I felt really important when I received my first private cabin at my workplace. It bundled with a dedicated phone, lappy, all stationary and a litter bin. It made me feel grown up and happy.

Some days back, I found two litter bins below my table. It gave me mixed feelings. Good feeling that I got two dedicated litter bins now and bad feeling that probably am too dirty for one bin.

Today I realized that there are four litter bins in my cabin, one at each corner and I feel trashed already. It looks a bit funny to me, but not as much that I can enjoy everyday.

Some things are best when in limits.

Someone sent me this via mail. I really liked it so now you can read it here..

Old Version

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant’s a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

New Version

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant’s a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house.

Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter.

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance).

Opposition MP’s stage a walkout.

Left parties call for “Bharat Bandh” in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry. CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]“, with effect from the beginning of the winter.

Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for GrassHopper in educational  Insititutions & in Govt Services.

The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it “a triumph of justice”.
Lalu calls it ‘Socialistic Justice’.
CPM calls it the ‘revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden’
Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.

Many years later…The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multibillion dollar company in silicon valley.

100s of grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India ..

As a result loosing lot of hard working ants and feeding the grasshoppers, India is still a developing country……

Really, there are already too many of them. If you aren’t 100% sure that you are going to be successful in what you are trying to do, then please don’t waste your money, and time of all of us. Spare your investor’s money who don’t understand a single word of what you are telling them.

Messing a Startup or Starting up a Mess

You maybe spoiling what you already have

I hear this a lot: “I am going to start an IT firm”, “I have started something with my friends”, “I am setting up a backyard office” and blah blah. Out of all that I have seen, most successful of new startups are those who start maybe alone or with a bunch of like minded intelligent friends. But those who just saved some money and then hire a development company to realize their visualizations, are mostly a big fail. At times I see some sound minds, who are great at consulting opening up small service provider companies, with all good intentions; but end up with frustrated clients and spoiled reputation.

Starting up in India doesn’t mean you can afford to be cheap

In India, communication is a lacking factor and we must accept it, that we are not native English speakers. Even though there are many people who understand technology very well, communication becomes a big hurdle and they can’t be used well. Clients from all over the world keep complaining, that they have hard time communicating to their outsourced consultant in India, which only makes work hard to be done. Many a times, there are various IT companies who get to design a product or service for western countries, but due to lack of knowledge of western culture and unwillingness to research on the same, they end up making something which doesn’t really meets the clients needs, resulting in rework, extended deadlines and client’s frustration.

Many people think of starting up a company in India to be of great advantage in terms of cheap labor. Yes, that is right, but make sure that your services are reasonably priced so that you can maintain the quality. Many entrepreneurs assume, that they are pretty clever at what they do, and don’t need an equally clever staff. They think they can spoon feed every task to every employee, but my dead friend, if you think so, then I think you are not aware of height of dumbness of people out there. To run a successful company, employees need to be just as intelligent as the management. You can’t afford either of them to be dumb, not good for you, neither for your clients. Some great person said, “One great programmer is equal to hundred good programmers”.

Research before you startup, unless you are Paris Hilton

No offense with Paris Hilton, she is hot and what she sells, she don’t need to do research on that; and even if she fails, well, she will still have a lot more than what you have ever seen. But you must do research before you start a company. Research about your audience needs, find your competitors, analyze their market shares, set up some goals, mark some deadlines, structure a budget, know what kind of employees you need, where can you find them. Do you need big investment, or you can work with your partners and experiment your ideas first. What is the least that it takes to do your best? You are spending money, spend it wise.

You are starting your business, but creating jobs for others; Make it stable

Its great that you have left your job now and are planning to start your own business. Now you can probably work according to your own timings and don’t have to be answerable to anyone. But did you realize you are creating jobs for some people who will work with you. Do you think that the kind of people you want to work with, will also like to work for your small startup company in their right minds? Does your product have enough potential which they will also be able to see for a promising future and long term career commitment? Are you sure that you will not run down your company and have enough backups to secure the jobs of your employees? Failure is not the end, but people don’t forget.

I didn’t mean to discourage ambitious people with this post, just wanted to discourage ambitious people with crappy ideas. Believe me, even I have got many crappy ideas in my mind, but lets accept it and don’t make a fool out of us and waste everybody’s time and money, and probably save it until we are hit with some really bright idea?

You know what is a goal keeper’s dilemma? People hardly remember or even acknowledge every goal saved by the goal keeper, but they never forget the goals he couldn’t save.

Goal Keeper's Dilemma

Similar is the case with Mumbai Police. Their achievements and hardwork is merely appreciated acknowledged by public, but their mistakes are highlighted in bold letters by media all over. Every aspect of society has it’s own flavor of corruption meld into it, it doesn’t mean that you call the whole sect to be corrupt. Mumbai Police suffers from this common mindset of public more than any other organization. As many people we find to be corrupt in Police, we must understand that number of honest officers is always much more than those of corrupted officers, which is why we can roam fearlessly in streets and can have sound sleep in nights. Not acknowledging their honesty, hardwork and loyalty will only discourage their commitment to their duty, which is not in favor of anyone.

There are so many times when I have been helped by Police, without even asking for it. Long back when I was in school and lost my way, I approached a police officer and told him I am lost and don’t have enough money to hire a cab either. He managed a bike and dropped me at my doorstep and left.
At other instance, I lost my two months old Omnia last January (it costed around 35k back then). I made a complaint to the railway Police and they found my phone in four months. All I had given them was my IMEI number. I feel pretty strange because every time I tell someone that Police helped me find my phone, I get weird reactions like “did you have to pay them for that?”, “wow, they really did that; you are lucky!!”.
Most recently, I was getting late to my office, and approached a cab, and the driver totally neglected me to take me to the destination. The moment I turned around, I saw a traffic Police man behind me. He asked me if the cab driver declined to take me where I wanted to go, I confirmed positively. He quickly stopped another cab and asked him to take me where I wanted to go. Meanwhile, he prepared a complaint slip against the cab driver and fined him. For a moment, I felt that I shouldn’t say that the cab driver declined and should prevent him from getting fined, but then I thought that it will be so discouraging for the officer who was honestly being helpful, following his duties. I reached my office on time.. thanks to the officer.

Now I completely understand that I need not be so thankful for such act by them, as its just part of their duties. But we are raised in such a way, surround by all the bad talking about Police in media, T.V. and people around us, that I can’t stop myself from being amazed by how helpful they can be. I guess this is about time that we should change our mindset and start respecting them, for their choice of profession and the everyday challenges they undertake to make our life easy.

Here is a quote from the last post from Seth’s blog:

Bloggers don’t have impact because they have a lot of readers, they have a lot of impact because of who their readers are (my readers, of course, are the most sophisticated and cloutful on the entire web).

I normally reciprocate self braggers, but this quote was too clever for anyone to feel that way. It kind of sounds as if he is praising himself, but on the back of the head, it directly strikes you that he is calling you most sophisticated and cloutful at the same time; and then you instantly feel (and want to feel) that he is right. It reminds me of another incident when I used to convince my friends to do stuff or make them agree with me on a statement that I wanted to do or say, by using “we” and “us” instead of “I” and “me”.

People are more concerned about how their life is affected by whatever happens, whoever does it. Everyone loves to talk about themselves, but unless you are Priyanka Chopra, you must talk about your customers if you want them to hear listen to you.