Time to make a difference; Unilever vs Coronavirus

This situation of Coronovirus today reminds me of the lockdown I experienced once in Mumbai. It was the time terrorists took over the Taj Gateway hotel, forcing a military shutdown of the neighborhood which included the erstwhile Hindustan Unilever office, and the guesthouse where I stayed.

I was stuck to my room as it was unsafe to even step out, let alone visit office. This was a time when Skype and Netflix didn’t exist, to allow you to work or pretend-work from home. Thankfully I had just copied all seasons of Boston Legal from a friend onto my shoebox size 10gb HDD. And spent the 4 days locked in at home, doing nothing else but watching these shows.

Times are different now. The lockdown is for an entirely different reason, and most importantly, likely to go on for far longer than 4 days.

I can once again choose to work or be tempted to turn on that TV that is so easily accessible.

But it occurred to me, that there cannot be a time more important than now to work harder than we ever have.

It is a time such as now, when the simple addition of hot water to a pack of Knorr soup, can provide a meal both tasty and nutritious to compensate for those empty shelves of fresh produce at grocery stores.

It is this time that consumers more than ever need to practice personal hygiene through handwashes and hand-sanitizers.

It is also the time to bring a smile on our faces with a treat such as an ice cream when we’re hauled up in the confines of our house.

And if we don’t go to work at this time, we are at best denying people of their sanity, and at worst, increasing the queues outside hospital doors.

We’re always saying how our work is not brain surgery or rocket science, but it is this time when it happens to be just as serious as all those scientists and doctors working hard to find a solution to this, because we are the ones who can hold fort until such a solution is made available en masse.

So I realized we have to make those virtual meetings happen, take those extra precautions while making sales calls or running the factory line, but work harder than we ever have, to prevent an H.G. Wells situation of the War of Worlds happening to our own species instead of aliens.

It’s time now to practice what we’ve always preached.

It’s time now to make a real difference.

What is home?

A question of such simplicity and relevance, but manages to evoke a wide variety of responses from people. From a place where you see your family, to a place where you sleep best, home can be so many things. 

I tried capturing 4 basic elements that can define a home:

1)     Home is the base for mobility

This one is borrowed from an article I read, and the term ‘base for Mobility’ sounds like an oxymoron, but it makes a lot of sense. Like the hub of a hub-spoke model, you always go back to the hub to re-route to your next destination. Home does that for us, both physically and mentally. From the Hub you recharge your batteries and then decide which is the next destination to head to. The Hub is also the place where you are mentally in the best frame of mind to reach out to the people you want to connect with. Therefore, home has both physical and mental manifestations.

2)     Home is where the inanimate extensions of your personality reside

Have you ever noticed how the simple placement of your personal coffee mug on a work-desk suddenly makes that desk your own? Home is a lot like that. You place all those things that represent you as an individual around you, and suddenly, even a hotel room could be your home.

3)     Home is where you are valued

Like a phrase I once read, ‘you go where you are invited, but stay where you are valued’, and this is completely true for home as well, since that is the place where you are truly valued. Even the bed in your house values you enough to lend you the best sleep you can get. Everything in your home values you as an individual, both people and things that reside there.

4)     Home is your center of gravity

Just as how the carrying of a heavy rucksack can temporarily destabilize you, home is where you always need to go back to, in order to find that stability. Once you are home and stabilized and grounded, you are ready to now carry the metaphorical rucksack towards your next activity.

Well, that’s me. 
What is home for you? 

Lessons from an Apple presentation

1)     Set the supremacy context

a.      Making statements like “we’re not the number 1 smartwatch in the world, we are the number 1 watch period” energizes the audience right at the start of the presentation.

b.      This keeps them engrossed to hear what got them here, and more importantly, what’s going to keep them here.

2)     Land one big reveal

a.      Every Apple launch is studded with one big feature that no other device offers, and somehow becomes the staple of the market once they’ve come out with it.

b.      Face recognition, finger print recognition, smartwatch, touch screen, going back all the way to GUI and the mouse, Apple has always set the standard in electronic device features, and this time was no different with the ECG feature on the Apple watch.

c.      Apple watch becomes the first OTC device to measure ECG, something doctors have struggled prognosing so far given the time gap between the moment the patient experiences a symptom to the moment their statistics are recorded.

3)     Celebrate the incremental achievements

a.      Most Apple features are just incremental changes, but they’re still always celebrating them, crediting the teams that have turned these around in just one year, a time frame that is almost impossible to achieve even the smallest packaging change where I work.

b.      9x faster core processing, 1/10 the power usage, 30% bigger screen size; some of these sound too technical, and possibly not even noteworthy, but just think about the last time your own organization presented something that changed a trajectory by 30%! In Apple’s case, its almost the base level increment, while most things move in x factor like 9x and 0.1x

4) Be the change you wish to see outside

a.      Being purposeful is part of the vision statement for most organization and brands right now, but what's rare to see is how this is internalized before going outright with activations - MCD with the reversed arches on Womens Day is a classic case of backfiring when the organization isn't authentic about their purpose
b.   In the case of Apple, being authentic to their sustainability is showcased through a number of actions like the the zero carbon footprint office space they have created and by installing the robot (very nicely called Daisy) to disassemble iPhones to reuse or recycle them as required

5)     Finish with an encore

a.      Just when you think you’ve heard it all, Apple comes up, “oh, by the way..”. They’ve done this with the Apple watch in the past, and this time it was the iPhone XR; the phone to democratize the X experience with the lower price point of $750.

b.      The price point of $750 sounds ludicrous for something to be democratized, but then again, you know people will still stretch themselves to still go ahead and buy it.

c.      The X UI is going to be commonplace in the coming months.  Will be interesting to see what Apple does to further stretch themselves in the next releases. My guesses are speech recognition and a completely sealed phone (no charging point therefore).

Catch of the day

Hooked a chunk of beef as bait on the other end of the flexible Baracasha wood fishing rod, since this was no ordinary fish, but the deadly piranha we were hunting. 

Within seconds of lowering the line, there was a tug, but the rod came back up with just the bait missing. 

Hooked another chunk of beef. Same result.
Repeated this more than 20 times. 

This was not just a deadly, but a really smart piranha. 

Began wondering if the activity is piranha fishing or piranha feeding!

Just when the boatman said it’s our last 5 minutes, there was a tug again, but this time, the tug didn’t disappear as quickly as it did the last 20 times. 

This one was a religious repeated tug. This was man vs beast now. 

Reeled the line quickly back in to find one of the deadliest of all piranhas, the red bellied piranha, with teeth so razor sharp that the Yagua cheiftain used one on these to sharpen his arrows. 

Once we got back, there on my lunch platter was the piranha that troubled me all morning, lying harmless and delicious. A true catch of the day.

Kolkata: Bangdu Wedding

This was our first unofficial trip to Kolkata. We thankfully had one before while working on a project together in office way back in 2010, and wanted to make a personal trip ever since, and this is how it finally happened.

We got to Kolkata on Jan 23, Monday afternoon, a little too late for the fancy 6 Ballygunge lunch that Boka planned with everyone, and a little too early for the Sundown party with the to-be married couple.
So Geet and I caught lunch at a place called Malgudi, right opposite Relax Inn hotel where we stayed, and turned out to be just what the doctor ordered as we got hot Rasam, which was perfect for the sore throat I've been nursing.

By 'sundown', the boys got ready in their blacks with white shoes that we'd planned and headed to Nocturne.
I had prepared a video for Bangdu and Nocturne offered a nice big screen to show it, but that was the end of the benefits the club offered, as I went literally insane trying to get the video to actually play.
First it wouldn't work off my laptop as the DJ only had HDMI cables that my laptop wasn't compatible with. So we arranged another laptop, but then realised my office laptop screws up any pen drive I insert into it. So only option was to upload the file and then download on the other laptop. Now I had to do this twice coz our fancy DJ needed Audio and Video files separately.
Anyway, while in the process of transferring, the second laptop runs out of charge, so now I had to get a third laptop, and repeat the whole process again. By this time lots of people were trying to help, including Mihir who was risking his life holding the laptop charger within the socket given a loose connection to ensure the transfer happens.
After all of that, the DJ plays the files separately, introducing a lag that ruined the output. I anyway was too tired to care by then and just glad I got the video out of the way.

But then, I went and shot a mannequin after that, which actually turned out well, so there began my video editing work right again.

Anyway we sat up a bit at Relax Inn after that till Thakur went nuts and then called it a night, only to hear him break the door next to ours trying to get Kataria out to join him for a drink. What a seriously insane guy!

Next day we rushed to the venue for Baarat which was to start at 9am, but only after a mouth watering road side breakfast of Poori Bhajji and Jalebi.
Bangdu soon came on a Harley Fat Boy and we danced around till he wed Poonam.
Lots of photos later, we got back to Relax Inn as the last of the friends to leave the venue and Geet immediately left shopping with (thankfully) Ritika for company while I caught some shut eye and thankfully a slightly better situation to attend a very fancy reception at Calcutta Golf Club where we had to choose between cuisines rather than dishes that were on offer.

After much Japanese and Punjabi food with Bengali sweets and chaat, we called it a night to get back to work straight the next day. However, Bangdu dropped in to give us our return gifts which ensured I only slept 2 hours before work; but well worth the wait as he doled out some really fancy silverware.
Perfect finishing touches to an already perfect wedding.

Guns n Roses, Netherlands

My first concert alone. Would have never expected to undergo this experience solitary, but turned out there were many others like me on the ground. Far more than the solitary individuals I see in movie halls. 

And as the night went by, people began to have a lot of fun. It's just ironical that I can't get high these days to enjoy things like this that I always wanted to experience. 

Anyway, I bought the concert tickets through resale on the day of the concert itself, and paid €110, which was nearly the cost of the front row if purchased on time, but couldn't manage to decide earlier, as is the case with most things in my life. 

Thereafter made the long 2 hour trip from Rotterdam to Goffert Park, Nijmegen to watch the show, and had sufficient time to grab a Vietnamese Gyoka and move ahead to a spot where there weren't any tall Dutch in front of me, allowing clear LOS of the stage. 

What I didn't know was that I was right at the epicenter of a moshpit that only grew bigger with every song, which included women and kids too. I entered it a couple of times from the side, but not whole heartedly, and only towards the end did I give in, only to fall twice in quick succession, realizing that it was the reason I didn't enter earlier. 

 

However, the way moshpit works here, people pick you up with a smile the second you fall, so everyone is out to help and actually have a fun time. 

I was completely enjoying myself. My favourite, Estranged, played right at the start, and simply watching Slash and Axl together was a high. 

But the crescendo was at the end when AC/DC guitarist, Angus Young jammed with the rest, which was followed by Sweet Child Of Mine that Axl wore a white leather jacket for. Then Slash performs a solo of Floyd's Wish You Were Here. Then Axl takes it higher with a classic November Rain on his piano, and follows it up with a dedication to Chris Cornell with Black Hole Sun, and finally there was Knocking On Heavens Door. 

It was high after high, and by this time, the concert was done for me. Band took a break but clearly there was an encore on the cards. I started to walk back though as the last 2 hour train was 22:55 and the ones later would take 4 hours. But by the time I waded through the crowd, I was late. So I decided to have a beer, which as usual I couldn't finish, so then had fries with curry sauce that tasted terrible, and made it to the station among people partying so much that at one stage, a girl even holds my arm saying Hoi. I was too embarrassed and just smiled and said Hoi in return and she let me be. 

Then followed the long journey that ended up taking 5 hours, coz I met Diletta at Utrecht and we decided to take an Uber that never showed up, causing us to miss the 1:10 train and take the next one at 2:17. 

 

Finally made it home by 4:30 and could barely sleep after that. But can't deny that the effort was worth it. Head banging to the last part of November Rain was the highlight of highlights at the concert for me. 

Diwali continues

Diwali has always been a fun time for me growing up. Which kid doesn't like crackers!
Jeeth and I particularly enjoyed it as pa always got a customary Diwali box of crackers from his office that were sometimes so much that we would save it for Christmas, or for a time India wins an important cricket match, or maybe even till the next Diwali.
So we'd have most cousins and neighbours meet up with is to blow the crackers, or even if it's just the two of us, we'd go to the terrace of our lovely independent corner Kammanahalli house and watch the fireworks all the way to Unity building.
As we grew up though, the relevance obviously diminished. Pa quit, cousins moved, house sold etc etc.
Then after marriage, Diwali took a new turn for me. One of a religious celebration that it never was before. Suddenly there was the customary stay over at Geet's parents place, the Puja, the visits to and from the neighbours, the bursting of a few crackers or more often the watching of the bursting of a few crackers that people of the building did in cramped spaced Bombay's apartment parking areas offered.
And Diwali had plummeted to an all new low for me. Something I didn't even understand let alone enjoy.
Until this year.
We made the long trip to Mugoltur which was the 3rd for me and first for Naan since marrying Geet. We made the trip as Naan wanted to meet his ageing grandpa.
This was going to be a bigger gathering of Geet's family in a remote village and more discomfort likely to await me.
Somehow the reverse happened. Reversed all the way to those carefree childhood days when I enjoyed Diwali with Jeeth.
We burst a bunch of crackers, including a 5000 garland and a continuous rocket, in the backyard of their house with little ambient light and zero pollution, at least till we started. And went on to completely have a blast with the entire family.
The rest of the time there was so conducive to just relax, read, eat, and even participate in the family bickering, that I began to feel as comfortable as I probably did as a kid.
So, very surprisingly, this turned out to be a Diwali I truly enjoyed.