Thirty+

My previous post “turning thirty” seem to give an entirely wrong picture to some of my close relatives. In particular, one of my uncles got an impression that I’m disenchanted with life while in search of truth or purpose of life. Well, I’m now forced to write an adjunct post to give a better idea of what I may want to do with my life.

The quote “Core of man’s spirit comes from new experiences” has been a great influence. I’ll give  two examples from hundreds of ideas that I have for my life to enrich my experience of living:

First example: I’d like to build a museum some day.

A museum where I’d like to exhibit things that would make a man wonder about it. A museum that would inspire a child to appreciate beauty in science and arts. A museum which could rekindle a bored person’s imagination.

Second example: I’d like to make a trip to Madagascar.      

 

Turning thirty…

A few days before I turned thirty years a close friend of mine asked me “how would I feel when I turn thirty?” This post is in some way my thoughts on that question. I’m neither sure if I can capture the feeling of crossing that mark nor I’d say things change after turning thirty, yet there is something about hitting that number – only the one who reachs there would perhaps know.

As a young boy I grew up asking many questions to my father, mother and teachers. I used to indulge in debates with people I knew and sometimes with people I didn’t know. I still do. I’ve been part of some intellectual discussions where I haven’t contributed much but still participated more as a listener. I’ve also been in situations where I did seek for advice when I thought that I lacked the ability to think on my own. And sometimes I’ve been in discussions with myself.

I can appreciate aging by the questions that have occupied my mind over the years. The kind of curiosity I’ve have had over the years have actually not remained the same. What used to grab my attention once up on a time seem to have little or no effect on me now. I must also say that things have been pretty drastic in last six to seven years, mostly because of the people I’ve met and interacted during these years. The friends I made at the Indian Institute of Science have been a great influence. It roughly started with me attending a talk by an Israeli – American Nobel laureate at the campus. His name is Prof. Robert Aumann. He gave a talk on the subject “War and Peace” with a mathematical base. Though I didn’t quite understand all that he spoke but I still remember him using the words like rationality quite often, which was pretty new to me. In fact I had done some web search on him before the talk and did glance through various things that he had worked on. I was pretty attracted towards his works for a while even after his talk. Besides the fascination to see a Nobel laureate for the first time in my life, what I liked the most is that he started his talk by defining the fundamentals. For instance he defined “economics”, “rationality” etc before he went into the nuance ideas in game theory applied to the subject of his talk. That event has surely played a role in me appreciating the importance of starting a thought process with definitions, whether in my work or in general my life.

Definition of success has also been a vital indicator of aging to me. It is widely acknowledged, at least in my circles, that success in school is to top the class (and win competitions), success in college is to get a high paying job or a get seat in a grand place to do higher education and success in adult life is to have a career that ensures prosperity, fame and stability in life. With that definition of success I have tasted a bit of success in my life but not really much. Though reluctantly I did subscribe to that definition of success to an extent, I’ve had my disagreement for such a definition from my early childhood for various reasons. Having contemplated for the definition of success and I still do, I’ve also been indulged in another related thought that takes reasonable amount of space in my head. I wonder about the purpose of my existence, rather more apt questions are: is there a purpose for my life, should I define it or should I find it? Sometimes I think that I should come up with a “meaningful” purpose for my life and achieving that is the real success. Now, what is the definition of “meaningful”? – Something that makes me feel “truly happy”, So what is true happiness?… Well, what I’ve realized is that every time I define something fundamental I end up using an abstract idea or more fundamental thought that again has to be defined precisely – in a way it is an endless process.

In spite of it being an endless process to search for answers, I’ve convinced myself of an utility in going about this journey. While I’ve not been able to precisely define “success” or “true happiness” or “my life’s purpose” and many other things, in this process I’ve continuously been figuring out what is certainly NOT the definition for these things. I feel I’m slowly getting over things of lesser importance in my life while my mind is focusing on doing things that are driven by need. At thirty, I’m left with many fundamental questions in my mind to answer and my guess is that the questions only become tougher as I understand it better – I’d either have the courage to attempt in understanding it or I’ll ignore it – that perhaps time alone will tell.

Marriage

While I’m approaching thirty, I’ve started thinking that getting married is definitely not a bad idea. Though I’ve always made fun of marriage and of my married friends, I’ll not miss the crazy ride – as I’d like to call it. Since I completely missed (or may be messed) out on “finding a girl by myself” part, my parents and my relatives are doing the hard work now. I hope I don’t make it harder for them – see it’s not that easy to make a decision of such magnitude. I’m pretty sure you can understand, at least the married ones would know. As it is this arranged marriage works in an insane manner. To start with, they do match making based on the time and place of birth of the candidate who is suppose to get married – if you are born with some “issues” then you could potentially get screwed (read: rejects) and you may have to go for a big compromise, if you understand what I mean by that. It’s not just the birth ‘star’ matches and everything is done for you; you got to match the salaries, looks, status, life style, educational qualification, the families have to be compatible and several other things. I’d rather tell the young readers of this post to stop having that anomalous prejudice on their career shaping objectives, you have whole life to do that anyway; instead get a life – get a partner, If not hunt for one – look around, there are many success stories. You know what is stopping you, don’t you?

Well, let me get little serious about the topic, without denying that there is kernel of truth in the above paragraph, if selectively analyzed. The first question that should ideally come to a person’s mind before entering the marriage process is”why marriage? Why should he/she get married?” In fact when I agreed for the girl search, all my relatives were very glad and the very close ones felt relieved (Ref 1). Only one person in my family circle cared to ask me the question “why did I wish to get married?” though I must say such questions are not particularly encouraged, especially if the guy or girl is ready for an arranged marriage. At first I told him that getting married is an experience that I wouldn’t want to miss and then I went on to tell him that getting married means having a companion for life. After a short discussion about the topic he told me that my thoughts may not be good enough reason to get married and he asked me to go little deeper into the idea of getting married before actually stepping in.

Though I personally don’t think it is necessary to figure out the entire nuance associated to marriage before tying the knot, but as such doing some amount thinking wouldn’t harm. I did contemplate for quite some time and I did get some answers. I also went on to ask some of my close pals the same question:” why they got married? “And also asked them “what are their thoughts about getting married?” Some of these friends gave very enthusiastic responses. Although I know that these friends of mine are some kind of evangelist when it comes to marriage (at least to me it seems), but I still think those responses were genuine thoughts. Leaving the quite obvious reasons aside, if you know what I mean, I’ll share some quotes from their responses to the questions I raised in that email discussion:

“Something I realized when we were dating was that he made me want to be a better person than I was. Since he had different perspectives than mine, it was and is still a process of growth.”

“Wanting each other’s happiness; And most importantly, ability and desire to communicate freely and openly without any fear”

“I think it’s just different phases of life and one would probably miss out on more than one important phase by not getting married. Your experience of life will be incomplete Also I think all of these phases have their own age/time range in which they are more enjoyable so it’s good to start thinking about them when you think it’s the right time but also think when your loved ones tell you it’s the ‘right time’.”

“Kick off egos….I always had it, I never knew….”

“Talking all nonsense without the fear of getting misjudged…. A wife could always be your close friend…..”

“Be ready for anything new…..As you grow old together, you will always unfold new stuff…..This relationship will never be discovered completely… “

“Marriage also is an unsaid agreement to accept and complement each other in the journey of life… And setting expectations matter a lot… Some of that expectation setting is explicit but most of it implicit and gets formulated over a period of time… It’s like driving a car or playing a musical instrument… you first learn the rules and set to drive/play accordingly… as time goes you both keep getting better at it … that’s when you don’t need to remember the rules anymore and just enjoy the drive / music…”

Since some of these friends had a love-marriage and some arranged, one friend aptly pointed out this:

“Why marriage is a very different question in love and arranged marriages so you’ll get very different answers. In love marriage, it’s the last question and in arranged marriage it’s the first question”

These thoughts have made this post of mine worth reading and I’m glad that the discussion we had is not lost in that long mail chain. I must say that these friends have recently married and I can see the freshness in their approach towards marriage. I hope they stay happy, as loving couples, for a long long time.

Having said the good part let me come to the flip side of being in a marriage. While marriage is empowering my friends to become better people, I’ve also come across failed marriages or painful marriages. Another friend of mine quoted a famous diplomatic saying on marriage as ” It is that Laddo ( sweet), one who eats it will be disenchanted and the one who doesn’t eat will also feel disenchanted”. I remember to have seen an outburst of a friend when she expressed the fact that her husband and her in-laws doesn’t give her enough freedom and is highly non-cooperative when it is about her career related things. Another friend says that after getting married he has not been able to do things that he always wanted to do as the responsibility of running a family is taking all the time and he also mentioned that his wife’s needs are pretty endless, though he said that with a bit of unusual reluctance . He also warned me by saying that the choice I make would eventually change the way I’d deal with life – I did tell him that I’ll be very conscious when I make such decisions in life.

What is the most alarming thing about this generation is that the divorce rate is rapidly increasing and I can see the trend is picking up just like the way it did in the west a few decades back. My parents’ generation was lot less ambitious than what I think I’m in. I also see that they lived a much simpler life than what a person coming from average middle class family lives now. The idea of getting the best deal from life wasn’t in the minds of the previous generation as it is today – they lived a life with contentment. Back then arranged marriage was a norm and love marriage was a taboo. I love the sense of liberty in this generation, which is to do whatever the hell that we desire – you can be really ambitious and dream to achieve anything that you have in your mind, however I also see a lot of side effects that is erupting out in the form of unsuccessful relationships and failed marriages. We more often subscribe for individualistic based ideology, which is driven by an individual’s priorities over the traditional conservative mentality where ‘family first’ approach is prevalent, which perhaps our fathers and forefather used to subscribe. As such the smarter ones always knew to strike a balance between the two schools of thought.

Coming back to the topic, what are the causes for the disenchantment in marriages? I’ve already mentioned a couple of examples but you know, it’s harder to get true data for this compared to the happy stories of marriage. Some of my elders say that “ego problem” is the top contender for a failed marriage; while others say it could be mismatch of “maturity in thinking”. Some of my friends who got married a few years back say that people have imaginary expectations from a marriage and they find it very hard to digest the reality when they are actually in a marriage – some get used to it and some revolt; while there are some who sincerely work on the marriage and make it a success in spite of all the terrible imperfections in their spouse. In my opinion, marriage is just like any other relationship but we tend to become a lot greedier since it is a lifelong commitment. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’ve come across people having major problems in marriages and relationship in general, for that matter even I’ve had (not a marriage ofcourse). I’ve seen some of them blaming the idea of relationship itself at times. What I’ve realized is that relationship is a reflection of oneself. I mean, one gets treated somewhat similar to what he or she treats the other person in a relationship. I also know many successful relationships in my friends’ circles and my family circles, and one thing that is certainly common in all of these is “mutual respect”. I guess disrespectful people with double standards are more vulnerable to relationship crises, whether it is a marriage, a friendship or even a professional relationship.

I’m pretty confident that these thoughts that I’ve are good enough to approach the process but I never mentioned a thing about luck associated to marriage. Well, wish me luck. 😉

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(1) A blog post called “About getting married” that I wrote some time back when I was not ready to get married: http://isiganesh.blogspot.in/2012/10/about-getting-married.html

An unsolicited career advice…

28-02-2013

Bangalore

Dear friends,

I’m writing this open letter to communicate some thoughts that came to my mind during my recent visit to Delhi. I’ve always felt that travelling has played a significant role in refining my thinking and communicating my thoughts with you has helped me broaden my perspective further. This letter is one such effort. Like always, I hope you share your thoughts on this as well.

Last week I  had been to Delhi to speak at a conference organized as part of three day expo by a major electronics magazine. I was suppose to speak on two consecutive days on two different topics. The first one was about “Low Power Electronics design” to a gathering of design engineers in electronics field and the second one was to a gathering of engineering students and teachers (basically academia). I was certainly glad to speak at the event for many reasons. My pursuit to electronics started way back in 90’s when I was a teenager . My father had got me an electronics kit to play around during my school days and later I took electronics as an optional subject in 11th and 12th. I indulged my self in electronics more seriously when I did my engineering and in fact I had subscribed for the same magazine during that time. My father was more glad because he had been reading that magazine since 1969. I was also felt honored as one of the speaker was a visiting faculty at IISc when I was a student there. Anyway I’ve bragged enough about myself, let me address the intent of my post in next few paragraphs.

Before my talk on the second day, there was a panel discussion addressing students interest in electronics. The discussion lead to career guidance and stuff. I was more of a passive participant just stuck to my seat as an audience and when I was called on to address the gathering after the panel discussion, I did mention various career avenues in energy sector as it was expected of me to enlighten them though my presentation. I guess I did my job fairly well. I said good bye to the expo and also thanked the organizers for giving me an opportunity to speak. Meanwhile my friend Somesh, who had come with me to Delhi, was waiting  for me to finish my talk so that we could see places in Delhi. We had also got a car from an other friend in Delhi to roam around but it so happened that we didn’t actually use it much to see places in Delhi but instead we used the public rail transport called as “Metro” to see most of the places in Delhi. Metro had connectivity to most places in Delhi and we figured that it was easily the preferred mode of transport for all classes of society. The cost was very reasonable for the kind of service a passenger could get, that too in a place like Delhi. We never waited for more than five minutes in any terminal to catch a metro train. We also figured that the New Delhi Railway Station, the New Delhi Airport and Bus stand were also connected to the Metro network which in a way bridged all form of transportation. There are metro links to outskirts of Delhi which is called by the name National Capital Region – they are the major economic zones for Industries in North India. In short metro is the back bone of Delhi transport system. Somesh and me were blown by the level of design put in Delhi metro while my mind was faintly pre-occupied with what had happened in the panel discussion. When I came back to Bangalore I read more about Delhi metro and I knew what would be my career advice if I ever have to give some one.

Delhi metro construction started in the year 1995 under the leadership of an experienced railway engineer by name E Sreedharan. The Delhi Metro construction was completed ahead of time and Sreedharan served as the Managing Director for 16 years before he retired at the age of 80. On further research on him I came to know that he played a major role in Culcutta metro and also headed the Konkan railway project. He served Indian railways for 56 consecutive years. I also happen to read an article which gave greater depth about his contribution to the railways (1).  This story of E Sreedharan reminded me of a quote from a novel I had read recently which says  “This isn’t just an epigram – life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.” I’ve come across many intelligent people who have had the creative energy to do anything under the sun but I have also seen them not pursuing on one particular field for a reasonably long time. I see that they have very short span of interest towards one field and get disenchanted and jump to something new, which they will eventually get disinterested. Especially people who graduate as engineers don’t pursue engineering for various reasons and people who take up engineering jobs end up getting into management roles or not so engineering roles in very less time. Sreedharan wasn’t educated more than engineering and his job didn’t require any further qualification. Present day role models are mostly Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and not many would know about Sreedharan. I’m not saying Steve or Bill aren’t great people to look up after, in fact they are the pioneers of modern computing which has pretty much revolutionized the way we live but students thoughts are driven by the affluence that they got after making break through in computers. From the kind of questions that were asked in the panel discussion I could figure out that present generation engineers are more interested in doing a high tech jobs or become entrepreneurs with out any kind sense towards problem statement in mind. Many don’t see a point in seeing the difference between the first world countries problems and third world countries problems.

I’d like to elaborate on time aspect in career. I happen to attend a convocation function at IISc as some of my close friends were graduating that year . The degrees were handed over to the students by Prof. V.Ramanarayanan who has more than thirty years of research experience in Power Electronics. In his commencement speech he talked about a sanskrit verse on learning , it roughly translates as “you learn one fourth from your teachers, one fourth from your own efforts, one fourth from your peers, one fourth with the passage of time.” He gave a lot of impetus on the last one fourth which is the learning that happens with time. I could connect those words of his at different level over the years and I feel current graduates should give due importance to time in shaping their career. In some discussion a friend mentioned that if pursuit for affluence wasn’t a current day phenomena, people would have valued the importance of patience. I see many of my friends talking about increment, bonus and career prospect mostly in terms financially not really keen on how their work is solving the problems world is facing. I also feel sad that the more evolved ones aren’t thinking in that direction but they are more interested in working on ultracool technology which will not address the issues that their countrymen are facing but merely interested advancement in technology.  The need is forgotten, instead sophistication, comfort and better life style has replaced it.  I really don’t see a point in an intelligent engineer working on technology that can enable voice commands to operate a television when he has got the education to work on technologies that can help millions of people get better drinking water, especially if he comes from a country like India where you face more of third world problems.  Again Sreedharan’s work can be taken as an inspiration. His work has been an enabler for people in doing their work more efficiently, it was at the infrastructure level. May be I sound like a cynic who is against the advancement of technology, but my interest here is to encourage engineers to become proactive on bridging their skills and capability that could cater to the fundamental needs of their country men.

Works of Sreedharan has greatly inspired me to an extent that I’d not divert my attention from working on energy systems problems (mostly in India) at my capacity for at least next 10- 15 years. While I see that many things that may come my way could be intellectually tempting and lucrative as well, however I’m convinced that a career which is driven by focus for a reasonably long time  is lot more successful than otherwise.

cheers,

Ganesh

(1) Dr. E Sreedharan – The Bharat Ratna no one talks about:  http://kaipullai.com/2012/02/24/dr-elattuvalapil-sreedharan-the-bharat-ratna-no-one-talks-about/

Love = respect?

Over the years I’ve experienced, I’ve heard from people and also I’ve witnessed many forms of love. This post, as the title indicates, is about love, however its an instance of love I recently came across while I was exploring some videos in youtube. The video is from Oscar awards ceremony. If you wish to read the whole post then I suggest you see the below video link before you proceed ahead.

If you do follow american movies then you would know most of the people in the video. If you are even little sensitive then you would have observed their reaction. Well, they all are actors or people from film Industry so it may not be genuine expressions you would say – may be yes may be no. I’d like to believe that they were truly happy to see Martin Scorsese with the Oscar for best director. This man who graduated as a film major from NYU in the year 1964 and then on pursued a career relentlessly to achieve what many would call extraordinary, asks in all humility  “could you double check the envelope?” when he receives the award. What could you possibly think of this man – he has a great sense of humor? For your information, his movies were nominated for Oscars for more than five times, starting from 1981. 

In his speech he says “Thank you” perhaps millions of times, you will know why he says that perhaps when he says these lines “I just want to say, too, that so many people over the years have been wishing this for me, strangers, you know. I go walking in the street people say something to me, I go in a doctor’s office, I go in a…whatever…elevators, people are saying, “You should win one, you should win one.” I go for an x-ray, “You should win one.” And I’m saying,”Thank you.” An then friends of mine over the years and friends who are here tonight are wishing this for me and my family. I thank you. This is for you.”

I don’t think Martin Scorsese would have ever made movies to win Oscar or to win any other award for that matter – pursuing a creative career by itself an adventure of different class and doing it for more than forty years would make it even something and at this level of excellence? But you can see how glad he was when he got the award, how glad his colleagues were when he got it, how glad the whole crowd was, how some one like me, who had never seen Martin Scorsese (but seen only his movies), felt so good when he got the award – Well, why did I become so happy to see Martin Scorsese win an Oscar?

College Dreams #1

On the eve of my 27th birthday I sent a mail with the subject line as “College Dreams” to some of my close friends saying that I’d be leaving my job in GE to start a company of my own. They were little amazed to hear that as I used to have super awesome fun there. In the mail I told them that starting a company of my own was my dream during my college days hence I aspired to give it a shot. I did quit my job in next one month or so and came to Bangalore. I did exchange quite many mails with this set of friends on starting a company and my game plan for the same. Here is one such mail I sent on 10th August 2010 ( more than two years back) :

Hello people,

I am back with one more lengthy mail, only this time I shall also talk on how my venture in solar engineering could be of mutual benefit. So do read the complete mail.

After quiting my job and coming back to Bangalore I have been thinking about the two important aspects of starting this business. One being domain knowledge and other capital to launch & sustain. This mail is precisely about those two aspects.

I have decided to take up a field engineering job for next few months (3 to 6 months). The job I am looking for should involve setting up solar photo-voltaic (PV) panels based electricity generators. I am ready to work in any geographical location. I have already contacted few people regarding this and I could see a good chance of getting a job some where in western ghats. However, I am attaching my resume along with this mail, so do forward it to those who can get me a field engineer job in a solar (PV) company. Working as a field engineer I would gain hands on experience in a EPC (Engineering Procurement and Construction) business. I would learn to do hand calculations, budgeting, handle practical issues while installation, troubleshooting, maintenances issues and hell lot of other things which I cant imagine right now. I am hoping this job will ensure that I wouldn’t miss out on having some domain knowledge before starting of on my own.

Let me take a short digression from my story. Now that that many of you have started earning, I am guessing that you would have also thought of various ways of investing it as well. Investing on land and gold are two fairly secure investment, while investing in stock market and chit funds involve greater risk. Investing your money on a business is less common amongst us. I say that is one area you guys should give some thought. Solar based business is one such business area where you could bet your money for the following reasons:-
“Firstly, India is a sun-rich country. Secondly, our government has recently announced the jawaharlal nehru national solar mission to cater to the future energy needs of our country. The aim of this program is that India should be able to generate 20,000MW power thorough solar energy by 2022 (presently it’s less than 40MW). This ambitious plan aims to expand solar power generation from current level of less then 5MW per year to 1000MW a year by 2013. To reach this goal, the cabinet has sanctioned Rs. 43,370 million the initial activities in this regard.”

Coming back to my story, I am very passionate about the whole idea of generating electricity thorough solar photo-voltaic panels. I am all set to start my business by start of next year (after I gain enough competency through a field engineering job) . I would be looking for seed funders (rather initial inverters). You could be one of those people. By investing on my business you would become an ‘Associate’ (only recipient of this mail can become an ‘Associate’). By being an associate you would get fair benefit of the profit earned by the business. If an Associate is willing to participate in the business activity in terms of legal, technology, sales or marketing, then he/she could be promoted as an ‘Adviser’. An ‘Adviser’ will have access to the business related information. An ‘Adviser’ wouldn’t be working in the setup (will probably be having a day job). An ‘Adviser’ would be graduated as ‘Partner’ based on his/her involvement with the business and his/her protectiveness. I am no MBA and this might sound very far fetched but this is what I could think of in order to make my dreams a reality.

So guys do understand solar business better by searching in the web and also think of investing in the same, I would say spend on me – you have nothing to lose.

cheers,
Ganesh

Well, I did get a job in a rural electrification company called Selco Solar – all thanks to a friend of mine who connected me to an apt person. My job was in a small town called Ujire (350kms from Bangalore) . I even sent the same set of friends a mail in the same chain after joining there (1). I did get a great experience there on solar and rural development work. I came back to Bangalore in pursuit of starting my company but I didn’t want to rush so I started off by doing some experiments on solar on the roof top of my home. I also took up a  part time job in teaching computer science to apprentice folks. Since I knew that I wouldn’t have much time for myself once I get into business I decided to do some cycling expeditions. I even did a cycling expedition to Goa from Bangalore (2) with a friend of mine. After all the good break I finally got my company registered as FluxGen Engineering Technologies Pvt. Ltd. – all thanks to a friend of mine for suggesting a very engineering name for the company. The company got incorporated as private limited in Ministry of Corporate Affairs some time during September 2011.

When I started this company one of my very close friend, Hari also agreed to join hands in taking this forward. We started of with some simple projects related to solar and energy measurement. I started the company with my savings from GE and also couple of friends loaned me some amount. I requested two of my close uncles who are practicing engineers and also entrepreneurs to become the directors of my company, which they kindly agreed and kept supporting.  We also got connected to  National Instruments (NI) from a class met of mine from my engineering college. It so happened that NI liked our interest in renewable energy domain and hence funded us with their hardware and software. We did some in-house projects in our lab using those hardware and software for couple of months. This project attracted attention of a professor in IISc and she asked us to build a solar energy system with monitoring. That’s how we got our first project.

Things have been fantastic ever since we got our first project. The good quality work we did helped us to get more and more projects. I even got an opportunity go to the US to talk (3) about our work and Hari won an award in a design contest (4). In last few months Hari and I got opportunities to talk about about our work in various conferences and institutions. I was even part of NI’s video to promote there initiative for developing countries (5). With this development we could even hire two fresh engineering graduates as interns. Now we have absorbed them as employees in the company and we are looking forward to have more engineers in the company.

Today I posted the following update in a social media site ” I’ll be selling 10% of my personal stake in the company so that I can invest on a few ambitious products that I have in my mind. I would rather go for people who know me at personal or philosophical level than a VC or an angle investor. In a way I want to share my dream not just the money that I’d make in the future. If you were my classmate, my colleague, my team member in some sport, an adherent follower of my blogs, my student when I did painting classes or engineering lab tuition, a member in organizing committee of a college or corporate fest that I was also part of, member in street play or drama or dance, or indulged in some adventuresome activity with me then you can consider buying some shares in my venture.”

I’m very glad that so many of my friends from school, college, post-graduation and my previous jobs responded very positively to it in no time and showed great interest in helping us out to take this venture further ahead.  Well, I can only be thankful to them and like in the past I’d say confidently “spend on me – you have nothing to lose”. 🙂

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(1) My post after going to Ujire for a solar job:  http://isiganesh.blogspot.in/2010/11/new-job.html

(2) Post on Bangalore to Goa by Cycle:  http://isiganesh.blogspot.in/2011/06/goa-here-we-come.html

(3) My Speech at Austin: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=460044117350543&set=vb.460014574020164&type=3

(4) GSD Award pictures: https://picasaweb.google.com/106423175487235708924/GSDAwardsNIDays

(5) Planet NI Video in the right side: http://www.ni.com/company/corporate-responsibility/planetni/

Sachin Retire!!??

“It’s time we stop blindly hero-worshiping Sachin and demanded his retirement for the sake of Team India.”

The above statement is the content of a community in a social media site. The community name is “Sachin Retire”.  I came to know about the community as some of my friends have subscribed to it and a friend even endorsed it. My initial glance of the page made me feel that  it is more of a fun community, rather just for the sake of sarcastic humor. Well, I was wrong. My closer observation regarding the subject in general media and in social media has made me realize that there has been a lot of talk about the cricketer, that is Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement. This post is my personal account on how I see it.

Firstly, I really don’t know if someone like me who just watches cricket matches for entertainment have any credentials to comment about a player’s retirement. If the talk is about ‘retirement’ I’m not sure if any individual has a say about other individual’s retirement. Well, in sports I always thought there is no such thing as time bound retirement but it is more of a voluntary act. If it is voluntary retirement, then why are we even talking about Sachin’s retirement, if he wants he will. Is it not a personal choice?

Secondly,I see this whole Sachin’s retirement thing is some kind of a fallacy. It is termed as ” Ad hominem” fallacy, which means “appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect”. Here is why I think so: If a player is performing badly in successive matches, is retirement the only option? is dropping a player from the match or series not come to mind. I remember Mark Tailor, when he was the captain of the Australian team, dropped him self from a match and asked his deputy to lead the team. If Sachin is performing badly in a successive occasions then he should be treated like any other player and dropped. As per team management goes, the captain has got the fair bit of power to select the players for a match. I see that Indian Captain has never dropped Sachin in any match. The selectors haven’t either done it. Now, see it from the Sachin’s point of view. The guy clearly doesn’t want to retire voluntarily as he still feel he can play good sport. But the statistics says he is consistently performing badly as far as batting goes. I don’t have stats about his contribution to the team other wise. So now whom should we blame? The captain or the selectors or Sachin for not insisting the captain and the selectors to drop him.

My final point is about why would the selectors/captain need or don’t need Sachin in the Indian Team. Like Sachin, the current Indian team members haven’t either played any better cricket. Even after his poor performance  Sachin is worshiped in India as God, perhaps for his past accomplishment. Recently it so happened that Indian team suffered the retirement of two experienced players. Now the team is as such with less experienced players. What is the advantage of experienced players in the side is some thing only team members who need it would know. With this background, It would really require a very promising player for the selectors or the Indian captain to replace Sachin. It is the risk that has to be taken at some point of time as Sachin himself may not want to play the game for long. So the question is does selectors have some one in mind?  If they have, is it wise to axe Sachin and get a new player on board or try new players simultaneously while Sachin is in the team. This situation reminds me of another legend in Indian cricket team, Anil Kumble. Kumble retired from the game when he wasn’t getting much wickets and also when he saw some hope in young cricketers who could possibly take his responsibility. Kumble would also know and the selectors would also knows that no one has yet filled that spot (he retired four years back). Now coming back to Sachin’s case, will dropping him and getting new players change the situation drastically? Is the team losing only because of Sachin’s poor show. The primary objective of the selectors is to make a winning team. I guess the selectors have to work on much bigger problems in the team than thinking about Sachin’s future.

Though this part of the post doesn’t count, still I like to say: I have played hard ball cricket maximum at inter school level. I remember to have been belted with several sixers by some players who were also part of Karnataka team in under 16 category at that time. I also remember getting some wickets. I remember the pressure involved in performing at the best of my capabilities to be competitive. I always wondered what is it like playing at national level and at international level. I couldn’t actually imagine it.

 

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going by instinct…

Couple of months back I had been to Jamshedpur to attend a wedding. It was a special wedding as both bride and groom are my close friends. I had promised the couple that I would dance at their wedding (I mean for the Sangeeth). I was of the impression that I would just be a side dancer where as the bride’s cousins had other plans for me. I was suppose to dance with six very pretty girls. If you ask me, this could have easily fitted into my fantasies some years back – but yeah these were my friends cousins so I wasn’t even suppose to think in that way, lets not get there – I cant be too honest here.

When the dance practice began, I started of by observing the steps by my group members. They were reasonably in flow. I was no way going to match with their flow. I wasn’t confident when I saw their performance. Initially I was hoping that they were less dexterous but man, they were good. When it started off I looked too out of sync with them. Seeing the way things were going I told one the girls, the one who was coordinating  the events, to look out for some one else for which she told me that I was doing fine – I’m sure that kind lady was lying.   Later I requested her to reduce my bit as much as possible  for which she obliged by making my thing at the end of the dance. Since there was no way out I decided to give a sincere shot with  all the concentration.  In fact I was able to perform lot better by just mechanically copying their steps but it lacked genuineness – I wasn’t me. At that time I asked Prachi (one of the group members) how could I make it better. She told me that I was doing fine, after some time she told me that I could perhaps just try steps that comes naturally to me. She went on to help me understand the context of the song, situation behind the score and the possible symbolic expressions that could be communicated to the audience during my time on the stage.  Well, after which I had little to worry, here is the dance video, please do watch it…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4CsUzMPNSw

… and thanks Prachi!

Work…

For past few days I have put my Google chat (a text messaging utility over internet) tag line as “I’d rather quit when my work is not my philosophical expression in action…” This post is about my personal thoughts on it and also the responses that I got over the chat though I never expected it to come.

While I was coming back from a customer location with my colleague, he told me “Ganesh, I love my job – I am happy doing it”. He also mentioned that the work we do kind of fits into his philosophy.  I felt nice. I told him that I feel the same about my work. I kept thinking about it until I got a call from another friend of mine with whom I did my engineering education. He had called to invite me for lunch at his place this Sunday. Before hanging up on the call he told me about the way he feels about his job. He felt that it was more like a rat race that he has got into, though it gives him enough money for a comfortable living.  I didn’t know what to say, a few minutes later I ended up putting the tag line that I mentioned in the first paragraph of this post.

A friend of mine who read that tag line pinged me to say “Hope it was as simple as writing a custom message”,  another friend asked “can I share it on Facebook?” and this friend from my masters pinged to say “I quit my previous job for the exact same reason”. There were couple more who mailed me to say that they left their jobs to do what they thought was more meaningful and perhaps what they felt as apt thing to do. To elaborate on another instance, which in some way fits the context, there is a close pal of mine who currently works for a company which develops software systems pertaining to “the compliance in work environment”. After working there for a year or little less, has resigned from his post and he tells me that  “I am not able to connect with the product they sell”.  He’ll be joining an other company where he’ll write software for the database systems for ” life saving drugs”.

When I look back at my career, I’ve worked in businesses which involved engineering in domains such as automobile, health care, aviation systems, energy systems and rural development. In a span of 7 year (getting out of college as reference) I have had brief exposure to the mentioned domains at various levels. Of all the domains that I’ve worked, I felt very connected to products of aviation systems. I was always fascinated about flying and developing engineering systems for such stuff was something I was very excited. Though I didn’t get to work on all the things that I wanted to because of business related issue I still have that urge to learn about the science and technology of flying. Having said that I didn’t find myself working in that domain for long. I felt aviation engineering was state-of-the-art in terms of its technology and management. I found lacuna in many other domains that I came across, the first that caught my attention was energy engineering – as I had worked in the energy business unit for the same company for a duration of six months. The fact that I could see many open ended problems in energy systems attracted me. I quit my job in that company to later start a small outfit of my own in energy business – let’s see how long I can do this.

If you ask me “wasn’t working in aviation systems my philosophical expression in action?” I wouldn’t know what to say. Let me elaborate on this, on a daily basis we directly or indirectly extract work from people across the globe for which we compensate by means of money or in some other way. Like for example, If I have to go to a location X in Bangalore I would take an auto or a bus or may be a cycle. Lets say I take an auto for which I pay the driver 50rupees. The auto runs on Liquid petroleum gas – the auto driver spends 30rupees for it – the Liquid petroleum gas is manufactured by a company which would have people working in refineries who get salaries because there are consumers of petrol. If I go more meticulous, I can pretty much connect how a baseball player in the US gets his salary because of some one in china who manufactures a wrist watch. The point that I am trying to make here is that everyone’s work count, not just some doctor saving his patient’s life.

We get compensation from the direct beneficiary of the work we do. We have fair liberty in choosing those beneficiaries. If the beneficiary of our work is not helping us do our work according to our feel for doing things then what action should we take?

The other side of the story is here. I’ve always wondered about how people crave for security. I’m sometimes confused if they really crave for security or it is some thing else. I’ve met people who tell me that they left their previous job because their present job pays more – more money means more things could be bought – whats the point of life with out luxury. I’ve met people who work really hard to get promotions – promotion means more respect in the office or perhaps more pay. I’ve also met people who work hard so that they feel nice .  The fact that I am judging people here in a bad way or a good way is one thing, which many of you may find as reproachful, while the other thing is that why should a man/woman do his/her work ? Seriously, why do you do your work?