Breaking a Leg in 2011

Mom, myself & Nagaraj with our Christmas tree

End of year are exciting times. I was to be heading home after a strenuous eight months in Bangalore. Having changed my job but a few months earlier, adjusting to my new job and workplace had been hectic. Nothing like an holiday in home sweet home Goa, take in all the awesome food and attention before heading back to work for another round on the grind.

Goa has a lot of hoopla and hype around it, especially during Christmas and New Year, especially for all its beaches, drugs, alcohol, nightlife and women. To us Goans, Goa is just home. It’s the cool breeze one can enjoy sitting on ones veranda, greeting familiar faces as they pass by, eating loads of fresh fish, sharing meals with family, catching up with friends, all in a very relaxed and congenial environment.

The excitement of heading home had led me to shop extensively and I could not wait to pack my bags, until a week before I missed a step and what I fervently prayed was a sprain turned out to be a fracture. A Jones fracture to be precise.

A cast, and five weeks of rest is what the orthopedic doled out nonchalantly. “W-H-A-T”, I shouted, “five weeks, you must be joking”. I live a rather hectic life, waking up at 6.00 a.m. cooking my meals, travelling to office, beginning work ahead of time,  travelling back, cleaning, washing… I hate sitting around in one place unless I’m working on my computer. My mind is always abuzz and I’m doing stuff, now I have to sit in one place with my right leg alleviated, oh man that is simply going to kill me, I thought. The first week I went about like a wounded animal. Frustrated, aggressive, irritable, snapping at those around when I wasn’t engaging in self pity…. It was terrible.

Finally, I decided I needed a perspective change and convinced myself to look at the brighter side of things. This was an opportunity to slow down, sit and smell the coffee. I could now jam on the brakes and experience what it means to be dependent on others, how to seek assistance, how to appreciate assistance, relearn the importance of interdependence. I re-acknowledged the tons of love, concern and caring that makes the world go round, from my dear neighbor who brought over steaming bowls of sumptuous food, to another neighbor who accompanied me to the hospital, the auto and cab drivers, my concerned colleagues who kept calling and messaging to ensure I was comfortable, my family who kept my spirits up and positive and then catering to my every request when I reached Goa. Lowering myself a few notches, life came back from fast-forward to its normal pace, a bit leisurely … on the whole, it was nice.

For five weeks I could not travel and thus needed to work from home. For the last six years I had not spent more than a week at a time in Goa, the slow pace of life bored me. Now I spent a month there, and it seems like fun, work from a comfortable, caring home, enviable isn’t it. I had to thank my luck I had the most cooperative office and a family that felt it could be with me every step of my temporary disability.

My restricted movement actually came as a blessing in disguise, I was back to reading, something I love to do, write for my blog, something I had not done in a while. I got to spend loads of time with my nephew and nieces who were springing up but I didn’t have the time to watch them grow. I got time with my mom and sister; my friends and relatives who visited me. I got loads of time by the window, take in sights and sounds I previously had no time for.

My mom Virginia with her grand kids

My nephew David and niece Jamima at the BBQ

For a while now, I have been associated with the disability movement, now I know just a little bit, what it means to have a disability. The hardships that are bestowed upon the person without their asking.  The limitations a person with a disability experiences because their surroundings have been insensitively designed for able bodied people.

I nearly through my five weeks of hindered movement, wont kid you that I can’t wait to get my cast of, but the learning’s have been tremendous, almost worth the initial suffering that has since evaporated into lessons I could not have paid for even if I tried.

Steve Jobs – Black, White and Everything Between

Steve Jobs Biography

The biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson was launched soon after Jobs death. Simply titled Steve Jobs, the book fueled the  abiding fascination the worlds has for the bespectacled man in blue jeans and black turtleneck.

The hefty hardbound basks in the characteristic sheer white of Apple and with over 600 pages, is a  serious read. Folks lined up to buy it just like that have all Apple products and while it does make for an excellent Christmas gift, I hope it remains less a collector’s item and is widely read.

The book is simply named Steve Jobs. On the façade, the answer may seem obvious, Steve Jobs needs no introduction, yet reading through the book it becomes clearer through each passing page that Jobs is a man difficult to describe. One can adopt his love for binaries and label him black, however Isaacson has done a brilliant job of fleshing out a man in all his colourful hues and the reader is constantly oscillating, like the man himself, between appreciating his genius and weights the costs.

Being a biography, the book focuses completely on the man. It peels away the veneer, created by Apple around its CEO and the veneer created by Jobs himself and captures a range of interesting details that are insightful not only to a casual reader, but even one trying to understand the personality man and those attempting to glean nuggets on how he cut an arduous path to grow his businesses again and again. The book is an excellent chronicle of a man and his time and one cannot fail but see where so many smaller companies have picked and stolen ideas from (following in the path of Apple itself).

The book is full of quotes and if one were to make notes, the lovely white would be full of pencil grey. I myself resisted the urge to take up the pencil, convincing myself that this provides me with a reason to read the book a second time.

In a rather old fashioned way the book reiterates a few old principles. Prominent among them in the need to have an eye for detail – to take the time to dot ones I’s and cross ones t’s. To spend time, thought, care and healthy dollops of love, developing a product. ‘Perfection’ becomes a familiar word and for Jobs it was less an imposition and more a choice. One that few companies like or choose to take.

Marketing is a highly overrated aspect of business when the product itself is bad, and yet today, ‘competition’, ‘faster time to market’ etc are become catchwords that psych companies into launching half baked products. Consumers wait expectantly and are disappointed, but instead of focusing on improving the product, companies spend tons of money on marketing and coning consumers, thus eroding their goodwill. Apple chose to be different and its products continue to stand out for premium quality, robustness and ease of use.

Man Behind the Job

While for a long time people have been fascinated with the man, the book paints Jobs in rich and complex hues which range from genius to megalomania. More importantly, it also details out the larger number of people who shared his vision and worked with him tirelessly to bring his visions and theirs to life.

Looking deeper, I think, one of the reasons Jobs was able to do what he did for Apple and then Pixar is because he represented the aspirations of a generation. The sixties were a time of the great counterculture, people thought differently, yearned to be different, do things differently, challenged the old norms. Jobs was able to energize and synergize these earnings  and truly bring out something different. Many of these unsung hero’s working with Jobs, challenged him and did what they though was right so that products turned out the way they did. Much of Jobs credit goes to these heroes who once they had their catharsis, went back to being the many functionaries of the system, with their bruised egos and traumatized hearts.

For those looking for takeaways, Steve Jobs (the book), forces people to make a choice. There is good and bad in each of us, we need to decide what to promote and what to hold back. At his worst, Steve Jobs was a demon who ran roughshod over people who cared for him, manipulative,  arrogant, boastful and controlling. At his best, he gives strong lessons on the need to strive for perfection, display conviction in ones action and the need to be inspired about what we do. Too many people these days, put their own passions behind them to do what is socially desired of them, thus denying and killing a lot of talent. At yet another level Jobs was highly grounded in Buddhist principles of frugality, vegetarianism and minimalism. Even as one reaches the last pages of the book, the reader is left wondering who really is Jobs…. Should I love him or hate him.

India: Goa’s Women Professionals want more, and they want it now

This article is written by Sapna Shahani

Lillian D’Costa, 32, left the idyllic village of Saligao in North Goa where she had spent her childhood years, and moved to Bangalore, in neighbouring Karnataka five years ago. “I had reached a point where I wasn’t growing any more and realised I needed a change,” she recalls. “I’m sure that Goa offers a better quality of life than many other states, but that’s if you’re economically well-placed. If you’re young and need opportunities for growth, Goa does not work.”

Ashwina Souza, 23, left her family in the Southern Goan town of Vasco last year to pursue a Ph.D in Industrial Psychology in Mumbai. “My seniors told me that the faculty here in Goa was not as good as in Mumbai. Besides, in a place like Mumbai, there are so many industries and they need people like us. Among my circle of friends, many have left Goa – perhaps six or eight out of 10.”

Two voices of young women professionals from a state that has recorded the highest per capita income among all Indian states in a 2009-10, according to the central statistical office. However, a study by the Labour Bureau of the Ministry of Labour and Employment also reveals that Goa has the highest unemployment rate in the country. What’s worse, according to another study conducted by Goa’s Ministry of Labour in 2009, only one-fourth of those employed in the state are women.

These figures imply that not only is Goa’s wealth not distributed equally across all sections of society, its working women are clearly marginal players in the state’s economy. Unless efforts are made to reverse this trend, Goa stands to lose young talent, with many youngsters like Lillian and Ashwina being forced to leave home for educational and employment opportunities in other states. Indeed, they are left with little choice, given the rising inflation and high cost of living in Goa.

Perhaps in response to the impending crisis, Goa recently became the first state in India to announce a dole for jobless youth. But such political gestures are merely symbolic. There still isn’t much public discussion about creating jobs for the state’s 80,000 people registered with the Employment Exchange. The Goa Chamber of Commerce carries a telling piece of information on its website: “Roughly about 15,000 graduates come out of Goan colleges every year. The government on its own will not be in a position to provide employment to these youth…”

There is widespread consensus in Goa that higher education in the state does not prepare graduates for real jobs. While the state has focused on primary education – ranking 11th among all Indian states in terms of performance – higher education appears to have stagnated. Public perception is that it is best to earn one’s degree or post-graduate qualification outside the state if one can afford to do so.

Says Aldina Gomes, a lecturer at Carmel College for Women in Nuvem, “As a professor, I’m a little against how academics is handled here. Everyone has to study humanities but they don’t really have a connection to the subject. They won’t pursue humanities as a career but will end up doing something completely different… There is a clear lack of vocational guidance for students as well as career opportunities. There should be many more entrance exams, job-specific courses and certificates that can get you jobs.”

Of course, women students are full of expectations. Take Zaheera Vaz, 20, who is about to start her Master’s degree course in Political Science at Goa University. She is keen to have extra-curricular activities that could help her develop her analytical skills. Nashoma De Jesus, 22, who is currently finishing her Master’s degree in International Studies at Goa University, would like more field experience. “The education system is too theoretical. We need more exposure while we’re studying. Internships should be mandatory,” she argues.

But this would require more investment in higher education, as Sabina Martins, a prominent women’s rights activist and school teacher with a Ph.D in chemistry, points out. “I did my research in carbon, which can be prepared from coconut shells. I thought since Goa has so many coconut shells and carbon is in high demand, being used for water purification and in so many other applications, it should be easy to make carbon this way. I went to see the only plant that does this in Goa and it was run by someone from outside the state. Planning here is devoid of research,” she says.

Those who don’t leave the state and are lucky enough to find jobs after they graduate, get measly salaries, sometimes as low as Rs 4,000 (US41=Rs 44) a month. Aglin Barretto, 23, has a Master’s degree in Counselling Psychology and works in two schools as a counsellor. Her salary? Just Rs 5,000 per month.

Both opportunities and salaries are lower in Goa than elsewhere and that is a source of angst for young women like Skitter Faia, 32, who works in a PR firm in state capital Panaji. “I hear a lot of people talking about job security and I think that means a government job where you can work or not work and still take a salary home,” observes Skitter. Others feel that appreciation and promotions don’t easily come the way of women employees. Clara Rodrigues, 24, a journalist based in Saligao, rues the fact that the glass ceiling obstructs many ambitions women may harbour, “We need opportunities to grow vertically in the organisation.”

But this does not mean that women have stopped dreaming of personal growth and freedom. Interestingly, one of the reasons why many young women here prefer to migrate out of the state is to free themselves from the diktat of conservative families and the norms that mark rural life. D’Costa says, “As a single woman living outside the state, you don’t have to rush home. Or face judgmental people in the village who are always assessing you. Or hear that your phone isn’t accessible. These are constraints I experience every time I return to Goa.”

Despite the stereotypes fostered by the coastal tourist belt, life in Goa’s hinterland is fairly restrictive for young women and the general outlook is narrow. Ashwina shares a personal anecdote, “Once in college, a teacher asked us why we wanted to go to college. Students gave all sorts of answers. Some argued that it was their ticket to leave home; others said it was their certificate for marriage; still others just wanted to ‘pass time’, while a few talked of how it was the best way to make friends. Only three of us – out of a class of 60 – said they were in college to pursue a career.”

She and others like her want the state to be more pro-active about broadening professional vistas. Not only would this bring economic benefits to the state, it would mean more women in the workplace, they argue. For instance, they point out, that Goa – with its educated population – is eminently suited to emerge as an IT hub, yet little is being done to achieve this.

Says D’Costa, “The government wants to invite only ‘clean’ industries to the state. With its good roads, broadband connectively and relatively cheaper land, it could easily attract the IT industry. IT companies are moving out of Bangalore to places like Chennai and Vellore, but why aren’t they coming to Goa? Bangalore was once known as a retiree’s city, but now it has reinvented itself as a world city. Why can’t Goa make the same transition?”

If Goa has to keep pace with the hopes and expectations of women like D’Costa, it would need to do much more to expand employment opportunities for young professionals.

–

Published in Deccan Herald, Bangalore edition, 30^th April 2011

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/157633/looking-growth-go-some-place.html

Tips for New Content Writers

Over the last three years, I have spent time writing all kinds of content, from articles and whitepapers to blog posts; search engine optimized (SEO) content, search engine marketing (SEM) ads, social media marketing content, and even dabbled with copy writing. All of my writing skills are self taught and for those content writers who have just landed themselves a job, here are a few tips.

To begin with, nothing you learnt in your journalism class or mass communication course could have prepared you for this, but then you must be thinking, “Well I know that…. that’s  about the only think I can vouch for infact ”.

On your new job, be prepared for a hard struggle for at least the first four to six months.  Keep your eyes on the goal, your attention on the task, you will be learning and implementing what you learn at a rapid pace. So rapid, you may need to think on your feet; it is here that Google becomes your best friend, comrade, teacher and philosopher.

Through the first few months on the job keep your mind open, become a sponge and soak in all you can.

Write client centric content

When writing, keep your client at the centre. Your client has commissioned content for certain very specific purposes -and not to see your writing talent, so put away the fluff and ego- these are to gain better and more online visibility, get back links for their website and blog, educate prospective clients, customers and partners, brand their product and services, project themselves as thought leaders and on the whole increase their conversion rate. To sell more. No company can survive without sales, and your content will be constantly used by the company’s marketing team to sell their products. You owe it to your client to give nothing but world class content.

If you keep the client and his needs in mind, you will also realize along the way that the client knows best. Listen very carefully to what the client wants, if not ask him very clearly what he hopes to achieve through the content.

Tailor your content and delivery what your client wants

Your client walks the beat. He knows the market, he lives it day in and day out and so, obviously, he knows best. Yes you may have interesting ideas and suggestions, but if the client is not in a mood to experiment, or has passed through that phase and identified a sweet spot, go with it. If you look at it in a positive way, it makes your writing job so much easier, because now you don’t have to think, you have a clear mandate and expectation and all you need to do is write and deliver J.

Read, Read, Read

As a content writer you need to be reading all the time. Hopefully you don’t smoke so when you need to take a break, visit a news site and read. Read as much as you can, stay updated on all things, because often times, delivery dates are close, often hours away, something you had read months before may give you a head start and help you save precious time.

The more you write the better you become

Well everybody knows that, but the stress of those first few months of writing may sometimes actually make you doubt yourself. Much later you will actually be laughing at this self doubt, that’s when you know, content writing is finally under your skin.

Content writing is an evolving skill, you can never be good enough, you need to always be learning with as much humility you can musterJ.

Your audience is changing all the time in the way they consume information, you need to be aware of this and keep modifying your style all the time, experimenting and learning and of course, writing.

Stick to being a writer

As a writer, your job is to write. Don’t waste your time finding out where or when your article will get published. Once you send an article to your client the article is no longer yours. As a content writer you are like a surrogate mother. Once this is clearly understood, you take pleasure in just writing your piece and doing a good job of it.

Keep your audience in mind

You write not for yourself but for your client who pays you, and for your audience, who will favour you by reading your content. Keep your audience in mind and tailor your content accordingly. Keep in mind their experience and expectations, and chose your words accordingly.

Content writers need to know psychology

If you have not studies psychology, it may be a good idea to learn aspects like memory, retention, how the brain works under certain circumstances, how people read on the web and offline in hard copy publications.  Learn how a person’s age, gender, education level and experience influences the way they consume information, the kind of language each age group likes and uses. You need to understand the emotion and feelings that words create and use them accordingly depending upon the product you are selling. You need to be aware of how people in different geographic locations consume information and work this into your content accordingly.

The more you understand human psychology and the way they consume and process information the more you will see yourself not just as a content writer but as a potter, moulding words and sentences, to create shapes, and things, and giving meaning to things.

Learn typing

Content writers need to type fast and while you may become fast using just two fingers to type, knowing typing ensures your fingers keep pace with your train of thought and you don’t need to look at the keyboard while you tap away furiously at the keyboard .

There are lots of online typing tutorials that you can download and learn, so typing is a skill worth acquiring.

Keep working on your grammar and editing skills

Your client pays you or your company good money when they commission content work, poor English and grammar in the content is insulting to them to say the least. Ensure your grammar is good and keep working on it. Plug even those tiny holes; this is especially true for us in India, as English is an acquired language.

Even if your company has an in-house editor, it is best for you to develop your editing skills. Start by reading a few articles on what goes into good editing, edit your own articles; an extra word here or there can completely change the meaning of the sentence. Editing your own content is a great way to sharpen your usage of English and grammar. Another way is to take up a local newspaper and read it critically, scratching out unnecessary words, rearranging sentences to improve flow and noting how you would have written it had you been the writer.

Don’t let a new, unfamiliar word pass you by

Thankfully, we content writer’s not longer need to keep that thick dictionary on our table, knowing fully well that new words are being added to it all the time. Bookmark an online dictionary and check the meaning of new words or meanings of words you are not sure about. This way you increase your vocabulary and learn the exact meaning of words. Don’t ever use a word in an article if you don’t know its meaning or are unsure of it.

Be patient

Be patient with yourself, with your clients and with the topic you are writing on. Some days are good and you will be writing at a fast pace, some days are bad and your mind just won’t cooperate.

After completing an article don’t rush to dispatch it. Complete it; sleep over it, a good time to look at it afresh is to review it early the next morning. If you have others on the team, get them to review your content too and when you are completely satisfied that it is a job well done, dispatch it to the client.

Be passionate about your work

Content writing is a vast field; it is dynamic and ever changing, in subtle yet sophisticated and strangely powerful ways. But if you are not passionate about your profession as a writer, you will not realize these aspects and the joy of writing will be lost. If the desire to write does not burn in you, does not consume you, you might be in the wrong profession, or you may not be feeding yourself with the right information about the profession. Spend time motivating yourself; your recognition may most often come from within you .

Beyond Fear

There are a few times when I feel intimidated. The task is large and complex and I don’t know how to do it, or I have to write this whitepaper that is extremely domain specific and I need to have my content come across with the authority of an expert, or I see a large number of people around me, who are better qualified and write so much better and have so much more knowledgeable, and my confidence cowers, I break into a cold sweat, my heart beats faster and I think, can I do it, can I really, really do, can I stand out, can I achieve anything, can I get to where they are and ahead, what if I fail. Fear is a horrible thing, but I have read some quote which actually says fear a good thing. Fear aids self preservation, it aids survival. Fear is a way to recognise danger, and if fear fails to kick in we would be dead a long time back, killed by our wrong response to a situation.

But then somewhere you need to slowly take control of it, like taming a wild horse, or reeling in a really large fish. You need to be patient, let go a bit, reassess your strengths, let the fear overtake you, let it believe for a few moments that it controls you, that it has won, and use these precious seconds or minutes of lucid thought to develop your counter strategy. Wait for the fear to tire out, manoeuvre it, give in a little, pull back a little, and then drawn it in, before it has realized it’s lost the battle. Draw it in quickly, like one possessed, like one in control.

It is overpowering, intimidating fear like this that brings to mind a dream I had many years ago, when I was a little girl but it still remains fresh in my memory like it were yesterday. In my dream I am standing in the lane that leads from my home to the road. It was a little mud road then, with young coconut trees on one side, and the shadow of a looming house on the other. And as I stand there, as a bus, crowded with people passes by. To the small girl in the lane, this is a huge bus, all metal roaring by. The bus stops a little ahead and people alight, and the girl in the dream thinks to herself, will I ever grow big enough to travel in a bus such as this, travel all by myself. Will I be able to indicate to the conductor or driver that I would like to alight at a particular stop, what if the bus does not stop and takes me elsewhere, and the heart of the little girl begins to pound and fills with dread.

Since, I have grown up, traveled half the country all by myself, have lived numerous years by myself, have stepped into and off many buses, trains and planes, and feel bemused when people much older than the little girl in the lane exhibit similar fear for banal things.

When my mind comes back to the present I think, I will overcome, just like the girl overcame her fear of that bus, I will write that complex whitepaper, I will find a way to do that complex large task, fit it all in even in a crazy tight schedule, prioritize, plan, execute. I will get ahead of all those big time writers, I will try and I will be. If it’s doable, consider it done J

So who cares for your website?

Have you had this experience when someone calls you and says they are calling from so and so company, you search them on Google and come upon a really shabby website. Your image of the company you are talking to falls apart. Now would you want to do business with a company like that or would you consider taking up a job with them?

I’ve had this experience more than once, and the astounding part, many of them claim to be online marketing companies. What?… With such poor content, little or no SEO, nothing to distinguish the site as a 2.0 website, precious little information on their services, I yearn to ask them how they manage to do business if any, but usually take the faster and more pleasant way out by saying a simple ‘No’.

If you don’t care for your website, why should I

In case you as a company have forgotten, your website is your public face. It is your advertisement for all to see, and a pretty cost effective one at that. Who in their sane mind would want to waste an opportunity like that to advertise themselves, yet so many companies would, and do.

A shabby website speaks volumes on how much you care about your own company, how much you have conceptualized your products and services, how much you strive to distinguish yourself from the myriad competition. Poor English, meagre content, indicates you’d rather be found chasing the money, or maybe that you haven’t looked at your site in years.

Updating a site with current information, making sure it displays the current year, means that you are concerned about your appearance, that you care to make the right impression; people who would like to do business with you find it easier to read about you, understand you and determine if they could gel with you. Prospective employees also get a better understanding of your style of business, learn about your products and are able to determine if they could fit into your organization. A well maintained website, helps you attract better talent and generate much needed leads, free of cost.

The first thing most people do when they hear the name of an individual or company they need to interact with is Google them, and if you don’t make the best first impression, it might create a lasting bad impression.

My Dear Village, Bangalore

Bangalore may be projected as a hi-tech cosmopolitan IT city, but somewhere in the convoluted crevices of its being, it still continues to remain, unplanned, organic and yes, unprofessional as the many villages or halli’s that surround it.

For example, who of us, who live in Bangalore have not found ourselves driving up a street only to find it blocked at the end by a large tent. Some festival, marriage, house warming party, or Lions club blood donation drive and the entire road is summarily barricaded. What? You wonder, did these guys actually apply for permission to do this? Do you actually get permission in this city to block a public road for personal use?

Another common sight is when a building is being constructed by the roadside. Expect the road to be half occupied by rubble, sand, bricks and debris, and I’m not talking about some tiny lane in the no-where of town, but places right in the heart of town, broad roads that see large amount of traffic. The construction material causes traffic jams for months together and no one does a thing. Again, from where does the builder get permission to occupy the road?

Come festival time and god help your ears. Recently in my neighbourhood, huge amplifiers and speakers began to blare music from 4 in the morning till well past 12 at night. The weekend is time when I unwind and relax, but this weekend it was not to be, rather, by mid day I was irritable with the constantly loud noise. Again, can you get permission to do play loud music like this and disturb the entire neighbourhood for such long hours?

Bangalore

Another thing I’ve come to notice and many would agree, if you see a newly asphalted road, a newly constructed drainage, a new footpath… keep watching… it has to be, and I mean it has to be … damaged for some reason within a month. After construction, someone will realize that a water pipe needs to be laid, a drain has clogged, a tree needs to be trimmed, or the quality of the work is so bad it gets washed away in the first rain. And so, you never see things properly maintained for long in the city. The city’s signature is broken, rundown, decrepit,  loud, noisy and I find this strange, because most people in Bangalore, no matter what your position, are under tremendous work pressure and tense, and need to unwind, need a quiet place, need to have at least a small section of their lives stress free, but that never happens. This city of Bangalore, and it would probably be unfair if I said only Bangalore, for it seems to be the hallmark of many other city, sometimes seems to me like a runaway train, or an elephant run amok. Little sign of planning, little or no sign of processes, no professionalism, piecemeal, ad-hocism, impulse action, little or no collective thought, and this brings to the fore, the strange paradox of what we do professionally and how we live.

The thousands of IT companies spread across this city are probably engaged in millions of projects to develop applications, software’s, tools to put in place processes, streamline processes, reduce human intervention and automate processes, so that things are faster, smoother, efficient, planned, structured and yet, when we step out of our offices we see none of the fruits of our work. We, IT professionals do all these projects, offer all these solutions to customers cross the world, but back home, our government is not equipped enough to see the intelligence in implementing any of these solutions for the betterment of our lives, they lack the foresight and the ‘education’ and for me this is a paradox I am still trying to reconcile myself to.

Sometimes I wonder if anything at all can be done about this situation, cause, at some point it stops at a ‘education’ and ‘foresight’ and gets into this highly debatable and arguable domain of ‘culture’. Are we adequately ‘cultured’ and ‘developed’ enough to understand how technology can be leverage to catapult the city to the next level? To engage in planned urbanization that is less stressful. Sometimes I think the gaps, in every sense, are so wide and dark that it may take many many years.

I know this is a highly controversial topic and would love to have feedback from those reading this post.

Don’t buy tiles from RAK Ceramics, Goa… here is why

My disappointing experience with inefficient and incompetent RAK Ceramics

Dear friends, home maintenance is a frequent task, recently, my family decided to replace the flooring of our home in Goa and so began the saga on simply buying tiles from a company with a large international presence called RAK Ceramics.

It all began with me walking across the road from my office in Bangalore to one of the premium ceramics retailers PC Mallapa and Co. Here is where the most helpful and intelligent salesman ably and expertly introduced me to the range of quality floor tiles, drawing comparatives in quality and price and pointing out that RAK Ceramics would be a wise choice even if it meant paying a premium.

A company with a global presence I opted for RAK Ceramics because their production process was technologically superior. Their strict quality control and exactness of manufacture assured me that I was buying tiles that would have a longer life. I must confess this elderly salesman at the showroom was extremely knowledgeable about tile making and after an intense 45 minute discussion there was no way I was going to consider any other company, even though 90% of the companies in the market were selling me tiles for half the rate RAK Ceramics quoted.

Having picked up the brochure and virtually zeroed in on the colour and pattern I wanted, I next headed to Google, to locate their office in Goa, after all that’s where the tiles were required.

Surprisingly, for a company with a global presence there was very little information about RAK Ceramics online, the first sign of them not being in sync with the times. The management of RAK Ceramics does not seem to be aware that they are in the Information Age, that customers locate companies online, they read feedback from other customers and then choose their product. Interestingly, I have just noticed that the RAK Ceramics website shows their copyright date as 2006! OMG they haven’t updated their website for 4 years!!!!

The dearth of information about them prevented me from getting adequate information about the superiority of their product, but well, lucky for them an elderly salesman at PC Mallapa, the premium ceramics retailers in Bangalore, had done his job well. For a company with a global presence and superior technology to trust a salesman can hardly be a way of preparing for competition, because ahead you will learn how others put his good work to naught. Getting back to my search for an address to their location in Goa… well I simply couldn’t find one on the internet!!!

Goa is an international tourist destination and has huge amount of construction happening, additionally the people of Goa are highly educated with a high foreign exposure. The consumers of this tiny state are discerning and if they go online to locate a good ceramics company, they won’t even locate RAK Ceramics, so how does the company make sales? So much for global presence and a desire to do business and make profits…. Wow, I’m actually questioning their fundamental motive of doing business, but then let them prove me wrong.

So I then remembered the salesman at PC Mallapa telling me that RAK Ceramics tiles were manufactured in Andhra Pradesh and I located an address and write to the company asking them for a contact in Goa if any.

I promptly get a reply from Mr S.S.YADAV and he gives me the phone number to the Area Manager of Goa Mr. Nitin Sawant. I try calling Mr Sawant, initially his phone service provider tells me he is out of coverage area, when it does finally ring sometime later I can hear Mr Sawant but Mr Sawant cannot hear me. Thankfully on my third attempt I get across to Mr Sawant and he gives me a contact number to 2 of his dealers in Goa. The interesting part, even though all my attempts to call Mr Sawant would have registered on his phone as missed calls, at no point does he try to call me back. It probably did not strike him that it could be a potential customer trying to get in touch. So much for RAK’s sales personnel.

With the two contact numbers given to me by Mr Sawant I call a showroom called Bath and Tiles, I speak there to Mr Praveen Lotlikar and we agree that when I’m in Goa I would contact him to discuss the details of my order.

I get to Goa, meet Mr Lotlikar, decide on the tile, RAK Venezia, ACNE, premium vitrified tiles and immediately make my 1^st payment of Rs. 25,000 against order form – ST/133 on 30^th March 2010. A second payment is made of another 25,000 on the 3^rd April. Mr Lotlikar assures me that the order has been placed, and the truck will be dispatched that day itself. I head back to Bangalore and my sister follows up with him, he assures her the truck is being dispatched, a week later, that the truck needs to be full as the truck can’t leave from their factory with only our small order of tiles. A week later, the tiles are not in stock and are being manufactured and we will receive them by the 30^th of April 2010.

My sister goes along with Mr Lotlikar, anyway we planned on starting the work during the 1^st week of May so why not oblige a company with a global presence and who is already sitting of Rs. 50,000 of our money… the politeness of consumers. I hope RAK Ceramics will give us credit for it, and ofcourse they are still flying on the fantastic job done by the elderly salesman from PC Mallapa in Bangalore. Strange, how for all its marketing strategies and sales forecasts and targets, it all comes to an elderly salesman from PC Mallapa in Bangalore! If this does not stink of inefficiency in RAK Ceramics what does?

On the 30^th of April when my sister called Mr Lotlikar again to inquire about our order she was in for a rude shock. (Please note, it is we who keep calling Mr Lotlikar, he always promises to call us back and update us with information but never does. I hope RAK Ceramics is making note that there is a visible training need here, their retailers are poorly equipped in client servicing.) After all this waiting she is told that the tiles have still not been manufactured and he does not know when that will happen and as a result he of course does not know when they will be dispatched and … Bingo you guessed it right, we have to keep waiting.. ah to make a fool of ones customers!

I think what RAK Ceramics forgot was that we, their customers were paying a premium price for their product, we paid an advance, but we don’t get any communication on the delivery. Rather it is held up for a month (today is the 1^st of May 2010) and information is given to us only when we call their showroom, INEFFICIENCY AND PATHETIC SERVICE is all they display.

There are millions of other companies that sell products like RAK Ceramics and much more expensive ones too. They have something called online databases, where their dealers can check online, inventory and availability of a product before they commit to a client. Once an order is placed, an internal set of activities are set in motion, online, to monitor timely delivery, put in place accountability and checkmate quality issues, does RAK Ceramics have such a system? Sorry, I forgot….. RAK Ceramics belongs to a different age; of snail mail should I guess.

There are thousands of companies manufacturing vitrified tiles in the Indian state of Gujarat. I took a decision not to buy from them because I could see little or no online presence of these companies, no quality control and no accountability. But RAK Ceramics seems to have turned out to be exactly like one of those companies I avoided buying from. They display lack of transparency in their processes, lack of accountability, inability to provide adequate and truthful information to their customers, lack of respect for their customers, they dishonour their commitment of timely delivery… and they claim to be a company with a global presence manufacturing world class vitrified tiles. Their website says they are ‘Trend Setters’ OMG that’s the only thing they do, and the trends in inefficiency they set, par excellence.

Realizing we have been taken for a ride, I am livid with the response of Mr Lotlikar on the 30^th April 2010. I call him up and assure him that this weekend I am going to put my time to good use unless I hear positively that my consignment of floor tiles have been dispatched (predictability 24 hours later I still haven’t heard from him yet… but I’m waiting

I then try and contact the good ole Mr Nitin Sawant…. Remember Mr Sawant, the one who is always inaccessible…. And yes he is at it again… inaccessible… I try all day on 30^th April but his phone continues to be inaccessible. Mr Sawant, sorry for doling out unsolicited advice but I think you need to change your service provider. Get one who gives you better coverage, and yes… don’t forget to charge your phone batteries.

Two people Mr Sawant should never keep waiting are, an irate customer and a client wanting to place an order. He has made one mistake, of not being available when a customer needed him, god alone knows if lost a sale too. As of writing this post I am still to get in contact with Mr Sawant, it is hard for me to believe that all my calls have not shown up as missed calls on his phone…. Or maybe he is yet to charge his phone batteries!!

In utter frustration, the next person I call is Mr Rohit Khandelwal who is based in Mumbai. In retrospect I should just address him as His Highness Rohit Khandelwal because Mr Khandelwal is busy in a meeting from 10.00 am to 4.30 pm and has no time to look into my concerns or queries. Infact he gets arrogant with me, and why not, after all I have placed an order of less than a lakh, while he deals in crores. He talks back to me angrily (which annoys me all the more) that the matter is not so simple, the tile I ordered is not available, it has to be manufactured, they have to get a whole company working for that… and as I surmise… gosh they are so not use to doing that. And all this conversation makes me feel like I just ordered a rocket for Mars. But why do I crib, it’s just another instance in the long line of incompetent, inefficient, unprofessional services from RAK Ceramics, the company with a global presence.

This is when I decided that I simply had to tell my story. Of course I have written to the Management of RAK Ceramics all the way from the Head Office in the UAE to their office in India and I am writing this post to warn your dear friends, should you want to buy tiles from RAK Ceramics please think again. There are other brands, just as good; you might save a few thousands to

So now that I have raved and ranted so much, what do I want RAK Ceramics to do to remedy the situation.

1. I want the delivery of my Order form – ST/133 for RAK Venezia, ACNE, premium vitrified tiles ASAP. If RAK Ceramics is unable to make the delivery please let me know so that I can come over to the Bath and Tiles showroom in Panjim and select a different tile of the same cost.
2. RAK Ceramics needs to let me know how they plan to remedy the situation of the tremendous anguish and mental stress their callous attitude has caused me.

And last but not the least, they still owe a big thank you to the polite, intelligent salesman at PC Mallapa, Infantry Road, Bangalore, who did such a great job of selling their product, but all their overpaid, highly trained MBA certified official brought to naught.

Thaati Nungu for the tired soul

It is that time of the year when Bangalore is all decked in color. The flame of the forest is flaming, the Bougainvilleas are magenta pink, the Burmese Padoga is in full bloom, so are the TV trees, even the Croton leaves have taken on a bright yellow in the warm sun … and this is one time of the year when I wish I had wings

This is also the time of year when the familiar voice of the Thaati Nungu seller fills the evening air. Thaati Nungu in Kannada or palm fruit in English is a delicious translucent soft jelly like fruit. It is the fruit of the Palmyrah tree or toddy palm and comes encased in a hard purple casing.  If you’ve the quizzing type don’t forget that the Palmyrah tree or Nongu as it is called in Tamil is the state tree of Tamil Nadu.

Thaati Nungu

The Thaati Nungu looks very similar to a small coconut. In each nut are a set of three fruits with a light brown covering. Watching the Thaati Nungu seller shaving off the husk to carefully extract the fruits without cutting into them is a treat.  The task involves skill as the husk is large, the fruit itself tiny, heart shaped and a small palm size. Each fruit contains a small quantity of water and the Thaati Nungu peeler must ensure he does not cut the fruit and cause the water to drip away.

As dusk falls over Bangalore the Thaati Nungu seller sets out on his bicycle with a large flat bamboo basket on the bicycle bracket. Perched on it is a kerosene lamp surrounded by the brown Thaati Nungu fruit. He walks from lane to lane calling out “Thaati Nungu” in a clear loud voice so characteristic of hawkers.

One of the ways to determine if the fruit is fresh is to actually pick and press it. The fresh ones are soft to the touch, moist and have a jelly like feel. The stale ones are hardish. When you try to eat them they taste more like mature coconut only a bit rubbery.

To eat the Thaati Nungu fruit you have to gently peel off the soft brown skin around it and take a large bite, turning your head back to prevent the juice inside from dripping down your chin and wasting away.

Until recently I thought the Thaati Nungu fruit was found only in south India but it seems not. Thaati Nungu is available in Maharashtra and Gujarat as well, where it is called Taadgola.

Thaati Nungu has more than a few resemblances to a coconut and that includes its taste which is very similar to tender coconut. The fruit is not just delicious but very refreshing too and come April I ensure I get my fill of this seasonal delight while it lasts.

The fruit is known to be rich in calcium and phosphorus. It also contains B complex vitamins like thiamine and riboflavin and on a tiring evening this cooling fruit instantaneously fills me with energy.

So the next time you hear the Thaati Nungu seller call out don’t forget to rush out and buy a few.

Women in India don’t want to be in the Defenses

Should women be allowed to play a greater role in the Indian defenses, this is a debate that keeps cropping up time and again. More than once I have seen some women screaming on national television on how the defenses are bias and are keeping women out of frontal roles, such as combat. The most recent case in point being that Indian women were not allowed to become fighter pilots. This, when all other countries including China, allowed women, screamed the women defense!.

The defenses headed by men also put up a stiff resistance citing research about how women just aren’t meant for the role, and for once in my life, I kind of agreed with them. But of course if you know me, you would know that it definitely could not be for the same reason, and yes, you would be right. The fighting machine in this world, and that includes the cannon fodder, is just not the creation of women. Women are inherently creators not destroyers and so I honestly think that if women rule this world, there would have been smaller armies, smaller defense budgets and as a result less fighting. In a world of conflict created by men why in the world should women participate?, should the want to participate, why in the world should they protest for not being allowed to participate?

If the Indian defenses or any other defenses for that matter want to keep women out, they are doing women a favour we should be grateful for. Women especially the upper middle class ones, who have access to all the TV channels and self appoint themselves ‘speakers’ on behalf of other women, often drape themselves in the deceptive garb of feminism and enlightenment and fight for equal opportunity with out the intelligence to note, who it is that they are fighting with. How many of these women have sent their children to the defenses without a heavy heart is yet to be seen, but more important for these women to discern is, what it is that one is fighting for. What good has any defense force done so far. An overwhelming majority of the time, a country’s defense forces are used against their own people, why would we as women want to perpetuate this violence. So Hail to the Indian defense forces and please keep the women out.