The Batman movie...

You know what! I really liked the new Batman movie, I truly did. I liked it so much that I actually hunted down the first part, "Batman Begins", and watched it over the weekend. There are interesting ethical questions that are raised repeatedly in both movies - "do criminals deserve sympathy?", "why doesn't Batman pull the trigger on deranged felons?", "are compassion and regard for the justice system his biggest weaknesses, as Ducat repeatedly says in the first film?". I honestly feel that in the second movie, Batman takes this compassion and regard for justice thingy too far. Why the heck didn't he knock off the Joker the first time itself? Does it make sense to put this raving lunatic in jail and then see him escape and blow up half of Gotham city with a smile? Even in the end, he leaves the Joker alive for the police to arrest him, leaving scope for a lot of mayhem and another Joker movie, minus the immensely talented Heath Ledger.

Anyways, except for this moral moot point, I had no other grouse with the film. Brilliantly composed and acted. The ending was pure delight - Batman fleeing into the wilderness with the title flashing for the first time, heralding the presence of the tortured and disturbed, yet noble and brave - "dark knight".

What is the difference between IIT-IIM graduates and the rest?

This must rank amongst the top 10 water-cooler conversations in offices around the country. I have my own theory about what sets apart an IIT-IIM graduate (or for that matter a person from any reputed institute) from the rest.

• Popular belief: Managers say that they observe a noticable difference in the performance of IIT-IIMers when compared to others. They say that these folks tend to be more organized and structured in their approach to work.



• Response: Given the widespread prevalance of this theory, one has to grudgingly admit that there is indeed a noticable difference in the performance of this brat pack, especially when work has to be done under pressure. If one were to admit that these guys are really more focussed and organized, what is it that ordains them with these gifts? Are they born that way? Are they truly smarter than the rest of us? Not quite so, my interactions with loads of IIT-IIMers have shown that most of these guys are not born geniuses (discount the few exceptions). It is the grind of the IIT-IIM system that makes them super efficient survivors who thrive under pressure. IITs, IIMs, etc. breed a highly competitive atmosphere within. When the exams and assignments pile up, every strata of collegiate existance, be it the top rankers, the averagers or the bottom of the class, get embroiled in a battle for survival. The sheer number of project submissions, tests and exams provide innumerable chances for students to practice and perfect their survival skills to the hilt. Handling stress, time management, prioritizing work to meet deadlines, these skills become second nature by the time you pass the course. You might question what makes exams in these institutes any different from those in other places, well the answer is that these institutes take their exams really, really seriously because in the face of infrastructural constraints and lack of teaching staff their very survival depends on building a high performance culture in their students through artificially hyped exams. This is the only way to maintain their reputation amidst plunging standards.

So, that's my submission of the day, IIT-IIMers are no smarter than ordinary mortals. What makes them tick at the work place is their ability to stretch when the situation demands it. So, the next time you encounter a haughty IIT-IIM colleague at work, don't despair, he's no genetic freak programmed for ineluctable success. His secret recipe is most likely to be pure and simple hard work, you put in your quota of the same and you should be able to give him a run for the money when it matters. Amen.

IT in middle class neighbhourhoods in Bangalore

After a 3 year stay away from Bangalore, first for an MBA and then work, I returned to the city I call home a few months back. The transformation in my middle class neighbourhood was quite striking. There were signs of prosperity everywhere, many houses had been redone and there were more cars parked in every street, all this thanks to the resident acronym that defines Bangalore - "IT". Every family seemed to have been touched by the IT sweep. All my childhood friends had become software engineers in different companies. Those few who chose not to become engineers were still a part of the IT troupe as lawyers, marketers, accountants and HR personnel. Now, even my next door aunty knew how to tell the difference between an Infosys, TCS, Oracle and IBM.

Daily interactions in the neighbourhood threw interesting gems about the prevalent mindset about IT. One elderly uncle asked me, "So, you are in this company, you must be travelling quite frequently to the US." I made a feeble attempt to educate him about IT consumption in India and mumbled about my frequent travels within the country, the uncle was not impressed. A schoolmate of mine asked me, "So, what is your job profile?", for once I thought I'd got a discerning listener and rattled out my JD around sales and presales. The friend gave me a dissapointed look and said, "But you were pretty good at studies in school, why did you take up sales?". Later I learned that in Bangalore, sales is associated with either door-to-door selling or call-centers. No wonder, my schoolmate scowled that way.

Things are not this way in Mumbai and Delhi. You get to meet a lot of young people who are pursuing degrees in pure sciences and liberal arts. People there seek a larger pool of career options beyond engineering and medicine. There are many who want to be lawyers, bureaucrats, journalists and admen. I find Bangalore suffocating in this respect. Very often I come across friends who've been sucked into the engineering-IT rigmarole and are gasping to come out. Yesterday I met one such. He'd been through the IT coding phase for 4-5 years. Last year he compeleted a correspondence diploma course from an IIM and switched to market research. He sounded relieved. I met another extreme example of this phenomenon last weekend. Here was a guy who did his civil engineering and then worked for an IT firm for a couple of months and then quit on the verge of breakdown. He joined a sports portal as a content editor and is now at least happy with his job, but is trying to move because the pay is extremely low. Without a relavant educational background he is finding it tough to break into the big league in media. He's languishing in an itsy-bitsy firm that's squeezing him dry for a pittance. He's now thinking of doing an MBA from a tier-3 B-school, in a hope that it will give him the legitimate pedigree that he's looking for. Sigh...what a mess.

Today, fortunately, as a fall out of India's economic growth there are a whole lot of viable professions that have opened up beyond engineering and medicine. CROs and pharma need biologists and their tribe. Law firms, LPOs, IT companies need lawyers. Media has an unsatiable thirst for journalists and language graduates. Everybody needs salesmen and marketers of every conceivable background. I hope things change as we go forward and kids are encouraged to take up what their comfortable with and not simply what is in vogue. My brother is studying to be a lawyer, I wish I had done so.

Willful Suspension of Disbelief! - the secret to enjoying movies or for that matter anything at all

Willful Suspension of Disbelief is such a useful concept. This is how wiki defines it,

"Suspension of disbelief is an aesthetic theory intended to characterize people's relationships to art. It was coined by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817. It refers to the willingness of a person to accept as true the premises of a work of fiction, even if they are fantastic or impossible. It also refers to the willingness of the audience to overlook the limitations of a medium, so that these do not interfere with the acceptance of those premises. According to the theory, suspension of disbelief is a quid pro quo: the audience tacitly agrees to provisionally suspend their judgment in exchange for the promise of entertainment."

Now as far as movies go, the second part of the last sentence is the key - "in exchange for the promise of entertainment". I am willing to suspend disbelief to any extent required provided the movie maker promises to entertain. Many Bollywood movies fail on this count. On the other hand with a little help from the movie maker and a teaspoon of disbelief, a mundane movie can be elevated to the level of a thorough entertainer. Jhoom barabar Jhoom falls in to this category, I simply loved the movie. Watching Lara Dutta gyrate on the big screen in a fanciful setting was well worth the ticket money. The true essence of disbelief comes in to play while watching animation movies. "Ratatouille" is a case in point. It is my all time favorite. The director makes good on his part by dishing out entertainment garnered with a heart warming message, on your part, if you were to slide back in your seat and choose to overlook the minor impracticalities of a rat becoming a chef, you'll be treated to an inspiring fable of Paulo Coelho proportions. The same holds true in the case of Ashutosh Gowatrikar's "Jhodaa Akbar"....was Akbar tall or short, was Jhodaa his wife or daughter-in-law, who cares. As the lights dim, stretch your feet and let the Mughal era unfold. Smiles as the narrative dwells on the practical difficulties of a Hindu-Muslim marriage even in those days. Cheer when Azeem-0-Shah-Shehanshah plays out like the Olympic opening ceremony, make your side of the disbelief pact and the movie director will deliver on the rest.

Now, this technique works well with other aspects of life too. Try it out the next time you sit in an autorikshaw in Chennai and you don't know Tamil. Try it when you have to eat at a roadside dhaba in alarmingly unhygienic conditions. Try it when you are sitting next to a pesky relative, who loves to deliver long-winding lectures....application of this concept will turn such routine episodes in to thoroughly entertaining experiences. Try it and tell me if willful suspension of disbelief works for you..

Disillusionment and growing up..

You know, when you are a kid, say a five year old, you begin to think that you are all powerful within your realm of activity. You start fancying that you are a super-hero from a cartoon show or a cowboy from a western or like in my case, a mythological Indian prince from Doordarshan or Amar Chitra Katha. In your imaginary world, while jumping on the bed, tumbling on the sofa, fighting treacherous villains who exist only in your head, you are all powerful, anything is possible and then...you grow up. You start playing with kids of your age. You have your first brushes with organized competitive sport like cricket and football. You begin to realize that there are others who better than you, that older boys seem to be stronger, but then your spirit is still not fully broken. The imaginary world refuses to let go. You still believe that you are as good as Sachin Tendulkar, it's just that today was not your day, luck wasn't on your side, the day when you shall play that match winning innings is just around the corner. You keep chasing that dream all the way through middle school and the early years of high school and then.....you grow up. By now, you probably have been rejected from every school team sports selection after making it past the first round, the realization that you are no good at sport slowly begins to sink in, but you keep trying. At the same time, suddenly, studies seem to be a big thing, not that they were not earlier (Indian middle-class kids have no escape), but now they seem to be really, really serious. Tutions, board exams, world-cup-cricket matches on TV, the odd crush - life passes through in a blur. Your board results come, you join a college, you don't have a clue about what's happening around you, yet you fall in line and follow and life continues to pass on like a blur. Your new super heroes are entrepreneurial geniuses like Bill Gates, rock-stars like Metallica, English premiership footballers, movie actors, nobel laureautes and all other icons of pop culture prevalent at your time. You try to emulate them in your mind till you well....grow up. You get a job, or sign up for higher studies and then get a job, all in all once you start working your reference points change once again. Now your super stars start becoming more real. After the initial months you realize that reaching CEO will take some time, the only option now is to put your head down and work (those who don't realize this soon enough, go through a lot of emotional anguish before they settle down to the worker ant mode). And so here I am, trying to come to terms with my limitations and ordinariness (now don't worry, I'm not heading for the window ledge to jump off, instead I'm writing this blog), trying to redefine my super heroes and idols, down-sizing them - should I aim to be like my boss, a country GM, nah, I should aim higher, try to become his boss, a regional GM and then....I grow up and get real...sigh...I'm only a consultant and even becoming a senior consultant is years away...reality sucks.

I should probably switch jobs and start writing tear-jerkers for Ekta Kapoor.

Parkour - Remember the Akshay Kumar Thums Up ad?

Parkour is a physical discipline that evolved in France in the 1980s. It started out with a bunch of city kids trying innovative ways to hop, skip and jump across obstacles that come in the way while moving around the city. The guiding principle is to figure out the most effecient way to get from point A to point B by employing well - hop, skips and jumps. Have a look for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHyoKC3C0bg
Looks pretty similar to what I went through the last time I had to cross Bannerghatta Road :)

IPL vs ICL

You know what? ICL was better. It at least served as a platform for many local lads to step up to the limelight. The young Indian team in the ICL outplayed every other fancied team in the fray and won the cup. Players like Stuart Binny and Ambatti Rayudu emerged from obscurity. On this front at least, ICL did good on its so called intention to promote the interests of the game. On the other hand, IPL has been very disappointing in terms of promoting local talent. The IPL teams are packed with international cricketers, the ones you've got tired of seeing throughout the year. You get to see over-worked war horses dragging their feet on dusty, crumbling pitches with no sense of purpose or direction. You feel a sense of pity when you the likes of Bret Lee running in to get hit out of the park in an itsy-bitsy encounter.....if ever there was something called over-exposure killing the golden goose, this is it.