About the Blog

This is my diary....what I make sense of, around me. You'll find short prose on contemporary topics that interest me. What can you expect - Best adjectives? …. hmm occasionally, tossed around flowery verbs ?…. Nope, haiku-like super-brevity? … I try to. Thanks for dropping by & hope to see you again

July 31, 2008

Yeh Taara Woh Taara...

Sometime in Nov last year I was on my way to Mangalore to attend a relative’s wedding & as usual I took one of the several bus operators who ply on this busy route. It so happened that then the main Blr-Mlr road, a NH48 which passes through Shiradi ghats was so dilapidated due to monsoon (which has become a regular feature) that the bus operator told us that he was talking us through another lesser known Sampaje route which also passed through the Western ghats down to the coastal plains.

In the dead of the night, around 2 am or so, the bus came to an halt and i woke up to realize that it might have stopped to help some passengers attend  nature call. Sensing that this was an unusual route & not knowing where it would stop next, i quickly got out of the bus to seize the opportunity. 


Coming out into the chill night i realized that we must be in the middle of the ghats as i was greeted by the dense forest around and the relentless chatter of night life in the wilderness. As i was standing there, going through the motions, i was awestruck by a rather unusual sight . A crystal clear nightsky!!, accentuated by blinding darkness around revealed an amazing tapestry of stars & heavenly bodies across the horizon just above the canopy of thick dark trees. 

What was unusual was the clarity of the night sky, highlighted by pitch dark firmament that i could see the reddish pink tinge of the nearby planet & the whitest white glow of distant stars & constellations. This fleeting experience became a vivid memory because of the circumstances in which i saw the natural wonder. Now a days it is a rare experience for a city slicker like me to just step out to my top floor terrace & get a clear view of the sky in Bangalore on any given night, leave alone seeing the stars. Bangalore like countless other cities around the world, is so polluted with smoke & dust that all you can is view is a thinly placid sky filled with smog scattering the bright glare of the cityscape below.

The amount of light pollution that any city generates can be gauged from a simple observation from a window seat of an aircraft that is about to land in clear dark night. All you can see from several thousand feet up in sky is a swathe of bright yellow & white lights not to mention neon colours interspersed here & there. In fact coming from a late evening Delhi flight recently, an hour or so into the flight, I just kept peering out of a window seat to see whether I could catch a glimpse of a perfectly dark landscape on the ground. Small patches of light kept appearing on the ground almost endlessly & my patience ran out after some time . 


Satellites images of the world captured in the dark, as recent studies show, reveal that the artificial light emanating from cities around the world is 3 times more now than it was in the 1970s. Studies by Royal astronomical society have also revealed that the stars that Humanity is seeing in a clear dark night sky is steadily decreasing with time. Observatories around the world, despite their high resolution telescopes are unable to pinpoint fixed & moving heavenly bodies for astronomical calculations due to this poor visibility. Prompting scientists to put the Hubble telescope into space. And it has not disappointed, seeing into the far reaches of the universe like never seen before.

One of my most vivid childhood memories has been of my mother feeding me with the lullaby & tales of a bright moon (chandamama) & dangling stars under the clear night sky of a far away town in North Karnataka where she was a Govt Medical officer. Whether this simple yet extra ordinarily wonderful natural experience can be had by my son in Bangalore? Nah, may not.

July 28, 2008

Management Ethos

I find a lot of similarities between the Haute-Couture collection of hotshot designers and entrepreneurs having exotic advisory boards. Like the proverbial “Haathi ki Daanth” as one of my friend puts it, they are just meant to showcase rather than offer any practical value. 

How else could one describe that? Take for instance, in the first instance, the gorgeously looking dresses (sometimes bordering on grotesque) which are displayed by super thin models on the ramps in Rome, Milan & god knows where. No clothing expert in his right frame of mind will advise you to try one of these at the weekend party or a social get together. For that matter you will rarely if ever find one on the street walk. 

Not only because of the price element but also for practicality. Nobody buys the stuff but designers & design houses spend millions on such flamboyant presentations to the Glitterati (& Chatterati) assembled in a tennis court like audience. The couture I believe is an attempt or rather an opportunity to show off the designer’s genius and the design house’s prestige, not to mention the massive ego in both cases, rather than any serious commercial exercise of selling clothes. 

Ditto with entrepreneurs, who ornate their showcases with exotic advisory boards, of people who come with big reputations and chequered karmic history written on corporate & academic turfs. Maybe it gives the entrepreneur or a solution evangelist some forlorn conviction that it will create an impression among potential clients that smart people believe in his/her business concept and are therefore willing to lend their reputation & time to help the budding company grow.

In reality a lot of the high profile advisory board members find very little time and inclination to do any meaningful work i.e., bring their wisdom and foresight to help the company find practical solutions to its problems or for its clients. The Business owners have to realize that the difference between success and failure is primarily the result of their team on the ground and their collective endeavors. 


Ordinary mortals who bereft of high reputations and devoid of any hang-ups, sweat & toil and build a reputation for the company by their work on the ground. However, rarely do these mortals figure out in the annals of a company showcase (whether it be Company website or product brochures or presentations) or even if they do, their presence is inversely proportional to the value they contribute to their respective businesses

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