The Working Woman

From today, i plan to post a few of my so called poems in frequent intervals. Some of them are a bunch of crap and some of them not so bad. A lot of them talk about elements of sadness. I am afraid that despair does drive people to write unconnected words and then derive meanings from them

Sun sinks into the far away sky, settling
Itself into a deep slumber, away
From all that it does not want to see, shrinking
Into its cocoon of night

City lights blaze wildly, towering beyond into
The dark, denizens rise from deep slumber
As night wraps its cloak over, a soft touch
Whispering silence into the aftermath

Honking drivers carry them, into little streets punctured
With shorter frames, doors and windows seem meshed
Into a tight grip, faces extract from within, bodies
Move into the glowing crimson

Lithe and supple, fat and voluptuous, they stand
Tantalizing you to reach out, touch them, feel them, give in
To their longing gaze, depravity hints light
Behind their sultry eyes

Gaudy paints across their face, rag tags adorn
Their overworked frame, strategic slits show themselves
And with it, alabasters made of blood, pouting lips
Send silent invitations to onlookers and wanderers

A silent whisper, soft badinage, sudden laughter
And teasing gestures, soft hands, ages of experience
Shows you the way, the terms fixed, the money exchanged
All is ready, as you follow, eyes down, head covered

The eyes betray once more, silent tears fall
But mechanical hands work fast, the light
Extinguished, all that is heard, the breath hard
And fast, and the silent cries

Who are you ?

Today is the last day at work for one of my friends. He has moved on from our company to start his own firm – specifically a music firm. He used to play music when he was in his college days. And now he has moved on to pursue his earlier career and his passion. He has started a music group and probably in sometime will start a music production house and many other things along with that. I read with a great amount of happiness and some pangs of jealousy, his farewell note to some of us in the organization. I mulled over the event and realized that he is probably one of the few people i will definitely appreciate and hold in high regard in my lifetime

To discard something where you are most comfortable,a job where you earn a lot of money and are good at doing it is very difficult. To discard that at the peak of your career is what a lot of people would call foolhardy. But there are very few people in the world who are brave enough to take such a step. All of us keep thinking how uncomfortable we are in our current job, why others got promoted, what is my colleagues salary and why is his increase higher than mine. All of us stage political gambits to win our supervisor as well as our organization’s favor. All of us think how foolish is the person who quit his job to pursue what he likes ?

None of us even bother to think on what it takes to take that bold step. It is not easy, but neither is it difficult. All it takes is for one to find out what he really wants to be and then pursue it diligently. But very few of us even know what we want out of life. We tend to visit masters, gurus , read a lot of self help books to understand who we are and what we want to do and where we want to go. These books will never help you arrive at the reason. These books will never tell you what is correct and what is wrong. It is you who have to collect information, ruminate and then decide on what to do. We are our own masters and there can be no one who can lead you towards your utopia

Sham-Boo Karnataka

Dear Eddie & Kummy

Hope this letter finds you in good health. I have been meaning to write to you for the last few days, but frankly in the mundane world of corporate life, I have not had the time to sit down and write a letter with meaningful sentences. After the assembly antics that was vividly displayed in Technicolor across the country, I feel that it is time I wrote to both of you and let you know what I as a citizen of this land think.I have taken time off from my daily work and have spent considerable time writing this letter. I hope some sense does prevail after reading this in both your minds

It is suffice to say that in the last few years since I got my right to vote I have not exercised it. I have not found it too difficult to alienate myself from both your parties as well as the others who have been around in the political potpourri, either in this state or in this country. To me all of you look and sound the same and I can define no differences in your ideology or your actions. Every action of yours stem from the word “What is in it for me”. You neither have ideologies that are clear to the common man, nor have dischargeable duties that benefit the tax payer. Of course you all end up burdening us money makers for your gain

As politicians, your duty is towards the upliftment of the state you govern and of the people you rule. In fact, I would go on to state that the word RULE has been misused by a lot of you. RULE in this context is to administer the laws laid down by citizens as per the constitution book and not by your book. To read and to interpret the principles of governing a particular piece of land or area with the interest of people living in the same area being upheld is the definition of RULES. They are meant to be guiding principles and not subject to individual interpretation

In the last few years, both of you have spent ample number of hours trying to get to each others throat to ensure that one of you is holding the power seat and milking the land (including people) of resources and pushing these into your own coffers. The antics of both your parties in the last few days have probably damaged the land and its people more than the Britishers or the Mughals did in the last few hundred years.

As learned and trusted individuals and elected as representatives of the people of Karnataka, both of you have a duty to discharge which is in the best interest of the people and not of your selves. Please remember that personal gains are not to be achieved through public means. If that is the case, areas such as thievery, smuggling are better suited for this. One can indulge in these without any investment whatsoever and the gains are multifold.

As for yesterday’s fracas in the assembly, both of you have played the part of hooliganism to the hilt. Even a pair of pugilists knocking each other silly in the ring take cognizance of the referee and abide by the rules of the bell. These my friend are the Queensbury rules and I guess both of you have never heard of the Queensbury rules of the legislature. To show your faces on national television with your teams kicking and howling like little children show that you and your team are no longer fit to discharge the duties that you have been provided with. It is time that both of you sit back, spend some time introspecting on what went wrong

I am not going to talk about legalities here. They are woven so intricately that as you peel away each skin a new one appears. It is like Draupadi’s Saree which never stops coming out. We will never reach the end of the line here. But what you have to do now is to understand that you have misused the power of the people vested on you by the people and you are now answerable to them.I would suggest that both of you take the next few months off work, dive deep into the ideology pool of your parties and understand the errors and the way forward

Till then, i as a citizen of this state would be comfortable with Mrs. Patil ruling our state or any other central body thereof including the armed forces.

Hope you are able to work things together

Yours Sincerely

Citizen of Karnataka

Endhiran – Monstrous !!!

Last evening, we managed to get tickets for Endhiran – the talk of the town, and ended up spending nearly 3 hours in the theatre watching the most touted movie in India

To sum it up in one word – Monstrous was what i would call this movie. Starring the Superstar Rajnikanth and former Miss World(maybe of plastic land) this movie has been made with an enormous budget and boasts some serious Hollywood technicians. Not much to talk about the story line, there is nothing there at all.

Scientist makes Robot
Robot breaks scientist’s heart
Scientist breaks robot apart
- end of part 1 -
Robot does a Jesus, Robot does a Judas
scientist kills Judas, the baby is disarmed
- end of movie -

The typical elements of a Rajnikanth movie is missing – good rich guy has a problem with bad rich guy, becomes poor, has family trauma and then makes it big, of course with the help of a classy hot heroine. This movie is all about making a humanoid robot, trying to get the army to accept it and in between this whole episode, multiple failures, partial successes and the judiciary mocking the whole creation and shelving into a place aka Area 51 till the world is ready for the beast !

Special effects are a plenty, some of them slickly made and some can be forgotten. A scene inspired by 3Idiots delivery can be simply forgotten with the robot trying to deliver a baby in an ancient method and telecasting the delivery through wireless transmitter to monitors and television screens. Boy, would data security firms get fits while seeing this. Of course the robot is supposed to be generations ahead and well, the look and feel is so plastic that one wonders whether it was created eons earlier and left to rot on some planet. Seeing through the robot’s eye could have been enhanced like Terminator series, but these are left untouched to a great extent. To that effect, use of special effects has been disregarded. Maybe its for the masses who do not appreciate such details. But when you are making a movie with artificial intelligence, neural networks and software lingo, this is the least that could have been done

Tamil cinema needs comedy tracks aplenty and this is true for this movie. However, the director could have avoided childish comedies like the mosquito scene. And please, you are not shooting a commercial here and having names for mosquitoes seem a bit overkill for a space age movie. Electro magnetism finds a lot of mention in this movie. In fact it is probably the common thread in the movie. Asimov too finds a mention in the beginning. But the robot has built in flaws which go against Asimov’s principles and this is not corrected subsequently too. Maybe Shankar has got his own laws of robotics

Aishwarya finds passing mentions in the movie just like the mosquito. Her character starts abruptly and does not flow through the movie. She is more like an accompaniment to the proverbial masala dosa. You could eat the dosa even without it. She does show her age. Strangely, i must admit i had a fleeting glimpse of her wearing a body suit. Either she has become a prude, or the technician during touch up failed to notice it. The Peruvian ladies (i hope) featured in one of song sequences sizzle and the heroine looks more like a wet torch compared to them.

The emotional aspects of the robot lack punch. Compare this to the Bicentennial man and Robin Williams and you would see what directors can do. I must say that there is no fault of Rajini here. Being the star he is, his movies such as Johnny and Dharmadurai truly shows his emotional swings. The director lacked the brilliance to bring them out. The one thing that was done right by the director was bringing out the villain in Rajani. Rajani is simply superb, right from his costume, his gait and the cackling laugh which becomes a full blown, deep throated punch. His teasing of the righteous scientist with a sheep’s bleating is pure evil. Again, just like the re-entry of Sivaji as the bald man with the maniacal eyes, the evil robot Rajni does his part to the hilt. Kudos to Rajini

The movie ends on a very strange tone. The judiciary closes the case against the scientist just like an open and shut case. Further it stops the deployment of robot in society. Obviously, the robot was not built for a society. It was built for war. The least that could have been done was to downgrade it from version 2.0 to version 1.5. The dismantling scene of the robot leaves pangs of laughter in anyone’s mind.

The songs can be disregarded from a musical perspective. The background score lacks the punch. The picturisation of songs though are quite interesting and the Indian viewers manage to visit a new country once again. Non Dravidian dance steps is not the hero’s forte and Prabhu Deva seems to have got it right. Robotic movements seem to define the day and this is most satisfying.

The movie is an entertainer nevertheless, but fails in story, screenplay, audio and succeeds in special effects, fight scenes and dance sequences. If you are an ardent Rajani fan you would wonder what on earth prompted him to do this movie and if you are new to Rajani you will still wonder what on earth prompted one to take such a movie. This is more of a Shankar’s movie and manages to lift its head and run about thanks to Rajani

Who dares watches

Customer Service – Where art thou ?

Customer Service seems to be such a common word in India with all the outsourcing that is going about. Do we really understand the term customer service at all, especially in the BPO industry. Many of the BPO services organizations work on processes which are customer service oriented or what they call as frontline tasks. Do they really know what is it that they are focusing on here

I remember an incident which happened to me when i went to a hotel in Bangalore. I had ordered a particular dish which i later realized that i did not enjoy much. I had an exasperated look on my face, exasperation at myself for not remembering this. The duty manager who was making the rounds saw my sour face, walked over and enquired as to what was it that troubled me. He sat next to me and over a conversation of 10 minutes or so coaxed it from me and then went over to cancel the order, pick a new one and deliver it to me in time that it took me to finish my drink. To me that was servicing a customer.

Customers are serviced nowadays when they stand before you asking for help. It is one thing to proactively walk over, extend support and make the customer feel wanted. It is a completely different thing when someone calls you and asks for help. At this time, we are bothered of measuring our talk times, efficiency of picking up phones and answering customers as quickly as possible. We do not look at the larger picture of providing a wholesome experience to the customer. We end up working in boundaries of our processes and forcing the customer to reach out using additional media and at times annoying them.

Have you ever wondered what happens when you take your car to your garage. There is a fatherly person who sits on a stool smoking his cigarette and sipping tea always. It is strange that this person seems to have the patience of an elephant and ends up talking to you for a long time, understanding your family, your profession, sympathizing with you on the rise in fuel prices or even the notoriety of being associated with the CWG committee. He does not then hand you over to the little man in the blue overalls under the car train. Rather he leads this person to you, explains the problem in a better technical language and then ensures that your needs are taken care of

In our call centers do we end up doing this. I am not sure we do. We end up transferring calls to other people, putting customers on hold so that they can hear the lousy music and create that high pressure crater waiting to blow.

We need to redefine our priorities in our service centers. At the end of the day your customer is always right since he ends up being the user, the promoter and the owner of your product

Nowhere Man

 

Dreary the sun, drearier the earth                                                           the days seem longer now
as time keeps itself ticking and reminding
of the melancholical force that life has now become

Changes around, changes aground
idols fall down, shattered in the dust
partners in crime become turncoats
bliss turns into nightmare

As you languish in the mire and filth
the green doors open and the slime pours
of envy, of hate
caught in this web of deceit
you turn around to feel the walls
not standing anymore, they disappear into mist
whipping hands clutch at nothingness
as you wander back to your little cubbyhole

You have become a Nowhere Man

Whats with giving sarees to Obama. To wh

Whats with giving sarees to Obama. To what purpose. Give it to someone in India and you might see the joy in their eyes. http://ow.ly/2yUUy

Looking for a grandfather clock, anyone

Looking for a grandfather clock, anyone who is willing to sell please send me a message..pass it on to your friends too

great experience with IMRB survey for br

great experience with IMRB survey for broadband service providers, quality of communication was very high…:)

Pattar Press

Today, I thought of starting a series of posts on my family members, arms length and leg’s length (extended ones), not to be mistaken with the ones you would like to kick around like Floran. Our family is probably a big Octopus (not Paul of course). They were not clairvoyants, but did manage to make predictions on things like elections, food tastes, gender of the yet to be born baby, movies and a whole host of other things including outcome of cricket matches with consistent failures. Infact, the predictability of their failure rates is as high as 99% with a confidence level of more than 95%. However, returning to the Octopus, our family tree from my great grandfather would probably fill a few 100 square feet of space what with each of the children managing to cross the 6 limit barrier. Not sure, who decided the 6 limit barrier, but it worked in reverse. Any person with lesser than 6 children were rendered outcasts. To this effect, my parents lost out on the 6 club by 3.

One of the intersting things to be noted about the typical Palaghat Iyer clan (Pattar) is the naming convention. As most of you have been called at some point of time or the other, PIs are normaly called as Pattars by the Malayalees who believe that we lost our way and landed in their home town and completely usurped their seats and claimed feifdom to Palaghat. There are a lot of places in Palaghat that we call our own and to reinforce the patriotism we have actually managed to include the villages in our names. And hence we have people called Tayankolankarai S Mahavdevan affectionately called TRM or Tatamangalam R Srinivasan. Of course, when these people land up in the US counsulate for visas to visit their sons or daughters they end up having an argument with the application form. And herein the proverb “Pen is mightier than sword” takes a big beating with TRS pulling his hair apart in deciding which of the boxes he would put his 3 names and finally shredding the form with his pocket knife specially made for betel nut hacking (Vethalla cheeval)

Of course, the TRS family has things easier at the home front. When Mrs TRS delivers their first child in the same village, the child is aptly called TSR. The second and third names keep getting substituted and this of course has been their for generations. The grandfather is called Srinivasan Ramanathan, the father is therefore called Ramanathan Srinivasan and the son quite obvious Srinivasan Ramanathan. Creativity was not one of the favourite point of the TRS clan. Of course, when it comes to the daughter things change a bit. The first daughter has the paternal’s grandmother’s name and the second daughter maternal grandmother’s name and if there is more than 2 daughters then the grandma’s sisters begin their sojourn into the family nomenclature. So When Srinivasan Ramanthan and Alamelu Ramanathan have a granddaughter, she is called Alamelu and when they have another granddaughter she becomes Pattammal who is their in law or in this case sammandhi.

However, it should be noted that the TRS clan had a different sort of creativity in them. This became evident again in the naming of people. As you would imagine a marriage ceremony that needed to be attended by the octopus and its tentacles would be a nightmare. Imagine the priest calling for the girl’s father by his name Ramanathan and 5 of the namesake turn up at the madapam. This had to be nipped in the bud and the clan came to its creative best. Nicknames were the order of the day. So each name was shortened to its minmalistic length and a chi, chu or bi (bee) was added to it. Krishnan became Kicha, Ramanthan became Ramu, Nathan, Ambi, Venkatraman became Venky, Venkacham, Veeramani, mani and so on. Sarswathi became Sachu, Alamelu became ammu and so on. Sometimes, nicknames did not have direct meeting to the actual name. They became a dervative or the relation, work or a common activity. In our family, one of the most creative name was for my uncle who had a penchant for wearing anything green. It is said that his wardrobe sported roughly 60% green shirts and he was therefore affectionately called Pachai anna (Green brother of the elder variety) since he was my mother”s brother. There were other interesting names such as mani, picchai, ambi and so on. These of course had a different reason of being formed and i shall brief you on the rationale of the same next time around