A Consultant's Life - Part IV (Incomplete)

This thread of posts must take the record of being the longest set of chronicles I have written under the same title. Is it that two years of working has taken its toll on my imaginative capabilities? Hope not!

In terms of content, this is a follow-up of the 1st part of the series with the above title: Some things don't change and some things do...

Of the things that do change, especially on the personal front, the most prominent and significant is the change in marital status - tons of my friends, batchmates etc. who were leading single, unattached lives have decided to take the plunge and step over to the grhasta side of life.

The latest bachelor to bite the dust among my friends' circle is Avishek Addy (the PJ king of my batch) - he is getting engaged this May. Guess he hid his PJs well during the time his would-be made the choice :D. A months back, couple of my best friends, Poza and Bhars, also got married. Is it something about the stage of one life? A little introspection leads me to a very consultanty answer...

I figured that people by and large go through a 2x2 matrix of life [my non-consultant friends call this the point of no return, the point where I form 'frameworks' for the heck of it :)] - I call it the JOL framework (nothing bengali about this, though!). In a nutshell, the journey of many people's lives follows a 'Z' pattern through the following matrix

The JOL (Journey of Life) Matrix

Most people start their lives by being single and happy about it and somewhere down the line, that happiness vanishes and a desire to be with a member of the other sex takes over- neatly described by the following masterpiece


JOL-ly Roger Calvin here is in the bottom left quadrant of the matrix and Hobbes is in the top left quadrant. From the "Girls/Boys! Ewwwwww... yuck! I hate girls/boys" phase to the Hobbes phase of "Whom do we smooch?", it is one turbulent journey!

Another natural question which cropped up was: where do you fit "Relationships" in the picture? To that the answer is: Substitute "Marriage" with "Relationships" in the matrix and you get the answer in a more generic way

(Incomplete)

A Consultant's life - Part III

Yes, Consultants do have 'lives' ;-), especially when they get time off to refresh themselves with some well earned leave! Yours truly went on a trip to Darjeeling and Gangtok recently - Paradise found!

I shall be uploading a more detailed travel write-up shortly, but in the meanwhile, the interested reader can check out some photos here.

PS: The not so interested reader can stifle his/her yawns :-)

A Classic PJ

This is not mine, though I wish it were.... (one of the best PJs I have heard in a long time)

The cows in the Animal Farm have been reading about bear runs and bull runs in the stock market for a while now. First its one, then the other. After a while, they got really frustrated...Why the hell can't we have a cow run!!
So, they started a new stock exchange, the Cow Jones Index, and proclaimed, "There shall only be cow runs in this one, bulls and bears take a hike."

But having grown so fond of the hedge surrounding the animal farm, they became quite interested in hedging their risks as well. Thus began the Cow Jones Futures Index (CJFI). Now, what did these chaps trade in the CJFI?




Ans: Dairyvatives, of course

Of course, yours truly made a dairivative PJ of this masterpiece, and came up with the following:

If investors got wary of investing in the Cow Jones Index directly and decided to give their money to someone else to manage, what would they be investing in?



Ans: Moo-tual Funds

PS: I am in the process of collating some of my PJs and putting them up for display on the blog... so people who remember some of my earlier ones, please send me a mail/dbab/comment, anything!

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

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

A Consultant's life - Part I

A relatively chill period on my current project and an irresistible urge to let my fingers loose on blogosphere has resulted in this post - ages after my previous one

Faiz Azim (a good friend of mine at work) and yours truly were having this illuminating conversation today (for ease of typing, Faiz Azim will henceforth be referred to as "F" ):

F: "Hey Ranga. Good to see you.. been a while! Are you still working on two projects simultaneously?"

R: "No, thank God! I am relieved to say that is now past tense... My recent past was indeed tense

F: "Ah! I see ... your present is continuous, but do you think your future is perfect?"

R: :)

A wholly unintended side-effect of this grammatical jousting was that I realized one thing: To keep my present continuously recountable in future, I'd better do some blogging right away! So here goes... This post is a rather light-hearted take on consulting, work, life and all that has happened in the 1.898765 years since I joined A.T.Kearney!

I know Consultants are very fond of structure (did I hear someone mutter 'paranoid'?), but giving a structure to a reminescence is a good idea nevertheless. This chronicle is divided into the following sections:

- Some things don't change

- Some things do change :)

Some things don’t change

- Mumbai’s commuting infrastructure still sucks: The average speed of commuting on Mumbai roads is 12 kmph – as much as a fast jog. Roads keep getting dug up in a heartbeat. The municipal authorities are like God . They are continually engaged in a cycle of creation-preservation-destruction of existing infrastructure.

In my opinion, the municipal authorities have a three step approach to ease infrastructure bottlenecks (yeah, yeah, 2 years in consulting does have its effects!) :

• Create bottlenecks first ("Ah... this stretch of road looks neat! Let’s say a nice big gash across the middle? After all, the city needs better telecom connectivity right?", or "Wow! This is a smooth bit of road... but wait, come the monsoons, it would be choc-a-bloc with potholes. What say we ‘concretize’ it just before the monsoons?" [Conversation with Road contractor: Psst... Psst...give me 10 crores and this baby is yours])

• Let commuters suffer for a few months (the following is an actual mail sent out by a large Indian bank to its employees)

"We have received information from MSRDC that work of the flyover at Santacruz Airport junction is in full swing and it is targeted to open the northbound carriageway of the flyover to traffic before the onset of monsoon 2008. Due to the construction of the flyover, there will be little more congestion on this stretch for the next 3-4 months.

In view of this we request you to inform all passengers traveling to keep an additional margin of 1 hour for reaching the airport so that they may not miss the flight."

• Shift the bottleneck from the place of creation to some other place . I can just about visualize a ToI article like the one below "After the flyover was constructed over the turn towards Santacruz (Domestic) Airport, congestion near the Andheri flyover has multiplied enormously, with vehicles often having to wait over 1 hour to turn towards Andheri station from the highway. The authorities, however, are jubilant, saying that there are no more traffic jams near the domestic airport."

- IIMA Campus still rocks: I have been to campus multiple times for recruitment related activities, my most recent being on that most touted of days, Day Zero of Placements. Placement activities take place in the new campus these days and things have improved to a great extent since my placements took place 2 years back.

• For one, the greenery is beautifully spread across the new campus and the buildings just look amazing at night
• The eternal charm of the LKP is beyond description ... When I visit campus, I go there sometimes just to let the atmosphere and grandeur of the architecture soak in.
  
• Despite the supposed laxity which has crept into the current batches at IIMA, we still have facchas losing sleep over Operations Management, MANAC & WAC - guhahahahahahahaaaaaaa [Muggo Facchon Muggo! Short MANAC Quiz at 2.30 beckons :)]
• People still doze off in classes , only to get told off by DT or some other prof at IIMA

- Calvin and Hobbes RULE!
Came across some outstanding (as usual) pieces from Waterson - am posting them below for the greater good of society :)




Rest in next!

The Second Chapter: The Gita in Brief - Part I

After a brief hiatus, I resume my interpretations and summarization of "Talks on the Gita" by Acharya Vinoba Bhave. What follows is a discussion on the second chapter of the book, which coincides with the second chapter of the Gita.

The Second Chapter of the Gita is said to lay the foundations for the teachings in the rest of the chapters. It establishes three principles which are expounded in different ways later:

• The spirit ("Brahman") is deathless and indivisble - and you are that spirit
• The body is transient
• One's svadharma cannot and should not be thrust aside

I have often heard from my IIT-ian friends that most stuff they learnt during JEE could be built from First Principles. Similarly, these three aspects form the First Principles of Vedantic philosophy, reflected in the Bhagavad Gita. Let us go into each of these in greater detail.

Note: the following paragraphs can get quite boring for the non-philosophical variety of reader. Don't say I didn't warn ya! :)

Vedanta philosophy talks about the Eternal Spirit or "Brahman" or "The Self" that pervades all creation. The spirit is referred to as "That" - formless, timeless, genderless and perfect. One of the most famous quotes from the Vedanta period is one from the Chhandogya Upanishad, viz: "Tat tvam asi" or "That you are". Each form of creation is Brahman and it is said that every one's journey through the cycle of birth and rebirth is to understand this truth.

Brahman cannot be perceived by the five senses, but by pure intellect alone. To perceive Brahman requires the utmost control of one's body and mind. To the economists, Brahman is the 'invisible hand'; To the devout, Brahman is God; To the disbelievers, Brahman is disbelief and to the farmer, Brahman is the daily bread.

Vinoba says:

"The self is impatient to pervade the world. It wants to gobble up all creation. But we shut it up in a cell (our body). We have made a prisoner of it. We do not even remember that it exists. From morning till evening, we are busy minding the body. Day and night we worry about how fat or how thin our bodies have become. One would think that there was no other joy in the world...Even when a man draws a small circle and calls it "his own", the unconsious aim is to taste the joy of growth in the self; for thereby the self bound in the body comes out for a little while.... But it is like the prisoner coming out of his cell into the couryard"

The Gita refers to various ways of seeking perfection, or Brahman, described above. The person who seeks is referred to as the sadhaka. The sadhaka is however, bound by his/her attachment to the body and to preserving it. The Gita seeks to destroy this illusion by laying down the fact that the body is ceaselessly changing. Cells get created and destroyed at every given moment - so much so that the entire body is supposed to get a complete overhaul (in terms of blood, skeletal structure etc.) once every 12 years [I believe the figure is around 10 years for the skeleton itself, and 7 years for the blood in one's body].

In addition, it says that the body is like the cloth that the spirit wears. Once it wears off, the cloth is discarded and a new cloth is put in its place. Understanding this, the sadhaka is supposed to dedicate all action in the pursuit of his/her svadharma. I had already referred to one's svadharma in my earlier post. But the author makes a beautiful comparision which is appropriate to mention here:

"This svadharma comes to one naturally. One does not have to go out in search of one's own dharma... I would compare svadharma to one's mother. It was not left to me to choose my mother in this birth. it had already been determined for me. No matter what sort of person she is , there is no pushing her away. that is precisely the case with svadharma - it is inescapable. Besides, svadharma, we have nothing else in all this world to rely on, to rest in."

Therefore, understanding that the body perishes every moment, and understanding that the Spirit pervades everything everywhere, the author urges the sadhaka to leave the crooked ways of adharma (what is not one's dharma) and paradharma (someone else's dharma) and follow the natural, easy path of svadharma. He should never let go of the motherly security of one's svadharma.

When I re-read what I had written above, I was left thinking "Yeah, yeah, fine - all this preaching is great, but this just addresses the "What should I do" part of it, without ever touching the "How should I do it?" bit.

[Other readers, of course, might be left thinking "Oh boy, what a bore! Who really cares!" - but then, due to my significant interest in the above, topic, I can't help getting a bit detailed :) - which is also why I put the plot summaries in first :)]

The "How to go about it" is going to be part of my next post. So till then, cheers and Happy reading!

An in-flight experience

PS: This article below is meant purely for fun and not intended to hurt the sensibilities of anyone. Apologies :)

Once, I had to go to Jamnagar and, expectedly, the only airline to serve that destination was an Indian Airlines Flight (looking at the number of people on that flight, I could not but think that there was a huge market opportunity - but then, that is another story).

I boarded the flight and was greeted by a stentorian "Welcome aboard, sir" - except that it had as much warmth as a graveyard. I was confronted by an imposing woman, some ten feet in height and a width to match. Every cell in my body froze. I had the irresistible urge to cower into a corner; my past seemed to come rushing back to me and I felt like a little schoolboy again.

I hurried to my seat and fastened my seatbelts, finding an odd comfort in doing so - she would have to take the trouble of unbuckling me first before she could throw me out of the window/door you see...

Time passed and they safely locked the doors (phew!) and the plane taxied to the runway. In the meantime, the airhostesses started serving 'preliminary' refreshments, namely fresh lime juice. However, the juice wasn't as fresh as I had wanted it to be. So I asked for a change.

To borrow a Wodehousian phrase, ice formed on the stewardess's upper slopes. She said, "Let me check, sir". The "welcome aboard" sounded quite cheery in comparison... this felt like I was in an Arctic graveyeard with a Polar Bear breathing down my neck. I was significantly alarmed at having fastened my seat belts. I could have at least dived under the seats for protection otherwise. There I was, helpless, immobile and unarmed, with Jezebel herself in front of me. Damn you, Ranga! Foresight! Foresight!

Anyway, there must have been a hint of mercy in her (somewhere deep down I think), and she finally condescended to give me a fresh cup of juice. The experience left me deeply reflective and weirdly relieved. I thought for a while and suddenly it struck me... the airhostesses on Indian Airline flights could not even help being cold; it was part and parcel of their existence. It was pre-ordained when they named their employer.

... All Indian Airlines Flights are called IC(y) flights...

One of the best PJs I have heard in recent time

I saw this on the electronic Notice Boards of the IIM-A campus and could not resist posting it here.

How do you call Rowan Atkinson when he is sleeping?

Ans: Soya Bean :)

The Yoga of Despondency

To put it concisely, the plot outline for the context for the Gita (and the rest of this post) is as follows:

Villains and Heroes ready for battle - hero commander goes to see who all he's going to fight - hero sees his relatives on the villains' side - hero gets the heeby-jeebies - hero questions why he has to fight

To put it as I have just done above is the equivalent of saying a Beethoven MP3 is just a series of 0's and 1's - true, but not quite true enough !

So, in slightly greater detail

7 armies on one side (for the Pandavas) , 11 armies on the other (for the Kauravas) stand armed and ready in Kurukshetra ready to annihilate each other. Arjuna, one of the greatest warriors in the Mahabharata is in the middle of no-man's land, facing the Kaurava army, ready to raze his opponents to the ground...and he raises his eyes to look at the 'enemy'.

There he sees his kinsmen - uncles, cousins, brothers, sons , lined up in row after unending row, ready to do death unto each other. His mind wavers, his body trembles and despondency takes over... "Is the end that I am fighting for (namely, kingdom) , worth killing my kinsmen?"

Following this question is a series of rants against war:

• Those for whose sake we desire kingdom are themselves here, waiting to kill each other - why should I fight?
• How can we kill our own people? They might be overpowered by greed and might be willing to kill us, but we can't do the same because we know that it is wrong to destroy a family like this
• If we kill entire families, their traditions, customs etc. are lost forever. What greater sin could I commit?
• If they should destroy me in battle when I am unresisting and unarmed, that would be better for me, rather than my taking up arms against them

It is worthwhile to note here that Arjuna would not have had any qualms killing the opponents had they NOT been his relatives. He was a warrior and it was in his blood to fight. As much as it is in a businessman's blood to trade or in a good student's blood to learn. He was trapped by the attachment to his relatives, and that prevented him from doing his duty.

The author makes a beautiful point : Arjuna was at odds with his svadharma. If he had really been converted to Non-violence, a la King Ashoka, he would not have been satisfied by Lord Krishna until his real objective was met. He was trying to talk his way out of his dilemma , out of doing his duty. His path to doing his duty was clouded by attachment, by illusion.

This 'attachment' is a common issue faced by people all over the world. And many in the corporate world can especially identify with this:

• Should I dump stocks on a distributor in order to meet the current sales target or should I find ways of creating demand?
• Should I sell this medicine even if the side effects have not been fully tested?
• Should I report higher quarterly earnings by valuing stocks higher and adjust them in time for the annual report?
• Should I recommend the client against what he/she feels is the right course of action, even if it means I won't get future work from them if I disagree with them?

All the above situations arise from an 'attachment' to the results of one's action rather than doing the right action. The right action in this case is set in the context of one's conscience. The purpose of the Gita is to rid us of our illusions and attachment in the pursuit of our svadharma. What is svadharma? Literally, it is "one's own way", determined by our unique DNA! It is what makes us tick, what makes us who we are.

Each person's svadharma is his/her own and holds the greatest attraction to him/her. However attractive/easy another person's dharma seems, you should never follow it. You should follow your true vocation. The path might be strewn with thorns but that path is yours and yours alone. By treading your own path, you never have regrets and grow as a person.

By treading your chosen path with a sense of devotion to duty, you also demonstrate a willingness to live by the consequences of your choice, as it is yours and yours alone. Nobody forced you into it, and nobody can force you out of it. So if it means a change in career paths, do so by all means. But once you have changed, be prepared to live with the consequences.

I chose consulting as a career because I felt it represented the right balance between learning, business and interpersonal interactions. The path I have taken has been tough, yes, but I am proud at sticking to my choice. I have taken the rough with the smooth, and a year and a half after I joined consulting, I am completely at peace with myself. The paths are never easy, but it is your willingness to fight it out and stick to the choices that counts.

That's all fine, the reader might say. "You have got a job that you like. Great! But that is not the same for me... I was forced into a banking job because there was more money there. All I really wanted to do was marketing. I was forced into a job because of the money - I have a family to support". People often say they are 'forced' into doing certain jobs/tasks. Such short term aberrations do occur and are quite common in fact. But then, they are the outcomes of their own desires.

If I desire something and expect it to fall in my lap, it is not going to happen. I have to work to get it. If the path is tough, then I live with it. I work hard at whatever life throws at me, even if it is something that I dislike.

At the same time, if I am forced into something that I 'dislike', I have to ensure that I am always on the lookout for something that my heart lies in, so that, if the opportunity presents itself I am not found napping.

When you do something with your heart and soul, you often end up creating a competitive advantage that none can replicate. Given that 'competitive advantage' is what businesses are endlessly in search of, finding where your heart lies and working that to your employer's advantage is something that will be mutually beneficial in the long run! This feeling of dedication of one's heart and soul is what is called vikarma elsewhere in the Gita. But then, that is the subject matter for another post :) - enough for now!

Old wine in a new bottle (err.. template)

After over a year of sticking to the lighthouse blog template, I have finally decided it is time for a change. The new template is fairly elegant I think... must acknowledge Vishal Grover's contribution in my taking up this template (IIMA has made me a stickler for APA referencing!).

Of course, that does not mean that my writing will get any better! Hence the title for this post.

PS: Getting the My-Shoutbox and the Visit counter applications to integrate with the new template was a bit of a pain. But the effort was worth the change. I quite like the new template. Thanks Vishal!

Talks on the Gita - a precursor

My current project is quite hectic... long nights, high stress and all that. And expectedly, when you come close to 'killing yourself for a living' (as a colleague of mine aptly put it), that is when your interest in philosophy really kicks in! :) - Shubhang Shankar, another of my colleagues at A.T.Kearney, can vouch for this as well!

And what better way to re-visit philosophy than to take up a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita?

"Talks on the Gita" by Acharya Vinoba Bhave is one of the simplest and most beautiful expositions on the Gita that one can ever come across. It is a life changing book in every sense of the word. Just reading it makes one's wandering mind feel at rest. This is going to be the first of a series of nuggets from the wonderful fountainhead of the philosophy of life that is the Gita. I shall start with a small selection of quotes from the book and as time passes, augment it with more experiences/observations.

So here goes:
The Gita is set in the context of the Mahabharata, a truly outstanding work of a 100,000 verses that gives new meaning to the word "epic".

On the Mahabharata, the author says:

"The Mahabharata tells us clearly that none but God is wholly free from blemish ... The Mahabharata describes human life as a fabric woven out of both black and white threads. Himself standing aloof, Bhagavan Vyasa projects on the screen of the world a picture made up of both light and shade, of the universal movement"

On the Gita, the author says:

"The Gita is the Upanishad of the Upanishads...Almost every idea necessary for the flowering of a full life occurs in the Gita"

The first chapter of the Gita, where Arjuna's despondency is pictured, is a fantastic context-setter for the rest of the Gita, because it talks about the fundamental human dilemma that everyone faces in the course of daily life, or the pursuit of svadharma as the Gita calls it. When one follows a choice that one makes and the consequences of the choice lead to seemingly unpleasant situations, how does one respond?

• Does one question the very choice that one took up in the first place?
• Does one flinch in the face of unpleasantness and choose to run away or choose to stand and face the consequences?
• In the face of a choice with an unpleasant consequence, issues of "morality" frequently crop up (note that 'morality' normally never interferes with actions when the choices are pleasant! ) - how do we overcome the barriers we put in front of ourselves and pursue the path of action, and detach our minds from the consequences?

The first chapter, titled the Yoga of Despondency, deals with Arjuna's dilemma in terms of the above questions. I shall discuss this in greater detail in the next post

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!)

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Paradise revisited!

I went on a client visit recently to a place around 100 km from Mumbai. The site is nestled amidst gently rolling hills which erupt in violent greenery during the monsoons.
The client guest house overlooks a little lake on one side and a small hill (with a couple of waterfalls) on the other. The hill was typical of what you'd find around Mumbai - like a table, with intense greenery at the bottom, some sheer rock faces in the middle (of course! how else would the waterfalls form?) and again greenery(primarily grassy) on the top.

The entire scenic package was too tempting to pass up without a trek... and trek we did! We (me and a couple of client team members) started off one morning (6 a.m!) and left for the temple. It had drizzled/rained continuously the previous day and the route was wet. The clouds too were tantalizingly indecisive: "Should I unload my watery burden or do I carry it elsewhere?". But it was not raining when we started.

We went towards the temple, trudging towards the base of the hill. The forests at the base were wet and looked like they had been newly sent back from the cleaners. The moon peeped at us naughtily over the top of the hill (yes, it was that early in the morning!) just to be swallowed by some angry looking clouds shortly. We had to climb a set of haphazardly assembled stairs to reach the temple. They were quite slippery, with all the rain and moss. A word of advice here: Never wear running shoes on a slippery trek! Trekking shoes are different from running shoes for a reason, and I found it out the hard way!

Keeping a steady pace, we reached the temple in around 20 minutes, despite stopping here and there for clicking some pictures. The temple was built around a crack in the rock face and had a Kalimata-like deity inside the crack. We reached the porch of the temple and got a breathtaking view of the surrounding hills and plains. There is just one word to describe the feeling: "PEACE"

Soon after we reached the temple, the benevolent-till-now clouds changed their minds and decided to unburden themselves on us. The shower lasted around 20 minutes and we could see the volume of water in the adjacent waterfall growing visibly. Thank God we had some shelter! During the shower we had the song of a turned-on mynah (or some such bird) to keep us entertained. The range of tunes it could produce were stunning - quite the composer! I named it A-Mynah (pronouced the British way, it is the same as A-Minor :))...

Once the rain subsided, we left the temple and branched off towards the waterfall. One of the team members, Rajan Tendolkar, is a trekking enthusiast. His knack for finding the right paths and goat-tracks was amazing. We had the roar of the water to guide us as well... amazing how such a small waterfall could generate so much noise.

Slipping and stumbling, we soon reached a stream which seemed to emanate from the waterfall and then the task became easier. Sometimes along the stream, and sometimes through it, we went; higher and higher till we came to an impassably dense bit of shrubbery which would lead directly to a wedge in the rock face where the waterfall turned. At that point we took some more photos, before turning towards the base.

We took a different route to the base, heading north instead of south (where we came from). This took us through yet another stream and a few leg-grabbing creepers/bushes before we reached a beautiful clearing where the streams split into small rivulets gently meandering around the clearing. Soaking in the sight, we plugged on, only to get soaked again :), this time through marshy grasslands. I nearly lost my shoe there! But this was a short stretch and we were soon on the road leading to the guest house again.

2 hours, a bit of mud and a lot of water later, we were back in the guest house, feeling hungry, exhilarated and of course, slightly sad that it had to end. Of course, half an hour afterwards, the rest of the team and I were rushing off to deliver yet another presentation at the client site... there is consulting for you! Rushing headlong from one experience to the next ...

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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? :-)

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On decency at the workplace...

Interesting article from Knowledge @ Wharton. My favourite bit given below:

"Decency is not just about being nice," noted Harrison, author of The Manager's Book of Decencies. Rather, it is about creating a "bubble wrap" of good deeds that will protect a company in hard times. "Our willingness to be decent at work cannot depend on whether business is up or whether we're in a bad mood or whether it's raining. Decencies don't amount to anything unless we take the trouble to make them come alive through concrete acts in all kinds of weather."

Again, implementation is the key, but then, I have it in me! :)

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PJs for the day...

One of the best ways of keeping up my contribution to this blog will be to keep peppering it with the numerous "witticisms" I conjure up/come across on a daily basis. So here goes...

Jai Bajrang Bali!

The actress/model Yana Gupta fell in love with a rich industrialist and then got married to him - on one condition… that he transfers all the money to her on his death. How would you describe the situation?

Ans: Czech-mate


Which hill station in Maharashtra is a Boxer's favourite retreat?

Ans: Punch Gunny (Panchgani)

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Of Wodehouse, Vedanta and Long distance runs...Part II

Been ages since I blogged. Need to get back to a more disciplined habit again. Maybe keeping the posts shorter should help!

Nearly 8 months have flown by since the last post, yet the title for the blog seems surprisingly fitting. So many incidents in the past few months can still be attributed to Wodehouse, Vedanta and Long distance runs... though more figuratively than literally.

I have always been an admirer of PG Wodehouse's brilliant style of wit and the way he takes a 'not-too-serious' view of life. I implement it in my own way by cracking "witticisms" (the purists may sneer and say .. "PJ" - but who cares! :P) and taking potshots at normal, day-to-day situations. Am thinking of putting up a collection of my PJs on this blog. Should be up shortly... Life ain't worth taking too seriously.., so don't!

One of my friends (Shubhang) used to love the quote below:

" First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you
win" - Mahatma Gandhi

The same way, PJs are infectious :-) . It has been over a year to convert some of my colleagues to my way of thinking, but the Force shall prevail :). As for Vedanta, life teaches lessons on detachment all the time... and the essence of Vedanta seems to be "Detachment". The true karmayogi is supposed to be Detached from the consequences yet 'engaged' in action.. that is a remarkable balance to achieve. There have been just a few instances in my life where I could genuinely say I was in that state. But it was a 'divine' feeling to experience!It should be possible to achieve that state more regularly with discipline... need to work that out. And long distance runs! I Completed the Mumbai half marathon in January this year and have been running off and on afterwards.. it is a PHENOMENAL feeling to get.. tired and excited at the same time. Waiting in the queue for nearly an hour and a half immediately after the marathon, to collect my completion certificate was a pain beyond words though... AARGH!! There were a lot of things to learn from the marathon, the primary ones being

• It is not the person who runs fastest that wins the race, it is the one with the greatest average speed!
• It is no use straining yourself in the beginning, to drop out of the race later
• Never go by what other people say! Have complete belief in yourself..
• Warm up (preparation) before a race is crucial!

One of the biggest complaints against consultants as a race is that " They think and say a lot but do very little" - I shall prove them wrong!

Of Wodehouse, Vedanta and Long Distance Runs Part I

Nearly six months after my last post of any note, I revive my rusty literary brain again to think blog for a few minutes. Thanks Tahseen .. you have ensured that my New Year resolution goes unbroken… at least for the time being :)

My first instinct when I start this piece is to give an excel sheet-by-excel sheet description of all the interesting bits of consulting I have done over the past six months, but what the heck… don’t think that my readers will be interested in the intricacies of the Poisson Distribution and Spiked Demand anyway :D

When I chose consulting, my choice was heavily influenced by a nebulous concept of work-life (im?)balance…Oh, and by the way, I have a very Indian, and in fact, very Mumbaiyya concept of work-life balance – as long as I leave at 8.30 AM and am back by 10 PM, I consider it a nice, relaxed day … damn those weekends! :P

Jokes apart, life in consulting has been good. How can I crib when an Optra comes, picks me up and drops me back at home and work five days a week most of the time? And what more proof of adaptability do I need when the client thinks that I am an engineer, completely oblivious to the fact that sine waves, lognormal distributions, Fourier transforms and the nth law of thermodynamics are as obviously intuitive to this Chartered accountant, as Tamil is to an Egyptian?

But then folks, there you have it. Consulting is the ultimate test of adaptability – of the capability to learn new things. And if you have won the trust of the client through your knowledge of the subject and an understanding of the practicalities of his/her situation, you have won a friend for life, and probably a bit of repeat business as well J.

One thing consulting (and I am sure this is true of every job that a WIMWIan lands up as well) makes me really ponder about is ‘the meaning of work’ and ‘the meaning of life’ . Remember Frankl’s “Man search for Meaning”? I am DEFINITELY not saying that today’s corporate life, however striking the resemblance is to a rat-race, comes anywhere close to the horrors of a concentration camp. But it does force us to lead lives where we are forced to run without knowing why we are running. Notice the use of the word ‘why’ instead of ‘where’ (I believe I have answered the ‘where’ part sufficiently for myself. My duty (thanks to the Gita) has been fixed as the search of excellence in my chosen profession. Wherever it leads me I am happy to go!). What do we achieve by doing whatever we do?

The One With All the Resolutions

MY NEW YEAR RESOLUTION: To update my blog at least once a month!

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.