7 years ago today, Nelson Mandela left us - committed to ending differences in human race and a keen follower of Gandian values, Mandela is a powerful role model for leaders in the 21st century.   But before there was Mandela, there was Robert Mugabe, the Premier and later President of Zimbabwe who was heralded as the statesman of Africa and the model for good governance. [ 1 ]. As history tells us however, Mugabe and his politics failed miserably.  The reason why Zimbabwe became a failed state and South Africa a successful one was because of the Gandhian values, mainly ' Hate the Sin, Not the Sinner ' imbibed by Nelson Mandela, and a contrasting revengeful reign by Mugabe in Zimbabwe (especially in the 1990s). The story about how Mandela used the Rugby World cup [ 2 ] to reconcile and reach out for his erstwhile oppressors is a case in point [The subject was used in the movie Invictus , which is titled on one of Mandela's favourite poems - and mine too!]. Mugabe vs ...

I visited Ladakh close to two years ago with my parents; since we went there close to beginning of winters, we had to keep our trip short and that left us with less time to acclimatize ourselves to the weather. Out of the 4 days we planned to spend, my parents felt a little sick on the second day and could not join us for the sightseeing. On that day, we had planned to visit places around Leh which included the visiting the Thiksey Gompa (Monastery). I liked the place so much that I wanted my parents to visit the place - so on the next day, after we finished our day long itinerary, I insisted we take a shot at visiting Thiksey again. As luck would have it, we reached the monastery just when it started getting dark (after which usually the doors are closed to visitors), but chanced to get entry into the main gate. However, to my disappointment, the doors of the main temple were closed by the time we climbed up. We were about to turn back when my brother spotted a young lama, in h...

I read through this awesome interview with Steve Jobs taken way back in 1995 before he created the second revolution of his life (iPod et al). While each section of the interview is breathtakingly awesome, I wanted to reiterate some gems specifically, hence quoting them here. For the whole interview transcript go to this URL  http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/sj1.html 1. ...a lot of people come to me and say "I want to be an entrepreneur". And I go "Oh that's great, what's your idea?". And they say "I don't have one yet". And I say " I think you should go get a job as a busboy or something until you find something you're really passionate about because it's a lot of work ". I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I...

You might be surprised to see the title after the post I made last night. But I am really impressed the way Zapak has reacted to my post. Read on to know more ... When I made the post last night, India was still in deep slumber; and when India woke up - I was in deep slumber. But while I was asleep, the Zapak team woke up to my blog post - they thereafter tracked me through various Social networks and by the time I woke up, I had a couple requests from their team to connect to me. [The earliest one was as early as 7.57 AM India time] I was surprised (and impressed) about the speed with which they contacted me - so I sent out my contact details, and Lo! Within less than an hour I had them calling me explaining that the mail I received was because of some kind of spurious network activity and was a "security issue" which they were dealing with. They requested me to remove the image which I had put up on my blog, because it revealed some internal statistics they were tracking. W...

"Benazir Bhutto Shot Dead" - as I looked at this headline on 27th December, I was shocked - though not as much as I was when I read "Rajiv Gandhi assassinated" way back in 1991 (I was just 10 years old then). The reduction is shock was not just because I had grown up and that Benazir was not a politician from my own country - but also because after Lal mazjid , terrorism has become more and more mainstream in Pakistan. However, there are some aspects of the assassination which are different from Rajiv Gandhi's assassination which make it much more worrisome than the former. 1. Ubiquity of Terror Agents - and failure of Administration The Pakistani Administration (namely the Army) claims that "[Benazir] herself contributed to the incident by standing [and] that none of the other occupants in the bullet/bomb proof car died." Which effectively means that the assassin was just waiting for Benazir to step out of her bullet proof vehicle. It seems quite unli...

[Q]... do you have a sense of how you would place it all historically? [Tim Berners Lee]I'll answer that one in a thousand years' time, if that's okay. [LAUGHTER] I think trying to write the history, at the time I think it's very difficult. we didn't know whether we were going to be looking at history or not, because when you look at a curve like that, an exponential curve going up can often just tilt over and crash back down again. And there were a lot of other projects we've all had which have done that. How very true - Tim Berners Lee put it quite aptly that an exponential curve could as well crash and end up looking like a 'blip' on the scale of centuries in history. Many of us Millenials remember the craze that VCR's were in the 90's - some of today's most hyped innovations like the i-Pod or iPhone could as well end up similarly. It is too early to place any new technology or trend as a game changer - which is a mistake that many a te...

Arbit Choudhury – First B School Comic Character of the world, created by the duo of Shubham Choudhury & Hemant Kumar Jain has bagged this year’s Manthan Award for India’s successful e-Content for Development 2007 on. [To know more on how I am related to Arbit read this ] Sabyasachi Ghosh a friend of ours accepted the award on our behalf ... The award was given in the e-Entertainment category giving a major boost towards the need to develop a comical sense even when engrossed in our beloved work related pursuits. The award giving ceremony was held on September 22, 2007 at IICC, New Delhi and is given annually to promote usage of ICT at the grassroots level for innovation and ultimately e-Content development in the country. “Arbit Choudhury” is a comic character which came into minds of two people while studying in a B-School. Fed up with the same routine for two long years, they saw the funny side of it and created a comic character on their lives at campus itself. With the corpor...

My current reading is the biography of J.R.D. Tata (by R.M. Lala) since the past few days. It was probably just a coincidence that I read the chapter titled – ‘Getting Airborne’ which covered the birth of Indian aviation while I waited on the Bhopal Airport and during the flight to Mumbai. But as I flew from Raja Bhoj Airport (Bhopal) to Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport (Mumbai) in flat 1.5 hours I could compare my present with the text and it was exciting to make this comparison. Here are some quotes from the chapter which enthused me: “the only place to suitable to fly or land in Bombay were the mud-flats in Juhu, a fishing village and a beach resort ….” [Juhu? A village? … Mud Flats as am air strip for the country’s commercial capital?? ] “Captain Newall was keen on a passenger service than a mail service… Newall wrote to Peterson: “We do not agree with you . . . at Rs 100 per seat (Karanchi - Bombay) we feel confident they will do so…” [Rs 100!!!!!!! Gosh … sure I would love to board ...

I haven't written much about my younger brother Abhishek. Well .... a fantastic person who has achieved his dream of getting into the National Defense Academy (NDA). Today he returned home (Bhopal) after his first semester at the academy. Dainik Bhaskar covered their homecoming. Below is the photograph of the occasion- I have drawn a faint green circle around Abhishek. A few words from my father also form a part of the article in Bhaskar [ http://www.bhaskar.com/defaults/bhopal_newshindi5.html ] . Dad said he doesn't remember when the reporter asked him all that stuff !! Even I had a similar experience the other day. I got a call from a college friend late night congratulating me for getting my name in the Advancedge magazine by IMS learning. I was dazed for a moment thinking when I had given an interview to IMS. It later dawned that our Press relations committee IMpress had once asked me for a quote on our placements - they had passed on this to IMS. If anyone is interested in...

Shubham is a great punster [ http://my-mind-space.blogspot.com/2004/05/my-experiments-with-pun.html ] and I have borrowed the term 'pun'dit from him. The one line that I would write about my friendship with him would be - 'It goes beyond emotions!'. Both Shubham and Me are strong believers in reason and absence (or insignificance) of emotions. But this attitude should not be confused with being selfish - it is 'beyond' emotions not 'devoid' of emotions! Shubham is very practical - perhaps the most practical person I have met; but what bonds us together is that both of us are hardly ever affected or bothered about what 'others' are doing. An internal locus of control is integral to us. We have our hobbies, our passions and our secrets too and we do not believe in poking our nose in affairs that do not relate to us. Some more hygiene factors bonded us better - the fact that both of us wanted to get into IT, both enjoy old Hindi film songs and we b...

Long time no c! This blog was untouched since 22nd May. That was the day when G7 (our gang in NITIE) members started arriving for their final presentations. Since then I have had little time between making my report/presentation, attending the National Practice meet of KPMG, IRM and going out (just once!) with buddies! Finally, the campus is again getting empty. Most of G7 is gone and once for all Shubham has left NITIE. Shubham - a character who has been with me almost day-and-night since the last 2 years. I feel compelled to write a few words about him today. Shubham and I belong to the same engineering college - BIT. Yet, had anyone asked me or him about each other just a month before leaving BIT and we would have asked - Shubham/Nikhil?? Who?? Oh he's in Comp Sc/Elex?? Hoga koi! When I made it to NITIE, I was the sole person from BIT to get in. I had known that one Shubham Choudhury - 'the geek topper of Comp Sc' was in the NITIE waiting list and had cleared XLRI. Ever...

Today has been a day of lots of thoughtful activity and culminated into recollection of my old philosophy et al. I started the day by visiting my school – Campion. It was a nostalgic visit especially because it was a ceremonious day of 26th January (Republic Day). Met almost all my teachers – and all recognized me by my name instantly – an achievement I can boast of. My thoughts went back to my school-days when I was an inspired soul who had a lot of vigour for the nation. The day has ended with news – an MLA in Allahabad (U.P.) was killed in broad daylight and his body was cremated in secrecy without even informing the family members. This was done because the police feared law and order problems if the body was handed over to the family. What was SHOCKING was that I could relate this incident to the freedom fighter Bhagat Singh’s life. Even the bodies of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were cremated in secrecy for the same reasons. This exposes a burning question of today – are we...

Yesterday night (or rather early morning) we kicked off the El Dorado Film Festival with the screening of the classic 'Gandhi'. (btw El Dorado is the name of our hostel wing) I must be watching the movie the 3rd time but the last time I saw it was about 10 years ago, so yesterday's screening definitely gave me newer insights on the life and times of Gandhi. Also I have half read Gandhi's Autobiography - "My experiments with truth" about 2 months back and have just completed reading the life of 'New India's Mahatma' - dear APJ Abdul Kalam. All this combined gave me better understanding of lots of principles of leadership. (It isn't a coincidence that we watched the movie as an assignment from our Prof in the subject - Business Leadership) I had been an antagonist of Gandhian ideas of non-violence in my teens. But as I grew older I realised that principled differences apart, none could overlook the fact that Gandhi was probably the only man who ...

The IM11 team has been the main reason for the success of MastishK. These people have worked really hard – all credits to them …. I am just a cog-wheel of the gears, they are the engine behind the Rocket called MastishK The specific credits are as follows (order is random, no preferences) To start with, Suraj , our central upload manager – a very efficient chap, hard working and dedicated. He was a major resource to us during the website coding. The homepage, the Registration and login areas and all other daily games were made by him. Without him we wouldn’t have completed most of the crucial stuff. And creditably, he even worked during his summers-placement process, and has always been the person whom we could rely on during constrained times. Arti – another dedicated worker! If you want to know what process ownership means, give a job to her and you’ll understand. The MastishK creative whiz, all MastishK wallpapers are her handwork. She also made sure that the Quiz runs everyda...

MastishK has finally come to an end. The journey that started way back in February, through the months to October has finally reached a conclusion. This post is a thanks giving note from my side. Fully online games – the dream concept that I proposed to begin with has come out to be great success and has been appreciated across the nation today – thanks to all of you who helped me out make it a success. My first thanks goes to the Prerana Management Group for supporting the concept even at a time when it didn’t seem feasible. The support thereafter has been a big booster for us, and helped us concentrated on the quality of the event than other issues. Irrespective of the contentions that aroused time and again PMG stood by us during the tribulations. I once again thank them for the support. Next my gratitude goes to all my friends and team mates who made MastishK possible. To mention the names – ShoOOonya, Shubham, Kartik, Milind, Payal, Ashita, Sourjyendu and VAK worked as much o...

From the day when I literally begged the Prerana committee for support to the online gaming event, to today when Mastishk has more than 11000 hits and beyond 2000 registrations – I have come a long way with MastishK. During the past 3 months I have spent numerous hours for making this event a success. . . and happily enough, the hard work has paid. But more than the satisfaction of having made it is my satisfaction of having learnt a lot from it. Take for example my understanding of SEI-CMM levels. I had read it in the course on Software Management, but I came to realise it lately, when we launched MastishK. As many times we struggled, as many times I remembered the definition of an SEI-CMM level 1 company. Chaos prevails, no processes are defined, success depends on heroic efforts of individual team members . . . and what not; each characteristic matches ! Talking of heroic efforts, I must whole heartedly thank my team mates from PGDIM XI (the junior batch). Without them this ev...

Last post I wrote on passion of life, I wrote that we work mostly because we enjoy our work rather than because the work is important. Since then everyday I have been visiting the NITIE Pond in the evening and have witnessed and appreciated a special passion – the passion for an evening jog! Even I was once a regular jogger round the pond – but that was before Mastishk. Ever since I came back from my summer break, no runs no play - just working for Mastishk . . . . but that’s another story. I was writing about the passion for a jog. Everyday, since probably the past 6-8 months Amit Atri comes to the pond around 6.00PM and starts his jog. If he doesn’t get time at 6.00, you’ll find him at 7.00 or probably the next morning. But there are few days when Amit would miss his routine. Over the months I have seen him increase the number of continuous rounds from 1 to 4. Notably I haven’t seen Amit growing any thinner due to his regular workout. Even if he has grown thinner, nothing is visib...

Gandhi has been my philosophical preoccupation almost for the past 2 months. It started when I borrowed the book “My experiments with truth” from Aurko during my holidays. And it reached a high when I visited the Gandhi Ashram at Sabarmati on 30th June. I also had a chance to watch a video of the play ‘Mi Nathuraam Godse Boltoye’ based on the assassination of Gandhi while I was in the first few pages of the book. The sharp contrast to Gandhi’s personality and their philosophy was very interesting to observe. Even Nathuram Godse was a freedom fighter but he was against partition of the nation – and considered Gandhi responsible for it. His philosophy was that if creation of Pakistan is not opposed, many new factions might emerge in the nation later. A dialogue of the play goes like this- “Today Muslim’s have asked for a new state, tomorrow Sikhs might ask for one, and imagine if each of the Hindu factions ask for a state; this nation will be fragmented to every inch.” What comes out...

Its about 10:45 AM and today is Sunday...probably i may not get a lot of time from tommorow when the week starts....right now am playing the song 'Dil Chahta Hai..." and somehow I am thinking of my most trusted freinds..both present and past... There are few of my friends whom I can rely upon without thinking twice...they are those whom I never need to think before reacting..and I know I will find them always beside me when I need them.....I can be assured that happen what may...even if i dont talk to them for years, still they will never be angry of me...Aurko from school days, Nimish in college days and I believe now my relationship with Shubham (in 'MBA' days) is also transforming into such a friendship.....Adhish though a bit far away in the US now, is also a dear friend.. Aurko is the oldest of such freinds and I am fortunate to have him around even today....we complement each other too well and hence probably we will be together in future...lets see.. I have ...