Kerala : God's Own Country - Part 1

Had the good fortune of being sent to Kochi on a project recently. While I have been to "God's own country" twice before (once to Shoranur to catch a train back to IIMA - you can find details about the trip here; and once to Kovalam on a company Offsite) , this is the first time I stayed there for an extended period. And now I am in a position to say that the epithet is richly deserved :)

For starters, the client office was right next to the harbour and I got to see some fantastic sunsets day after day from the window. Here's a little sample


Naturally , could not just stop at just soaking in the sights and sounds of Kochi alone. So, called over another colleague, Abhay [due thanks to Abhay for taking the above pic!]and we went gallivanting through Kochi and some neighbouring places over a wonderful weekend.

First came Athirappilly Estate, a sleepy estate around 70 kilometers from Kochi full of lush bamboo forests, rubber plantations and palm/coconut trees but perhaps better known for its waterfalls. Mani Ratnam has an ongoing love affair with these waterfalls, by the way, having used them in two rather memorable scenes in "Dil Se" [Jiya Jale] and Guru [Barso Re]. And if I may say so, Mani Ratnam seems to ba a man of good taste :D.

Our enchantment started with the approach road to Athirappilly itself - winding, serene and rather oddly, lined with newly built bungalows [thanks no doubt to the booming Middle Eastern economy and the sizeable remittances from "mellus" in the "Gelf"]. Soon afterwards, the houses faded out, to be replaced by more lush plantations (including the quintessential banana plantations) and the odd toddy shop along the way.

Shortly, we reached a 'check post' - our entrance into Athirappilly estate. It had rained there and the smell of earth that had recently slaked its thirst was palpable. The road started climbing again and the twists, turns and mini-bridges that are the hallmarks of Ghat Roads began to manifest themselves eagerly.

We soon reached the entrance to the falls, got ourselves entry tickets and hurriedly made our way downhill towards the falls. The distant roar of the cascading waters and the coordinated chirping of the birds in the forest fed us a primal feast of natural music that left us asking for more. [We were quite early to get up and push off to Athirappilly as well, so not too many people were there at that time, making the atmosphere even more serene]

We reached the falls and were greeted with a sight for sore eyes. There was a surprisingly large quantum of water flowing for this time of the year (March), augmented no doubt, by the recent rain. The entrance to the falls from the ticket counter actually opens out close to the top of the falls, where you can see the Chalakkudi river eagerly heading downhill, only to find a little wall of rock about forty feet tall to be navigated. And navigate it does, with great glee. The river breaks into two main sections and empties itself into a couple of dents in the rock face barely more than 10 feet wide and thunders down the wall of rock in a grand cavalcade of furious water droplets fighting for space in a race to reach the bottom first.

More pictures and details to follow :-)

A Consultant's life Part II

In this post I am supposed to write some stuff on how things change and how things don't. But then, as someone before my lifetime put it,
The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men Often Go Astray (or some such thing)

To cut a long story short, my best laid plans have changed, not permanently, but enough to warrant a deviation in the topic of this post.

We at A.T.Kearney had an intra-office cricket 'tournament' - basically a lot of young and old consultants getting together and having a lot of fun. I prepared a match report and thought it fit to post it on the blog. A word of warning though: All characters mentioned in the report are real, though the non-ATK reader can, for all intents and purposes, treat them as fictional :)

Official Match Report

A Lukewarm start, a sizzling mid-game and a red-hot end (literally!)

Ladies and Gentlemen, call it Saturday morning blues, call it cold feet, but indisputable was the fact that the start to this all important cricket fixture was lukewarm. Of the 18 members registered, drop-outs were so significant that the teams had to be pruned to two from three, with “Scorching Suns” being the casualty. The captains of the remaining teams, viz. Kearney Kangaroos and Dada’s Devils took to the field on a pleasant breezy morning to inspect the pitch and formulate team strategies accordingly. This was followed by the toss for Match 1

“Dada’s Devils”, under the leadership of our very own Kaustav-da (who, ironically, is a bigger fan of Sachin Tendulkar than Sourav Ganguly), got off to a good start by doing what has eluded even the charismatic captain of the Indian Team, Mahendra Singh Dhoni – winning the toss. Batting first was the natural choice and, as time proved, a good one.

The Devils’ innings – An idle bat is the Devil’s workshop

Kaustav-da and Nithin took the field, with Varun “Lee” Poddar opening the bowling for the Kearney Kangaroos. Disaster struck quickly as both Kaustav Da and Vivek Kalucha (who came in after K-da was out, caught) came and went without troubling the scorers within the first over. The score at the end of the first over read 3/2 and the Kangaroos, justifiably, were jumping all over the place. However, for Nithin “Yuvraj” Chandra, this was just the calm before the storm.

GG was the first victim of Nithin’s onslaught, with his second over being mercilessly dispatched for 30 runs including three towering sixes and two fours. The spring in the step of the Kangaroos was brought to a brutal, but effective halt. Jassi turned to Arunav to stem the haemorrhage. A run-out effected of Nishant in the third over provided a brief respite for the fielding team but Dada’s Devils still managed to eke out twelve runs from the over, including a couple of well struck fours.

Nithin and Abhiram continued the innings for the Devils with Arunav and the Jassi/Mahesh combo holding fort relatively economically. Arunav conceded just 25 runs from his two overs… (the figures would not have been as bad, had Nithin not decided to despatch Arunav away for a 4 and a 6 just as the innings was winding up to a close) and Jassi/Mahesh managed to keep Abhiram quiet, though they would not have liked the Umpire’s strictness with balls going down the leg side being heartlessly declared wides. (Damn those limited overs rules!)

Thanks to Nithin’s masterclass and significant contribution from extras (13 of them), Dada’s Devils set the Kearney Kangaroos a target of 85 in 6 overs, translating to a run-rate of just over 14 runs per over. The lukewarm start had morphed into a sizzling mid-game and a mouth-watering chase loomed on the horizon.

Kangaroos’ chase - look before you leap

Jassi planned to lead from the front as he took the field with Mahesh to open the innings for the Kearney Kangaroos. The chase began disastrously with Jassi being stumped efficiently by Nithin off Vivek’s opening over. Mahesh soon followed, getting run-out without troubling the scorers. GG restored some life to the chase, with a brilliantly struck six right over square leg, followed by another sparkling four.

The second over of the chase was a tight one, with Nishant steaming in and beating the batsmen with sheer pace, conceding just three runs and bowling GG out. The pressure was mounting! 71 runs to be scored off the 4 remaining overs. Dada turned to the star of the first innings and said “Ek over daalega?” , to which Nithin said, “haan, daaloonga”, and the rest, as they say, folks, is history.

An extremely tight over with Arunav’s wicket thrown in for good measure made the task for the Kangaroos even more difficult. What made the task more difficult for the chasers is the fact, that the graciousness shown by the Kangaroos while bowling to Nithin, was not reciprocated, with not even a single extra being conceded.

Varun Poddar struck some valiant blows for the Kangaroos and their team took 25 of the next two overs (Vivek and Nishant being the sufferers), without the loss of a wicket. Still, the required run-rate was not met, leaving the chasers a 36-run target off the final over, to be bowled by Nithin.

If Nithin had been miserly in his previous over, he was downright mean in this one. A nagging line and impeccable length meant that the ‘roos task was that much more difficult. Apart from a conciliatory 4 off the penultimate ball of the innings, the last over was a terrible let-down for the Kangaroos with neither Varun nor Kunal able to make any impact.

The result: Dada’s Devils defeat Kearney’s Kangaroos by 28 runs – a convincing victory, with the Man-of-the-Match award going to Nithin “Yuvraj” Chandra. Kaustav-da marshaled his troops very well, though his contribution with the bat resembled more the hero of his land, Sourav than the hero of his mind, Sachin

Match 2 & Match 3: Commentary truncated!

The remaining two matches were on similar lines, except that Ranga, the resident photographer, added strength to Dada’s Devils while Kunal and Hemant lent their expertise to the Kearney Kangaroos.

An added attraction was the commentary of Varun, Vivek, GG, Kunal and others whose observations on the activity on the field were as funny as they were insightful, though their sledging against the umpiring did not find much favour with either the opposition or the umpires. There was talk of the commentators being fined 50% of their post-match pizzas for the transgressions.

Just before this correspondent signs off, late on a Sunday night, his blow-by-blow commentary on the excellent proceedings looking to be cut short by a series of uncontrollable yawns and project commitments looming large in front of him, he feels it worthwhile to recount one unforgettable 13-ball over from the Kearney Kangaroos to Dada’s Devils in Match 3 as a sign-off gesture.

The bowler in question shall not be mentioned, but Mumbai Mauler Nithin Chandra was the tormentor. The bowler managed to deceive batsmen, wicket-keepers, umpires and commentators alike with his flight, with one well-directed (!) delivery failing to release properly from his hand and trickling down to short cover.

The few times the ball actually managed to float into Nithin’s vicinity, it went away rather quickly, getting dispatched to all corners of the ground. The outcome: a match-winning 37 runs conceded off 1 over, with 2 sixes, 4 fours (including byes) and god-only-knows how many wides!

This particular over sent the Kangaroos scurrying to all parts of the ground and was well liked by the rather limited audience of Parul and little Arjun Kalbag, whose presence did much to add to the fun and festivities (For those who did not turn up to watch the match today: You missed the treat of the year, people!)

Till the next event, cheers and lagey raho!

- Rangarajan Vijayaraghavan

******************************************************

On poetry at the workplace

Interesting interview on how poetry, imagination and creativity at the workplace are important and how they need to be nurtured carefully to achieve tangible competitive differences. A side-effect of our over-analytical upbringings (and I presume to represent the majority of the managerial and working population here.) is that the softer qualities like creativity, imagination, artistry etc. are ignored by and large. Maybe we need to fight for their rightful place in any workplace.

As a 'creative' person , I also feel, however, that creativity needs to be controlled as much as it it needs to be nurtured. Creativity is a 'childish' thing, knowing no bounds once the 'creative connect' is made. It makes one rush headlong into any activity. Some tempering of the emotion is essential, to bring a more 'detached and rational' framework within which creativity can thrive. "Ain't this paradoxical?", one might say. But from experience I can say that the 'framework' needs to be there, however broad it might be. The trick lies in making the framework broad enough that creativity is not stifled and yet defined enough that it meets the business requirements of the organization.

For the entire article, refer http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1745

(those who are prompted for a subscription are recommended to sign up...some fantastic articles there!)

Powered by ScribeFire.

Eight Skills of Highly Successful Consultants

An interesting article I came across recently http://ezinearticles.com/?Eight-Skills-of-Highly-Successful-Consultants&id=2075.

This article talks about the skills needed to make highly successful consultants, the skills being
1) Designing
2) Delivering
3) Selling
4) Contracting
5) Relationship Building
6) Separating Process from Content
7) Socratic Questioning
8) Saying No

The article does not talk about "values" of a consultant, but those I feel are equally important and will finally influence the way the above skills are built.

Any consultants reading this out there? :-)

Powered by ScribeFire.

Of Lions, Politics and the Gita

It has been a looooooong time since I blogged. But finally, a completely chill weekend and a cup of coffee has made me decide to revive my rusty literary fingers with a small writing session on blogosphere once again.

Quite a bit has happened in my life since I bid adieu to IIMA in my last post… For starters, I got just about a week off before I joined work . Consultancy beckoned… and so did aamchi Mumbai. Shifting from campus was not that big a deal, but getting my parents to shift into the city was an additional responsibility. But thank God, that went off without a hitch.

I have accumulated a lot of thoughts during my three-month old career in consultancy, which I have been itching to put into words. Apart from the substance of these thoughts, I also realized I had spent too much time with Nat Geo and Discovery channel in my formative years J. The similarities between living in the managerial fast lane and the life that many animals live out there in the wild are striking. I now understand the meaning of the phrases ‘rat race’ and ‘dog-eat-dog world’ in their truest sense. Let me draw an analogy.

Take the instance of a male lion’s life in the African Savannah. The male lion’s entire adult life revolves around getting mating rights over the females and defending his ‘harem’ from other adult lions. Territorial disputes are a way of life for our harassed, yet majestic feline. There is no such thing as a harmless male adult in lion society; each is interested in building its genetic pool and thwarting its competitors for survival.

Now consider life in a city like Mumbai, which is renowned for its ‘survivor’ attitude. Not only do the people here have to fend for themselves in order to get ahead in life, they also have to be wary of other individuals encroaching upon their ‘space’ in the race for resources. The same behaviour gets exhibited in different ways in different spheres of economic activity. At the lower levels, the auto-wallahs fight their daily battle by trying to extract that one rupee extra from the unwary customer. In the corporate world, people’s ambitions to get to the higher levels or to protect their current jobs are paramount drivers of their behaviour. This desire makes them aggressive. Power and politics rule the roost and establishing one’s territories as wide as possible is a way of life. I observe these ‘instincts’ at work every day in my project.

But given the phenomenal success of our species in infesting pretty much every part of the planet, I often wonder what is the reason in fighting tooth and nail to establish power hierarchies in corporate circles… does it have any meaning whatsoever? What is it that they want to achieve in life? And will these ‘territorial disputes’ help people achieve whatever they seek to do?

This was the primary question I posed to myself recently. I found something which resembled a satisfactory answer to the question (and not unsurprisingly, it related to animal behaviour J), but surprisingly I realized that it was not so much an interest in these ‘territorial disputes’ as it was a question of that elusive thing called happiness. Will I be happy running the race on a day-to-day basis? It was then that I turned to my source of eternal advice and comfort – The Bhagavad Gita

The Gita talks about the way of action: devoting oneself to the achievement of excellence in one’s chosen sphere of activity without bothering about the results of the process. And to borrow a line from one of my favourite professors in IIMA, ‘you should find joy in the process, and not in the result’. In a way, I also think the Gita talks about choices. People (especially out of B-school campuses and into their jobs) often question the choice they made in taking or not taking a particular company or field, so much so that attrition rates in the first year after leaving campus is often in excess of 60-70%. The Gita on the other hand, I believe, talks about picking a choice based on the available information and not looking back at it to see whether it was the right thing or not but rather, to do that which is needed to make the choice work.

But will doing ‘that which is needed’ entail doing something unethical or immoral or against one’s code of conduct? I for one firmly believe that there is very little role for aggressive conflict in people’s lives. But such conflicts are a reality in everyday corporate life. My sattvik nature rebels against getting into the quicksand of conflict, but then how do I defend myself when being faced with it? My ‘survivor’ instinct tells me that I should become aggressive myself but I somehow believe that this is not the way I want to live my life… but then, having made the choice to be in the field of management, I need to do ‘that which is needed’ to make my choice work. What will it involve? It simply involves defending my territory against ‘encroachment’, clearly demarcating my boundaries and letting people know kindly but firmly that intrusions beyond those boundaries are not permitted.

I have my place in this world; I am a unique individual and nothing which other people say will make me question my abilities or my capacity to learn from others. I am here to do something which I have chosen to do and I will do it within the framework of my morals and my way of life. I will find happiness in doing the thing I have chosen. I WILL NOT have regrets. At the same time I will do what I think is fit to make the world a better place for all of us to live in. If I have to bide my time, so be it.

I now feel a bit sheepish at writing all these on my blog but I believe this is something all of us face as adults in an intensely competitive world waiting outside for us.