MAINTAIN THE BUBBLE

SM to marry SM after breaking up with SM


This news was the talk of the town yesterday... no, actually the talk of a country or two... Sania Mirza after her recent breakup with her beau Sohaib Mirza is going to marry Shoaib Malik... 


The news hungry media feasted on the news... There were comments like "SM broke with SM because she wanted to marry SM"... Or, "Will she will play for India or Pakistan here after" and the second one came with a stinging reply -- "With the way she is playing nowadays, who cares?"... and the last one "Out of 600 million Indian men, she had to find a Pakistani to marry?", the last one coming from none other than yours truly...


But, really, who are we to talk about these 3 SMs... The main SM here is a tennis player, who has given a few (agreed, not a lot, but definitely a few) happy moments on the tennis courts. She has won accolades for her feisty nature and gutsy game. She stood her own against some higher ranked opponents and made us proud... In an otherwise barren desert also known as Indian Womens Tennis, she gave us an oasis... 


Can you name any other Indian woman tennis player? Forget about someone who has earned her name on the ATP circuit, can you name ANY Indian woman tennis player? The only other players I know are the Oberoi sisters and Sunita Rao -- all these girls are representing India in spite of growing up in the US only because they are not good enough to represent the US and there is a very evident paucity of resources here.


She has been clean so far -- no controversies at all, sports or otherwise -- in her entire career. She has had a lengthy battle with injuries but injuries are a part and parcel of professional sport today, especially in an high intensity sport like international tennis... And please note, these are injuries, not fitness issues. She is not someone like those young cricketers who lose his fitness due to lack of focus and unhealthy social agendas... 


Ask any athlete today if they would work doubly hard to get over injuries and they will say that they are ready to work three times harder to have a injury free career... Sadly, the mind is willing, but the body is not... 


She has had no affairs, no party life, no performance enhancing drugs, no drunken binges... She has done her bit to encourage hundreds of young girls to think of tennis as an option in life... She has been a role model for so many in this country, deprived of heroes... 


This is what both the SMs, that matter, have said today -- 


Sania told TOI: “This is the biggest day of my life. I have been in the media glare for too long, and would appreciate a little privacy at this very personal moment in my life.’’ 
Shoaib has pledged his support: “I fully understand what it takes to be an international sportsperson. I’ll support Sania in her career as long as she wishes to play. Representing India at the 2012 Olympics is very important to her, and I will be the proudest husband if she can win a medal for her country,’’ he told TOI. 


They have displayed dignity and sense... But have we? Instead, we have failed her... and have failed her rather miserably... 


We do not know how to treat a sportsperson... Michael Phelps who has had the BEST EVER OLYMPICS performance is no one today in the US... The football quarterbacks and ace baseball hitters get their space in off seasons or during their injury time offs... They get their space from the public glare to go about their business and work on their game and achieve better heights in their careers... 


But not in India... Anyone who is anyone, is hounded by this crazy media... And we cross the boundaries without thinking twice... 


Soon, we will have to train young sportspersons how to evade the evil eye of the media before we teach them how to return the service of a Rafael Nadal or how to evade a punch of a Cuban boxer... 


We need to let all the 3 SMs her live their life... Let us not encroach their personal space... Lets maintain the sacred bubble... 

TOUCHING

A very touching yet brave story of a cricketer. I read it here and it originally came from Harsha Bhogle. Just could not resist from posting it here.

WHOPPER!!!

1700 crores for a club cricket team? Sahara group has paid 1700 crores for a team which will be primarily based out of Pune. There are talks about having the team based closer to the Amby Valley, with an eye on Mumbai crowd.

Along with this amount of 1700 crores, they have to pay for the actual team and the support staff. The team needs to have super stars and few internationals. The support staff is not cheap any more. Add to it, the costs of their accommodation, food and transportation etc. They also need to rope in a few Bollywood celebrities to add a touch of glamour. Rumor mill says that the Bachchans will be called in to counter the aura of SRK, Preity and Shilpa Shetty. There are ground rentals, security costs and all other costs that my naive, non business minded brain cannot fathom?

How will Subroto Roy recover the funds he is pouring in? 

One of the biggest source of income for this business model is merchandizing. But I am not sure that club loyalties in India can score over fans of role models. Do you ever see anyone paying 1000 rupees for a Pune Patriots branded T shirt or a Kochi Killers Jacket?

They are talking of buying Sachin in the next auction. And Sachin will be cheered wherever he goes, be it Kochi or Kokata. No one will ever reach his stature, even after he retires. But Sachin turns 37 next month and he might not play after a couple of years. The business model should deliver consistent (if not ascending) revenue for 10 years, just to break even.

TV revenue is a big beast in India, but unless Lalit Modi renegotiates the broadcasting contracts and blows more hot air into an already over floated balloon, TV revenue can not guarantee recovery of 200 crores every year.

All in all, I am really looking forward to how this money is recovered. And where breaking even is a challenge, even if they achieve it, it is going to be a failure. You invest 2000 crores and after 10 years, if you end up with 2000 crores, then it is a BIG failure. Banks will yeild more interest.

I am really more glued to the business aspect of IPL than the cricket. I am more interested to the fries and the soda instead of the whopper burger.

Update -- And when I thought my business mind was finally working, S sent me this link which makes me look like a naive B.Com student at an IIM Alumni convention. Read it here. No wonder, everyone who is has a trunkload of money is jumping on the IPL bandwagon.


MAYA MEMSAAB

Today's our country has ample WTF moments.


Here is one more. On the 25th anniversary of her party's birthday, her party workers gave her a garland worth crores in cash. How did her party get the funds in the first place? No one knows and no one dares to ask.


After a lot of criticism in the junta about the super-garland, she had another one gifted to her, just to rub it in. Talk about adding insult to injury.


And when there were bees at the function, there was a FIR logged and cops are investigating possible conspiracy to ruin the function.


A few years back, Maya Memsaab had asked her party men to collect funds to celebrate her birthday. One engineer who declined to donate was murdered. The same cops, who have not investigated anything about the murdered engineer, are now on a bee hunt.


Surely, our country does not cease to amaze sane people a bit.

IT HAPPENS ONLY IN INDIA

I was reading this article today and it got me thinking. What is going on in the background with these 2 entities?

Lets talk about Indian Airlines first -- No one opts for this airline travelling domestically, unless the airline is forced upon by the employer. Given a choice, no one will travel by Indian Airlines. Jet, Sahara, Indigo, Kingfisher, Go Air etc etc are more popular with travellers and easier on the wallet. The service sucks and the staff is so unfriendly.

Air India -- Even Indians do not choose this Airline to travel abroad, forget about non-Indians. Again, no one uses this airline, unless someone is getting free tickets or it is the only airline available for that itinerary. The staff gets crazy benefits, good salaries and the management gets free business class travel for life for the entire family. F-in entire family travels first class unlimited for life. What the heck?

The breakfast and lunches and dinners at the Air India kitchen are virtually free (breakfast = 25 paise, lunch and dinner are 75 paise -- YES, I am not kidding. I have eaten the amazing meals at that canteen). They get the money spent on those meals as pre-tax coupons. The cabin crew really carries bag full of loot (drinks, juice, chocolates etc) after every flight. Me and my friends really ate more Toblerone at one friend's place (whose dad is a flight pursuer) than I ever purchased in my life. His dad got more drinks home than I have seen at one time in any wine store. And this is going on for the last 20 years.

How are these two airlines ever going to break even? Forget about making a profit. And then this happened.

This entity has made a loss of 7200 crore rupees in the last 2 years -- 2200 crores in 2008 and 5000 crores in 2009. So, 130% increase in loss and what does the government do? They give them an additional 800 crores. When this bill was being approved by the government, civil aviation minister Praful Patel said that it will be atleast 5 years before this entity can turn around.

I mean, really, WTF? Where else can this be allowed. You lose 2200 crores in 1 year, 5000 crores in the next and say that you will continue to make losses for the next 5 years and then you get additional 800 crores.

The minister - Praful Patel - is in the cabinet only because he is the only other person in NCP who is worthy of national recognition, after Sharad Pawar. But seriously, there is no justification for the whole royal mess that has been going on for last few years. 

Can someone explain what is going on? Is anyone every going to answer these questions?

WELL SAID

Continuing this series...


Dreams are not something which you watch when you sleep, Dreams are something which does not let you sleep.


-- Rajkumar Hirani when he received the 2009 Filmfare Award for Best Director for 3 Idiots.


How true!!!

UNDERCOVER BOSS

I had a chance to watch this new series on CBS, just after Amazing Race. One of the best episodes I have seen, ever.


The whole idea of this show is to have a CEO or a President of a company visit the lowest level company location - a franchise or an outlet or an office - as a regular worker. The employees at that location do not know about this undercover operation and the big boss can see what is going on at the grass root level of his company.


This is such a good idea, especially for organizations with a fat management structure. The biggest reasons for good corporations to fail is because the uppermost management layer never knows the ground reality. The real information is filtered out by the middle management and they just get to hear what they want to hear. Bad decisions are made which ruin the reputation and eventually, the business.


The "Undercover Boss" operation is a very sure way of leaping over this middle management information filter. Sometimes, the ground reality is harsh and other times, the information that comes out of such operations is really heartening. Most important part though, is what action the management takes out of such unsolicited feedback.


The episode I saw featured the 7-Eleven chain. The CEO Joe DePinto changes his identity to "Danny" and visits 4 stores in NY and Texas. These stores are one of the most successful ones for 7-Eleven in the entire nation and CEO wanted to see the truth that made these stores stand out.


The journey was really fascinating. From each store, Danny befriended at least 1 employee who he saw was critical to the successful functioning of the store. He got down on the floor cleaning toilets, cleaning trash bins, brewing coffee and baking donuts at every location he visited. He tried to understood the ground realities and challenges faced by his employees on a daily basis. He was amazed by the passion and dedication of the key employees which drives these locations on a day to day basis. How cheerful and happy the lowest level of employees were in spite of low wages, personal issues, health issues and career challenges, made his very emotional.


Then came the best part, he returned back to his office and set an action plan based on all his findings. He set people in charge for those items and said that he is going to undertake more missions like these to ensure that the corrective measures are implemented actually.


For e.g. All the donuts / bagels / pastries etc which are 1 day old and can not be sold, should be given to charity. These were being thrown, every single day and every single shop. Hundreds of them. Joe ensured that this program is implemented strictly. Just imagine, hundreds of baked goodies will now be fed to orphans instead of throwing them down the drain.


But then, he ensured that the real good employees are rewarded. He called all the good employees to the head office and revealed his true identity. He not only rewarded them with what they really wanted -- 
1 - A student who thought that he had no career in 7-Eleven is now a head of 10 franchises.
2 - A baker who was an excellent artist has now a professional portfolio with 7-Eleven's ad agency and a possible alternative career in advertising.
3 - A truck driver who can not meet his wife every day has a franchise of his own. And he sent the couple for a week long vacation, just so that they can spend quality time together.
4 - A coffee maker who has kidney problems now has a kidney donor awareness program and $150000 for her kidney operation once a donor shows up.


It was a touching ending to a beautiful program. But more importantly, the employees of 7-Eleven will now look forward to the day when Danny shows up at their store undercover. They will treat every Danny as a Joe DePinto and those Danny's will show up every day, day after day, and ensure more business and more profit.


If every CEO or, for that matter, every highly placed officer does this in his organization, there is no reason why the company can not turn the tide.

SURPRISINGLY REFRESHING

I love to try out new things (cuisines, books, articles, movies etc) and in other aspects I am inertia personified. There are certain things that I do not want to change. I do not mind living in oblivion of existence of those changes.


Technology is one such piece -- I still use a cell phone which I bought in 2005. According to S, the museums are going to bid for it soon because it is an antique piece which even Cavemen will refuse to use. Until a few years ago, I thought that Blackberry is just a company that makes amazing trousers. (Try those trousers in Lifestyle in Bangalore, you wont regret). I am very possessive about Windows and am not ready to move on to iMac. And from the days of Netscape Navigator, I was a staunch follower of IE.


On the other hand, S is pretty open to change. She toggles between Firefox, IE and Chrome just like switching between popcorn and soda during an movie. She is already bored with her smart phone and wants to try out Android now. And she has plans to gift me a Macbook (that she has craved for last 1 year) for my birthday.


Things are changing now though. I am switching over to a real Blackberry now. I love the Chrome browser and have dropped IE as my primary browser for good.


In the midst of this mini-tech revolution in my life, my laptop started acting really weird. It was running on Vista and I hated it. It was just so annoying, to say the least, and I was waiting for an opportunity to switch back to the old school XP.


Fortunately for me, my laptop did not recognize the XP bootable CD in my collection and it got so angry with the other XP bootable that I borrowed from Me2 that the OS crashed for good.


So, another friend of mine graciously offered me a Vista Ultimate and Windows7 Ultimate CD from his CD library. For once, going back a few years was not an option. So, I decided to take the leap forward. What the heck? Vista sucks so bad, so Windows7 can not be any worse. Taking the nothing-to-lose approach, I installed Windows 7. 


And what a pleasant surprise it was!!!


The installation was done in about 30 minutes. Customization was very easy. And other than finding a valid antivirus program, I had everything working in about an hour -- with all installations done.


Everything looks good -- in fact, it looks great -- on the new OS. Some annoying features from XP and a lot of thorns from Vista have been dropped. The new features function better, faster and most importantly, there are no irritating popup messages.


For the layman -- I love the Chess game here, primarily because there are no hints and I have to rack my brain. The desktop changes its wallpapers on its own every few minutes and you can customize the pictures you want to see as your wallpaper. A lot of the options and features are customizable and very flexible.


From a techy angle, the only drawback I see is that it occupies too much space on the hard disk. But hey, HDD are so cheap nowadays, just grab an addon and you are good to go. So far, have not found any software incompatibility issues and drivers are easy to find. There are clear instructions if you want to upgrade from XP to Windows 7 without having to format the system.


As I play around more and more, I am sure there will be some flaws unearthed, but well begun is half done. Microsoft, for a change, has launched a very good product and made inert people like me embrace a big change. They are even giving the Home version to students for just $10 and about $25 to select organizations for a trial period of 6 months.


I have been working on XP for almost 6 years now and was very cozy on XP. But I do not feel out of place with Windows 7 and for that matter, I am liking it.


Now waiting for my workplace to switch over to Windows 7 as well ;-)


For my 4 readers, give it a shot. You will not regret it, even if you are old school like me.



REALLY WTF

Had a glimpse of Rahul Mahajan's show -- Swayam-vadhu -- and the only Q that popped in my brain was WTF?


Why would any girl think of marrying Rahul Mahajan? Who is he? What are his qualifications?


-- divorced within a year of getting married
-- Caught doing drugs and drinking champagne when he was on his way to immerse his father's ashes
 -- Has behaved foolishly and cheaply on national television on another reality show
 -- His only ticket to success (his father) is dead 5 years ago and his family has no political future
 -- And all these are his known vices. No one knows how many skeletons are in that closet.
 -- Most of the "candidates" are atleast 10-12 years younger than him. Some are even 15-16 years younger than him.


In spite of all this, I can not understand, why? Really, WTF!!!

Sachin Mania

Sachin finally scaled the once-unassailable peak of 200. He thoroughly deserved to scale the peak just way he planned his innings that day, just the way he managed his stamina that day and just how everyone else played around him that day. More impressively, he was back on the field in the second innings right from the first over.


But, I am really amazed how everyone went crazy writing anything and everything about him that day and for the entire week. Some called him "God", some called him "Sun" and so on... 


There are no doubts that he is one of the best cricketers who have played the game. Sheer statistics prove it and the fact that he has been playing the game for 21 years without any major controversy seal the deal. But does that make him a god? He is a model player, probably the best India has ever produced and still so humble and down to earth. A thorough family man and an ideal citizen.


The Q is -- does this make him a god? If you ask me, plain No.


His achievements in the field of cricket are great and probably, no one might ever surpass him. But so are the achievements of Vishwanathan Anand in Chess, Leander in Tennis and probably Dhanraj Pillai in hockey. They have done so much to make India proud in their respective fields. They might not be the best in the world, but they are the best in India (or atleast "were the best"). Are Abhinav Bindra or the other Olympic Gold Medallists any less important?


Why do we make him a god? Because, he himself says it -- This is a game which I love to play. The day I think I am not enjoying it, I am going to stop playing it. -- So, are we going to make him a Mango Man (Aam Aadmi) once he retires?


Atleast he is enjoying what he is doing. And, even if he loses a match, a series or the World Cup Final, he is going to come back to his palace of comforts. If he does not earn even 1 penny more, his next 2-3 generations can live a life of luxury.


For me, the soldier who is facing crazy weather, deadly terrorists and weird international politics in Jammu Kashmir is more praiseworthy. He is doing something which he does not enjoy, would love to do something else any day, and still does it with utmost sincerity. He does not know if he is going to survive that day or if some bullet has his name written on it. If he dies, his immediate family gets 2 Lakh rupees (after paying half of it as a bribe) and then has to struggle for existence for ever.


What abt Sandeep Unnikrishnan who died in 26/11 Mumbai attacks? What abt so many soldiers who died in Kargil?


But still, I would not term the soldier as god. For all their great deeds, I would not call them a god. Because, the term GOD is too sacred.






So Sachin. Great? Oh, Yes. God? No way. And let him stay that way. Please!!!