MY POSTS

THE POWER OF MUSIC The experience of attending musical concerts of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi',Hari Prasad Chaurasia , Shivkumar Sharma ,V G Jog  and Budhyajit Mukharjee  in one single week  at Darbar Hall of Gaikwad's Rajmahal  in Baroda is  unforgettable. Most of the time Ustad Zakir Hussain was accompanying on Tabala which was more than icing on the cake . Frankly speaking I don't have any knowledge of "Ragas" of the Indian classical music .For me there is no particular favorite  Raga  nor I can recognize any style of particular "Gharana". To me  "Sarod" sound or "Sitar sound"   or for that matter Veena sound are all the same. I have always failed in distinguishing sound of "Mrudung " and "Tabala" At times I cannot even differentiate between " Dholki sound " and "Tabala sound". Never the less I do enjoy musical concerts as they are treat to ears and somewhat  amazing . In my bucket list ther...

PANEER OF HARYANA In the hostel days  the quality of  food in the mess was always an issue. On Tuesday for Lunch and on on Saturday for dinner, they used to serve  Mutter Paneer. At that time Paneer was not known to me and I never liked  it's soft spongy  touch. Many of my friends however used to get delighted with that tasteless paneer and I used to wonder why they like those white cuboids. 5 years later when I shifted to Haryana in 1983 I came across Paneer again , but this time l found that the  paneer was of superb quality. There was sea change in the taste,texture and size of the paneer pieces compared to what they used to serve in the mess of IIT Powai  . The main reason for this was I was in Haryana. Haryana was well known for milk and milk related products including Paneer.There used to be more than 7 % of fat content in the milk of Murrah buffaloes  and one  was required to dilute that milk by mixing some water for easy diges...

VADODARA EXPRESS There is one train from vadodara to Mumbai starting at 10.45 pm and reaching Mumbai  central next day morning at 6am Almost everyone , except my Gujrathi friends, will agree that during this period of journey there is absolutely no need to eat anything. The real situation however is quite different than this normal thinking  and anyone can verify this by traveling in Vadodara express. As the train starts the discussions on the share market and investment in the property will also start and soon  one after another passengers in the compartment will start opening their four or five stories Tiffin carriers.The whole coach will be filled with different flavors of so many varieties of edible items.If you are not successfully pretending that "you have slept " then at least 3 or 4 persons around you will offer you some food items .While eating ,the passengers around you will be constantly talking either about their business or about politics or about which items...

It was Sunday and in the afternoon we were watching basket ball match between Haryana and Maharashtra.In those days Doordarshan was the sole channel available and whatever they telecasted people  used to either watch merrily or switch off  the TV and used to go to see some movie in cinema theater. The basket ball match was very interesting and scores of both the teams were increasing after each basket scored by the respective teams and scores were going neck to neck .It was a final match and both team's were giving their best for winning the gold medal. Myself and my wife were very happy to see Maharashtrian girls  giving spirited fight to Haryana girls who looked a shade better and physically stronger.Maharashtra not only leveled the score from down score of  7-13 at 21-21 but at half time they were leading 35-32 Then came a sensational comment of my son Amey. He commented on us that  you dont understand  basket ball game because whenever we are loosing yo...

The nearest place from Delhi where there is a stream of holy Ganga is Gadhmukteshwara.This place is about 50 kms from Delhi.I initially planned to visit this place but this place people generally visit to perform last rites so I dropped the idea. The choice then  was Haridwar . We started  in the early morning of first week of October ,to be precise on 2nd October which was a national holiday.After a wonderful Breakfast on our way at Khatauli on high way we continued our journey and after  two  hours we saw the great river for the first time.There were very old bridges and Ganga hardly looked impressive . I was rather worried about the conditions of those bridges and road and since no one was seen near the river bank we continued to proceed.  We Did not know  the exact  place where we have to go so after some time I stopped  and asked the  stranger where is the nearest Ganga river ? He was annoyed as I Did not say Gangaji . The stranger told ...

EXPERIENCE OF WATCHING MOVIE WITH CALCUTTA CROWD  While watching a movie or any sport event or while in musical concert , ambience  and the type of company matters a lot.I experienced this in Calcutta while watching  Anupam Kher's  'SARANSH' way back in 1984 .  I observed a very disciplined and responsive crowd around me watching the movie in a pin drop silence.The feeling then was no different than watching some MARATHI drama of Ms.Vijaya Mehata or Dr Lagoo  in Mumbai. Later I came to know that Anupam Kher who played the main role was only 28 years old. He played the main role of Retired school teacher of Maharashtrian man and his wife's role was played by Rohini Hattangadi who too was much younger compared to the age of  woman she played . Hats off to Director Mahesh Bhatt who dared to select such young persons for the main roles .The theme was about the couple whose young son dies abroad .It was a serious movie and great thing to note for me...

Generally it is believed that if there is scarcity of the items belonging to "daily needs" category, there will be  dissatisfaction in the society. On the contrary if the things or facilities are available readily in abundance  there are different types of problems which also lead us to unhappiness ! When I was child and later till I was 30  I indeed experienced and  still remember  scarcity of items like  milk ,suger,wheat,rice etc. For hours we used to wait for the  Government  milk van  and the restricted quantity of milk was distributed to people standing in the long queue. Some persons in the queue used to wait for their turn even  without taking their morning tea. ....Suger was available only in the  ration shops and at other places it was illegally available on premium price.  In 1964 red wheat  distributed on ration shop was of horrible quality ....Later I came to know that in USA this  red wheat was fed to pi...

HURRICANE  FROM  HARYANA.   In those glorious cricketiñgs days of fast   bowlers  including Malcom Marshal ,Michel Holding,Andy Roberts,Garner  from West Indies , Dennis Lillie  Jeff Thomson of Australia ,Ian Bothom of England , Sarfaraz Nawaz , Imran Khan of Pakistan and Richard Hedaly of New Zealand, KAPIL DEV was the only answer from Indian side. Till  1978  India used to mainly depend on spinners from the days of Subhash Gupte,Vinoo Mankad,to famous  quartet Bedi,Chandrashekhar,Prasanna and Venkat Raghavan. For our generation Kapil was the first fast bowler who made his presence felt and perhaps only after that , young cricketers were inspired to opt the career in fast bowling. Kapil was perhaps the slowest among all the bowlers named  above but was the dark horse, as in wicket taking numbers he surpassed all of them. Many of today's generation may not be knowing that at one time Kapil was holding record of taking...

S S  BARARA...THE STALWART There is a place called Suratgarah in Rajasthan  which is almost in the desert and quite  close to Pakistan border. When I started my career I  never imagined that I will have to ever  go to such a remote place for some official work. Our tractor testing site was just 13  km away from no man land between India and Pakistan  and all over the places there was hectares and heaters of irregularly cultivated  Government land  for the  want of labor and water . The land was  fertile but water was the constraint. It was this place where our SWARAN SINGH BARARA  was in action  .He was heading the tractor testing team at that remote place. BARARA was always his own boss though KR used to think that SSB reports to him (KR means K Rajeshwar)Our GM ...RJ  was scared of SSB and will talk to KR or others about tractor testing.  To describe Mr Barara the only word I can imagine is the STALWART. He ...

Someone defined that  "Consultant  is a person who at your cost  understands the problem from you and tell the solution to you which you already know ." Many people think engineering and management are entirely different things .It is really not so.The two things  do have relation.Managing engineering solutions is extremely tough task .Most engineers can solve management related issues simply by using common sense but if  managers give engineering solutions they more often backfire. Broadly there are consultants in two categories. Technical consultants who are expected to  give solutions to engineering problems.The other category of Consultants work in areas  like finance, personnel,legal matters, ,administration, logistic and other  such fields.They engineer the solutions! Most companies employ consultants and seek their advice for the various problems / issues they face because the expertise may not be available within the company. Legal co...

We often come across people in the industries who stretch themselves too much to achieve their target dates. It is good habit indeed if adequate caution is exercised.   .Everyday we have to commit some date to someone for some activity .....be it office or home. The target dates are important but one must understand that there is no point in spoiling the fun part of the work or quality of the work just to meet these committed target dates. In one of the best sellers  "SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE" , STEFEN COVEY , an author said that "BEGIN WITH AN END IN THE MIND.He strongly recommends that one must estimate when the activity will be completed. The date on which the end of the activity can happen without compromising on quality of work  should be ideally the TARGET DATE  of  that activity or assignment or Project. Unfortunately real world is not ideal  therefore  Target Dates are decided in most unscientific manner. Many commit the  da...

Caught Red Handed ! Way back in 1984 I had gone to Japan for two months.I was staying in a  special room in dormitory of small city called Fukuyama which is about 200 km north of famous Hiroshima city. Fukuyama was perhaps C category city but at that time itself Fukuyama had automatic  traffic light signals  and Cameras fitted on every busy square and whichever part of the city  I saw, was spotlessly clean.The room in   dormitory  where I stayed was equipped with air conditioner and TV. In the evening I used to walk to spend time because though TV had 40 channels  except the sport channel no other channel was of any use to me. On one evening I was returning at about 10 pm after seeing  English movie. There was negligible traffic . As I was crossing on the zebra line there was a strong and heavy  hand on my shoulder.He was a policeman. He  took me to his cabin at one corner. Obviously I was frightened.Away from India in the place ...

DESTINY WILL HAVE THE LAST LAUGH ! Bradman and Gavaskar were most precious players for their countries.Both will be always remembered by thousands of fans for their centuries. When Don Bradman walked to bat to play his last inning of the illustrious career he had scored 6996 runs in 69 innings. In his last inning he needed just 4 runs to make his career batting average 100. What happened is now the history..Bradman was clean bowled on duck ....could not score 7000 runs and his career batting average is  99.94 not 100 Those four crucial runs elluded him no matter he might have hit hundreds of fours prior to that. The world acknowledges Bradman as the greatest batsman but the Destiny put a small Mark of blemish in the record books. When our Indian Bradman none other than Sunny Gavaskar played his last test match Destiny played the same game with him and he was out on 96. Those four runs prevented him from scoring one more century , no matter he had scored highest number of  ...

RESPECT THE BREVITY For communicating   effectively a good skill is required......be it  a face to face oral communication or written communication.  Readers digest in one of  their books mentioned  ABC of communications are A   for  Accuracy   B   for Brevity and      C  for  clarity. Some time when one wants to be diplomatic   less clarity or less accuracy  is intentionally planned ,but that type of communication is at much higher level. To communicate in brief is the skill  and it is not easy  to acquire this skill . If one is too brief  not only clarity  will be reduced but you will appear curt  and hurt the receiver.  On the other hand if one keeps on chattering  not only brevity is lost but entire purpose of communication will be lost as receiver will loose the interest. For communicating effectively there are many factors involve...

Three essential aspects of  long distance communication are  1  its speed  meaning time required to get information transferred ,  2  its accuracy  meaning has the  receiver  got exact information as intended by receiver  3 Quantity of communicated data. meaning  can sender was in the position to give  complete details  of information he intended to give.  When the telegram and telephone  were invented  limitation of speed of communication disappeared  and messages could go instantly  from one end to other end irrespective of distance between the two ends. Earlier days  long distance communication  used to take days or months depending on the distance where information was required to be sent. With advance in technology speed of communication  increased however quantum  of information (details including photographs and drawings ) required to be sent from one end to...

Other day I was told that more than 80 percent of  MESSAGES   on Whatsapp are  not only useless  but they are  not even read by recipients. One  could never imagine such a mass misuse of the technology at the cost our  time  , our own development .and our money .      Every day I get  4-5 Good morning messages , one or two  happy birthday or Happy anniversary  messages of some person in the group wishing another person ...one or two puzzles 20-30 photographs and at least  15 video clips  each of minimum 2 to 3 minutes. It is humanly impossible to go through all those messages and so they become useless. I have one friend who has  refused to be on whatsapp to more than 100 people so far. He is a very creative  person and he feels that his creativity will be lost if he starts using smart phone, he still uses that old mobile  with so many buttons and ignores the dirty looks  of people...

PLEASE DONT WORRY ! These days I more often observe extremely worried persons whenever I  interact with youngsters particularly working in IT companies. They are in fact much better placed than the vast majority.  Every second person I come across either draws  6 figure salary per month or very near to that figure.They don’t  face any  basic problem like transport as everyone owns car. At a very young age they have all the amenities in their house which they themselves own. Invariably I find that they possess latest models of mobiles and are always  in front of some screen ….be it mobile screen.. or laptop screen or TV screen or a camera screen.Alternately they go to to multiplex to see some moovie on weekends. I always  find them downloading some application or updating to new version of the existing applications.How many times those apps are actually used ...I really don't know. In spite of all this well to do style of life there is constant worry of...

Nagpur is .....or was ....one of the most ignored city of the central India It was  once capital of Central zone and number 1 .Today Bhopal and even Raipur are far ahead of Nagpur. In 1960 When Maharashtra was formed in the independent India Nagpur became part of it and lost its capital status as Bombay was an obvious choice for Capital. Since then Nagpur is ignored systematically and cleverly by all western Maharashtrian politician's and the great sugar lobby. There were many Chief ministers from Vidarbha but they were controlled by lobby and  they were more fascinated by Mumbai. They happily ignored Nagpur and Vidarbha. As such Vidarbha was; and even today is one of the richest area considering  it's minerals  and forest wealth. For 50 long years almost all the electricity generated here is used by western Maharashtra and still they feel Nagpur has only oranges .The money allotted to Vidarbha area was either diverted to other projects or was not used. In MIHAN...

ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS These days quality of water is a big problem.As a result, all water purifier manufacturers are minting money. One of those manufacturers in its advertisement tell " PANISE PANGA MAT LO". I was wondering who is taking "panga' with water.No doubt that water quality has deteriorated over last several years but R/O machine is not the real solution. It is only solving problem for very few affluent and that too temporarily . Root causes for poor quality of water are   1 leakages in the pipe lines which leads to mixing of sewage water.   2 Ground water pollution because of illegal chemical discharges by industries. Now instead of insisting on the actions to prevent these root causes people like us give excessive focus and importance to R/O machines. How many of us know that by using R/O Purifiers we are helping in reducing the quality of ground water and not only that..by consuming R/O water we ourselves are becoming more prone to viral atta...

FALL  IN   LINE 43 years back I attended one lecture of noted management expert and teacher , Professor Sharu Rangnekar and later  read his  one small and wonderful   book titled " In the wonderland of Indian Mangers".I honestly feel that no one has described  management style and work culture of  Indian Industries better than professor Rangnekar. Since then I have been a silent observer of the people I have met in various industries. RANGNEKAR described  in the book how people avoid work in the systematic manner.He also mentioned  about 90 /10  formulae stating that  in almost all Indian  industries and offices 90 percent work is done by 10 percent of the employees and balance 10 percent work is done by 90 percent of the employees .When I observe people I try to place them in either 90 percent or 10 percent category . In most Indian industries the basic  management style continues to be " Either you fall in lin...