From time to time, we are on the edge of a precipice and miraculously, we are saved each time. Now I really wish to ask the Higher Power, ‘what do you really want man?’ I mean if we need to die then let us do it gracefully once and for all. And if we need to live, ‘ then let us do it in style’. I mean a few limousines, a few flats, offices, political contacts and the branded accessories (you know what I mean). Here we are, ‘dying, dying and then suddenly alive’. Very dramatic but please, this is really very tiring.

The newsletter has been completed (finally!). It is not perfect but what the hell. At least we have done it. It has been uploaded on the PrithviPraroop online shop. I look a shade better in the photograph pasted ( not like a moron at least). I am supposed to look in control, all in charge but I don’t think I have been able to fake it well. OK. So it is an attempt. So far so good.

I am coming back very late in the night and Appu and me have a deal for this month. I have to streamline things by the end of this month so that I can reach home earlier (??). Kaise hoga? I am alreayd scared. ‘Time’ like ‘Money’ is a very difficult thing to manage. At least ‘money’ can be created. There is absolutely no way of creating ‘time’.

I have to reach a state where I am ready to accept, to surrender to the fact that people cannot be changed. They will be who they are. That the only person I can change is me. So the actions, reactions, thoughts, feelings of other people are really not my property. Talking like a self proclaimed Guru (when everything else fails, this is the best remedy).

Losers will create losers.
And leaders will create leaders.

Trying to be a leader.

We are taking an inventory of the time, money and resources available to us. Together with the interviews. And the daily administrative jobs. Got a call from an existing client in Mumbai today. It always feels good. To know that the client is happy with our work.

Maybe we are ready for the next level in terms of technical proficiency and mature professionals. We are ready for a more mature and experienced team with less groupism. It is all for the best. We also have a lot of negative comments coming in. Which means that we have a lot of well wishers! Good. Nobody kicks a dead dog. The more negative the comments, the greater will be our drive to move ahead.

The salaries for this month have been paid (ok, huge sigh of relief), even though it has meant losing the entire team just after payday. At least some of the bills have been paid. The excel sheet is still intimidating and Diwali is just round the corner but we have never truly gifted expensive things to anyone. Be it the bankers, the clients or our team members. We always make a gesture, however small and that is about it. Hopefully, we will be able to manage this year also. The gifts, the diyas and the puja. For the first time in many years, Appu is going to be here on ‘Choti Diwali’ and that is huge. I mean we will light some diyas together before she leaves for Kashipur the next day.
There is a sense of betrayal. It is getting more and more difficult to have faith in people. That is and has been the biggest loss. I lost faith in my family a long time ago. And now I am losing faith in people. Looking for bread in a hardware store.

OK. I just need to focus on this hour, this day for now. The rest will fall in place. I need to feel alright before I embark on a journey to get everything else alright. To feel spiritually complete. More than any other poverty, it is spiritual poverty which is the biggest silent killer.

I think I should invite God over to lunch some day. You know, like for a chat maybe. Its just getting very unmanageable out here.

On this Earth.

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’.

This is also perhaps a day of ‘amends’. For my freind and batchmate ‘Mamta Anand’ who was killed by a man who claimed to love her. She had come to do M.Tech and I was in the final year of my B.tech.  We became friends and she shared with me that she needed to move away from her boyfriend as he was very controlling and abusive.  Once after spending a weekend with him, she came back early morning, scared to death. She shared that he had pointed a revolver to her head and threatened that if she did not obey him and stay with him, he would kill her. I took it very lightly. I believed that ‘love’ meant not hurting the one you loved. I was wrong. Then and many times again.He did kill her. By offering  ‘laddus’ laced with arsenic on the occasion of ‘diwali’. The irony was that he had taken permission from his parents to meet her. He was the son of a sitting MP with a lot of political clout. Mamta’s father believed in ‘Gandhivaad’ and ‘non-violence’. He asked Mamta to be gentle with him even if she wanted to leave him and to give him time to get over her. That was a the biggest mistake he made. He apologized to his daughter but only after her death. And I could not even do that as I was part of the IIT system and the entire affair was hushed up. It would have been blasphemous to tarnish the name of IIT Kanpur, the most hallowed institution in the country. I was not allowed to meet her parents, attend her funeral or give testimony in court. And in all probability, her killer is now married and well settled.

I am sorry Mamta. I was myself too scared and without support at that point to take on the system. It is a flimsy excuse. But I hope to get another chance to be able to finish the unfinished task. And this time round I will not dither to take a stand.

Sandeep has nearly finished the survey and should be back soon. We have been able to pay the salaries on time this month. This is huge for us. A great milestone. The office space is decent. For once there is no immediate crisis on the horizon except in the house. Amma has become too arrogant to live with and I have to allow her to leave. The water purifier has conked off, a glass shelf in the refrigerator is broken and the gas as ususal is over. I am sure there is another endless list of pending jobs. Deep breath.

I will do just what I can today.

Back to the basics. And doing the next right thing.

Work is happening ( as in ‘happening’). There is ‘work’. So hopefully, the ‘money’ will follow. Getting ‘respect’ would be another story altogether. ‘Respect’ is fast becoming an ‘unknown word in our lexicon.

Everyone is eagerly waiting to shift to the new office (which has a larger space). Of course a lot of work is still pending (which also means that a lot of money is still required for the makeover). And we do not wish to stop work here as there are deadlines for the projects we have undertaken.

Too much time on this earth could be detrimental. It would be nice to just experience life, do what one has to do and leave it to the younger generation to create something better and more worthwhile.

I have been thinking ( that is what I do most of the time anyway) that most of us live in a dream most of the time (just like in ‘Inception’). We live in a dream created by us for years, maybe generations at the second or third level. And it is a comfortable world. We believe what we wish to believe. The ‘reality’ is too heartbreaking, too painful. So we prefer to stay in a makebelieve world where all is well and nothing changes, day after day. Until a crisis happens to break that comfort level. And we are forced to face reality. And the facade breaks.

So maybe it is important that the facade remains intact. Of a happy family, of a successful life, of a ‘happening’ political and democratic system, of power, of being in control. The other side would be too scary to show. Just like the slums of a country or the ‘poor’ of a family. Now the poverty could be ‘financial’ or ‘emotional’. It has to be hidden. Behind lies, drugs, clothes,cars.

The ‘show’ must go on.

Thereafter the teaching class went well. I understood the positioning of the instruments on the runway and the guidelines for the restrictions on building heights to ensure that their functioning was not disturbed. Even with two cups of coffee, it was a long class (kab tak padna padega). But my ‘fundas’ (short form for fundamentals from our IIT lingo)are clear now and hopefully, we should be able to transform the restrictions on a digital map. The obstacle surfaces are still not very clear (some of them are, some aren’t) and I will need to go tommorrow also for one more lecture ( phir se?). After a few guidelines were discussed and some calculations done, it appeared that the maximum permissible height could only be 175 m whereas the appeal is for 402 m. So I asked the officials for a solution. And they shot back, Madam, aap log to (meaning the powerful and rich real estate clan, surely not me) kuch bhi kara sakte hain. Aap airport he shift kara dijiye. Phir jitni marzi unchi building banaiye. Airport nahin to radar hi shift kara dijiye. I am sure it was said sarcastically but it also reflected the power the real estate guys have on the political and economic landscape of our country.

I have been whining to Appu about how I have not been able to do any real work over the last few days. Exasperated, she finally shortlisted four things for me to finish today and she put it down on a white board in my room. The list included the meeting at AAI, sending 5 mails to potential clients (one of them has already bounced back), asking for a pending payment and discussions with Narendra on the presentation. And the deal was that in case I managed to finish these four jobs, I was not supposed to crib about not doing any work. OK, so I got the four jobs done. Cool. No whining today.

The ‘bank’ called. The red alert is beeping very fast now. We have to clear the TOD (by hook or by crook). The question is ‘how’.

Yeh CEO ka kya chakkar hai. Actually it should be ‘Chief Executive Peon’ or ‘Always available executive (AAE)’ or ‘ Blame us for everything (BUFE)’, actually that is a nice punchline for a T-shirt for CEO’s- Blame us for anything and everything that goes wrong. We have no control (we are just supposed to be in control) over anything. Just like the man appears to be in control in the house but it is the woman who wields the power (from the kitchen from where the food originates). Like me and Appu appear to be the bosses in the house whereas it is Amma (our long time maid) who has real control over everything( including every cup of tea that leaves the kitchen.)

Actually I was never comfortable with titles. When I founded the last company, I had travelled to Pune (on a shoestring budget and therefore had to stay in a very small and dingy hotel) to sign an agreemnt with a Pune based firm. On the last day of the trip when the agreement was being signed( and I was wondering how I would reach the airport on time as I had finished all my money and walking would have ensured that I missed my flight and be stranded with no money and no ticket to travel back), Prof. Krishnayya (the head of the Pune firm) asked me what title I would like to use. I was lost for words as I could think of no heavyweight title for myself. And he said how about ‘Chief officer’? And I said OK. I was never comfortable with heavy titles like ‘MD’ or ‘Director’.So that is how the journey of titles began for me

And now from ‘Chief officer’, it has evolved to ‘Chief Executive Officer’. But the job remains the same. It is mostly that of a sophisticated available peon,manager, executive,punching bag, all rolled into one.

And what a journey it has been.

From CO to CEO.

Now Tech Mech invited us for discussions and for outsourcing the GIS part. Mainly the creation of a base map using high resolution satellite imagery. They have no idea of the how’s and why’s of the work. We explained the process and methodology to them in great detail and we reached the stage of discussing the prices.  In a day or two, Mr. Ankit who was representing Tech Mech travelled to Lucknow to meet the client and came back after outsourcing the work to some other company in Gorakhpur. And the take on the issue was that there was ‘political pressure’ on them to give the work to that particular company.

I mean this is bullshit. First a company who does not deserve to get the job gets it. Then it is pressurized to again give away part of the job to a yet again undeserving company. I mean one wrong sparking off a series of wrongs. Spoke to the CEO of LIDA, Mr. Vaarshney and he has expressed his incapability of doing anything. And these are the ‘men’ in ‘power’. Awesome.

And those who are deserving stay in the background because they do not have the necessary ‘links’ or ‘liasioning’ as it is called.

What would ‘success’ in such a system mean?