My new pre-occupation

I have enrolled in a course which will lead to my being certified as a Professional coach. It is a pre-occupation for 2 reasons. The first reason because it occupies a large part of my day on most days. The second is because I hope to make it part of my occupation from June 2012 onwards.
I have a separate blog on my coaching journey which is still stuck at the starting post.

I have many friends who earn more than just a decent living through coaching. They were serious people with lot of experience in corporates with a few certifications tucked in as well. Moreover, I viewed them as patient people who tolerated fools far more than I did. They were good listeners.
LISTENING is a big monkey on my bag. Chattering is my strength..... However one fine day , in the course of a few hours, I had enrolled in this course, in no small part because of my patient friends who felt I had it in me to coach.

Here I am now, really enjoying my journey. This seems like a honeymoon period. I have mostly got positive feedback . With this new alliance, I am hoping to make this honeymoon last a lot longer than the belated one I tool 18 months into my marriage. My long suffering partner from my first alliance is patiently hearing my chatter as always. This time it is all about coaching.
Join me in my travels and travails.

Stories from my father land

I attended a ceremony which is conducted when a person reaches his/her 60th birthday. My cousin reached that milestone and decided to invite friends and family to one such ritual based ceremony. If the birthday boy or girl is married at this stage, they celebrate it by having a marriage ceremony. To westerners and uninitiated Indians, this is like renewing your marriage vows. I went to cheer the couple and meet assembled family and friends.
I met quite a few of them after more than a decade.

Having described the context and the setting, I will now come to the gist of this narrative. I was pleasantly surprised that people were keen to narrate incidents about my father to illustrate how much he meant to them. Since it is 14 years since my father died, this was a surprise and a pleasant one as they showed my dad in a brilliant light. One long lost cousin's husband recognised me and it seems it was because my walk was exactly like that of my dad. If my intellect was half as sharp as my dad's, I will be thrilled. A few of them said they still followed his advice and one person has even safely kept a 20 year old letter from my dad.

Every now and then I will meet someone who will feel a kinship with me because of what my father did for them. And very few of these were material things. One person talked about his systematic nature. Another about his meticulousness and yet another person about his fairness.

There was one particular narrative which I had not heard before.
My father, Prof Y Satyamurthy was the CEO of a small sick unit which was taken over by Crompton greaves and he was on Crompton Greaves rolls. This was in Pune and those were the days when Mumbai and many pars of Maharashtra was ruled by labour union leaders. In particular people feared Datta Samant. He was one tough cookie. He walked into the office with some other people who I guess were union office bearers. my Dad was on the other side with his management team. Before a word was spoken my Dad handed over a list and said that those were the management demands. Datta Samant was surprised to say the least. He started raving and ranting that he would not tolerate this. Management could not make demands. My dad said that in those pages he just handed over were the details of what was essential to run the company. If those cannot be met, the talks were over. Datta Samant left fuming and furious.
I cannot vouch for this since this is a second hand narrative. Apparently Datta Samant came back to the table two days later and they reached a quick agreement. Then he said that this was the first management which he had met which had honestly and transparently shared all the details of the company and it's position and that he was impressed with the thoroughness with which this was documented. If this had happened in 24/7 news coverage, my dad would have been more famous. However I am what I am because he did not care to dwell on these since he generally believed in humanity and he cared two hoots about visibility.

What I have learnt from him is that I should be true to myself. I should not laze around because others do or work harder to please others. My father worked very hard and enjoyed it. He lived a hundred years in terms of what he achieved though in chronological terms he only lived till he was 66. I know he is one of my guardian angels since life is generally good to me.

Jobs and Palin-Way of the world

Steve Jobs died at the age of 56,  at what can be considered a young age. Almost every life I know has been touched by Apple and at least one if its products. For some it is buying and enjoying the product. For some like me, it is dealing with incessant demand for money to buy those product. For a very close friend , it was the dilemma of how to get her two sons to share the one precious I=Pod their rich NRI uncle presented. My firs brush with Apple technology was way back in 1986 when a colleague fresh from her PhD in BYU in USA came back with a Mac and she had this "Hide the boss is coming " single click feature which instantly transformed any game you were playing or any frivolous other things you did in office time into a businesslike spreadsheet. Nice touch eh!
I have heard that Steve Jobs did not believe in Market research. I am thankful for that. Collecting opinions from random people who can never imagine how things can be better. I heard many people comparing Jobs to Edison. It seems a very apt comparison. To twist Mark H McCormack's words, "If Steve Jobs had gone to Harvard, we would be typing on bigger keyboards and seeing bigger screens. Thank God he didn't finish college. So the world is worse off for losing someone who could show you a better way.

God (now Steve Jobs is up there to guide him)  works in mysterious ways. While he took away a genius, he saved us as well. I heard an announcement that Sarah Palin has decided to drop out of the presidential race. That brngs a bit of cheer back into my life. I don't know why she decided that. I hope she sticks to it.
I prefer watching her fish, trek, hunt and cook etc. Sarah Palin's Alska is where seems at home and hope she stays there.

Chin up...

101 % cut off

Long long ago in what seems like a different galaxy, I did not get admission to VJTI in Mumbai since my mark was half a per cent below the cut off which was a modest 84%. If my dad had been a defense personnel or better still SC/ST , I would have been in. Not having such luck, I joined B.Sc and life went on quite smoothly in spite of this admission hiccup. I had some 10 marks grace for having been in NSS (National Social Service) under whose umbrella for wo years, I read to a brilliant blind person by the name of Ramakrishnan. I used to read Statistical equations to him and he would instantly grasp it. The point is that if I and my fellow NSS mates had maxed our papers in 12th and had grace marks, the cut off could have been 101 % .

I heard that there were 880 eligible students with a cut off of 100%. Not surprising at all. The irony is that if they didn't have that as the cut off , someone who got 100% could be denied admission.

It is high time we had an exam like SAT which would be common for the state boards, CBSE, ICSE , NIOS and the lucky home tutored students. It is a standard test which can be taken any number of times at convenient times. You do not have to worry if you happen to catch the flu or have a hairline fracture in one of your fingers. And you get the same score irrespective of the evaluators. Sounds heavenly.

The least we can do is track these 100% club members and see where they land up after a decade. That would be an interesting read. TOI, DH , Businessline, are you listening?

Silver Jubilee Re-union (SJR) XL-85

We had out SJR on 26th and 27th December 2010. The poem is horribly written and desperately rhymed. Some of the words would not have any meaning unless you were in XL between 83 and 85.

This is an Ode to our SJR
Because to some the entire 2 days was all fog and a blur
We had to miss TM and Arun who have passed on
Others should plan so that they they make it to the next reuni-on

Lord Srinath was present with his wide stance and Eyes
But seriously, missing most of the fun of SJR was hardly wise.

There was a lot of food, fun and Madeira
Some clicked photos with Maggie, not knowing that it was Fr.Guidera

There were lot of egg rolls and cold Coffee.
We had a wonderful meeting with Mrs Sarin and her superb High Tea.
Everywhere people went, in their midst they used to suddenly find Me.

There was a tiny girl who gave us TLC and is called Padmini.
Her energy and presence made me think she had a twin just like Gemini

We were blessed to have a RARE visit from Mary
And there was a PEARL in the form of Mother EARTH,
The amount that people indulged was monumentally scary
Thank God most us are back to our home and hearth.

The GENESIS of this penning was a poem by Moochi,
Which was read out by our own conjurer,we shall call Harry Puttar
We all visited Bistupur, but most missed Sakchi,
I shall now stop since reading this poem is utter torture.

Made my day

As anyone who knows me would know, I have a son. He is a big boy now. He was little once. He is not demonstrative, but shows a little hint of affection occasionally.
Between 1997 and 2002, we visited the US quite often, mostly spent the months of April and May there. In addition, it is in this period that mothers' day is celebrated. AT first, he could not understand how my birthday could change. He after all had a mother with a birthday in August. Then he figured that it was a day that mothers are felicitated and gifts are brought for them etc. In the US, my son would do small chores and collect quarters and he had a few dollars saved.

A few days before one mothers’ day, he made me wait outside Lechters' (one more victim of the bad times in US) and he bought me a beautiful set of knives. I was very pleased. It had set him back a good 9 dollars, almost half of what he saved. The day before mothers' day, he spied a magnetic clip with Taz (a comic character modelled on the Tasmanian devil) and I like it and bought it for three princely dollars. On our return, my kiddo sidled up to me and said, "You know that the knives cost a lot of money. Will you please buy them for yourselves and accept Taz as my gift. It is also very nice. And please return six dollars to me. I am a poor boy working hard and we will leave for India before I can earn his back. SO I said OK. And Taz still adorns my fridge after all these years. The knives and the fridge are different.

Flash forward to present day and age when my son has voting rights and is of an age when it is legal in India to marry. He visited China and was there during my birthday. In one of our Skype exchanges , he told me that he had bought me a dragon in genuine jade. I was very happy about this gesture. He came back and gave it to me. Then after a few hours he blurted out that of all the things he had go in China, this was the most expensive memento and so he wanted to keep it in his room. He gave me a dragon he had, made of some non-jade material. He then gave me a T shirt with a photo of the dragon and told me that he had ensured that it was my sixe and that it was not the cheapest one available.
I have a feeling the T Shirt may outlast the dragons.

No use by date for India

A friend of mine had posted a link to Shekhar Kapoor's blog about how he got his blackberry repaired in six minutes in the interiors of India. Indians have always known the ground realities. When we look for a house in a high rise being next to what some would call slummy areas is not always a disadvantage. And it is fun to shop and walk in these areas.

I was walking by today and as I often do, I looked at sign posts and shops . My son has put a few pictures up in his blog . There are signage like Government Bhang shop, Charas and Ganja shop etc. today I saw a uniquely Indian shop. The shop's name was "Using Items sale" It was a second hand goods shop. But in typical Indian way, it was true. We buy items still in use viz Using Items. I hope Oxford takes notice of this meaning of this phrase. When I have limited money I want a car in use , not a has been used car.