Engaged....

..... to Varsha, on Sep 1st 2008.

My opinion

I was watching James Caan (of Santino Corleone fame) being interviewed on Hollywood shootout and I was quite surprised to learn about some of the roles he had turned down in his career.


1. Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (eventually performed by Brando)
2. Hans Solo in Stars Wars (Harrison Ford)
3. Kramer in Kramer vs Kramer (Dustin Hoffman)

These were roles that eventually became milestones in the careers of these actors. The interviewer asked him about any regrets that Caan had on turning these down. Caan's classic response - "See....If I had had your opinion, I wouldn't have turned them down. But I had my own opinion on these roles, and they weren't good. They still aren't."

Now that's what I call attitude.

Great Indian Arranged Marriage!

The concept of a typical South Indian arranged marriage has always intrigued me. When parents are busy looking for a life partners for their children, they are entirely dependent on 1 sheet of paper - the horoscope. Once horoscopes match and other criteria are met, the families meet..more importantly, boy meets girl. This meeting lasts anywhere between an hour and a day(this happens if the both families are pretty liberal and the boy and girl hit it off pretty well). Once this is done, the boy and the girl need to think things over and accept ot reject the proposal. The deadline for this is usually a day...2 days if you get lucky.

Needless to say, I had my reservations about this system. But I knew arranged marriage was the best option...given my dashing appearance and charming nature, finding a life partner on my own was pretty much ruled out. So I signed up for this, hoping I would eventually trick some girl into saying yes. But yeah...whoever said beggars can't be choosers, needs to study the concept of the Great Indian Arranged Marriage. I got to list down the specifications regarding the type of girl I wanted to meet. My requirements were simple - I wanted somebody with professional qualifications, and with interests in some extracurricular activity. And I requested to be kept out of the process till both families were ready to meet each other...after this the decision would be only mine.

And that's how I ended up meeting Varsha. I travelled to Coimbatore and we chatted for a couple of hours. I was looking for somebody who was more outgoing than me... somebody who would not take life too seriously... somebody more childlike in nature... somebody who was passionate about some thing in life... I realised that Varsha was all this and more. And I said yes. More importantly - she said yes!!

So, I did trick somebody into saying yes....and on my first attempt! Now my days of bachelorhood are numbered.

Southeast Asia

Phew!! So many things have happened in my life since my last post. But I've been wanting to write about my SE Asia trip for quite sometime now. So I've decided to get that out of the way, before writing about more recent (and very important) developments in life.

I travelled to Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand with a couple of friends - Pradyot and Swaroop. During the trip, Swaroop and I made a list of interesting observations about the people and places we had seen. Here are a few


KL is not for backpackers on a shoestring budget - I don't mean you can't find cheap places to eat or stay. What I mean is that you feel like a loser, looking at the opulence all around you. One look at the malls and you realise that this city is for shoppers with lots of money.


SE Asians don't sweat - During summer, Malaysia and Thailand are hot and humid like Chennai. Surprisingly, Southeast Asians just don't sweat. The SE Asian males have absolutely no facial or body hair. Not surprisingly, they are very particular about personal hygiene. Being the three hairy South Indians that we were, we had a tough time staying fresh. I've never used as much talcum powder and body spray in my life, as I did during those 3 weeks.


Forex scam in Cambodia - After landing in Siem Reap Cambodia, the three of us exchanged around 500 USD for local currency. We became "instant lakhpatis", since we got 3750 riel for a dollar. Feeling pretty happy, we ventured out into the city, only to discover that we had been taken for a ride. Cambodia is so starved for dollars that people prefer to deal in USD and not in local currency. All prices are mentioned in dollars..even the tuk-tuk drivers negotiate in dollars !! And to get rid of the local currency, we had to shell out 4000 riel per dollar..not 3750!


Gogo bars - The hotel we stayed in Pattaya was bang in the middle of a street full of gogo bars. For the uninitiated, these are the dance bars for which Thailand is pretty notorious. Every time somebody walks past these bars, he is subjected to cat calls (and what not)!! The worst part is being hit upon by lady boys (she-males). Needless to say, I felt pretty embarrassed initially. Once I started enjoying the "limelight", it was pretty funny. But more than everything else, what impacted me the most was the pathetic life these bar dancers lead. More on that later.


Pattaya - If you are a male, more than 50 years old, have a lot of money and want to splurge it on women and booze, Pattaya is the place for you. If not, don't even bother going there. There are lots of cheaper destinations with better beaches.


Kanchanaburi - This is one place I fell in love with. One can find pretty cheap accommodation...and you get floating rooms on River Kwai! There's nothing better than chilling on the river, with Leo or Chang beer. The Erawan national park is great for a day trek and the waterfalls there are straight out of one of those desktop wallpapers. And then there's the tiger temple, which is a must-see. Apparently, there's at least one tourist who's been seriously mauled by the tigers. I came to know about this only after my visit.

Great trip in all...but of course, the best part of the trip was when Swaroop's underwear got stolen by monkeys!! :)

Suprises galore!

I joined work on May 16th. I was supposed to take charge as a product manager (marketing) and take over from a guy who was supposed to move to US in a month. I was supposed to handle a "market appropriate" product. Dangerous name, since it kinda insinuated that all the other products were market inappropriate. What it actually meant was that this product had been designed for markets like India, China and Russia.

Two weeks in to the job, I was still clueless as to what my predecessor had been doing for the past 8 months, besides travelling to remote places like Bagalpur and Imphal. Then I realized that he was selling the product, not marketing it. He had an entire sales force at his disposal, but they weren't too excited about this product. Bottomline - not enough incentive for the sales force to invest time on selling this product.

In two weeks, I had kinda formed a very vague idea of where I wanted to take this product in a year's time. That's when the bombshell was dropped on me (and my predecessor). His assignment to the US was indefinitely postponed. So he had to stay back and continue doing what he had been up to for past 8 months. As for me - I was asked to head the Mumbai metro sales team. I was pretty pissed. It's not everyday that a company changes your job profile drastically, 2 weeks into the job. But I thought about it for 3 full days before accepting the new role.
Upside - I won't be spending my life in airport waiting lounges; I will be handling a team of 8 managers; Opportunity for turning around Mumbai metro; Young, fresh team.
Downside - Mumbai metro is in a mess; Veterans in team have quit; no marketing role till 2009 end.

So I'm back in sales!! And this is pretty much what I'm going to write about my job, for a long time to come.

Next post - Experiences in SE Asia.

Back to the grind

Successfully graduated from ISB on April 5th.
Went on a 3 week backpaacking trip to Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand.
Returned to Chennai and spent a couple of weeks at home - doing absoultely nothing worthwhile.
Shifted base to mumbai on 10th May. Found a house in 3 days. (yup...3 days..no kidding!)
Joined work on 16th. Got my laptop, phone and my blackberry.
Have lots to write about.
Determined to write regularly.

He was happy

He was happy.

His eyes were closed. He was leaning back in his chair. The room was dark. Pink Floyd was playing "High hopes". He had listened to this song several times before, but only now could he make out every note and chord that was being played....only now could he understand the meaning of the song. There were tears in his eyes.

He was happy.

He wanted to share this revelation with the three others in the room. But he was afraid they wouldn't be impressed if he disturbed the reverie. He opened his eyes to check. He was right....they wouldn't have been impressed. It had been more than an hour since the first song had started, but right now, there was no hurry to get anywhere. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

He was happy.

He thought it was unfair that he could actually understand and enjoy these songs only at this level of intensity. He envied the artists who had created these songs...and all the other artists who had become immortal through their creations. He imagined the kind of elation they must have felt while creating such works of art..the level of intensity at which they must have operated. He felt blessed to have been given a chance...a brief moment to experience that elation.

He was happy.