#55wordstory - Themes: Week 2

Theme: Job

"My job sucks man!" said Divakar while gulping his peg of whiskey. "Yeah man! Crazy hours, pathetic pay and a moron boss" chipped in Tulika. While heading home, they saw an old man without legs, at the signal and Rhea spoke "He is working in this condition, at this hour and we complain our work sucks!"

Theme: Paper

It was his fourth attempt. He tried his best but still found it difficult to manage it. He tried using various books, surfed the Internet to get tips to improve, even asked friends for help and guidance, but the result would just be the same. He never knew writing a love letter would be so difficult. 

Theme: Cafes

I finally got the collage ready. Choosing the best ones from the lot was quite easy. The day I held her hand for the first time, my first appraisal in my career, and my meeting with her parents to ask for her hand. Yes, this was a perfect collage of the memories that I had collected at various cafes.

Theme: Spices

"Why did you kill him?", asked the lawyer. "Because he loved spices." Everyone in the court room were bewildered to hear this. "What are you saying Ms. Dalal?".  She spoke nonchalantly "I caught him in bed with his secretary.  When I asked why he did this to me, he replied 'Variety is the spice of life'."

Theme: Hotel

It was past 2 am and the party ended abruptly. Neighbours had complained and police had landed at the door. People started leaving reluctantly when suddenly the speakers started blaring ‘Hotel California’. Saif wanted to have the last word as this was his success party and Chhote Nawab did it in style before getting arrested.

Theme: Aliens

Krish joined work after a break of ten days. He had taken to seek psychiatric help as he had been dreaming of UFOs since the past few weeks. Today everyone was heading to Blue Frog and asked him to join. Alien Chutney was performing there. He did not want to go anywhere near aliens anymore. 

#4linepoetry - Themes: Week 1 (Mar 15 - Mar 22, 2012)

Theme: Beaches
I asked her preference 'Beaches or Mountains?'
She responded 'Waterfalls and fountains'.
I told her compatibility will then be an issue.
She was crying but I walked off after handing her a tissue.

Theme: Chips

A packet of chips and a bottle of beer,
Sachin's 100 100s needed everyone to cheer.
All the celebrations went out for a toss,
After such a glorious moment, it was painful to see India's loss.

Theme: Terrace

It was on the terrace when he first saw her.
That she was married was a thought that did not occur.
Dreams of a life with her, he started to make.
Without realizing that knowing the truth is something he won't be able to take.

Theme: Soul

He came to the city to earn lot of money and fame. 

A successful business got him all of this and a huge name. 

Achieving all of this had its effect and took its toll.
In this process, he just did not realize when he lost his soul.

Theme: Mirrors

“How could you do this to me?”, he asked her. 

She could execute such a devious plan still seemed like a blur. 

“Don’t be surprised. After all that you had done, I had to save my honour, 

So what I have done is nothing but shown you a mirror.”

Theme: Memories

The paper had become yellow and crinkled,
Similar to his face that had become pale and wrinkled.
But the memories that they brought out were as fresh as dew,
Reflecting various moments of his life as he grew.

Theme: Lips

I clearly remember it was a rainy night,

We were drenched completely but I still embraced her tight.

Our lips met and it was magic.

Four years later, when we separated, it was tragic.

Theme: SMS/Emails

The year was 2002 when not all of us had a cell phone.
The STD booth on campus is where we would go to hear our mother's familiar tone.
Today, SMS is free and emails are easy.
But I am not sure people's relationships are so breezy.

#55wordstory - Themes: Week 1 (Mar 11 - Mar 18, 2012)

These are my #55wordstory of this week on various themes:

Theme: Wicked

It was the last day of the circus. Two months and not a single day of applause for him. All the applause was for the ring master and all he could manage was a few guffaws and some sniggers. He was sick of being the clown. He had a wicked plan...to open the cage.

 
Theme: Letters

"What will you do now?" she asked him. "I don't know. This is what I have always done. It's not their fault." 

"They fired you from your job of 37 years and you say it's not their fault?" "Times have changed. People dont send letters anymore so what's the use of a postman like me."

Theme: City 

Having an office that gave him the view of the entire New York City from its 105th floor was a dream come true for Rohan. Today was his second day and he was enjoying his cup of coffee, looking out of the window when he saw the plane coming towards him. He was staring at death.

Theme: Bottles

It was the last day of campus life. Two years of late nights, projects, group work, parties, sports, bitching, placements and all the razzmatazz had come to an end. They wanted to celebrate all this with bottles of beer. Only thing they did not know was that their bootlegger in this dry state had been caught!

Theme: Apples

The body was burnt beyond recognition. Police could not establish the identity of the woman found dead. The tea-vendor saw the news and recognized her unique shoes. He approached the police station and told them that she worked at the office which has apples at its reception. There was some questioning to be done at Leo Burnett now.

Theme: Gods and Demons

I started dreaming in the 60s. My dream was to upstage the leader in all the big industries. I started seeing success in automobiles when I became bigger than USA. Soon, I earned the wrath of Gods and Demons and I was struck by earthquakes followed by a terrible tsunami last year. My name 'Japan' soon lost its power.

Theme: Water

In a cruel and ruthless city like Mumbai, this was his only confidant. Happy, sad or depressed, he would find his answers here. 

Always by his side, ready to listen to his pains and anguish and advising him whenever needed. The sea, its waves and the horizon in the distance had its language, which he understood.

Experiences - They vary

All of us know that no two fingerprints are the same. Maybe, we should add one more saying ‘No two experiences are the same’.

Just think about it – You must have had instances when two different friends had uploaded pictures of their holiday to Paris on Facebook, but the pictures of the two would be completely different. The pictures would be different in terms of their posture, their emotions and their expressions, etc. In fact, don’t be surprised when you notice that both set of pictures have been clicked at the same place, like the Eiffel Tower, but yet, the description put by the two people are as different as chalk and cheese.

Now why would a picture taken at the same place by two different people look so different (other than the Eiffel Tower in the background looking the same in both the pics!)? The simple answer to that is because the picture is actually telling you about the experience of that person in that moment at that place. And the reality is that the experience of each person is different due to a number of factors and place is just one of those factors that plays a role in building that experience.

In fact, if you think deeper, you will realize that not only are experiences of different people different, but even the experience of the same person is different on different occasions, even though the place may be the same or the event may be the same.

An experience is a summation of various things that are part of a given moment that come together and form what we call an experience. What that means is that even if one of those various things is different from the earlier experience, the entire experience would be different. Confusing?

Let me try and simplify. According to my hypothesis, an experience is formed with the help of a number of factors – place, time of day, your own mood and mood of others, friends/relatives who are there with you, the kind of music in the background, the quality of food and drinks being consumed, the kind of weather, the occasion, the kind of customer service being offered. (This is not an exhaustive list and one can easily add more factors that play a critical role).

The point here is that if any of these factors change either for you or for someone else, the experience will also change. Often, one hears the use of the term ‘A sense of déjà vu’. What this means is that what  one is witnessing or experiencing is coming pretty close to what one has seen or experienced before (may not necessarily be exactly the same). That is when one immediately comes up with this as the human mind knows that it is very rare that you get to experience the same thing again and again (unless it is a Monday morning blue!) and if you can manage to do that, either you are lucky or you need a change!

Demand Forecasting for Valentine’s Day

Seeing all the hearts, red colour and Valentine’s Day sale ads in the papers got me and my marketing mind thinking. One of the first thoughts that struck me was that Archies was the pioneer in India in popularizing the concept of Valentine’s Day. All others took the bait and followed suit a few years later and today everyone has jumped onto the bandwagon as it is a commercial opportunity that cannot be missed. So be it a florist or jeweler or a retail chain or a pub/lounge, everyone is out there to make a kill and rightly so….after all if you don’t take that opportunity, someone else would.

While for most others, there is not too much of a need to change their merchandise mix too much other than packaging the entire concept in a different way, but when it comes to the pioneer itself – Archies, the game changes a bit.

For Archies, planning for this activity would be a mammoth task, starting months in advance, deciding on what all gift items to procure, in what quantities and from which vendor/country.

This is where the big challenge comes in – Demand Forecasting. This is also the core idea behind my blog as I got intrigued by just thinking about it.

I mean how does one forecast for such an event?

One cannot apply a simple formula like other companies, where you assume a certain growth percentage. It does not work like that in such a scenario. Following questions are hovering in my mind:

• How does one know how many people would be in a relationship next year and how many would not? How many people who are in a relationship this year may not be in one by next year and may not be celebrating?
• How does one know how many people would have found that special someone, with whom they would want to celebrate Valentine’s Day?
• What is the number of married people who would want to celebrate this one day of love?
• Even if people are in a relationship/or have got into one, how do we know whether they would be keen to celebrate this concept or idea or not?
• How does one figure out that what is the amount that those people who are celebrating this day would be willing to spend?
• What is the number of gifts/cards that they would pick up?
• How many soft toys with love messages should be ordered? Similarly how many love or Valentine cards should be ordered?
• How do you further plan this for each of the store for each of the city? How do you know which city or which area will have more people flocking to that Archies store to pick up something for their Valentine?

The counter response to some of the questions that I have raised above could be that, the same is true for any other category or occasion. To some extent, that is right, but in most cases, the merchandise can be used even later or after the occasion is over, but unfortunately that does not work mostly in such a case.

I don’t have answers to the questions raised above, so if some of you know it, please do let me know and I would be glad to figure this out. And if you guys are also intrigued and are looking for answers to these, then maybe this is an interesting material for a case study to decipher how Demand Forecasting is done for Valentine’s Day.

2012: A Year of Four Es

This is a blog that should have been out much earlier in the day… or rather in the year but taking the adage of ‘Better Late than Never’, I have gone ahead and put this together even now.The thought for this blog came to me when I was hearing a number of people talking about their New Year resolutions and how they can’t sustain it and it gets broken every year.

I sat back and thought that I don’t want to make any resolutions, which when broken have no meaning left to them and then you miss out on the rest of the months, waiting for the next year to return, to start with the same set or new resolutions once again. But yet, I wanted to put some goals for myself for this year so that I could push myself to achieve those.  

That is when I thought that a resolution gets broken only when you put a constraint or leash on yourself (Eg. – I shall not eat pizzas – Broken as soon as you enjoy one slice of it or I shall exercise daily – Once again broken the day you miss one of the days of workout). I said to myself ‘What if this was flipped around and I put a goal for the year, which cannot get broken because the more I do it, the more I gain out of it?’.

This helped me in putting a clear strategy for myself and I put a framework, which I call:

The Four Es for 2012: Exploration, Experiences, Extraction and Entertainment

This is how this approach works:

1.Exploration:  The idea is to venture out and see new places/new cities/new countries and explore  

India/world.

2.Experiences: This is all about coming out of the comfort zone and trying out new experiences of life. It could be a new adventure, a new skill, a new course. As long as it is something I have not done before, it will go as part of the experience.

3.Extraction: Instead of putting reading as one of the goals, I have broadened the concept and put extraction as the objective. This would then allow it to mean reading, writing, blogging and surfing.

4.Entertainment:  This one is pretty simple. This is all about movies, videos, TV Shows and the works. There are quite a few old movies and seasons to catch as well, so that gets covered here.

What is very interesting,  which I realized after putting this together was that each of these Es are interlinked in some way or the other. While I am indulging or achieving one of the Es, there is a strong chance that in some way, the other E is also getting achieved.  For eg. – If I am exploring a new city and I try out a new dish, it also means that I am experiencing something new.

Furthermore, there is no fear of this getting broken during the course of the year because the more I do any of the Es, the more I enjoy and gain and hence there is no fear of this getting broken.

The only hitch that I see is that to follow this approach of Four Es, I need to indulge in one more E and that E is the E of Expenditure! But that is the harsh reality so without bothering much about that, I would just say ‘Let’s do Eeet!’

TRUST – It Comes and Goes at Unknown Places

The thought of this blog came after a few messages that got exchanged between a friend and me on Twitter. It made me thinking and I thought that the word/feeling/emotion called ‘TRUST’ needs a more detailed probing and thinking, and rightly so, as this small but powerful word plays a critical and crucial role in relationships, businesses, partnerships, negotiations, and any other human transaction one can think of.

For the purview of this blog, I would like to keep relationships out of this deep dwelling as presence of trust in that is a given and is a mandatory. It would be interesting to explore the dimensions of Trust and how it acts up in non-personal situations.

Let me start with an incident that happened a few days back and which further strengthened the idea of putting this blog: I had gone to the petrol pump to get fuel filled in my car and the attendant asked me to check the zero sign before he started filling the tank. Since I could not see the digits while sitting in the car, I got off the car to check the zero. What struck me there and then is that trust is the first thing that goes out of the window as soon as you enter a petrol pump. You will perpetually go and check the zero sign every single time even though it may be the petrol pump where you go regularly to get fuel filled.

This made me sit up and start thinking about places where trust is at the lowest level and then there are also places where trust is the highest. Let us talk of another example where trust is high.

Ever tried opening a new email account or signing up for a new account online. Chances are that as part of the registration process, you are asked to accept the terms and conditions which run into a few pages. No one and I repeat no one ever bothers to go through the fine print and immediately presses the ‘Accept’ button.  This happens despite the person on the other side being a stranger and an unknown face and the risk being higher that what you are accepting may not exactly be what you agree with. So how is it that trust in such a situation tends to go up significantly? Is it lack of time, the hurry to get the registration done with or difficulty in understanding the legal language? If you sit back and ask yourself, the answer is none of these and it is our inherent trust that stems from the fact that if a site is online, it has to be reputed and hence can be trusted. Not necessarily true but the reality.

No matter how good a human being and truthful a real estate agent may be, the trust that you put on him while doing a property deal is never rock solid and it is always wavering. You are always hoping that you get what you have been promised at a rate that does not make you feel that you have been fleeced or cheated. In this case, trust gets governed not by the individual but by the perceptions that have been formed.

The word SALE often used to conjure doubt in the minds of shoppers, atleast till a few years back. One would often hear comments like “This must be their rejected goods” or “They must have increased the prices first and now they are showing it as discount”. Thankfully, due to the presence of more and more organized players, such perceptions have changed for the better and people trust Sales and Discounts to be genuine nowadays.

Every time you hand over your car keys to a valet, whether in a 5 star hotel or a small restaurant or a wedding venue where valets have been hired, you are not only handing over the keys but you are also placing implicit trust in the valet with the assumption that not only will he park your car safely, but you will also get your car back the way you gave it.  

I think the above-mentioned situations should give you a drift of what I am trying to say. I am sure there would be many more such incidents in each one’s life where trust tends to go up or down depending on our experiences, our perceptions and our own approach to life.

Are you the fourth in line?

Imagine this situation happening on the road in Bengaluru: 

Girl on road at Koramangala: Will you go to Old Airport Road?

Auto 1: Yes, but I will charge Rs. 90/-

Girl: But the fare till that place is only Rs. 50/-

Auto 1: Your call. I will charge Rs. 90/-

Girl lets go of the auto and stops the next one.

Auto 2: I will charge Rs. 90/-

Girl tries to haggle but with no result, she lets go of the auto and stops the next one.

Auto 3: I will charge Rs. 90/-

Girl tries to haggle but with no result, she lets go of the auto and stops the next one.

Auto 4: I will charge Rs. 90/-

Without any discussion, girl sits in the auto and ends up paying Rs. 90/-

Now you can imagine the situation by assuming any city that you want/where you live. Instead of the girl, you can imagine yourself. And instead of the auto, you can imagine a cab, a street vendor or any other person you can think of.

Chances are that you would have also experienced a similar situation and by the time you reached the fourth guy, you would be so tired and frustrated that you would just give in and end up paying the same amount that the first guy was asking for.

Now sit back and reflect at this situation and you will see a few insightful things emerging out from this:

1) There was no fault of the first guy to ask what he asked for (ignore the overcharging part). He was simply unlucky to be the first in line but he set the context for the amount that you would pay.

2) You obviously knew that you are paying the fourth guy the same amount of money that the first guy was asking for but you are frustrated enough now to go back to the first guy nor is there any need for you to do so.

3) The fourth guy probably does not know that he is the fourth guy that you are encountering and that you have already crossed the limit of your patience and your negotiation skills. Had he known that, he would have probably quoted Rs. 100 instead of Rs. 90 and chances are that you would have even agreed to pay that much. So that is an opportunity loss for him due to lack of information (Though he is still earning/charging more than what he should).

4)  Had you known that you would still end up paying the same amount of money that the first guy was asking for, chances are that you would not have wasted so much time and energy and negotiating and waiting for a better/reasonable deal.

5) If you had the energy and time to negotiate one more time, who knows, the auto guy would have reduced the price by Rs. 10 or 20

So what emerges from the points mentioned above is a classic case of economics where other than two critical factors – demand and supply, there are two more dimensions that come into play. These two dimensions are: Time and Energy

Often we tend to ignore these two critical dimensions when it comes to striking a deal – small or big, but they play a critical role in the sub-conscious minds of ours.

It is not the question of an auto guy or a question of Rs. 50 vs. Rs. 90. These two dimensions play an important role across all deals and the best negotiators will tell you this that one of the tricks to get the deal in your favour is to stall it till the end, knowing fully well that the other party will give in when either he is short on time or short on energy.

So if you are the auto guy (to be read as the guy wanting to strike the deal), try and be the fourth in line and chances of getting a good price and the deal will increase significantly. If you are the victim (to be read as the guy who has already negotiated earlier and is in a hurry to close the deal now), then either try and increase the energy and time you have to negotiate the deal or just close the deal with the first guy and move on as it will give you lesser heart burn.

Ranbir Kapoor – The True Rockstar!

Everything that I had blogged earlier remains the same. The only difference is that one can add Barfi to his list  of performances, where he delivers.

This is what I had blogged when Rockstar had released...

5.00 pm on a Sunday outside a multiplex in Delhi and I see the board of Housefull. I am there to buy tickets for the 6.30 pm show but I am told that the 6.30 pm show is also Housefull and hence I end up buying tickets for the late night show for Rockstar.

While heading back home, I was thinking about the career of Ranbir Kapoor so far in the Hindi film industry and following films and their fate come to my mind in the same order:

1.   Debut film: Saawariya: Super Flop
2.   Raajneeti : Super Hit
3.   Bachna Ae Haseeno: Average
4.   Wake up Sid: Hit
5.    Rocket Singh – Salesman of the Year: More than Average
6.    Anjaana Anjaani: Average
7.    Ajab Prem ki Gajab Kahaani: Hit

I could not recollect any other movies of Ranbir, though I feel that there are 2 – 3 more films in which he has appeared.

What was also surprising me was that I had seen all of the above movies of his (yeah yeah including Saawariya but thankfully at home and on a DVD!) I had done this without any plan of watching each and every movie of his and had never even thought about it till yesterday and there I was, once again buying tickets for another one of his movies.

I gave this a little more thought. This guy has not delivered a hit after hit. This guy does not have the biceps like Salman Khan or the intellect of Aamir Khan or the wits of Shah Rukh Khan. When I saw Ranbir on screen for the first time, I did not rate his looks too highly and I had my doubts about his stay in the industry.  In fact, this guy gave us one of the most boring movies and a super duper flop in the form of Saawariya, which could have meant doom for him and a complete good-bye to his career but yet there are people like me who have come to see one more of his film.

I tried to analyze a bit more about this phenomenon called Ranbir Kapoor. Here is a guy who is not on any of the social networking sites the way other celebs are. He does not come and talk about his movie on each and every channel nor does he kill with a marketing overdose. This is a guy who likes to do limited work and let his work do the talking. He does endorsements where also he plays different roles.

Coming from the illustrious Kapoor family, Ranbir has got things easier, without any struggle. As lot of people would like to say, he was born with a silver spoon and that would make lot of people jealous of him and his achievements. But I must admit that I have never ever read jokes or pot shots directed at Ranbir (other than his romantic life) on any of the social medium the way people rip apart Abhishek Bachchan or Udit Chopra or even Shah Rukh Khan.

What has worked for Ranbir is the kind of roles that he has played and the realism that he has brought to those characters. The role that Ranbir played in Wake Up Sid allowed lot of youngsters to relate to him. Similarly, his role in Rocket Singh as a Surd was as realistic as it could get. The role of a shrewd politician with shades of grey in Raajneet further showed his caliber and versatility and also made people compare him to Rahul Gandhi.

With the aim of digging deeper into the success of Ranbir Kapoor, I left my thoughts at that point and headed to watch Rockstar. Once again Ranbir proves his mettle in the movie and does complete justice to his role of Janardhan Jhakar aka Jordan. Ranbir has got powerful and emotive eyes which allow him to straddle from the role of an innocent boy to a romantic lover to an angry man to a drunkard to a spaced out rockstar in a span of a single film. It would not be wrong to say that the entire movie is carried on the shoulders of Ranbir Kapoor and whatever success the film garners would be due to the performance that Ranbir gives in the film.

Ranbir Kapoor actually has the versatility of Raj Kapoor, the spunk of Shammi Kapoor, the charm of Rishi Kapoor and the eyes of Neetu Kapoor. With all of this, he has amazing confidence and absolutely no inhibitions of letting go completely towards his passion. All of this makes him a complete Rockstar and I think now Ranbir has made a permanent mark in the film industry with a stamp that says ‘Jeena Yahaan, Marna Yaahan, Iske Siva Jaana Kahaan’.

DIWALI – A FESTIVAL OF…

Diwali is the biggest festival in India, celebrated by millions across the nation with great pomp and fervour. It is a festival that is awaited every year with lot of excitement.

While the general feeling is that Diwali is a festival of lights, which it surely is, one needs to analyze this a bit deeper to really put down meaning on what Diwali means for different people. Basis my observations of Diwali over the years, I am attempting to broaden the scope and definition of Diwali. Diwali is a:

• Festival of glimmer and hope for all the candle-makers and diya makers who try to earn a large amount of their annual income through their sales in the few days prior to Diwali.
• Festival of coming back home and enjoying home food for all those students who are studying in another land away from their homes.
• Festival of a holiday abroad for the families who head out of the country every year on Diwali as this is the time when the parents and the kids, both have a long enough leave to enjoy a good holiday.
• Festival of opportunity for all the trading communities, consumer durable companies, gifting companies as a large part of their revenues get generated during the 15 days preceding Diwali.
• Festival of socializing for all the la-di-dah ladies who attend various high profile Diwali parties across their friends.
• Festival of Glee for all the Teen Patti and Poker enthusiasts who emerge from various locations with Gaddis in their pockets and the illusion and belief in their head that it will be their day today and they would make a big kill.
• Festival of new beginnings for all the business and trading houses who start their new books of accounts on the day of Diwali.
• Festival of Welcome as the doors of every house is open to welcome Goddess Lakshmi as well as the guests who come to greet and meet them.
• Festival of splurging as saving money as a concept goes out of the window for these few days as it is the time of indulging yourself in new clothes, new products, new mobiles or anything else that you can splurge on.
• Festival of bingeing and weight gain as every house is filled with sweets and chocolates and it definitely goes and sits in someone’s tummy.
• Festival of Desire as everyone who sees people better off (whether in terms of the car that they drive, the clothes that they wear, the parties that they attend, the gifts that they buy) desires to such a lifestyle.

Last but definitely not the least, Diwali is a Festival of Money. It is a festival where money changes hands every minute and every second, where money comes to a few and goes from a few, where money defines the feeling and the mood of the people, where money decides whether it is really a prosperous Diwali or not.     

On that note, wishing all you readers a very Happy and Prosperous Diwali and a great year ahead! 

STEVE JOBS - RIP

It is a very awkward feeling when you wake up to the news of the death of a person you admire. You want to tell yourself that this doesn’t seem to be true. You switch channels to confirm the veracity of the news. Today morning, something similar happened to me when I heard the news channels flashing the message ‘Steve Jobs dies’. I immediately tuned in to some of the international channels to see what people are saying across the world on such shocking news.

I discovered more about him than what I knew. Steve Jobs had 332 patents to his name so while we may know about only 10 - 12 of these, he had worked on a number of other ideas. Even the stair case design in the Apple headquarters was designed by Steve Jobs and he had a patent on that design. That was the genius that Steve Jobs was.

The first product of Steve Jobs that I experienced was the Ipod. This was years back but it made me marvel at the style and design of the product. It just changed the way we heard our music – no buttons, no CDs, cool earphones. I read about the man behind this product and discovered a lot about Steve Jobs. He had founded Apple along with Steve Wozniak. The Apple ads of 1984 clearly belong in the cult category. Steve was asked to leave the company that he had founded after a few years but that did not stop him in doing some amazing work with Pixar and no one could miss out on his caliber and hence Apple got him back to take charge.

With the launch of the iPhone, Steve Jobs changed the game and gave consumers an experience that they had not experienced before. No other company can claim to have a product for which people stay up through the night across the world to see the launch and then line up outside stores to be the first ones to get their hands on that product. When one thought that this is the best that is possible, Steve would surprise everyone by coming out with the next level of the iPhone and during his reign, Apple gave us iPhone 1, 2 , 3 and 4.

As if all of this was not enough, Steve Jobs amazed the world with the launch of iPad that made everyone sit and notice and a tablet revolution was born. Another product that caught my attention due to its sleek design and style and I also became one of the iPad owners.

Steve Jobs had said once ‘It is not the job of the consumer to know what he wants’ – a statement that would have been poo poohed by regular marketers but Steve was different and he proved his statement by giving products that consumers would never be able to ask for.

Some of his other famous quotes were:

• ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish’
• "Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”
• “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

The greatness of Steve Jobs comes across even when even rivals talk great things about him. Bill Gates tweeted– ‘Steve Jobs was a brilliant person and it was an insanely great honour to work with him’. Google has a link on their home page for Steve Jobs that takes you directly to the website of Apple, whose home page is a dedication to Steve Jobs.

While the online world is abuzz with tributes to Steve Jobs, I really thought that these two statements sum up the mood of all:

• ‘Steve Jobs logged into the world in 1955 and logged out in 2011 but human kind will never be able to delete him’
• ‘Some great people are remembered for a decade. A person like Steve Jobs will be remembered for centuries to come’ –  Rajiv Makhni

Steve Jobs was a man who was far away from thousands of us, a man we had never met personally but had heard and read so much about him that we always felt that we knew him personally as he understood what all of us wanted, he knew what it was to come out with a product that would make lives cool for people across the world.

Once again, I would like to thank Steve Jobs on behalf of each and every one who has been touched by his genius and I hope that your soul rests in peace as you have done outstanding work in this world, which lot of people will look upto and get inspired. 

RIP Steve

PROVOCATION

Tigers are known to pounce on their prey in such a way that the prey does not have any chance of escaping their claws. It is pretty understandable for them to do that as it is their way of surviving and getting their food.

The problem starts when similar behavior starts getting displayed by human beings. In their case, the one pouncing is also a person and the one being pounced is also another person. Now when cannibals do something like this, it is perfectly justified as this hunt will give them their food but when non-cannibalistic people get into this act of pouncing, it is a little difficult to fathom.

So what is it that makes people behave in this manner? What is the trigger point to this? The simple answer to this is ‘Provocation’. When people get provoked, they tend to get aggressive and irritated and the only way for them to retaliate is by hitting back at the other person.

Provocation as a tool has been used by market researchers for years in getting ideas and making people reach a level where they have to think of new solutions or options. I have personally used provocation techniques in idea workshops for new product ideas and have got tremendous results.

I completely understand the positive aspect of provocation as illustrated in the paragraph above but in most positive cases, the provocative attack involves the person himself in some way or the other directly. Anything said or mentioned is impacting that person and for them to react in such situations is as expected in normal human behavior.

In recent times, I am witnessing a new form of provocation where people get provoked even with statements or things that have got nothing to do with them directly but yet they lash out or rather become quasi spokesperson for the person or issue that is being hit at.

I can cite a number of examples from the online world:

1. When Narayana Murthy criticized the quality of students at IIT, Chetan Bhagat got provoked and tweeted a few bad things about Infosys. In return, present and ex Infoscions got provoked and hit back.

       2. When a girl wrote an open letter to a Delhi boy on her own private blog site, a huge number of people(men and women) got offended and provoked and wrote a response to that letter, logged onto the girl’s site and gave harsh comments and left abuses. Once again, if you were to sit back and notice, you will see that it was one girl’s angst after having gone through some bad experiences (probably), which she wrote on her own blog site. But people who wrote back also commented about the South Indian community at large and extolled the virtues of North Indians, thereby showing how provocation works.

People who understand human behavior and how it reacts to provocation use it for their own benefit:

•  Sidin Vadukut, a writer for MINT and a popular author understands this concept of provocation nicely and he purposely tweets statements that will provoke people and elicit a response from them. Some recent tweets of his go like this ‘Sholay is a boring movie’, ‘Paneer is for losers’, etc., which he is tweeting purposely and he mentions also that controversies sell books so I might as well create some by tweeting such things.
• Shoaib Akhtar came up with few extremely controversial statements on Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid when he launched his book ‘Controversially Yours’. In his case, the provocation was so high that it bothered the entire country  and may have not got him sales of his books but got him enough buzz and publicity.

With the convergence of the digital world, where everyone is connected to each other and people are out with knives, any provocative statement is bound to get huge reactions from people and sometimes it is intended to be that ways and sometimes it just leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

I hope this article does not provoke anyone of you because that is definitely not the intention. 

Travel Light - Happy Journey

This is an article that I had written for my B-school (MICA) magazine ‘Black Coffee’ in the year 2002 and I just came across it once again and felt that it is relevant even today and so thought of putting it up on my blog. Though it has a Deepak Chopra kind of feel to it, I still felt like sharing it with all of you.

So, here it is…..

Most of us would like to travel light, but very few of us are able to minimise our baggage. So many times, we literally sit atop overstuffed suitcases in order to snap them shut, but we are not ready to admit that we don’t really need all of those things.

Being overweight is often a problem. But we continue undeterred; consuming and accumulating fat despite our health problems. We are loath to part with the extra kilos that we lug around.

Here, I am not only talking about the visible flab but also the real flab – the weight we lug in and around our minds, the weight that drags us down.

Trimming the flab in the mind is a very daunting task that most of us don’t even attempt to do. But if we can muster the courage and make even an inept beginning – the rewards are bound to be tremendous. It may seem strange to talk about weight in the context of the human mind, but any unhappy person would know how heavy the mind can become.

Picture the mind as a room with many windows through which thoughts constantly fly in and out. The room is full of light and air. But in the middle of the room, a shape is growing. Call it the ‘I-ME-MINE’ syndrome or simple the EGO. This shape traps thoughts like flypaper traps flies. It feeds on those thoughts and grows bigger and uglier, and gradually blocks the entry of fresh air. The room becomes dark, stuffy and claustrophobic. The atmosphere also becomes heavy and stifling.

It is our own mind that bothers us but yet we keep on trying to blame the world for our affliction. We also continue to look to for world for joys, not realising that the joys are devoured by our ego.

William Blake has put it very beautifully: he who binds to himself a joy/does the winged life destroy/ but he who kisses the joy as it flies/lives in eternity’s sunrise.

Despite its size, the ego is very clever. Compel it to shed weight in one area and it puts back in the other. Ego reduction is actually a Herculean task! A good sense of humour can do a great deal to contain the ego. The ability to laugh at oneself is one of God’s greatest gifts; it can defend us from the vicissitudes of life. Most of us laugh at others, but we become very justificatory and protective when it comes to our own faults and problems.

Those who can smile through both rain and sunshine realise that the two are inseparable. Such is also the human condition, but beneath it are depths of serenity that can be reached. It is these depths that sustain us and give our lives meaning.

Another way to reduce the ego is to concentrate on the work at hand, instead of being obsessed with oneself and one’s expectations as a doer. Concentration on any activity without the interference of the ego yields unexpected pleasures. It also makes you more creative. It is the dirty tricks department of the ego that causes the major stress.

The battle for ego reduction has to be fought every day. If you can hang in there and not give up, then you will emerge as the winner. The ego will begin to shrink; fresh air will blow through the room (the mind) again. Sunshine will stream in. You will start feeling lighter and freer. The world will start looking brighter and a better place to live in.

It is a long road ahead, so the lighter you travel, the more pleasurable it will be. Hope you all are able to manage a room that is well-lit, airy and with lot of sunshine.