Never a dull moment

We have high expecations and dreams on academic front even when we send our kids to play school. Some of the most interesting movements of our life have been the first few days of our kids at play school. The elder one Shobha was very reluctant to go to play school when she was around two and half years old. As a dad , I felt bad that kids have to be sent to school at a tender unlike my childhood days when I entered the school on completing five years of age. My wife and mom accompanied Shobha to play school on the first day. She kept looking back at them often as they hung around the campus. The teacher suggested that they should leave the campus and as they were leaving, Shobha started crying loudly. When my wife went to fetch her in the afternoon, she could not find Shobha at a glance .Finally she spotted her in a boy's dress playing on a see-saw. Teacher said Shobha was howling for along while and vomited and the spare dress sent along was used. She vommited once more and she h...

We all talk about how everybody has right to education and access to education. I travel around the country side a lot on work and try to strike conversation with students and youngsters while travelling in public transport. The places I visit could be large cities like Madurai and Coimbatore, medium sized towns like Tanjore and Cuddalore and smaller towns and localities. Of course, I interact with youngsters in Chennai and Delhi. The youngsters studying in English medium in smaller towns do converse in English with a lot of prompting. They are able to convey ideas and matters even if the English is not gramatically correct. One thing common was the general awareness and knowledge of current events decerases as the size of the town decreases. There seems to be a critical density and total population threshold beyond which general awareness and knowledge of current events increase exponentially. The youngsters in smaller towns are not aware of the opportunities and academic streams ava...

I found the first follower of my blog- Thomas Mailainathan ( Jegharaj ) my school mate as well as my college mate. We studied in Madras Christian College School where I was in Malayala medium in 6th and 7th standard and then shifted to English medium. Thomas M was in English medium through out his school days. We were in different sections. I got to know Thomas M in NCC Airwing in 9th standard. We attended a 10 day camp together. The toilet facility at the camp being bad, we used to eat very little food to avoid nature's call. Water was also in short supply and I took bath only twice during the camp. He won a corporal rank in second year of NCC and became a sergeant in third year. Holding a poorer rank , I ended my NCC stint in thea two years. We spent the five years in College of Engineering in the same section. I had met him on a few occassions in early 80s after graduating from college. He did surface through our batch yahoo group. I got to know him better as a famly man and bre...

A strange sounding topic. I could not think of a better caption. Recently , I attended a marriage of a biologically distant relative but personally very close to our family. They are from a poor family of four sons and a daughter with the dad earning his living as a supervisor in a small hotel. The second son , say Mr.X , proved to be exceptionally good in academics but was forced to take up employment in a central government laboratory after a bachelor's degree in chemistry. He published some research papers in German journals. He got a break at an Amercian University in 1976 ( two years after graduation ) as a prominent member of faculty there was on a visit to India and was impressed by Mr.X's work and secured him admission. Mr.X went on to do M S in two subjects and a Ph D in chemistry. He has been a reserach scientist at a leading pharmaceutical company ever since and has completed twenty five years of service. He worked for several years in drug formulation department.Now...

My college batch get together went off very well. It is difficult to know all the members of 300 strong batch. I was one of the least known as I have been away from Chennai for long. Varying degree of wear and tear which is natural as people get on in age also made identification difficult. As a rule, people have gained weight and sported receding hairlines . After all those present made a systematic introduction of who they were and what they were up to which was interspersed with humour, we settled down and had a good time. One could easily make out those who have settled in USA. The unmistakable American drawl made them stand apart. The most interesting part was somebody came up to me and told me that I have grown taller after my college days ! Growing taller after 22 years of age ? It was definitely a question of mistaken identity. I had the unenviable task of giving a pep talk on how to prepare for entrance exam for post graduate management studies. I think I did a good job of i...

We are having a get together of our batch from my College tomorrow.It has been 27 years since we graduated and readers can guess the age of the wards of classmates who are also turning up for the meeting with their parents. In such a crowd, one has to be a bit careful when we recount our escapades and and truant behaviour as youngsters. I have been given an unenviable task. I have been asked to give a pep talk on how to prepare for entrance exams to management institutions. I am not going to deliver a lecture. I am going to interact with the group and prompt them to ask me questions. I have been proud of the fact that I am the only one who made it to the particular management school from 300 batchmates. Now I realise that this pride comes with a price and responsibility. Neverthless I am excited and look forward to the interaction. I have noticed that it is much easier to motivate others' wards. Children seldom listen to their parents !

European Union had brought out a book on the relationship its members have with India and it covered history too. It was amazing to read the variety of vegetables Portugese, who are inverterate sailors , had brought to India. Potato is an essential part of daily food in North India. This was brought to India by Portugese. Again place of origin of potato is not Europe but the home land of Machu Pichu- Peru. Peru has about 2000 varieties of potato some of which are poisonous. Another essential vegetable Indian cuisine has absorbed is onion which again was brought in by Portugese. Some other vegetables which sailed into India are cauliflower, cabbage, pineapple, chillies, tomato and coffee bean. On the topic of India, the food habits differ across the country. The range of cooking oils used is amazing -coconut oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, rape seed oil, mustard oil... some of the recent additions are cotton seed oil, rice brawn oil, palm oil.... Cottage cheese is popular in North India...

There has been several changes I have been noticing in newspaper content in India over the last three decades. The most striking has been the increasing space given to show business in the main body of newspapers besides the suppliments devoted to cine world. Controversies, film awards, love affairs of cine artistes, their travel plans film festivals taking place all over the world makes it to the newspapers. Academy awards have space of prominence what with "Slumdog millionaire" pushing Academy award ceremony to the front page headlines. Even contents of blogs of film stars have become newsworthy. Hollywood matters have also been gaining prominence in newspapers. Business occupies much more space these days. Of course , businessmen and industrialists have also become newsmakers in daily newspapers. Another recent trend is a number of ranking list coming out in newspapers like most beautiful women, the best dressed men , the best dressed couple, richest people in the world an...

History varies depending upon the narrator's perspective. A number of articles had been written about D Day celebrations - the Normandy landing anniversary affair which has been reduced to a Franco American event with the British occupying the side lines like a kneeling ball boy in the tennis court with Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer slugging it out. Russia, a major player in the Second World War has been totally side lined by the Western World. United Nations itself has estimated that Russia lost 13.6 million soldiers - sixteen times higher than the combined losses of the US, UK and France put together. Churchill had gone record in his memoirs stating that a major reason for France -UK - USA combined landing in Normandy was to halt the Russian Army as much to the East as possible. Russia would have got the better of Germany without help of US- UK combine. There has been attempts in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania recently to portray Russia as the aggressor and occupier instead of Na...

After spawning new terms and expressions like outsourcing, offshoring , knowledge management etc IT industry has moved on to greener pastures on language front. Recently a software major sent good number of their employees into virtual pool. Unlike a swimming pool, this pool does not leave the occupants wet but they feel left out in the cold. I assumed that virtual pool must be barren but I was mistaken. A recent report from this software major mentioned that the employees in virtual pool were seated on virtual benches. A lot of investment in terms of thought process has gone into create the virtual pool and associated infrastructure . Who knows, creating such virtual infrastructure could be the next " big bang" opportunity. A report says that Lear's macaw ( named after poet and artist Edward Lear ) which faced extinction in Brazil has moved from "list of critically endangered species " to "list of endangered species". The report also mentions that ...

Way back in December 1990, my parents joined me at Kolkata to attend a wedding in my sister's in-laws family. My marriage was slated to take place in March 1991. My parents were in a hurry to go back to Kochi to attend another wedding but I persuaded them to stay on. I requested to return on the earliest date confirmed tickets were available on the direct train. As a result I could enjoy their company for four weeks. I used to go for long walks with my dad around the lakes of South Kolkata . We used to walk at a rapid pace ( I still do ! ) and one of my colleagues who had seen us from a distance could not believe that it was my dad who was giving me company. Not only was he very fit, he had a youngish look about him with a mane of thick hair. Little did I know that these were the last few days I would spend in his company. His sudden demise in late January 1991 of a cardiac arrest came as a bomb shell. Death of beloved one very close to the schedule for my marriage left us rat...

I have two daughters who are full of verve and energy. The elder one talks incessantly while the younger one though a good conversationalist is more circumspect. My wife and my mom complete my family. There is never a dull moment in the family. Being the only male member, I feel the pressure for my attention and time. Kids keep complaining that I do not pay enough attention to them. My wife says that all my attention is on my kids. Mom's voice is lost in the wilderness. I enjoy each and every minute with my family. An year and half ago, I took up a "challenging" assignment which has forced me to stay away from the family. Chennai where I work and Delhi where my family stays is far away and I can not afford to travel frequently. The implementation of the project I am working on kept me busy and engaged for an year. The ful fledged office is functioning smoothly and now life has become very boring. I do not know what to do with myself after office hours. I bought several bo...

Unity in diversity is a thing which we Indians are proud of. While unity is laudable, diversity has to be catered to while introducing interventions for improvement and economic development. Look around the world.There are very few countries which are bigger than our states. These countries are China, USA, Indonesia and Russia. Many countries in Africa and Europe are like states in our country. As for developed nations, but for USA, all others have a population of 100 million or less. It is evident that economic development intervention has to be different for different geographic clusters like North, Hill states, North East, East, Central etc. Rise in popularity of regional parties have to do with diversity of development requirement ( to put it another way, skewed development achieved so far ) besides lingustic / regional likings. What is required is political will and sagacity. How does one achieve this when number game is important in formation of government. May be the cacophony i...

Spelling has been my bugbear on emails. I cursorily glance over what I have typed. Psychologically we tend to see what we meant overlooking glaring spelling mistakes. That brings me to the recent report on commonly misspelt words in English in UK. This study was done based on a survey of 5000 people from different walks of life. The most misspelt word is ' definitely '. Most people were confused whether an i or a followed f. The second place went to 'sacrilegious' which left people confused about whether it was an e or i in the middle. The next place went to "indict" which was misspelt as "indite". The descending order upto tenth place are 'manoeuvre', 'broccoli', 'phlegm', 'prejudice','concensus' and 'unnecessary'. Words like 'supersede' , 'connoisseur' and 'particularly' figured high in the list. I have a habit of misspelling habit as habbit ! This makes me a rabbit in spelling...

We were 174 students in our batch at IIMA. We were drawn from various parts of the country with diverse social and acaedmic backgroud. Going by theory of probability, chances 0f two batchmates sharing the same birthday is low and gets lower for three batchmates to have the same birthday. Sometimes theory of probability is rendered a chance event ! Jasmeet Kaur and VC Nadarajan share my birthday. Mind you Mathematics and Statistics for Management course at IIM was not my favourite subject. May be our birthdays want to cock a snook at this subject.

Today- 19/06- it is my birthday. I started celebrating birthdays after my marriage. Birthdays as per date of birth was not celebrated in my family. The star birthday ( one of the 26 stars ) was observed by elders by some offerings in the temple. The star birth day and date of birth coincide once in 18/19 years. There was a narrow miss this time around. My star birthday was on 18/06 and my mom reminded me after verifying the same from a vernacular calendar. My kids called to wish me this morning. For a decade and half now, my birthday has been a birthday of “left overs”. My elder daughter was born on 18/06 and we celebrate her birthday with gusto. As a result, there is a heap of garbage to clear and bits and pieces of all sorts of eatables left over which herald my birthday. Transition from a family atmosphere where no anniversaries are celebrated to an era of celebration after wedlock has not been difficult. I have not missed my better half’s birthday and our marriage anniversary. I su...

Summer holidays for kids are different these days. Besides braving the hot sun, parents have to face the heat of "holiday homework" of their children. As kids we have spent time with gay abandon in summer break. We never used to read any books and never wrote anything significant. It used to take a couple of weeks to get back handwriting rhythm after school reopening. As parents, our time is spent in carting our kids from some activity to another activity during summer break. What little spare time available is spent in "doing" holiday home work. Most of the topics are beyond the comprehension of our kids. I have started dreading any long school break of our kids One way of keeping our brain young is to do new things. This is the main benefit from "holiday homework " !

Untouchability and caste divide continue to plague our nation even in the twenty first century. Reports on religious atrocities and caste problems are common place. We have a long way to go to achieve equality amongst all citizens of the society. I have not read our epic Mahabharata thoroughly. But caste feelings are evident in this epic. Birth of Pandu and Dhritharashtra are examples of caste prejudice. Most of the off springs born of wedlock of people from different background in this epic were "kinky" characters and were looked down up on. Even Karna suffered discrimination and humiliation by Pandavas as he was the adopted child of a charioteer. Most Indians have grown up listening to stories from Mahabharata. How are we going to get rid of the scourge of castism and untouchability which has been deeply ingrained in our psyche for generations ?

The kind of questions kids come up with are amusing. Lack of prior knowledge and absence of self doubt amongst children helps. I am recounting couple of questions my younger daughter Sandhya came up with couple of years ago. She was watching a programme on National Geographic describing the social behaviour of gorillas. The narrator said that a gorilla kid is in the care of mother till it is three years old and then moves away on its own. Sandhya had a serious question:" Dad, Who will tell the gorilla kid that it's third birthday ? " Another gem- we were travelling in Rajastan and we visited a temple. My better half prayed. Sandhya wanted to know what her mother asked for and in which language she prayed. My wife told her that her prayer was in Tamil. Sandhya was at a loss not able to understand how a deity in Rajastan would undertstand a prayer in Tamil ! I intervened and told her that my wife's prayer would have landed at a BPO at Bangalore who would translate her ...

These are trying times for people and organisations. The world economy is on a tailspin. It has sounded the death knell for venerable corporations. Some notable names have been brought to their knees. People have been thrown out of their jobs. Contrary to what is touted at WTO, developed countries are becoming protectionist. World Trade is shrinking. European Union elections have voted right wing parties to the EU parliament. GM has filed for bankruptcy and is expected to emerge as a much smaller company post bankruptcy proceedings. For decades, GM has been the world's largest motor car compnay. Now Toyota has become numero uno. Other Detroit giants are struggling- both Ford and Chrysler are pale shadow of the grand companies they were. Now AD stands for a new acronym in automobile industry - After Detroit ! In the wake of Tech mahindra taking over Satyam a new term has emerged - vrtual pool. These are employees who have been found to be excess to the current requirement. They hav...

As predicted yesterday , my weakenss with technology continues. I had to figure out how to get inside my blog space and post this message. I kept going back to my blogspace expecting to unlock the mystery. Finally I took the help of a colleague to post this message. It turned out to be pretty simple. My friend who persuaded to me to blog has sent a congratulatory message. Now I will move on the next stage of inviting followers. Tomorrow is another day

I am pretty slow on matters concerning technology. Whether it be my laptop or my blackberry, I use the product extensively but only use a few features. This bugs my kids who are tech savy as most kids these days are. I write prolifically but have not tried blogging. A close friend has been persuading me to start a blog. And today is the D day. I am excited