Let the dogs bark!

Nothing could have been more exciting for a child in late 80s, when a dad said, ‘let us go and have an ice cream!’. This was all the more true for a small town like Changanacherry in Kerala where entertainment still meant going across to your neighbour’s house and play with your friends in their backyard instead of looking at a digital screen and searching for happiness in the incessant number of reels on the social media that keep us jailed in the Boolean world.

The shop where we got ice cream was a tiny room, roughly a ten-by-ten square. They had only three types of ice creams there, a cup, a ball, and a chocolate stick, all in Vanilla flavour. That itself was like heaven for people in that small town. This was when dad came up with an idea of a full-fledged ice cream parlour in Changanacherry. 

The shop was to sell more than fifteen flavours of ice creams and even more interesting were the sundaes which were a mix of flavours served in fancy glass bowls laced with syrups and other accompaniments like caramelized nuts, Tutti Frutti, cherries and what not?! Brilliant idea for those times. 

We are talking about more than three decades in the past. A business model such as this, obviously needed significant investment. Dad presented his vision to his known circle. Soon, two groups of opinion makers were formed, one that fully supported him and the other vehemently opposed him. The resistance was quite stiff that he had to use his entire charisma to pacify them. Many remained unconvinced and continued to discourage him from proceeding further. 

Dad was one of the most optimistic people I had ever come across in my life. He heard everyone, weighed all pros and cons, and went ahead with the decision to launch the business and called it Adens with a tagline that read, 'A Sweet Den for All'. That was how on 22 December 1991, history was written in the small town of Changanacherry where the people of the town witnessed a brand-new experience of exciting their taste buds with variety of ice creams! 34 years later, the business still stands tall even though dad now oversees the operations from heaven as my brother runs the show. 

Many years after Adens was launched and running as one of the biggest success stories from that part of the world, one day I asked dad how did he overcome the resistance from many people during the planning days. His answer was a simple yet powerful proverb.

Let the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on...

God bless his soul!

 

Punctuality – A Deadly Lesson!

Yesterday evening a sad news came in one of my college WhatsApp groups. It had a picture of a professor who taught us during the graduation days, quarter of a century ago and the message was about his passing. May his soul rest in peace.

A barrage of memories came rushing on how he used to take classes those days when faculties were not burdened with political correctness. They freely spoke their mind and acted as they wished. Getting reminded of maintaining decorum in the class, with a pellet hitting your head in the form of a chalk piece or at times even the eraser itself or notebooks flying through the air and out of the door since homework was not done, were all accepted norms then. They all contributed to the beautiful nostalgia that we cherish today.

Those were the days when faculty and student relation was laced with respect and love, something only next to what we experienced back home with our parents.

On the contrary, I recently heard from some of the professors in colleges now, where they had to think twice before making a remark in the class fearing what students and parents will think and react about the correctness of their remark.

That reminded me of one of our other professors, Mr D who taught us during our MBA days back in the then Christ College, Bangalore. It was the initial days of the classes and our first experience of getting exposed to a professional course that taught Business Management.

He had a unique way of delivering his lecture. The campus at Christ was lush green. On one end of the campus, there was a Birds Park where literally we could see birds visiting in groups due to the thick foliage. The garden had a gazebo with ample chairs that could accommodate a whole class. 

We were given clear instructions by Mr D, for us to be seated at the Birds Park before the beginning of the class. He would join us right on dot when the class time was meant to start. On day one, we all followed this to the T. Day two, one of our classmates was late by a minute.

As soon as the student came up, he gave an excuse on why he was late. We could see a clear change to the professor's demeanour. His face became stern and when he spoke, the voice was deep with a scary tone.

Mr D made a statement, which remained etched in our minds till date and became the Magna Carta for everything to do with punctuality in our life. 

He said, 'You can only have two reasons to arrive late to my class. Either you must be dead, or you are dying!'

This and many more timeless reminders from our dear teachers from yester years, keep us on our toes in our daily life, even decades after leaving college and working in a professional environment in the corporate world.

Salute to good old days!

The Chutney Manager

By virtue of hailing from Kerala, also known as land of coconuts, it is quite natural for us to have coconut in many of our dishes. Chutney or coconut dip is one of the most common dishes that is paired with famous breakfast items such as dosas and idlis. As was destined, last weekend, I decided to take a bold step in preparing a coconut chutney myself in combination with wheat dosa. It was an unusual attempt considering the fact that we have a master chef at home, in the form of my sweetheart.

As the established practice many novice chefs resort to, I searched and found a recipe online and followed the instructions. Since some of the ingredients were either unknown to me or not available, I decided to ignore them and managed with the rest. All went well except for the initial roasting of shallots which got slightly burned, or so I thought. At the end, the final product turned out to be so good that even the master chef was majorly impressed with the culinary skills of the rookie! Who knew, maybe the burnt shallots gave a smoky flavour to the dish, which might have added an accidental twist and tickled the tastebuds.

A few days later when the breakfast menu again had dosa and chutney, the master chef herself prepared it. A huge surprise awaited me, as soon as the dish was ready. The master tasted the dish she made and then bowed down to this humble being stating, she still felt the chutney I made last time was better than hers! I was in seventh heaven. What a glorified way of getting an appreciation. A tribute par excellence!

It didn't stop there. The liberal compliment was followed by the statement of the century. My sweetheart declared to the family that since Appa makes the best chutney in the house, henceforth, all days when chutney is on the menu, it will be Appa who will be the official chutney master.

Suddenly, I heard alarm bells going off. Warning lights flashed in dozens. Before I could even rush to a safe zone I was trapped in an impossible-to-escape dungeon. The name board of the place read, Death by Appreciation!

The only comparable experience in a corporate workspace is when a colleague or a boss showers you with compliments for a job well done, which in the first place was theirs to do. You will then be trapped to do similar or other jobs, the pain of which will be drenched in an avalanche of appreciation.

Allow me to dedicate this piece to all such 'true strategists' of the modern world. From this day, they will be known as The Chutney Managers!

 

Gulf Air & Scissors

If you have read the title of this story, you may be wondering what has a scissors got to do with Gulf Air? For a ten-year-old boy in the early 90’s the airline played a critical role in a barter transaction for something important to him. The interesting fact was that the airline itself had no clue that it was going to be a party to a life changing decision the boy was about to make.

Before I took the story any further, I had to take you back to my tiny state of Kerala in India. While the state of Kerala is one fifth the size of state of Washington, even in early 90s we had a considerable number of expats from the state, especially in the Middle East. One of them was my uncle and family who used to visit us once in a year from Muscat, the capital of Oman.

Uncle and family used to take the most famous airline from Middle East during those times, Gulf Air. Emirates was still in its infancy then. One of the most awaited events for my brother who was four years elder than me and I, after uncle reached my home, was unpacking of the bags. Those were the days when gifts from abroad were attributed very high value. It was the era before liberalisation in India, and we were yet to have foreign merchandise freely available in our country.

Among the gifts uncle came home with that time, was a pair of beautiful stainless-steel scissors with a transparent brown handle. The best part was the cutting action by the scissors which was so perfect that it was altogether a new experience for my brother and me. I was a bit jealous when my uncle extended that scissors as a gift to my brother. While I do not remember what exactly the gift was, I received that year, I definitely remember that I got something priceless that day.

Uncle’s eldest son was just two years younger to me, and we used to share similar vibes on our interests. He clearly knew my love for aviation and I appreciated anything unique that came with a Tflight. In this case, it was the inflight magazine of Gulf Air. Every year when he arrived at our place, he showed me the latest edition of the prized possession from the flight that time. He was quite generous and allowed me to have the only copy he managed to get from the flight. Thirty-five years later, all these sounded silly. But during those days, the magazine meant the world to me. I wonder what the editorial team at Gulf Air would have thought if they knew they had a die-hard fan of their magazine across the Arabian Sea in the tiny coastal land of Kerala!

Days went by and my wish for the beautiful looking pair of scissors only got stronger. I pleaded with my brother to give me the scissors, and I told him I would give him anything in return. I saw a diabolic twinkle in his eyes. He looked at the magazine from Gulf Air I was carrying as if it was the first edition of The Bible itself! He then looked at me and the scissors. No words were exchanged. The message was loud and clear.

I was in a dilemma. An incredibly special piece of equipment on one side. An absolute rare specimen of a magazine on the other side. The choice was quite tough. I had to take a decision quickly, else if my brother changed his mind, I may lose the scissors for ever. I took a deep breath and did some quick calculation. I realized that the barter is not as bad as it looked.

Another year and I was sure I will get the next in-flight magazine, but there was no guarantee that I will get a scissors of that calibre even though India started talking more about liberalization from 1991 onwards. With great difficulty, I agreed with my brother and took the possession of one of the most beautiful and useful tools I ever had in my life.

Happy and proud to say the same pair of scissors is still a part of my life and works like a charm. I must also add that, since this incident I lost count of the number of in-flight magazines that went through my hands. In fact, we all have reached a point in our lives, where I now hardly see anyone yearning for an in-flight magazine anymore. Many other material things took the position of prized possessions.

Good old days!

 

Empowerment – Incredible Leadership Stories

After two gruelling years of MBA from Christ College, one of the prestigious institutions in then Bangalore, I took my baby steps into the corporate world with Mindtree Consulting, the name by which the company was known those days. It was a mid-size IT company compared to the likes of giants in Indian IT diaspora such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro etc. My staff ID was just 4299.

I joined the Staff Operations department of Mindtree which was entrusted with the critical task of finding the right person for a job. Those days, Staff Ops department of Mindtree was designed to have regional teams taking care of staffing requirements of clients in their respective geographical areas with US being the biggest, followed by Europe, Asia Pacific etc. There was a Central Operations team as well to co-ordinate with these different regional teams to ensure that staff utilisation is effective and optimized. My boss and I were part of the latter.

While the structure worked, there were already talks about this model to be redesigned to match the planned growth of the organization. To facilitate this, the management decided to get a seasoned Mindtree Mind, how the staff was addressed in Mindtree, who managed a large client in the US.

The word got out and all of us in Staff Ops team were quite excited, as this man was to be our new boss. What was even more interesting was the rumour that he was going to consolidate Staff Ops function to achieve more synergies. Lot of improvements were expected. Little did we know that along with him a sea of changes were to follow, some of them we did not even anticipate. The man's reputation preceded him.

Dats, that was how our new boss was affectionately known in Mindtree circles. As soon as he took charge, he called for a combined meeting of all Staff Ops teams. We were quite surprised with his demeanour. The man who ran one of the biggest accounts of Mindtree in US, the man who had been tasked to consolidate the entire Staff Operations for the company had a remarkably calm way of going about with his business. We were impressed on day one itself.

The action then started!

His first ask was to get all the leads list down daily activities we carried out as a team. He reviewed the list and identified all those activities that did not strictly belong to Staff Ops. There were a bunch of tasks that our team performed on daily basis which in fact belonged to other functions in the organization such as HR, Quality, Recruitment etc. This was quite typical of young organizations, a learning that was applied over the period of growth. Dats immediately scheduled meetings with his counterparts in those departments and agreed with them to own their respective activities thereby freeing our valuable time to do more meaningful staff allocation specific activities.

We thought we were all set to start with our new life. That was when Dats broke the biggest surprise. It must be either the work culture he picked up from US or his methodical approach to everything that we came to appreciate in the days ahead or both. Dats noticed that some of the team members worked late in the evening in office for multiple reasons. He called the entire team into a meeting room one day and made a statement that still echoes in my head even after almost two decades of the incident. He said, ‘None of us are doctors and no one is going to die if you stop working at the prescribed end time of the day. I do not want to see any one of you staying back in office unless there is an emergency that you will be able to justify to me’!

Those were golden words, teams across the corporate world would love to hear from their bosses! He was incredible in not just saying that but to live a life and showed us how to really have a work-life balance. God bless bosses like you Dats! You are indeed a rare breed! 

The Paris Surprise

Year 2018, was when Ruby and I decided to take our kids for our first ever European trip together. Among the destinations we planned to visit, Paris was the last. As a sheer coincidence, that was the year of FIFA football world cup and as destiny would have it, France were the champions that year. It just so happened that the final match was two days before our planned date of arrival in Paris.

The city had gone crazy on the day France won. There was chaos and fights everywhere. It was as though Parisians were in a trance from the win. We were obviously a bit worried about reaching the city given this background. A friend of mine who worked in Paris in fact asked us to drop our plan if it was not urgent. Nevertheless, since we planned it long time ago and this being our last leg of the trip, we decided to go ahead. Fortunately, by the time we reached Paris, the commotion had settled down.

We had booked ourselves a hotel at a place called Clamart and reached the place on a taxi from the train station on the first day. The hotel booking was done based on our research looking at the accessibility via train. Little did we realize that this was the suburbs of Paris and though a train station was right next to the hotel where we stayed, it was not the metro railway network connecting the city directly. While it was a late realization for us, we were quite OK with it since all these contributed to our travel experiences.

The next day we decided to explore the city and headed to the train station near our hotel. As we reached the station, we looked for the ticket counter. While there was one, unfortunately no staff was present. The alternate option was to buy the tickets from an automated kiosk. We thought we will give it a try.

The kiosk had a catch. It only accepted coins. We had Euros, but as currency. While we were trying to check the tickets from the machine, a queue started building behind us. With the machine not allowing currency we were stuck.

As we were wondering what to do, I heard a tiny voice from behind us in the queue, asking in a French laced English, if we needed help. It was a petite lady who was patiently waiting for us to finish our turn at the machine. We tried to explain the situation to her. Without even thinking twice, she took out her purse and paid for all our tickets.

Soon we were on our way to the city. At the station where we all got down, we paid her in currency and she promptly returned the change. The train moved on and all our concerns about friendliness and wellbeing in Paris also went along with it.

Santhosh George Kulangara, one of the most widely travelled person in the world had once said, ‘most of the people across the world are good, unfortunately we get influenced by negativity expressed by one person’s experience and make the mistake of generalising that for all.’

Let us remember to have an open mind during our trips, all the while being aware of our surroundings.

Happy travelling!

 

When Arundhati pushed Obama away…

I hail from the state of Kerala in India where people speak the language Malayalam. While all my schooling and college education was in English medium, the influence of native language on me was quite deep. Having said that, by the year 1997, I had started with my second year of Pre-degree, the equivalent of grade 10 + 2 today. While authors who wrote in Malayalam was a clear favourite, English authors were not that alien to me.

Incidentally, this was the same year the world was surprised to see Arundhati Roy, an Indian born, Kerala woman who authored an English novel, her first, and bagged the Booker Prize! For someone who stayed away from English writers for most part, I had no clue what Booker Prize was. So, I took an effort to find out how big a deal it was and was indeed impressed with the author for the win.

Everyone seemed to talk about the book, ‘The God of Small Things’. While it was a fact that Arundhati had her roots in Kerala, what was even more appealing to me was that the story in her novel happened at a place called Aymanam which was near my hometown, Changanacherry in Kerala.

I was thrilled and really wanted to get a copy of the novel. As luck would have it, I came across the book in the library of one of my uncles. Since he was quite particular about not letting people borrow his books, I had to attempt to read the book at his place. Attempt I did, but after a couple of pages, the novel turned out to be a tough nut to crack for me. I just could not understand the plot. It was the language perhaps or my limited exposure to English novels during those times. I promptly placed the book back in the library and walked away. The next time I was to touch that novel and buy a copy was almost three decades later. Even then, I simply added that to my collection, planning to read it one day.

Life moved on. Obama came to power in US. He got re-elected as well. I was totally at awe by his speeches and the videos showing his surprise visits to local eateries. Without Obama even knowing it, he had a huge fan in me, and I started following anything related to him. Close to a decade after Arundhati published her book, Obama’s book came out, ‘The Audacity of Hope - Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream’. Blinded with idol worship, I thought this was the autobiography by the man and decided to buy a copy one day. 18 years after Obama published his book, I picked up a copy from a local store in Dubai.

I was reading a Malayalam book at that time. Soon after I finished with that, I picked up ‘The Audacity of Hope’ in eager anticipation of knowing all about the man I admired. I was in for a shock that the book was more of a Political Biography and had little to do with being an autobiography. I persisted. Afterall, I was no longer the young boy in 1997 to drop a book just like that. Patience is a virtue, or so I thought. First page gave way to the second, with great difficulty though. Page three seemed far away. Nevertheless, I pushed myself to reach page fifty somehow. By the time I was experiencing the feeling of self-betrayal and finally decided to give a break to Obama.

As I replaced Obama in my library, my eyes got stuck at the name Arundhati Roy. ‘The God of Small Things’ looked at me and smiled. I obliged. It had been two days today, since I picked up the book. I must say what a relief it was from traversing through American history and political philosophy to enjoying the simple landscape of Aymanam, a village in my dearest state of Kerala. Arundhati was beckoning me this time, with an almost seducing clutches to revive my interest in reading! And I must say, she was able to push Obama away that, ‘The Audacity of Hope’ seemed to have lost all hope forever.

Everything has its own time. When it is meant to happen, it will happen.