Letter to Dad from Dubai

Dear Dad,

Hope all is well at your end? How are grandpa and others doing there?

It had been a couple of weeks since I wanted to ask you something. Do you remember an incident that happened 23 years back while I was doing my Masters in Coimbatore? Way before social media became a norm, there was a competition by the local Malayalam newspaper Malayala Manorama in their weekly newsletter named 'Sri'. It was a general knowledge quiz which ran for a few weeks. Every week I had to find the answers, fill in the blanks and post the page back to Manorama office. 

When the result was announced I won the second prize which was a return flight ticket for two from Kochi to any location in the Gulf states. Since I was still studying, I gifted those tickets to you and mom. You chose to visit the UAE which I remember was your first ever international trip together. It always remained a happy memory for me.

After a lovely visit to Dubai, Sharjah and a few other Emirates in the UAE, you came back to India, with lots of amazing stories about this highly prosperous State in the Gulf region. One thing I distinctly remember was, you were impressed with all the greenery and flower beds that greeted you everywhere you went, which was probably the least you expected in a country built on a desert! 

Six years before this visit to UAE, you had been on a solo trip to the US and Europe for almost a month. You were fascinated to see an equivalent level of infrastructure and lifestyle in UAE. Now, as I recollect many of the stories you narrated to me on your return from UAE, I had seen sparks of surprise and sheer delight for the success achieved by this region. You were beaming when you narrated how advanced and liberal a country UAE was, even a quarter of a century ago.

Eight years after your trip to UAE, as you may remember, Ruby and I landed in Dubai from Bangalore to work with one of the greatest known brands in the aviation world, Emirates! This was year 2011. Ever since that day, I personally lived through similar, if not more, surprises this country kept in store for us. 

Among the many things the world celebrates about the seemingly impossible feats achieved by this great land, one thing always stood out. The leadership of this young nation and how down to Earth they are in the ways by which they absolutely take care of the people who live here. They support the local population but equally care for the expats. In fact, with the last 15 years of living in this beautiful nation, I can vouch for the fact that, every passing year, the love showered by this country on the citizens and residents alike are simply out-of-the-world. 

Dad, you left us to join our Lord three years back. With the current happenings here in the Middle East, I would have expected a call from you every day if you were around, asking how we were, with the genuine concern any loving parent would have about their expat children. I want to reassure you dad, while you may be gone, we do have equally loving parents here in the UAE in the form of rulers of this land, who not just consider our safety as their responsibility but even care for us the way you cared as a father.

Dad, I want to promise you one thing. This is a land that taught us the true value of tolerance. I am certain that, as long as the leaders here remain committed, combined with your blessings from Heaven, as we say in this part of the world, Insha Allah, we will remain safe. Do not worry!

Love you lots...

Yours, Jerry, 14 Mar 2026 

Love at tarmac

Ary knew it was time to leave. She felt a deep pain every time she had to travel for duty that kept her away for a day or two from Toby, her sweetheart. They were at the Airport, eyes locked, both knowing that they will miss each other for the next 48 hours. No words were spoken, but their hearts felt the pain. This time as well they did not forget to share their wired headset and listen to their favourite music before they parted ways.

Toby knew he had to lead the way, as Ary never liked walking back alone. He took two steps forward. She felt the warmth of his body closing in on her. Toby extended his arms and wrapped them around her. She felt lost in the deep valleys of his eyes. Before even she knew, she had closed her eyes. 

As always, Toby made the next move, the one that Amy loved about him. With a gentle movement, he pulled her closer towards him. They were no longer two. Their love never had boundaries. 

She felt her feet no longer touching the ground. He had lifted her up in his strong arms and slowly but steadily led her to where she needed to head to. As they reached the point after which he was not allowed, he took the headset back and safely placed her feet on the floor. He kissed and wished her a safe journey. Finally, with great difficulty, he released his arms around her and let her go.

They looked at each other for one last time. He waved at her and she acknowledged with a nod. She was all by herself and moved forward to head to her destination. Toby watched her for a minute and with eyes welled up, he turned back and headed home.

The airport was a witness to all this, where no other love story was more passionate than the one between Toby the Towbarless Pushback Tractor and Ary the Aircraft!

Sunflowers in us!

It was a bright and a beautiful day. Scores of people thronged the lovely flower garden brimming with a riot of colours. Among the gorgeous view, stood out one sunflower which attracted a lot of attention from the visitors. She was enjoying all the appreciation and even started to believe that she was the most beautiful flower in the entire world! 

As the day progressed, other flowers heard her say, 'Look at me! I am created with an ethereal beauty, which can make even Gods jealous. People say I am named after the sun. But I think, the sun must have been named after me. Afterall, no one can look up and enjoy the sun, while people cannot even take their eyes off me!'

So, she went rambling. It was soon nearing the end of the day. The sunset was imminent. Before the world was pushed into darkness, the sun made a parting statement, "Silly girl, do you realize, your beauty is only till I take a nap?'

The question sent a chill down the spine of the sunflower!

Knowingly or otherwise we all have a sunflower inside us. Many times, we forget the very reason for our existence. We tend to brag about our skills and our abilities, completely ignoring the fact that there are forces around us that sustain us.

Let us remind ourselves, even in this crazy paced world, being humble is still a virtue...

Know Thy Product

Many years ago, I was assigned a project where I was to meet my fourth client in my career as a Business Analyst (BA). I was brimming with confidence as a young BA with the experience from the previous three projects.

I was to meet a senior executive from the client team to gather requirements for a new application they wanted my team to build. Armed with enthusiasm and good spirits, I reached the client’s office well before time and prepared myself for the session. There were no presentations from my end, since the plan was to interview the client team, discuss their business requirement and take notes.

After a few minutes, the team members from the client started walking in one by one. Finally, the big boss himself arrived. We went through the process of initial introductions. Soon after that, the senior executive asked one of his team members to showcase a presentation about the business plan so that I was aware of the context.

The team member opened her laptop and switched on the projector to display the presentation on to the big screen in the meeting room. The projector got powered on, the familiar blue screen was displayed on the screen. But how much ever she tried, the presentation failed to load on to the screen. The screen seemed to be silently screaming in blue!

A few moments went by. The blue screen seemed to stare at all of us with nothing getting displayed. I could sense everyone getting impatient in the room, especially the boss. A couple of minutes later came a statement that redefined my concepts of working in IT. He said, ‘You are in IT, you must be able to fix the projector!’

Whether the senior executive truly meant that statement or not, that was my first of many experiences, with some of the clients I had worked with since then, about how ill-informed can people be about the roles and responsibilities of folks who worked in the vast world of Information Technology. For many, just like the boss in the above incident, a Business Analyst and a Hardware expert who could fix issues with a projector were both from IT and hence they can both do the job irrespective of their specialisation.

A decade later, as the world moved from Waterfall to Agile ways of working, I could see similar arguments manifested in a different manner. When I met clients in the capacity of a Product Manager, one of the biggest challenges I faced was on the boundaries defined for the Product I owned. This was especially true from operational teams for whom, dilution of the nature of Product was never really a problem. Their sole objective seemed to be addressing a business problem through the Product, irrespective of whether it really was a part of the core capability of the Product.

There were multiple instances where clients had asked for features that rightly belonged to another Product to be brought into the one, I handled. It required a great deal of persuasion and at times even helping them see how logically the ask was a misfit helped in bringing back the conversations on track. If it was not for the pushback, what would have guaranteed were multiple Products in the organization with capabilities getting duplicated. Unfortunately, this remains a sad reality in many companies.

The Big Question: Is there a way to avoid this situation? While there is not a simple and straight forward answer, I will still say, we need to have a Push & Pull Strategy that needs to be applied here. We need Product Managers to be clearly aware of the bigger picture with respect to their Product. They really need to know their Product in-depth and realize exactly when the boundaries are threatened to be crossed. It is also important to have a high-level understanding of related Products and how they are designed to have a logical discussion and convincing a client on why it is important not to dilute your Product with a feature that really did not belong.

Equally important is the fact that clients need to be educated to ‘Think Product’. This is not a one-time effort. It will always be a battle between Operational Convenience Vs Product Strategy.

Do not get disheartened. The good news is, most of the clients we from Product world must deal with, are logical in nature and they understand if presented with meaningful and logical reasons. That alone is the way to sustain a better way of working with Products and avoid costly overlaps which otherwise will result in a phenomenon called ‘Product Overhead’ which unfortunately remains largely undetected, especially if it is an organization with hundreds of Products.

So, next time when someone asks you for a feature to be added, first ask yourself this question and then challenge your client. Does this feature really belong to the Product and adds value to the client? More importantly do we avoid overlaps with other Products thereby making the Product landscape of the organization more streamlined and better managed.

Cheers to all sensible Product managers out there as well as rational clients who understand the reason when you challenge the requirement to add a new feature!

Once upon a time...

Am not sure if you will believe what I am going to tell you. It was the day when, I created a flowchart for a business process. I used a pen and sketched on a paper on my diary. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, I used my brain too!

The whole process was quite empowering and liberating. I thought, I wrote, I scratched, I sketched, I thought again and there it was! The result of my cerebral exercise. A beautiful child born out of sheer human perseverance.

I loved it. I owned it. It was mine. Cent percent!

I then did something else too. I created a neat representation of the flowchart using a drawing app and once done I mailed it to my business users for their validation. All that took about a day for me.

I stopped for a moment to take a sip of water when I heard a call, 'Sid, come have your dinner. You can continue your story session with grandpa later. By the way, did you finish your project?'

Sid, my adorable grandchild, ran to the kitchen. I heard him telling his mom, 'No mom. The bot was not feeling well earlier. It should be fine now. I will get it done in two minutes.'

I went back to my nostalgia, when I lived a younger life, much before AI redefined everything literally...

The Jewel of My Life

Many years ago, during my college time, one day my mom and I was having a casual conversation about life in general. When the topic came to married life, mom said, ‘Marriage is a like buying a lottery ticket. If you are lucky, you will get a good partner’.

This was early 90’s in Kerala when arranged marriages were pretty much the way of life. The concept was quite strange for people from Western world when they heard that you could marry someone without falling in love first. Quite sure it still sounds the same but let us say it was a way of life. We found happiness in discovering love together and since both parties involved heavily invested their time and effort for such a beautiful discovery, most of the times the result was cherished quite well.

A few years later, by the time calendar was nearing the end of 2009, I treaded the same path and took a lottery ticket myself. Our initial days were in Bangalore where we started setting up our life together. The process of discovery was not easy I must admit. There were many things we did not know each other and every day we figured out something new about ourselves. Not all findings were pleasant while there were adorable ones that kept us going.

As we look back, we realize that we have replaced the calendars sixteen times and the biggest realization we have today is that we are still discovering each other, all the while enjoying the feeling of being in love! If someone told us this in 2009, I am certain that neither of us would have believed that.

Having said that, this post is not just about love. It is also about the moments when the love of my life was instrumental in decisions we had taken together in life that defined our future. All such decisive moments now feel like glorious chapters of our past.

Be it, shaking myself out of my comfort zone and making me believe that I can take on a new challenge, or staying together while crossing the seas and settling in a new country, or jointly rowing our family boat while adding two tiny bundles of joy during the last decade and half, or motivating me to venture into unknown territories outside work and proving to me again that the limit I can stretch is not even the sky, and above everything else, being there as the calm during all storms we endured and pushing herself in believing in me more than what I believe in myself, this ladies and gentlemen is the true reason for the post.

As we celebrate Valentine's week, I want to acknowledge the real leadership that reminds me everything that I knew I could do, but more importantly empowers me to believe that I could do much more. It all happened with that one lottery I took way back in 2009.

Today, I want to tell my mom, I was lucky not just to win the bumper prize, but it was a priceless gem that destiny had kept in store for me. It must be a sheer coincidence that her name is Ruby!

Equal (In) Justice!

Jane is a mother of three adorable little ones, Ben, Stacy and Keith. As is the case with many households across the world, their home is always filled with cries and laughter from the games and fights by the 'darling devils', a name Jane calls them occasionally, half serious and half fun!

Usually when one of the darling devils crosses the limits of fun, Jane reminds them about the rules of the game and generally they fall in line. Rarely when the reminder did not work, she usually bestowed them with minor disciplinary actions such grounding for a day with no access to TV, games etc. But these actions were limited to the culprit which helped in directing the action to the one who committed the mistake. It also acted as a serious reminder for the rest of the kids that their mother meant business and they better get their act straight. The strategy worked all the time.

One of those days, there was an incident when the limits of fun was trespassed by Keith, the youngest of the kids. The offence was committed with the greatest margin of naughtiness till that date. Jane was furious! She was so mad that, shortly the announcement about grounding came through with new set of rules. No tabs, No TV and No games for an entire week. Her fury did not stop there. She declared that the grounding applied to all three kids. No questions asked! Jane even went beyond and got her rules framed and hung them on the wall of kids' room.

Keith tried to revolt but soon accepted his destiny. Ben and Stacy could not initially comprehend why they were getting punished for a mischief by Keith. They raised their voice of dissent. But their concerns died a painful death when their voices hit a solid wall of resistance erected by their mom. They retreated with great pain and a deep feeling of betrayal, something they never experienced before in the family.

Life moved on. Jane found her new way of reprimanding, quite easy and effective. The intermittent voices of dissent were suppressed with authority. Little did she know that her 'darling devils' were slowly drifting away from her. Soon a day would come when they all stopped talking to her. The house was no longer filled with cries and laughter from the games and fights by the darling devils. Only muffled wails and faint sobbing rippled across the walls of once vibrant home.

The rules remained hanging on the wall.

The End.

After story: If you felt a connection to the above narration to what is happening in your office environment, it is not merely incidental. An office is a logical extension of a family. The nature of decisions and its impact on people, are quite similar, whether at home or in office.

Hence if you are in a leadership role, may you be blessed with the cerebral prowess laced with emotional intelligence to take decisions that will unify the extended members of your family at office, than driving them away. Always remember, rules are meant to follow, but if you are the one who is setting them, ask yourself if they make sense, not just logically, but emotionally as well.