Back!

Having pretty much locked myself out of my blog for the last 4 years, am back in.

A verification code received on the mobile and a new password later, landed softly on the 100 odd passages from the past. Feels good to read some of the pieces again from inside. The sheer joy of the ability to churn out a new sentence from the old, correct a preposition here and dot a t there. And create greater freshness from the same letters.

To reflect on how much the world has changed. Or hasn't.

And on how much my view of it has changed. Or hasn't.

More soon.

Merchant of Manhattan

Caught Al Pacino and his Shylock act in the play- the merchant of venice in Broadway the other day. Cost me quite a packet - $180 to be precise, and I did'nt enjoy the play a bit.
Firstly, the seats at Broadhurst theatre on the 42nd at Broadway were pretty small, and added to the heavy set jackets and overcoats everyone was wearing in snowy New York, it made for very uncomfortable viewing.
Secondly, my seat at one corner didnt give the best of views, the elderly couple sitting next to me were jittery due to something in their seats and the young couple sitting in front of me ,though pretty engrossed in the play, had a packet or two of chips which made cracklimg noise just as Narissa was about to say something that would draw the applause of the crowd.
Thridly, Pacino was shorter than I imagined, his Shylock's delivery of dialogue wasnt impressive either. Antonio was better & smarter, I thought.
Fourthly, Shakespeare at 10pm is tough on any day, but when you have to manage a big event the next day, its even tougher. While seeing the Phantom of the Opera in London a few years back, i had dozed off a few times- due to the sheer darkness of its sets and due to teh late hours spent working on that day. A 50 pound ticket experience spent napping. With the MErchant, while teh sets were imagnative, its the verbosity of Shakespeare that got to me. After dozing off a few times, walked out of theatre half hour before the play ended into the chill New York night and to super Italian pizza.
Finally , $180 left a big hole in my pocket - it was what I was paying for Hilton for a night.
Pacino got me into the theatre, Shakespeare managed to get me out.

A new style of play

The reason I dont like Barcelona's style of play is its boringness.
Under manager Pep Guardiola, the team has become quite invincible- 18/20 wins in La Liga, GF 122, GA 21 ( a record both ways) for a 38 match season. So why is success in this case boring?
Its the way they play.
The team is full of steady(they have 80% match attendance) creative, short players- (most under 5'8 -tallest being Villa) who keep passing the ball between themselves (70-75% possession in most matches), tiring out the opposition and using the awesome quartret of Messi, Carles Puyol, Gerard Pique and David Villa to score.
My team Chelsea normally has 50-55% possession (balanced team, athletic and talented) and a good winning record, Inter had 45% possession and won Champions league last year.
This also is something Arsenal practices- while it does make for some beautiful football, so much science also drains the fun from the beautiful game.
Get creative, Barca.

Escape!

Nietzsche's Nihilistic philosophy is classically summarized by the statement- everything has eternal recurrance, since time is infinite and matter finite, everything will repeat itself. This implies that general human life is purposeless and mans actions have no inherent meaning. A meaninglessness endorsed by existential philosopher Camus in his essay, Myth of Sisyphus.
In contrast, there's a lighter, happier theme in 'Escape' centered works, one of which I have just finished reading- John Updike's Rabbit, Run. Escape to find meaning in ones live , existence and purpose. Escape to a better, more joyous state of being.
This theme has recurred in many books- Somerset Maugham's brilliant book, Moon and the sixpence( where bored stock broker Charles Strickand becomes an artist) ; Eat, Pray, Love - a recent blockbuster about the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, herself running away from a divorce thru Italy, India and Indonesia; Year of the Hare- Arto Passilinia's classic tale of Vatanan running into the forest with the hare and moving away from his drab city life.
A few movies have run the similar theme- Revolutionary road - with the Titanic lead pair of Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet fighting to keep their boring marriage alive dreaming of escape all the time, but not being able to achieve it; A Good Year achieved escape - again a dreary and incredibly busy stock broker, breaks away to work on his uncles wineyard to discover the joys of country life. Russel Crowe is the unlikely hero, but does a commendable job, nevertheless.
Rabbit, Run ranks way above quiet a few of these as a good escape novel- simply because it dwells in escape and its consequences- by covering over four decades of the life of Rabbit- Harry Angstrom, who grows (or doesn't) from being a great basketball star to a dull householder and makes multiple attempts to escape his own life, even as he becomes rich (his Toyota dealership booms in the 1980s) and finally falls to ill health. Written every ten years, Updike managed to reflect on some of the key developments in American polity- from the launch on the moon to vietnam war to the end of communism- possible sheerly due to the span of the novel's progress.
This theme of leading multiple lives in search of purpose- a sort of escape from present circumstances makes very engaging reading.
In non-fiction, escape in the form of Jim Rogers beautiful travel books written with a decade between them 'Investment Biker' and 'Adventure capitalist' or even P. J.O.Rourke's Eat the Rich were highly engaging.
An escape experience, be it a movie or a book, leaves you satisfied that there is meaning in life and that all you have to do is to attempt it.
Getting back to Nietzsche, escape is also a recurring philosophy manifesting itself in different ways and forms.
After all, wasn't it the king Siddhartha- the Buddha, who found enlightenment after walking away from his wife, kids and family?
Is escape, then, the route out of meaninglessless?

Spring forth in 2011?

2010 ends this weekend.
Guess it's time to draw up lists of resolutions, pull out reviews of books read, movies seen, progress made, lessons learnt, draw up a mini statement of monies made, blown, left and due, remember places traveled and generally summarize the year for posterity.
2009 was a static year. Nothing happened, it just passed by.
2010 has the makings of a change year- an year with the weight of a decade on its back- seems like a turn around a block, resulting in a complete change in the view.
Another decade is over. From jumping aimlessly into my 30s in 2000 to cautiously planning for the 40s in 2010, it has been a transformational decade. TIME magazine calls it the Decade from Hell; Business Today calls it India's Best Decade. Maybe thats the worldview. When I began the 30s, we were half a trillion $ economy. Today, ten years down we are a trillion and half!
But personally, the decade has reduced my hair, increase my pulse rate, made me a conformist from a confrontist, converted me from a functionalist to a generalist and a tougher negotiator.
To summarize what has changed, transformed- needs more pause, more reflection and more thinking and more projecting into the future. Maybe till 2020.
Whats my view of myself in 2020?
Empty Nest. Entrepreneur. Dollar Multi-Millionaire. Author. Professor. Traveler.
These are six possibilities, not in any order.
But, before all of these possibilities looms a 12 month certainity- 2011.
Should I plan one step towards each of these goals in 2011? Maybe.
Back to 2010. All in all, an year that marks the beginning of a period of considerable progress with some initial milestones achieved. Read very few books this year, but bettered the average in December - having been laid low by flu, have managed to finish in fiction-Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (great 2/3rd- Rome and Indonesia); Sunetra Choudhury's Braking News ( a missed opportunity to produce a masterpiece); John Updike's Rabbit, Run (cant believe it is about life in the 50's) and begun to read the much discussed- 'the girl with the dragon tattoo'. It's also been an year of travel compared to last year- globe trotted to US, France, Hong Kong - mostly places I have been to earlier. Did see many many movies this year, culminating in the launch of a movie channel! Did a small and refreshing education flip course- spent a few days at the ISB-Kelloggs discussing strategy and lectured students visiting from Kelloggs on Indian media. Also gained a definitive couple of kilos as I tipped the 115kg mark. This is one milestone I am not happy about, since unlike my earlier weight gains, this one comes with stress, not cheery prosperity. Could 2010 also be the springboard to greater adventure?

2011, here I come.

No goals at the moment. Just plain anticipation of an interesting year.

European cliffhangers

First, it was the volcano. That just refused to let flights move.
Then came the financial meltdown, Britain which had felt tremors as early as 2008, followed by Belgium, a Greek Tragedy- a collapse of its currency, followed by Spain and a dramatic fall of the Euro from 70 rupees to 55 rupees in under 12 months!
Then the change in political landscape- as slowly conservative preservationsists come back to power in England, Poland and Germany.
Finally, its manifestation on the soccer field.
This FIFA world cup has seen Italy(reigning defending champions), France( winners in the previous cup), Greece, Denmark already falling off. Spain and England struggling to get to the round of 16. Germany and Portugal just about getting there.
Guess the State of country's mind is the State of the country's game.

Soccer & us

The TRP ratings report this wednesday flashed the incredible climb of the TV channel ESPN's viewership from 3 GRP's in the 15-34, AB, C&S, HSM 1mn+ markets to 50 GRP's and then to 117GRP's over the two weeks of FIFA world cup.
I wondered why.
We dont play soccer, we dont like physical sport, we dont like team games, so why is India watching this world cup?
We have been a spectator sport country. We like to watch ( explains our obsession with TV), we like to talk( explains our poor written history records and oral tradition), we dont like sharing credits (explains why we excel mostly at individual sport- tennis, badminton, chess, archery, wrestling or golf) and we like individual skill over collective force( explains why we like cricket which is reliant more on skill - batting, bowling, wicketkeeping).
I think sport to sport, cricket consumes the least amount of calories. Soccer is pulsating, physical extreme sport. Just like rugby or basketball. In soccer, you cant win without teamwork. You need to have people engaged in intensive co-ordinated ball-play to score.
We like the soap opera feel of cricket, you never know what the next player will bring to the game, we like the wristiness of a shot, the slowness of the game( 5 ridiculous days), we like the fact that it creates heroes who can be worshipped, we like the intense discussions around a sport very few countries play. We also like it because maybe it is still the only game where we manage to win.
Maybe what has changed is that as a nation turns capitalist, you learn the power of collective force. The unifying factor has been the pressing opportunity to create wealth for itself, the impending limited period demographic dividend. Which forces the US to build relationships with us. We also begin to get a first world view of the everything as we migrate from defunct and low-leverage groups like SAARC and NAM to BRIC and maybe, G20 and further to a seat in the UNSC with veto powers. For a country that abstained from voting on most issues due to its NAM policy, we have come a long way.
So, we begin to view first world sports. Then, maybe we will play. Health is a big discussion in any meeting. The increasing number of marathon runners will soon make it the worlds largest marathon.
Soccer is here.
Baseball, Basketball and Rugby will follow.
Individual skill will have yielded to collective force.

Insurance is subject matter.of this solicitation

'Hello?'
'Sir, Pramod calling from Reliance capital, wanted to discuss future planning'
'See, with the insurance policies I have already bought, I am already worth more dead than alive. Now, how much more should I insure?'
'Sir?'
'Do you guys want me dead or what? I am insured for more than my salary now! Do you want to kill me with these daily phone calls?'
Click!
'Hello,Hello...'

'Hello'
'Sir, Calling from ICICI prudential...'
'Yes,Yes,aah,aah,...more,..more...aah, aah, yes, yes....aah, yum, aah,aah,, oooh,...,yes,yes,more....more...'
click!
'Hello,hello....'

'Hello'
'Sir, main Max new york se bol raha hoon. Kya aap insurance mein interested hain?'
'Mein ek khoon karne wala hoon. Chalo, uska 1 cr ka policy nikalte hain. Uske marne ke baad, dono half-half share karenge!
click!
'Hello,hello...'

'Hello?'
'Sir, am calling from Religare finance. Wanted an appointment to discuss financial planning'
'Thoda paani dena?
'Sir?'
'Paani deona'
'Sir?'
'Paani deona, pyaas laga hai'
Click
'Hello,Hello..'


Hello?'
'Sir, calling from Tata AIG'
'Yes, what can I do for you?'
'We want to meet you for financial planning'
'Sure, when'
'Sir, what about friday?
'Ok, how much money will you give me?
'Sir?'
'Are you meeting me to give me money?'
'No, we want to do financial planning"
'you will give me money, right. Then we will plan what to do with it'
'No, sir. We don't give money'
'So, whats there to plan. I have no money'
'Sir, we can help you make money'
'You are giving me a job?
click
'Hello,hello...'

'Hello?'
'Sir, calling from Bajaj capital'
'Which branch?'
'Mumbai, sir?'
'Which branch in Mumbai?'
'Andheri'
'Oh, I work in the Bandra branch. How are you?'
'Nice to know'
'How many policies did you sell last month?
click!
Hello,hello..'

'Hello'
'Sir, calling from Aegon religare'
'I know, I am you President- M&A, based in Delhi. How did my number get into your database?
'Sorry, sir, We were just given these numbers'
'Who gave you these numbers?
'Our company?'
'What's your number?'
Click!
'Hello,hello..'

'Hello?'

'Sir, Nitin from Birla sun life insurance..'

'Great, just the guy I was looking for! See, my name is Ajmal K and I have been given the death penalty, what do you think will be my premium?'

Click!

'Hello,hello...'

'Hello?'
'Sir, this is Anjali calling from Canara Robeco..'
'You have a nice voice, why dont you call me later in the night, Anjali?'
'Sir?'
'Why dont you call me later in the night? We can talk at leisure?'
'Sir?'
'Are you calling from Mumbai?
Click!
'Hello, Hello..'

'Hello?
'Sir, Calling from reliance capital..would you be...
'
Hello, hello, sir, sir, are you there....?
'
'Hello?'

'Hello?'
Click!

Hello?'
Sir, Arjun from Tata capital, Can we speak to mr nc?
'Just killed him. Bloody fat fellow. lots of blood came out. Have his cell phone. Is there some way I can get his money?'
click!
'Hello,Hello..'

Tech lives.

It's amazing how technology makes every other experience transient and itself redundant in quick cycles.
A bigflix subscription for movies kept me enthralled for months on end last year, but with digital cable and its 8 english movie channels and 12 hindi movie channels, I have been forced to keep the bigflix order book dormant and avoid responding to all their reminders.
Take my iphone, for instance. It has made a whole host of devices quite redundant. The iphone apps are making everything else unnecessary- check this- it's already a video camera, has my stock portfolio, facebook, news videos, atlas, global weather finder, scientific calculator, fav gaming device- sudoku, chess,checkers and pacman, live tv, ipod, quick notepad, money manager, birthday reminder and has all my mailboxes and contact lists.
That's not all, what it has also done is turned business models upside down.
Microsoft doesn't care for the hardware, just makes the software and leaves many vendors fighting each other for customers., while it just sits around making proprietary software.
Apple turned the model around, it makes the basic hardware- focussing on designing an intuitive product - say an iphone or ipod or ipad and lets everyone make software for it. So over a 100,000 app companies have mushroomed around it. That's why it is iconic.
From CRT to LCD to Plasma to LED, we have transitioned in 3-4 remarkable years.
To design is to be on top of teh value chain.
Everything else can be sub-contracted and take shape by itself.
Now take blogging. With facebook, and then with twitter, blogging is been made old-fashioned before you can say b!
Thoughts have to fit 140 character word limits.
Technology has turned time transient.

Marine Drive in 1998

I was more funkier twenty years back. Denim, white belt, badge and Gladwellish hair !

2009

How does one describe 2009?

Amongst the newsmakers- Andhra stood out. Starting the year with the massive Satyam scam, it staged an upset by winning the IPL in SA, from being a team written off last season, then the summer saw it being ravaged by floods washing away towns, the landslide victory of the congress was overshadowed with the dramatic death of its CM and then out of the blue the state almost split into two bringing many other forgotten statehood aspirations to the fore.

Amongst the TIME magazines best books of 2009 - fiction & non-fiction, this year I managed to read none, though I read a lot many non-fiction works this year.

I turned 40 this year. Like they say life begins at 40. Maybe I need to re-invent myself. Take up marathon running for instance. Maybe I will get younger. Maybe I should give in to wanderlust and try to backpack Europe next summer as I have been dreaming the last couple of years? Maybe I should burn midnight oil and finish my novel ? Salsa ? Maybe. Read 25 books? Maybe.

All in all, I think 2009 was a 'paused' sort of year - the year with the lull before the storm.

2010, I reckon, will be the year of action.

Valuelessness

I think the parallel process of denigration of values following the transition to capitalism has slowly begun. Myth and fiction are being inter-twined creating a new confused Indianess.
There is a serial on Ravana, extolling his virtues as a king, not 'demon' king. Ramayana has been re-serialized in a 4-book form and presented as fiction. The video games on Ramayana have you fight demons with the bow and arrow acting as Ram and there is a new movie in the works which presents Mahabarata from Draupadi's point of view ! Saw a management book on case studies recently that carried a line- who will you choose- Krishna or his army?
Last weekend , I finished reading Ozamu Tezaku's 8 volume graphic novel 'Buddha' . The illustrations are quite stunning and the story moves quite rapidly - the journey of Buddha's birth to enlightenment is detailed even though it is classified as a work of fiction.
The book is, however, full of nudity, expletives,racism, profanity and violence.
How is a 10 year old kid to read it ? And what is he to retain from it? Whose version of mythology is it? Does being classsified as fiction give it the license to distort and represent old myths ? Fictionalizing myth further will dilute the Indian value context and leave behind confused meanings.
And in 10 years, what will be left of the original Indian Mythology?

You ain't seen nothin yet !

Here's what Yogi Berra means
A snapshot of numbers and growth of various products and services over the last 10 years:
Product/service: 1999 nos: 2009 nos: % growth
ATMs : 1100 :40000 :3636%
Air passengers(mn):12:54:450%
Coffee shops:9:1200:13333%
DTH(mn):0:16
Internet users(mn):1.5:55:3667%
Mobile users(mn)1.2:449.3:37442%
Multiplexes:1:900:90000%
PC's in India(mn):1:7.6:760%
Desktops(mn):1:5.4:540%
Laptops ('000):23:2200:9565%
FM Radio stations:0:280
TV channels:75:426:568%

Phenomenal.
Here's a list of new cars launched in India in 2009:
i20, Spark, Jazz, Ritz, Astar, Linea, Punto, Merc E class, Audi A6, Passat, zetta,Fortuner, Estilo, Zylo, Altis, Altis sport, Rangerover, Road liner, Jaguar, Landrover, Nissan, Nano, Beetle ( coming in Nov), Golf, Tuareg, Polo( coming in Dec) !
India has suddenly turned to become a market for global brands now that most other markets are deep in the red with no consumer demand.

The best is yet to come.

What next for Balika Vadhu viewers ?

Television has changed significantly over the last couple of years.
Maybe it reflects the changing demographic structure of society or maybe it is leading the change. Time was when rural audiences were the core viewing group, as there was one uniform India - licenced, protected, uncompetitive and poor- and the need was to reflect their reality. Then came 1991. India became free again and tasted capitalistic independence -with abundance, choice and wealth. Print added color and skin, Television added slickness , svelteness and instantness, Radio added the music and the internet re-defined urban. The Aspirational housewifes dreams found satisfaction in the well-decked bahus and saas'es with the scandals and affairs reflecting capitalistic values again- choice, competitiveness and infidelity - to brands and men. Over the years, another adaptive format of capitalism- competitiveness and identity- in the form of reality shows emerged in all formats of talent- laughter, singing, dancing, dating, fighting, driving, or just staying together - competing to win.
India was definitely split - into two , three or maybe four India's - the rural , the emerging, the developed and the evolved. The mass at the bottom remained rural but the pace of growth of 1991 had now caught up with them and they had access to cable- so wanted to identify with that content - Colors, followed by Zee, Star and everyone paved the way for such new rural social-issue oriented programming.
Every other day, there is a new car being launched costing anything from 80 lakhs to 5 cr. There are watches costing 0ver a lakh, bags worth many lakhs, shirts and trouser brands costing 50,000 rupees available at showrooms. And at the other end, there is a sachet for every product priced at Re.1 to create newer market segments that can migrate upwards to buying the pack.
A kid born today has atleast 20 channels he can spend his childhood in front of and then he will maybe migrate away from the medium by the time he is 12-13 and get onto the internet and maybe migrate to the mobile by 17-18.
What medium will he consume when he is twenty?
Its unlikely to be television as it is today, for sure.

Fine city -Singapore !

Singapore looks like a nursery.
Everything is monitored and everyone is well dressed. Noone breaks any rules and cleanliness is the way of the world.
The country is rightfully positioned as a world city and is truly integrated into the global economy. Many ads for basic products like housing and shopping use expat models. Food is truly multi-cultural. Having faced tough choices about food in most of South East Asia- HongKong, Kaula Lumpur, Macau, Bangkok and China , Singapore was a breeze- basic edible fare with vegetables was available everywhere- including in the Jurong bird park and Sentosa island. The good Orchard hotel which hosted us( cost quite a packet though) had an Indian menu everyday.
Patches of Singapore look like Chennai - Little India for sure with its zillions of tamilians and the ananda bhavans and banana leaf restaurants ; while some parts reflected the city's multi-ethnicity - Chinatown with white-as-paper chinese people and the consistent smell of fish oil and Arab street with its Malayasian Muslims.
The city cheekily advertises itself as a fine city- full of fines - fines for smoking, traffic, spitting, importing chewing gum to get people in line. The best control for rush hour is to fine the drivers - there is a 30% surcharge for peak hour traffic and a 50% surcharge on taxi fares on weekends.
At 41 rupees to a singapore dollar, it is expensive as taxes account for 5-10% of the rate. A bottle of water is 8 bucks and any cab ride spills into hundreds. The city-country is also trying hard to catch up with Malaysia and HongKong to get tourists with investments in resort city etc. The 120 page Strait Times also chronicled the post-recession problems of Singaporeans, the issues with expats and the aspirations of the local population. The stock market was rebounding and was in good shape while the bank interest rates stayed close to the 1% mark.
The other intersting thing was the continual re-development - each building had been torn down every couple of years to make way for a more smarter,slicker building keeping the city chic 24X7.
With only a 700 sq km area and a population of 27 million, geographically, its only a patch on Mumbai, forget matching to India's size.
Like the taxi driver driving us to Jurong on Ayer Raja Expressway said, you can finish Singapore in 4 days, but even in 4 years, you will only know so little of India.
How true !

On business - 3

Democratization has set in for good.
There was a time in the 1960s and 1970s when IAS was the coveted job to do. Then came Engineering and Medicine that ruled the roost for very many years. Till one day in mid-1991, PVN Rao liberalized the country. Management and Chartered Accountancy suddenly became the rage.
Today, eighteen years later, anything is ok - fashion design, culinery courses, acting , interior design, real estate , NGO and charities are all considered at par. Water management , Civil engineering, Nanotechnology and Petroleum engineering are as coveted as Computer technology. A Dentist is as coveted as a Neurosurgeon.
'Business' was looked down upon and the middle class dream ended with a service and retirement pension. A pawn broker was looked down with contempt. Now, credit card and mortgage firms pay the highest salaries.The economy has shifted from being agrarian and industrial to knowledge driven. And one cold afternoon late last year, Jet Airways tried to retrench 1900 people, resulting in a huge stir, political protests, an apology from the chairman and a re-instatement of the people . A month later, as the world came crashing down financially, Jet quietly removed over a thousand of its employees without a protest. Hire and Fire is now an accepted part of Indian corporate world for good, settling the Union issue once and for all.
Accountability has also reached high standards. You need to tread the straight and the narrow - with judicial and media activism, its difficult to fool all the people all the time anymore.
And while its cool to be an entrepreneur in the knowledge economy, there's now a level playing field for first gen entrepreneurs.
Heave Ho !

On business - 2

The entreprenuer differs from the manager in only one aspect - risk apetite. This reflects directly on the rewards. An entreprenuer gambles big and makes it big, but a manager trades his skills for smaller, safer returns. The entrepreneur manages his external environment and needs skills to negotiate his way in the world , the manager manages his people and so focuses on operational efficiency.
Can a manager make a transition to entrepreneur ? While they are necessarily cut from different cloth ,some managers migrate to become entrepreurs and some even behave as entrepreneurs in their role with a high degree of ownership and responsibility which is occasionally traded for some stake in the firm.

The US is a great example of how an entire society is built on entrepreneural skills. Punjabis and Gujaratis adapted quickly into that environment and blended their entrepreneural skills with Jews, Britishers, East Europeans etc. South Indians waited for Y2K and leapt into the couldron with many IT ideas for outfits of all sizes, sweeping away the BPO business and SAP implementation worldwide. As the internet came into its own, a new generation of entrepreneurs was born.
The tech world also needs extensive collaboration - IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, HP and Google all need each other to survive. Unlike the rest of the industries, IT has high inter-dependence. Everyone is a cog in the wheel. Entrepreneurship comes easily in this space, you need to find a small niche, seek small funds, get guys with stars in their eyes on board with equity, build your product, find the wheel that needs your cog, get valued, sell-out and exit with your millions. Orace, for instance, has bought 52 companies in the last 24 months.
Most other businesses - TV sets, Cellphones, Cars,Films, Burgers, Garments - need you to market your product and find consumers. The tech world doesn't need you to find consumers, it only needs you to find the nearest complimentary product and then together you can tango ! e.g. The iphone has spurred over 6500 apps, each of whom on revenue share can roll in the moolah. The app makers focus on the open source code of the phone and create zillions of games etc. that people will download for a fee. A revenue share worked with the phone maker can fund your lifetime of travel.

The trick is in finding the idea.

On business.

How is it that some people can create enormous businesses generating large scale employment and creating a lot of wealth in the process, while a large majority are destined to plough the till and seek salvation by becoming Sisyphuses ?
Maybe its in the genes. All of working humanity can arguably be divided into four parts - workers, managers, entrepreneurs and geniuses or talent. Talent creates the idea, entrepreneurs convert it into reality, managers run the ops and workers run the processes. The wheels of business churn to produce so as the rest of the world to consume - be it knowledge or goods or services.
Since these layers are a pyramid, there are very few entrepreneurs and fewer geniuses or talent, but a whole lot of workers at the base.
Workers slog to create EBIDTA while the entrepreneur laps up the PAT. Innumarable CxOs create inumerable balance sheets and stare at quaterly humungous profits, but none thinks of the possibility of creating that value for oneself. Some take the leap from one classification to the next- from manager to entrepreneur and maybe genius. Infosys is an example- Nandan and Murty have climbed the complete ladder. If Nandan cracks the national ID project, he is absolute bankable 'talent'. Sreedharan after the Delhi Metro has orders from the world over including Pakistan. Jobs, Buffet, Gates, Tata are gifted. But so are Subramaniam of Subhiksha, Majumdar of Symbiosis, Parekh of HDFC - they are among the many who have built businesses from scratch.
Now, if hard work, perseverance and some luck turns a worker into a manager, what helps make the transition from manager to entrepreneur?
And then to genius ?

All quiet on the western front

Just finished reading Erich Maria Remarque's 'All quiet on the western front'. Quite an engrossing war novel. Its the story of a nineteen year old german boy, Paul Baumer, fighting in the World War I for a cause he doesn't know or understand is quite intense. Erich participated in the War himself , was hospitalized and lost his mother during that time, so the story is pretty much modelled around his own deep-rooted feelings on the purposelessness of war and the toll it takes on the people who participate in it. He gives away the lopsided nature of the war when refers to the fighting French, British and American soldiers as being inferior to german soldiers but having better rations, weaponry and tanks. In a way, the book is quite similar to Joseph Hellers Catch-22, except that Yossarian accepted the futility of the war and wanted to escape,feining ill health and madness while Baumer doesn't protest, he accepts his duty as a soldier and comes back to the front lines & trenches to do as commanded. Maybe because Yossarian was older. Remarque constantly reflects on the wretchedness and inhumanity of war and how soldiers are plain statistics in a war. Im Westen nichts Neues - nothing new on the western front. Dying German soldiers, the killing of British or French is part of the rigor of war-nothing new. How a war leads to a slow loss of interest in life ,increasing uncertanity of what's to happen when one return to normal work- almost dreading the thought emerges as stark reality through the key characters. Even as the one Baumer adores Stanislaus Katchinsky or Kat , who is so full of joie-de-vivre finally meets a bloody end, Baumer lives on unsure.
The book was banned in Germany and when Remarque wrote a sequel The road back about what would have happened if the soldier survives a war and returns to normal life, both his books were burnt. The movie versions ( 1930 and 1979) did better - both winning oscars for best picture.
Terrific book.

Archers in town

Dear Mr. Archer,

It was great meeting you at landmark the other day. Must confess that I have read many of your books and at one point, I owned over ten of them.

Have been wondering about quite a number of things about your writing-

a. It is quite evident that none of your books have been made as movies but have only made it to TV versions and adaptions. Do your plots not lend themselves to the movie format or is your asking price too high?

b. Is it true that in order to fight the advent of movies and TV, one tends to write more action centric novels and not character novels that you are good at. At the turn of the last century, there were many great books written -with long elaborate character sketches and a long winding scripts -all of which we bundle together as classics. The world war finished all that style of writing and gave birth to 'cold-war' writing with thrillers from - alistair maclean, forsyth, tom clancy, ian fleming, sheldon etc. focussed on the cold war and espionage. You have avoided all this and focused on drama. Are you afraid of action?

c. Everyone has a specialised in a certain form of fiction - Michael Chricton - science fiction; Grisham - legal, Tom clancy - cold war, Steven king - horror; each has had many movie version successes as action lends itself well to movies. You have stayed focussed on drama, relatiosnhips and middle class aspirations- more TV stuff than movies material.

With Paths of glory being a real life story and your next book being a re-writing of Kane and Abel- maybe you have finally run out of stories. In fact, the last 4 of your books are real life- including your prison diaries. In response to a query on your favourite books, you had said that 'The Count of Monte Christo'( I have always thought your favourite own book 'Not a penny more,not a penny less' was actually inspired from Dumas's novel ) and All quiet on the western front ( you happily signed this one for me) were your best and amongst your own books ,your wife liked 'As the Crow flies'. My favourite is 'First amongst equals'- liked everything about it from the title to the way the story pans out and the way it ends.

Hope to have a book of my own for you to sign when I meet you next time.

cheers
naveen

p.s. You are very right when you say that while we could accept coincidences in real life, we quite dislike them in stories.