Bird Sanctuary

We were only 20 students in the ICWAI (Final) class at Kochi in 1995 – twelve boys and eight girls.  Since most of us were working, the classes were held in the evening from 6 to 8.  We were taught by senior managers and executives from various companies.  Since we all met only during the class hours, we didn’t have much opportunity for personal interactions.  Most of us used to reach the ICWAI centre just before the class started and would be in a hurry to catch the bus back home when the class ended.  We got time to chit-chat only when a teacher came late or on those rare occasions when a teacher didn’t come.  So, we decided to go on a one-day trip to Thattekkad, a bird sanctuary, situated around 60 kilometers from Kochi.

Thattekkad is a popular bird sanctuary inside a reserve forest in Kothamangalam thaluk.  On a Sunday, we set off to Thattekkad in a minibus.  It was a sunny day with a clear sky.  At the entrance, we were instructed not to make noise inside the sanctuary as that would disturb the birds.  We started walking into the sanctuary, which was full of tall trees covering the entire sky.  At some places, the sunlight was not touching the ground due to the wide and thick shades of the trees.  We didn’t have any tourist guide with us.  So, even though we spotted many birds, we could not identify them.  Anyway, there was full of silence and the only noise was that of the wind blowing through the trees, creaking of bamboos, chirping of birds etc.  Nature was at its best (Unfortunately, back then, we didn’t have cell phones with cameras).  After walking for a long time, we reached an open space and the girls in our group decided to sit there for a while.  Two boys also gave them company.  The rest of us continued to walk further into the forest.

At one point, we saw a warning sign that visitors were not allowed beyond that point, because of the presence of wild elephants.  However, there was no forest guard to stop us.  We were hesitant to go further, but our friend Vasu insisted that we go little further.  Vasu had already got selection as Sub-Inspector of Police and was waiting to join the training.  So, obviously he showed courage and led us into the forest.  We continued walking, though slowly and cautiously.  The forest was getting thicker.  After a while, the chirping of birds stopped and there was an eerie silence all over the place.  We reached near a lake and saw a muddy path leading to the lake.  We also saw the pug marks of elephants in the mud.  It was clear that elephants took that path to reach the lake.  We were scared to move any further.  But Vasu kept telling us, ‘Come on nothing will happen’. 

Suddenly we heard a loud noise on one side and saw the bushes shaking violently.  None of us had the guts to wait and watch what it was.  We all turned around and started running back.  While running, I turned around to see where Vasu was.  Some of my friends were running behind me, but Vasu was not among them.  For a while I thought whether Vasu stayed back foolishly to exhibit his valour.  But in no time, I spotted him.  Those friends who were the first to turn around and run were in front of me – and the first among them was Vasu! We stopped only when we reached the place where our other friends were resting.  Everyone started pulling the leg of Vasu.  He said, ‘when one’s own life is at threat, even a policeman would flee’.  While returning, we asked the forest guard at the entrance, ‘do you really spot elephants in that area?’.  He said, ‘yes, quite often’.

Lemon Juice

Lemon juice, especially with sugar and a pinch of salt mixed with cold soda, was one of my favourites during my college days.  In fact, there was not a single day on which I had not tasted the same in a nearby shop.  But over the years my liking for lemon juice came down.  Today I don’t relish it as much as I used to during my college days.

In 1996 when I moved to Ahmedabad, on my first day my roommates took me out for dinner.  Growing up in a small city, in a middle-class family, I didn’t have any experience of dining in big restaurants.  All my restaurant visits prior to this were to small ones where we had south Indian varieties like ‘masala dosa’, ‘idli-vada’ etc.  But the dinner that my roommates hosted was in Hotel Topaz, a reasonably big north Indian restaurant near IIM.  There were many ‘firsts’ during this occasion – first dinner with my roommates, first dinner in a big restaurant, a north Indian meal for the first time, tasting ‘tandoori roti’ for the first time and so on.  At the end, a small bowl of water with a piece of lemon was kept in front of us.  I was wondering if I was supposed to squeeze the lemon and drink.  But I didn’t understand why the water was lukewarm.  Luckily, before I could squeeze the lemon and drink, my roommates started using it and I got to know it!

In 1998 I moved to Tumkur.  Within a few days of my joining SIT, my cousin Anil came to Bangalore on an official visit.  I went to Bangalore to meet him.  That day he had an appointment with a senior manager of a company.  Though I was reluctant to join him, he insisted that I accompany him.  He said, ‘we are not discussing anything confidential and the person I am meeting is a senior gentleman who is a very nice person’. I agreed.  The meeting was in a club.  After the initial chit-chat when they both got into business discussion, I started flipping through a magazine kept there.  In between, our guest asked, ‘shall we order something?’ Turning to me he asked, ‘shall I order something hot for you?’. I said yes.  Shocked, Anil turned towards me and whispered, ‘Do you know what he meant by hot?’, I said, ‘Yes, coffee or tea’.  Listening to this, with a smile on his face, our host told me, ‘Sorry, I don’t think they offer coffee or tea here’.  Finally, I ended up ordering lemon juice!’’

A few years later a senior executive from a company came to my institute as visiting faculty.  My director asked me to accompany him for dinner.  When I reached the guest house, he told me, ‘First let us have a drink, then we will go for dinner.  Which is the best bar in Tumkur?’.  I said, ‘I have no idea’.  He said, ‘No problem, let us find out’.  Thus, a teetotaler, who had no idea about bars in Tumkur, along with a person who had no idea about anything in Tumkur set off in search of a good bar!  After passing through a couple of them, when we reached in front of a particular bar, my guest felt that it was decent enough for his standards.  So, we went in.  He started going through the menu.  For a while, I felt as if the guest was hosting the host.  He ordered something of his choice, and I had to settle down with – yes, you guessed it right – the lemon juice!

 

 

Wasp Empire

A few months ago, I noticed a small nest on the window of my house.  It was very small, and I didn’t know whose nest it was.  As time passed, the nest started growing and I realised that it was the nest of wasps.  I was really fascinated by the way they were constructing the nest.  I kept observing the process every day.  It was small, and it had only a few wasps.  Since it was built on a window on one covered part of the building where nobody disturbed them, I decided to leave it there.

But, within days I could see phenomenal growth in its size and the number of wasps multiplied exponentially.  I kept observing their movements.  I could see hundreds of them always moving in and out of the nest.  The wasps were very active during the daytime.  Most of them would fly out and return back soon to the nest.  Though they were very active during the daytime, they all crammed into the nest by evening.  They rarely came out in the night and the nest looked as if there were no wasps inside, while hundreds of them were actually there! 

Shortly, the nest became huge, and I started worrying about the risk of the nest being disturbed by someone resulting in dangerous consequences.  Though wasp sting is not poisonous, when hundreds of them attack, it can be fatal.  But I kept thinking, when we don’t bother them, why would they attack us?

One day I left my home to go to the office after lunch.  When I sat on my office chair I felt as if someone gave me an injection in my leg.  I jumped out of the chair.  Yes, it was a wasp! It was probably sitting on my chappal which I had left outside my house.  When I wore the chappal, it would have climbed on to my leg.  It was very painful.  Now that the wasps had breached the trust, I decided that I must get that nest removed from my house. 

To my surprise and shock, nobody was available in Tumkur for removing wasp nests.  I started getting panicky.  I was also worried about my neighbours who were at risk.  From the internet, I located an agency at Bangalore, specializing in pest control, including removal of wasp nests.  When I contacted them, they told me that they do not provide service outside Bangalore.  But they gave me the number of another person.  This guy was also from Bangalore but was willing to come to Tumkur and do the job.  However, he demanded a very high fee for the service.  When I asked him how he was planning to remove the nest, he was not willing to disclose.  Somehow, I was not convinced about this guy, especially because, if he made any mistake while removing the nest, all wasps would come out and attack people nearby. 

Meanwhile, I also did a lot of research on wasps by surfing the internet.  I learnt about their behaviour, life span, making the nest etc.  I also read that the wasps usually leave the nest after a few months, especially during winter and once abandoned they never come back to a nest.  During winter they won’t get food and would die due to starvation.  By then, the winter was starting, and I could see a few of them falling dead near the nest.  One day a friend of mine told me that wasps had made a huge nest near his house too and the same was abandoned after a few months.  So, I kept observing the nest every day.  As days went by, I found more and more falling dead.  Slowly the nest was completely empty.

Today the nest remains there as a monument of a onetime ‘Wasp Empire’!

Non-Veg – Non = Veg

I remember reading an article many years ago, which stated that most of the vegetarians are actually not vegetarians.  A vegetarian is a person who consumes no animal products, including milk.  Going by this definition, most of our traditional vegetarians, who consume milk and other dairy products will fail to qualify as vegetarians.  The article further stated that there are four categories of people.  First is the pure vegetarians (who are very less in number).  Second is the vast majority of the so-called ‘vegetarians’, who consume milk and milk products, who are actually lacto-vegans.  The third category is lacto-ovo-vegans, who consume milk products and eggs, but no fish and meat.  And the last category is non-vegetarians.  I belong to a lacto-vegan family.  But my father and I were lacto-ovo-vegans.  

When I was in college, one of my classmates got married.  Her marriage was in a Church in her village, about 20 kilometers from Kochi.  A group of us travelled to her village for the wedding.  It was a small village and we had to walk almost a kilometer from the bus station, climbing a small hillock, on top of which the church was located.  Enjoying the natural beauty, we climbed the hill.  We noticed that there were no shops or establishments anywhere nearby.  Some of us were already feeling hungry.  When all the rituals of the wedding were over, we rushed to the dining hall and occupied the seats.  When they started serving lunch, I realised that they only had one item – chicken biriyani.  I was the only lacto-vegan in the group.  All others were non-vegetarians.  Hearing us discussing my problem, the bride’s brother told us that he would go to the kitchen and see if he could get any vegetarian food for me.  After a while, he returned with disappointment saying nothing was available in the kitchen except the biriyani.  He was very apologetic too.

I was extremely hungry.  If I had decided not to eat, I would starve, because there were no restaurants nearby.  One of my friends suggested a way out.  He said, ‘I will get a plate of biriyani for you and carefully remove all chicken pieces from the biriyani.  You can eat the remaining, if you don’t mind’.  Though I was a lacto-vegan, since I always had many friends who were non-vegetarians, I didn’t have any aversion towards non-vegetarian food.  So, I agreed.  Thus, I ate ‘chicken-less chicken biriyani’ that day.

A new formula was invented: ‘Non-Veg – Non = Veg!’

Three Train Tales

It was early 2000. I used to travel frequently between Bangalore and Kochi by train.  One day I boarded Kanyakumari Express from Bangalore city station and occupied my seat in a reserved compartment.  My seat number was 42.  The train pulled out at 8 pm.  The next station was Bangalore Cantonment.  A middle-aged passenger boarded the train at Cant., came straight to my seat and said, ‘this is my seat’.  I was a bit annoyed by the way he spoke to me.  I said, ‘this is my seat’.  He said, ‘show me your ticket’. I said, ‘why should I show you my ticket, I am sure this is my seat.  You better check your ticket’.  He was in a fighting mood, as if I had wrongly occupied his seat.  Finally, he pulled out his ticket, looked at it and said, ‘look, 42 is my seat’.  I looked at his ticket.  The railway reservation tickets usually have the seat number, sex and age of the passenger printed on it.  Pointing to his ticket, I told him, ‘see, 42 is your age, your seat number is something else’!  He didn’t know how to face me.  Realising his folly, he said sorry and moved on.

The second incident took place a few years earlier to this, when I was at Ahmedabad.  Venkataraman, my roommate, was travelling from Ahmedabad to Chennai by an early morning train.  I saw him off at around 5 am and went back to sleep.  After some time, I heard someone knocking on the door – it was Venkataraman. I asked him, ‘what happened, you missed the train?’.  He said, ‘no, something strange happened. When I reached the railway station, the train was already on the platform.  But when I got into the compartment, I saw another passenger with his family in my allotted seat.  I told him, this is my seat.  He said, no this is my seat.  He showed his ticket, yes, he was right.  I took out my ticket.  I was surprised, how could railways allot the same seat to two passengers.  Suddenly, he asked me, are you supposed to travel by today’s train.  I said, yes.  He continued, oh, this is the train that was supposed to depart yesterday.  Due to a derailment somewhere enroute, all trains are running late and this one is running 24 hours late.  Your train has not yet arrived at Ahmedabad.  Then I checked the dates on our tickets.  Surprised, I got down and went to the enquiry counter, they said today’s train is expected to depart at around 1 pm.  So, I came back.

The third incident happened when I was in college.  My uncle and family were travelling to Bombay from Kollam in Kerala by Jayanti Janata Express.  Jayanti Janata Express ran between Kanyakumari and Bombay.  When they were about to leave their home, he made a phone call to the railway enquiry number and asked, ‘is Jayanti Janata on time?’ ‘No Sir, it is running 60 minutes late’.  Relaxed, they went a little later to the station.  When they reached the station, they were told that Jayanti Janata was on time and the train had already left Kollam.  Then he came to know that the Bombay-Kanyakumari down train was running 60 minutes late.  Since both the up and down trains crossed Kollam almost at the same time, there was this confusion.  They didn’t know what to do.  Jayanti Janata was the only train connecting Kollam and Bombay back then and to get another ticket they had to wait for more than a month.  The station master suggested, if they could drive fast by road and head straight to Ernakulam, where the train stopped for 20 minutes, they had a bleak chance of catching the train.  He told them not to try in any other station in between because in all those stations the halt was just 1-2 minutes.  Ernakulam was 150 kilometers away.  Somehow my uncle showed courage.  He took his brother’s car and drove straight to Ernakulam.  Since I was at Kochi (Ernakulam), his brother called me and asked me to go to Ernakulam railway station, so that I could help them board the train, in case they reached at the neck of the moment.  When I reached the station, I could hear the announcement of the train’s arrival.  Their car had not yet reached (remember, no cell phones those days).  Shortly, I saw the train arriving on the platform.  Holding my breath, I waited there.  Suddenly I could see their speeding car in the distance.  As soon as the car stopped at the portico, we swung into action, picked up their luggage and ran towards the train.  As they stepped in, we heard the whistle and the train started moving! All of us had a sigh of relief.

 

 

Investment Scam – DIY (Do It Yourself)!

Hey, if you are wondering which is the most profitable business, I can tell you without any doubt, it is Investment Scam.  Yes, you heard it right.  Nothing can be as profitable as ‘cheating people’! So, if you want to try, here are some useful tips.  

• Start a Finance Company and give it a catchy name.  Set up a fancy office (take it on lease or rent, but pretend it to be the company’s own)

• Start an investment scheme offering exorbitantly high rate of interest (for example, 4% per month, which amounts to 48% per annum)

• Create as much publicity as possible.  Create an image as if you have a variety of businesses and you are stingy rich.  This will instill a lot of confidence in the investors, because they would believe that even if the investment scheme does not work, you have enough assets to repay their money.  The more flamboyant your life is, more is the confidence the investors have in you!  Appear in media and give sermons. Always promise to protect your deposit holders at any cost.

• Now the money game starts.  To begin with, assume 10 people invest Rs.1 lakh each for three years in your scheme.  You have Rs.10 lakhs in your pocket.  Pay 4% (Rs.40,000) towards interest in the first month.  Continue to pay the interest every month promptly for few more months.  

• As the saying goes, ‘the proof of pudding is in eating’, when you pay the interest promptly, the investors’ confidence will skyrocket.  Now, they will become your brand ambassadors and bring more investors to you.

• In one year, even if you get only Rs.10 lakhs as deposit, the money required to pay interest is Rs.4.80 lakhs.  The remaining Rs.5.20 lakhs are all yours!  Imagine what happens when more money flows in.  In fact, what you are doing is just rotating the money – collect from A and pay B, collect from B to pay C, collect from D to pay C and so on.  Your success depends on how efficiently you manage this flow.

• At the end of three years, when the deposit made by the first set of investors becomes due, if you are lucky, you would have collected enough money from others to repay them.  But this cannot go on for long.  So, you need to envisage a day when your scheme bursts.  When the scheme is running, it is better to keep an escape plan ready.  When it bursts, abscond.  If you are lucky, you can avoid the police. Otherwise, be ready to spend a few days in jail, till you get bail.  Anyway, the case will go on for a long time, the public and media will forget your case, and the investors will be fed up fighting.  You can live on!

What is your investment in this business? Almost nothing.  The returns are very high.  Yes, as they teach you in Finance, you need to take risks, rather high risk!

(The above write up is satirical, but unfortunately, this is the modus operandi of most of the scamsters.  No, I don’t have the experience of running such a scheme.  But I have been reading about investment scams since my college days. If you think only uneducated people get trapped by the scamsters, you are wrong.  Everyone is attracted towards high rate of returns promised by them, because ‘greed’ has no color, sex, religion, or class – all are greedy!  So, people forget one simple Economic principle that if someone offers 48% interest per annum, he/she should be able to invest the money somewhere else and generate more than 48% to sustain the scheme.  Common sense is enough to realise that it is not possible to generate such rates of returns consistently from any business.  So, next time you come across any scheme that offers rates of returns far above the rates prevalent in the economy, just ignore them or be prepared to lose your hard-earned money)

Recipe for Growth

Recently I read an article written by Prof. Ajit Ranade in India Today.  An alumnus of IIMA, he writes about why IIMA has always attracted the best students in the country and remained at the forefront of management education.  One sentence by him caught my attention, ‘many gold medalists got their egos deflated in the very first term’.  Having been part of IIMA for two years, I could very well relate to this.  I remembered another instance.  Few years ago I met the Director of a B-School at Bengaluru, who was also an alumnus of IIMA.  She told me, ‘I was a rank holder in my school. I got first rank in my pre-degree and again a first rank in my B.Sc. Mathematics from Bangalore University.  I was considered an extraordinary scholar in my family and friends’ circle.  With this aura of superiority, I landed at IIMA.  Within no time, I realized that everyone else was more intelligent than me and nobody cared about my ranks’.  

So, what happens when we are surrounded by people who are more intelligent and knowledgeable than us?  Before answering that question, let me touch up on two more instances.  Prof. Ravi J Mathai, the first full-time director of IIMA, was not even a postgraduate.  But what he did at IIMA was to create a team of academicians, where almost everyone was more qualified than him and led the institute to greater heights.  Prof. P V Indiresan, the ex-Director of IIT Madras, spoke about his contributions to IIT at a function organised to confer the IEEE Fellowship on him.  He said, ‘the best thing I did for IIT is to induce a number of outstanding persons to give up lucrative careers elsewhere to join in the struggle for life here in IIT. That is my pride: I persuaded a number of minds greater than mine to join IIT’. 

There lies the answer to my question.  When we are surrounded by people who are slightly less in caliber and intellect, we would definitely feel a sense of superiority.  But that feeling is of no use.  It doesn’t allow us to push beyond the comfort zone, to scale greater heights and grow.  But when we are in the company of people better than us in terms of knowledge, intellect, and skills, we will be motivated to work harder and grow.  But, we need to carefully keep away jealousy.  It is very much possible to find people younger than us and coming from lesser backgrounds to be more knowledgeable than us.  We need to humbly accept the truth and go hand in hand with them. 

Even our ancient wisdom advocates ‘Satsang’, being in the company of good (better) people.  So, one of the recipes for growth is – Surround yourself with people who are better than you!