The Toothbrush

Its been long...

It was not that there were no ideas which needed to be expressed...it was just a combination of too many things which just kept me away...and while i was away in the real world doing things which real people are supposed to do to earn a real living and sustain themselves, a solitary toothbrush struck me with a thought...

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We are all social animals, or most of us are in any case, and we feed off our position in the society. The fact that you have someone to care for you and that there is someone who visits you/talks to you often is in itself a booster of sorts. But humans being humans, and our minds being even more demanding at that, we keep looking for assurances and re-assurances and signals to prove that we are accepted and people love us.


The toothbrush, you may be wondering, where does that fit into the picture.
The toothbrush, let me add, is a very personal item and in a typical societal setup, people need to carry it along to most places. In the long term, if you keep visiting places very often, you may leave one at each place just to avoid being bothered by forgetting to carry it.

Actually, its a bit of stretched thinking but if you let yourself loose just a wee bit more, you may be able to see that...

Imagine yourself when your loved one is in a different city/travelling and not with you. You yearn each moment for them to be home...sharing jokes, news or even staying mum as long as they are just there...with you! You become restless with their absence, its as if the routine has been disturbed and you need something to set it all right.

...and then you chance upon the toothbrush.
There, all alone, in the holder...and that is when the warm fuzzy feeling engulfs you...

All is not lost. The toothbrush, the one very personal thing, is still there generating hope and affirming that the owner would be back...you just have to be patient...and wait!

Respect !

During the course of my conversation with my wife i came to know that Chetan Bhagat has written in Times of India about women and the article has gone viral big time.

It made me curious as there are umpteen attempts at writing women centric articles for various reasons but what is so special about this one that has made people go bonkers. I was not able to locate the article directly on the newspaper's site but i found the content on a blog  (sorry for not taking prior permission to link!).

As i read through the article, it was evident why the article was so popular. It made sense. Not in any arbit way, but in a very matter-of-fact and straight to the point kind of a way. The premise is based on the findings of a survey which lists Indian women as the most stressed in the world. The research cited states that 87% of
the Indian women are under acute stress vis-a-vis ~50% American women.

Our sensibilities want us to think on the contrary relating higher workload and a higher status of living to cause more stress but the reality is quite different.

The article was a winning one because it not only outlines the problem but also proposes simple and effective measures to counter it too. I also totally agreed with the solutions laid out to help our ladies de-stress.

There were 5 core points: in-laws, undervalued at work, undervalued at home, balancing home and office, peer pressure. Now i know that the list is not exhaustive and you may know women who are not stressed by all/any/some of these but then this talks about our average lady. If you or someone you know do not fall into any of these categories, congratulations !! you/they are ahead of the curve.

For those who fall in any of the above categories, go read the article to get a fresh perspective in life. If you are still hooked to what i have written here, below is my perspective (largely rehashed and developed on the article only, sorry for the lack of originality)

In-laws (or should i say Relatives) are an integral component of the indian family system. Can't live with them, can't live without them (hopefully!) but then being married does not come with a contract of a personality change. You were chosen for what you were, you fell in love by being what you were, agreed there are additional responsibilities to take care of but you are not part of the Transformers !! Stay that way !! All expectations can never be met, just meet your own expectations and stay happy !

If you are working and sincere towards your work, you are an asset. Do not be emotionally attached to the workplace. There are better options who would give you your true worth. Go for the heady feeling, liberate yourself and work where you are appreciated. The positive atmosphere would reflect in your feeling of well being.

Undervalued at home, your poor husband does not know what he is getting into. He would probably never be able to achieve all that you do singlehandedly in double the time. Trust me, i have been living away for a long time (solely due to work :)) and life rears it ugly face everyday. Its the lady who acts like a shield and paints a rosy picture.
To all men - the ladies of your house do more than you can imagine. Show some respect, if not then just shut up or do it yourself, you will soon figure out.

Balancing home and office repsonsibilities and peer pressure are something that most ladies of the day face. As chetan bhagat put it..." This is not an exam, you don't need an A+". Look around you, if your family is happy with whatever you do for them , if your friends are there around you, if life is going smooth - stop and smell the roses. There is no end to desires and ambitions, learn to count your blessings.

I am writing this because in the recent years i have come across women who balance a lot of things while still going about their lives cheerfully. Respect !

Unbecoming me

Its been an year at the new 'workplace'. I can very confidently say that now i have transformed in to a true landlubber. The history of a sea-life has become what i just said, "history". The transition has been fast, breakneck at times, but it has been largely the way i had wanted.

During the transition, i encountered numerous people and their varying degrees of dismissive attitudes:

"OMG!!! you are going to quit sea!!!! what will you do? Can you do anything else" (As if i was destined to be a sailor from the womb itself)

"You wont be able to do it, it is not as easy as it sounds!" (As if they were paying me to sit on my a** on the ship)

"Please dont quit sea, you have responsibilities!!!" (My God! as if they would have welcomed my quitting if i was in a parallel universe)

...and so on and so forth

Had i heard or paid heed to any/all of them, i may have still been sailing and thinking about why i am doing what i am doing? i realized on the first sail itself that i need my support group of friends and family within easy reach. Its not convenient when you have to pay $24 for a 20 min phone-call through satellite in which there's a voice delay of a few seconds.

Internet, what's that?? Till a few years ago it was considered an unnecessary luxury and additional cost to have a VSAT system on board. The companies have only now extended the facility on board and that is also not all pervasive, so i needed to be somewhere stable. A place from where i could connect easily, network, call, drive, meet, greet, play, laugh and all that with all those around me.

I wanted a routine. Routine is boring but then it is better than the unknown alarm waking you up every night and being on your toes throughout. Some are wired that way, i was not.

Yes, the life has become more routine now. I wake up, eat, go to office, slog the day in a chair, the waistline has moved north by a couple of inches, i come back home, watch tv, sleep...but there is the assurance that i am there for those who need me and vice versa.

Living/settling in a new city is not easy, that has become the latest challenge, life has become different but i have successfully passed an year of it.

The challenges are still there and would always be till the last day, only their classification has changed.

The 'me' is still the same as i was before but happy.
Happy to have proved my detractors wrong.
Happy to have been able to achieve what i have.
Happy to be me.

The Middle Eastern Mirage: Doha and therabouts...

On these business trips to "exotic" locations, myriad thoughts keep crossing my mind at any given point in time. There are things that strike me as odd or unusual or different and i try to make a mental note of it but more often than not, they slip out of the mind when i actually sit down to describe a place i have just been to.

But as i circled over Doha in Qatar, my imaginary visualization of the cityscape was instantly shattered. Having been to and transited Dubai quite frequently, the opulence has somehow become a benchmark within the middle eastern region but Doha set the image straight in an instant. From no angle, except maybe looking at the high-rises in the Business district or some of the Bugatti, Lamborghini, Bentley showrooms aside, you cannot make out that this is the country with the world's highest GDP per capita and the residents are supposed to be pretty affluent.

Its all constructed in the same sandy color buildings and there is nothing beyond 6-7 KMs in any direction. Doha has been the hotseat for many a sporting activities including the Doha Open, The Asian Games of 2006 and more recently winning the bid to host the World Cup Soccer in 2022. But looking at the condition of the country at the moment, it poses a big question mark.

The Olympic stadium built for the Asian games now hosts other events but over the dusty skyline of the city and its remote location, it resembles an eerie building on some faraway distant planet shrouded in reddish brown sand. The architecture is marvelous and most probably the country would be able to construct a new stadium for soccer fans but then it really needs to overhaul itself completely from the perspective of town planning.

Doha reminded me of Cinderella, a beautiful girl whose beauty was under wraps for most part of her life, compared to her more glamorous cousins (read: Dubai). Doha appears just like Cinderella, plain, simple, contended and having the potential to outshine itself but then the world has already started equating the middle eastern opulence to that of Dubai and Doha would have to keep up.

The buildings, specially in the center of the town, are old and creaky. They reek of neglect. There is ample construction going on all around and these dwellings are being razed and most probably a glitzy structure would develop but i dont know in what time. Another dire need of the city is the development of the Public transport. You cannot expect tourists to be familiar with bus numbers and utilize them for commutation. Getting taxis was a big headache, they have won the bid for the cup but if these things are not rectified, they are in for some major grilling. i am not too sure but maybe for them its just a matter of throwing some more Oil money and getting it renovated in a jiffy. I hope they have something up their sleeves to improve it.

The airport is functional. They have just recently started to modernize and expand it. Considering the Qatar Airways premium image being flashed on the TV screens, i had imagined its base to be something out of this world!! but sadly as of now, i would say that probably Jaipur airport is also better in terms of designing and handling the flow of passengers. Doha became my first international airport where i had to board a bus to be taken to the aircraft and then use a stepladder to reach the aircraft. A definite first for me, but am sure things are about to change.

Also, while i was mentioning money being thrown around, from my seat in the aircraft i saw couple of 7-series Beamers stopping right by the aircraft and some local families getting down to board the looong 50 minute flight to Dubai in a first class cabin. Price discrimination at its best.

But in the end, even for Dubai, the opulence seems to be a facade. We all know how the emirate trembled after the recession of 2008. New buildings and construction and glitz is just fine....but its still a desert beyond the city limits.

All the best Doha! Hope to see you in your overhauled look sometime.

2010 to 2011 : An Year's worth of Nostalgia

I thought of naming it " a game of numbers" but then the title would have been  quite misleading given that this entry has nothing to do with numbers or mathematics or for that matter logic! What i intend to write over here is how the last year panned out. Given the fact that so many events have taken place and it gets really hard to document each of them, i shall do it crisply in a monthly breakup.

January 2010 - The month was frought with excitement what with the ISB campus scene hotting up for the batch. Nothing else was important enough to catch attention in the entire month. The term just passed away without any major happenings.

February 2010 - Brought with it my first job post MBA. Apollo selected me and it also initiated my first vacation from ISB in the last 10 odd months that i had been in Hyderabad. My first trip home from college :). Also completed an year of FB existence

March 2010 - Was the most happening party season. Parties were happening left, right and center and i was glad to be in the midst of it all with some wonderful friends. Started blogging as well.

April 2010 - The Graduation! Finally an ISB MBA under my belt. Also, the season of partings, some tearful, some hopeful and some with a sense of relief!! Got a chance for another road trip when i drove from Hyderabad to Jaipur with am amazing co-driver/partner/friend/human being and lastly wife :)

May 2010 - The entry into the big bad corporate world. The ship had finally run aground. Joined my job and started settling down to the concept of fixed working hours. Also the month where the daring decision to live in Chennai was finally being implemented. A learning curve on getting settled in any new cities. Learnt to run around with language problems and still get work done.

June 2010 - The first official trip happened and got to visit ISB again (Related post)

July 2010 - That one small change for me, a giant leap for Radhika! She got selected in Allahabad Bank as a PO and had to join in Jaipur. Heartbreaking, yes as she would leave but was happy to see that she is moving on in life onto her chosen and cherished career path.

August 2010 - The fall over of last month led to the development of my culinary skills. Had no option but to start cooking on my own. Thanks to a well established kitchen, free culinary guidance and technology, the dishes were ready to roll out of the kitchen :D.

September 2010 - The first visit home after joining job. Learnt the fact that its difficult to manage holidays with a 6 day week but what the hell. A few changes in the office and a first hand experience of change management implementation and its importance. Also came to know that wife is already set to move into her 2nd job!! A better one at that!!

October 2010 - A season of festivities. Diwali at home, Dusshera in Chennai. Travel all around

November 2010 - Mongolia!!! (Related post) . Got a chance to visit an exotic location for a project. Wife joined State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur as a PO with better chances of a chennai transfer.

December 2010 - Completed an year on twitter. 890 tweets in an year is not bad!! Visited Sudan (Related post) and came back in one piece to regale people with exotic location and engrossing encounters. Looking forward to an even better year ahead.

Throughout the year - continued being Optimistic about things, continued being a good friend (people disagreeing with this please meet me offline :X ), Most importantly, continued being what i am.

And finally,

The number game enter the scene with 2010 giving way to 2011. An insignificant addition of 1 but an occasion that changes the outlook of quite a few people on many things. A new year not only brings the old to an end but also brings with it a hope of a different year ahead.One which is peaceful, joyous, calm from an individual's perspective and one which is productive, profitable, engrossing and enriching from a company's perspective.

To each his own but nonetheless wishing everyone in the Blogopshere and to you (who took the trouble of reading it without taking the trouble to comment ;) ) a very HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011.

Surviving Sudan 101

OK so yet again I got the opportunity to travel to another godforsaken place typically seen on discovery as exotic/adventurous or on BBC/CNN as war and epidemic stricken but contrastingly to all these perceptions, Sudan (or atleast Khartoum where I was for 4 days) is an exact opposite.

It is as troublesome or peaceful as any other city on the planet. On getting hit by this reality, I thought I might as well pen down some “salient features” or tips for Sudan. In the unlikely event of you getting to travel here you may want to read through carefully or you can always call me!

1.     1.  Try to get your visit sponsored by a local person with contacts. Why I am saying this is because, you need to preprocess the visa from Khartoum and carry a print of the same. The trouble starts once you land and need to get an actual visa stuck to the passport. A local person with contact comes handy in this situation. Also, they charge $105 as of today as visa sticking fees…and we always thought that its only India where there is redtapism and bureaucracy

2.      2. The arrivals area outside the airport is without street lighting so be careful while carrying your luggage. Also I could not see any trolleys so better to travel light

3.       3. The taxis look as if they have been recently bombarded and then hurriedly painted in garish yellow to hide the blemishes. They are all very old Toyota models (oh yes…BBC showed this correctly). I am told they would be phased out next year but then forewarned is forearmed

4.       4.There is a visible lack of decent star rated or business hotels in the capital. Probably media driven but they are expected to be here in 4-5 years. Till then try your luck with the internet to find a place (a local contact is very helpful here). The existing hotels are also very expensive compared to the facilities they offer. I stayed at the Khartoum plaza hotel (sounds fancy eh ??) the basic single room was $105 per night and a luxury suite with 2 bedrooms was $205 per night. As we were 2 people on the trip, the suit worked out cheaper than individual rooms!!

 

5.       5.The Sudanese are very friendly and quiet people as in they do not trouble foreigners. There are a few beggars on the streets but they don’t cling on to you for dear life or till kingdom come and move away quickly. I had to move around a lot on foot and amidst local population but never was I made a subject for curious eyes and furtive laughter.

6.       6.At night, although it is not advisable to travel unaccompanied in any city, Khartoum is comparable to our Indian cities. I saw ladies driving all alone at around 10 in the night and also groups of men and women were visible at restaurants.

7.      7.  There is officially no alcohol available. Unofficially I could not get any information as my hosts were a gujju pure veg family.

8.    8. There are plenty of Bajaj autos on the roads driving at breakneck speeds just like Chennai. One difference in the structure is that the driver’s seat is fixed with a headrest and the wheels have sharp spokes jutting out a-la death race style so be careful!!

9.      9. Maalesh – sorry. Tamaam – in the sense of very good or are we good?. Shukraan – thank you. I did not need to use any other words as my local hosts spoke fluent Arabic. But still if you know Arabic, it’s a big help in the region.

10 10. The currency is Sudanese pounds mysteriously abbreviated as SDG. 1SP~ 2.5 USD as of today but they used to have old Sudanese pounds and sometimes refer to prices in old pounds. 1 new pound = 1000 old pounds so go figure out the price for yourself.

11 11. These people love to drink kava (coffee) or sha (tea) and they have it without milk. Many varieties of tea are available and I liked the Hibiscus tea the most!! The different food that I was able to taste included “eggplant chutney” and an “eggplant stew”. Like I said before, the schedule and the hosts were not conducive to palate experiments of the nutcase kinds (I can see Radhika heaving a sigh of relief at that!!).

12 12. All foreign visitors need to be registered at the foreign office for about $70 each without which you cannot leave the country so carry a spare photograph and allot one day for the process (if you are daring enough to attempt the feat yourself) or get it done through the hotel at about $80-$100 per person or best way is to ask your local sponsor to get it done for you :P.

13 13. The landscape is identical to many of our tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India but its fast changing and lot of construction is taking place.

14 14. Yeah, it’s the place where the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet to form the single Nile river heading out to Egypt. That’s a nice place to visit.

15 15. I read that photography is not allowed unless you take a permit or you would be flogged publically so no pictures taken. Actually there was no time due to my schedule also.

16 16. And the worst piece of news is that north and south Sudan may separate ala India-Pakistan so January onwards may be a critical situation for some time, although as of now there was no indication of any tension in the air. Hope all happens peacefully.

Ok, the flight has been announced so leaving for it…but I hope I have not missed out on any other info of this type. I also hope more people get to visit Sudan and alleviate the misconceptions surrounding its conditions. It’s a nice place to be! Ciao!

Mongolia Revisited...albeit in a hurry :D

“It’s not the destination that matters, it is the journey”, but in my case it turned out that it is both the journey and the destination which mattered.

I wanted to blog about each stage and on the go but then 90% laziness and 10% lack of time took over me during the journey phase as it was a welcome break from the regular office routine and there went the idea of “live-blogging” in the dustbin.

The journey in itself was pretty amusing. There is no direct connection to reach Mongolia from India. As  it’s a land locked country, so the only options remaining are: -

1) For Conventional Travelers: Fly into the only international airport at Ulaanbaatar or UB (as its fondly called by locals) city from limited places on earth such as Seoul, Beijing, Osaka, Tokyo and surprisingly Munich and Moscow!

2) For the Adventurous Fellows: try taking the trans Siberian railway from Moscow and spend a week in the train or take the train from Beijing to UB.

3) For the Nutjobs: Walk across the mountains either through russia or china (likely to be shot dead at the border for being a nutjob running away), amidst barren landscape wrapped in n-layers of polar climate woolen clothing

I would have tried the last option but for being on a business trip, we were made to take option 1 above.

This option was also a very circuitous one owing to something called a Revenue Management System (which all B-schools teach the students but very few students claim to have mastered the art). We were routed through Chennai – dubai – Beijing – UB and the same way return. It was almost 30K cheaper than flying from Mumbai to seoul and onwards to UB and returning the same way. Another plus was to be able to stretch my legs in the spacious economy class of the A380 between Dubai and Beijing both ways ;).

Travel is mostly the same across the world, except if it is options 2 and 3 above so cutting the chase and coming to the more interesting part about Mongolia hereonwards.

Mongolia is most famous for Chinggis Khan. We are all taught about the barbaric nature and his immense empire. The present day Mongols are not even a shadow of the same. They are all extremely friendly and simple people who prefer minding their own business. Crime rate is very low, a major factor being that it is world’s 3^rd least populated country. The entire population is only about 3 million of which 1.5 million are in UB. The moment you move out of the city, homosapiens are the rarest commodity available.

The country has a very different landscape. When I was there recently, it was the onset of winter which led to snowfall and temperatures in the range of 1 to -23C. For the locals, it was not yet cold but I had to keep buying more layers of clothing just to survive. The country had a very barren countryside and there are hardly any trees to be seen. 

The situation may be different in summers but who knows. The point is that this type of natural beauty is rarely come across anywhere else. I am not aware if the nation promotes its tourism but if it does, I see an immense potential there.

The currency is called Tugruk and as of today 1$ = approx 1280 MNT so when we converted 300$, we were loaded with cash :D. ofcourse, it went away equally fast, but the feeling of carrying lakhs/crores in your wallet is awesome !!

 

The food has beef as a major component. Ok, almost everything is non-veg, owing to the climate and the protein needs for the winter and yes on the same lines, alcohol is quite cheap with Chinggis Vodka and Chinggis Beer ruling the streets as the most (ab)used poison of choice.

Another interesting fact was that there are no taxis on the road. The tourist guides list out some call taxi numbers but they were also far and few. The fact is , just stick your hand out at a passing vehicle and if you are lucky they would stop and offer you a ride. Negotiate the price and you are on your way.simple!

While we were there, we also met an Indian chef running an Indian restaurant for the last 8 years. Indian food is quite popular and reasonable priced. Some of the major restaurants are Delhi Darbar, Taj Mahal and Hazara. The chef told us that including us, the number of Indians in the country was 73. Also, we were not able to locate a sardar/gujju bhai (though most certainly at least one of each should be there).

Even though I was told that there is an active nightlife in UB city, our nightlife was confined to the office and coming back to the hotel for all the week that we were there. Got a chance to go out to Terelj National Park on the northern outskirts of the city, and it was a magnificent sight. This is not a national park for the animals but for the vegetation primarily. At this time of the year, everything was covered in snow so it was a different kind of beauty but would love to visit the place in summertime and maybe have an overnight stay at the numerous tourist camps offering “authentic nomadic experience”.

In short, (and yes, I’d like to finish) it’s a beautiful, bustling modern city having pristine countryside natural beauty. Try to visit.

For more Pics: please refer my FB profile

And yes…do not forget to drink Ayrag – its fermented mare’s milk. Truly Awesome!!