SRKV Reunion Reminiscence

I wanted to draft my impressions on the reunion that I just came out of while it is fresh in my mind. 

 

 The School:  Though I happen to study only from 6^th to 10^th in SRKV, for me it is “the school”.  Earlier to SRKV, my schools were either small huts or a platform with no cover, so I couldn’t be happier when my dad got me admission to SRKV in 6^th class. Unlike the schools today which ask for “donations” for a seat, SRKV made me earn it. In 2 months of summer holidays I have studied full English medium curriculum, passed in all the subject final exam paper and then got admission.  It was a sweet feeling that can’t be bought with money.  It also helped me gain confidence.

 The Organizers:  When Kranthi hinted me that there is a reunion being planned after 28 years of passing from school, I thought it is impossible. Though Social Media can help in finding few people, it felt like lot of work. And then there are genres of folks like me who stay away from Social Media, making life of organizers a nightmare. I was proved wrong by them through resounding success of the event in terms of effort undertaken and bringing us together for a memorable weekend.

 The Tribe and the Vibe:  After 28 years gap and with everyone in 40s, expecting to remember names, or even to link names to faces is not a reasonable expectation.  Interestingly we had zero awkward moments  and instantaneously came together as the SRKV tribe. The vibe has set the resort of fire and kept us warm despite the winter chills of Hyderabad.

 The Teachers and teachings:  It is emotional moment for all the students and the teachers to meet after such a long gap and felicitate them properly. The teachers are as kind towards us as we were. జనులా శిష్యుని (పుత్రుని) కనుగొని పొగడగ అన్నట్లు they didn’t try to hide the fact that they are proud too!  And they still have a thing or two to teach us and continued from where they left.  In their speeches they emphasized on importance of values, inculcating them as part of parenting, friendship, innovation, and importance of continuous learning.  Heartening to hear from teachers who couldn’t make it to the meet due to various reasons but spent time recording message or available on voice call.  Their blessings will surely help us reach new heights in life.

The Spectrum:  Like we were in school, we are not alike and form a spectrum that ranged from entrepreneurs, engineers, doctors, educationalists, supervisors, managers to caregiver parent. Which ever sphere of work we are in, we inculcated the values imparted by the school and the teachers and put excellent efforts earnestly. 

 The Friendship and Affection:  To be honest, I was not the popular, noisy or attention-grabbing sort in school.  There are many like me. Then there are few who hog the limelight.  I am overwhelmed by the reception from fellow classmates.  The bond created at that tender age is built on such a formidable that I felt as if we were in constant touch all the time.  There are friends I went to same tuition but I failed to recognize them. But the warmth with which they approached me and enquired about the well-being left me dumbfounded and slightly embarrassed for my poor memory.   

 Handsome men:  Day1 men donned white shirts and denims as they get closest attire to the school uniform of SRKV.  And the Day2 everyone wore the Tshirt with SRKV emblem engraved on it. Both days Camera men didn’t miss capturing the handsome men parading in resort as you will see from the pics captured.

 Beautiful Ladies:  As it happens all the time, the ladies % is 20-25%. But that is good enough to lit the place and add beauty to the otherwise monotonous colour palette.  I always carry this regret in my life and if given another chance to life my life again, I would shred my shyness , get benefitted by the maturity and diverse perspective female friends bring and become a better person than I am today.  Their beautiful minds and hearts reminded me what I missed.

Sharing & Caring:  28years is a long time. Each of us have got a story to tell. Grit and determination stories are of that paved way from failure that they used to step on to next success. Perseverance stories in which someone fought and stood by loved one. Proud stories included our own friends competing at highest level in Global Orgs and having track of working with who&who’s of world.  Struggle stories friends have undergone to settle in life and become financial stability. Heart break stories friends had to undergo unduly in life.  Each story has a lesson and has made us incredibly proud of each other.

Games: We became kids again as we competed fiercely as we did in the school days trying to score a win for our groups.  It also helped us renew the bond and reduce our age by 3 decades. We defied age by engaging in volleyball sport even at the risk of getting sprain.

Teary eyed sendoff: The 2 days gone by so fast that it felt like 2 seconds.  As we reached end we couldn’t hold back our emotions. Each of us wished well for all the friends and left with renewed commitment to do better than meeting after 28years next time around. 

Overall I would qualify this weekend as the best weekend of the year 2024. 

 

 

Bitsian Reunion Week - My Reflections

I wanted to draft my reflections on the reunion that I just came out of and in the process renew my blogspot that has been dormant since covid hit us.  

The Mask :  More than decision on what outfits to pack that shows me younger than I am, the bigger one was the decision on what “mask” I should wear!  What image I should create amongst my batch mates – Successful Technologist, Happy Soul,  Great Communicator etc., the typical masks we wear to work.  After some deliberation, I fixated on going mask-free as it is judgement free zone of Pilani campus I am marching towards.  This is the group of people who have seen me in most vulnerable position and most immature phase of life already, there is really no need of wearing a mask to be honest. 

Ice Breaking:  Given the introvertial traits I carry, getting back to the gang of 200+ people was never easy. This is one thing extroverts struggle to understand “what is wrong with introverts” 😊 Even with in gults, I was not in constant touch with many with a notable exception of the 2-3 closest buddies.  I had a sinking feeling in stomach, mulling over questions like what if none of them remember me, what if no one is able to reconnect with me, what if I am loner who has to push along 6 days with great effort!!  To be fair, my brain is pretty logical given the low key life I maintained at Pilani and after.  I was proved wrong on all these counts the moment I landed with the group, same warmth, accommodation and love despite long gap of two decades. 

I embarked on a train journey with my gult friends, in Telangana express that used to be AP express. They instantaneously connected with me and showered warmth. 27 hours felt like 27 minutes with greetings, sharing personal stories,  playing card games, Dumb Charades.  Little did we realize that the train ran more than 3 hours late, and completely engrossed with the gang. 

Networking:  What is more interesting than to listen to life stories of friends, their successes and learnings. It is inspiring and amazing to see the friends with whom we shared wing, classes and campus make it big and earn name for the batch.  It is equally distressing to know heartbreaks some friends faced.  While they coped with it and became resilient and stronger through experience, they never deserved that pain in first place.  Overall, interactions made me stay grounded in our life journey ahead.

Reconnection with C6-ites:  Turn out in C6 is quite good given we are a small gang. We had utlized the opportuntity to share experiences and getting to know each other better.  I am sure many of you would find it difficult to believe that I did not speak a word with C6 girls, with whom we attended exclusive classes every sem, between 1998-2002.  Not even a miniscule mistake of theirs really, instead speaks volumes of the “shy”, “introverted”, “in a shell” type of personality I carried along.  When we (re)connected last week, they were so generous, friendly and warm in interactions,  that left me wondering how much I would have gained from their association had I mustered courage to speak to them while in college.

Same vs Different:  Campus stayed the same in terms of its spirit while bringing technological and infrastructure advances that are world-class.  Among similarities, the old hostel rooms, the vibrant FD1 & FD2,  Serenity of the temple,  the color of chairs in Audi, Sky lawns, IC carried nostalgic memories of our campus life, bringing down our age from 40s to teenage. Among the differences, the new age workshop, fantabulous library,  amazing best-in class LTC,  Rakesh Kapoor Innovation Center, beautiful infra in and around Rotunda that let us wonder if it is same old Pilani.

Friends who couldn’t make it:   There are few friends I longed to meet on the occasion but unfortunately due to work and personal commitments couldnot make it.  I will keep hoping to bump into them some other occasion soon.  There are few friends who have left us teary eyed to heavenly abode, whom we remembered during the event.

Rotunda side chat:  I really enjoyed opportunity to interact with those innocent souls in current pursuing graduate students with high hopes and uncertainity of what life has in store for them. Felt exactly like me (or us if I dare say) two decades earlier.  They sounded bit more matured than we were at that tender age.  But we tried to answer their questions as if we know all answers to life’s questions 😊. On topics like Biotech, Core Chemical Engineering, we mustered courage to say that “we don’t know” and routed them to experts in our batch on the subject.

Parties:  Better said by others than me, given I am coke/Juice candidate who cant draw as much from parties as others.  But I could clear see the vibrant crowd enjoying every party and that’s truly contagious. 

Farewell:   It is incomplete description without mention of organizing committee who has undertaken this event with Super human efforts.  I came in with high expectations and they made sure it exceeded by huge margin.  Some groups had logistics challenges along the way but like aways they all made it on time to flights beating the odds. As we drew towards the closure, we all had heavy hearts and left with renewed promises to stay in touch and frequent meeting at every opportunity presented.

To end On a lighter note, a gult friend teased multiple times Shashank to give his message to the group “ జాతిని ఉద్దేశించి మీ సందేశం”  and Shashank delivered a hell of a message on responsibility towards women at home that kept us grounded.  Overall it was a great week for me, and potentially the best week in many years.

Are you ready to bear consequence of your actions?

 In the telugu movie directed by legendary Bapu-Ramana named “Sampoorna Ramayanam” there is an excellently scripted scene that goes like below.

“Ravan, the King of Lanka, kidnaps Sita, wife of Lord Rama, when her husband is not around. Rama finding the misdeed, comes with monkey army to Lanka to fight Ravan. Ravan did not expect Rama to cross the sea and ready to fight him. So Ravan arranges a meeting with his ministers and kins to discuss strategy of defeating Rama. Ravan has a wise and good natured brother named Visbhishan.

Vibhishan questions Ravan “Brother, when you decided to kidnap Sita while her husband is away, you took the action without consulting anyone. Now when Rama who vowed to kill you, comes with his army crossing the sea,  you get terrified. When the consequence off your action comes to give its result, you are asking all of us for suggestion. Why don’t you decide for yourself how to deal with it, the same way you acted independently while kidnapping Sita”

This obviously made the King of Lanka furious and Vibhishan had to flee out of the kingdom is a different story.  The wonderfully scripted scene depicts that humans when they have face consequence of their evil deeds, struggle quite miserably to come to terms with it. They either try to avoid, escape, transfer that to others or blame others for their actions.

Every action comes with a consequence of some intensity that we would have to bear. Good actions have good consequences. A student who attends all lectures, who studies well, who prepares well for examination – would get the grades that he/she capable of.  A student who does not apply himself to studies – would suffer the wrath of examination through bad grades. Simple isn’t it?

If it’s so simple why is that lot of people fail to recognize this and indulge in irrational decisions?  People give in to sense gratification and unable to visualize the long term consequence the action would bring. Also they think they can get away with their evil deeds without having to face the consequence. Or they play victim card stating “I was immature and so didn’t realize the consequence would be this tough”.  In the epic novel Veyi Padagalu, there is a character named Rangamma who indulges in extramarital affair that eventually leads to suicide of her husband and losing all reputation. She transforms herself and asks her mentor the same question. Her mentor answers “A kid touches fire without understanding of the consequence, would the fire not hurt the child? Similarly whether you do a deed with or without giving enough thought to consequence, the result is certain that you are to bear the fruit.”

Also the consequence may not always be evident and traceable to the action. The student in above scenario might score by indulging in malpractice and think that he gotten away from the consequence of not studying. But then as he did not accumulate knowledge, that is needed for his job he would struggle at work. Or he might make huge loss in business that requires necessary fundamental abilities education imparts. So the consequence can come in many ways and at different stage in life. But it certainly would. Only intelligent folks can take cognizance of it and make good decisions in life.

There are certain group of people who through their shrewd and predatory nature, try to transfer the consequence of their actions to weak or innocent person. Through this they are committing another evil deed. Little do they realize that at some point in life they would face compounded result.

 

Human Touch

 Today while availing Urban Company service for getting my Haircut done, I felt a bit odd to get the feel of hand wrapped in rubber on my chin. It didn’t feel that odd, I got when I met the dentist to check on my teeth, dentist adorned in PPE kit met us in the cabin. Indians are brought up in touchy feely culture where lot of communication happens through non-verbal communication like facial expressions, laugh, pats, handshakes etc.,  Post Covid era, masked faces covering most of the facial expressions and gloved hands reducing the human touch became the norm all over the world.

If someone is thinking this is going to be a temporary phenomenon, are definitely underestimating the long term lifestyle impacts covid would permanently leave a mark, when it leaves. We would get used to social distancing coming into cultures that thrive on personal intimacy in                 closely knit relationships. We might as well get used to masks to some extent when meeting strangers or visiting populous places. We might forget handshakes and pats completely or meet gloved hands when we do in near term.

Like mentioned above, human touch is one aspect that we are missing in the middle of the pandemic especially when we need it most.  Take for example, a covid patient would long for support, someone to lean on, someone to give reassuring pat, or someone to wipe tears.  But given the contagious nature of the disease, you are going to get them the least. Without the human touch, the reassurances family and friends give might sound shallow but that’s all they can afford to give unfortunately.

Human touch also means empathy and touch of humanity. In the current situation, we all need to pay explicit attention to fellow humans both within family, friends or work colleagues. We need to strive as much as possible to understand the challenges they go through and be kind to each other. We may not be able to give commercial benefit to all but kind words are not expensive, so use them generously.

The First Week

I knew it all the while or at least I had the feeling that I knew it (may be a hindsight bias). Our generation and our parents were lucky so far that they have not really witnessed a crisis of this scale. Well there were some economic slowdowns, some personal setbacks but we never really seen what freedom struggle looks like or a situation of world war could have been. As India fights the impact of Covid-19 by announcing the lock down, this is the closest to a crisis we would witness in our life time. So I thought it is worthwhile to document some bits of feeling.

Slight Panic:  Well to be honest, I felt a bit of panic. Why would not I? I am deemed head of the family with a wife and 2 small kids to provision for and protect. Also it happens that my old parents (including father recovering from a major surgery) are also to be looked after in this crisis. Slight panic is natural. Ahead of the lock down, couple days prior, I did my share of panic buying of provisions enough to last for 3-4 weeks.(reason1 for my opening statement)

Hectic weekend: Weekend prior to the lock down, whole of our management teams were quite busy to understand what it means to our teams. To be honest, it didn’t feel like a weekend as we were on for most part of the week. I still cant imagine, what I would have done if my team mates didn’t have equipment to work from home. (reason2 for my hindsight bias)

Working from Home: If I would have worked as hard as I have during last week, I might have become a CXO by now J. Jokes apart, initial week of full work from home, teething issues, inadequacy of experience, requests from management for impact analysis, colleagues trying to ask for help, too many twists, many unreasonable expectations - all meant one thing, more than I usually do in a typical week. Being not a great fan of work, I am hoping this would change soon.

Kids: Kids are great. They are omnipotent. They can relieve stress, they can induce in the same magnitude. When you are on an important call, when you least expect it, they can come and press disconnect button on your headset. They most certainly can! At the same time, when you are off a point less meeting, they come innocently ask for a biscuit or something as if that’s the most important thing in the world.  More often it feels like yes it’s the more important than the meeting we are on.

Level headedness:  Well this is the most important characteristic in life. There will be highs and lows. Usually people walk with bloated chest and heads held high when things are going in favor. On the other hand, people stoop heads below shoulder, when the tide turns. We all need to have a level head, irrespective of what’s going on around. This is the time when we need to collect ourselves and show our strength when we face an adversary that we can fight it. Taking all precautions, staying put and staying home is the need of the hour.

Learning: Signed up for FT trial for  one month for $1 and trying to read markets across the world and response to Covid-19.  Read 2 chapters of Accelerate book on Devops. 

Optimistic: When this is all over, I would want to narrate the tales of how usually frivolous characters turned into conservative when it comes to using provisions and how scared we were but tried to maintain balance. Hopefully humans will reach to a solution in the war with the invisible to naked eye enemy soon.

As we end first week, got some time to rest and geared up what new week brings.

The Unjust Divide

Not a big fan of controversial topics but one thing baffles me about India is the huge perception/real divide between the Hindu and Muslim communities.  

 ·       In school days we had Mohammad Rafi, whose mother shouldered burden of feeding kids after his father’s death. He wanted to settle in life soon so that he can help his mother financially. Then there was Madhavan, whose father lost fortune in business and he wanted to do better in life to support his family.

·       We also had a gullible Imran and Raman, who were close buddies and marched all of us to the house of a pretty girl in school, only to be intimidated by her big brother.

·       We then had Praveen and Hidayat, who fiercely competed with us to become school topper in 10^th.

·       In college days, we had Shahid who used to study with me with a common ambition of getting a good job in campus placements. When Shahid fell short of funds to pay fee, it was Hari who helped him with a loan.

·       We then had Basha who used to tutor us in Biology course, who in turn got tutored by Chalapthi or ramki for math where he needed help.

·       We also had Rafi who partnered with Ramki who is building fintech in India and working with Global MNC.

·       In our colony, we have Mr. Jaishakar who goes about his life as blissfully as Mr Khan, who exchange cordial relationship.

Well as you can see in the above examples, there is so much similarity between a common hindu and muslim. But we unjustly draw a divide basis religion, as if they are poles apart. I don’t see any commonality between Rafi and a certain MIM Leader, whom we try to see in same lens. Nor any comparison between Madhavan and RSS leader (or some hindu leader).  Our basic premise that muslims have lot in common with the leaders who pretend to work for them (likewise hindu leaders) needs review. There is a huge divide between them and the leaders who vouch for them in terms of financial, social, political status but we unjustly put them into same club. Just like an average hindu, a muslim wants to live peacefully providing for his family and trying to improve day by day. We are getting divided for political aspirations of few leaders who don’t really care about us, which is a pity.

We all need to realize it and bridge the perception/real gap to strive live in harmony.

Role of Neutrals in a Polarized World

India was historically country with less political polarization. This trait gave raise many regional parties and national parties to coexist in the largest democracy of the world. Each of states were ruled by different parties owing to dynamics of the region, preferences of people, charisma of the leaders, and issues that were prevalent. This is good sign that there is good portion of people who are open to choosing option that they think is suited to run the state. Similarly at nation level even though Congress ruled the country for most part, there were enough evidences that nation did not give clear mandate and the choice kept waving  basis the agenda and policies backed by the parties that came to power.

In recent past there seems to be a change in demographic on the political affinity attribute. Noticeable polarization is being observed in people and the neutrals are being reduced to a small group. Given this shift neutrals are now entrusted with responsibility of ensuring they analyse and read the situation and decide well, this is not easy task.

•  Resisting Strong urge to be part of a gang – Like every one neutrals may get sense of being wanted, part of a gang. This can lead them to sway one way or other thus shrinking the group even further. It is an urge that needs to be resisted.
• Social Media distractions – With explosion of social media we get fed what they want us to hear. We are continuously being fed half information, fake news and some logical lies which distract you and try to pull towards a gang.
• Biased Media – Even the most lauded new papers and TV subscribe to one ideology or the other and deliberately or otherwise feed us with biases info
• Lack of proper analysis – with so much information to grasp it is not an easy  task to comprehend fully and decide. There is chance of misunderstanding/misinterpretation of information at disposal.
•  Blind followership – Some neutrals due to limitation in point#4, resort to follow an intellectual blindly with a view that I am sure he would have thought through this.
• Apathy – Over a period of time, some neutrals lose hope and become apathetic towards the process and system 

Neutrals in fact decide the fate of the nation as their votes are decisive and crucial for fair outcomes in democracy. They must understand the value of their contributions and try and resist above traps to make the nation better.

Age is just a number

Age is just a number is a catchy phrase. But Roger Federer proved it again. Nearing 38 many would retire from demanding professional tennis and go for less physically demanding job like coaching or commentary. Roger has other plans and defies all trend by trying to become oldest ever to win a Grandslam title. He did not succeed, unfortunately, but in the process produced marvellous tennis any player would dream of in the final against world number 1 Novak.

Tennis as a sport is cruel at times. In a 5 setter where players have shared 2 sets each and standing at 12-12 games in decider, why should there be one winner and one loser? Instead they can declare both as joint winners. But the irony is one of the two gentlemen who produced such exceptional tennis had to lose, what a pity!

Roger’s journey to final did not come by chance. Unlike earlier years when he reached finals without dropping a set, this time he faced young generation players and the long time rivals during the course who did grind him enough. He has to face long time rivals Nadal and Novak in semis and finals, who are presently ranked 1 and 2 ahead of Roger.

What pains Roger fans more is that he had his chances. He won 2 sets convincingly and all the sets he lost ended in tie-breakers, which tells how close he was to win. He also had two championship points in his serve at disposal but credit to Novak who snatched victory from that position.

To those who were waiting to watch Roger extend his Grandslam tally to 21 and Wimbledon count to 9, Sunday night has ended in disappointment. He might have lost the match, but won many hearts. As Roger himself put it “I hope I give other people the chance to believe that at 37 it’s not over yet”. No Roger, its not over yet, we await you at US open, then at Australian , then at Roland Garros and then at Wimbledon. Year after year until you decide to move on. Hail Roger, The Greatest Tennis Player of All Time!

Unsolicited Advice

This morning after dropping my daughter at school, I noticed a young man sitting on his bike immediately after a blind turn. I thought it is a dangerous place to standby and out of genuine concern advised him politely to move away. He mumbled something inaudibly which I presumed as a 'Thank you'. Usually that's what people expect when we help someone. A minute later from across the road I found same man in same posture and same place not moving an inch. Then I realized what he might have mumbled is 'it's none of your business'. It is an unsolicited advice even though given in best interest. He is evidently not interested in it. It made me think, why do I do it despite being rejected in similar fashion time and again. May be it is something to do with my personality , may be a defect in my making or growing up.

If you thought this happened only because I am a stranger to the young man, you are mistaken. It happens with known people as well. I gave an unsolicited advice to a friend who is living outside his earnings on credit (credit cards , loans etc., ) I was genuinely concerned about the kind of lifestyle and financial havoc he is into. He did not appreciate it. I have never ending debates with my wife, which revolve around why we should remain our ethical stand irrespective of the non-matching behaviors from other people. Her point is you cant remain Gandhian in today's dog-eat-dog world. She may be right from her view point, but I always hold contrarian view and an unsolicited advice in my back-pocket ready to invite trouble.

Professional environments were relatively better conducive, how ever a guy like me can invite trouble every where. There are times when I took "Speak Up" feedback a bit more seriously and started speaking up. Little did I realize that nobody asked me to solicit my opinion on a recently rolled out policy, decision made by a senior boss., The list is endless. I thought people appreciate the fact that concerns are not my personal rather general with earnest concern for people. Sometimes I got away with it but on other occasions ended up sucking embarrassment that I was not expecting. I was expecting a thank you instead. :-)

It got me thinking, where is a the problem? Do I represent the diversity in nature or do I represent the  devil' advocate that I am not expected to be? 

Life Skills for a Professional (Part II)

This is continuation of the blogpost I started as essential for survival in today’s world for working professional

Networking:

It is not what you know but who you know will take you heights in career. There are many talented folks waiting for opportunities while there are many others who get just because of the connections they have made. There are many other benefits of networking.

Being a part of good professional network grants you access to wealth of information easily, which otherwise takes painstaking efforts to gather. An informal connection can help break the barriers of bureaucracy helping us in accomplishing our goals. If you have a strong connection with some powerful person in the organization, your image among the people would change.  

Reading:

In today’s world not knowing is perceived as a crime. In order to know the best avenue is reading. Selective reading about your area of business is minimum required where as a more generic reading can broaden your mind and though process and makes you a better person.

Well, the common question asked is, can this be monetized. Sometimes yes but most often it gives us intangible benefits that cannot be really quantified. A well learned person gets respect from others. He also will find his confidence levels improved and will be ready for challenges in life. It also gives him maturity to deal with difficult situations life throws at us. This is one unique skill that can be cultivated without help from anyone.

Introspection:

We all rely on Annual Performance Appraisals, for identifying areas of improvement. Its experience that the feedback we await for year is grossly inadequate, outdated, and sometimes not even correct. Also it happens in some cases that we work under selfish bosses who care only about themselves and have no interest in our development. How do we tackle this shortfall? Introspection at regular intervals can help in bridging the gap.

What is introspection really? It is critically reviewing our performance against the goals we had in our vision. Here we have to be brutally honest about it as giving benefit of doubt in our favor is not going to help really. This has to be done at regular intervals such as biweekly, month or quarter. We need to make sure we note down the corrective actions and work up on them before next review. This process when done on a sustained basis, can provide magical results to your life and career. 

Life Skills for a Professional ( Part 1)

Survival of the fittest is the norm as per Charles Darwin. The same can be applied to professional work environment these days. Especially with increasing competition in work place where the smart newcomers are posing a serious question of existence to veterans aboard.  So what constitutes a winning combination of skills to be acquired by senior staff so that they can win (not just survive) Here are few observations from my side. As usual the disclaimer is these are personal opinions and so limited by my knowledge level and experience with Indian IT sector. 

Story Telling:  

A very important skill in today’s business is the art of telling a compelling story. You may be providing progress updates on your project, you may be trying to justify a design choice, you may be trying to pitch for a new project or you may be simply trying to face your manager in performance review – likelihood of your success improves if you are great narrator. Ofcourse the story should be backed by data, otherwise it would not fly.

A compelling narration tailor made to the audience will give you advantage over competition, as the impact it makes over clumsy presentation, technically overloaded content, indecisive audience. The Story that is well articulated, covers all dimensions, pre-empts the questions the audience might ask, objectively evaluates options can easily win in making the intended impact. So if there is one skill that you would like to pick up this year, it tops the list. 

Data Interpretation:

In day-to-day job we come across many numbers that need to look at, understand and make a decision. However, if we cannot interpret the numbers well, the decision can suffer. So the basic data interpretation skill to understand what the data is trying to suggest is of utmost importance. Unfortunately most decision made are based on intuition either for want of good data or due to inability to interpret the data at disposal.

“Lies, damned lies and Statistics” is the wisdom that tries to infer that numbers can be used to conceal the important facts. This is the second problem. We need to be able to ask relevant question and unravel the facts hidden behind the beautiful charts and graphs. This is gaining more importance at strategic levels in the organization. 

Active Listening:

Come on! We do all through our lives, you may say. Please understand I am talking about Active listening. My observation in meetings is people come decided to the meeting and listen to only parts of the conversation they want to hear and discard. Even worse, some people actually were just waiting for the person to finish so that they can recite their premeditated speech. Due to these problems, the important information that other people trying to convey/communicate is being lost without consideration. Active listening involves intent to understand, get other person’s view point and if necessary, to make amends to our line of thought.  It can help improve our knowledge and become better. 

Data Democratization - A Perspective

Couple of years ago, we were having following conversation in IT office.

Me: Guys, what does it take to end all our application data to our Enterprise Big Data Lake?

TM1: But why do we need to send it?  Nobody asked for it!

Me: That’s true but does it hurt us? Is it too much work?

TM1: It is not too much work but I am worried about who will see this data

TM2: That’s my worry too, if users access the data without understanding what it means.

TM1: Actually we have a reporting team who develops reports so if users want some data traditionally they ask us. We can give them canned reports anytime they need.

It brings a question to forefront, why are we overly protective about the data and its usage? I don’t blame the team members as that’s how traditionally things were run. Whenever business user wants data, they need to approach IT for a new report development. But we are now staring at a new paradigm. Users want democratized data which can be self-serviced without involving what they term as expensive, time consuming IT development.  But is it as fancy as it seems? Let’s inspect this case for democratization of data versus the traditional data aristocracy.

Why do we need it?

Firstly business needs it as in the traditional approach there are limitations in accessing data that is needed for making a decision. Only access users got to data is through a set of canned reports that are opened to users. This approach suffers serious limitations

• 1.    The canned reports are developed to cater to static business requirements that do not have flexibility to adapt to dynamic nature of business decisions. If we developed a report which answers the question of Top performing business lines and if user wants to make a decision about non-performing business lines, the report does not help anyways.

• 2.       While the new reports can be developed, they take time and money to see the light of the day

• 3.       Canned reports could not break the barriers of application-centric data silos enterprises created. If a decision involves data present in two different systems, we are facing multi-year, millions of dollar investment. Data that exists with the organization is not immediately consumable.

• 4.       Users relied on excel extract and manual crunching of numbers to get data needed on ad-hoc business needs. Thoughtful business users always asked for excel export option to all reports developed in BI systems.

• 5.       Also it is important to highlight that there were limitations from technology side when it comes to handling huge amount of data translating It into business insights.

• 6.       Extracting value out of unstructured data is not easy to accomplish

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Panacea?

Business users are excited every time they hear “Self-Service” BI as this gives them information they need without having to go through IT. IT is skeptical about business users skill levels in playing with data, despite the fact that they are well-versed with basic data Querying skills. However the advent of new technology enablers has made it possible to march progressively.

Technology Enablers:

Big Data: The advent of technologies like Hadoop which can handle big data without necessarily having to take care of intrinsic complexities of parallelism and distributed systems has come as a boon.

Data Lake:  Data warehouses have gone out of fashion. Data Lake is the new concept of hosting the enterprise data in one place accessible to users who need the data. Data can be ingested into the lake (which is powered by Big Data technologies) in raw format and can be made accessible to those who need. Traditional Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) processes have taken over by new Extract-Load-Transform (ELT) method. It is more than a jargon change. With ETL , business was under pressure to explain to IT what kind of transformations it needs before data can be loaded into warehouse. Now comes ELT , where business can give a one line answer to load everything as-it-is in the Source data format and worry about transformations when it.

Real-time: Real-time data exchange between applications is not new. Message Queues were serving the purpose for years. However the need of the hour is to handle massive amount of data that is being generated real-time. Technologies like Apache Kafka help in solving this problem.

Cloud: For smaller organizations that could not afford the infrastructure of scale, Cloud offerings help in getting the infrastructure and associated scalability without necessarily having to shell out huge bucks upfront.

Analytical Tools: A variety of tools have come into existence which can help users in coming up with insights. Features like mining useful information, discovery of patterns, machine learning algorithms that are enabled with the tools aid the users in finding valuable information without having to do lot of technical stuff.

     

Challenges:

We cannot rule out the challenges in data democratization in this new found excitement! Following aspects still need to be addressed.

Data Security:

While unfettered access to data to all is real fancy thing to achieve, exposing access to sensitive data can pose threats to the Organization. If this data happens to fall in hands of unauthorized users, it can be risky. So even in the new world of data democracy, Identity and Access Management protocols have to be put in place.

Data Quality:

There has to be a data quality thresholds defined and adhered to before the data can be consumed by wider groups within the organization. Any crucial decisions made with data that is not of good quality can potentially impact the top-line/bottom-line.

Overwhelming Data:

Having so much of data available can be twin edged sword. Users might get overwhelmed with the abundance at their disposal. Data Officers must be a full-time job to aid data ingestion protocols as well as consumption methods for the users.

Data Governance:

A board of data governance tea must be formed with involvement from various stakeholders. Data Governor who will be chairing the board must lay out procedures around how the data moves around the organization, quality metrics, how it must be consumed, what should be classification of information, which information should be restricted for general user etc.,

Data Dictionary:

Data element should be tagged with metadata and context it represents, in the absence of which it becomes extremely difficult for end users to make sense out of the data. Properly defined, robust and unambiguous semantic layer and created data dictionary is essential before exposing the data to general user.

Empowering the users:

Empowering the user to make use of the data accessible to them is critical success factor for this approach. Empowering also includes providing necessary tools, training and skills to the users so that they do not draw inaccurate conclusions from the data and, as a result make wrong decisions.

Involving IT:

In the entire paradigm shift, IT has a crucial but rather unconventional role to play. Success of this new future state mostly depends on adopting to new design and architecture patterns. Some of the conventional jobs in IT might get shrunk, if not eliminated. IT engineers have to redefine their roles that would suit the new landscape and find newer opportunities to help business.

As a summary, while data democracy is something that is good and achievable for benefit of challenging business dynamics, there are few things that need to be addressed at the framework level before it can become a reality. 

Feedback.. Please..

After working in corporate world for more than a decade, one thing I realize important is getting proper, timely, constructive and useful feedback. Honestly in past few years I don’t think I received feedback consistently from anybody except my wife. My wife always has feedback about what I say, do, dint say or didn’t doJ . Jokes apart, after amassing decade of experience, managers thinks you know it all. They assume you doing mistakes you are committing deliberately.  

Proper – The feedback should be given in a scheduled meeting so that the person comes prepared to receive it. It has to be done in a closed room where no one can listen to the conversation. It has to be verbal communication. Sending feedback in writing is required for documentation purpose but not adequate to communicate the message. Also giving feedback in front of the team to be strictly avoided.

Timely – Most managers observe the mistakes and wait for performance rating discussion. They would want to use this mistake as a weapon to justify the rating. But if the mistake is done in January, waiting till December conversations is not going to help the individual. He might commit more of the same mistake, assuming he is doing just fine.

Constructive – Lot of managers misunderstand feedback to rebuke. I have seen managers who shout in the name of giving feedback. In an urge to speak-up the mistake to be understood, they shout at the individual. Some managers in an attempt to be too nice, they won’t give any feedback. Neither is appropriate. Intent should be genuine concern on the staff to help him improve. Only constructive feedback explaining what he should have done better is going to help.

Useful – In delivering feedback, the focus should be on the improvement to be brought in, not on the mistake. Sometimes, managers attribute a collective mistake to one individual. As we cannot change the past, the focus should be on improvements to be made in future. 

I know people who have not received quality feedback in years. So if you have a manager who gives you feedback, you consider yourself lucky. Problem with feedback is receiver enters the room expecting praise for all the good stuff he did, giver comes prepared with mistakes committed. A quality feedback would comprise of a mix of acknowledgement, appreciation for the good efforts followed by improvement sought in matters that did not go too well.  Feedback is a luxury. So whenever you are given quality feedback, do not forget to say “Thank you!”. 

The King Returns!!

5 years is a long time. People age advances, especially for sports persons and athletes, 5 years is lot of time. That time frame can possibly end few careers. 2012 is when Roger won his last Wimbledon. He was 31 years old then. With dry years that followed when he left home slam-less, many predicted the end of Roger show. Some suggested he should be content with what he has achieved and hang up boots.

Though the results show he didn’t win any slams in the years 2013-16, the stats mislead us to believe Roger era is done. Roger made it to 5 major semifinals and 3 Finals. Only Novak and Murray have got better record than this. Roger has shown unbelievable temperament during his dry run that players of current generation must learn from. Despite criticism that he hasn’t won, he always maintained “I will play as long as I am enjoying the game”. He persisted and he provided treat to his fans by staying on. No one can deny the fact that most graceful and elegant tennis comes from his racket.

I don’t know how he felt during the period but it hurt his fans like me so much. Pained more so because he was playing flawless and most consistent form anyone would have dreamt about. But it is the same period when Novak peaked and Murray had got much awaited success in Slams who ended stopping Roger most times. In 2016, Roger took a break and did not compete in US open. This lead to new series of gossips and speculations that Roger is done.

2017 a new chapter has begun. Roger won Australian open. Icing on the cake is when he defeated his long time rival Rafa, whom some critics rate above Roger. The ticker that has paused in 2012 started ticking again. But the real ecstasy is when he participated in Wimbledon an won it without dropping a set. Yes I repeat competing with professionals who are on average 5 years/more younger to him and winning it without dropping a set in the tournament!!  Amazing!!

Roger’s turn around is not just amusing. It is embodiment of the wisdom that if we persist and do the right things , success will find us. He has proven to all that and proved his critics wrong, despite the fact that he has got nothing to prove.  King returns in Style!! And I await US open to see if he repeats the 3 slam years he has done earlier during his prime years. 

Link to an old blog on Roger http://sarathkrishna.blogspot.in/2010/07/wimbledon-final-with-out-roger.html

Why Learn Sanskrit?

If I have any complaints on my parents, it is this. They should have appointed a tutor for teaching me Sanskrit while in school. Even though I chose Sanskrit as one of the languages in XI and XII, Sanskrit is too vast to learn in 2 years of part time study. But it introduced me to beauty of language. I still remember the lesson on GoSeva (Service to Cow) by legendary Kalidas. I have been introduced him as greatest of the poets and ‘Upama Kalidasasya’ – translating to he made phenomenal use of Upama Alankara or simile. But unfortunately could not continue the love with the language during engineering days not because of lack of time but because of lack of focus.

It may appear outdated and out of fashion for someone to wanting to learn Sanskrit when the alternatives we have around are likes of French, Spanish, German. I actually know few people who consider Sanskrit as a dead language. It pains me to hear such things.

It comes back to basic question of why learn a new language. Fundamentally language is a means of communication. So on this front in order to converse in Sanskrit we need to have someone who only understands Sanskrit and no other languages we know like hindi, english and regional language. Argument holds good for likes of French as well. In one of his speeches veteran devotional speaker Shri Malladi Chandrasekhara Sastri Garu quipped “if you need to converse with God Sanskrit is the only medium. You can use English to send money orders not for conversation with God”. Some truth in it as most pujas are performed using Sanskrit and learning the language will help you perform it with cognizance rather than following instructions of priest.

Another reason could be to benefit from the rich knowledge repository in that language and its literature. Nothing beats Sanskrit here. Vedas, Upanishads, Kavyas  dramas and all probably the vast in the world and needs more than a life time to read. There used to be Rishi named Bhardwaja who wanted to study Vedas. He prayed to God and asked for 1000years of life so that h can study Vedas. After 1000years he is not done yet and so asked for another 1000. After next 1000 years, he asked God how much he completed. God has picked a handful of sand from a big heap and said you finished this much in 2000 years. That illustrates the vast nature of literature in Sanskrit, pity large portion of it is not available to us today and is still vast.

Employment opportunities is one reason for study for some. It doesn’t apply to me as I hold a job already. But I recently got to know that in the heart of the city I live in, we have 2 French tutors and in 6 km radius we could not find a Sanskrit tutor for the kids who have opted for that language. So there is plenty of opportunity here as well as in universities.

Some may disagree with me but I feel Sanskrit is easier to learn than likes of French. This is because most regional languages originated from Sanskrit and have many words borrowed from Sanskrit. So the learning and comprehending would not be too tough. On the other hand one needs to go through steep learning curve for other languages like French.

Given the merits associated with the language, I would suggest given an opportunity pursue study of Sanskrit. Also encourage your kids to study this alongside the curriculum prescribed by the contemporary education system. 

Appreciate what one has

People fail to appreciate what they have until they lose it and it is the norm of average human. Many a time we see colleagues who whine about the company and leave, only to realize the challenges exist everywhere. We see folks who do not pay attention to health in prime days and suffer illness. They regret later that they should have paid attention to body. “I felt sad that I had no shoe until I met a person who has no legs.”

It is easy to crib about tiny imperfections in our loved one. Little do we think about the positive value they add to our lives and how much vacuum our life would be when they are not around?

We find parents pressurizing the kids for not scoring top grades, comparing them with neighborhood kids.  They fail to appreciate the talents of their own kid and encourage them for the gifts they possess. While there is nothing wrong in expectations, excessive obsession and comparison is not good for the kids. Also the parents will appreciate the good fortune of having a normal kid as there are many parents who are not fortunate enough to have normal kids. There are many aspiring parents who visit temples, doctors alike to get blessed with child. If we think in those peoples perspective, we can appreciate how blessed we are.

We don’t appreciate life when we are alive. This is excellently put by Apple founder Steve Jobs after he is diagnosed with Cancer “Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

Once we realize this and start appreciating what we have, life would be beautiful. All the petty problems disappear and we feel blessed for having the life we have. 

Why Managers need to study Psychology ?

 When I studied graduation, we had a mandatory course on Psychology, which happens to be one of my favorite subjects. Little did I realize that the concepts come handy at a future date in personal life and more importantly at work place.

There is an application of psychology at every level in organization, but more importantly for people in managerial position need it in managing people working for them. Not many managers are fortunate to have a course in psychology in college. Also I feel organizations are doing little to train their aspiring and performing managers on psychology. This in turn leads to mistakes in understanding people in the roles assigned.

1)      Stick model of motivation is the only model:

Psychology text books contain this metaphor of a donkey that is carrying load. In order to make it move, there are two methods to motivate it to move. One is feeding it with a carrot as a reward. Other method is to hit it with a stick as a punishment for not moving. This is popularly known as Carrot and Stick model. Unfortunately, lot of managers think staff perform only when they are subject to fear and in face of punishment. Little do they understand that there are situations and individuals who get demotivated by overdose of punishment.

2)      Senior members do not need be motivated:

Managers expect the senior members or middle level managers to be self-motivated. Self-motivated individuals usually draw motivation from the work, the challenge, the task and various other things. But the managers fail to understand that in absence of motivating factors around and at lean patches in careers, even the self-motivated seniors need to be motivated.

3)      How we make a person feel:

Managers at times underestimate and at worst fully ignore how they make the person feel. Making remarks in front of a broader group belittling a certain person, does not help anyone. It not only demotivates person, but also make him feel ignored, undervalued. So managers have to be very careful about the impact their negligent remarks have on their staff.

4)      Pat on the back:

When a staff performs some good work, manager thinks he just did his job. This can put-off the staff who is expecting some nice words about the good work done by him.

5)      Assuming everyone has same priorities in life:

This is the common mistake made. There will be staff who can afford to devote lot of their time to work either due to their ambitions, life stage or priorities. Assuming and expecting everyone to have same set of priorities will only be detrimental.

6)      Gender Sensitivity:

Common mistake made by some managers is to deliver unisex response to both gender staff in all situation. Unfortunately they think that they are being fair by being gender neutral. Study of psychology can help understand how each gender takes things,

These are just a subset of many other places where study of Psychology can help managers perform their job better.

What makes Rama so great?

Ramayan is the timeless epic and the very name means the journey of Rama. The journey of Rama becomes so impactful because fundamentally his journey based itself on two legs – Satya and Dharma. I just want to highlight few points in Rama’s life where he has gone against the easier options to make sure Satya/Dharma are held upright.

1)      Episode of Viswamitra: -  Rama did not hesitate a second to follow Sage Viswamitra, just because his father asked him to do so. He did not complain that he is being asked to sleep on the rock/sand/mud floors as opposed to his usual routine of sleeping in well-made and well-maintained princely bed rooms. He did not hesitate a second to kill demon Thataki. He mentions to Viswamitra that because my father asked me to follow you and do anything you say, I am killing this demon. Period.

2)      Marriage with Sita:- As Rama broke the Holy bow of Lord Siva, it is evident that he is eligible to get married to Sita. King Janaka offered Sita to Rama, which is not easy to say no given beauty of Princess Sita. Rama showed immense maturity at that tender age by saying to King Janaka, that matter as significant as his marriage is a decision of his father and not his own.

3)      Episode of relinquishing throne:- This is a tough one. As the eldest son of the king Dasaradha, he would have known subconsciously that he is to become the king one day. Now when all of a sudden, his fortunes deceive him and he is asked not only to relinquish the throne but also asked to leave the kingdom to hardships of forest. Rama maintained his composure in that situation and followed the instructions of his father without any hue and cry. This is the defining moment of Ramayan.

4)      Episode of Bharata:- Bharata, the son of Kaika, gave an irresistible option to Rama to comeback to kingdom. Rama politely refused it stating that he cannot go back on his word. This situation he has successfully conquered the temptation of riches offered by Bharata by sticking to his path.

5)      Making Ravan as enemy:- Rama has shown his confidence by choosing to fight with Ravan. Ravan is a seasoned warrior and has an acclaim of defeated even the Gods, but that did not invoke any fear in Rama.

6)      Making Sugreeva as friend:- Rama is cognizant of the fact that Sugriva is himself in doldrums and if he chooses Vali as his friend his search of Sita would be easy. But he stood by Sugreeva and not by Vali as Vali is not in path of Dharma.

7)      Agnipravesh:- To me this is the toughest test Rama has faced in his life. Even today people find fault with Rama. I found one of the best interpretations in “Ramayana Kalpavriksham” by Telugu Poet Viswanatha Satyanarayana Garu. As per the poet, the test is not for Sita, it is a test for Rama himself. He is facing a challenge that is two-fold- one if he chooses to accept Sita without proving her purity, future generation might find fault with Sita. Secondly if he subjects her to the test, the future generation will admonish him. So he chose the option that will hold Sita upright at the risk he being ridiculed. Thus giving a chance for every tom, dick and harry to criticize him, who is a perfect individual all through his life. 

Memories

I still remember going over the pictures of my childhood over and over again while growing and then as an adult. I made sure to show them to my friends while in college. Then when I got married I have shown them to my wife. Then comes my daughter and I have shown them as well. In all there are at most 20 pictures of my childhood that are stored as memories. Obviously as it is only 20 pictures, people enthusiastically went over them every time I showed them.

Then there were two dozen pictures of us visiting Hampi and Warangal. As the camera reel is limited, my father made sure all the important aspects of architecture were covered and of course me and my sister got equal (or nearly equal) chance of getting into the picture. We stored them as sweet memories. Whenever I take a glance at the album, it brings me back the architecture of Vijayanagaram and Kakatiya empires in front of my eyes.

Now comes ubiquitous mobile cameras and other digital photography, combined with madness of social networking. We started capturing everything just for the heck of it. Sometimes in a rat race just to use the picture as an excuse to post in social network when we really have got nothing to say. Pictures which served as memories, stopped being so when we started capturing everything we do. 

We see a dozen pictures posted on social network of people eating out and the dishes they chose to eat. I cannot really understand why “eating” is a memory, for a person who eats 3 meals a day. I can understand if the person comes from country like Somalia where eating 3 meals a day a luxury.

We get hundreds of likes and comments from friends. I don’t want to sound sexist but the truth is fairer sex gets more likes. I see people uploading 100 pictures in one go and honestly I feel bored after looking at 4^th or 5^th pic. I seriously wonder if the persons who liked and commented on the album, have really taken all the time to see them or just responding as Social Network courtesy.

Then comes Selfies. Oh my God, I am not exaggerating if I say that there are people who take 100 selfies in a day. I wonder if selfies have taken away business from mirror manufacturers. While it is not a bad idea to record how I looked like at a specific point in time, I feel it is an overkill if we try to record how I looked like at every point in time. Result? May be Gigabytes and Petabytes of pictures produced every year and giving business to BigData technologies.

One other thing with selfies is people making faces while taking them. Twisted mouth, slanted face, funny expressions. My grandmother innocently asked if the person has a twisted mouth while looking at someone’s selfie.

But frankly, in this huge dump of pictures, if I really wanted to extract a specific memory how difficult it is going to be?  Technology made it easy to capture memories. However, with inappropriate usage of technology we are creating more junk and thus making it difficult to mine good memories from huge pile of data. 

Your freedom ends where my nose begins

I have come across this story in school. An interesting one and even more relevant today with everyone is free to do what they want, but very few understand the limits of such freedom. The story goes like this

London historically is a city with unpredictable rains. So people used to carry umbrella all the time while going out. There is one gentleman who is walking on the streets with his umbrella in hand. Lost in his thoughts, he starts casually waving his hand to and fro while taking small steps towards his destination. As he sped ahead, the waving of hand gains equal momentum and unfortunately the umbrella hits the nose of the other gentleman coming from behind. They both start an altercation.

First Gentleman: “What is your problem? It is my hand and my umbrella and I am free to wave it as per my wish”

Second Gentleman: “I have no contention about your freedom. However, you must note that your freedom ends where my nose begins”

Wonderful statement isn’t it?  We are free to do what we want so long as it does not hurt anyone directly or indirectly. Most of our actions are not executed in isolation. As social animals we are, our actions have an impact to others. It could be affecting someone in the family, friends, neighborhood, nation or the society in general. We must be cognizant of this and take utmost care that our actions do not lead to detrimental effect on others.