Freedom at Mid Life
C'est La Vie

Freedom at Mid Life

The men decided that the only logical thing to do was to take a break and reassemble after dinner for a few more hours of work, before the scheduled early start the next day. The young lady also gamely agreed to this, thought she looked very unhappy and agitated. After some persuasion, she admitted that her one-year old son didn’t sleep until he saw “mommy”. So she had planned to leave after the meeting, drive two hours to her home and then leave again at the crack of dawn the next day to be back in time for the meeting. Motherhood guilt mingled with a desperate need not to appear unprofessional. As I looked at her stressed state, I thanked the lord that I had long passed her age, and had “been there, done that”. I thought with a heartfelt shudder, that I never wanted to be a young mother […]

December 26, 2010 0 Comments
Meet or Wed
C'est La Vie

Meet or Wed

I intended to say, “Have to keep car going to Shalimar hotel to meet somebody”. “Meet” became “wed”, because the w-x-y-z key is just below the m-n-o key and a carelessly pressed m became w. The phone then used its brain and said weet is not a word. So the last is extra, maybe it is wed. Why did it think of w-e-d and not w-e-e? Because like all of us, the predictive text is a creature of habit and I use the word wed – short for Wednesday – more than I use the word wee. In fact I never refer to anything as wee. Most of my friends would think that was an SMS typo. So the message read, “Have to keep car going to Shalimar hotel to wed somebody.” I am a total SMS junkie. The ability it gives me to tell people what I think about […]

December 12, 2010 0 Comments
Prince Gusting, RIP – EYE
C'est La Vie

Prince Gusting, RIP – EYE

This is the story of Prince Gusting (‘Gusting’ because I thought he was disgusting and my daughter and husband didn’t). who held our family, friends, domestic staff, and neighbours in thrall and in tyranny for 11 and a half years and died last month, exactly the way he had lived- on his own terms, fighting to the last, and with an encourage in attendance. We are unused to our new freedom-to be able to answer the doorbell without five minutes of pleas and threats; to be able to eat paneer/chicken/papaya without having our elbow jerked and our eardrums shattered; to leave the house without the mandatory dash to the door to escape the furious creature trying to stop us. It is nice to hug family and friends, without furtively looking for Prince, because he disapproved of us having body contact with anybody except him. He disapproved of many things, and […]

November 14, 2010 0 Comments
Ring in the New, Revel in the old
C'est La Vie

Ring in the New, Revel in the old

Diwali shopping, and finding the mecca of the modern Indian shopper I went to the mecca of modern shopping, the new temples of modern India, this weekend to check out what Diwali shopping was like and what modern Indian shoppers and shops were doing. Here’s my amateur anthropologist’s report. There were two X-ray arches to enter the Phoenix Mills complex of malls in Mumbai one for the uber-fancy Palladium Mall, with its shops housing high-end (mostly foreign) brands and hip restaurants; the other was the entrance to the more janta malls, relatively speaking of course. Sort of diwan-e-aam and Diwan-e-khas, but diwan-e-something for sure. The queue to enter the high-end mall was non-existent, and all of us headed purposefully towards the other entrance. In both places, there was not a soul inside the high-end shops be it cosmetic, apparel, footwear, branded accessories, western jewellery, music equipment or toy stores. Not […]

October 31, 2010 0 Comments
Iim All Yours
C'est La Vie

Iim All Yours

The Bhargava Committee Report: A Leap Backwards (PART II) How the Bhargava Committee Report surrenders all significant control to the government After the emasculation of the IIMs through two tier board control and a careful process of selection of the “right” board members, comes the bit about the “co-ordination” that the pan IIM super board will do amongst the IIMs, bringing them all down to the lowest common denominator. The report preaches the doctrine of ‘sameness’ across all IIMs, ignoring the idea that strategically, differentiation is what makes the larger IIMs collectively more competitive. IIM C chose a more analytical, quantitative orientation while, IIM A, pursued a more generalist program, inspired by its original collaborator, Harvard Business School. IIM B has gone the functional and sector specialization route. In recent times, IIMA has chosen to launch a one year executive MBA and a one year program for policy makers and […]

November 22, 2008 0 Comments
The Great Leap Backwards
C'est La Vie

The Great Leap Backwards

The Bhargava Committee Report: A Leap Backwards (PART I) The IIM review makes a case for tightening the government’s tentacles The report of the IIM Review committee is finally out. If this were a student report it would get an A on “describing the current problems”, a C on all the sections they call “our analysis” – a C and not a D because some of the arguments made in the analysis are brilliantly tautological. As we tell our IIM students, if the analysis gets a D, don’t even bother to check your grade on ‘quality of recommendations’ – even if they make sense by some fluke, please go back and do your analysis – diagnosis again, with more rigour and depth. On integrity and intent, this report gets a straight F. The key thrust of the recommendation is that the boards governing the IIMs be configured in such a […]

November 21, 2008 0 Comments
Rama in Vietnam
C'est La Vie

Rama in Vietnam

Another one bites the dust, walking shamelessly down Mr Karat’s “pro – imperialist” path, and that is none other than Vietnam, run by his comrades. The latest emerging market that is being deluged with attention from America Inc is Vietnam. The Wall Street journal has frequent Vietnam stories; and in true American Inc. fashion, there is a rush to hold emerging market conferences and strategy sessions in Ho Chi Minh city, with well arranged tours of the hinterland, so that the American senior management team can understand what it takes to capture Vietnam, so to speak. And as a bright young man who works in the region was explaining to me on a flight back from Saigon, whenever there is an American business leader of Fortune 100 CEO rank visiting Vietnam, the visit carries all the courtesies extended to highly placed political figures, which includes the top brass from Hanoi […]

September 15, 2007 0 Comments
Creating Active Citizenry
C'est La Vie

Creating Active Citizenry

I am a great fan of Pavan K Varma. In a recent interview about his book “Being Indian: The Truth about why the 21st Century will be India’s”, he says that we Indians are a bundle of contradictions. “We are focused and will work towards a goal despite formidable obstacles. So we are resilient , ingenuous, ever hopeful”. If you have trouble believing this, just look at the epic proportions to which we take the saga of standard 10, 12 and college admissions. Rich or modest in income, the drama is the same. It’s a discourse which we all are a part of, that says “just do it, never say ‘can’t’, at this time of life, ‘chalta hai’ is not an option”. And guess what? Very few of our children rebel against it. Otherwise the coaching class and entrance test industry would be out of business. In fact Verma agrees […]

January 15, 2006 0 Comments
Relaunching Brand Bihar
C'est La Vie

Relaunching Brand Bihar

I remember a discussion a few years ago at a strategic planning session of a multinational consumer goods company on how people of India were changing. A lot was said about the positive effects of liberalisation and all its spin-off effects, on the attitudes of the people of India. Until someone suddenly broke the spell by asking, “If all this is true, then why do millions of people vote for Laloo in Bihar? Do we even know for sure?” An expat sitting through the meeting asked for clarification on Laloo and Bihar. And, with huge relish, got told all the Laloo and Bihar jokes and war stories, starting with an introduction to the word Bimaru. The joke about how we would happily hand over all of Kashmir to Pakistan, provided they took Bihar as well; the one that said that Laloo asked the people of Bihar why they needed roads […]

November 24, 2005 0 Comments
© 2023 Rama Bijapurkar, All Rights Reserved.
Powered by ADKRAGE