River Tern Lodge - Jungle Resorts & Lodges

Work has kept me outside Bangalore and mostly outside India for the past few months. I finally found one weekend (23rd and 24th Oct) and a Friday when I had no work that couldn't wait. So I took the Friday off and we hit the road for a drive. Jungle Lodges & Resorts Limited (JLR) is a government of Karnataka initiative. They currently have 14 resorts, all in Karnataka and all in jungles/ national parks/ sanctuaries. A friend recommended the River Tern Resort. This resort is in Karnataka's Chikmagalur (literally, place of young daughters) district, which is north-west of Bangalore in the Western Ghats. It is situated at the entry to the Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary. This sanctuary/national park is fairly large as parks go…it’s around 490sqkm, which is slightly less than Corbett (520sqkm). The Bhadra reservoir is unusually large at 196sqkm. With a mean depth of 190 feet, that’s a lot of fresh water. This reservoir is the result of a dam on the Bhadra river, the river goes on to form the Tungabhadra river which later merges into the Krishna river. Like most peninsular rivers in India, it flows from west to east.

For those of you who believe like I do that the journey is the destination, the road is as important as the resort itself so I'll dwell at fair length on the road. The resort is around 280 km from Bangalore, which is a drive of around 6 hours. 2 of those 6 hours are to extricate yourself from Bangalore, or to get into it on your return. You drive out of Bangalore towards the Tumkur highway, which for me meant driving past the Hebbal flyover and going straight on (ignoring the oft taken right that leads to the airport J) past Nilamangala and finally hitting the highway. It took me ~50km just to hit the highway. The drive on the highway is all too brief – only another ~40km at which point you take a bypass to Shimoga well before Tumkur. Thereafter, the road ceases to have a divider in between and you have a single lane of traffic on either side of the road. But it’s a fair stretch of road almost right through till the resort barring a 2 km stretch where the rains have really taken a toll. For most of the single lane road, I averaged 80 kmph and even did 100 at stretches where I could see long stretches of empty road ahead. The road is ok to drive at speeds more than 100kmph but I cap out my driving at that speed since I don’t think I have control above that mark – at least not in my Swift.

Like most JLR joints, the agenda is for a single night’s stay. You reach around noon, go for a jeep safari in the evening and either trek or do a boat safari the next morning. You finish breakfast and check out around 11 AM. So in two days I drove 580 km, which is a fair bit on the road but it isn’t very taxing since the weather for the most part is pleasant, punctuated by the occasional mild drizzle. The sanctuary is famous for the river tern (bird) and the Gaur (Bison). There are a few tigers, cheetahs and around 200 elephants. The ideal season to visit if your primary intent is to watch the wildlife is in March – May (summer) when most of the water holes dry up and all predators as well as prey come to the limited perennially filled water holes to slake their thirst. If you intent is not wildlife particularly but to get some nice weather, take in the jungle air and get an eyeful of lush greenery then around this time (post monsoon) is a good time.

Here are some photos of the resort. I’d strongly recommend it for a weekend break from Bangalore.

Signboard at the gate:

The entrance to the resort:

A solitary bird:

Birds on every branch, and one little thing in the water:

A Deer

Saturday Surprise

I was rummaging yesterday through some of the boxes I hadn't ever opened since I moved to Bangalore a year ago and I found a CD with no tag or identification of what I'd recorded on it. I have this habit of burning songs on CDs that I play in my car stereo (since it doesn't connect directly to my ipod). I played it and realized it was something I used to play for months in my car stereo in 2008. It contains some of the best songs in a single CD...somehow the mood a collection of songs can create and sustain depends on a thread between them, and in this CD I seemed to have got that thread right. It has an eclectic mix of 39 songs like Hazard (Marx), Comfortably Numb (Floyd), Aerosmith's I don't wanna miss a thing (from the movie Armageddon), How Could an Angel (Kenny G with someone), Patience (GNR), Wish it would rain down (Phil Collins) and those two songs (which I think are some of the best sounds I've heard in Rock) - Lynrd Skynrd's Sweet Home Alabama and Freebird.

After coming to Bangalore and getting mired in a job that really takes its toll - it doesn't leave a single day when you're totally off work - I had decided around Christmas last year that I needed to treat myself to something that I could enjoy, which could really help me switch off from work. I invested the biggest single amount I've ever invested in an asset, buying an extremely refined self assembled music system. There are two floor-standing KEF speakers that stand around 4 feet tall (IQ90) and link with a Denon Amplifier and a source (the source too is a Denon, that sits on top of the amplifier). While I had initial misgivings that I'd probably blown too much money, after I've installed it I haven't felt a single moment of regret. The sound is really refined and the best part is when I hear songs I've heard several times before, I realize they contain sounds that I totally missed out before - specially underlying sounds like the bass guitar. My earlier music system was one of those well advertised Sony Hi Fi 5000 watt PMPO MHC -RV-60 with four speakers. After hearing the new assembled system, I think all other integrated systems like Sony or JVC and their ilk are just power and very little else.

I have a lazy sunday ahead...hearing this cd again today and trying to finish an extremely putdownable and obese novel by Ken Follet called Hornet Flight that I started reading on a flight. I had put a photo on facebook of an Epiphone hummingbird guitar I'd bought in NY. It plays really really well. I was trying this song late last night from Wake Up Sid "Goonja sa hai koi ektaara" which has a prominent G Major running through it. Someday I'll record it and put in on youtube so you can hear the sound...it has a really good sustain for an acoustic guitar and the sound is much clearer than my earlier yamaha (which I'll use now as my travel guitar).

Radio Blues

I've most certainly blogged about this before. My preferred means of waking up is to a radio alarm. I love to wake up with music. I'm the deep sleeping kind of species, so the music first seems like a dream, then ever so slowly my senses kind of wake up to the tune first, the beat next and finally the language. Even when I'm fully awake, lyrics don't get to seep through, somehow. Of late, I've been hearing music with vague time signatures - you know, the kinds that aren't normal 4/4 beats but 10/8 like some of Yanni's pieces, or this Finnish band called Varttina that seems to specialize in 7/4 beats.

Radio stations in Bangalore have definitely changed since I left Bangalore earlier in the decade. Now there are no solely English speaking RJs - they all speak a blend of English and Kannada - more Kannada than English. Most of the FM stations are dedicated totally to Kannada. I think prioritizing your regional language to preserve culture/heritage etc is all fine and important, but you can't coerce an entire city that's fairly multi-cultured to hear nothing but Kannada. There has to be some kind of balance. These glib Kannada speaking RJs alternately seem to play Hindi, Kannada and English songs as interchangeably as they speak different languages. Bangalore as I remember it during 2000-2002 was definitely not this way.

The saving grace is that I set my alarm for 6 AM, which is before these RJs come on air so I get to hear music - eclectic as you might guess, but still passable. This morning I heard some Ram bhajan which was nice, and then it was followed by the unmistakable sound of Rock, in a pentatonic scale. I'm ok with that unannounced switch to Rock from Hindustani classical - anything seems better than an RJ that speaks three languages, all three of them severely accented.

With due respect to regional cultures and languages, I think we need to respect the fact that other cultures too have developed music worth hearing. I don't at all think its a slur to our culture to agree that Jazz or The Blues are heavenly forms of music. So why can't the city have just one station dedicated to playing rock, or jazz or blues? We can have 5 FM channels belting out the latest Kannada hits.

There's space for all.

New Beginnings

It’s tough to believe it’s been two months and more since I last posted. In these two months, I shifted from Delhi to Bangalore – within the same company, but a larger and more onerous role in the HQ. Much of my life so far has been nomadic…I don’t have any one city I can confidently call home because my dad was a banker and we used to keep shifting cities every 2-3 years when we were kids and right through college. So I’m not prone to getting nostalgic and weepy about any city.

That said, I definitely miss Delhi – I lived there 5 full years. I miss Khan Market. I miss GK1 and Kailash Colony Market and most of all Lajpat Nagar’s central market. I miss the drives to Gurgaon and to Noida. Somehow Lajpat Nagar will always strike a chord…I never lived there, but I learnt my first guitar chords there at my guitar tutor’s place. I also learned to drive a car there when I took a 7 day refresher course – my driver made a beeline for Lajpat Nagar since the roads were narrow and always packed, and they offered the best learning. As time goes, I know I won’t miss it all that much. It will instead become a memory of the past, with each location in Delhi cherished for the time I spent there. Amongst all the cities I’ve lived in, counting Abu Dhabi in, I’d rate Delhi the best.

My new role is very different from the one I was handling in Delhi. I will have absolutely no travel now, within or outside India. The hours these guys put in here are unbelievable – most Saturdays and Sundays are spent at work, and technology has gotten even smarter. Even the office instant messenger is always wired on so I’m always just a ping away. I definitely don’t like this role – I’ve taken it with the clear intention of learning a few skills (three, to be precise) which I don’t have and I want to learn and I’ll hopefully have that done within 4 quarters. I don’t suppose I’d want to endure 7 day working weeks for longer than one year. I’m not cribbing – the move was by choice. I elected for this. And I’m counting the learning and the days. I plan to take stock every week and the last stock take will hopefully be week number 52.

I’m staying at a lovely apartment. It’s very spacious and has a large swimming pool and one of the best gym’s I’ve seen. I use the gym at least twice a week (Sat and Sun) and try to squeeze in a third day during the week if I wake up early. There are two balconies in my flat. One of them opens out of my bedroom. The view is of a small landscaped garden, and then the perimeter of the apartment complex. I have two bright red chairs in my balcony (both without arm rests) specifically to sit and strum my guitar. I guess the residents in all 12 floors of my block have heard me play – because I play at the dead of the night. Even if I return home at 1 AM, I play for 20 minutes and then crash to sleep. I don’t play all that well yet, but it sounds regular and feels indescribably good.

I will post more regularly now onwards. I’ve missed you guys – Scribble, … and Mukta.

Farish bashing

This is a really interesting read....an article that appeared in 2005. I don't know if I can generalize this about all educational courses - but when I did my CA, we had a precious 2.5 to 3 months of leave to prepare for our exams - that was all, and we had to begin by cleaning the dust off the study material. And we had intentions of getting an all India rank too. With that kind of an ask, basic intelligence told us that we needed to focus on areas where the marks were loaded. So even in the most unpredictable of papers like that on Direct Taxes (which is a mind-numbing subject), there was a clearly discernible pattern of where the marks were stacked and we learned those topics really well. Predictably, I did get an all India rank. Equally predictably, none of what I studied is at all relevant in my working life. The bane of modern education....and here is how it all began. An excerpt from the link above which contains the whole article:

"The model of education from its earliest times was one of mentorship, starting with hunter-gatherers taking their children out on the hunt 100,000 years ago, all the way up to the teaching methods employed at the university founded by Thomas Jefferson. The teacher and the students got to know one another. They interacted constantly throughout the day. The teacher knew each child, had a clear vision of each child's understanding of the coursework, and worked with each child (or encouraged them to work with each other) until the teacher was satisfied each child understood the material ... or was hopelessly incapable of being educated. Because this latter was virtually an admission of failure on the part of the teacher, it happened rarely.

When a student graduated, the most impressive thing she or he could share with a prospective employer was not a Grade Point Average (GPA) or even the name of the institution attended: it was the name of the teacher. Students of the great teachers of history often became famous themselves because of the thoroughness with which their mentors had inculcated knowledge, understanding, skill, and talent in them.

This is how things went from 98,000 BC to roughly 1800 AD. Then came William Farish.

William Farish was a tutor at Cambridge University in England in 1792, and, other than his single contribution to the subsequent devastation of generations of schoolchildren, is otherwise undistinguished and unknown by most people.

Getting to know his students, one may suppose, was too much trouble for Farish. It meant work, interacting and participating daily with each child. It meant paying attention to their needs, to their understanding, to their styles of learning. It meant there was a limit on the number of students he could thus get to know, and therefore a limit on how much money he could earn.

So Farish came up with a method of teaching which would allow him to process more students in a shorter period of time. He invented grades. (The grading system had originated earlier in the factories, as a way of determining if the shoes, for example, made on the assembly line were "up to grade." It was used as a benchmark to determine if the workers should be paid, and if the shoes could be sold.)

* Grades did not make students smarter. In fact, they had the opposite effect: they made it harder for those children to succeed whose style of learning didn't match the didactic, auditory form of lecture-teaching Farish used. * Grades didn't give students deeper insights into their topics of study. Instead, grades forced children to memorize by rote only those details necessary to pass the tests, without regard to true comprehension of the subject matter. * Grades didn't encourage critical thinking or insight skills, didn't promote questioning minds. Such behaviors are useless in the graded classroom, and within a few generations were considered so irrelevant that today they're no longer listed among the goals of public education.
* Grades didn't stimulate the students, or share with them a contagious love for the subject being studied. The opposite happened, in fact, as the normative effect of grades acted as a muffling blanket to any eruptions of enthusiasm, any attempts to dig deeper into a topic, any discursions into larger significance or practical application of content.

What grades did do, however, was increase the salary of William Farish, while, at the same time, lowering his workload and reducing the hours he needed to spend in the classroom. He no longer needed to burrow into his students' minds to know if they understood a topic: his grading system would do it for him. And it would do it just as efficiently for twenty children as it would for two hundred.

Farish brought grades to the classroom, and the transformation was both sudden and startling: a revolution as rapid and overwhelming as the Industrial Revolution from which it had sprung. Within a generation, the lecture-hall/classroom shifted from a place where one heard the occasional speech by a famous thinker to the place of ordinary daily instruction.

While grades didn't help students a bit - and, in fact, had the now well-known effect of "dumbing down" entire nations - they vastly simplified the work of teachers and schools. So they spread across Europe and to America with startling speed, arriving here in the early 1800s.

Without grades, the assembly-line-classroom would not be possible. With grades, whole categories of children were discovered who didn't fit onto the conveyer belt, providing an entire new realm of employment for' adults who would diagnose, treat, and remediate these newly-discovered "learning disabled" children.

Responsibility for the success of learning shifted from teachers to students: when kids failed, it was their own fault, because they obviously had a defect or disorder of some sort.

A process of sorting and discarding the misfits began Oust like in the shoe factory) which, to this day, rewards the "standard" and wounds the "different."

William Farish gained, but something precious was lost to generations of students thereafter: the mentored learning experience."

Selections from the weekend

This is one hell of a year...there are some 5 three-day weekends. Long, lazy, three day weekends. I did the stuff I reserve for my weekends....6 hours of accumulated guitar play over Friday and Saturday. And lots of reading over cups of steaming green mint-tea. Here are some of the interesting mail forwards/articles I've read:

1) An absolute must-see link on youtube. It won second place in a video contest titled "u@50" and was submitted by a 20 year old. I wonder what won first place, if this is so good! Hear this with your speakers on.

2) The Harvard Business Review of May 2009 has an article featuring an interview with J Richard Hackman, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University. The article is titled "Why teams DON'T work" and is about a book the Professor wrote titled "Leading Teams". The book begins with a question: "When people work together to build a house, will the work probably (a) get done faster, (b) take longer to finish, or (c) not get done?

The answer really depends on the nature of the team. Some of the truths you cannot but help agree with in the article are these: The team composition (if that is in your hands) needs to be hand-picked to have skills that complement each other's expertise. The team needs to have one single, compelling direction. Articulating, and refreshing the team's understanding of that articulation is critical. The presence of what the Prof calls "Deviants" is critical to the success of a team. A deviant is a person who questions "Why are we doing this at all?". A team that just has doers will stagnate at a set level of performance unless deviants exist. Now the problem with these kinds of research articles is that your brain picks up points that you can identify with. So the points I noted above are what struck a chord with me. You might not find these points to be extremely path-breaking, but you'll surely get some relevant and unique insight if you read the article yourself.

3) Want to top the world in your chosen sphere? Check out this link at the New York Times' website. It's somewhat similar to an article I posted some months ago - it states that Einstein, Mozart and Dante were not born geniuses blessed with abilities beyond the realm of ordinary human beings. Its 10,000 hours of deliberate, intelligent and necessarily boring practice. I believe this. Totally. Every great sportsman has made it that way through these hours of practice. A musician class mate (from college) is getting this way through very deliberate practice of the weak points in his tabla play. The big difference is mere practice versus intelligent practice . That ability to break down work areas into their elements and work on each element before it becomes habit is critical.

4) Finally, a guy called Peter Lawrence has written a book called "The Happy Minimalist". Peter himself worked at HP, retired last year at 44, and lives his spartan life in a two room condo with no bed, no TV, an ironing table that doubles up as a writing table where his laptop sits. The book itself is about that lifestyle and its simple joys. The lifestyle itself seems to be an idea he took from the way Mark Hurd (the CEO of HP) runs the company - he pared down the extravagances and cut down everything to its minimal required design. Now, I am not the kind of guy who's ever going to retire at any age even if I'm offered half the world as my kingdom. I need to do something with my head or I'd go mad. But you needn't view this article as a retire-early helplist, it can just be read to help you retire from a job you dont enjoy and instead do something else you do enjoy, even if that doesnt pay very much. Note - I haven't read the book, I've just read a gushing in-depth review of the book and I think it makes imminent sense.

PS - Much of the six hours of playing the guitar were done last night as a slight drizzle spread over Delhi. The chords of E Major, Esus2, Esus4 and G Major make for a great sound together.

Another Weekend Getaway

Friday was Easter and that made it a three day weekend. 8 of us who’d had about as much as we could endure of work pressures decided to hit the road and drive to the mountains. The place we chose was Ranikhet in Uttaranchal’s Almora district. Its around 370 kilometres from Delhi. The journey is the destination in such short trips so we drove to Ranikhet via Ramnagar and Jim Corbett National Park which was a tedious route with some 4 hours of ascent. We came back via Kathgodam, which cut the descent to just under 2 hours.

The good thing about Ranikhet is that you don’t get there with a list of places to see and museums/forts to gawk at. You just land up there and soak in the atmosphere and that’s exactly what we did. The only time we went out of the resort was to do some rock climbing to a height of 130 feet and rappelling back down the same cliff. That was really fun.

The rest of the time in the resort went by in fairly unremarkable fashion…lot of snooker, table tennis, cards, scrabble, etc and the drinks flowed. And lots of photos of course. Most of these are taken from the resort.

Sunrise near the Nanda Devi mountain:

 

View of the Nanda Devi/Trishul peaks beyond the immediate  mountains. you have an ~250 km view of snow capped mountains rising beyond the immediate Kumaon/Garhwal hills.

 

The rock climbing site. Now this isn’t the greatest of images with the light playing havoc, but it gives a true representation of the incline.

Its a wonder how refreshing such a short trip can be!

Road Blues

We have an office in Greater Noida and I went there today for the first time. I was fascinated my the sheer breadth of the Noida-Gr Noida expressway. Flat 6 lane highways are a driver's delight. For some strange reason as you actually enter Greater Noida there's a flyover where the road becomes a four lane affair for a brief while before widening out again. All in all it felt like driving on American highways...vast stretches of straight roads with supermarkets or stores a good distance off the sidewalk.

The day ended with a dinner at The Great Kebab Factory in Noida, before heading back to Delhi. If the expressway was a driver's delight, coming via the BRT till you reach the Chirag Dilli flyover is as much a driver's nightmare.

Agreed, reams have been written about the BRT and how flawed it is. But I have to contribute today to the chorus. Firstly, a picture of this monumental disaster for the uninitiated - just watch the buses ambling around in the BRT corridor and the cramped traffic on the right hand side of the road:

I will never cease to wonder how the mental processes of people that plan these kinds of disasters work. I had a mail forward of the Trans Milenio BRT in Bogota, Columbia a few days ago. That BRT is supposed to be the lifeline of Bogota. Agreed, Bogota has a tenth of Delhi's population. But that doesn't mean a BRT can't work in cities that are ten times larger. Conceptually a BRT is a swell idea. It has all the right intentions of converting car traffic to buses to reduce road congestion, pollution and sheer traveling time. But the way the Columbians did it was very different from saddi dilli ("they" below refers to the Columbians):

1) They widened the roads first, before taking away two lanes in the middle for buses. We did nothing of the kind in Delhi.
2) They connected the BRT to dense human traffic areas. In Delhi, the bus stop is at the cross roads where you have the Siri Fort park on one side (no human population) and on the Archana complex side, you have a posh GK1 (very few people living in GK1 would ever dream of boarding a delhi city bus). Effect: no switchover of traffic to buses. Normal traffic plies beside the BRT.
3)They had separate bicycle lanes for people to ride to the BRT station and parking facilities to leave your car or bike there. In Delhi, we don't have separate lanes for bicycles. People ride bicylces at their own peril. There are no parking facilities anywhere near the BRT.

Now it doesnt take a wizard to figure out that with 1 ,2 and 3 above going wrong, we had the perfect recipe for a disaster: Serpentine queues of non bus traffic going green with envy watching barely loaded buses plying lithely alongside in a privileged corridor (the buses are green coloured too, incidentally).

I've vented enough now and am back to my normal high spirits. I guess, every story has a positive side to it: if nothing else, this BRT must make bus drivers smile.

A wonderful world

I watched the Aussie Open men's singles on Sunday. What the match itself lacked in terms of quality was more than made up by the complete display of emotions and gentlemanliness in the post match ceremony.

Here's a picture from the nytimes that says it all...a victorious Nadal and a weeping Federer.

Its never a pretty sight to see a grown man cry but this time you felt you could excuse him for it, given the history of this rivalry. But what makes it different is the photo below of Nadal consoling Federer in public, and this quote from Nadal referring to Federer's breakdown in a post match conference: "...It shows his human side. But in these moments, when you see a rival, who is also a comrade, feeling like this, you enjoy the victory a little bit less.”

And the last song I heard at night before calling it a day was the almost-divine gravelly voice of Louis Armstrong singing "Its a wonderful world".

You feel so, sometimes.

New Year Musings

The most beautiful week in the whole year is undisputedly the one from 25th Dec to 1st Jan when all is well on earth and the gods are happy in their heavens. I obviously had my plans for the week, but there were other ideas in store - the seasonal flu that normally comes in with the onset of every winter hadn't happened in early Dec this year. It was lying low, to rear its head in this week.

I don’t know if it happens with you but my mental faculties take a complete break when I’m unwell. I remember trying to think “clearly” about my new year resolution and each resolution kept echoing and graying out into peripheral kinds of hues. All I had was four resolutions but attempting to think about it made it feel like there were a 100 of them. I finally had to reduce it to black and white on a piece of paper so it looked crisp - and DOABLE. Resolution #1 is humming along nicely, which was to continue the good work of going to the gym/hitting the track atleast thrice a week…I’ve managed 3 days out of 5 days so far in the new year which is a great start considering I was swathed in wool on the 1st.

But all told and done, I’m now back to the pink of health and I intend to make good on every lost moment with a vengeance by taking a forced leave before end April – I’m setting my eyes on a road trip from Delhi-Manali-Leh-Kargil. If the Zojila (which is my favorite place on all this whole wide earth) opens up by April, I can even do Kargil-Srinagar by road. [My happiest moments in life were those when I was perched at various vantage points along the Zojila in three different years (2006, 2007 and 2008)…I have whole albums just containing views from the Zojila – that’s how mad I am about the place. I guess the Zojila is more than photography…I can shoot there all my life but I’ll never succeed in capturing either the sheer magnitude or the feeling the place gives me].

The only thing I did during the run up to the new year was finish reading Tim Bouquet and Byron Ousey’s thriller-style account of L.N. Mittal’s take over of Arcelor – it’s a book titled “Cold Steel”. Neither Tim nor Byron sadly has the art of telling a story well. They introduce all the characters on each bid team in one go – which is about the surest way to make the reader get confused the very next time he comes across the character. And the names themselves don’t help – they’re strange names like Yoel Zaoui and Pierre-Yves Chabert to give you a sample. But one thing that did manage to penetrate through despite Messrs Bouquet and Byron’s obvious lack of experience in writing a novel and my own flu was the fact that it’s great to have some kind of purpose that drives you - even if that goal is as wordly as becoming the only producer of 10% of the world's steel output. ArcelorMittal seems to be the only company that manages this feat in a fragmented global steel industry. Without goals, actions aren't liklely to be cohesive or inclined towards any particularly great end. Now, this bit about the importance of goals is something of a known fact, but it hits hard in this book.

That seems to be the right note to end this post on. Wishing you all a very happy new year!

News and Views

Do you like your news to be statements of fact, or do you like it spiced up with oodles of interpretation and imagination? I like to be on top of news, and that starts off with an hour every morning poring over the Delhi edition of the Times of India. And then electronic media takes over - I browse Google news, BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, WSJ, Nytimes, etc. When Google news wasn’t around, I was a frequent visitor to Newstrove, a kind of news aggregator which is pretty much what google news does. Across all these various media/sites, I can’t help notice a very discernible pattern: we Indians seem to like our news liberally garnished with views.

Take the ToI – it prides itself on giving its news with its views. The views may be wrong in many cases, but it doesn’t deter ToI one bit. The TV news channels CNN/IBN, Aajtak etc seem to revel in gory footage and loud reporters airing their theories on what might have transpired. You saw Barkha Dutt on NDTV gasping out information as she walked into a gutted Oberoi building in Bombay after the recent disaster there. This penchant for spicing up info seems to pervade across the more arcane world of business channels too. The RBI governor cut the repo and reverse repo rates today. Both steps generally mean a reduction in rates commercial banks would charge their customers (call it the Prime Lending Rate or PLR), and therefore an expected boost to liquidity. But these consequences are gradual and not immediate...commercial banks don’t slash PLR by 100 basis points for every 100 basis point reductions in repo rates/reverse repo rates. Commercial banks’ PLRs are a function of their deposit/lending mix and some competitive pressure. But the interviewer on CNBCTV18 (Lata) would have none of it. She insisted on grilling Chanda Kocchar (ICICI), Keki Mistry (HDFC) and Chakravarthy (PNB) on the same issue of when they would follow the rate cut with a cut in PLR despite being told in no uncertain terms that PLR is a market determined rate.

This contrasts so vividly with the BBC news. They air known and established events. They don’t speculate. This gets a tad boring for most Indian viewers. And why do I generalize that Indians like their news with views? I think its basic economics – supply exists because demand exists. That explains why we see so many of these look-alike/sound-alike channels like CNN/IBN, Aajtak etc. There’s another interesting law in economics. Say’s law states “supply creates its own demand”. I know the argument gets like the chicken and egg syndrome. But the outcome is clear.

Get Rich Ideas

I've spent the better part of the weekend prowling around moneycontrol. I'm convinced after having invested major tranches last week that the way to relatively quick riches is to save 60%-70% of current incomes in stocks that are languishing right now. Disciplined investing of this 60%-70% every month should see solid returns once the market lifts from the gloom in 3-5 years. I think Indian markets will continue to be undervalued through 2009 with elections, and a hung parliament being the most likely outcome. Metal stocks are in free-fall mode right now, and are prominent on my watch list.

I did go to watch Dostana too. The movie is a disaster, with its only saving grace being a refreshingly fit John Abraham and a ravishing Priyanka Chopra. But you've basically had as much as you can endure within the first 30 minutes.

I'm reading a book called "Cold Steel". Its about L. N. Mittal's bid for Arcelor in 2006 and is positively gripping. Its unusual for business books to grip, but this one does because its written like a thriller. The whole industry is in doldrums with ArcelorMittal shares at around $18 at close of play Friday in NY. With utilization at 65% of capacity, they must have serious problems. Only the banking industry seems to be worse affected.

Of Human Bondage

My saga of reading this book finally ended nearly 3 weeks after I began. I loved the book. I think it should straightaway go as one of the best I've read. I am partial to one particular book of Enid Blyton called 'The Enchanted Wood', and one of Wodehouse called 'Money in the Bank' which have remained favorites for years for sheer imagination and charming humour. This book has neither humour nor imagination...its about life. And it certainly beats anything I've read on that subject. Here are the broad phases I went through

1) First 300 pages - heartily cursed Somerset Maugham and every author who had anything positive to say about him. A writer/critic called Cyril Connelly writes on the back cover of the book "Here at last is a great writer". And Gabriel Garcia Marquez chips in saying "One of my favorite authors". Mental notes made that I need to steer clear of C. Connelly and GG Marquez if these are the kinds of authors they like. The first 300 pages meander. 'Gripping' is certainly not a word that would pass your mind when you think of those pages. Only sheer grit can get you past them.

2) Pages 300-400. The character has grown to around age 21. He tries his hand at various alternate careers ranging from art in Paris to chartered accountancy in London to medicine. Finally sticks to medicine. He also falls fatally in love with a woman who was never meant to make a companion. In this section and onwards Maugham is completely in his elements - he decribes the helplessness with which people chase things that just werent meant to be.


3) Pages 400-600: The character (in addition to his other continuing woes) invests unwisely in the stock market and loses all he has. Medical studies flounder and are put on hold and he becomes a shop attendant. He is still hopelessly in love knowing he's not doing himself any good. Its that typical phase where his head tells him pursuit is hopeless and must end in sorrow and yet he pursues because he cant get to listen to the voice of reason. And poverty is examined brutally and searchingly.

4) Pages 600-700: An amazing culmination. The character falls, stumbles, recovers, falls again and through all these pitfalls, LIFE is critically studied. The searching questions of why we live and the purpose behind it all is the central theme. And I think Maugham offers the most plausible answers. For years I loved the statement "The journey is the destination" and this book adds so many dimensions to that statement.

Its monday today and as a rule I post only on weekends or holidays but I think this book merits a break from set pattern. I haven't read a more sensible book. I would very very strongly recommend it to anyone who cares to ask (and those who dont ask too).

P.S. - were the first 300 pages needed? In that painstaking detail? In hindsight, yes. They add so much relevant background to pages 300-700 that you wouldnt appreciate the book otherwise. Like Maugham says, life is all a matter of design. You paint it. You use the colors you choose. The intricacies of the design are yours. And the finished product is yours...no one else cares a damn about it.

Random Updates & a must-read link

1) I bought Maugham's 'Of Human Bondage' in 2003 after a colleague recommended it. Each year, I've read the first 30 odd pages before giving up - unputdownable is not a word you associate with "Of Human Bondage". But this time I've crossed 120 pages due partly to having nothing else to do on a long flight from Pune to Delhi, and partly to sheer dogged persistence. I have set myself a target of reaching page 250 this weekend.

2) I find myself waiting for the Limca ad on TV - the water splashing stuff. I like the chords, the photography and both the models in it.

3) My aggregator brought in the usual weekend pile of blogs and articles and this article on Fortune is the pick of the week. It makes total sense. Check out this article if you want to get better at whatever you want to get better at Fortune. Ages ago, my guitar teacher used to tell me about "intelligent practice" and I'm sure now that this is what he meant. It was generally wasted advice when he gave it to me - I was plagued by thoughts of the talent I lacked compared to some of the North-Eastern college friends who invariably played effortlessly.

But the good thing about life is its never too late for anything.

All about Bears

Last week was disastrous for everyone who’s invested in the stock market. Leaving behind the tempting choice of dressing in sober, dark colors and having that tragic unshaven look, I’ve decided to make a weekend of it. We went to the Big Chill. The place unfailingly delivers what the gastric juices pine for. A fattoush salad, with some tangy Tomato and Basil soup, followed by some fettucini primavera , closed out by some molten chocolate with vanilla was what the doctor ordered to take your mind off marauding bears. (Let me hastily add before you call me a glutton - that was a menu for two).

Rum things, these bears. You don’t often think of bears in life. When a bear market happens, you want to forget about bears. As luck would have it, bears seem to run out at you from every nook and cranny. A friend called me to tell me about a joint called the Bear Camp in Shivpuri. I settled down to see a movie last night, and the character (Borat) purchases a bear to protect him from jews. Finally, a mail forward showing how John West get their packaged fish from the jaws of – you guessed right - a bear.

To take my mind off bears, I went in for my round of Google Reader – my aggregating software where all my reads for the weekend land up. The whole world seems to be doing nothing...there are no new blogs from the usual haunts I go to, nothing new from Fortune/Economist other than the bear markets gripping North America and Europe. And finally WHFoods advises on potassium rich foods. This, if you see the world like I do, is not terribly exciting stuff.

With nothing better to do, I’ve gone for a riot of colors for my blog, discarding the plaid minimalist designs I normally prefer. I might go back to that, but for now I want some splash of color. So bear with me. (Ouch...the “bear” again).

This too will pass.

The serious type tag.. where I attempt serious type answers"

Tagged by Sribble (iscribblehere.blogspot.com).

Here's my take on "The serious type tag.. where I attempt serious type answers"

If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?

Move on. And find someone else pronto. A compelling argument in James Herriot’s books was that of getting a replacement pet for a person that’s lost his/her dog. A life-time of veterinary experience convinced him that people at first miss the old pet’s ways but then sooner or later find the new pet engaging enough in its own way that they forget the past. I don’t mean to compare lovers to pets, but I think the message is not incapable of being applied to the issue in question.


If you could have a dream come true, what would it be?

Quitting my job and the rat-race of a career and going for a two year residential MBA in Harvard or Wharton or Kellogg. And thereafter setting up my own business. During all my school and college life in the past, I focused on studies. I hope to do exactly the opposite in an MBA – just focus on building relationships and becoming the kind of person I want to be.


Whose butt would you like to kick?

Fundamentalists like the Bajrang Dal/VHP, Islamic Fundamentalists, Narendra Modi. People who can’t restrict religion as a private belief of their own but seek to bring it into public domain deserve worse.


What would do with a billion dollars?

Invest $900 million across equities, fixed income, real estate and bullion. Investing is a passion for me – it’s a costly passion now, with the way Indian markets are tanking. I cant think of any thing I want to spend on….barring maybe a Nikon D-SLR, a self-built up music system with a Danon amplifier and Harman/Kardon speakers…but that’s already pretty much saved up for. So I might use the balance $100 Mn for education to the rural masses. One of my seniors in my CA firm threw up a consulting career in Europe after an Insead MBA and runs exactly this kind of an organization in India so I know any money contributed there is going to reach its intended use.

Will you fall in love with your best friend?

Absolutely. If not, make the person I fall in love with my best friend.


Which is more blessed: loving someone or being loved by someone?

Being loved


How long do you intend to wait for someone you love?

I could wait forever. Between staying single and having a bad or even a not-too-good marriage, I’d prefer staying single.


If the person you secretly like is attached, what will you do?

I’m not likely to like someone “secretly” given the open kind of person I am. But secretly or otherwise, if the person is attached, I’d move on right away and find someone else.


If you could root for one social cause, what would it be?

Education. I think there’s a vicious cycle (pardon the cliché, but it is vicious) of lack of education- unemployment- poverty. You can give the poor money – no guarantees they’ll use it well. You can’t give them meaningful employment if they’re not educated. But you can educate them for free, they’re likely to be well-employed and get to a sustainable income. When I say education, I don’t mean the education system I came through of 12 years of school, three years of graduation and three years of CA…what I use today in my career is so little of what I learnt in those 18 years that I have strong and radical views about how (and how long) education ought to be imparted. And education should include basic values.


What takes you down the fastest?

Straight/direct people.


Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?

Doing something that has a larger role in the world than my current role of working for my company’s bottomline. That would most likely take the form of setting up my own business.


What’s your fear?

Ill Health. Everything in life revolves around being healthy. I’m paranoid about health – I go to the gym 5 days a week most weeks just to ensure I don’t add on to anything nature has planned to spring on me.

What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?

The first two descriptive words that come to mind are “carefree” and “nostalgic”.



Would you rather be single and rich or married and poor?

Single and rich.


If you fall in love with two people simultaneously who will you pick?

The one that can make a better wife – basically the person I can see a lifetime ahead with. I’m the settling-down kind.


Would you give all in a relationship?

Definitely.


Would you forgive and forget someone no matter how horrible a thing he has done?

I would move on. I think life’s too precious to waste on petty vengeances. That doesn’t necessarily mean forgetting….I still remember debacles in life but when I do, I also see I’ve clearly done well to move on.


Do you prefer being single or in a relationship?

Being in a relationship. And that relationship should be marriage. The fact that I’m still single shows that the circles I move in has an appalling shortage of eligible women. Or that I’m a total loser. I like to think it’s the former.