Inducing Culture in the Young Minds!

I recently bumped into DD Malayalam Channel at 11.30 in the night after I reached home after a brainstorming skype session with the client and got hooked on for a good one hour+, watching an interview with Tanzania’s first Indian Ambassador, respected Shree M.A. Vellodi, who’s living his retired life in Chennai. He is officially invited by the President of Tanzania as state guest for their Golden Jubilee celebrations of their National formation.

At first, it was his pure valluvanad diction, which pulled me in, and with the interviewer Dr. Nedungadi also speaking the same lingo, it was a treat to listen on! As he went on, he was passionately talking about the need for youngsters to understand the culture of our state through its history in the formative years so that it gives a better perspective throughout their life.

One more aspect I had noticed throughout the interview was his positive attitude and refinement. While he was critical about the cynicism of looking down upon the state by many of us who live outside Kerala, he was sad about it rather than being angry. The gracefully old man who travelled across the world was sad about people being cynical of the state rather than acknowledging many good achievements. He reiterated that it’s this lack of knowledge of the history and culture of the state which bereaves the pride of being Malayali from each one of us. He insisted to induct ‘Kerala History’ as a subject in the syllabus of 6^th or 7^th standard in our curriculum just for one year so that young minds adore it through rest of their lives. In fact, he even suggested  a book for the same, Shree Krishna Iyer’s ‘Kerala Charithram’, which is a very lean book written in simplest of Malayalam.

At this juncture of the interview, it was a reconnect for me with Pallassana and I realized that even though the education system did not induce the culture in us, the village did! Pazhayakavu, Puthan Kavu, Vettakkaruman, Sabhamadam, Shiva – Vishnu temples of east – west villages respectively did the trick of inducing the culture, traditions and values in each one of  us through festivals, when Kanyarkalis, Kathakalis and other folk art forms were performed. Even the remote influence of Iruppakkal, Vaamala, Maariyamma and Chudala Karuppan had a strong influence on all of us, which makes us proud of our small, quiet world within this large, busy World! Even the only mosque near my house was influential to open my eyes towards the sensibilities of other religious practices in a cohesive living environment. During my school days, we have been an integral part of their ‘Ramadan’ month celebrations and I used to get ‘Ramzan Pordridge’ every evening and it was tasty for me with its spicy flavour!

Shree Vellodi was correct in his views and our little Pallassana is a classic example of the his view point. As he said, it’s not just in Kerala, but in every state, there is a need to introduce this system of learning their own culture through their rich history, to re-induce the pride of being Indians.

Corporate Communications and Jargons

I wanted to write this note for some time. My interactions with lot of teams who works with me triggered to take a determined effort to make this note for all those youngsters, who’re seeking jobs and also for those who’ve just landed at their first jobs.

  

I request all those who work in senior positions at various organizations to add more value through their comments to this collection of vocabulary of jargons used in corporate communications.

Jargons have been part of human culture since ages and of late, it became the order of the day in corporate communications as the conventional and conservative business practices withered away with new thrust of information technology and the work culture built around it. Many a times, in my professional journey, I came across shockers of such acronyms and found myself humiliated for lack of knowing it. Things are different now and anyone can google about anything and in the most likelihood, one will end up with many answers and sometimes, it becomes confusing to choose the right one.

However, there are lot of acronyms used in new era ‘SMS’ and ‘Chat’ communications, which I’m not touching at all, as it is not very important in the corporate communication at this point of time.

So…here we go….

S.No	Usage	Expansion	Context
1	PFA	Please Find Attached	Mail Attachments
2	ETA	Expected Time of Arrival	Flight schedules/ Project Scenario
3	ASAP	As Soon As Possible	Mails/ Correspondence
4	FYI	For Your Information	Forwarded mails/ Files
5	FYI & A	For Your Information and Action	Forwarded mails & files
6	TL	Team Lead	Projects
7	TL	Top Line	Finance projections (Gross Revenues/ Profits)
8	BL	Branch Lead	Sales & Marketing
9	BL	Bottom Line	Finance Projections (Nett Revenues/ Nett Profits)
10	FYP	For Your Perusal	Reporting/ Submissions
11	FYP & A	For Your Perusal & Action	Reporting/ Submissions
12	PFB	Please Find Below	Mails/ Correspondence
13	UP	Under Production	IT/ Film Industry (Very context specific)
14	UT	Unit Test	Education & Software Testing
15	UT	Union Territory	Geography & Politics
16	UAT	User Acceptability Test	Software Testing/ Quality Assurance
17	PPt	Power Point/ Paper Presentation	Corporate Presentations/ Seminars
18	JFM	Jan – Feb – Mar (Quarter)	Sales & Marketing/ Finance Projections
19	AMJ	Apr – May – Jun (Quarter)	Sales & Marketing/ Finance Projections
20	JAS	Jul – Aug – Sep (Quarter)	Sales & Marketing/ Finance Projections
21	OND	Oct – Nov – Dec (Quarter)	Sales & Marketing/ Finance Projections
22	PLC	Product Life Cycle	Product Management
23	TQM	Total Quality Management	Quality Policy
24	QA	Quality Assurance	Quality Management
25	CAP	Corrective Action Process/ Programme	Corporate Counseling & Rehabilitation pgm
26	Pgm	Programme	Programs/ Package etc.
27	Id/ ID	Identity	Identity Card/ Code
28	PR	Public Relations	Corporate Media Management
29	PR	Please Revert	Corporate Communications
30	KUG	Key User Group	Project Scenario
31	PM	Project Manager	Projects

Once again, I request all the readers to contribute more into this world of Jargons. If this was useful and interesting,  kindly write your comments.

Wah! Ustad! Its Humility Personified!

It was after 14 long years I was going for a live concert of Ustad Zakir Hussain, here in elegant Chowmahalla Palace at Hyderabad on 17^th December. Last time, it was in Palakkad at Rappadi Amphitheatre, when it was organized by The Rotary Club of Palakkad and Association of Chartered Accountants. I had the privilege of accompanying him to the hotel after the programme, along with Dr. Prabhakar of SRI (Society for Rural Improvement). Having hosted the Maestro in the USA, Dr. Prabhakar knew him personally and wanted to meet him to discuss about a charity concert for his organization. Though we had to cancel that programme later, the meeting was very positive and I was awestruck at the humility of this legend.

The whole programme was a huge learning curve in my life! The fusion of Tabla (Ustad Zakir Hussain), Violin (Dr. Kunnakkudy Vaidyanathan), Ghatam (Vikku Vinayaka Ram) and the Kanjira (Selva Ganesh) was literally an amazing experience! However, the most unforeseen (for me, till then) happened towards the end of the programme, when Ustad conversed with the most ordinary audience through the medium of Tabla! Later, when we met him, it was the unbelievably modest behaviour of this great man left a permanent yard stick forever in my mind to look for, in any such celebrities!

One more incident on the same day left another deep mark on my sensibilities. In the hotel lobby, we met Shree Mattannoor Sankarankutty (The famous ‘Chenda’ artist), who was there with his twin sons for just taking the blessings of the Maestro! Ustad blessed the kids and talked about Chenda in length & breadth!  I believe that the depth of his knowledge on the various formats and technicalities of Chenda must have amazed Mattannoor as well! Years after, I witnessed the ‘Arangettam’ (Debut Performance) of these young kids in ‘Pallassana Pazhayakavu Temple’ and Shree Mattannoor was nostalgic about this meeting when I referred about it.

With these memories intact, I went to this concert on 17^th December, 2011 at the beautiful Chowmahalla Palace and as expected, Ustad was at his magical best! Though he played many new innovations and unique improvisations, there was a deliberate effort from him to play himself subtle to give importance to young Sabir Khan (Son of Late Ustad Sultan Khan), who with his Sarangi, shared the stage. In fact, Sabir Khan was performing for the first time after his father passed on, a month back. The usual ‘takeover and indulgence’ of Ustad Zakir Hussain was missing, though there were couple of glimpses of it as rare exceptions. He, often forgets momentarily that there are others around him and indulges himself in a seamless journey of Ragas! However, he used to come back to his composure recognizing others respectfully and pass the baton to them, who in turn indulge themselves in pursuit of outreaching the set standard bar! This was deliberately downplayed in this concert to accommodate this youngster and as an ardent fan of Ustad, it was little disappointing for me. The young Sabir Khan also had his moments of glory when he enthralled the audience with his variations in Sarangi.

At the end of the programme, pointing at the beautiful Chowmahalla Palace, Ustad reminded the audience to preserve our rich heritage and culture along with the T20s and IPLs. He told: “There are numerous young artists performing around you. Google them and encourage them too, not just me alone”.

With every individual who touched his feet for his blessings, he too bent down to show his respect and it kindled my sensibilities to learn the DNA of humility from this great soul!

The Legends are those who travel beyond the stricture & frame work of their profession into virgin lands of exploration with an open mind and correlate every new experience to the well learnt basics of their profession to evolve new practices and bring freshness to it and thus contributing in transcending the same warmth to their listeners.

Every youngster has tons of lessons to learn from this great human being, who is humility personified!

An ode to a Legend

  “Let me keep a petal of silent prayer

          In front of his soul and legacy he left with us,

         To follow and to practice,

         Though, with broken hearts”

One of the most influential people in my life is my Dad. I know this may look like a cliché for many, but I can’t keep myself away from proclaiming it as I owe him so much for whatever I am, as a human being.

In Haridas Master, I lost the second most influential person of my life. He was Pallassana’s ‘Hari Mash’.

Haridas Master was my Mathematics Teacher in 8^th and 9^th Classes. These were my years of transformation as a Maths student since I hated Maths till then! He definitely had a magical wand to attract his pupils towards the most prejudiced subject. In fact, my Dad used to meet him every day during his evening walks and explained him about my perceived fear of Maths. I still don’t know what magical touch had transformed me, but the results were magnificent. I’m ever indebted to him along with all other lives, he had transformed in his life time.

As it is nostalgic to remember about those formative years of life, I can’t stop writing without mentioning about the unified efforts taken as a team by those self-less teachers with great dedication. During SSLC, it was like a very well conducted orchestra and I remember the Maths Team - Sudha Teacher and Sasidharan Master under the leadership of ‘Hari Mash’! From Santhiniketan (a Tuition Centre adjacent to School), there was Jayaprakash Master too, who contributed in introducing us to lots of innovative tools and methodologies. In fact, during those days we were given exposure to today’s work sheets by ‘JP Mash’. The most important point was that these new tools were immediately accepted and adapted by our formal teachers without any resistance as they found it was very useful for the students. I don’t know how many of such teachers exist today who adapt innovations, so quickly?! Predominantly we should thank the bold leadership of ‘Hari Mash’, who initiated and led this positive change in teaching.

Another factor was the inspiration to see and enjoy ‘Kathakali’ more seriously. Over a period of time, the ‘Kathakali’ in Pallassana and ‘Hari Mash’ became two inseparable entities. I remember the tiny ‘Krishnan’ along with him among the ‘Kathakali’ audience during the annual ‘Pazhayakavu Temple Festival’. Pallassana will definitely miss 'Hari Mash' a lot during next year's festival.

As a matter of fact, in this world of Public Over-Display of Affection (it is no more PDA, now it is PODA), we shared a subtle relationship with lots of affection. We had numerous constructive discussions on various issues and on devising new techniques to introduce applied Mathematics to the young minds to inculcate a Mathematical culture and make them aware of its pragmatic applications in life.

Thanks Hari Mash…

Thanks from a million minds!

Inspiring mortals was your destiny

You will keep doing it in your absence too.

Through me and all of them, forever!

The disaster of political hoodwinking

Whether most of our politicians lack education or not, they have arrogance in abundance with little wisdom! However, to understand the pulse of the nation, you don’t need rocket science expertise, but sheer common sense. Many a times, in the eagerness to oppose the change, our ‘Netas’ tend to forget it or deliberately ignore it.

In fact, post Anna’s movement; there has been a polarization of political class across the party lines against it and against anyone who supports it. Though this is a natural phenomenon and response, well expected from this species, what I fail to understand is the height of their foolishness like any other frog in a small well! I apologize to my readers for these harsh words as I am helpless to find any lesser word from my vocabulary. If they carefully observe the political turmoil across the world and the bloody end of those dictators who were far more powerful and influential than our stalwarts of democracy, it is vivid and clear that neither these movements can be ignored nor that the relevance and the lessons it provided can be sidelined.

Every reference of these global movements by most of our political analysts and other scholars during the Anna’s Movement on a comparison note, was repeatedly thwarted by our political class  who came on discussions across the party lines and their reasoning for their stand  was that the political scenario in India is completely different from those countries and they went ‘gaga’ over the greatness of our democracy! Post 26/11 attack, as I have been repeatedly stating through various articles, the ire of the marginalized middle class was ever growing and culminated as the evident support to the Anna’s movement and thanks to Anna and his team mates who could channelize it in the most peaceful manner unlike in most of the other countries. To the people who refer to Anna’s movement as a threat to the democracy of the country, I have only one appeal and that is to understand the world around you more practically and not through those yellow spectacles of a politician who wants to cover his assets and his lost face. The fact of the matter is that this ire towards the political species is going to remain here as long as they don't change their ways and if you resist and try to bamboozle the people, by harassing and/ or dividing the team, which only reminds people of the British tactics of ‘divide and rule’, it will boomerang with added momentum.

Yes! They are correct that it is a threat to the democratic system of our country as our current system is built on the fragile framework of regionalism and religionist sentiments and the most influential middle class have been so far kept out of our electoral political process through deliberately clever and strategic marginalization, which is of late, losing grounds drastically. The system has consistently failed our people over all these years of independence and by shying away from each opportunity to mend their ways, our politicians are shutting doors to the enormous opportunities to avert the end of the road disaster, which is not too far! Moreover, the very agitating middle class are very much aware that no one is sacrosanct in this current system which has been on a sharp climbing curve of corruption for over 60 years and nobody is an exceptionally perfect role model! So, what they look forward is only a gesture of hope to keep their spirits up and they are all aware that one ‘Jan Lokpal’ is not going to end corruption overnight in this country. If our politicians fail to read these minds of the people and stop hoodwinking at them to divert their attention by attacking a few team members of the movement, the disastrous end to this glorified democracy and the politics of religious and regional divide, will come to a grinding halt.

It will be much easier to topple democracy in our country than those autocrats and monopolies of other countries as it is more delicate and internally displaced by any standards! If it took a much difficult blood shed to replace the authoritarian governments/ rulers outside, it will take no time in a factional, unrealistic and non – representative democracy like India. The only hope now is that there is still some breathing time left, to change and transform and if you don’t listen to these final calls, you are writing your destiny of disaster and in the end, whatever you wanted to cover – up and safeguard will be unveiled like in the cases of yester year corrupt world leaders.

End this Intolerance & Impatience…!

When you go through the media, be it Television, Newspaper and/ or Micro – Macro Social Networking sites, you get a feeling that no one is happy and everyone is intolerant towards others and everyone is impatient to accept and analyse their failures. They all find some medium to vent their ire towards almost everything they deal with in their daily lives!

There’s an air of suspicion and hatred and more and more people are becoming unhappy and bombs explode in regular intervals across the globe. Where’s this universe heading? Is it reaffirming the 2012 theory? Recently, I met one of the spiritual gurus after the ‘Navaratri Pooja’ and talked for some time. During his discourse after pooja, he was urging the disciples to have a self-analysis and a course correction to lead a healthy and happy life. I don’t know how many of them understood it, among those who were assembled there, as many of them were in the last phase of their life. I was going there after a long gap and earlier I had seen youngsters who used to be there to organize such events and now I observed that the vibrant presence of the youth is missing there. Later the Swamiji confirmed that those who used to be there had either got transferred in their jobs or got absorbed in their work pressure and not able to find time at all…!

Now, with the ‘wall street capture’ movement gathering momentum, it is evident that people across the globe have been suppressing their insecurities and intolerant desperations all these while. Given a chance, this is erupting and gathering the imaginations of millions across the globe. Where do we go from here? This is ‘the’ big question we need to ask ourselves and the answer is simple and within our inner selves!

The tolerance is always a relative term or act as it could be quite different for different individuals in a constant situation and it could also be different for same individual in different situations. It may also depend hugely upon the ‘bio-rhythms’ of the individuals as well. So the reaction to a situation can vary on the basis of multiple reasons, logic and facts. Above all, intolerance can be kindled by the act of external forces’ brainless attitude or sometimes, it can be deliberately programmed to execute.

However, as I mentioned earlier in this article, the solution is very simple and this can be addressed by our own small acts! This applies to everyone from street side worker to the chair-persons/CEOs of large organizations. Understand the fact that the mother earth has resources to share to its children, but then we the children have a critical responsibility to use it with deep caution. Our needs, comforts and luxuries should not turn into greed and exploitation of these abundant resources, which is also meant for other cohabitants. Of late, what we witness is the thrust for more & more from every other corner and this is reflected in the agenda of the corporates and conglomerates as well! This agenda of corporate greed is well disguised in the name of ‘investor friendly’ approach and such beautiful vocabulary of jargons!

Whenever we forget those small recognitions of others’ needs, we are bound to face the music of the ultimate caretaker, who’s always watchful on all of us…! There are classic examples of this everywhere in the world and one such example is as follows…

Great Britain/ United Kingdom is one such country which was infamous for its successful invasions and also for looting wealth of the invaded countries. They successfully master minded and used technology to build systems to transport that wealth to their country. As I keep telling, the world is a full circle (easily told as ‘Duniya Gol Hei’ in Hindi) and to describe it more significantly, you start where you end! If you observe the current economic crisis, even after centuries of looting, they are not able to sustain the wealth they had looted from others and this is a pointer to the corporates to realize ‘Nature’s Justice’ and mend their ways to initiate partial distribution of this created wealth through well-conceived and genuinely executed social development programme. Then you become an idol in the minds of common people and in the process, refrain from marginalizing sizeable proportion of the population and thus keeping them under their tolerance levels.

This intolerance will vanish if each of us (individuals, organizations, establishments including governments) initiates a self-introspection and self-control to take course correction to recognize and empathize with others’ needs, thoughts and expressions. 

My response to an email on Somnath Chaterjee's article on Jan Lokpal Movement...

Dear All,

This is very typical call by anybody who's part of our political system and nothing surprising about it...!In fact, the same sentiment was expressed by A B Bardhan during a procession at Gateway of India post 26/11 Mumbai Terror attack. Then M A Naqvi of BJP criticized that protest march as an elite class lip service and nothing deeper than that. I'm not going to technicalities of constitution and the parliamentarian politics now, as the issue they are projecting to size down is much beyond those narrow technicalities.

Though I respect the impeccable public life of Somnath Chatterjee, he along with all other politicians need to understand the pulse of the people and need to admit the fact that people reached at this point after being marginalised and pushed over long painful years of suffering..! In fact, the political class of this country have of late, hid behind the vote banks (in the name of region, religion, caste, etc.) and a common middle class who were vibrant society in the initial stages of independent India slowly turned indifferent towards the electoral politics due to predominantly two reasons...1) They felt that nothing is going to change as every one who came as new hopes took them for grand royal rides. 2) when they felt that they had been taken for ride, they looked at a constitutional provision for rejecting the entire list of candidates and realized that no such provision does exist. However, the hope resurrected when T N Seshan became CEC and brought in the provisions of his position to bring in radical changes to a system which was actually put to a slow death in the minds of the people. Hence, T N Seshan deserves a very important and immortal position in the sustenance of our democracy, whether the politicians agree or not. Unfortunately, like our society, our politicians also look at every issue with a short term vision unlike the visionary politicians of the early independence days and they were comfortable at the middle class alienation from the normal electoral process as they had to focus on those sectarian issues and influencing an illiterate, social, economical lower class was quite easy and there are time tested formulae to handle them. So middle class indifference was a blessing in disguise for every politicians to handle the system and whenever there was an awakening among this class, they mocked at them on their right to speak out as they hardly participated in the process and eventually succeeded to shut their voices. When A B Bardhan responded that the kind of politician bashing happened after 26/11 incident was dangerous to the democracy, he was 100% right! But the fact of the matter is that every colleague of him should have interrogated to find the root cause of the issue instead of not just responding at the symptom of the problem...!

No one from this political species understood that they are sitting on a boiling volcano and it can erupt at any point of time...!They were all the more interested and indulged in looting at unimaginable folds and ignored various signals this society started giving. Above all, they never sensed that this middle class is the one who actually contributed the major chunk of the taxes as most of their taxes were deducted from the source even before their earnings are paid to them. The ire of these genuine or partially genuine tax payers were growing as each scam was meted out to them and Anna's movement had provided them a perfect platform to vent their feelings and that is the success of this movement. The beauty is that it is the only movement of the recent past with complete peace and non violence!!

So anybody (I mean the entire political class) who talks about the sanctity of the constitution and the parliamentary system, I have only one answer: Had they kept up this very sanctity of the system with utmost integrity, they would not have reached this situation at all! I have few more questions to ask: 1) In the name of regions & religions and reservations & anti-reservations, when people kills people and burns public/ private properties and affect the normal public life, then it is called protests in a democracy just because it is organized by a political outfit. What's your take on this? 2) When people go for a peaceful protest fast completely legal under the constitutional provisions, that too after engaging and negotiating for months together, how can you call it as blackmailing?

Regards,

Padmanabhan Bhaskaran

Skype ID: padmanabhan.bhaskaran

Save! Save! 108 Services….?!

For some time now, I wanted to express my sincere gratitude to ‘108 Services’ in Hyderabad for saving my life on 2^nd August, 2008 midnight when I had an unprecedented, severe asthma attack and their fully equipped ‘108 – Ambulance’ reached exactly in 15 minutes and gave me the first aid by connecting me to the oxygen cylinder and took me to the hospital along with my wife with no time wasted anywhere…! I was unconscious and it would have been fatal, if it was any later..! It was an eye opener for me to understand about the services and later I did lot of research on the services provided by both EMRI (Emergency Management and Research Institute) and HMRI (Health Management and Research Institute) and found out the brilliance of our veteran health scientists and their pragmatic approach. In fact, later we could refer this model of their ‘Hospital on Wheels’ with a Mini Operation Theater to some of our clients in African Countries, where medical health care is still an oasis…!

I’m extremely sad that I had deferred writing my thanks giving article about the services only to find me writing almost an obituary of this fantastic concept which, by now, has been implemented in many of the states of India partially or completely…! When Former CEO of Satyam Conglomerate came up with his confession on the fraud he had committed, nobody had thought that his dream project initiated and supported by Satyam will ever go through this phase in its path forward…!

When Ramalinga Raju and team had conceptualized and created this institution with the support of then CM of Andhra Pradesh, Y S Rajasekhar Reddy and  pulled in lot of eminent scientists and advisors like A P J Abdul Kalam, it was a dream coming into life for the common man. The people were really relating it to the ‘911 Services’ of the USA and it was a sigh of relief and there was a touching story like mine for everyone who used these services. As planned by the institution, it was replicated across the country in a phased manner at different levels…!

Withdrawal of Rajus & Satyam in the aftermath of the scam, who actually envisaged the entire project and later, demise of YSR had actually orphaned this project and with lot of reluctance GVK group had taken up the operations with a more reluctant Kiran Kumar Ministry, who had been grappling with lack of funds put these services in the dock..! Now, the quality of these services is quite pathetic and not worth to talk about…! Moreover, there have been a lot of blame games by GVK Group and the Government on this issue and the GVK Group categorically blamed that for months together they had not received the promised funding from the Government…?!!

Whatever may be the reasons, the current status of the quality of the services and the quality of the employees of the EMRI indicates the lack of interest and the incapability of both GVK Group and the AP Government and it is really a serious concern for the public??! If a single private firm is not able to run this, why can’t we discuss about involving more corporate houses as part of their CSR Programme (Corporate Social Responsibility) and make it successful? Why can’t we have value added services at an additional cost and thus bridge the gap in funding? Now with the introduction of the UID, the income groups can be identified & defined and a fees structure can be arrived at, accordingly. The need of the hour is to take this forward with top priority to save one of the most beautiful & important social health care milestones of our country…!

Note: If this issue is not addressed, this deterioration in the quality of the services may seep through to other states as well, like an epidemic...!