Krishnav's "firsts" make me feel so blessed!

Yesterday Krishnav stood by himself for 5 seconds. It was such a great moment for me and my wife when we saw him suddenly get up from his four-legged crawl to swing from one side to the other as he struggled to maintain his balance. He also waved for the first time yesterday evening in response to the zillionth “bye.” We are eagerly now waiting for his first coherent words and his first baby steps…

Though we struggle coping with Krishnav’s eat-play-sleep-eat… pattern, little things like the above just make all the effort so worthwhile.

Thank you god for letting us experience parenthood, and blessing us with a little angel…

Of life just before taking off…

No, this is not a philosophical blabber about how to take off on a stellar career path. One, I am yet to experience it myself; and two, I believe it is a topic best left to Jack Welch’s and Robin Sharma’s of this world.

This blog entry is about my experience at the domestic airports in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata, since I have been travelling around over the past three weeks. I am not a compulsive reader so I like to observe and absorb surroundings around me when I am sitting idle, or cogitating about something, or just am too tired to do anything else – which is of often the case just before my flight back home, late in the evenings, after a day full of meetings.

In terms of airport terminal quality, I must say that nothing beats Delhi’s “1D Terminal.” It has several coffee shops, a cool new bookstand, and plenty of seating capacity; it easily compares with any airport terminal abroad. Though Mumbai terminal has fewer vendors and coffee shops, it is huge, with plenty of comfortable seating. Kolkata terminal is a traveller’s nightmare – not enough seating, often no air-conditioning, one single vendor selling stale sandwiches, and queues all over (even in the washrooms!).

I especially enjoy those few minutes between security checks and boarding the aircraft. I routinely witness three distinct categories of people in those often crammed up waiting areas (if you do not know what “crammed-up” means you need to see the scenario at the Kolkata airport, where there are a zillion people fighting for those 50 odd seats in the waiting area):

- corporate executives (just like myself) who are tired after a day full of meetings; and eager to get back home. This “species” often spends their time at the airport either checking e-mails, catching up with the pending work, making a list of To-Dos from the meetings just concluded, or “pretending” to read a book or something else. These folks are easy to identify – dark color suits with ties often hanging loose around their neck, and a laptop bag in their hand. They are often seen working at the airports or struggling to find power points to charge their laptops so that they can work on the plane journey back home. They work through their plane journey or catch up on sleep and often have a cab driver waiting at the reception area with their name plate in hand.

- businessmen back from a full day of commercial dealings. Not often dressed up in formals (like the executives), this species is often found talking loudly on their cellphones, and more often “pulling up” their staff back home or talking to their spouses instructing the exact time when the pick-up car should be despatched for the airport. These folks are often the last ones to switch-off their cellphones while seated in the planes – and the last call invariably is to someone back home (or in their office) letting them know the exact take-off time (very annoying for co-passengers!). These are strangely also the folks who will invariably get out of their seats before the plane halts at the home airport, and will immediately switch on their cellphones and ensure that their car is waiting for them outside!

- families travelling after a long trip to another city and fully prepared for the journey (as if it were a multi-week adventure trip to Siberia!), often carrying several handbags with all kinds of stuff. They (mostly kids) will invariably buy stuff to eat from the “crappy” eateries in the waiting area; will have a zillion bags to check-in; and are most eager to board. I often see them waiting for their luggage as I walk out of the airport at the destination terminals.

I find it fairly interesting (and entertaining) to just look around and observe people while waiting to security-check-in or board the plane; much recommended over reading a best seller!

I relived my past…

Some looked just the same, while the others were hard to identify. Some had receding hairline (to say the least!), while the others had streaks of grey. Some had expanded around the waist, while the others had pulled in a bit. The young girls (as we knew them) were more like mid aged (yet charming) ladies. But we all relived our school days just for a few hours.

The Springdales (Dhaula Kuan) batch of 1990 met a few days ago, and what a blast that was. The evening started with pleasantries as if we were meeting strangers – and I thought it was going to be one long evening! But soon, a few (actually much more than a few!) drinks down, folks were just like school kids – pulling each others’ legs, using more than a generous dose of the four-letter-word in conversations, bitching about folks who could not make it to the meet, talking about "ex-flames," etc. It seemed as if 19 years between our school graduation and that evening had vanished in high (and rather heavy doses of) spirits! There were doctors, salesmen, bankers, business men, exporters, consultants in the group; but for those few hours it seemed we were a bunch of heady high school kids.

And then after early excitement, the conversation turned to more mundane topics such as who was doing what, and how had life treated individuals in the interim. Thank god, however, no body pulled out their visiting cards; otherwise it would have just turned into celebration-of-professional-success for some, and a feeling that they had lost-out-in-professional-life for the others.

As folks got high on nostalgia and “spirits,” and as guys ran out of conversation topics, the mood turned to singing and music. We shouted slogans of our school groups (“houses”), cheered as some even sang our school songs, and posed for pics as cameras flashed all over.

Post dinner and after a zillion phone calls from spouses, some (like me) left the party (at 12:00 AM), while (I heard) some others stayed for a few hours more, downed more drinks, and eventually had to be assisted to their cars and even dropped home.

We all promised to meet each other regularly, and keep in touch. A few weeks later, I at least see a lot of e-mails floating around the group. The next meet (with family) is already on the cards.

Cheers to Apul, Sumit, and Gautam, who took the initiative to set that evening up. Thanks folks, you made me relive my past for those few hours…

Four months down; not much progress on my resolution...

I am writing in today to confess that I am not doing enough to move forward with my book idea! Am putting this down in my blog so that even if no one eye-balls it, there is some incremental pressure to deliver on my resolution.

To be true, I have been thinking of possible plots, but have not come across anything that makes me jump out of my chair, or motivates me enough to hit my laptop’s keyboard, or keeps me up at night. Maybe, I have not given myself enough time over the past 2 months to really “taste and chew” the various half-baked story ideas in my mind. The only thing positive is that what started as a vague maybe-someday kind of dream is turning into a have-to-do-soon kind of passion!

Don’t know where to start and how to build on the wire-frames of various thoughts I have in my mind. One vague idea is to just “speed-write” for an hour a day various thoughts that are in my head, and possibly collate all of that after a few weeks to see if there is a pattern emerging or if there is some area worth digging deeper into. The other idea is to read some contemporary works by Indian authors to get inspired enough to take a leap of faith in one of the several directions my mind wants me to pursue.

I am really hopeful I will sort this out soon, but would love to get some advice from fellow bloggers...

Is “polishing the blemishes” a key to survival in this difficult corporate environment – a thought…

I am writing in after what seems like ages!!

I am back to the corporate world, though the transition was not easy; I guess I had got used to the 24x7 “idyllic” lifestyle at the IIM campus. Strangely, have been very busy ever since I stepped into the corporate world – getting used to a relatively new environment, new profile, very different “waking hours,” and dealing with the more mundane things in life. But net net, it is great to be back in a world where some money flows into your bank at the end of the month!

A few days ago an ex-PGPX peer reminded me of a phrase that one of the marketing gurus at IIM used a couple of times during his sessions:

"When you paint wood, you're trying to hide blemishes. When you polish wood, you're trying to show blemishes as quality."

I laughed it off then taking it to be one of the professor’s ways of exhibiting his deep philosophical insight into the world of marketing. Now however when I think of it, there is a much deeper meaning to it. Especially in the corporate world where everyone seems to be trying to “paint” their own personality and skill set to map with what the company demands of them, this phrase seems so true.

I ask: isn’t there merit in diversity, being different (and being proud of the difference), having the will and the courage to polish your “blemishes?”

I strongly feel there is. During this economic downturn when the mantra to succeed in the corporate world is to think-out-of-the-box, being mere “clones” and hiding our blemishes is not going to take us too far. “Polishing” our blemishes into key differentiators in personality or skill is what one need to move forward.

Let me stop here before I get into the philosophical gyan mode. But the message is certainly worth a thought I would say.