Remembering 'Uncle Pai'

Uncle Pai had passed away a month back. I got to know of it when a small postcard invite fell on my doorstep from his  hometown of Mangalore to attend the 12 day ceremony. Another Uncle Pai (of Amar Chitra Katha fame) also passed away almost in the same period. To me these two Uncle Pai’s had something in common; they left a legacy - a body of  work with a lasting imprint on the minds of the elderly & children respectively. 

The Uncle Pai (Kulyadi Madhav Pai) I am referring to is related from Wifi side and I regret I couldn’t attend his last rites due to some commitments.  But the time I spent with him & his memories will be cherished. With a small note he religiously book posted whenever the  newer editions of ‘Kaggokti Sampada’ hit the stands. The Book and its series were an illuminating body of work on decoding one of  the great literary works in Kannada literature by D.V.Gundappa (or DVG as he is popularly referred as) 

DVG was a literary colossus & his Mankuthimmana Kagga is considered a Nobel prize winning material, if it had been written in English. This was followed by  Marula Muniyana Kagga which Uncle Pai had translated . The beauty of this work ( and there lay in it its greatness he used to say)  is that- it makes the reader see himself through the poems, to interpret the thoughts of the poet in his own way. 

Kagga is a beautiful and profound collection of 945 poems. Each poem is of four lines. Some of the poems are in old Kannada style (Halegannada). Kagga poems are profound, and poetic and like a bee attracted to the flower Uncle Pai was drawn into it. 

An instance (roughly translated to English):

Life is a Horse driven cart, Fate its driver
You're the horse, Passengers - as allotted by God
Sometimes rides to a marriage, sometimes to a graveyard
When stumbled, there's always the earth - says Manku Thimma

In  his book preface Uncle Pai  writes ‘DVG’s Marula Muniyana Kagga’s   beautiful play of words with profound meaning of life  urged me to interpret in a layman’s language. It was a long journey though, it started when I by-hearted a few kaggas; the meaning of which took some to sink in. I later took some more & the experience was overwhelming. Based on my initial experiences I began to write but was not happy with the outcome.   So I discarded the effort and waited for the next couple of years to truly imbibe the work for an accurate representation’

 

Finally egged on by friends & encouraged by the “Samyukta Karnataka” newspaper he began compiling the works which went into 7 volumes by the time of his death.

R.I.P Uncle Pai

Morgan Stanley & the pursuit of Happyness

Remember Will Smith in the Pursuit of happyness? The first time I saw the movie, the telemarketing tactics adopted by Chris Gardner (played by Will Smith), the intern stockbroker, struck me more than the storyline about his struggle for livelihood.


As a single parent he has to achieve the same results and better in 6 hours where everyone else has 9. He calculates that it would save him 8 minutes a day if he did not put the phone down between prospecting calls. So he keeps the handset up and uses his finger on the button so that he doesn't get distracted. He also doesn't drink much water to avoid wasting excess time in the bathroom.

Why? The company, Dean Witter, where he is earning his spurs has ingrained him with a simple idea: "x number of calls equals x number of prospects, x number of prospects equals x number of customers, xnumber of customers equals x number of dollars."


The movie not only makes a statement of the hyperactive competition of the US Financial markets of the mid 80’s but also how telemarketing became an integral part in the growth of the financial services Industry (in India this phenomenon was observed about 15 years later)


Dean Witter had an interesting tagline "We measure success one investor at a time" and much like the Business it was into i.e, M&A (mergers and acquisitions) it too underwent mergers (with Reynolds) and was finally acquired by Morgan Stanley which adopted its tagline.


Another iconic name is soon set to join the ranks of Dean Witter; Smith & Barney. Ironic for another legacy company whose tagline was “They make money the old fashioned way. They earn it”.


In case you missed the Irony part, it too is being gobbled up by Morgan Stanley whose role in the subprime mortgages & creation of other toxic assets healthily contributed to the US financial crisis.

Snoring in Train: A Surreal Connection to a WWII Spitfire

The train chugged into platform #3 at 9:45 pm. I had a client meeting in Coimbatore and, miracle of miracles, I beat Bangalore traffic and arrived an hour early. Victory dance, anyone?

The beauty of late-night trains is you can hop on, deal with the ticket collector, and then straight to bed. Early evening trains? Ugh. You get the whole circus: tea/coffee vendors, biscuit sellers, dinner caterers, and, of course, the beggars. Not to mention the chatty co-passengers who think they're on a late-night talk show.

Adventures in Railway Berths and Snoring Symphonies

I found my berth in coach B2 and couldn't believe my luck: a lower berth! I was about to give myself an invisible high-five when three Gujarati-speaking ladies entered. The youngest, a cute lady, sweetly asked if I'd swap my lower berth for the middle one so her elderly mother could have my spot. With a smile that could melt butter, I couldn't say no.

Moments later, the same lady made a similar request to the other guy with a lower berth, this time for her aunt who had the upper berth. The guy looked crestfallen and mentioned some vague nasal problem but agreed to swap with me. So, two swaps later, I was promoted to the upper berth, with Mr. Nasal Problem right below me.

Nasal Nightmares: When Snoring Sounds Like a Spitfire

Nothing unusual about this guy, except for a flap of skin behind his head that looked like a dog ear. He quickly hit the sack and began making deep guttural sounds. His "nasal problem" was an understatement; it sounded like a WWII Spitfire engine on its last legs.

Being right above him, I experienced the full acoustic effect. It was like being in a dogfight, with this guy creating turbulence below me. I reached for my Philips GoGear MP3 player, only to find I had no earplugs. Desperate, I considered cotton buds, but that was like holding an umbrella in a thunderstorm.

His snores varied in rhythm and pitch, making it impossible to ignore. Each minute felt like an eternity. I stepped out of the AC cabin, hoping the TC (ticket collector) was still around. By some miracle, he was. I explained my predicament, and he muttered something in Tamil while scanning the reservation chart.

"B51 is available," he finally said. I almost hugged him. I quickly grabbed my stuff and navigated the cold, dark railway bogey, which now resembled a morgue with bodies wrapped in white sheets. I found B51, another upper berth. Relief was short-lived, though - this section had not one but two snorers already in full swing!

I landed in Coimbatore the next morning, bleary-eyed and sleepless, feeling like I had survived a night in a snoring symphony orchestra

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