A HECTIC WEEK THAT WAS

It is some time that I made a post. Both at personal and professional front, I have been quiet busy over the last fortnight.

In fact, last week was full of activities. The week started on Sunday the 22nd with the KMA Golden Jubilee valedictory function in which I received an honor award from the Kerala Governor, H.E Shri. R L Bhatia, for helping to build the institution of KMA and for contributing to the management movement in the state, it was indeed a soothing moment to have it received in front of friends, colleagues and corporate chieftains.

Later in the week, on Wednesday, there was the seventh installation meeting of Rotary Cochin International, a club I chartered in the year 2002. It was more happy an occasion because the seventh President is my colleague in Team Frontline Ltd, Mr.V. Prashanth Menon. I got the opportunity to introduce Prasanth Menon and from the feedback of the audience and from Prashanth, it seemed every one liked the intro.

On Thursday evening, with the President of ‘Better Cochin Response Group’ Shri. S Gopakumar, I called on the District Collector Mrs. Beena. I had known her earlier through our association with ISTD. Our President laid before her the catalytic efforts being put up by the Group to help Cochin manage of traffic issues and solid waste management issues. A project related to reducing the traffic jam at South over bridge was detailed to her.

On Friday morning Better Cochin Response Group had a breakfast meeting at Sarovaram Hotel on the NH Bye pass. In addition to 15 members from the group who are drawn from various walks of life, other personalities who had attended the meetings include the Deputy Mayor (the defacto Mayor) of Cochin, The Chief Town Planner of Cochin, The Executive Engineer of State PWD in charge of the city roads, The Engineering Section heads of Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) and Cochin Corporation. The discussion ensued regarding the projects on the reduction of traffic congestion at South over bridge, a cross-over bridge at Shanmugham Road, bus shelters with public convenience stations at MG Road etc. We also had the representatives of a major signage company based at Delhi who were invited to present their plans of helping out at these projects on Build Operate & Transfer (BOT) model. It was indeed a very fruitful meeting.

On Friday afternoon, there was the Core Group Meeting (CGM) of TiE Kerala Chapter. This was a good meeting with much improved attendance. Charter member retreat and other SIG functions came for discussions. As in other years, this time the Charter member retreat is planned on August 2 and 3rd at Marari Beach Resort Alleppey. I look forward to the same. It is quiet long that I spent some quality time with the Charter members.

Same day evening, we had the election and Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Kerala Management Association. This year’s election had been very tight and well fought between 15 nominations for eight seats; most of the nominees were big wigs of the State on the management front. Most of the members whom I had cast my votes had won, particularly, Dr. Jyan of BPCL, Mr. K N Shastry our current Secretary, Rajmohan Nair of LIC, S Gopa Kumar Head of the Factories of Apollo Tyres Ltd Kerala and Jayathilakan, formerly Chief Engineer of FACT who was my Secretary when I was the President in the year 2003 . I am very glad about the results. I also got an opportunity to felicitate the President & secretary, M/s Ravi and Shastry. Normally this is not done in KMA as our managing council members and past presidents are very miserly with words of praise. I wanted to break the tradition and I am glad that I did it. In fact, we gave a standing ovation to the President for successful KMA Year in 2007-08. The dinner at KMA was attended by more that 150 managers and I got compliments from many senior members for taking a bold step of felicitating the President and the Secretary.

All those things had happened in addition to my work front where there was series of meeting both internal & external. Our Sales Quarter is coming to an end by this month end and now we need to schedule quarterly review meetings and so on. At the office I got an opportunity to mentor Mr. Avinash Krishnan, CEO of Qanta consulting, a start up company trying to specialize in e-commerce, SEO and web based marketing. We have to meet again for some more times.

One event I missed was the Board meeting of Kerala Venture Capital Ltd. at Trivandrum on Friday last week as it clashed with other Cochin based activities.

Overall, it was a jam-packed week, full of activities. What made this week more special was that I could undertake or be part of lots of meaningful activities that are looking to meet some noble objectives. I do feel happy at the turn of events.

THE SPIRITUALITY CIRCUS

In the last posting titled “My Mumbai Visit”, I had cited our experiences during our visit to the ‘happening city’ of Mumbai including that of the day when we had taken for Mumbai Darshan. I had mentioned how disappointed we were with the Mumbai darshan. The last part of it was visiting the Hare Krishna Mission temple @ Juhu/Versova. A small experience therein, I thought it worthy to be mentioned here. Honestly, I do not know if this temple really qualifies to be a darshan point. There are so many historic spots that the travel agency could have taken us to. Anyway, we were there at their mercy. 

 It was indeed very crowded at the temple. We were queuing up to see the Deities. The main one was Krishna & Radha together and there were so many other sub-deities. That day, in the evening, there was this special prayer and pooja connected with Narsingh avatar of Vishnu. Having nothing else to do (we were given more than an hour for the temple visit) and being pious people, we decided to sit through the prayer for sometime. There was the ‘homkund’ and some of the Hare Krishna sanyasins were sitting around that. At another side, there was this main prayer singer with his harmonium surrounded by sub-singers (again, Hare Krishna sanyasins). And there were some more of them hovering around, the very look of them showed that they were senior sanyasins. They had a managerial look about them. 

The prayer was about to start. Then there were special dignitaries who were the invited guests of the mission. I saw about thirty of them, all decked in costly silk cloths, both men and women, sweating profusely. Behind these VIPs, were their ‘chelas’ (ADCs) with a requesting look of “Saheb / Sahiba is here, please get him/her to be seated properly please”. 

And then I saw the politics of the body language. There were these ‘yajman’s of the Pooja (the senior managerial swamis) who were giving scant attention to the VIPs. ‘Who is bigger, you or me?’ was in their eyes. The junior swamis were trying to accommodate the VIPs but were embarrassed because the approval of the senior swamis did not come about. The VIPs were sweating and standing awkwardly not knowing what to do. The VIP chelas were getting terribly pale on their face because their bosses were not getting accommodated well. In between, the main prayer singer swami started singing the bhajans and the sub singers and other disciples started their accompaniment of that. There was this Pooja swami looking very angry because his chanting was not heard by any. Around the whole premise were so many people with high decibel noise around them. 

Suddenly one heard the main prayer singer swami announcing that a missing boy was found, requesting his parents to come and take him home. There was this small child with the security guards wailing loudly for his mother. It was indeed chaotic. It was the last place where one could feel the ‘bhakti’. All of it looked like a circus with lots of clowns around, doing things in their own way, without any synergy. Being from a background of very conservative and orthodox temples and rituals, I was really amused to see this expression of ‘bhakti’ by a movement that is very well known for their stereotype culture. 

My impression of the organizational skills of the Hare Krishna mission seriously took a dent. “Let us get out of this circus”, I told my family and we vacated the scene immediately. What I saw was an over-expression of the materialistic definition of spirituality. Definitely this is not what our saints meant through the Vedas and the Upanishads that they created, to make the man a spiritual being. What is practiced by the cults is exactly opposite of what was preached by the Rishis. Any thinking person will be shocked to see the ostentatious, materialistic expression of spirituality that we see in places such as above. I worry that these things only will degenerate man into lower beings.

MY MUMBAI VISIT

It is after a fairly good gap of time that I had visited Mumbai. During the Time I was employed, I had plenty of opportunities to visit the city and get kicked by the sheer vibrancy that Mumbai (then Bombay) has to offer.

Mumbai is called the financial capital of India. Mumbaikar takes pride in calling the city as Shanghai of India. Mumbai city never sleeps and runs all time. Like it is said in the old Akbar Khan Movie, Hadsa, ‘Yahan roz roz kahi mod mod par hota hai koi na koi hadsa’ (At all times, somewhere, some incident happens). Mumbai has the good, the bad and the ugly in it. And above everything, Mumbai has Bollywood. The dream factories churn out hundreds of movies and TV serials every year with songs, dances and big melodrama in each. People get their nirvana by seeing from outside the homes of the Bachans, Kapoors, Chopras and the Khans (there are so many of them, all claiming to be King Khans!)

I went to visit Mumbai with my family. I told them that I am taking them to the largest yet the most industrious city in the country. My pep talk to them included comparisons such as ‘if you had not seen Mumbai, you had not seen India’, ‘before you see any mega polis, you must see Mumbai’ etc. I believe this really set up higher expectations!

I do not know whether there was expectation mismatch or there is true degeneration in Mumbai, we were not very impressed by what we saw. After seeing the city from the top and from the sides, my daughter said that all the apartments of Mumbai come with a free slum view. Very true indeed! Earlier, it was sea view! From time immemorial, there are chawls and the shanties in Mumbai. All are still there, growing big. Nothing had improved, really.

When you are in Mumbai, you spend maximum time for traveling. Time flies inside the buses, trains and the taxis. On a worse day, one could see morning, noon and the evening of the day, sitting in a taxi at Western (or Eastern) Express Highway of Mumbai. The wise men said, enjoy the journey. How true when you are in Mumbai! (particularly when you don’t have any other option). More than half your life in Mumbai would be wastefully spent on travel.

We spent a day for Mumbai Darshan. We did book in the top end Volvo bus run by Neeta travels (we were advised that they are the best). We chose a Sunday for the darshan so that we could avoid the traffic and see more. I must say it was very disappointing. The bus had a guide who was insincere and lazy. Though it was full of outsiders (including Chinese & westerners), he went on with his low tone in Hindi on a mic that was defective. He never accompanied us to the monuments to tell us its history. Thank God, I knew little bit on Mumbai and that saved the day for me, with my children.

During my interactions with a variety of mumbaikars, whether he is shopkeeper or a driver, an officer or a doctor, I saw a level of impersonality in everyone. And a level of insincerity too. Their body language tells that they are here to make a living and are not concerned with anything else. Whether it is a service or a product, it is delivered in an uninvolved style in Mumbai. Not serious. Not very concerned. The attitude is ‘theek hai, lelo na to phuto (OK, take it or leave it)’ like. Mad world it is, nobody has time for anything.

There are thousands of people everywhere. As soon as the sun rises, people come out of their foxholes. Every place, every road, every junction is a sea of people. If you would you like to see worthless lives all around, come to Mumbai. There are plenty of them. In fact, the majority of the sixteen million of them - the official population figure of Mumbai.

We squeezed in a day to travel to Pune, primarily to see OSHO’s ashram, and that is another story. On the way to Pune, sitting in the bus, a view that I had seen at Nerul, will everlastingly stay in my memory, that of an old (very old, wrinkled) woman cleaning her utensils in the black dark open sewage water that flows through in front of her hutment. That says it all, about the life and its worth!

It is true that Mumbai is the place in India that offers the best opportunity, for money to be made and to make dreams come true. Huge conglomerates are headquartered here. The big corporations, the banks, the stock exchanges, the ports, the bollywood, all are there to help make your day. However, there is plenty of scope for improvement for Mumbai, in everything it has. At present, Mumbai is nowhere near the city that it is compared with (Shanghai), For that to happen, Mumbai has miles to go and of course, that requires a big change in attitude too.