An illusion

Tag: Business

An illusion

Nov. 29 Uncategorized no comments

The difference between the masses and the classes. Can be measured only in light years.Politics, a synonym for business, is driven by the masses. By the underbelly, underworld, ghettos, slums, everything that is unauthorized. So the most authorized business actually runs from the most unauthorized places and the people at the bottomline, yearning to be heard somewhere, somehow, sometime. How can we even begin to think of cleaning the system? Kahan se shuru karoge? And how can one deal with hunegr, poverty, lethargy, the attitude of being a loser and the powerbrokers who exploit these needs to whet their hunger for power and control.

Appu has been upset. With the constant financial crisis situations in the office and house. With the hostility shown by AAI officials. I guess this is the cost we are paying for taking a stand. I am sure that easier softer options exist. But we have never taken them. And now is the time to pay for the choices made. Good or bad. Right or wrong.

Sab golmaal hai. And yet we gloat over the fake statistics, the fake turnovers, the fake signs of outward success. All the time, becoming poorer inside. All the time becoming empty and hollow.

We need more projects. More revenue. More income. And above all winners in our team. Change your tune bhai. It is really an old one now. Maybe we should get some people from the western world to get the work culture right. Maybe in place of our guys looking to work abroad, we should import some of them here.

The admin is ok. The pantry is working. The chairs in the office are being repaired today. Can we ever hope for a day where no repair is needed for anything in the office? Or for our souls? A client visit is scheduled for tommorrow. Need to make a trip to Hyderabad for another project. Good to stay busy. Lagta hai kuch kaam ho raha hai. Feels as if we are acheiving huge things.

A dream. Which keeps us going. Keeps us alive.

An illusion.

Tags: AAI officials, abroad, admin, an, authorized, bottomline, Business, chairs, choices, classes, client, constant, control, cost, crises, difference, dream, financial, golmaal, guys, huge things, hunger, Hyderabad, illusion, income, kahaan, karoge, lethargy, light years, loser, masses, old, pantry, people, politics, poverty, power, powerbrokers, projects, repair, revenue, shuru, soul, stand, trip, tune, unauthorized, underbelly, underworld, western, world

‘Live to die’

Mar. 08 Uncategorized no comments

Hate visiting the lawyers. The bankers cannot give us any window of time to retaliate the revoking of the BG by PACT, Lucknow. Le lo yaar. It is money after all. We were more concerned about the self respect that would be damaged if this act was condoned. But maybe the chief engineer or chairman PACT will lose self respect, not us. We have done the work, at a loss and as directed by PACT to the best of our ability, in fact even beyond it. We have to surrender the rest to the universe. Money will go and come. Hopefully. And we are not on the roads, as yet.

Gujiyas. My mother is very good at making them. I thought of calling her to ask for the recipe like any daughter would do under normal circumstances. But I do not know if she will talk to me. She has thrown me out of her life. I am not welcome in her life or home anymore. When the doors of your own home are closed, which other doors can open for you.

I drive back from the office very late in the night and the stark naked roads seem more real, more truthful than the hustling bustling roads of daytime. raat mein zyada sachhai dikhti hai. din se raat zyada schhi hai. It is like there is no mask in the night. There is no fakeness. No need too look good. To make money. To cover up.

Team nahin hai. All of us have different histories, different backgrounds and different limitations. We are using different survival tactics and feel more attacked than protected. So we are threatened by each other. Kya karen? We hurt each other to be able to survive. At any cost.

Blabbering as usual. Have we been able to change even one person? Then let us just shut up and go about our business.

Living is a preparation for dying.

And dying every moment is a preparation for living the next.

‘live to die’

Tags: attacked, BG, blabbering, Business, chief engineer, cost, damaged, daughter, dikhti, dying, fakeness, good, gujiyas, hai, hate, home, hurt, late, lawyers, life, live to die, living, look, loss, Lucknow, money, mother, nahin, naked, office, PACT, raat, real, recipe, retaliate, revoking, roads, sachhai, self respect, shut up, stark, surrender, survival, tactics, team, thorwn, truthful, universe, visiting

‘Worse than losing’

Feb. 23 Uncategorized no comments

We are broke. Thanks to the misuse of a blank cheque by our ex-accountant, Suraj Sinha. The cheque was given to him for cancellation. Of course he did not cancel it. He kept it for malafide use in the future. And that future is now. He also blocked the pc he was using with a password which he refused to reveal. It was for this reason that his salary of a fortnight was withheld. And he found this way to to debilitate the company. He took what he though was due to him and more. In the way of a conman. Incidentally, he also had the online passwords to be able to check the balances and to be able to generate statement of accounts. He has made very good use of this information.

So we are in a beg,borrrow,steal stage. But we will not die. I mean we are not dead yet. But we just might.

I don’t think we can be a part of the system. So the corollary to this is that we can never ever be successful within the system and by its definitions. We have to learn to live with this reality. We will always be outcasts. Business is Politics. And politics is business. And in between the two are just survivors. Still wondering what category we belong in.

Aur hoga nahin. I mean you know what I mean. The hacking, the conning, the forgery, the lies, the manipulation, the mis-trust. Difficult to work with this. To win. And to have no meaning to that winning.

When to win is worse than losing.

‘worse than losing’

Tags: accountant, accounts, balances, beg, blank, borrow, broke, Business, cancel, category, cheque, conman, conning, corollary, dead, debilitate, definitions, die, forgery, fortnight, future, generate, hacking, hoga, information, lies, losing, malafide, manipulation, meaning, mis-trust, nahin, online, outcasts, password, passwords, politics, reality, salary, statement, steal, successful, survivors, system, than, win, winning, withheld, worse

‘To be content’

Feb. 02 Uncategorized no comments

OK. Hold your breath. This one is unbelievable (but when have believable things happened with us?). The payment gateway of the shop has been successfully integrated and it is working fine!! Just when we had given up hope of it ever working fine. Just when we thought that our e-commerce venture would go down the drain, that it would never work with all the technical glitches and the fiasco with the last team( I mean so many have happened, right!). So the shop is technically and financially open and we should be in business soon( I mean not even one of our maps has been sold as yet but what the hell).

Thanks to Hariom and Gagan ( who has recently joined and is a fresher). Thank you guys. For winning this one.

Hariom is also very near to testing the logic to be used in the software for the calculations with reference to the surfaces and the instruments for a single airport. Chandrakant is doing some reverse engineering for a site in Mumbai and he will also need to visit it very soon to collect a few coordinates. Amit has joined us in accounts and OmPrakash in administration. Let us see. Fingers crossed as always. The beginning is good. I have already shouted once (or maybe twice) and they have not quit. Hope is a good thing anyway.

It is so difficult for us to just manage the office ,bills,clients,meals. Wonder how HP manages the earth with its rotation and every miniscule life on it. It would be good to exchange notes with HP. I mean free of cost of course. Why would HP charge us? It is only man who cannot think of anything without charging.

A lot of potential team members are reading the blog. Sone pe suhaga. I mean why would they like to join after knowing all the nitty gritties of GC? A million dollar question. Kya hoga tera kaaliya. I hope it cannot get any worse. That the worst is over ( we have said that many times in the past too).

I don’t think I am writing intelligent stuff. I should pack up. One of the tyres in my car is punctured and that will need changing before I can reach home, hopefully before the time freezed by Appu which is 1:30 pm ( in the night of course). The team packed up early today (which means by 9:30pm) and that is amazing. They have only been able to leave by 11:30pm or 12:30pm in the past few months.

‘Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence,

And I am learning, whatever state I am in,

therein to be content.’ – Helen Keller

Tags: accounts, administration, airport, amazing, beginning, bills, breath, Business, calculations, charging, clients, collect, content, coordinates, cost, crossed, darkness, dollar, drain, e-commerce, earth, engineering, everything, exchange, few, fiasco, financially, fingers, free, freezed, fresher, GC, glitches, hell, hold, HP, instruments, intelligent, learning, life, logic, man, maps, meals, million, miniscule, months, Mumbai, nitty gritty, notes, office, OK, packed, past, payment gateway, punctured, question, quit, reverse, rotation, shop, shouted, silence, single, site, software, sold, sone, state, stuff, suhaga, surfaces, team, technical, testing, therein, tyres, unbelievable, value, venture, winning, wonders

A metamorphosis

Jan. 02 Uncategorized no comments

Just feeling very tired. Bang in the beginnig of new year. And irritated with anyone and everyone. Also spaced out. Appu is upset with my behaviour. So am I. Running the house. Quite a task I must say. So is running a business, small or big. To do it on a daily basis is humugus. Jaan nikal jati hai. Need some help here. O what would I give to feel feminine again!

So much of hue and cry over the outward manifestation of ‘corruption’. The ‘bribes’, ‘commissions’. ‘paybacks’ are all symptoms of a deeper malaise. The ‘corruption’ exists in our minds. Uski surgery kaise karoge? The ‘media’ selling ‘soft porn’, projecting the possession of latest gizmos as the only sign of success’ ,apart from of course a beautiful girl hanging on your shoulders. Everyone would want to look good, to look successful and what could be a quicker way to achieve that than ‘getting easy money and quickly’. Go below the surface. The disease is of ‘wanting more and more’. The root cause is not corruption. The root cause is ‘greed’, is in wanting ‘to look good’, ‘to be on the fast track for name.fame,money,power’.

The team is still here. No one has quit. Till now. Achhi baat hai. Quite an achievement in itself. Hariom has committed to reading the guidelines. So has Chandrakant, I hope. Ritesh and Chandan are busy with the online shop and the payment gateway integration. The UK company hosting our sites is shutting down. So we need to very quickly transfer the sites to another hosting company before the 9th. Another crisis situation. Jhel lo bhaiyya. ‘Crisis’ is familiar. Being in ‘crisis’ is like being in a ‘comfort zone’. And being in ‘comfort zone’ would be like being in a ‘crisis’, being ‘uncomfortable’. Ulta chakkar hai.

The rations have been bought. Appu is not well. The bills are pouring in and the clients are not responding. They are still in celebration mode and ushering in the New Year. Ho gaya bhai. The New Year has arrived and so have the bills. Let us get back to work. Cake ho gaya, daaru ho gayi, party ho gayi. Its over. I mean the party time. At least for us.

I need a break. No I think I need a smoke. No, that would only increase the expenditure and where is the turnover to support that?

Maybe I should just keep quiet, let the world go about its business, let the earth rotate and just be.

From being a monster to being a saint. Sounds good.

From a monster to a saint.

A metamorphosis.

Tags: beautiful, behaviour, bills, break, bribes, Business, cake, chakkar, comfort zone, commissions, crisis, daaru, deeper, disease, earth, easy money, expenditure, fame, feeling, feminine, girl, gizmos, good, greed, hostins, hue and cry, irritated, jaan, malaise, media, metamorphosis, mind, money, monster, name, new year, party, possession, power, quickly, rations, rotate, running, saint, shoulders, sites, smoke, soft porn, sounds, success, surgery, tired, turnover, ulta, website, world

‘Raunak lagi rehti hai’

Sep. 25 Uncategorized no comments

Another legal notice. Means that we are not dead dogs. Because no one kicks a dead dog. There must be some life in us. As yet. Abhi lawyer dhoodhna padega. It takes more work to create an environment for work rather than the actual work. The 80-20 ratio again. 80% of the time is spent in preparing to work. Only the balance 20% is available for the actual work. Being a failure is difficult. Being successful is even more difficult. I guess it must be easier to hang somewhere in between, neither quite here and neither quite there.

We had advertised for a consultant and did not get a single response. ‘Teachers’ are hard to find. ‘ students’ are even harder to find. Although the business of ‘teaching’ is the most ( maybe only) profitable business as of now. We are muddling along. A few mistakes there, a few mistakes here. Consequences, fear, panic, deep breath, back on track. The interviews for the selection of a GIS executive are over. Five candidates have been shortlisted. One of them will be finalized over the next week. Narendra Rana is leaving for Ahmedabad for the collection of constituency maps on this coming tuesday. Dimpi is struggling with the online shop. Kamakhya is worried about PHBAAS as the upoming airport in navi Mumbai has created quite a few complications in the development of the product. Narendra is working on the latest small project.

Today is daughter’s day and me and Appu have planned to go out in the evening. As of now she has gone for a movie with her friend. I am happy that she has begun planning these small outings. She has spent quite some time sitting alone in the house. The office was cleaned thoroughly yesterday and the house is being cleaned today. I wish we could also clean our hearts and souls. But that would take a lifetime or even generations.

I was talking to a real estate client in Mumbai. The one who has filed all these RTI’s in AAI. He opined that if he had powerful political links, the need for filing RTI’s would not have arisen. But that he had consciously stayed away from any affiliation with any political party although he gets a lot of feelers from them. He said he was not very ambitious and had no willingness to compete with the other real estate developers. That for him, life or work was not just about making money. That ‘Work’ is only an essential part of living. That is it. Nothing more. Nothing less. ‘Raunak lagi rehti hai’, bas. I like that. That work is only to create some liveliness, some movement. And not the most important component of ‘living’.

Why are we working?

‘ raunak lagi rehti hai’.

Tags: 80-20, advertised, affiliation, airport, alone, back on track, Business, client, consequences, constituency maps, consultant, daughters' day, dead, dogs, environment, estate, evening, failure, fear, GIS executive, hai, interviews, kick, lagi, lawyer, legal notice, life, living, mistakes, money, movie, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, online shop, outings, panic, PHBAAS, political, powerful, profitable, ratio, raunak, real, RTI, shortlisted, student, successful, teacher, teaching, trhti, work

‘Let go’

Jul. 31 Uncategorized no comments

The earth will continue to rotate without our help. I wish I could say the same about the office. Saturday has been declared a holiday but it is a major day of operations for the HR/Admin/Accounts. The entire office is cleaned, the systems are scanned for viruses and the accounts are brought up to date. So in many ways it is a working day for most of us.
Finally, it is a sunday and the phone is silent.

Increasingly, i think more than jobs, we need people who want to do those jobs, who truly want to work. Mostly I am challenged with people who believe that having a degree and being alive is a passport for getting a job and making a living. And this creates poor quality work, low national income and consequently lesser net income and growth. But this is an area which is not focussed at, at all, as it would mean confronting the inability of our education system, of confronting our own inadequacies as individuals and as a nation. This is one more reason for people to walk out from GC. They are challenged to not just exist, but to live, to stretch their capabilities to the maximum and the hard work and commitment required drives them away. Mostly they are looking for easier softer options to make a living and just getting by. ‘Just get by’ is the ‘mantra’ to live with for most of us.

No project or payment in sight so far. Good. Very good. The lean times will help us respect the good times better. Amma continues to cook the lunch in the office. So far so good. The HR/Admin team has been re-vamped and hopefully they will sustain the pressure at GC. The newsletter for the month of july is in progress and is being designed by Narendra.
The online shop is due to be launched on August 8 although large parts of the inteface are yet to be finalized. Keeping our fingers crossed.

The online motor in the house has been replaced and the water situation is better now. I think it was overdue and it was just not done due to the lack of funds. So as we say in NA, on the outside, there is manageability. Ah, but what matters is the inside and we hardly ever talk about it.

Let the tears flow, they clean the eyes, the heart and the soul,
Let the world go about its own business,
Let the earth rotate at its own speed,
Let the universe step in and help when we cannot do it alone,
Let go of things, of people who choose to leave.

Letting go is probably the most powerful lesson in life and living.

‘Let go’

Tags: accounts, admin, alive, Business, capabilitis, clean, commitment, confronting, cook, degree, earth, easier, education, eyes, finalized, flow, focussed, funds, GC, get by, good, growth, heart, holiday, HR, inability, inadequacies, income, individuals, interface, job, jobs, launched, lean, let go, letting go, living, low, lunch, manageability, motor, NA, nation, national, net income, newsletter, office, online, options, parts, passport, payment, people, phone, poor, project, quality, reason, rotate, scanned, softer, soul, system, tears, things, times, universe, viruses, work, world

To communicate in silence

Apr. 18 Uncategorized no comments

My mind is not working today. Too many thoughts crashing into each other. Traffic jam so to say. I was told once that I would not be able to survive as a single woman and definitely not in the world of business. And the footnote was ‘ unless I agreed to be the mistress of somebody (obviously a man)’. I am very grateful to my higher power that I have been able to prove this prophecy to be untrue. Of course there has been a huge emotional cost, huge chunks of time with loneliness, long periods when I have been unavailable for my daughter, and a gradual erosion of interest in any thing other than work.

Appu wants me to be happy. Now that is a tougher task than making money or even being just alive. Happiness is an inside job and inside jobe are kind of complex in a simple way (now I am making it sound complicated). I mean one can fake happiness but to be truly happy,joyous would be difficult. To give up the masks,to clean the clutter, to live simply would take a lot of courage. Its easier to hide behind work,accolades,material things,routine,something,anything to appear busy. Multiple lives,multiple masks,multiple tasks and all for a single life. Very unbalanced I must say.

Kundan celebrates his 6th recovery birthday this saturday and he wishes to receive the token and card from me. That is a huge honor. I mean I am not used to getting so much respect. Never got it from my family you see. I told him that it would be a problem but he is adamant about it. OK. So I will go and experience what it is to feel ‘respect’.

The ‘sever’ in the office needs to work like a ‘server’ so that the backup of the data can be maintained. There is a need for a new machine ( wonder it it is a ‘need’ or a ‘want’). I guess all is well or is appearing to be well, for now. The quiet before the storm or the part of the iceberg that is below the water and hence is not visible.

What am I trying to say here? No idea. Am I saying anything at all.

To communicate in silence is so much more powerful.

Tags: accolades, alive.money, backup, Business, busy, chunks, clean, clutter, communicate, complex, cost, courage, data, definitely, difficult, emotional, erosion, footnote, happiness, hide, honor, iceberg, Inside, interest, jam, job, joy, loneliness, machine, masks, material things, mind, mistress, multiple lives, multiple tasks, need, office, powerful, prophecy, quiet, recovery, respect, routine, say, server, silence, single, storm, survive, task, time, today, token, tougher, traffice, trying, unbalanced, untrue, want, woman, work, working, world

Euthanasia

Nov. 25 Uncategorized no comments

My mother would be appalled by the way I run the house. The ‘dals’ are not kept in a linear row in the store, the containers are not symmetrical and probably have not been washed for a couple of months now. To top it, we have rats in the house. And for the larger part, we let each other be. As long as ‘us’ and the ‘rats’ do not cross paths, it is truce. But my daughter is OK with it and that is what matters.

There are a lot of deadlines to be met in terms of delivering work and my mind is in a frenzy. Of course this has never happned before. We were always looking for work. So to get an opportunity to just focus on ‘doing work’ is a new experience.

Have a meeting at the ‘Airport Authority of India’ today. Need to understand the complexities of the Hyderabad Airport. Yet again. Working with AAI has definitely re-taught us the value of precision.

Appu mentioned last night that being an enterpreneur was like getting sucked in by a tornado. That business was like a shark which never sets you free till you die. Qiute a grim scenario. She is living with the effects and consequences of this way of life at very close quarters. She must be right. The pressure always increases in geometric progression.

Need to go for an NA meeting. Need a space to be silent. To be quiet.
Too much noise in the world around. There is ‘Euthanasia’ to end ‘physical pain’. I think ‘Euthanasia’ should also include ‘emotional pain’.

More often than not ‘emotional pain’ is worse than any ‘physical pain’.

‘Pain’. Feels and sounds familiar.

Tags: Airport Authority of India, appalled, Business, close, complexities, consequences, container, couple of months, cross paths, dal, daughter, deadlines, delivering, die, doing work, effects, emotional pain, enterpreneur, Euthanasia, experience, familiar, feels, focus, free, frenzy, geometric, grim, house, Hyderabad airport, linear, living, matters, mind, mother, NA meeting, new, noise, opportunity, pain, peace, physical pain, precision, pressure, progression, quarters, rats, scenario, shark, silent, sounds, space, store, sucked, symmetrical, tornado, truce, undersatnd, understand, value, washed, work, world

Being dynamically static

Nov. 23 Uncategorized 1 comment

It was a very hectic day yesterday. The meeting in Gurgaon followed by the meetings in the office. Came home very late and discovered that Appu was very unwell. So decided to take her to Max Hospital. It is of course more a five star hotel than a hospital. You start paying as you enter and you keep paying till you leave. The doctor at the emergency was young,beautiful,rude and arrogant. The medical profession has lost its ethics,its mission in the maze of looking good and making money. The charges are double in the night and if you do not look good and/or have enough money, you will be looked down upon and not entertained at all. I had a small altercation with the doctor there and then me and Appu proceeded to leave when I observed two men pleading with the doctors to look after their baby who needed medication and possible hospitalization but they had no money to pay then and there. They were asking for time to be able to pay but no one was ready to listen to them. In fact they were being shouted at ‘paise nahin hote to kyun chale aate ho’? No medicines were being administered to the child who just lay on the bed. The guys were sure of arranging the money till morning but the docs were not ready to listen. Is this what the medical profession teaches? Is this the reason these five star facilities are built after taking land in the name of serving at least 5% of the poor. It is disgusting. This is the chain of Max hospitals. Well done guys. Keep it up.Keep killing and making money. Sometimes I think it is true that huge money can only be made in a hugely dirty way.

Appu has also been suggesting that a huge cost cutting can be done in schools by replacing the so called erudite teachers with ‘parrots’. I mean they can be trained in the same way that teachers are. And they can keep repeating the same chapters day in and day out and in PTA meetings they can keep repeating.’marks lao,percentage badao,padte raho’. Where is the difference? The ‘parrots’ will definitely reduce the budget and other administrative hassles.

It is disappointing. The way we are running our world and building systems to kill the very human beings for which the systems are being built.

My sister called. And she said that we needed to appear like one big huge happy family on the D day of the celebration. That I needed to buy clothes and whatever else to look good. That it might even help in the growth of the business. I mean having a good solid ‘happening’ family is a good thing for ‘business’ and ‘politics’. Point taken but let us agree to disagree.

Don’t feel like working today. Just tired I guess. Maybe one proposal. A walk of 1 mm.
Bills,layout plan,projects,shifting,money-the same rigmarole.

Something is better than nothing. At least we are not static.

Being dynamically static.

Tags: 1mm, administrative hassles, agree to disagree, altercation, appear, arrogant, baby, beautiful, being, bills, budget, building systems, built, Business, celebration, chain of max hospitals, chapters, charges, clothes, cost cutting, day, difference, dirty, disappointing, doctor, dynamically, emergency, entertained, ethics, five star hotel, good solid happening family, growth, Gurgaon, hectic, home, hospital, hospitalization, huge, huge family, human beings, kill, land, layout plan, listen, looking good, lost, marks lao, Max hospital, medical, medication, meeting, men, mission, money, office, padte raho, parrots, paying, percentage badao, pleading, point, poor, profession, projects, proposal, PTA meeting, repeating, rigmarole, rude, running, serving, shiftig, sister, static, systems, taken, teachers, trained, unwell, walk, way, yesterday, young

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Tag: Business

An illusion

‘Live to die’

‘Worse than losing’

‘To be content’

A metamorphosis

‘Raunak lagi rehti hai’

To communicate in silence

Euthanasia

Being dynamically static

On whose back is the monkey?

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