Meri Pyari Ekaa

वो आती सुहाने खयालों की तरह

जवाबों में लिपटे सवालों की तरह

नजदीक जाने की वजह ढूंढ़ता हूं 

मै नजरें मिलाने की जिरह ढूंढ़ता हूं

खिलखिलाहट में उसकी रम सा गया था

हंसी देख उसकी, सब थम सा गया था

वो ज़ुल्फो में छुपती करिश्माई आंखें

करे वो शरारत बस नजरें झुका के 

पायल की छम छम से दिल जीत लेना 

वो बातें मनाने को मुंह भींच लेना 

घर जाते ही उसका मेरे पास आना

उसके लिपटते ही गम भूल जाना 

वो जीवन में आयी है बारिश की भांति

वो ही मेरे जीवन में खुशियों की सांची

वो ही मेरे जीवन की अनुपम सी रेखा 

हम सबको प्यारी हो तुम मेरी एका ।।।।

10 headlines I wish we don`t see post Covid-19

Just before this tiny virus turned our world upside down and literally brought it to a halt, the headlines of any news site were filled with nothing but the negativity. It looked there was nothing right with our world and if there was anything called "Karma", then our collective Karma had warranted a dooms day. But then Covid19 happened and the entire world changed. When we go back to normalcy (more than "when", it is the question of "if" that haunts me), then I certainly do not want to see the following headlines (And please keep adding to the list):


1. Child Abuse/ Molestation:

I believe (and I may have a biased opinion, since I myself am a father now), this is the most heinous crime one could ever do. Children are such innocent creatures; and helpless. This is something that definitely needs to change.

2. Discrimination

Source: vikaspedia.in 

Headlines around discrimination and crimes against the weaker sections of the society were getting quite common. Discrimination in any form - religious, caste, sexual preferences, color, race or anything else you could think of. As society, we need to fight these evils and bring together everyone.

3. Corruption

We need to stop glorifying the acts of giving bribe and getting away with anything. One small thing leads to a slightly bigger thing, we dont even realize when it snowballs into a monster no one can control.

4. Communal Violence

Source: Cagle.com

Mob lynching, communal violence (verbal and physical) have become too common the events, it seems we have accepted those as the new normal! This must stop. Now!


5. Violence against woman

We as a society need to raise our boys appropriately. It is the small things that we need to change to raise next generation  to be more respectful towards women.


6.  Loan defaulters fleeing the country

7. Ancient Indian wisdom getting lost

We need to put our past to where it truly belongs, in the past. I`d be more than happy if ancient wisdom is proven to be treating deadly diseases or solving other world problems. But till then we should stop making the fall claims


8. Destruction of public property

I hope we become civil enough. And administration starts holding the guilty accountable to avoid such things from happening.


9. Catastrophes due to Climate change

10. Failing economy

Sika Solar Experience Blog (From Archives)

Written in 2010 September 

Hello everyone…

I finally made it to the SIKA experience on Thursday missing 4 days of some wonderful moments. But my first two days at sika solar experience have left me amazed and speechless. It is quite astonishing to see how a small country(in terms of area and population) has carefully preserved it`s natural beauty(truly blessed by god himself ) by making technological advances at the same time. What makes me more amazed is how they, as people and Sika as company are aware and willing to act and preserve nature for coming generations.

When I landed at the airport a simple gaze of surroundings gave me an idea of how amazing this is all gonna be. I joined in the team 4 days later than scheduled date. But it took me only an hour to mix up well with the guys.  I am really enjoying the company of these guys and hope to have a great time with them.

On Thursday afternoon we took a train to Zermatt which is a small village but a huge tourist destination in Europe.  It is surrounded by snow capped and rocky mountains. A river flows through from the center of the village emerging out of glaciers. We walked down to our hotel and I must say it was served as a great starter to this whole affair.

A Walk to remember. Indeed!

We kept our luggage in hotel and started for Sunnegga paradise. It is built on a mountain and reaching to this place is an amazing experience in itself. We took a special train that has been built by digging tunnels in mountain. The inclination of the tunnel is quite high.

Man! Technology has changed the world

We reached to the top of the mountain in about 15-20 minutes. On one side we could see the snow capped peak and on the other side stood the rocky mountain. At far off distances we could see some traditional houses. We had coffee on the top and then started to climb down through small muddy road that is used by villagers and cyclers. I guess they are soon going to have some big competition here in Zermatt and thus we could see a lot of them practicing.

Anyways, we were shown traditional swiss village houses and I must say we all were really impressed. Those were beautifull wooden houses in between the green fields, the one I had only seen in movies till the day. But yes, I was there right next to them. It took us more than an hour to reach village at the bottom of the mountain.

Good job, God!

The first day was very tiring for me because I did not get the time to rest after my flight but the place gave me enough adrenaline rush to survive….

Next day, i.e. on Friday we met Ryan who was supposed to take us to Matterhorn glacier paradise, a tourist destination located at the height of 3883 m above the sea level. The only way (if you are not an experienced mountaineer) is the cable ways. This company has taken every care to develop this area for passionate ski lovers and mountaineers without disturbing the environment much. There are 34 cable ways and lifts and can carry about 90,000 passengers per hour. Out of 290 million Franks invested last year, above 1 million was invested in preserving environment (planting trees, flowers, making eco-friendly buildings). The temperature at the top varies from -30^OC to 10^OC.

Yes!  It is harsh up there.

Solar panels (now we are talking business) are used to meet energy requirements of the hotel, and if they sometime fall short of energy than they buy it from electric company and sell it when they produce excess. There is one good water treatment plant installed at this place to minimize the harms caused to environment. Treated water is either re-used or used for snow cannons. Half of the hotel is built inside the mountain. The walls have skin of metal and glass. The heat capacity demand is around 32 W/m². Interestingly, the solar panels here are 80% more efficient than those in Zurich and Bern. The panels are installed at an angle of 70^O which is quite interesting because during rough times the wind velocity is about 300 Km/hr and they cn still withstand such turbulent winds. The construction was completed in record time because of bad weather most of the times. The raw materials were transported either using cable ways or helicopters. Some specifications of the walls of the building are:

Double cladding isolation- 40 cm

Wall width 48 cm

Façade width 75 cm

These guys have installed a very good water purification system. Water with oil is treated by bio membrane purification.

Well done Matterhorn Paradise.

We left for Zurich on the same day. Me, Jose and Rafia got down at Bern, the capital of Zurich, to have a look around and I must say it was great.

Well I guess I have written too much about my experiences but I still want to say that this is just a glimpse of what I have experienced.

Thank you Rafia, Jose, Heinz, Simon, Joseph and Ryan for amazing time, really looking forward to have many more great moments with you

Second innings- Another life challenge!

We all have laughed heartily about it. We have all made fun of the incident.

But it wasn’t definitely fun for me during those moments. It wasn`t definitely fun for my wife waiting outside the ICU impatiently for the doctors to say that I had a chance to come out alive. It wasn’t fun for my parents sitting a thousand miles away feeling helpless and waiting for the visa to be issued. It wasn’t fun for my brother to keep it altogether till he saw me alive. It wasn’t fun for my cousins, uncles, aunts, in-laws, wasn’t fun for friends with whom I had grown up. It wasn’t fun for me either because it was all very painful (especially when anaesthesia doesn’t work on me that well). 

My fault was to carelessly try to save a friend- something I am not embarrassed about.

I know it would have been embarrassing dying in the pool. But dying isn’t fun either.

In 2006 they said IIT was out of my league. I had given up but when I looked into the eyes of my parents, I knew I had to do it for them. I fought it out.

I was completely written off by people, in everything I have tried- Techfest, job, business school entrance etc. But somehow I have managed to fight back, of course because of bunch of people- family and friends.

Now, life has thrown one more challenge at me- To prove there is much more to me than that pool incident.

Bring it on! I am ready to laugh at the incident and fight back.

कहते हैं तारे गाते हैं- Harivansh Rai Bachchan

कहते हैं तारे गाते हैं

कहते हैं तारे गाते हैं!
सन्नाटा वसुधा पर छाया,
नभ में हमने कान लगाया,
फिर भी अगणित कंठों का यह राग नहीं हम सुन पाते हैं!
कहते हैं तारे गाते हैं!

स्वर्ग सुना करता यह गाना,
पृथिवी ने तो बस यह जाना,
अगणित ओस-कणों में तारों के नीरव आँसू आते हैं!
कहते हैं तारे गाते हैं!

ऊपर देव तले मानवगण,
नभ में दोनों गायन-रोदन,
राग सदा ऊपर को उठता, आँसू नीचे झर जाते हैं।
कहते हैं तारे गाते हैं!

Harivansh Rai Bachchan

What India needs? (our peculiar consumer behaviors)

To begin with, what really inspired me to write this piece?  Is it because I am an employee of Bayer MaterialScience- a chemical company with a very rich heritage and a long drawn history of innovations? No!  Or is it because I am a part of Industrial Marketing team which day in and day out, has been trying to change the way we conventionally have been looking at the businesses? Definitely No! Then what is it?  Well……

Let me just get you a sneak peek into my life. I recently got wedded to my childhood friend (& not childhood love interest). She is a complete gadget freak. My usual day starts with, her playing music on our newly bought home theatre system. She is at times (read most) very careless with her gadgets, throwing them around all the time. C`mon!  You got to make scratch resistance screens with stronger bodies… We can`t buy a new gadget every day. My brother, who is staying with us for the time being, on the other hand is obsessed with automobiles. He can literally identify the model of the car just by seeing the tail light from far off. Back home, for the past 7 years, my mother has been complaining about the poor construction at our house. There have been issues with one of the corners and it leaks badly in each rainy season.

My life almost entirely revolves around these 3 platforms, literally. As soon as I step into the office and log into my computer. I see a mail mentioning the platforms and how we need to align our strategies with these platforms. I along with many other colleagues face difficult time trying to figure out what the customer needs? Organizations spend millions in understanding what customer needs, often not realizing that during the office hours and before & after, as well, they have consumers all around them. In fact they are the consumer themselves.

Without doubt our life is dependent too much on housing (construction), mobility & IT & electronics and other consumer products.

Let me now, take a pause and ask myself a question, what is it that I want to achieve out of this piece? Is it to tell you that customers are all around us? May be up to some extent it is true, but not entirely. What I am trying here is to understand the 3 platforms from a slightly different perspective.

Often, my start to Mondays is slower than the other days. I usually take the office bus rather than commuting by own vehicle. There are 3 reasons to it: first of all, the fuel prices are soaring high. Secondly the traffic is a menace and thus you would always want to refrain from driving yourself. C`mon!  You are already half drained out because of Monday Blues and then you want to exert yourself by driving? Thirdly, I am one of those kinds who are always worried about energy conservation and yet in our quest for survival rarely do anything about it. This is the least I could do, right? Why adding more CO<sub>2</sub> when you already have a bus going that way? These are the problems that I face as a consumer. Now, zoom out, some more and more and more. There it is. You have a bird`s eye view of the whole situation. You now have a macro view of the entire situation.

Fuel Prices: There has been an acute rise in the prices of the fuels in India in the last decade (Petrol & diesel rose by 250 %). When I did a simple guestimate of how much do India as a nation spend on just commuting, I was surprised to see a mind boggling figure. The figure, as the guestimate yields, is somewhere near 71 billion INR daily or 400 billion USD annually. It is inclusive of both public and private transport. Though, I feel the figure is on the conservative side. (It is not inclusive of transporting goods etc.)

Traffic congestion: The current status of local commuting is completely wretched because of the level of masses that they handle. The mobility infrastructure is under a lot of stress. The new cars are faster than ever but choked traffic means you are commuting slower than ever. It is indeed an irony. The roads don’t seem to change overnight. So I did a guestimate again. In Mumbai alone, 200 cars & 300 bikes are added daily. The number in 2012 totaling additional 73000 cars and 109500 bikes on the Mumbai roads mean the number of vehicles would rise to 2 million. So, the result is more congestion on the same roads. Which means the probability of you getting stuck on the Mumbai roads goes up by .036. Thus, it makes me think if India is yet prepared for so many private vehicles on the road. The question is what is government doing to address this issue? What are the automobile companies doing about it? What are we as material & polymers company doing to address this issue? The change is ought to happen in the current trends. Are we prepared for this change, when it happens? Do we have the solutions for these issues?

Sustainability: India still contributes very less to the global mobility emission. The developed nations contribute 66% to the total (16% of world population). But still, there is a long way to go in this regards for India. We are already facing a lot of issues because of emissions due to inefficient engines. The pollution related diseases and ailments are on the rise and this has strained the economy (because of higher medical expenses.  So, we could quantify the losses here as well?).

Now, when the entire scenario is zoomed in and zoomed in further, I see myself as an individual customer again. When I see the situation around myself, I certainly do not want faster cars. They will not solve any purpose. I want to see limited number of cars and more of public transport. I want to see a better door to door connectivity. I want to see higher capacity public transport to reduce the congestion on India roads. I need more fuel efficient vehicles on the road. Because that is what Indian mobility needs and not fancy fast cars. Probably that is something that EMEA, NAFTA needs but India? A Definite No!

Tomorrow will be another day, another challenge that I ought to face, as an individual consumer and as a society. Keep following!