Sunday Posts

Kolkata invariably features in my tours to India. Not just because it is home, but I am a Kolkata enthusiast - I love the city and its people, and believe in its future. I am, of course, working towards expanding our network there - I remain convinced that any education business in India should have a Kolkata presence. Of course, I face this question often - if I believe in Kolkata so much, why don't I go and stay there? The answer I give is similar to many other compatriots living abroad - lack of work opportunity has made me travel. Undoubtedly, Kolkata has little industry and too few jobs - Rajiv Gandhi famously said it was a dying city - but most importantly, it is yet to wake up to Globalization and take the opportunity. There are people who would jump at the last comment. There has been much ado about the re-industrialization of West Bengal in the recent times. It is undeniable that the world-record making $2500 car, the Tata Nano , is to be produced in the outskirts ...

The last time, I was passionately involved was 19 th of March 2006. With my camera, I hastened to add! That was the last time I was trying to photograph a deadwood tree in the background of a neighbourhood church - somehow it told me a story that I was trying to capture. It was telling me about the futility and barrenness of life. The church stood tall in a sort of eternal uprightness. I knew that church was closed a few weeks back for financial scandal of some sort, but its structure hardly betrayed the shame. The sky was clear and a tinge greenish, providing the perfect background to the eternal church and a dead tree, embedding the irony that there was little hope for this closed church while the dead tree waited for its spring! But then I gave up taking photos on the 20 th morning. I lost my mother that morning. Since then, I was pre -occupied with life. With goings-on. I tried to take the cameras out of the shelf and shoot, but it seemed that objects stopped talking to me. Irret...

I am in a rather foul mood. Well, yes, disappointed is the word. Not angry, anger isn't something I am good at. Sad - a bit perhaps - but sadness is tragic, and I am not feeling tragic at this time. It is the sheer overwhelmedness, frustration of living statically, and inability to dream that's getting me. I must admit - this is only cyclical and I get these feelings often, though I don't know when this is going to go away. Easter is anyway a depressing time. A holiday in the middle of nothing - and I had to work and travel most of it anyway. It is an early Easter too - Easter was this early last time in 1913 and won't be till 2160. The weather god blessed London with some snowflakes too - but while I was gearing up for the possibility of an white easter and lecturing someone on Climate Change, the snow melted. March mid-day in London was too much for this, I suppose. The annoying thing is that I am travelling again next week. In fact, next week sounds distant and comfo...

A very interesting discussion about stickiness of ideas is uner way. Malcolm Gladwell started this recently in his Tipping Point - he argued that some ideas stick as the people who propogate them are more socially connected than others, and they can spread an idea faster, further. This is indeed the holy grail of Word of Mouth marketing - finding influencers, who can start a trend. Indeed, Keller Edward has also written a book on them - The Influentials . However, there is a contrarian view too, and read more about this on Fast Company, in this brilliant article 'Is Tipping Point Toast' - http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point-toast.html To summarise, what Duncan Watts is stating here some ideas stick whereas others don't has less to do with people who propagate them, and more to do with society's preparedness to accept the idea. 'No army in the world can stop an idea whose time has come' - as Victor Hugo famously observed. So, we always k...

Finally, I am back in London. Another 10 days - in India, Sri Lanka, and Dubai - done. How I wanted to live this life when I was young? How much I wished, during those interminable train journeys I had to take from Calcutta to Bhawani Patna [in the famine-torn parts of Orissa, where I had the uneviable task of selling Computer Training], that, by some magic, I shall move from country to country? That was another time, but. Do I sound smug, as if I have arrived. I am wrong, then. I am just a salesman, and will remain so. I travel with none of the pomp of a civil servant, with obiliging tax-payers paying for my first class. Unlike my colleagues in big-name corporates, I travel in cramped economy classes, with irritable seat mates and to uninviting airport lounges, always reminded of the constraints of the start-up business that I help to run. I allow myself no jetlag, anxiously check my hotel bills and carefully choose public taxis over hotel limousine, wherever possible. How aptly a col...

This death was like no other. It was not to be mourned, for a start. Instead, it was to be celebrated. Each death is different. How silly it was for us to imagine it like a black curtain, beyond which our eyes can't see, but what must come at the end. But always black, always pulled with a string by an invisible hand, and it is always the end. But, as I say, all deaths are different. Some in certainty, some in suddeness. Some distinguished by its ease, some tortured by its pain. Some of these mark a definite end, but some begins the trail. Trail? Of death, or of celebration? Well, a trail, let's say at this time - a journey - as in Dante's Inferno, some deaths are the beginning of love. Yes, love - because love begins in separateness, to end in oneness. Death is the final separateness, to be matched only by another death to oneness. Why am I so down tonight? Or am I drunk? Do I see the end of the road to think about death? But I am saying death isn't the end of the road...

Britain's curry houses are facing a crisis. They can't any longer bring chefs and cooks from Bangladesh to work there. The Home Office has banned all semi-skilled worker visas from non-EU countries, and hence the crisis. One must note that curry is Britain's favourite food and there are 9000 curry houses in the UK. Welcome to the world of Polish Pulao and Bulgarian Biriyani! Well, I have no knowledge, and therefore, no aversion, to East European culinary. Just that it makes no sense to have a polish cook a food which he is not accustomed to or would never enjoy eating. And, if cooking isn't a skill, what is? This is indeed the problem of Home Office. They have so much to learn from private enterprise. But, above everything, they need to learn Talent Management. They are nation's talent managers. The problem is that they don't know that. All governments either over-legislate or under-legislate. The New Labour under-legislated immigration first, and then over-legi...

It is indeed Barack Obama's moment. He won another three primaries today. As he would say - change is coming to America - it suddenly looks very possible, an Obama presidency. Hilary Clinton apparently does not seem to mind the losses. Though she has fired her campaign manager, but she is pinning her hopes on big states and kicked off her campaign in Texas. So, she wants to do Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which can get her back to the race because they have big delegate numbers, and then get a majority among super-delegates, the democratic party leaders and officials, to seal her nomination. But this strategy looks like a mistake now. This is a dangerous time, where political calculations of the old may not hold true. This is the mistake which undid Guiliani, the erstwhile Republican front-runner. This seemed to be undoing Hilary too. Because, well, let us say - because change is coming to America. A new 1968 is dawning. Young people, black people, professional people, suddenly un...

My second day in Manila was surely memorable. I always loved this part of my job - going to new countries and trying to set up a business there. It is very unlike a tourist visit, it does not have the trappings of coming to stay [as I did in Britain some time back] - but it needs all the involvement and sincerity that someone trying to settle in a country will need. So, it was not enough for me to know that the Philippines is the only Christian country in Asia. I had to find it from my visits to bookshops - obviously I got into some of them in course my visits to the huge shopping malls that mark the landscape - that the section on bibles is huge, with many interested readers! Also, I had a great time reading the newspapers. Filipino newspapers assume that every reader already knows a bit about the country, so in many cases, use initials for people's names. I have been noticing quite a bit of news on anti-GMA rallies happening since yesterday. Well, I must admit that I initially as...

I also watched with fascination Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, apologise for past abuses of aborigins. I was not aware, but I am now, that the Australian government forcibly snatched children from aborigin families in name of assimilation till 1960s. What travesty, I shudder to think, to take children away from their parents and families, forcibly, to integrate them into civilization. I am sure all of it was done in the name of progress, freedom and civilization. And, I am sure this invited less attention from Western media than Mugabe's slum clearance. No apologies for Mugabe - he is a monster anyway - but some compensation to match the sincere apologies from the Prime Minster will surely help.