enough to help them take decisions. At times, the getting the relevant data to take logical decisions becomes very tough and might test your patience in case you have tough task masters as promoters, which generally is the case.

These are some of the things that could be issues faced by a person reporting to the owner/promoter. Yet, the task is highly rewarding and an ideal platform to learn a lot of things about business.

Dear parents, Thank you.

Sitting in a bus jam-packed with people, watching the rains of Mumbai, seeing the bus driver crazily driving through potholes splashing water all around, listening to the music, looking at pretty girls in the bus, it feels like I am on the top of the world.

Reason: my parents. They have done something for which I cannot thank them enough, something I cannot repay them for. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks God for giving me such visionary parents. Without their support, I do not know what I would have done all through these years. They have always made it a point to give me everything possible. The lines from a song I like 'Chahane se pehle hi saab kuch diya hai' is apt for them.

Right from small things like choosing a lovely school for me, paying for all my education to helping me apply for this wonderful little job, they have done everything for me. And now this. That too for a child who is not going to stay with them for the rest of their lives to support them.

Thank you for all that you have done for me. Hope I never let you down and do everything possible for you.

Ya, and now am officially in the shaadi market. A lot of observations have been made about the gujju way of arranging marriage. Will write about it may be next time.

Thank thank you papa and mummy. Hope I manage to keep you happy and do everything u expect me to do.

Comparison

While the Birlas are on a buying spree to secure raw material for their coal based business and the Tatas too are focussing on such inorganic growth in these uncertain times, if I compare this to my beloved Reliance, it is not doing anything to secure crude oil supply. Infact, other than the shale gas source acquisition in the US, RIL has not even contemplated any major global acquisition. So, on comparison, it seems in that Mr. Kumar Mangalam is focussing more on the future as compared to Mr. Ambani. However, we cannot ignore Ambani uncle coz he is currently focussing on pertochemical consolidation which is not much told in the news. (Inside info hai :P).
Talking about comparison, I am really annoyed when people, specially relatives compare me and my parents with other cousins - specially those staying in Mumbai.
Sometime back, an elderly person of my family asked me about my salary and my profession and stuff so that they can put up this info in the shaadi market. It was fine till then but later on things became more annoying when I eavesdropped. It became like the 'Daadi' sa sort of thing from 'Balika Vadhu' where they started comparing me and my job with those of other eligible cousins. They had the following issues with me:
1. I come home early as compared to all others which suggested that I am not much ambitious kind and do not work hard enough.
2. I am in the profession of chemicals which is not considered very highly as a profession in Finance and allied services.
3. I work at Saki Naka which is considered to be a down market place as compared to places on the Western line like Churchgate, Charni road.
4. I am from Sangli and even though I have spent quite a lot of my youth days in Mumbai, I love Sangli more than Mumbai. This might prove to be a big issue to find a possible prospective girl for me.
5. I avoid boarding in crowded trains and buses as far as possible,not a very talkative person nor seem an interesting person when compared to others or similar aged boys.

Yeh comparison na, is really irritating. First it was about the kind of job and salary comparison with peers and now this. Dont know when people will stop comparison.

Saki-Naka

Most of the people who have a fair amount of knolwedge about Mumbai should know about this area for sure. It is a place in Andheri East - One of the most dreaded places for driving any vehicle. A place where, no matter what time it is, the traffic is always slow moving if not standstill :P. It is one of the few commercial places in Mumbai which is far away from any local railway station, thereby connected only by road & BEST buses, making it a tough place to commute to everyday.
Especially, from Andheri station to SakiNaka is one of the most tiring journeys. No matter what you travel in - a bus, a bike, auto or even a car, you take around 1 hour 15 mins to reach station in the evening - the same time it takes to reach Borivali from Churchgate.
It is said by people that once you start from Andheri, we cannot guess the time to reach the place (Kaab pahuchega bata nahi sakte).
The construction of metro on the road has made the net travelling side of the road very small. At places the effective size of the road is just enough for a bus to pass through.
In the peak hours, there is a bus from Andheri station to sakinaka every 5 minutes, yet, the place being commercially important, the frequency of buses does not seem sufficient. All the buses departing the station run full capacity.
Autos generally refuse to come there and understandably so because the opportunity cost because of the time lost is just too much. He can definitely earn far more in the same time on a different route.
Add to all these things, the unpredictable Mumbai rains, water logging and increase in construction activity in the region make commuting to this place everyday a nightmare for a person who does not like too much crowd and who is from a smaller city.

Hopefully, the metro gets functional fast and ease the trafffic condition in this area. But thats atleast 1 year away. Till then toh commuters have too suffer.

But all is not bad at this place. There are quite a lot of good places around the place - like mcdonalds, urban tadka, ccd, maharaja, 5 seasons, etc where one can get good food.

It is the place where, unfortunately, my office is situated and I have to commute to this place daily. Thankfully, i have this phone with me which can be used for reading newspapers, blogs and chat. And sometimes when i have nothing to do, I sleep or sometimes i write such dumb posts :P.

Strange things at work

It is raining heavily in Mumbai and I am sitting idly at my workplace wondering about my life. I have finally joined a company of my choice finally (3 weeks ho gaye though). Still have no idea whether I took the right decision of not opting for high-profile, high paying jobs. Hopefully, everything will  turn out well in the end (like most Hindi movies :P).

I found some strange things here:

1. For a company with a turn-over of around Rs. 1000 crore and over 200 employees, I found it strange for the Managing Director to call me up during the first week and ask "Kaise chal raha hai Purav ji". I had not known the names of all the products manufactured by then . (I still dont know all though :P)

2. The Managing Director has access to all the company emails of the important employees (Mine included. Can call myself important then :P) and once a week, (when I think he is bored to work), he goes through all the emails and gets hard copies of important mails during the week and sends the copies to the people to whom the email is addressed to. Strange.

3. He is completely obsessed over growth. Everytime I see him he gives me names of 4-5 chemicals and asks me to get the market information for them, which I find too tough to do. But feels nice to know that I will be involved in formulating the future strategy of the company.

4. I believe I have been given too much of a free hand at work - access to all internet sites (including facebook), a printer and lots of time to think over while collecting data. Strangely, no one minds here if I do a bit of facebooking and other tp like blog reading etc. In fact, I am advised to read blogs of people related to chemical fields as a part of RSS feed in Microsoft Outlook.

While I have been introduced to the people at the top like VP marketing, Director Finance, I have had almost no interaction with their colleagues and as such I have had no idea about what people, in general, feel about the company and bosses. I guess, insteaad of writing this blog, I need to speak to them now. :P

Random Observations

Travelled in the rush hour by a local train today and tomorrow and was surprised to see people say Ganpati Bappa Morya just as the train leaves. Though taking Ganesh's name at the beginning of any work is considered auspicious, I guess it was more out of the fear and they took God's name to pray for their safe return back home in the evening.

At Andheri Agarkar chowk, I observed that for boarding the same bus, there were two queues - One for people wishing to sit and the other one for people wishing to stand. This was something unique not seen before by me.

A little patience and tactic can help you get a seat in bus/train even on the week days in the morning.

Saw that people trvelling together everyday who had become train friends celebrating birthday on a local train and distributing sweets to everyone around - Something to cheer for in the packed train compartment.

Vodafone has the worst possible customer care support system in mumbai. The customer care representatives (and gallery people for that matter) do not have access to the call history of numbers from outside mumbai. - wonder why it is gaining market share.

A different life altogether

Long away from the hustle and bustle of cities, in small towns and villages, lie the manufacturing units of most of the product based companies which account for the basic source of revenue for these companies. The lives of people working at these manufacturing units is competely different than that of those working at their respective head offices.
I have been to such factories for quite a lot of times but a recent visit to a chemical plant (& stay there for around 4 days) last week has made me appreciate the contrasting nature of lives of people working - not financially but in other terms. Financially, in fact, plant officials are adequately paid so as to retain them.

A weeks' at the rural location made me appreciate nature and its beauty. With the travelling time from home to office cut down from 2 hrs to 5 minutes, I suddenly had a lot of spare time after working hours. I could now read books, surf the internet, learn stock market investing tricks or think about starting a new business.
I, however, did neither and spent the free time talking to a colleague, watching television and sleeping more than required. The point is that we could get time to think about other things.

Here, life revloves around the shifts at the factory. People have to plan everything w.r.t their shifts in the factory. Odd meal hours, odd sleep hours, etc form part of the routine. Enjoying power naps during the night shift, bitching about work (not) done by previous shift people, delaying work so that work can be transferred to people of the next shift, forming friends who would cover each other during absence, etc are some of the joys while working specially in production.
Here, people get to spend a lot of free time with family, bond with like-minded individuals and develop long-term friendships. Things like respect for elders, respect to seniors, etc automatically fall into the culture because of the discipline there. A lovely world of its own really.

However, this may be true and be good for people in their late 40s, young people taking up jobs at factory locations end up being frustrated - partly because of the isolaion from major cities, partly because of pollution and partly beacause of the same mundane routine life. Also the fact that factory individuals take more time to reach the top as compared to those at offices adds to their discontent. I talked to a couple of newly joined youngsters when I realized that they were quite discontented and wanted to make it to an urban place asap.

As for me, I got a chance to interact with a lot of people, a chance to spend sometime all alone, a chance to see houses at Konkan and a chance to see another chemical plant.
While going to the plant, my senior mentioned "jis chiz ko hume beenchna hain woh kaise banti hain jaao dekh aao" which reminds me of the dialogue from the movie Lakshya "Jis chiz ki hum raksha kaar rahe hain, jaao dekh aao".

P.S. Frankly, as I mentioned that I was from Sangli, people started becoming friendlier and things started becoming less formal from that point onwards. There's certainly a charm about my lovely city :P

first post using mobile

This is my first post using newly bought smartphone. I have now finally started travelling up the technology ladder. Still I am a long way to be called tech-savy. Yet, it feels great multi-tasking on this phone.                                                                       I am currently on a vacation. It is the first time in 8 years that I am at my home at Sangli for such a long time. I had the television all to myself this time and I had all the time to watch the different news channels being aired 24x7.                                              I was taken aback by the common nature of news running across all the general news channels. Even the timings of special shows were the same. So, at any time, one could get similar kind of news across all channels or special shows like maut ka saugadar, katil kaon, etc. There is no differentiation in the product offered. Even the english general news channels were the same. The only exception being the business news channels where each channel recommended different companies to invest depending on the money offered to them.Aaj tak has maintained its uniqueness by the absurd nature of news aired. However, channels like india tv, star news are fast catching up w.r.t absurdness. Aaj tak needs to make up more strange news to maintain its market leadership in the news market.Really the news channels have become more of sensation generation now. DD news being the lone exception where news are really relevant and to the point.                                   As rightly said by prominent people like Pritish Nandy, Aamir Khan, Rajdeepsardesai, etc the I too observed that the life of a particular news has shortened. E.g: the almost uprising on account of the LokPal bill was no longer discussed 2 days after the leader, Hazare, broke his hunger strike.         I do realize that i am not making any sense in this post, but this qwerty keypad is really convenient to use making me type more.̉

Tatas - Great brand makers

I have always admired the Tatas. They are truly the only Indian corporate to be truly global in nature. Recently, the Tata brand was selected as the third most trusted brand across the globe.

While I applaud the management at the group to run the whole empire smoothly and responsibly, what I have come to observe off late is that it is the marketing aspect of the group which makes it stand apart from others.
The Tatas have been great at identifying the product differentiators and have been able to come up with simple yet great methods to communicate it to the people - especially in businesses where the product is sold directly to the consumers. Tatas have always been able to come up with products with some unique point(s) directly relevant to the Indian audience. At times, their point of differentiation is so appealing and so effectively communicated that inspite of the product being mediocre, the Tatas have been able to get good sales. I would like to mention some of their products:


1.  Tata DoCoMo: Being one of the last ones to enter the Indian GSM telecom network, it needed something great to penetrate the already clogged telecom market. The product was the same yet their strategy of charging 1 paise per second and effectively implemented advertising campaign made the whole market change their pricing strategies. That no doubt led to a price war but the brand was effectively reinforced amongst the mass audience.
Similar thing has now been done again by the Tatas. Instead of talking of their product, it has now come up with a simple strategy to be emphatic to the audience towards the customer care related issues. This point of differentiation though common was not taken up by anyone and Tatas have effectively, yet again , been able to communicate these to the audience through the Ranbir Kapoor stand-up comedy campaign. Simple but highly effective.

2.  Tata Nano : Branded as the cheapest car in the world and endorsed by none other than Ratan Tata himself, this differentiation (of being cheapest) has stayed with the audience inspite of very little promotion effort by the company. The awe generated during launch was more than sufficient to leave a mark upon the audience.

3. Tata Salt: The old campaign of the Tatas of having Iodine as the differentiating factor was again very effective to build the brand image. So, even in a simple and a pretty undistinguished product like salt, the tatas came up with a good distinguishing factor.

4. Tata Swach : Here, they used the trust commanded by brand name Tata as the point of distinction used very effectively to compete with the network of HUL (Pureit).

Thus, while their products may sometimes not be with great features, I feel that it is their marketing effort that really sets Tatas apart. They are able to know the Indian audience very well and develop strategies that effectively identifies a point of distinction relevant to the masses and communicate it to them. Thus, marketing has been one of the most important pillars on which the success of Tatas can be attributed to. 

Highway Driving

I have always loved driving on the highways, specially on the highways from Sangli where we have the opportunity to drive along 2 way highway and also a one way highway of the golden quadrilateral.
The thrill of driving at high speeds, the fun to overtake vehicles, the excitement of racing with other cars, etc are some of the things which we cannot experience elsewhere.
At present, as a part of golden quadrilateral and other porjects, most of the national highways have been or are being converted to one way 4 or 6 lane highways, way too big as compared to the previous 2 lane, 2 ways roads. While, these one way roads have been able to decrease the average travel time, increase the safety levels, while driving on a small patch of the national highway today, I felt that the excitement of driving was missing. I feel that driving on these one-way highways has made driving a lot monotonous. We generally drive in one lane and be in the same lane as long as we do not need to overtake anybody. There is no body coming from the opposite side. We only care about overtaking cars and not worry about anyone from the opposite direction. We mainly focus on the cars coming from behind while keeping a safe distance from cars in front. Thats it. So, it creates a monotony - specially for someone with Maruti or Alto which cannot compete with high powered small vehicles. (Baas ek lane pakad ke go on).
In the 2 way roads, we had to concentrate on cars coming from behind, the car in front of us and also on the cars coming from the opposite direction. Here, overtaking is far riskier and requires a lot of  judgement with regards to the speed of the vehicle in front and also of the speed of any vehicle coming from opposite direction. The thrill of making it to our lane just in time after an overtake is an experience in itself. (Its risky but always need to maintain a safe distance). Today, while driving on the 2 way road from Kolhapur to Sangli, I thought of these things (and many more)

While the above is a completely personal opinion, I feel that driving on a highway has a lot of advantages and we can learn quite a lot. Some of the things which I feel we can learn are:

1. Concentration: I feel driving is a great way to improve concentration levels since we need to focus on a lot while driving specially on 2 way highways. You cannot let your mind wonder off even at slower speeds. A good mind exercise I should say to stay alert all the time.

2. Leveller : The highway acts as a great leveller for all vehicles. We do not know who will drive in what manner and so we need to treat everyone equally and as such acts as a good leveller.

3. Judgement : Driving helps us develop judgemental skills. Gets developed slowly and steadily.

4. Knowing when to call it quits : A highway offers huge scope for speeding cars. It depends on the individual to decide to what speed he will go before he calls it quits. So, in a way highway helps to see the risk apetite of an individual too. Not only the speed aspect, the way in which a person overtakes other vehicles says a lot about the risk taking ability of the driver.


5. Know your strengths/skills before jumping - A highway teaches us to first know our own strengths and capacities before competing. A Maruti 800 cannot compete with BMWs on a highway. We need to understand our limitations and decide our path accordingly.

6. Never underestimate small players: Most of the accidents on highways happen due to 2-wheelers on the highways. 2 - wheelers overtake from the left side, occupy a whole lane and hence are the cause of majority of the accidents on highways (after of course tractors :P). While driving, we need to tackle these 2-wheelers smartly. We can never underestimate these 2 wheelers. They are bound to raise troubles when we overtake if we ignore them like nobody.

 In addition to these things, at the stops at small dhabas we make on highways for meals, we can learn a great deal about the lives of drivers, the way they protect their consignments at night, the pressures they face due to the rising costs, etc. Such talks are really insightful, especially for a marketeer.

I wish all drivers a safe and a cautious journey and follow all the journey rules.

Irritation

I am a bit irritated today - Partly because today things did not go the way I planned and partly because of the slow pace at which things have been progressing at my end. This reminds me of an interesting incident I encountered.

A Punjabi man entered the cabin. Without any introduction, he sat on a chair opposite the person in charge and beside me. He looked like a well-informed person and a well-networked individual. After asking the hal-chal of the person in charge, the man started talking about the India-Pakistan match which is supposed to take place in a couple of days at Mohali. He looked very passionate about cricket and at length started discussing about the weaknesses of the teams and other stuff which appeared in the morning newspaper (Hindustan Times to be precise). He talked about the security arrangements and the possible outcomes of the PM meet at the stadium. Then he completely started showing off by talking about some influential in the Income Tax department at Pune. Then after some discussions about the upcoming courses at my institute, he left. The total time he talked was around 20 minutes. As soon as he left, the person in charge of the office asked me "Ye kaon tha?". I had no idea about the person and we had a big laugh. 20 minutes in the conversation and there was no introduction from his side. The person in charge also didn't bother to ask since there was no value addition from the conversation. Such an irritation.

This is just one of the many experiences I've had when the person who starts the conversation doesn't introduce himself. I have encountered a lot of such calls where the person calling assumes that I have his/her number and goes on with a general conversation (where we don't need to know specific things) for minutes together. After the initial 30 seconds into the general topic conversation, it also becomes awkward to ask him his name. So, we let the conversation drag on without knowing whom we are talking to.

A remedy to such an irritating experience is that we need to be wise enough to ask his name before getting into the conversation.
Moral of the story : Please introduce yourself when you talk to a person at a high post or when you talk over the phone.

Journey conversation and thought

It has been quite sometime I've posted something on the blog. My laziness, the mess I've subjected myself to, the vast number of scams (reading which I consume most of my online time), and the facebook are some of the reasons for it. 

So, I was travelling from Pune to Sangli via a non-stop bus (glad to get it as soon as  I reached bus stop) and I had a young farmer as my fellow passenger. After the initial hour, which I spend sleeping and smsing, we began talking. I don’t know why every conversation with an unknown Maharashtrian begins with the place one hails from and this was no exception. Even before we exchanged our names, we exchanged our hometowns and current location. After the initial discussions about the places around Karad and Sangli, the conversation went to farming.

Here, I was astonished with the knowledge level of the person. He explained me the different techniques of sowing sugarcane seeds which improved the yield levels of the sugarcane production per hectare, the two methods by which the fertilizers should be put on plants and the use of new concentrates which will yield more crop per hectare land. I knew about these things only superficially but thanks to this young individual, I think I have a better insight on this subject now.

The conversation then went to multi-level marketing and Amway when I saw a spark in his eye. He had been waiting for this opportunity and he started with the multi-level marketing concepts, the royalty concept and other things which Amway is known for. The passion with which he felt Amway will be a successful FMCG (which Is no doubt the fastest growing FMCG company currently) and the level of enthusiasm he shared was really contagious. I, personally, am not a big fan of multilevel marketing and Amway. I feel that the products are unnecessarily expensive and are dumped on to an individual to sell. When I explained him my reservations against this concept, he reluctantly agreed and  told me that he spent only 2 hours of his leisure time for Amway daily and he invested a low level of capital in it. He showed me detailed calculations which showed a revenue of Rs. 5 lakhs per month + some 4% royalty in case he convinced 25 people to join Amway and told that it was always worth a risk to try out for such awesome levels of returns.

He then went about describing that agriculture will only take him to a particular level and to rise from mediocre to higher, he needed to do something additional and he found Amway as a best way to take him to that level.

Though I do not approve of Amyay, I was really impressed by his thought of doing something to rise from the ordinary to the extra-ordinary. Hope that others also think along the same lines and find out different ways to rise out of the ordinary. If only that happens, India will scale new heights.

However, reasonable levels of risk (not too high risks) should be taken. Else things could go wrong like in my case. :P