Spirit of Bhaigiri

Captured behind an auto driver's seat in Bangalore.

Pride and Prejudice

Proud of CWG '10 opening ceremony and the way we stood up as a country and portrayed that we can do it as well as anybody else can, albeit with some extra money and a lot little less time. It was stupendous, awesome to say the least and one of those moments which made me feel proud and my head held high.

Having said that, as pointed by one of my friends, "Indian public memory is used to being 'healed' by displays of extravaganzas like these. It could only be called a miracle if people are even half as angry as they were a week ago, once the games conclude with minimum hassles". Just hoping that we nail the guys with the same ferocity with which we went after them pre-ceremony. Hope the media atleast makes it a point to come back and shower some spotlight again, else this temporary 'healing' as you mentioned, will set a precedent for even more corruption. Politics it is, after all.

While I feel proud that India stood up on its own on the world stage, my mind keeps reminding me that at one side we have infrastructure problems, hunger and poverty, half a million people without toilets in their homes - how fair and how shameful it is to put up such shows of extravaganza with 70,000 crores. Shouldn't we be spending it on the needs of the people, so as we call a 'third world power' or a 'developing' country.

Isn't it just a exterior show to bid for such costly games, to brand ourselves as 'Incredible India' while on the backstage we arrest beggars and hide the homes of the poor migrants so that the 'foreigners' do not see the real picture?

Western Digital My Book Essential 1 TB External Hard Drive

If you want to add extra capacity to your PC and like this device's novel look, the My Book will do the job.

Compared to other external hard drives on the market, it is relatively inexpensive at around $100. Luckily I got a raw deal for Rs 4800 from eBay. This drive connects to a system though a USB 2.0 port. Given its comparatively inexpensive price, this hard drive has great features for the cash. And on top of it, it offers a 3 year warranty.

Pros: Sleek, Looks Great, Fast

Cons: Pre-Formatted in FAT32, just Convert to NTFS for Faster file transfer. Google how if you don't know how.

The drive’s glossy black exterior makes it look amazingly sleek, unfortunately it also makes it a dust and fingerprint magnet. As for its eco-tilt you’ll find that the drive shuts off when you shut your PC off or unplug it saving that bit of electricity and while your computer is in use. It also has an auto-spin down function where it turns off the drive completely if there’s no activity to it after a 10 minute period. It certainly will save you a bit of power but the lag time between trying to access the drive and it spinning up and being usable is a little test of patience.

Overall it is a great looking device and it does exactly what you need it to do: store your files. It might not sport the fastest connections out there but it’s easy to add storage and once you’re done storing and retrieving files from it it’ll quietly turn itself off to save you a bit of power. Enough storage space to store my life :D Talk about GBs, here is something in a TB.

Highly RECOMMENDED.

Living on the Edge

Gentle, capricious, awful, Wild.
Never the same for two months together
Ruthless in its passion and infinity divine
Tames even the grandest Gods of power

Alone, yet never lonely,
Tranquil and serene, beyond somewheres
The world was mine, mine only,
When I trekked to the Himalayas

I wandered along the malignant edges
I could feel the clouds, sky pierced and broken
I saw no bird, for I had grown wings
No song was sung, no word was spoken

With a backpack and the will to survive
Life was much more than money and religion
Living the life of a happy warrior
When footsteps end at the top of a mountain

To listen to the sounds of silence
To feel the sun and earth as my soul
To explore the untamed wilderness
I like to call it my pilgrimage

I stood, my eyes turned upward still
It was the realization of my free will
What is failure
What are mistakes
What am I afraid of
How do I find success
Everything is good enough
When I live on the edge
No more haste, no more scamp
For a moment I was Alexander Supertramp

The Rs. 100 crore Garbage

A great man had once said - Opinions are like assholes. Everybody's got one.

Indians have liked Jaws, Titanic and National Treasure and no one has questioned the logic behind the story for any of the scenes. But when a desi director does international quality work, everyone sits up and puts in their two bits of opinion. Here goes my 2 cents too - True blue style !

Exotic locales, world class bike races, mesmerizing underwater scenes, stunning Lara Dutta, visual treats all around, beautiful Bahamas, exhilarating action sequences, gorgeous bikinis...everything pushed the ooomph meter to unprecedented levels. Its a Roller coaster ride, high on adrenaline, with Lara Dutta leaving the viewers asking and gasping for more, and much more.

Back to Reality.

Sanjay Dutt is a sea diver, when he should be farting his way up in the sky like a hot balloon. Zayed Khan, who cannot act for nuts, should not even be admitted to the sets for free. I wish the director had used his pay to bring in more sharks to add some thrill to an otherwise expensive 100 crore trash which feels like watching National Geographic on a Monday night with stand up comedians instead of predator sharks.

Inane direction, bad dialogues, hilarious expressions are all that I can think of. Sharks swim peacefully around, and make you think if they are actually vegetarian. A coveted treasure in the middle of the ocean, whose exact route Sanjay Dutt manages to remember light years later. Non existent script, ridiculous dialogues and lack luster music, the movie started in stle and ended up blowing everybody's mind. Yes. Mindblowing Garbage.

Finally, the movie runs around in circles and ends up ridiculously narrating stories about dead family members and to-be girlfriends turning out to be the wife of a best friend. Not to talk about the accent though, Kylie Minogue would have had a better shot in speaking Hindi than Kats.

Flashy exterior. Garbage inside.

You might want to buy something for your someone special, or might as well as donate money to charity..but watch this at your own risk.

Role of HR in M&A’s

An article which I submitted for an event at XLRI.

Investment bankers have a narrower training, and are rewarded for making deals; human issues tend to get lost or overlooked.

Before, during, and after the merger, HR may be responsible for assuring that cultural issues do not derail integration; for increasing innovation; for keeping communication going in all directions (upwards, downwards, across departments, across organizations); and for lessening the impact on those who are “survivors”.

In pre-acquisition phase things that need to be taken care of:

• An assessment of the cultural and organizational differences, which will include the organizational cultures, role of leaders in the organization, life cycle of the organization, and the management styles.
• To ensure that both organizations have a strategy mapped out in advance. Once the merger starts taking place, people will often be too busy to keep a strategic perspective.
• Communications to employees and customers as to where layoffs will take place (if any do), and how the cultures should be merged.

During the merger, HR plays an important role in:

• Communication – As people look inwards to try to find their place in the merged company and attempt to see their future in it – or outside it – productivity drops. Consistent and honest communication from the HR is very essential.
• Power and Conflicts – HR can help bring out conflicts to the surface and deal with power issues honestly. Employees often get wrapped up in turf wars which are destructive to both sides, rather than trying to figure out roles for both sides and have a win-win situation.
• Culture – HR may need to raise the issue of culture – how people work, how they think, what they value, and how they view the other organization. These issues must be addressed up front.
• Operations – In many mergers and takeovers, power relationships determine operational changes, rather than actual efficiencies or quality concerns. By making changes with facilitated cross-platform teams, HR can help to ensure that the best of the two organizations are preserved.

Post-acquisition, HR would have the following critical roles:

• Power equations between management and trade unions (if any) needs to be dealt with utmost care. These are the issues which are very brittle.
• Designations for the employees
• Compensation structure and performance appraisal systems

HR no longer plays a dormant role and is emerging as a strategic business partner where key initiatives undertaken such as communication, training, counseling, career planning, support workshops, building trust, coaching and compensation planning, have significant business impact.