While I was doing my graduation, I was a member of an youth association in my locality called “Ever Yours” where we used to conduct FREE classes for 10th, 11th and 12th students on all Sudays .  We also used to conduct yearly event with various competitions for the school students in and around our locality.

While I was ‘for reservation’ system in my country (though it was personally affecting me negatively in my education), the President of that association was against reservation system.  We had several debates about this and we never withdrew from our stand.

When I had enough experience in the organization, I was allowed to participate in the ‘Prize list decision meeting’ for the annual competitions where very few senior members took part.  In that, I found that many students from the same school used to score very high marks in all the competitions.  But while deciding the prizes, first prize went to that school student and second & third prizes went to other school students (who scored poor marks).  When asked about the logic behind the prize list, the President told me, ” Viru, if I give prizes to all the students from the same school, then from next year there won’t be any participation from other schools.  Also this prize will encourage students from those schools which doesn’t have similar environment as that of the ‘top performing school’.  We need to encourage those students to participate by giving some prize.”.

I understood his logic and accepted it.  It helped me easily explain my stand on ‘need for reservation system’.  But he was not willing to accept my logic (though he understood it).

Today, I attended the 7th session of Knowledge Community Chennai (#KCC7). For updates about that, please check Twitter

In this, I’m going to discuss about the participation for such sessions (and not about the session itself).

Today we had around 34 participants. The Wipro Office in Chennai was kind enough to provide us a 250 seater auditorium for conducting this event. Last time, HCL Technologies provided the venue and the strength was around 50.

Why is that the strength is so low for such KM sessions?  Aren’t people interested to gain knowledge from various sources?  Or is it that the people believe that they could gain knowledge from Internet and newspapers?

My understanding is that people are reluctant to ‘learn’.  They are interested in going home as soon as possible after completing their ‘regular’ work at office.  They don’t want to spend some extra time (even once in a month) to gain some knowledge and network with ‘real’ people.

When the atmosphere changes in the corporate world where people seek knowledge from various sources, the progress will be tremendous.   The root cause for the existing atmosphere in every institution/firm is, I believe, the ‘Education System’ of the country and nothing else.  If the education system had made the students to seek knowledge, it would have continued in corporate world also.  But it just helped the students to get a degree which was used by the corporate world as a ‘qualification’ for entry into their firm.  “As you sow, so shall you reap.”  Isn’t it?

Infosys’ Narayana Murthy(NRN) recently has told “IT industry needs to pay higher taxes and does not need Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) extension any more”.    This is the reason behind this article now.

Well, I had seen many companies following some illegal and unethical practices during their start-up stage.  To ‘grow’, it was absolutely necessary for such start-up companies to adhere to ‘normal practices’ due to the current political system in the country.    I’m not suggesting here to be illegal.  But practically it is very difficult to be 100% legal in the current scenario. For example, people from top IT companies travel on Business visa to work in US because of the complexities involved in getting work permit.  If they don’t send their team on business visa, they won’t get further revenue for their offshore center.

While I was working in a MNC 13 years back, we used to ‘photocopy’ books from the office library.  After few years, once it became ‘affordable’ for the company (this is the perception I got, may be wrong), they formulated a rule that no photocopying of books were allowed. 

With the ‘legal’ aspect removed in the above example, NRN’s statement looks similar to me now.  Infosys has grown to a great extent that they can afford to pay huge taxes.  But think about small and medium companies that wish to become ‘another Infosys’.   How can they afford such huge taxes?  Shouldn’t they also enjoy similar tax benefits which Infosys enjoyed for more than 25 years in India?

What I feel is that there should be some ‘tax slab’ for each company.  For the first slab, there must be lesser tax or nil tax.  Then it should increase gradually like the individual income tax.  If NRN meant that statement this way, it would be really great.  I wish he meant that way because I’ve great respect for him and his team.  I learned about ‘ethics’ only from his company while I was working there.  Also, no one should comment that, ‘You can be legal and ethical when it is affordable’.

When I used to read the results of “Best companies to work for” in many business magazines, I used to think that apart from the parameters mentioned in the survey result, there must be one more parameter “Number of Entrepreneurs from that company”.  Here I’ll explain why this parameter must be added.

While talking to few of my friends in my old company I asked them whether they had any plan to change their job or start their own business.  Most of them said that they were very comfortable with the company and never wanted to leave it till their retirement.  One friend told me very frankly, “Viru, I am not extremely happy here.  But what will I say in my next interview if I wish to leave this job.  I really don’t know.  Also I’ve taken so many loans for which I need to pay a major part of my salary.  If I wish to start my own business, who will pay my EMIs every month?”

His answer made me think that some ‘big & famous’ companies mould their employees in such a way that they become ‘unemployable’ in other companies.  Also they never offer ESOPs to their employees to become financially stable (if not rich) to start their own business.  Those companies can easily appear in “Best companies to work for” list as they keep their employees ‘happy’.

In my perception, if you want to call a company as “Best company to work for”, you must also judge it by the number of ‘Entrepreneurs’ it has generated. If this number is more, it means that the company had given enough confidence (both technically & managerially) for their employees and did help them to be financially stable to start their own company.  Which survey will add this parameter?

(Please Note:  I’ve started a website http://exinfoscions.com/entrepreneurs to list the entrepreneurs who worked at Infosys for more than 8 years.  It will be ‘UP’ soon.)

Once I had to come by bus from Bangalore to Chennai.  I boarded a bus and was waiting inside along with other passengers.  A person with bag full of some plastic items and oranges boarded the bus and started giving a demo of his product.  He took a piece of lemon and a small plastic item.  He squeezed the lemon with the plastic item and collected the juice in a tumbler.  He then took an orange, pierced it with the plastic item and showed us how he was able to collect the juice effortlessly with that ‘gadget’.  There were 40 passengers in the bus and four people bought it because it was just Rs.20/-.

I already had bought that plastic juicer for Rs.20/- and it never worked for me at home because I had to use very high pressure (with my hands) to extract the juice from the lemon or orange.  But I started thinking about his business model.

The plastic gadget may cost him only Rs.3 or Rs.5 (let’s say Rs.5), orange and lemon may be Rs.2 or Rs.5 (let’s say Rs.5).  So, for an investment of Rs. 10/- he was able to get a profit of Rs.10/-  From a crowd of 40 passengers, he was able to sell 4 which means he made Rs.40/- as profit.  It took him just 15 minutes per bus.  If he boards 30 buses per day (7.5 hours of work), he would have made at least 30 x Rs.40 = 1200 profit per day.  If he works for 25 days/month, then his monthly income is Rs.30,000/- (without any tax).  It’s the salary of a software engineer working in an MNC company.

What is the secret behind this guy’s success?

I guess the answer would be, “He works very hard, is able to manage the perception of customers very well and his business model to share his by-product (i.e. juice) with the bus driver.”

Yes, he has to apply very high pressure every time he squeezes the lemon/orange without people realizing it so that it would appear as if the juice is flowing easily from the gadget.  He didn’t lie or cheat.  He showed a live demo where he managed the perception of the customers very well.  He was allowed to give a demo in all the buses by the drivers because he finally gave the ‘orange juice’ to the driver (win-win formula).

Shall we say that ‘Marketing your product is in your hands’?

I am lazy to do any exercise.  I guess many of us may be like me.   I don’t create time to do exercise (many people use this sentence instead “I don’t have time to do any exercise”).

Whenever I read an article about food, exercise or health, I enjoy that and feel as if I will be doing something  soon to take care of my health.  But as soon as I finish reading it, I again become lazy to do any exercise or control my diet.

I used to think many times why am I lazy?  Why am I not taking care of my health?   The answer is simple: It is natural to be lazy.

Is there any way I can get rid of this laziness and take care of my health?

I guess there is one way: Just spend 10 minutes everyday at a particular time say morning 7 am or evening 6 pm for the first 15 days or 30 days doing nothing (easiest, isn’t it?) or some small exercise (breathing or jumping, etc).  After that we may get used to it (like reading news paper) and 10 minutes may become 15 and then 30 minutes.

Note: (Wordpress Plugin style): This concept is not tested with any humans (ver 1.0 and above) by me.  I’m going to test it from tomorrow.  If you wish to test this concept, please write a comment here.

I had to attend an event in Mumbai last December.  I booked Two-tier Air-conditioned train tickets 50 days in advance.  I didn’t go for flight tickets because even though they were just two times costlier than these train tickets, they were non-refundable and I would have lost the entire amount had I canceled them due to any reason (actually I had more chances for cancellation since my mother was not well).  Since I’m an entrepreneur now, I didn’t wish to waste money by booking flight tickets.

Unreserved compartment from Mumbai to Chennai

While my travel from Chennai to Mumbai was confirmed at the last minute, the return journey was not confirmed.  When I checked flight ticket fares, they shot up to 10 times that of the train ticket.  I had only two options: 1) book a flight ticket for an exorbitant amount and reach home in 2 hours or 2) travel for 24 hours by Train in an unreserved compartment.  I choose the second option since I didn’t wish to pay such an exorbitant amount (you will understand this when you become an entrepreneur after earning a very good salary in a regular job).

The moment I looked at the unreserved compartment, I was stunned.  It was jam packed.  I thought for a second, “Should I go by flight to avoid this mad crow?”.  I decided not to.  I thought to myself, “Now I’m an entrepreneur.  I should take any risk in my life. What is the worst thing that would happen by traveling in an unreserved compartment?  Whatever it is, let me enjoy that.”  This thought gave me a wonderful experience.

I was not even able to board the compartment.  Somehow I managed to board it and was standing for 3 hours till the train reached Pune.  Standing was not painful because the first half-an hour I was standing carrying my luggage.  When I got some place to offload them, I felt better standing alone.  After Pune, I got 16 sq.cm of space to sit.  It was very comfortable than standing.  Normally I won’t feel like sleeping till 1 am.  But that day, I was feeling sleepy at 10 pm.   After 10 hours of travel, I got a decent space to sit till I reached Chennai.

What initially looked impossible for me, became possible and my confidence level went very high after this journey.  Also, the people who were in that unreserved compartment were more humane than those who were in two-tier air conditioned compartment.

You should try to travel in such an unreserved compartment for 24 hours and experience what it is.  You will cherish it through-out your life like I do.

Wow! This is what almost everyone said after watching this amazing event at The Music Academy, Chennai.

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to get a free invite and watched it along with other Chennai Bloggers and media persons – from second row.  After it was inaugurated by N. Ram (Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu), the show lasted for about 70 seconds (actually 70 minutes).

Watching this kind of show in TV is totally different from watching it live.  Even though I watched the ‘trailer’ in youtube, watching this event live was fantastic.

In such shows, claps from the audience give energy to those performers. Many times our audience forgot to clap and cheer the performer.  I wanted to tell those artists that, “Look, we were breathless because of your performance.  That’s why we didn’t cheer you by clapping.”

If you are in Chennai on 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7th Feb 2010, then don’t miss this live show.  It is definitely worth for various reasons.

Please Note:

There is a detailed article in today’s The Hindu newspaper which you can read here: http://tr.im/wow_article_in_thehindu

People are mortal but their thoughts are immortal.

Today, Humans are in such a comfort zone compared to several years ago is because many good people communicated their thoughts which has helped us to use them and build many things around that.

To communicate, we all need a language.  I choose English over my mother tongue because I thought that English language has more audience in Internet than my mother tongue has.  FYI: I’m neither good at both (because even ‘English subject’ was taught in my mother tongue in my school and like many others I also didn’t have an inclination to learn my mother tongue properly during my school days).

I also thought that whether I should start communicating after I perfect my ‘English Grammar/vocabulary”.  But I decided not to wait.

If you want to travel, you just need a vehicle.  As long as the vehicle can take you to the place you want, you can use that.  If it doesn’t look good aesthetically or if the seat doesn’t have a cushion, etc doesn’t affect my travel because traveling is more important for me than those things.  Similarly, to communicate my thoughts I just need a language.  It may not be ‘aesthetically’ good with nice words and good vocabulary.  But it will help me communicate.

Many of you may have some similar inhibitions in communicating your thoughts.  Like I said, to communicate, you just need a language.  How good it is, is secondary*.

If I communicated well in this article, you may immediately start communicating your thoughts from your own blog by signing in any of the FREE blog sites (like http://en.wordpress.com/signup/ https://www.blogger.com/start http://www.thoughts.com/free-blog )

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PS: * Note: If the vehicle also looks good, it would be nice, isn’t it?

While I was young, I used to get bored when my father starts this sentence: “In those days….”

Yesterday (at 11 pm) when I told my 6 yr old son to switch off the TV and sleep, he asked me what I did when I was a kid like him.  When I told him, “In those days when I was in first standard, I never watched TV because there was no TV in our home”, I immediately remembered my father’s sentence.

I guess that it is inevitable for us to compare what happened in those days and what happens now.  Instead of boring you all with what happened ‘in those days’ to me, let me ask this question to you all and let’s watch this tag #inthosedays in Twitter here –>  http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23inthosedays .

It may be interesting

I don’t know how and why January became the first month of the year.  While discussing with my Physics Prof. Ananthan, I realized that once upon a time, March was the first month of the year & February was the last month of the year.

Question) What proof do I have to say that “February is the last month”?

Answer) I’ve two logical proofs:

PROOF 1: If March is the first month of the year, then September, October, November and December must be 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months respectively.  In Sanskrit, “Septha” means seven, “Octa” means eight (that’s why eight sided shape is called as Octagon), “Nava” means nine and “Dasa” means ten. By substituting the meaning of these months, we can easily infer that March should have been the first month of the year. This means, February is the last month.

PROOF 2: This is about human psychology.  Assume that there are 14 apples & 3 baskets. You are asked to place 5 apples in each basket.  How would you fill the baskets?

Psychology 1:  Basket A- 5, Basket B- 5 and Basket C -4

Psychology 2: Basket A-5, Basket B – 4 and Basket C -5

Psychology 3: Basket A – 4, Basket B – 5 and Basket C-5

Almost all of us would follow Psychology 1, isn’t it?

Similarly, if we need to fill 30 / 31 days* for each month and one month with the least number (say 28 / 29), then according to the above example we will fill the last month with 28 / 29 days – isn’t it?  That’s why the ‘last month of the year’ – February has the least number of days. 

So, 27 more days to go for the “Original New Year” isn’t it? 

PS:  * It is beyond the scope of our discussion to discuss why there are 30 & 31 days in other months. And this  article is just to prove that February is the last month.

A man, who was of no use to anyone, after death, went to heaven.  He asked for a luxurious room, he got one.  He asked for excellent food, he got them.  He asked for an LCD TV with all his favorite channels, he got it. He asked for a vehicle to roam around the place, he got one.  Then he started asking one by one and the angels were providing all he wanted.

After a few weeks, he was fed up with all the luxurious and comfortable things.  He wanted to do some work to engage his mind.  He asked the angel, “I want to do some work.  Do you have any work for me here?”.  For that the angel said, “I’m sorry, here you can get anything you want but for work”.  This man was annoyed and shouted at the angel, “This place is horrible.  How can you call this as heaven?”.  For that the angel replied, “I beg your pardon.  Did you say this place as heaven?  I think you misunderstood it.  This is not heaven.  This is hell.”

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 My Physics Prof. Ananthan doesn’t only talk about Maths & Physics but also tells me many thought provoking stories.  One of them he told me when we visited Rameswaram Temple was this ‘Hell & Heaven’. The context of this story came when we were describing about people’s motivation to build such wonderful temples few hundred years ago when they had everything in their life.

My advance apologies for two reasons: (1) This article is also going to be more than one page and (2) I may hurt few Graduates from India’s premier institutes.

1. Why do we need a University?

I had an interesting discussion with my Prof. Ananthan about the need for a degree.

If you take any famous contributor to Science or Business, they would be mostly a school dropout or at least did not get any degree from any University. E.g. Ramanujam, Einstein, Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple Inc.) etc.

Once it was thought that Universities produced Educated Persons.  But, with the latest technological advances, a person may get education without any University.  In fact, the syllabus in many Universities are so old that a student has to learn from private institutes or in a job – to cope up with the latest technology.

Today a person need not get a degree to do a job.  If you take my company M/s HomePlanGuru.com for example, I never insist for any degree.  All I want is people with good analytical skills & attitude.

2. Why there are so many “Deemed Universities” in our country now?

This is my belief:

a) Deemed Universities (DUs) can make lot of money since they can specify the number of seats in each course.

b) Education is looked at as a business today by both the Institutes and Students.  Most of the students join a course not out of passion but out of compulsion to get a high paying job.  These DUs find the gap between “Supply-Demand” and fulfill the  need of these students.

c) DUs can ‘produce’ more ‘qualified’ students since they set the exam questions and their own staff correct the answer sheets. [For external Examiners, they give a 'bonous' amount for paper valuation].

3. What is the status of “Government Universities”?

This is my understanding:

a) Government Universities (GUs) are worse than DUs because they have very old syllabus and pathetic examination system [a system that tests the memorizing capacity of students rather than their knowledge in the subject].

b) Many Government and Government aided institutes lack  basic infrastructure but is still famous not because of their infrastructure or staff, but because of the students who join there.  [Only 'Creamy layer' of the students join these institutes since the fees is very less and the institutes already have an established name - which helps them in placement].

c) Teaching and Non-teaching staff in GUs are pathetic. If you conduct an exam for all the teaching staff in their own subjects, more than 50% of the staff will score less than 50% marks in their own subjects.

d) Mostly, those who didn’t get any good private jobs stick to teaching in Govt institutes.  Or they may get excellent commission from the vendors who supply lab materials and other items to the institutes. [One of my friend in Bengaluru told me that he had to pay 20% of his billed amount as commission to the HOD of a department in a Govt Institute for supplying lab items.  This amount will be more than what a CEO of a private company may get].

4. Why are students from such Government Universities not complaining about the quality of their degree/Institute?

Come on! If I say that I got a degree from such a Government Institute, would anyone give me a job or at least respect my degree?  Why should I open my mouth and tell the truth?

5. Conclusion:

As long as companies look for a ‘degree’ for employment, both DUs and GUs will produce ‘low quality Graduates’ as they do now.  If employment is de-linked from ‘degree’, all ‘Doomed’ Universities will die naturally.  Also, institutes like ICA (Chartered Accountants) must inspire other Universities to produce graduates purely based on merit [you should ask a CA student how difficult it is to pass the exam].   I’m waiting for that day to come!

Do you have to change your online passwords very often? Do you have many accounts and passwords to remember? Do you have problem remembering your passwords?

Do not worry. Here is one simple solution:

Just write down your passwords in your ‘own’ alphabets. That is, first create a list of your own alphabets. [ Say for 'a' use some symbol like 'apple'. But let it not be very obvious for others to guess it. For 'A', just underline this 'a' symbol. Each 'new' alphabet should be understandable by you and not others. Do not let others know your own alphabets.] Then use this “new English script” to write down your passwords in a notebook so that even if others look at your notebook containing all the passwords, they won’t understand it.

If you want to store your passwords in an email(sent to yourself) so that you do not have to carry the notebook with you, then use an offset character list. i.e. for ‘a’ use an offset of 3 characters and so ‘a’ will become ‘d’. This means, ‘antz’ will become ‘dqwc’.
If you know a language other than English, then write down the password in an email(sent to yourself) in both English and your language so that no one will be able to understand it quickly. [But if they can read it, they may be able to crack your password easily]

If you find these tips useful, please leave a comment here!

This particular article may be a bit lengthy(may not fit in one page) since I need to explain almost everything.  If I write like this: “We went to Rameswaram, saw the annular eclipse, it was wonderful, it was a life time event, amazing!”, then it won’t reveal how I really enjoyed the episode.  So, I’m writing in detail here:

1. Plan:

When I called my Physics Professor.  Ananthan on 1st Jan 2010 at 00:00 hrs (since 1992 I’m greeting him every year like this), he told me that he had planned to go to either Kanyakumari or Rameswaram on 15-Jan-2010 to watch the Annular Solar Eclipse (which will not happen again in our life time).  I expressed my interest to join him.

2. Travel:

Mr. Badri Seshardi, one of the promoters of New Horizon Media, booked the train tickets to Rameswaram (since tickets to Kanyakumari were not available even in ‘Tatkal’) and Hotel rooms in Ramanathapuram – 60 kms before Rameswaram.  The train reached Ramanathapuram on 14th Jan 2010 at 3:30 am and it was a pleasant journey. The Hotel was just 3 minutes drive from the railway station in an auto rickshaw.

3: Stay:

I never imagined that such a good hotel will be available in a small town in Tamil Nadu.  It was an amazing hotel named “Hotel Garish Park”  [ neat rooms, luxurious look, clean bathroom (very important) and with TV, split AC & backup power supply].  The only drawback was, they didn’t accept credit/debit card for payment.  We had food in near by restaurants which was quite good and reasonably priced. We didn’t get a room in Rameswaram itself because the Governors of TamilNadu and Puducherry were there those days ( not to watch the eclipse, but for some religious reasons, I guess).

4: Observation Location

The day before the eclipse, we went to Rameswaram to decide about our observation location.  Initially we thought of going to Dhanushkodi - a ruined city at the edge of Rameswaram (about 6 kms from it).  But later we decided to watch it from Rameswaram itself (on the roof of a Guest House Building) as there were many other scientific groups.

5. Expected things that happened:

A few things happened as I expected during the Annular Solar Eclipse:

a) During the eclipse I expected the ocean waves to rise higher. It happened.

b) During the eclipse I expected that the birds and animals might get confused about day & night.  It happened (many eagles that were flying there returned to their nest during eclipse time).

6. Unexpected things that happened:

Few unexpected things that thrilled me are:

a) I was thinking that the Sun may not be visible during eclipse and only a thin ring would be visible.  But without a cooling filter, the Sun looked normal with less intensity.  i.e. if you looked at the Sun during eclipse with your bare eyes, then it would have appeared normal to you.

b) Before the eclipse, the temperature at our location was about 34 degree Celsius.  After that, within 2 hours, the temperature decreased to around 26 degree Celsius. i.e. 8 degrees change.  It was amazing.

c) My shadow on the ground changed.  During eclipse, the shadow of my hand became blurred as I moved away from the wall.

d) I went there with my simple 5 mega pixel digital camera.  I never thought that, using a simple filter, I could capture the annular eclipse in my own camera.  It was really a great surprise for me. SEE THE VIDEO here –>  http://tr.im/ase15jan2010

e) An young boy from “Sky Watchers Association of North Bengal” taught me how to adjust my digital camera settings to capture the photo.  So far, I was using only the “Click button”, “ON button” “Zoom button”, “View mode”  and “Delete button” of my camera.  I never bothered to learn how to set the camera for different exposures (though they were available in the camera).  I felt ashamed. I never expected that my ignorance would hinder me taking pictures during eclipse.

7. Conclusion

I witnessed once in a life-time event on 15th Jan 2010 with my Physics Professor Ananthan at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu India.  When I saw people from other parts of the country there to watch the event, I was happy that “scientific temper still exists in our country”. I’m grateful to my Physics Professor Ananthan and Publisher Mr. Badri who helped me watch this event live.

Photo Album:

Annular_Solar_Eclipse_15Jan2010_at_Rameswaram_Trip