woods are lovely dark and deep..

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep

Whose woods these are I think I know

Robert Frost’s poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening was first published on March 7th, this day in 1923. The story goes that Frost wrote this poem in a few minutes, after being up all night writing another. He took a sunrise walk, and got an idea.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, 1923
by Robert Frost (26 March 1874 – 29 January 1963)
source: Wikipedia

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: Memories, Old and New

Like many Americans, this was one of the first pieces of grown-up poetry that I was exposed to as a child. I remember sitting quietly at a little square desk in a darkened room, listening to a female voice reading. I felt dreamy, ignored fidgeting classmates, and wondered if we’d be required to write big kid style book reports about poems.

When I was getting ready to make this post I asked around about other people’s Snowy Evening memories. Many were from childhood, but not all. One 33 year-old person described recently sitting around an outdoor fire pit in Winter weather, roasting marshmallows, drinking hot cocoa, and reading read Frost to each other. I think that would be a lovely tradition for Winter Solstice, “the darkest evening of the year.”

The idea of reading this poem for Winter Solstice makes me think ahead to what might be a nice, poetic tradition for the vernal equinox, the first day of Spring. In two short weeks we will be just as close to Summer as the dead of Winter. I’m thinking of planting some snap peas, or maybe some cool weather greens – that sort of thing makes me happy. It will also be a class break for the college student in my family, and she is nothing if not poetic. We will think of something.

"Have breakfast …or…. be breakfast"!

Who sells the largest number of cameras in India?

Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon.
Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia
whose main line of business in India is not
cameras but cell phones.

Reason being cameras bundled with cell phones are
outselling stand alone cameras. Now, what prevents
the cell phone from replacing the camera outright?
Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and
Canons are taking note.

Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in
India? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The
answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that
play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what
music companies make by selling music albums (that
run for hours).

Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It
is the mobile service provider with the largest
subscriber base in India. That sort of competitor
is difficult to detect, even more difficult to
beat (by the time you have identified him he has
already gone past you). But if you imagine that
Nokia and Bharti (Airtel's parent) are breathing
easy you can't be farther from truth.

Nokia confessed that they all but missed the
smartphone bus. They admit that Apple's Iphone and
Google's Android can make life difficult in
future. But you never thought Google was a mobile
company, did you? If these illustrations mean
anything, there is a bigger game unfolding. It is
not so much about mobile or music or camera or
emails?

The "Mahabharat" (the great Indian epic battle) is
about "what is tomorrow's personal digital
device"? Will it be a souped up mobile or a
palmtop with a telephone? All these are little
wars that add up to that big battle. Hiding behind
all these wars is a gem of a question – "who is my
competitor?"

Once in a while, to intrigue my students I toss a
question at them. It says "What Apple did to Sony,
Sony did to Kodak, explain?" The smart ones get
the answer almost immediately. Sony defined its
market as audio (music from the walkman). They
never expected an IT company like Apple to
encroach into their audio domain. Come to think of
it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer
maker has both audio and video capabilities. So
what made Sony think he won't compete on pure
audio? "Elementary Watson". So also Kodak defined
its business as film cameras, Sony defines its
businesses as "digital."

In digital camera the two markets perfectly
meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and
sacrificing money on camera film or staying with
films and getting left behind in digital
technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had
to. It did not ask the question "who is my
competitor for tomorrow?" The same was true for
IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from
seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who
declared "internet is a fad!" and then turned
around to bundle the browser with windows to bury
Netscape. The point is not who is today's
competitor. Today's competitor is obvious.
Tomorrow's is not.

In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to
British Airways in India? Singapore airlines?
Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there
are better answers. There are competitors that can
hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned.
The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence
services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to
recession. Senior IT executives in India and
abroad were compelled by their head quarters to
use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget. So
much so, that the mad scramble for American visas
from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008.
(India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas
to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on
recession!). So far so good. But to think that the
airlines will be back in business post recession
is something I would not bet on. In short term
yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if
there is one place where Newton's law of gravity
is applicable besides physics it is in electronic
hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the
now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player)
crashed to one-third of its original level in
India. PC's price dropped from hundreds of
thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this
trend repeats then telepresence prices will also
crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is
not many are making money. Then it will surely be
RIP!

India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two
markets were distinctly different. So were the
icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag.
The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah
Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit).
That was, when cricket was fundamentally test
cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL
and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL
brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL
match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie.
Cricket became film's competitor. On the eve of
IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate
multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for
screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to
the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay
of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to
sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL
matches. As far as the audience is concerned both
are what in India are called 3 hour "tamasha"
(entertainment). Cricket season might push films
out of the market.

Look at the products that vanished from India in
the last 20 years. When did you last see a black
and white movie? When did you last use a fountain
pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The
answer for all the above is "I don't remember!"
For some time there was a mild substitute for the
typewriter called electronic typewriter that had
limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed
them all. Today most technologically challenged
guys like me use the computer as an upgraded
typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be
seen.

One last illustration. 20 years back what were
Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The
answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a
monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be
physically keyed every day to keep it running. It
made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke
you up and the rest of the colony. Then came
quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much
more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms."
What do we use today for waking up in the morning?
Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks
disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones.
Big watch companies like Titan were the losers.
You never know in which bush your competitor is
hiding!

On a lighter vein, who are the competitors for
authors? Joke spewing machines? (Steve Wozniak,
the co-founder of Apple, himself a Pole, tagged a
Polish joke telling machine to a telephone much to
the mirth of Silicon Valley). Or will the
competition be story telling robots? Future is
scary! The boss of an IT company once said
something interesting about the animal called
competition. He said "Have breakfast …or…. be
breakfast"! That sums it up rather neatly.

- Dr. Y. L. R. Moorthi is a professor at the
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. He is an
M.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
and a post graduate in management from IIM,
Bangalore

The Bihari enlightenment

India’s most notorious state is failing to live up to its reputation

ONE of the more unlikely case studies offered by Harvard Business School describes the turnaround of Indian Railways under Lalu Prasad Yadav, a shrewd, roguish politician who ruled Bihar, India’s most depressed and unruly state, for 15 years. His predecessor at the railways, Nitish Kumar, now leads Bihar. He may one day draw similar interest from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, for rarely has a failed state escaped political bankruptcy so fast (see article).

With a population bigger than Germany’s, Bihar still suffers from potholed roads, indolent teachers, apathetic officials, insurgent Maoists, devastating floods, shortages of power, skewed landholdings, caste resentments and an income per head that is only 40% of India’s as a whole. And yet, bad as that may sound, Bihar is far better today than it was in November 2005, when Mr Kumar came to power.

Today Bihar has pot-holes, where formerly it didn’t have roads. Businessmen grumble that they cannot raise money to invest in the state, whereas before they spirited their capital out of it. People complain that Mr Kumar’s government has fallen short of its ambitious development plans. But at least it has ambitions. Mr Yadav did not offer development. At best, he promised izzat, or self-respect, to downtrodden castes, who once voted as their landlords demanded, and later enjoyed picking someone their “superiors” could not abide.

How has Mr Kumar pulled off this transformation? He first imposed law and order, restoring the state to its role as night-watchman rather than rogue. He has put several gangsters—the sort of people who in the past became heroes—behind bars. He demanded speedy trials, where formerly defendants could intimidate witnesses and drag out proceedings. He has ensured that convicted criminals no longer get lucrative licences for liquor stores and ration shops, which sell subsidised food and fuel. And just as police reformers in America fixed broken windows, Mr Kumar’s police improved perceptions of safety by forcing Bihar’s many gun-owners to conceal their weapons, rather than brandishing them out of their cars.

People now feel confident enough to buy cars and go out after dark. The economy, always volatile, has grown at double-digit rates, on average, since he took power, partly thanks to funds from Delhi. He built over 2,400km of roads last year. In Bihar’s villages, posters advertising immunisation compete with adverts offering cheap mobile-phone calls.

Thanks. Now what?

The policies Mr Kumar has pursued so far have broad appeal. After the national elections in May 2009, a survey found that 88% of people were at least somewhat satisfied with the state government’s work. His second act will be trickier. He has shied away from land reform, which is both fiendishly complex and deeply unnerving to the upper-caste landowners included in his coalition. And to overcome what one minister describes as a “crisis of implementation”—teachers who don’t teach, nurses who don’t nurse, roads built but not maintained, funds received but not spent—he will have to overcome the most obdurate caste of all: the local bureaucracy.

More than the floods that frequently test Bihar’s embankments, local officials fear the rising expectations of people who no longer meekly accept their lot in life. Their instinct is to contain the waters by discouraging such self-assertion. But it is only by giving people their say, by turning unmet need into a political demand, that the state apparatus will begin to do its job. Mr Kumar must win re-election before the year is out. The biggest risk to him may be the rising expectations of his constituents. But that is also the measure of his success.

Incredible manoeuvre..

Suryakiran's at their best!!

Interesting Piece!

I came across an interesting article, Quiet Market ? Sound Louder....
how it works out when you will sound louder in bad time that we are facing now.......checkout...@ http://www.equitorial.in/



......

Are we safe.......????

This i am sure will make many of us think, where are we heading.......

A few of my friends and I were just paying our bills and coming out ofour regular Friday night watering hole and dinner place in Rest HouseRoad, just off Brigade Road, and most of the women in the company werealready standing outside. Some of us outside were smoking, people werehappy, there was laughter and jokes, as there were many other peoplein the street, all coming out, satiated, in the closing hour of thevarious pubs and restaurants around.Suddenly from up the street a massive SUV comes revving and speeding,hurtling down, and stops in a scream of brakes and swirling dust,millimeters away from this group of 4 women, barely missing one oftheir legs. A white Audi, imported, still under transfer, with theregistration plate of KA-51 TR-2767. Some millionaire's toy thing,that in the wrong hands can kill.Naturally the women are in shock. And quickly following the shockcomes indignation. These are self made women running their ownbusinesses, managing state responsibilities for global NGO firms,successful doctors. They are not used to being bullied. So they turnaround, instead of shrinking back in fear. They protest.And as soon as they turn around in protest, the car doors are flungopen, and a stream of 4-5 rabid men run out towards these women,screaming obscenities in Hindi and Kannada against women in general,fists flailing. Some of us who came in running at the sound of thescreaming brakes now stand in the middle in defense of our women, andthen blows start raining down. One of the goons make a couple of callsover the cellphone, and in seconds a stream of other equally rabidgoondas land up. They gun straight for the women, and everyone – a fewwell-meaning bystanders, acquaintances who know us from therestaurant, basically everyone who tries to help the women – startsgetting thoroughly beaten up.Women are kicked in the groin, punched in the stomach, slapped acrossthe face, grabbed everywhere, abused constantly. Men are smashed upprofessionally, blows aimed at livers, groins, kidneys and nose. Afriend is hit repeatedly on the head by a stone until he passes out ina flood of blood.A plain-clothes policeman (Vittal Kumar) who saunters in late standsby watching and urging people to stop, but doing absolutely nothingelse. A 'cheetah' biker cop comes in, with our women pleading him tostop this madness, but he refuses action, saying a police van willcome in soon and he cannot do anything. Everyone keeps gettinghammered. Relentlessly.The carnage continues for over 20 minutes.Finally when the police van does come in it is this vandals who areraging and ranting, claiming to be true "sons of the Kannadiga soil",and we are positioned to be the villainous outsiders, bleeding,outraged. How do the cops believe them, especially seeing the bloodyfaces of our men and the violated rage of our women, while they carrynary a scratch on their bodies? Don't ask me! Yet, it is us who thesegoondas urge the newly arrived law-keepers to arrest, and the policepromptly comply, and we are bundled into the van, some still beingbeaten as we are pushed in. Some blessed relief from pain inside thepolice van at least, even if we are inside and the real goons outside,driving alongside in their spanking white Audi. The guy who was hit bythe stone is taken separately by the women to Mallya hospital.Inside the police station at Cubbon Park it becomes clear that thesegoons and the police know each other by their first names. Thepoliceman in charge (Thimmappa) initially refuses to even register anycomplaint from me, on the purported grounds that I am not fluent inKannada and I have taken a few drinks (3 Kingfisher pints, to beprecise) over the evening. No, it doesn't matter that I didn't have mycar and was not driving, and no, it doesn't mater that the complaintwill be written in English. We watch them and the goons exchangesmiles and nods with our our bloodied and swelling eyes and realize inour pain-clouded still-in-shock brains the extent of truth in theclaim of one of the main goons when he claimed earlier in the eveningin virulent aggression: we own this town, this car belongs to an MLA,we will see how you return to this street!!This was the turning point of the saga, I guess.. For we refused to liedown quietly and be victims.One of our girls, a vintage and proud Bangalorean who is running oneof the town's most successful organic farming initiatives, took uponherself to write the complaint, when I was not allowed to write thesame. Another Bangalore girl, a state director of a global NGO firm,wrote the other molestation complaint separately on behalf of all thegirls. Some of us called our friends in the media and corporate world.Everyone stepped up. And even when the odds were down and we were out,we did not give up, and as a singular body of violated citizens wespoke in one voice of courage and indomitable spirit. That voice hadno limitation of language, not Kannada, nor English, or Hindi. It wasthe voice of human spirit that cannot be broken.And in the face of that spirit, for the first time, we saw the uglyvisage of vandalism, hiding behind the thin and inadequate veil ofpolitical corrupt power, narrow-vision regionalism and self-servingmorality, start to wilt.We spent 6 hours next day in the police station. The sub-inspector ofpolice who filed our FIR, Ajay R M, seemed a breath of fresh airinasmuch that he did not appear a-priori biased like others, eventhough the hand of corruption and politico-criminal power backingthese goons was still manifest in many ways: a starched, white-linenpower-broker walked in handing over his card to the sub-inspector insupport of the goons; the goons got an audience with the Inspectorbecause of this intervention, while we had to interact one level lowerdown in the hierarchy; the plains cloth policeman of last night, eventhough he had arrived far too late in the crime scene, gave a warpedstatement, passing it off as a "neutral" point of view, repeatedlystressing that we came out of a pub and hence were drinking,positioning this as a 'drunken brawl', while completely forgetting tomention the unprovoked attack against the women and the one-sidedvandalism and violence that ensued. I guess one cannot blame the lowranked police officer – the criminal connections of these goons mustbe pervasive enough for him to be careful.Thanks however to the impartial handling of the situation by Ajay,soon the goons were all identified. The lead actor was one RaviMallaya (38), a real estate honcho and owner of a small property offBrigade Road which he has converted into a "gaming" (you know whatthat means, don't you?) adda. The others identified are Mohan Basava(22) of Chamarajapet 12th Cross, R. Vijay Kumar Ramalingaraju (25) andShivu Rajashekar (20). All are residents of 12th & 13th Cross inVyalikaval. Their bravado and machismo were by that time evaporated.It was good to see their faces then.Of course nothing much happened to them, nor did we expect it. Theywere supposed to be in lock up for at least the weekend till they wereproduced in court, but we understand that they were quickly releasedon (anticipatory?) bail. The car, purportedly belonging to an MLA,also does not figure in the FIR, apparently for reasons of"irrelevance to the case".The media also have given us fantasticcoverage and support so far, strengthening the cause.The goons meanwhile, as an after thought, also filed the customaryreverse complaint on the morning after we filed our own complaint: thewomen have apparently scratched the car! (Why did they not file thecomplaint the same night, considering they came to the Police Stationin the same car? Why was the car allowed to be taken off policecustody? Why is the car still irrelevant to the case and not in theFIR? Questions.. questions..).Is this the end of this saga? Probably not. Are these women, moreprecious to us as friends and wives than most things in our lives,safe to walk or drive down Brigade Road from now on or are the goondaelements, slighted by this arrest and disgrace, are lying in ambush,waiting, biding their time to cause some of us more grievous harm? Wedon't know. Is there reason for us to remain apprehensive of futureattacks and victimization? Perhaps.But here is the point.We stood up.We believed in the power of individual citizens even in the face ofhooliganism, intolerance, corruption and power mongering. Even thoughmany of us have the option of leveraging political or governmentconnections, we deliberately chose to fight this battle asindividuals. Sure, these connections have been activated and they havebeen kept informed, should the worst case scenario unfold tomorrow.But we have chosen to not leverage them. And in every small win weregister as a group of individual outraged citizens of Bangalore andIndia, however insignificant these milestones may be in the largerscheme of things, there is one small notch adding up in favor of whatis right, one small notch against what is wrong. And we believe thatevery such small notch counts, each such mark is absolutelyinvaluable..It is the people who make this city, this country, this world. It isyou and I, as much as the terrorists inside and outside. And in oursmall insignificant little ways, it is my responsibility and yours tonot shirk from investing effort – not just lip service or any tokenattempt, but real effort – in backing up what we ourselves believe in.It is so easy to logically argue that everything is corrupt, nothingis worth it, there are so many risks involved. We must not fall trapto this escapist trend. We must not fail to try.Next time you feel outraged, violated, abused, don't let it go by andadd up to your list of litanies and complaints. Stand up and take itto the limit - at least your own limit. Not in the same way as theywrong you, but in the way that every citizen, at least in theory, isentitled to complain and protest. Do not let the hooligans power rantscare you or prompt you into submission. Do not allow the corrupt copmake you give up trying. Carry the flame forward. Try harder.If are up to it, start right now.Forward this note to everyone you want to be made aware of this. Postit in your own blogs. Talk about it amongst your circles. And ifanyone of you should like to step forward with a word of empathy oradvise, talk to me. Comment.It is not Bangalore that is going to the dogs. It is us. We have fartoo long become accustomed to let everything go. And the more we letthings go without any protest or fight, the dormant criminal and darkelements of the society get that much more encouraged. Every time weturn the other way, the hooligan next street gets incentivized to pushthe boundary a little further, provoke a little more, try something alittle more atrocious. It is time for us to refuse to let this go on.We are responsible for making ourselves proud. Lets believe inourselves. We can do this.My name is Saugata Chatterjee. And I am standing up.I refuse to letBangalore go to the hooligan slumdogs, even if some of them are petsof corrupt power millionaires.

Just a thought.....

there are many times when you are not at all in a mood to think something or do something and all of a sudden you got to receive certain signals taking you somewhere in your thoughts and we unconsciously follow it............