Reflections

Another translation. This one is the song "Achamillai Achamillai" by Subramanya Bharathy We have no fear, We have no fear We know not of that thing called fear We might be against the whole world We might be cast like dust and dismissed We might be made to beg for food We might be losing everything we cherish but We have no fear, We have no fear We know not of that thing called fear The heavens above might crash The heavens above might crash and Crush us in all their fury but We would still have no fear We have no fear, We have no fear We know not of that thing called fear!

I am sure you must have seen the movie or read about “ The Titanic ”. Did you notice the role of the music band in the titanic towards the end of the movie? I lead a big Programme as part of my work. A programme consisting of multiple components but all working towards a common goal (atleast they are supposed to). Quite often I find my teams totally lost in day to day delivery pressures and myself struggling to bring them out of that. There is absolute chaos all over the place. The major problem I face is that there is not enough collaboration between teams as required, people left to themselves are happy operating in individual silos and view the other teams as competitors. My major worry is that people are not ready to look at the bigger picture, pressurised by and used to traditional working models and are finally not focused on the value delivered collectively. I am not blaming my team. I understand what they are going through and I myself am struggling to find out of ways of gett...

I have found that I am at my creative best on Saturdays and Sundays. Now don’t ask me how creative I am. That is definitely a debatable topic and we can take that up sometime later. That is why I chose my words carefully. I have observed over the past year or so that I get most of my new ideas during the weekends. I am talking about ideas related to my work. I take necessary action through emails immediately but I get lost in mundane affairs (thanks to official pressures) during the week and by the time I am reminded of my ideas I find myself in the next weekend again. Maybe it’s the relaxed and informal environment at home which helps unleash my creativity. I really feel that I do a lot more productive work from home over the weekends even if I spend a few hours compared to what I do in office in a whole week. All enterprises today talk a lot about innovation and drive their employees to innovate but based on my experience I have never seen anything materialize. Is talking about innov...

Hutch is now Vodafone! I am not sure if you have seen the ad. What a wonderful depiction of change! This is an ad that has been picturised beautifully. The first ad that I remember announcing a change in name is that of Binaca becoming Cibaca. Most of you might not even know about Cibaca. I am not sure if the company or the toothpaste it used to sell exists today. It was a simple ad announcing a change in name but I still remember listening to it over a small Philips radio and seeing it in a black and white TV nearly two decades ago (as a small boy!). The ad did make an impact those days and there were many jokes and discussions around that. We live in a technologically advanced age now and the Vodafone ad is definitely on a different plane. In short the new Vodafone ad is about a dog leaving its kennel briefly and coming back to see a new Kennel totally different in design and color, struggling to get in terms with the reality in front of it. I don’t know how they made the dog act so ...

“I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere” said Jawaharlal Nehru . I find myself in a similar situation, atleast partly. Thanks to the Western culture that has crept in majorly into our country, a lot of questions arise in the name of scientific thinking! Nehru felt out of place 60 years back because he was ahead of time but today I think this is common and atleast I don’t feel out of place now. My daughter participated in a Bhagavad Gita recital competition recently and this turned my attention towards the Bhagavad Gita. The most important thing is that she won a prize and it was a pleasure watching the gleam in her eyes when she shared this news with me. Coming back to the Bhagavad gita, after some struggle going through some translations on the net, I finally managed to come across a simple translation in Tamil by Subramanya Bharathi . I really wonder why translations of great works are so complicated, whether it is the Gita or...