A leader inspires a generation

Last Saturday I attended an entrepreneur’s meet called “The Start up Buzz” at the Katriya hotel in Hyderabad. The closing ceremony was attended by Dr Jaya Prakash Narayan (JP), MLA and president of Lok Satta party.

A little back into the past, in 2006, I had heard about speeches made by him every Sunday evening in kukatpally and I had thought of attending the speeches. But due to my laziness, I never attended any of the speeches. Then I learned that he is a retired IAS officer with vast experience and knowledge. People were debating whether he should join congress or TDP.

Some time nearing elections, I heard from a collegue about Lok Satta party and I thought of visiting their web site. I downloaded their election manifesto titled “A silent Revolution”. Since it was a long document I thought of skimming through the election manifesto. The first thought that occurred to me was that these guys were talking about Utopia. But the headings kept me interested and I dug into details. I was amazed at things written in it, that some of them kept my jaws wide open. It almost had everything that is required to run a government. It was like one of the most idealistic answers to the essay question that we wrote in school “If I were the Prime Minister”. What is more, it almost gave a kind of financial details to run such a government, that too, to the finest details such as teacher’s salaries. No common man could prepare such a manifesto. It requires the touch of a genius to develop something of this sort and I knew that was JP.

For comparison sake, I downloaded the manifesto of CPI (M), a party known to house intellectuals. I found that most of the document was criticizing Dr Manmohan Singh and much of it was thrash. After all, that is the best they could do justice to the C money. Anyway forget that.

That evening, I browsed through YouTube to find some of JP’s speeches. In every speech I listened to, I learned something new. They were educational, inspirational, motivational and what not. I wondered how much he might have studied to acquire such knowledge. Every speech was not just an exhibition of his knowledge, but was a motivation to the listeners. Very rarely did I hear about Lok Satta. And most importantly, what ever he spoke made sense to me. After about four hours of streaming, at around 2 am in the morning, I became a fan of JP and Lok Satta.

I somehow couldn’t get a voter ID card this time, so I didn’t vote for Lok Satta this time. But on Election Day, my dad asked me to whom would I want to vote for. I said Lok satta. He said Lok… what? Now, he doesn’t belong to Hyderabad anymore and is quite unware of the happenings here. I said “Lok Satta founded by Jaya Prakash Narayan”. Then he asked me who he was. I said “he is a retired IAS officer and…” He interrupted me saying he knew him and was just checking. 20 years back he sat in a full day session with JP and he believes that ever since then he hasn’t met an intellectual like JP. To my surprise, my dad remembers everything that JP told in that session. I wondered if I could ever remember any such session even after 20 years.

Not anymore, as on last Saturday, I listened to JP talking to a bunch of entrepreneurs who had come to exhibit their start ups. He didn’t carry a paper neither do I believe he was prepared. He started in Telugu, spoke about two lines and switched to English, spoke with the same fluency. A good speech must be fluent, must have appropriate words, must be well organized and most importantly must make sense, his speech had all. Many of them attending were from other states, so they might have thought him as any other MLA. So there was a bit of noise in the hall. After about 10 minutes there was pin drop silence, everybody listening to him as if he was telling some thing like “Become a millionaire in one day”. His advice to the new entrepreneurs was more than how to start a company or to run it; it was more than about the qualities required for entrepreneurs or the role of entrepreneurs in the society; it was more than about wealth creation or job creation, yet it had all of them. It was a vision that he proposed well presented in four points.

I didn’t know how time went by, 30 minutes. That speech really was inspiring, inspiring us to do something big. He brought in different perspectives about India being a global superpower to preparing for an environmental change. And the speech was concluded with a huge round of applause that went on for a little more than what was normal. While JP was distributing prizes, I recollected my dad’s words “Everybody that day THOUGHT”.

Nikhil, who was sitting beside me wanted to touch his feet. Then we agreed upon shake hand. At first I was reluctant worrying about security and all. But then as I saw the crowd taking photographs and autographs, I changed my mind. I jumped on to my feet, pushed aside the crowd and waited for my turn. I noticed that every pair of eyes had a genuine respect for him. This sort of a following was not because of any stardom, nor was it because his father or grand father was great. It was his intellect and the way he educated crowds that the crowd respects him for. I thought “he is a real leader of our times”.

Then I met him, held his hand and said "Sir, You have always inspired me and many like me”. He politely responded “Thank you”.

What white shirts taught Kishoreji and me…

Below are some of the excerpts from the book “It happened in India” by Kishore Biyani:

A couple of years back a team at Big bazzar came up with an idea of buying white shirts at low, stacking them high and selling them cheap. This is the underlying principle of any hypermarket. The premise to the idea of white shirts was that every person in India owned a white shirt in his wardrobe. So, if they could sell it cheap, they would make handsome profits. So they purchased a huge stock of one lakh white shirts and priced them at Rs 149 each. But the customer response didn’t seem to be keen enough. Reason: White shirts although are cheap, they are costly to maintain. And the intended customers to whom this price is meant for are those who travel by bus, train and will have to bear dust and pollution. And those of whom who can afford for maintaining a white shirt are those who are willing to pay Rs 500 or Rs 1000 per shirt. So when the manager on floor realized this he brought the selling price further down to Rs 129 (Rs 105 being the cost price). But this strategy too didn’t help. When this issue came up to Kishoreji, he said that his manager though has put in good effort hasn’t tried enough. Kishoreji simply asked “Have you tried it to sell at Rs 49!?” The essence is that when we have done a mistake, accept it and try to get out of it quickly. Never put bad money after good money.

The above statement is somewhat similar to what my friend surender told me when I had expressed my interest over trading. He said “Never get obsessed with any particular share. If a share isn’t fetching you money, forget it, you may lose some money, but you can probably avoid a debacle.” No matter how much research you have put in buying those shares, no matter how much time and effort you have put in, no matter how much sentimental you are about that share, at the end of the day what matters is whether that share is fetching you money or not. If it is not fetching you money, dump it, Kill it! And forget it. Things like shares depend on n number of variables or parameters. And the failure of the share is not that one hasn’t put effort, it is just because, of these n variables, m variables didn’t perform well.

I believe that the same principle follows for life in case of any sort of investment (not just money). Generally people are obsessed with those things in which they put in a lot of time and effort. Even if we know that things aren’t going well, we tend to think “Let me give it one more chance”. The reason is “how can we let go things when we have put it so much effort in it”, “common let me try a little more”. I believe that it is OK to think this way, But when things are not in our hands, it is foolishness to be obsessed with them. When other parameters as mentioned or other people for that matter are not willing to make things work, it isn’t our fault! If things aren’t working fine and we know that they won’t, its better we leave them aside and concentrate on those that would fetch us more.
The best part of these bad investments is that they teach you some good lessons in life. Take the lessons, forget those bad things and move on with your life!

Can perfection be matched to ‘meeting deadlines’?

Today was a day packed with learning and realising. Today in office, we had to listen to all the criticisms made on us for not meeting the deadline or as our PM mentioned “miserably missing the deadline”. The question in the afternoon’s meeting was “why wasn’t our part completed in the given time frame?” There were criticisms made on everybody and I was last to be left out. Although there were so many things I could learn from our seniors, it also brought out some intriguing questions in me.

First of those questions is that What is expected on a deadline? It is easy for anyone working in a software firm to understand that a job when it is submitted for the first time is not without any errors or bugs as we call them. It is after rigorous testing and rework, the system becomes stable. From the very little experience I have, I can state that this is true not only in the case of software but also in the case of any field. So probably on the first built (job completion), the job is expected to have some errors.

Second of these questions is that Is finishing a job more important than doing it with satisfaction? Well I would say that satisfaction should come first.

Third question is why wasn’t I able to complete my job? Well a lot of reasons follow. First, I had tough time with my priorities during the initial stages of our project because of my GMAT. Then I had troubles with my piece of mind continuously being disturbed by an estranged relationship of mine. The above two being personal ideally should not have affected my work. I tried not to. I worked late nights, came early in the mornings, came during weekends, but still things didn’t work. Probably, one mistake I made was not having a firm deadline in my mind and working towards it.

Some of my earlier experience had taught me that it is not deadline but it is the perfection that matters. Probably it is these experiences that taught me that I should not deliver anything without ensuring the quality myself. Ensuring quality myself means the satisfaction of a finished job. The problem that happened was that I could not let the job go off my hands when I knew that there were some things in the job to be fixed. Had I been under the impression that “of course, these things could be fixed sometime latter also”, probably I could have met the deadlines. This is what brings me to the whole point of writing this blog late in the night. Can perfection be matched to meeting deadlines?

The answer is YES. And those who do are the most successful ones on earth. For instance, Kishore Biyani and a group of men involved in making of the first Big Bazzar outlet in kolkatta had a tough time in opening the shop 10 days prior to the Durga puja, which is the most celebrated festival out there. For a couple of weeks, they had to spend 24x7 on the shop floor to ensure that the things were done at the right time. And as far as the perfection is concerned, it was embedded in the planning itself. They could match perfection with the right timing(deadline) and that scripted the success story of Big Bazzar.

One thing I learned today is that the challenge of meeting deadlines does not lie in completing a job, but in doing it with utmost perfection in the given time frame.

The luxury of not having anything to think about…

Who said that it’s a sin not to do anything? Who said that an idle mind is a devil’s workshop? Who said that one can’t be happy doing nothing? Today was one such day when I didn’t do anything significant, didn’t have anything to think about except that I was pondering upon some really insignificant things yet I was happy and no such devil did set up any workshop in my mind! Let me take through my day.

I first woke up at 6.30 am and caught up with insomnia. As Edward Norton in the movie fight club says “when you are in insomnia, you are never really awake, never really asleep”, I was in the same position. I caught up some sleep at around 8.45 am. Sindhu woke me up at 9.45 and reminded me about the promise I made last evening that I shall prepare the breakfast for today. The one breakfast recipe I know is bread-omelet. Swetha called me up and asked me to get some vegetables for the lunch. I brought vegetables and started my preparation. Though I knew the recipe, I confirmed everything with my mom. Somehow, with the help of others I prepared two varieties of bread-omlete for breakfast, one was sweet while the other spicy. I myself claimed the breakfast a success story. Then there were some sprouts and that completed a heavy breakfast. Then we played a round of snake and ladder as kids do. Each one of us climbed ladders without the knowledge of others, though there wasn’t any ladder. Ultimately, the game ended when Sindhu disturbed the whole arrangement. Then I was looking at Swetha who was able to finish the brain-vita game with just one marble left. I was surprised to see that as my best performance ever was finishing with two marbles left. Then Swetha taught me a standard technique of finishing the game. Then some old telugu movie was on TV. I felt a little tired and slept on the marble watching TV, my eyes half closed, half open. At around 2pm I was walking back to my room walking in the laziest posture possible. Suddenly Sindhu reminded of a ‘lazy Sunday afternoon’ and it was then I realized that I was going through one such lazy afternoon. Then I came to my room and started reading the book ‘It happened in India’ while laying on my bed. I caught up some sleep again at 5 pm. Slept and woke up at 7 and again started reading the book. At 8 I felt as if something was missing. Yeah, my evening coffee/tea. I walked to the irani café nearby and had a cup of ‘irani chai’ with the best thing that complements it. I somehow like the irani cafés for that they represents something that is truly hyderabadi! Then went back to Swetha’s room and spent a lot of time chatting.

It’s been really long time since I spent such a Sunday. I remember last one around a year and half ago. Since then, there was always something or other going in my mind. Although there was nothing to do at times, I had some worry that was eating up my mind. Today I was free of all those. At the end of the day I was quite happy.

There are a couple of things that I learned today. One, there is so much luxury of not having anything to think about. It is this luxury that makes one dream, dream a lot. Also there is so much happiness in thinking about lot of insignificant, fairy tale things. Secondly, one doesn’t need to do a lot of things to be happy. One doesn’t have to roam around places to be happy. All that one need is a set of good friends for whom you really mean something. Even talking nothing, but having them around would bring out the charm in one’s face.

Looking back at this day, I had a wonderful time and I’m glad to have some good friends around.