Kartik Kannan on a Talk Show

I was invited by the student of Asian College of Journalism, a guest on their morning Video Show " Hello Chennai" on the 17th of March, 2011 to speak my thoughts on the World Cup. Do let me know, your feedback on the conversation.

Weekend Trip-Part-2- Sawantwadi to Vengurla

We went to the Sawantwadi bus stand to find a sleepy little minitown that was in no hurry to head to the coast. The coastal buses here go to either Vengurla, Kudal or Terekhol. We decided on Vengurla and sat in the bus to find a certain calm that was not present in the big cities.

The bus never had a fixed time of leaving, nor did the conductor seemed to have any fixed target on number of commuters. It was a happy little world that fortunately had no one with a dagger saying DEADLINES! People could stop the bus by just plonking their foot 2 steps on the road and that would be a bus stop. We were asking around a farmer on some observations we had on the fields as to why Hay was kept in stacks all over the fields. We heard from him that, it was food for his horses and animals, who were working on the fields. Nothing super duper, just that corporate life dulls your common sense!


We spotted this cute little wannabe Mexican kid, on the road to Vengurla

One needs to climb a small ascent to get to a ruined stone fort. Shot this from there. Alluring views of the azure waters and the palm/coconut trees.

How much must that be? 20 metres long and walkable in 20 seconds? NO... It was far longer than we expected and the water was close to 6-7 feet deep, during the high tide. Vinay decided to get inside and try out how quickly we could cross, as we had a laptop bag to ferry across. When he came back bleeding from the swim, we realised that the water was deep and had gorges and rocks inside, so we hired a small boat for 50 rs to help us cross to UTOPIA.

While on the boat, during the 10 minute ride, we played the oarsman, learning how to use the oars in the lake, with the fisherman also giving an insight into his life. The fisherman,during the monsoon, also doubles up as a mechanic to supplement the income, which goes on a downward spiral with rough seas and weather conditions. during such impulse trips, converations with the local people reveals a lot about the place, people, their customs, their lives, their motivations and then finally you are able to connect the dots between geography and history that lies dormant in your brain.

Weekend Trip- Part 1- Mumbai to Sawantwadi

There has always been this romance associated with unreserved and unplanned travel in trems of meeting new people, understanding their life story, and exploring lands already explored by well known travellers.. I set off on this trip alone, after office on last friday. At 7 15 pm, I decided to call it a day and head to Dadar Railway station for buying a 'unreserved' ticket from Dadar to Pernem. Now the best train to catch, to head to the konkan coast, would be Train number 6335, from the outskirts of Mumbai. When buying unreserved tickets in Mumbai, for travel north or south, the best place to buy it would be at the bigger railway terminuses like Dadar/VT/Bombay Central/Bandra Terminus/Borivali/Panvel. I tried buyinga a ticket from Lower Parel, but that is seemingly not possible and if you do head to the Dadar, you need to get it only from the counter on Dadar East.

Dadar-Pernem- 137 rs

Now after purchasing my tickets and realising that the 10 pm train at Panvel was a better option than the Konkan Kanya express, I decided to head to Mani's lunch home at Matunga and explore the combo that keeps every Tam guy worth existing- Ghee roast and filter coffee. After a short tiffen, I managed to find a taxi to Wadala Road station and took the local train to Panvel, which eased and ambled to Panvel by 9 30 pm, with the crowd being 1/1000th of what it was when I bullied people to head butt my way at Wadala road.

Once at Panvel, I removed the heavy bag I was carrying and allowed my shoulders to be free. The last 2 day's work out sessions had obviously made every sinew of my shoulder writhe in pain. I was feeling weak all of a sudden, whether I would have the energy to last the night braving the crowd in the unreserved compartment. But Today was Gudi Padwa, Maharashtrian new year, so every Mumbaikar was at home celebrating with family and if he was a travel freak, he would have left on Thursday night and not on Friday night, when I was leaving.

Just when my shoulders were groaning, I came across a short, dark man who seemed to be glancing into reams of paper. I guessed, he must be the TTE, and went and asked him if there was a possibility of getting a reserved seat. Today was my day, and given that quite a few states celebrated new year on Friday, nobody was competing with me on the train to Sawantwadi. The TTE charged me 200 rs extra for accomadating me in a middle berth, for me to lay me shoulders to rest.

Fine to the TTE- 200 Rs

I must have woken up every half an hour after 2 30 am, and finally decided to get up at 5 am, as the train was scheduled to arrive at Sawantwadi at 5 15 am. With everyone sleeping in the compartment, I couldnt rely on 'wisdom of the crowds' to get off, so I decided to take the plaunge of connecting the mobile phone GPS on my N-81, on Roaming(this combo guzzles the charge on your mobile). I was still a few kilometres from my destination, and so I decided to abandon my 2 foot space of the middle birth and stand at the footboard, allowing the morning chill winds to hit my face. After staring aimlessly at darkness, I saw that next to the toilet, there was a charging point and decided to charge my mobile phone. My friend Vinay, was to pick me up at the station. He had arrived the previous night after a sales visit to central Maharashtra. Vinay had brought an auto along and we drove to Sawantwadi town, which was 9 km's from the station. I hear that there is only 1 hotel near the sawant wadi railway station, and if you are caught up at the station, there's atleast a paid home to go to unlike stations in Goa( Pernem/Thivim/Karmali/Cancona).

We had breakfast in an udupi hotel, where the sun's rays had just pierced in at around 7 15 am. We tried to ask the hotel proprietor for breakfast at 6 20 am, but he was least interested in serving us, as words like 'customer', 'dhandha' are alien terms in this slowmoving,bovine and peaceful town.


Its not that you have too many options within a few minutes of the hotel opening. Whatever we asked for resulted in 3 items being suggested/reccomended. Upma,Sheera and Poha. We were in a mood for any thing, as long as it facilitated bowel movement and gave us a pleasant taste to make us feel good, while we saunter around the town.

The plate on the left is mine, which has Sheera(Yellow sweet) and Upma. Vinay is seen having Poha, which has become his favourite dish after he relocated to Mumbai.

The town reminded me of the faint little town of Malgudi, which had a sense of calm written all over it.

People are early to rise and discuss news with other people in the promenade of the lake.

For more updates, watch part 2 of the Blog, to be published soon

Goa- Trip Part 3

On 25th Morning, we went about hunting for Dolphins around Palolem. The boat guys will always point in a direction opposite to what you are seeing and say "dekho dolphin". We did see a couple of them jumping a mile away, but it's not like free willy, where you play with whales and dolphins. Its a nice trip on the boat, to get better views of the smaller islands around. Dont go expecting to see a dolphin.

Nischal decided to perch himself on the highest point on the beach to spot dolphins. All he did were to spot skimpily clad firangs swimming near the coast. Still his eyes wouldnt complain, would they?

Our Cottage, room number 17, on Bridges and Tunnels ( A hotel in Palolem Beach, on the hill) turned out to be a vantage point for seeing nature at its best. Right below as we opened the doors of our balcony, we could see women in various stages of nudity,trying to soak up the sun, and also the lovely bluish waters of the coulumb bay. If this was our view to the west, see the picture below to see our view to the east


That was the panoramic view of Palolem Beach, dotted with coconut trees and bamboo huts

Weekend Trip To Goa- Republic Day Long Weekend! Part 1

At Canacona Station.

We got off the unreserved compartment. We(Myself and Nischal Ram, a friend from B school) took the train from Panvel, and jumped into the unreserved compartment in train 6335, which was coming from Gandhidham and heading to Nagercoil. Most of the unreserved compartment passengers were workers going home to the konkan regions of ratnagiri and sawantwadi. A few of them were also 'Mallu' students who were content getting their inchspace to stand. Since we were able to bully around our way inside, we got 2 places to sit, but in the same position for a few hours. After 3 am, the seats that we occupied had a little more space to test the elasticity of our muscles. Our train reached Madgaon at 6 40 am, and reached Canacona at about 8 am. I remember passing through a tunnel enroute which was easily the longest tunnel that I have been in. Must have been a full 3-4 minutes inside that tunnel between Madgaon and Canacona(South Goa)

Watching the waves rise up and down at Palolem. Now that was our morning activity till we finished our breakfast in 2 hours. The water was pleasantly clean from the garbage one gets along Anjuna, Baga and Calangute. It a greensih tinge, but nowhere near the beauty of Havelock Island(Andamans).

The chairs we sat in, as we just saw the waves coming and going.

The colours of Palolem all around us. Goa was a beautiful sight in the morning. Decorated with bright colours, the contrast of blue skies against green coconut tree leaves, brown bamboo and of course a lot of phoren skin in various shades of white,cream and dark brown.

Part 2 comes in a while. Till then soak in the current post

Elements from weekend Chennai Trip- Part 2

Updates on this post, coming up by tonight.

My School Bus Driver, Physics Lab Atendant

Mahalakshmi Maam

Revathi and Jagadha Maam.

The New Year Bank Account!

Every time, as december 31st nears, most of us, thanks to the media frenzy around us, tend to make castles in air whch we refer to as "New Year Resolutions". Its basically like opening a new bank account after defaulting for payments in the prevous bank. We seem to forget the whole year's sins and absolve ourselves of any bad memories by going for a few minutes into these make believe world called resolutions. I was also one such person, who mildly tried the resolution thingy, only to forget it after having a sumptous lunch on Jan 1st,1997. My resolution was not too watch too much cricket on television, especially Ranji and county cricket matches, as too less time was being invested in studying during school days, but thanks to the burgeoning sports channels of Prime sports(Now Star Sports) and ESPN.

Its 11 years since that resolution, which failed like a rocket launch at its research stage. Now times are different. I have realised, I cant change myself drastically, but small installments regularly can create a habit. So wthout much shame, I start a new bank account called "New Year resolutions 2009"

My resolutions

1) Do lesser things, but do it well. Reduce mediocrity levels from in all activities.(seriously, 80% of the activites that I do, are with 20% interest and remaining 20% of the activties are done with 80% interest level)

2) Keep the house as clean as your mind. Both are indicators of the chaos that's plaguing the mind

3) Get organised by keeping bills and tracking payments carefully. Use the damn Microsoft Excel!

4) Watch 3 movies a week. No better way to understand the way the world and people work.

5) Buy Movies/Books only after extinguishing the current lot that lies piled up in 2 suitcases.

6) Examine the hard discs every month and keep only what might be neccesary. No use keeping something safe when you dont know you have that set of movies/folders at all.

7) Wash 2 sets of clothes a day

8) Mop the floors once a week. Sweep twice a week

9) Start to learn basic cooking, atleast Rasam, Sambhar, Chappati, Dal level

10) Do a weekly research of one new place and jot my targets to visit, if ever I reach there.

11) Read the above 10 for a month and see if the habits are coming along well.

PS: If you thought this was designed for this new year, then the answer is NO. This is what my mind says I should be doing, when think about my life, when I commute to work in the local trains. So there's more than a serious reason to follow this, than just making 'resolutions'.

Thanks for reading the post, and wish you a Happy New Year!

Infy Literature

The last couple of weeks, I have been reading a lot of literature penned by the founders of the Infosys family. Sudha Murthy's "Old Man and his God","Wise and Otherwise" and her other short stories have been a great peek into the Indian way of life,across the length and breadth of the country. I have also been seeing a lot of media attention on Nandan Nilelani's book, 'Imagining India' that is all set to release on the 24th of November. With the newer breed of writers also having a blog to interact with readers, Nandan Nilekani has started his book based blog right here.

I am pulling an extract of what the book has in store.

" Why then, do our challenges seem so intractable? We are an emerging economy, making waves in the global market, but the numbers of our poor are still staggering. We struggle to provide our citizens with basic levels of education and healthcare. In many parts of rural India, infrastructure is nothing more than a distant hope – we have villages with no roads leading out, and villages with mobile connectivity but without electricity, where people have to walk miles to the nearest town just to charge their phones.
I believe that much of India’s challenges come from our divisions. The Indian state has long championed the country’s ‘unity in diversity’, but in reality, our diversity has also meant that we are a fractured society, split along the lines of caste, religion, region and class. As a result, our politics have long been a politics of our divides rather than one driven by ideas or solutions.
However, there is a chance that this has begun to change. I think that the most effective answer to such politics is creating a ’safety net of ideas’ that can weather political storms and divisive rhetoric. If such ideas become popular across large numbers of voters, no government can survive by simply mining our resentments, and without addressing these issues."

If this interests you, I'd reccomend you book your copy at the earliest.

So This weekend's theme and flavour

1) Order the book

2) Complete Sudha Muthys books

3) Watch a DVD rerun of "Swades"

England 0-2 Down! Whats the Road Ahead

I had written this article a couple of days back for Crickblog. If you find some 3 minutes to thumb through, I'd suggest you click here

Chidambaram Reunion

Driving in the Tamil Nadu Monsoon enroute Chidambaram

I seem to be making some gesture to Madhanagopal, Aanand, Ananthavenkat. Probably complaining about the mosquitos.

Aanand making a point on the bad quality of water in the hotel that we stayed.

Sakthi staring and wondering after he tied the knot! "Was it three or 4 knots that I tied in the melee and the noise"?

Marriages!

This looks like the marriages season and quite a lot of my friends are getting married around the same time. One of my friends got married last week in Velachery, another getting married this week in Chidambaram. So that means a quick dashing visit to Chennai on Friday evening and back to bustling Bombay on Sunday night, after the marriage on Sunday.
Come November and December, there are marriages in Nandanbar(Somewere in Maharashtra), Ujjain(MP), Chennai and Jaipur. Thats quite a lot of travelling that week (Dec 2-9 week). Suddenly matrimony seems to be a little interesting from a perspective of trying to see if any value can be provided to reduce the headache assosiated with the operations aspect. Trying to crunch some numbers and meet a few people in Chennai this weekend to see if math, irrationality,oppurtunity and money tend to meet at a junction!

On Train Advertising

Airtel Express?

Big Mac riding on the "Deols"

Happened to come across these ads in Mumbai. With so many people taking the train during peak time, trains are a great place for a mega splash. I hear that having your brand on the handle, which commuters hold on to, in the local trains cost 1.5 lakhs for one train for a month. Actually pretty inexpensive when you compare it to a hoarding or any other public place.





Yesterday McDonalds have launched a campaign in Mumbai around their happy price menu featuring cartoons of Dharmendra and Sunny Deol. I am not aware of them being brand ambassodors for McDonald, but who knows it may even be a spoof.

Sports Marketing- Can We Look Beyond Cricket?

That's what my latest article explores. Read my article here

Ramayan Finally!

Ramayan meant only thing for me- Rama DEFEATING Ravana and on a similar Note India conquering Sri Lanka. Somehow It never happened in a bi lateral series over the last 3 decades. Finally Dhoni's men paved the way for a Ramayan script. What was different this time around?

I suggest you check my latest article which explore more of that. Click here to read the article

Chanced on This

Found this piece on my Professor who taught us International Entrepreneurship at Great Lakes. His classes were phenomenal in the sense that it taught us how business plans change in reviews and presentations to VC's and how an idea and can be pruned over and over again to make it look sellable!

The Race to be NOT number 1

I've seen people competing to be Number 1, right from School, College and obviously even the dog-eat-dog corporate world. But these days in the garb of being different, companies are branding themselves as number 2 and Number 3.

Sahara TV is fighting to be the number 3, General Entertainment Channel

Luminous Inverters does TV ads and proclaims that its number 2

Agency Faqs proudly proclaims that its number 2

Now, Who's queueing for Number 4?

Dhoni- Time to Make a Man out of the Boy?

Dhoni must be in a fix after yesterday's loss, but I still feel that the test captaincy must go to Dhoni, and India, need to regroup their core unit to form a great team. Reminds me of the time of the mid 80's when the Australian Team had a absolutely new team. Great decisions then reaped in benefits as the teams after Border's men, went on to reach lofty heights. Building a team for the future, didnt seem to help the Windies much, as after Richards and Richardson, they just werent able to fill in the void.

I've written a piece on why Dhoni would be the right choice. Do flip through it when you find some time.

Anil Kumble- Has the Sun Set Over his Illustrious Career?

Anil Kumble has been India’s unsung hero, but is it time to salute this warrior and try developing more warriors in the current crop of fringe spinners? An in-depth look at his bowling stats reveals a lot more than just numbers would.......................
Read the full article here.

Philip Kotler at Great Lakes!

This happened a couple of years back. Came across it in Youtube. I guess the next time I visit college, must ask the library copy of the whole talk

Afridi Ignites Long Lost Passion

The last 12 balls that Afridi has bowled, he has vociferously appealed thrice. All those 3 were very good shouts for leg before appeals against Yousuf Pathan and Raina. Twice it looked out. What was exciting was the ferocity and Afridi's desperate face while appealing. This was what India Pakistan clashes were lacking. Yuvi now responds with a six... and the nelson's scoreline was safely avoided.

117/4 in 19.1 overs... I want Pakistan to feel desperate and I'd love another close t20 like finish with India on the winning side! Back to fanatical cricket nights :-)