A year later

It is almost a year since I moved away from a regular job and the city I'd come to like. 2009 was like 2002 for me in many respects - the year I moved out of my comfortable home to Roorkee, high on optimism, to face the "real world" as they call it, and undergoing a significant transformation of perspective (and perhaps personality). It was a difficult year (those of you who know my roommate would understand)! Besides, you've got a good idea from watching 3-idiots. :)

2009 was a year where I was clear on just one thing - that I'd bring a lot of freedom, adventure and creativity into my lifestyle. Everything else was hazy - the business ideas, people, markets, technologies and all that jazz. But now, after a year, a lot of pieces are in place. Optimism is extremely high. I've interacted with a whole lot of people who've encouraged me rather than be skeptic.

I'm not making money, I'm living with my parents, I haven't had a drink in a long long time (clubbing days are long gone), I'm still trying to build back the social circle I kinda lost (and continue to lose to marriages), and I've had more than my share of bad bad days. But guess what folks, I'm having a lot of fun!

This is not an attempt to preach anything. Hell, I was the boy in school whom other kids' mothers told "why don't you sit with Aditya in the class", and now they're likely to tell "doesn't matter that he started off on his own, you do your MBA and ...". What I'm trying to say is, there's no right or wrong way, but there's surely a fun way and a boring way, and I'm happy I've made the switch. :)

Education is good, but not necessary to be successful

Well this post has nothing to do with travel or photography. It has to do with entrepreneurship.

True story. In 1980s, there was a young school-going boy in Kanpur. His father, an ordinary government officer, aspired that his son become a doctor. The boy, being very good in studies, thought it was for the best. When he completed his schooling with great marks, a friend of his father came visiting. When he learnt about the boy's performance he dug into his pocket, took out 5 large notes from a whole bundle and rewarded the boy. Excited and happy, the boy went to his mother to show her the money, which was quite a lot in those days (maybe even more than what his father made in a month). The mother tells him his "uncle" is rich because he is a businessman and is the "maalik" (owner) of a company. The boy, impressed, decides he'd rather be a "maalik" than a doctor!

Few years later, the boy has grown into a young sales agent for polythene bags in Kanpur. One day he observed that a pan wala sold pan masala by taking a little from the original cylindrical container, wrapping it in a newspaper and selling it "loose". Everyone ate pan masala, but wanted to buy a small amount only rather than a complete box in which it was sold. That was the "eureka" moment, and the young man sold the concept of small flexible pouches for pan masala to Deepak Kothari, the boss of Pan Parag.

The small pouches were a super hit. Everyone could buy a small pouch for "one use". Today these pouches have revolutionized retail, specially among lower and middle classes, because they can buy lots of products - from detergent to shampoos, which were beyond their reach in larger packaging. The young man is now old, and goes by the name of Ashok Chaturvedi. The company he started is called UFlex, and is among the largest flexible packaging companies in the world, worth over Rs 6000 crores today.

Another entrepreneurial success story, courtesy my mom who works for this company. There may be minor factual errors here, but the essence of the story is that a man from a very ordinary background, who still doesn't speak very fluent English, today owns many private jets! Cheers to the passion of entrepreneurship. :)

Rediscovering Delhi – Part 5: Qutb Minar Complex

Its been a long time since the last post (the rant about tobacco ad was just a lame filler). I’m home alone for a few days, so I thought I’d check out some heritage site in Delhi, and settled for Qutb Minar.

This monument and its complex was built by the first Islamic rulers in India. Qutb Minar was Qutb-ud-din Aibak’s solution to allow his princess a clear view of the Yamuna. He succeeded in completing only the first floor. The next three were added by his son-in-law and successor Iltutmish, and the monument was completed by Firoz Shah Tuglaq. The British also played around with the tower, adding and then removing a Europian dome structure at top now called “Smith’s Folly” and installed in the lawns.

Apart from the awe inspiring structures, what I liked most was that the entire experience of visiting a heritage site has become painless. The washrooms were excellent, the audio guide totally worth it and the entire complex sports ramps for accessibility! I’ve never seen this in any other heritage site so far. (I’m even including a photograph showing the ramp). Also included is an interesting feature missing in any mosque – columns with intricate carvings. This mosque (the first ever in India) was built over the remains of a temple and due to shortage of time and local skilled workers of Islamic style, the columns were retained in the final structure.

I’ve decided to go to the place again when the lights go up after sunset. Unfortunately I shot the photos when sun was at its brightest, hence no amazing shots. Comments are most welcome. :)

Tobacco is injurious to health

I was watching an interesting movie on HBO at night, and I saw a long advertisement about throat and oral cancer. There's a doctor talking about the cancer and visuals show sickening images of victims. The ad runs for quite a while (more than 30 seconds I think) and the last visual says "Stop Chewing Tobacco: Tobacco causes cancer" (or something to that effect).

Interesting things to note: The advertisement message in the end is in English, and is being shown to viewers of HBO at 10 pm in the night. Now I don't want to sound class-conscious here, but ad-slots cost money (comes from us tax payers), and I have great doubts about this advertisement's target audience the way it ran.

Shouldn't it have been on other channels and in local languages where most people watching it are likely tobacco consumers? HBO or Travel & Living has a different kind of viewership! But who cares - the Govt. has enough money to waste!

P.S. This is out of tune of the general theme of content that comes to this blog, but its been a long time since I blogged here, so anything goes!

Diwali: Festival of sweets..err..lights

Hope you had a fun-filled Diwali! I sure did, and tomorrow (or maybe day-after-tomorrow) I can go back to a normal diet after three days of hogging everything that came my way!

Delhi celebrates Diwali with a fervour that few other cities can match. Colourful lights (all made in China, of course) light up homes everywhere, and the Government is kind enough to spare the routine power cuts!

One important tip for shooting from terrace during Diwali – be very careful of “rockets”! I had a couple of them burst quite close by, and I decided to take only a handful of shots and go back.

Well I don’t burst crackers myself, being a member of the “Crackers=Noise+Pollution” school of thought. However, one can’t avoid admiring fireworks that spread out and light up the sky in glorious colours before blowing out.

Well these photographs don’t do justice to the spectacular display I witnessed from the terrace last night, but then I’m happy I made the attempt! Next time, with some more planning, perhaps I’ll shoot better photos. Once again, happy Diwali!

Pachmarhi – The good, the bad and the ugly

After my Khujaraho trip failed to materialize, thanks to Nikhil and his friends we managed to pull off Pachmarhi (M.P.) in a long weekend.

Pachmarhi (or Panchmarhi) gets its name from the Pandava caves, where it is believed that the Pandavas spent some part of their 13 year old exile. Later, in 1858 it was discovered by the British who made it the regional summer retreat for their army, and now the Indian army inhabits most of Pachmarhi.

The result of the army presence is that the place is wonderfully maintained, complete with a nice golf course and forest rest houses. Parasailing was literally the “high” point of the trip! On the downside, because of the peak season the place was very touristy (and expensive).

The last photograph above was actually shot when the train from Bhopal passes Narmada river en-route to Pipariya. The train ride is beautiful, much like the train rides in the Western Ghats post monsoons.

Final verdict: Pachmarhi is quite a regular hill station, which is not really something bad, but for someone who travels a lot there are probably other places to be seen before. However, for a long weekend with a good gang, it was an awesome trip!

Please post your comments about the photographs (I know they’re not up to the mark this time, but comments are still welcome).

My travel map

I came back from a weekend trip to Pachmarhi (photos in the next post), and I was thinking about the next trip already!

I haven't seen a lot of Central and Western India, so I decided to put every city I've visited on a Google Map, to get a big picture. However the exercise is quite time consuming, so right now the map is incomplete. Even then, it is interesting to watch lots of clustered pins and wide, unseen areas.


View Adi's travel map in a larger map

Goes to show how much there is to see within India! Looking at the map, I realize there's a whole lot of trips waiting to happen in Western and Central India, Karnataka, Kashmir and Ladakh and many unseen places in the East (including Kolkata).

Plan of action? Get the venture to generate enough cash to fund these travel dreams!

Rediscovering Delhi – Part 4: Connaught Place at night

Yesterday I attended a startup event in the afternoon at Connaught Place, and went armed with my camera and Gorillapod to take a few night shots. However, between the event and the photography, I ended up guzzling a couple of beer on a near-empty stomach and was more than a wee bit high for taking serious shots!

The good thing about being high was that I could ignore curious passer-bys whose stares, questions and comments unnerve me normally. The bad thing, of course, is that I lost the focus and patience that is a must for taking good shots.

The thing with night shots is that you need a tripod (I had a Gorillapod which works fine if you can find a pole, fence or wall to fix it on). Also, a view from top of a building works the best (like the photograph featured on Connaught Place Wikipedia entry), but unfortunately I didn’t make the effort (for reasons already mentioned).

The photograph above is tilted because I had placed my Gorillapod on a stone, but fixing the tilt meant losing some objects from the edges, so I’ve left it as it is.

The photographs here are unedited (no post-processing, not even cropping). I find it too much of an effort to play around with image processing software, though one of these days I’d like to try HDR.

Please post your comments on the shots!

Rediscovering Delhi - Part 3: Humayun's Tomb

With the weather now less oppressive than before, I've gone back to photography. I recently finished reading City of Djinns by my favorite historian William Dalrymple, and it ignited my interest in Delhi's Mughal history.



You can read a lot about Humayun's Tomb on Wikipedia. I'll share some interesting things I read in City of Djinns. The most striking fact is all kingdoms with capital in Delhi perished - right from Pandavas in Mahabharata (capital: Indraprastha) to British (capital: New Delhi).



The book says it was rumored that Shah Jahan had an huge sexual appetite, which made him lust for other nobels' wives, and even his own daughter Jahanara Begum, who was quite beautiful. Jahanara was so powerful, she was the only Mughal queen/princess to have had an independent palace all to herself.



There are a lot of other interesting stories about Mughals and Delhi. I'd strongly recommend both City of Djinns and The Last Mughal. Its unfortunate we didn't learn history in school by actually visiting all the sites, that way it would have been so much more interesting and I'd have probably known my history better.



Enjoy these photographs. I don't know if I'm any good at architectural shots, your comments are most welcome.

Zen and the Art of City Biking

Zen Seeker: "What has Zen got to do with the Art of City Biking, O learned one?"

Learned One: "More than you can possibly comprehend at the moment, O zen seeker. City biking is not just about commuting from one point to another, of knowing when to change gears and when to go full throttle. It is, in the very least, the Art of Squeeze".

ZS: "Squeeze? Did I hear right?"

LO: "Yes. Squeeze. It is the art of squeezing within obstacles to find a way, just like water finds its way through boulders in upper Himalayas. A city biker must find his path, no matter how many obstacles mar his way. He will end up with scratches, the obstacles will scream at him, but no matter what, he cannot stop, he must go on. And there lies Zen - to find a way around obstacles and to keep going on."

ZS: "Interesting."

LO: "There's more to Zen and the Art of City Biking. It tells us that some people may be in the biggest, most comfortable cars, but they move at a crawling pace compared to the city biker, who has to bear the harshness of sun, pools of puddle, black fumes of smoke and constant blaring of horns, but keeps on moving at a good pace."

ZS: "So some people would rather choose discomfort over stagnancy. Very interesting, but this is getting too heavy."

LO: "You haven't read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, have you? Don't even try! There's more. The Art of City Biking is also the Art of Skidding every now and then, but letting Time the Great Healer (and the neighbourhood clinic) heal your wounds, and continuing biking without fearing the next crash."

ZS: "Wow, that's a lot of Zen for a single post."

LO: "Let me close with one last piece of Zen. City Biking is about freedom, constant motion, obstacles, and exchanging comfort for speed. Last but not the least, the Art of City Biking is the art of synchronizing your office hours to drop that cute co-worker home without worrying about the traffic!"

ZS: "Well said! :) "

Epilogue:
The author travels roughly 70 km a day commuting from home to work and back. He rides an ordinary city bike, and really wants to purchase a Honda.

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Facebook invites I turned down this week...

• A prospective client I met for business. I mean, that's what LinkedIn is for! You can't award business to someone when you see some of the lame quizzes they like to take (I plead guilty to that!)
• That college batchmate whom I rarely spoke to. I mean - you didn't feel the need to socialize with me then, what's changed now?
• Someone from my ex-company. I'd like to keep my "updates" away from your judgemental eyes!
  
• An intern who works for me. Why? He's a great guy and all that - but I'll add him later when he's no longer an intern. I don't want him to see "Screwed up week..." kind of status updates from me when he logs in!
• Someone from school who never spoke to me when I was in school. Moreover, a male of the species. Not interested! ;)
• A cousin. I suspect she just wants to spy on my feeds for female activity to alert her folks (and mine too maybe). True - there are other cousins and my young devil of a brother on my friend list who can do the same, but given that they publish not-so-family-friendly stuff ("Which sexy tennis star should you date" kind of quizzes) too, we have an unspoken mutual agreement of not taking stuff to elders.
  

Am I making a big fuss of nothing? After all, its just Facebook - a platform for attention-starved bored youngsters. Nothing serious. But then - what is not serious to me can be very serious to someone else, specially someone whom I know only in professional capacity. Better safe than worry!

Have similar experiences? Share in comments. :)

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Freak injury diary

Saturday 5 am : Woke up to turn off the alarm, but didn't make it back to bed. I don't remember what happened, but I do remember my nose bleeding so much it was like Kill Bill! (Un)fortunately there were no witnesses so I'll never know what really happened.

Some time early this week, dinner time : Was cooking my special pasta for entire family, when burnt myself with a splash of really hot molten butter. Fortunately it turned out to be a fantastic pasta. :)

Wednesday, 6:30 am : Was working out my triceps (or whatever will become my triceps in a couple of months) and hurt my back. Ouch!

Same day, late night : Can't sleep. Back hurts. No gym tomorrow.

Enough injuries for the week, hoping for a great weekend ahead!

From the past: Malaysia Tour

I was going through some old photographs on Flickr, and came across some shots which are worth sharing. My vacation to Malaysia was one of the most interesting trips for various reasons good and bad, and also the most memorable experience of sun and sand.

The photographs are from Perhentian Islands, a beautiful set of islands in Kota Bharu, Malaysia. The islands are on the east coast of peninsular Malaysia, much less publicised compared to Langkawi, and much more beautiful. These were shot by my friend’s camera in film, and I cannot be sure which photograph was taken by whom, and so I don’t claim to have shot these. Here goes!

Revisiting Little Lhasa

The gaps between my posts are increasing, mainly because I’m not doing much photography lately. Last weekend I visited McLeodganj for a second time in two years. Although a bit too touristy at this time of the year, the place has a certain charm that will made me visit again.

Temple Road

I won’t bother sharing history or culture of the place or why it’s called Little Lhasa. McLeodganj has a lot to teach tourists about cooking, music, Hindi, and of course, meditation and yoga. You can find posters everywhere advertising the same.

Busy street – Shoppers, vendors, monks…

“In McLeodganj, the weather and the women are totally unpredictable”. That’s what someone told my friend, when within a few minutes we witnessed both bright sunshine and heavy downpour. In fact, on day two we were pounded by hail while trekking back to town from Triund. Speaking of which, here’s my best shot from the trip:

Hand-held panorama of the view at Triund (2832m above sea level)

The trip ended with a miracle – our train escaped the wrath of rioters in Jalandhar (the train which left about half an hour before ours on the same route wasn’t so lucky, it ended up with 3 burnt coaches). We reached Delhi an hour before schedule as the train skipped Jalandhar, and learnt about the incident on news later in the day.

All the photographs are available in my Picasa album. Feel free to share comments.

Civil Services results out: That time of the year again!

Yup, it is that time of the year again. Twice a year when newspapers report on CAT and UPSC exam results, I have to "defend" my decision of not wanting to break my back slogging for these "lucrative" courses. It is a well established bi-annual ritual at my home. Moreover, its not just my parents I need to explain. On such mornings when everyone is reading the same reports in the newspapers, some of my concerned relatives call up my mom, discuss the reports (and the effect it ought to have on me).

This year things became more interesting. Consider the similarities between this year's topper of UPSC (Shubhra Saxena) and me:

• Both residents of Indirapuram, Ghaziabad
• Both graduates of IIT, Roorkee
  
• Both ex-employees of Oracle (Hyderabad)!

See the pattern? Just when I thought the ritual is fading away, Fate was quietly slipping the Lead into the glove (quoting Wodehouse).

Anyway, with no CAT or IAS results due for several months, I can hope my new business will take off and I won't have to defend my career choice any more. :) (Though I will always have some other stuff to defend, from hair style to marriage plans!).

Worst Case Scenario – A lesson in Optimism

Silly post after a long time. But right now, in the heat of the moment, I really must write. I’m generally an optimistic fellow. At times when I need to plan for something, I tell myself - “Hey, in the worst case, this may go wrong and…” and if it sounds quite bad, I add “but the probability of the worst case scenario actually occurring is very low”. So a quick thought about the worst case and the belief that worst case will almost never occur, helps me keep an optimistic outlook.

But today is different. The worst case actually happened! It was a small thing: had a meeting at Greater Noida 9:30 am in the morning, and I reach the bus stand at 7:30 am to catch the direct bus (air conditioned too). The estimated travel time by bus would be around 1 hour 20 minutes. So far so good. The transport officials at the stop tell me the bus should be here “soon”, as it is supposed to start at Ghaziabad 7:00 am. So I wait. At 8:00 am there’s still no bus. Now I get a bit impatient, but tell myself that it will be along by 8:15 at most, and I’ll make it.

8:30 am and no bus. Now I know the only way to make it is by own transport. I call my brother (who needed to go to his college in the same area, only an hour later than me) and ask him to get the bike to the stop, and we’ll go on the bike from there. Revised estimate says if I start 8:45 I may make it by 9:35. Surprise – there’s a massive traffic jam between my home (around 2 km away) and where I wait. Apparently the traffic lights were not working, and Homo moronus drivers had violated every traffic rule in the book to bring vehicle movement to a complete standstill. At times like these I wish I had one of those battle tanks from my old video games that could shoot vehicles into dust and make way, but this is digressing from my narrative. So, what should have taken at most ten minutes takes my brother much more, and he gets the car (Dad thought bike is not good in the heat) to me around 9:30. I cancel the meeting, re-schedule it for some other time and head back home via a long detour to avoid the jam. Back home at 9:50.

Why do I call it the worst case? Well I was up early and at the bus stand at 7:30 am, but the bus never arrived, and the roads got jammed real bad (that too between a small stretch from my home to the stop), resulting in my returning back to my place 2 and 1/2 hours after I started. No meeting accomplished. The great heat doesn’t help either. Pretty much what I’d call the worst case. Of course things could have been worse, like a road accident, but those scenarios I never consider.

So what’s with the whole rant about waiting in the heat and not making it to the meeting? Well the first statement of the post already claims this is a silly one! Bottom line – once in a while the worst case scenario is bound to occur. However, two worst case scenarios one after another has an even lower probability, so I am going to be very optimistic for the next few days. :) 

oOo - A photographer's eye

oOo, originally uploaded by Davide Cherubini.

If you read my last post, you'll remember about my photo-walk in Old Delhi with some photography enthusiasts. Well something happened.

I was loaded with the minimum in terms of equipment - Nikon D40x with kit lens (18-55 mm). Others had better lenses, or cameras, and one guy was even carrying a tripod (though he never used it). As expected talk turned to equipment once, with someone saying how Canon lenses are the best etc. I didn't contribute to the discussion, because even though discussing equipment and gadgets excites me a lot, photography is an expensive hobby, and I've even met someone once who had an annual budget of Rs 2,00,000 for photography stuff.

While all this talk was going around, I was still thinking about how bad I had fared in terms of good shots that day, and none of it was because I lacked good equipment (OK, a high aperture zoom lens would have been awesome, but mostly it was my inability to compose nicely). I was mentally arguing this person that when I see a photograph, I can never say "Oh this would have been better if it was shot with a Canon instead of Sigma lens".

And then I came across this photograph of parked bikes. Look at the entire photostream of Davide Cherubini, and watch how he can take so many creative shots of "just bikes". We exchanged comments, and in his words:

"...fully agree with you, eye and composition first equipment after."

This reinforced what I had been thinking. I am not limited in my capabilities because I carry around a kit lens. Nobody is. I can take really awesome shots like this one with the lens I carry - that's what I intend to do.

By the way, this photograph made it to Flickr's homepage. Way to go, Davide!

Rediscovering Delhi – Part 2: Chandni Chowk

Today I got my first shot at street photography during a photo-walk in Chandni Chowk (yup, Delhi-6). Someone at our online photography club suggested it, and early Sunday morning I headed to the nearest Metro Station on my bike.

I have to admit – street photography is not really my thing. Carrying a bag and a DSLR camera and shooting some beggar, I commanded so much attention I felt as if I’m some strange creature from outer space. I know I should have ignored them, but I couldn’t, and the result was a set of uninspiring photographs.

Uninviting view of the famous Gali Parathe Wali

On the other hand, I befriended a bunch of photography enthusiasts, and happened to finally walk around in Old Delhi after a long long gap.

Made in China: I can’t explain what that expression is.

Being early Sunday morning meant the markets were closed, but it certainly didn’t mean fewer people on the roads. Most of the activity stemmed from the religious buildings – the Gurudwara (Sheeshganj), temple and mosque (Jama Masjid). A huge queue of destitute men waited for the food distributed outside the Gurudwara, amusing themselves at our expense.

 With bag and baggage – did he miss the train?

The lanes so narrow that I collided with a hawker (on foot!), old houses in a variety of colours, the hit song “masakkali” playing in the air, it was overall a great experience. No wonder Puraani Dilli is the favourite muse of a lot of bloggers and travel writers.

Wired: Its scary how close the transmission wires are to the houses.

One thing is clear, I’ll be making at least one more such trip before it gets too hot to walk. Destination? Not decided. And next time maybe I’ll carry a point and shoot :)

“Are you from TV?” That’s what they all thought!

I understand the shots aren’t great, but comments on this post are most welcome.

Rediscovering Delhi – Part 1: Connaught Place

I had been away from Delhi a long long time, and a lot has changed in the past five years. With all the roads, flyovers and Delhi Metro construction activity, routes no longer look familiar.

I had a chance to visit Connaught Place yesterday, and it was awesome. I have never browsed so many books in a single day before! And I happened to carry a camera along as well, and there are a couple of photographs worth showing.

A hand-held panorama – PVR Plaza road

Hundreds of pigeons feeding on the sidewalk

I took another panoramic shot but I messed it up (overexposed with bad focus). CP is a heaven for shopping on a limited budget, specially for books. I got myself an Orhan Pamuk (he’s become popular even with footpath sellers) for the time being, since I was short on cash, but I’ll surely be making another visit soon enough (with lots of cash!). :)

Well, while the weather remains as good as it is, I’ll be doing a bit more Dilli Darshan (hence the “Part 1” in the title). So long!

Two Weeks Later: Status check

Lots of people are asking me what's up. Life has changed completely since I relocated two weeks ago, here's a quick summary of what has happened:

• Orientation week at home (I'd been away a long long time)
• Met some entrepreneurs
• Almost discarded the idea
• Then got working at it feverishly
• Company name, website and logo done: CampusConsole
• Survived chilly winter days
• Celebrated first birthday at home in seven years
  
• Less than 6k in bank
• And lastly, gained a lot of weight (and probably still gaining)

Agenda for coming weeks? Get customers and deliver. Simple!