LED displays
Improved ventilation
Faster fans
And cushioned seats
Mobile phones
Seem to be with all of you
Everything looks new in a Mumbai Local

Shoe-shine boys
AH Wheeler
The smell of popcorn
Eunuchs onboard
Pocket radios for some
And a Ray Ban too!
Life sure is interesting on a Mumbai Local

Abusive cop
Scared little kid
Girlfriend-Boyfriend
And an office exec
Vegetable vendors
And a Parsi bawa too
Every one takes the Mumbai Local

Fast train screams past
Marine Lines sea breeze
I arrive at Churchgate
By a window seat
Reached in no time
In 6 rupees too!
Is there anything better than a Mumbai Local?

And so the waves come crashing down on us. With marriage. With graduation. With a job or a promotion. On buying a house. With the first steps of an infant. With the scaling of every personal Mount Everest.

There is no unalloyed joy in this world, no hope, no freedom, no solace – once you have lost someone you truly love.

Anirban’s words will ring true for many of us.  Yes, we all have our own unique ways to cope with our losses.  But, in the end, we are all united in the truth that there’s not much we can do about it…

On weekends you call relatives up. Just as they state the plain truth that they are getting older, you either bluff your way through the conversation by telling them that nothing will ever happen to them or you berate them for not taking better care of themselves. The deception and the anger are your strange way of compensating for the impotence of not being able to do anything at all.

One day you are speaking to a loved one. The next day he or she is gone forever. You know that tomorrow it could be someone else. And the day after, it will be someone else. And one day it will be you.

Driftwood was an affirmation of my belief that Life should be lived to the fullest, every single moment!  That, we cannot choose our circumstances, only how we react to them.  That, all things come to an end, good and bad.  That, all we need is love.

In it, Bill Keller describes his observations on the wonders of modern Technology, and how they impact our lives… sometimes, not so favourably.

I don’t mean to be a spoilsport, and I don’t think I’m a Luddite. I edit a newspaper that has embraced new media with creative, prizewinning gusto. I get that the Web reaches and engages a vast, global audience, that it invites participation and facilitates — up to a point — newsgathering. But before we succumb to digital idolatry, we should consider that innovation often comes at a price. And sometimes I wonder if the price is a piece of ourselves…

My father, who was trained in engineering at M.I.T. in the slide-rule era, often lamented the way the pocket calculator, for all its convenience, diminished my generation’s math skills. Many of us have discovered that navigating by G.P.S. has undermined our mastery of city streets and perhaps even impaired our innate sense of direction. Typing pretty much killed penmanship. Twitter and YouTube are nibbling away at our attention spans. And what little memory we had not already surrendered to Gutenberg we have relinquished to Google. Why remember what you can look up in seconds?

By day, I lead a team that goes by the name of Business Solutions & Innovation, where we focus on leveraging Technology to improve customer engagement across a diversified range of financial services.  So, I am well acquainted with the benefits that Technology and Innovation offer.  But, I am also acutely aware of the downside.

Keller touches upon my fears in his essay, too: 

Basically, we are outsourcing our brains to the cloud. The upside is that this frees a lot of gray matter for important pursuits like FarmVille and “Real Housewives.” But my inner worrywart wonders whether the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity.

The choice of poison differs, but the consequences are the same – Email clients that sync every few minutes; Blackberry devices that show you that all-important (and not-so-important) message as soon as it arrives; Twitter and FB updates that refresh on your preferred screen every few seconds, and of course, every conceivable piece of information that is now just a “Google search” away… 

Increasingly, we are all growing up in a culture of instantly-available, always-on, information-overload. 

The “shelf life” of most of the stuff we encounter in today’s day and age is abysmally low – sometimes as low as a few seconds (a la Twitter).  And, by and large, we seem to be “okay” with that.  But, it’s leading to shorter (as in really, really short) attention spans, which demands even faster turnaround times from such mechanisms, further fuelling the viscious cycle!  And, it’s leaving us little time to digest much of the content we consume, which means that few of us are really “processing” any of the stuff we come across, let alone synthesize it with our own learnings and world views.

How would this affect how we view relationships?  How would we define “long-term” in the years to come?  How would this impact creativity – the art of creating something new by combining two seemingly-unrelated entities?  Will we lose all understanding of “delayed gratification”?  What would “learning” be like, in the next decade or two – when all information would literally be at our fingertips?!

I am convinced that if this continues – and it probably will – it will have long-lasting effects on the human race.  Like Keller, I also fear that we may be losing our most essential human qualities in the bargain.  And, that would be too high a price to pay for progress.

A (Twitter) timeline that follows 150 people or more moves fast… Sometimes I try to put those thoughts together into a coherent picture of the individual and I fail. It reminds me of a Salman Rushdie novel I’d read where a man isn’t allowed to see his prospective wife, but only parts of her through a veil. He sees the eyes, nose, hands, chin, feet and is smitten. When he sees her after the wedding, the whole is decidedly less than the sum of the parts. This is what worries me about online friendships.

Over the past year that I’ve spent on this medium (Twitter) I’ve been fascinated by some of the people I follow. I think I know them, I think I relate but I don’t know if they’ve really let me into the most private realms of their world. A privilege few extend and fewer deserve.

Until I meet them I can only continue to build my edifice of thoughts, letting a chosen few enter in the hope they extend the same faith.

See what I mean?  Thought-provoking, it certainly was.  And, I found myself responding…

My take is that it differs from person to person. If you’re the sort who doesn’t care much for “what people may think” and are true to your identity, you’ll behave online how you really are.  But, others could just as easily create an elaborate exercise of projecting the kind of impression they want to project.  To make matters worse, both types may post about only a limited range of topics, and almost certainly not include the thoughts they consider “personal” to them.

So, I guess, I’d agree with him for the most part – you can’t really tell how someone truly is unless you’ve met them. And, then too, you can only build up a picture from what they allow themselves to reveal…

That said, every once in a while, you come across someone who you immediately connect with. Your wavelengths match, your ideas resonate and your discussions make sense… And, you’re pretty sure that if they lived in your neighborhood, you’d be good friends, and hang out as much as possible.

And, somewhere deep down, you believe that it’s not just a “persona” – it’s all true!

A couple of years later, hungry for some large-scale enterprise experience, I would find myself joining an organization with more than 7,000 employees, and growing at the rate of more than a 100% each year.  I left that organization four years later, after I’d helped scale up business processes impacting more than 30,000 employees, and delivered solutions for a channel/partner network that was 4x the size it was when I’d first joined.  I would soon move to a sister company within the Group that was, at least in some respects, at an earlier point in evolution than the one I was moving from.  This, new, organization employed nearly 3,500 people, but dealt with a hugely diversified range of product & service offerings within the Financial Services space.

My associations with all of these, ranging from small boutique firms to very large enterprises, has been a very rewarding experience in more ways than one. 

Over the past few years, when I looked back on all those stints, I could not help but ask myself : Is there a sweet spot for me, personally?  The answer I came up with was, “Yes!”

As of last month, I have accepted an exciting, new assignment as “Head – Business Solutions & Innovation” with a dynamic, highly respected and diversified provider of Financial Services.  While it has a rich past that goes back decades, it also stands poised to leverage new ideas and breakthroughs, offering me the opportunity to be a part of its growth story, in the years to come.

Here’s to a new beginning…

Here’s a brief excerpt of some of the points that I found particularly noteworthy…

- Fear change and resist it
- Complain about problems instead of taking the necessary steps to resolve them
- Try to control everything and then worry about the things you can’t control
- Hold onto anger.  Never forgive anyone.
- Don’t let anyone help you
- Dwell on things that happened in the past
- Say “yes” to everyone.  Fill all your time with commitments.
- Fear the things you don’t fully understand
- Think about all the things you don’t have
- Don’t say what you mean.  Don’t mean what you say.

Naturally, reading the entire list is highly recommended. Oh, and please remember to “move swiftly in the opposite direction”…

It’s January 2012 and you’ve just gotten your new Android 3.0-based phone. You’re going on a road trip so you start up the newly-released Foursquare. Gone are the checkins of 2010. Now you tell it where you’re going. This time we’re headed to Harrah’s at Stateline, Nevada. But this is no Foursquare you’ve ever seen before. They’ve finally integrated Waze, Tungle.me, and Yelp information into it. So, let’s discover more of what happens on our trip.

As we pull out of my driveway in Half Moon Bay we cross a geofence that sends alerts to the various systems that I’ve connected to Foursquare. Tungle.me knows I’m meeting Mike Arrington for dinner at Harrah’s. He gets an alert on his mobile phone that I’m on my way and Glympse sends him the ability to watch my progress so he’ll know if I’ll be on time. Plancast lets me know that four friends are attending the Black Eyed Peas concert at Harrah’s tonight. I see that Siri is offering to find me tickets, so I ask it to find me some tickets under $400 each…

… When we arrive at Harrah’s, we cross another geofence which lets Arrington know we’re here. It also checks us into Foursquare, and tells us: “there are 29 other people we know about, including three of your friends.” Then Siri (which received a message from our geofence) chimes in with: “are you still having dinner with Mike Arrington at 8 p.m. at Friday’s Station Steak & Seafood Grill?” I answer: “yes.” That goes away, but on screen is a Yelp review about that restaurant and I realize that the attire is dressy and I only have jeans and t-shirts. So, I ask Siri: “are there any other four-star restaurants like Friday’s Station nearby?” It answers with a list from Yelp and then it starts showing places that still have spots left for us this evening by querying OpenTable’s APIs. Siri then tells me it has found two seats for tonight’s show at Harrah’s outdoor arena, and asks if it should buy them from Stubhub?

Read the whole thing.  It’s fascinating.  And, the best part is that most of the technology Scoble talks about is already here!  It’s just not talking to each other, yet.

A lethal plume of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas escaped from a storage tank at the Union Carbide pesticide factory in the early hours of December 3, 1984 in the central Indian city of Bhopal.

Government figures put the death toll at 3,500 within the first three days but independent data by the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) puts the figure at between 8,000 and 10,000 for the same period.  The ICMR has said that up to 1994, 25,000 people also died from the consequences of gas exposure.

Union Carbide settled all liabilities related to the accident, including cleaning up the site, with a 470-million-dollar out-of-court settlement with the Indian government in 1989 after years of wrangling about the amount… The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB), an umbrella group of survivors’ organisations, says most survivors received 25,000 rupees (500 dollars) to fund a lifetime of hospital visits.

Yesterday, after a 25-year-long wait, the final verdict was out.

A quarter of a century after the worst industrial disaster in history, a Bhopal district court sentenced seven people, including businessleader Keshub Mahindra, for two years in jail under sections of Indian law usually applied to road mishaps.

The Monday verdict didn’t mention Warren Anderson, the Union Carbide global chief during the disaster. Anderson, who was arrested in Bhopal in 1984, was freed on bail on assurance that he will return. Four years later, the CBI chargesheet named him, and in 1989, the chief judicial magistrate of Bhopal issued a non-bailable warrant for his arrest for repeatedly ignoring summons. In 1992, Anderson was declared a fugitive by the Indian courts.

The Indo-Asian News Service reports:

The United States has ruled out reopening any new inquiry against Union Carbide after Bhopal court’s verdict in the 1984 Bhopal gas leak that killed more than 15,000 people, hoping it would bring closure to the probe into the tragedy.

“Obviously this was one of the greatest industrial tragedies and industrial accidents in human history,” US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake told reporters on Monday.  “But I don’t expect this verdict to reopen any new inquiries or anything like that. On the contrary, we hope that this is going to help to bring closure,” he said…

Pritish Nandy seemed to hit the nail on the head when he tweeted:

We have simply stopped respecting the lives of the unknown any more. No number of deaths interest us, unless the dead are famous.

Bhopal will no longer be remembered for the crime: 6 lakh lives destroyed. It will be remembered for the injustice meted out 25 years later.

Today, I am ashamed to call myself an Indian.

Someone wise once remarked, “There is only one question – How to love this world?”

Update : 16 June 2010

Amar Hingorani, an advocate in the Supreme Court of India, posts a shocking and brilliant editorial in the Hindustan Times in which he informs us that: “The law empowering the Indian government to represent Bhopal’s gas victims was unconstitutional. In effect, two guilty parties negotiated with each other.”

See Also : Union Carbide’s official statement

For starters, this May I’d scheduled time-off from work to address not one but two trips out of town. 

The first was to celebrate our 10th anniversary, the details of which would forever remain between us and the friendly people of the charming resort we’d booked our stay in.  I returned from that holiday, only to depart the following day for a photo-tour in the Lion Sanctuary of Gir! 

A friend and I had been talking about doing a photo-tour for a while, and were able to sync our calendars for this one.  I’d planned the thing weeks in advance by reading up all I could lay my hands on. 

It was to be the baddest, hottest time of the year for Sassan Gir, with temperatures soaring upto 45 deg C… it would also be the best time to spot the lions, as the heat would make them go in search of water more often. 

We’d booked ourselves in a Jungle Lodge (surrounded on all sides by the forest!) after reading about it on travel sites, and it turned out to be even more charming and exciting than the reviews had mentioned.  The food was great, the people were friendly, the safari trips were well-organized, and we were able to shoot quite a bit of wildlife through the lenses of our respective cameras, even picking up some info on wildlife habitats along the way.

This was my first open-jeep safari, and it was an experience unlike any other!  While some of the lion sightings were so far away that you could hardly spot them without a telescopic lens, we also had a few “encounters” merely 10 feet away from our vehicle. 

Words cannot adequately explain the thrill of being in lion-land, a few steps away from the magnificent cat, in an open-jeep, with nothing in your hands except a camera.

Of course, as the safari guides kept reminding us, going to Gir is more than about “spotting lions”.  On our multiple runs through the sanctuary we saw countless deer and peacocks, and a host of other animals and birds, trying to capture as much as possible with our equipment.  On our way back, we also made a brief stop at the town of Junagadh, to shoot the fantastic Indo-Islamic architecture of the city, and were more than rewarded for the hours we spent in the sun.

I was hooked for Life, and will be sure to return to many more wildlife trips in the years to come…

Pictures on my photoblog, here.

You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of “just getting by” absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your politics and religion become matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people’s expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury…

You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don’t discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled…

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement.

As we go through Life, we often find that it is not what we planned it would be. And yet, we must go on.  And, make our peace with it.  Perhaps even thrive in what it has to offer!

Once again, I implore you to “read this speech” in its entirety. It’s well worth the effort.