Is Life too short or is it a Lifetime?

I was and still is a man in hurry. There was hardly ever anything that stopped me. I kept moving on and on. I remember reading a short story about a famous French sculpturer who created a perfect sculpture of a life size damsel. When it was unveiled to public in a Gallery, the whole crowd went silent in appreciation followed by "oohs" and "aahs". But the sculpturer was still not happy with his creation. He was closely examining his work. He then picked up his chisel and hammer and said that the nose needs some more finishing. His tryst for perfection made him chisel the nose of the damsel.... and.... gosh... to the horror of the crowd and the media... the nose was broken. The sculpturer paid the price of his perfectionism. His work was destroyed.

Do we have to be satisfied with what we have? Is the thirst for excellence wrong to be quenched. If people are successful their stories are told for perfectionism like Steve Jobs. Do we have to sit back and say, we are happy with what we have? Why people like Modi and so many other workaholics work 18 hours a day?

I had my fair share of success. In fact, I can say, that everything that I desired, came my way. It was not easy. Not easy for my family and especially my better half. She has to bear with me all hard times and the decisions that I made. She was also the sole shoulder who gave me solace when I needed the most. I love you Preeti!! Thank you!!

Success did not come to me easily. Just like Harry Potter, I think there is a magic potion of luck. With luck, your little effort yields super results and vice versa, in its absence, you have to try 10 times to get the same results. I kept on trying. From 1990 to 2013, I got every job that I wanted. I was in Germany, Switzerland, US and other countries on work permit but I always wanted to come back to India. I worked in Pune and in Bangalore. I started my business and had my own consultants working in Germany. We developed two products. I got into leadership roles very early in my career but I moved on relentlessly. Nothing could stop me.

When I kept moving in and out of Delhi, my home, every time, I came back, I saw the same chowkidars, presswalas, newspaperwalas, milkman and so many others who for years after years kept on doing what they were doing... and they seem to be happy. Probably they slept better then me. On the other hand, my life is still a mission. I am happy with what I achieved in my career. I am happy with how my business is doing (although it is a never ending strive for me and my team) but I already have my goals for what I will be doing after couple of years. The last part of my life, it has to be creativity, spirituality and philosophy.

We all get the same lifespan. I do watch TV, I do have fun, I do focus on my health and give quality time to my family. How ever, as my mother told me as a child, I hope to be like a lamp and do my bit for reason of my very own existence.  It is not just happiness which matters but it is also the purpose. We can live many lives in one life.

Inward Battles

What are the options for Mulayam ? Fight or surrender or death or anonymity.

A bird builds a nest... a straw at a time... it takes a lot of effort and time for her to build the nest... she lays eggs and feed her children.. she nurtures them into strong birds.. as her dreams turn into truth... there is a storm... a storm which blow away the nest... This is life... or is this life... is life cruel.. does life always provide options?  What can Mulayam do now? Is it about wrong or right or is it about peace?

Fight : Fight with whom? His son... son whom he dreamt to be his successor? A successor or a betrayer? A son, who went against his father... and for what reasons? Why is Akhilesh against his father? For power... has he forgotten all the good things he posses are because of his father. But this is not the point.. the point is... Shall Mulayam Fight.. and for why?

Surrender : Can Mulayam surrender? If he surrenders, he will make peace with his son but he will not make peace with his soul. How will be justify to himself and the whole world his actions? Will not he be proven wrong. His cause will be wronged. So surrender, he will not even though his mind say so. His heart will never give up to his son as he has wronged him.

Death : Actually many people choose this. It is better then a life of shame. Time do heal wounds but scars will always be there. An unnatural death also brings shame but who knows what happens after death. If life is cruel, then why to worry about death.

Anonymity : Life is cruel for some. People with passion and emotion are hurt more and such people get dejected with life but live on. Sanayasa and vanaprastha are some option which are considered to be divine in Hindu scriptures. These are not bad options... really!!! Become a sadhu.

We are born with our Karmas and we carry our Karmas with us. We are gifted by our physical, emotional and spiritual bodies and we are also born with our magic potion of luck. Some are lucky and some are not. Some times the luck run out for the lucky ones. What goes up comes down... Let us see what the fate has in store for the lion of UP. His desire to become the PM for sure will never happen.  

The Three Women - Hope

There were three women. The oldest was around 60 but looked much older. She was a widow, very thin and fragile. She looked much older than her age and was always draped in a saree tucked tightly around her which made her appear even more weak. The second was her elder daughter. She was married but abandoned by her husband, two children and in laws. She worked 8 to 8, 7 days a week and lived with her mother and younger sister. Over years of suffering she had become thinner than her mother and her only hope was that someday she will be united with her family. The youngest was Minni. Minni, lost her father when she was 16. No one supported them and she was forced to start working at the age of 16. At the age when kids go to college and have fun with friends, she started taking care of her mother. All the three women lived in a one room 12x14 flat with two single beds tucked somehow in which the three would sleep.

One day, Minni, met an old man for a job interview. The old man was not so old, say 50. The old man, was touched, was moved and sad when he heard about her plight. He was very sad. He was also worried her future. This is cruel world. How did Minni, a beautiful young girl, working in call centers for last 5-6 year survive exploitation. He also adored her. The old man always wanted a daughter and he saw a daughter in Minni. He wept so many nights worrying about the future and thinking of the past and present of Minni. Gradually, the bond as father and daughter evolved. The feeling was mutual. Minni started calling old man as ”Papa”. It was not easy for Minni as the world would call her mean to adopt a Papa for selfish reasons. However, the bond grew stronger with time and they were “Papa Beti”. She became the daughter of the old man’s family.

But the bond was also strange for the world. Laws do not allow to adopt any child over 12. The relationship between a young girl and an old man was questionable. Family, friends, society all wanted this bond to break. Everyone asked the old man to break the bond. They even said, that the old man could go to jail as the relationship is questionable and that no one will believe this father-daughter theory. What shall the old man do? Leave the three women on their plight (as there are hundreds of millions of other miserable women in the world so what is special about Minni!!!). Shall he also abandon his daughter as she is not his daughter? Shall he just think of keeping his immediate family only happy? Shall he abandon the daughter, his daughter, his daughter of many lives.

The old man is torn, the family is torn and the daughter is torn. Instead of a dream of a happy family it has turn into a nightmare. The dreams are foolish and only fools ride horses. We think we make right decisions. We think we decide on our futures. We think we control our destiny. So, what is the right decision in this case? Is it about right or wrong or is it being selfish? Shall the old man abandon the daughter as she is not his daughter and make his family happy? Is there any other option? Is this really so complex that it can't be resolved?

Hardik Patel : He is fighting for reservations or aginst reservations?

Reservations in any form is incorrect. It promotes mediocrity. Our politicians have played it well by covering more then 50% of the population under 50% reservations limit. Disgusting, last govt, Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, trying to force reservation into private companies. These power hungry mongers, they will go any limit. Vote bank politics... without retrospecting the benefits this has brought in last 60 years.

Look around yourself. You will not realize but many people around you, from IITs, from very good colleges are from the reserved category. They are every where, in your neighborhood, in offices, doctors, enggs, in important positions in private, govt, in colleges, in media, in parliament EVERYWHERE. These more then 50% of India will never raise voice against reservation as they enjoy these benefits. Hence majority of people in India enjoy reservation benefits. 

What about people like you and me? First of all, why there are no debates on benefits of reservations? Milky layer, scope of reservations, etc. Reservations is a curse. Yadavs and Meena's rule Uttar Pradesh politics and bureaucracy and what is the state of affiars here!!! 

Hardik Patel is right... eventually this will become a bigger debate ....about reservations, the curse of India. I support Hardik. The shame called reservations, needs to be retrospected. Two wrongs does not make a right!

Who Needs Miscrosoft!

Few days back, I got an intimation from MS that they will conduct a SAM (Software Assessment Management) where as they will asses and check the compliance of MS products at out company. I was amused and more funny was that some where it was mentioned, that this exercise shall have no direct cost implication on us. This is crap. The while idea is to find out pirated licenses and ask for buying these licenses!!!

Bill Gates was a technical Genius combined with a strong business acumen. But I would not hold the same respect for recent MS decisions. I started working on MS in 1990, when they created PC-DOS for IBM PCs. PC-DOS was built by MS for IBM for the first real desktop computer. MS had the copyright and they started to sell PC-DOS as MS-DOS to every possible vendor. The rest is history. MS-DOS was everywhere as small businesses could afford cheap desktops with a small operating system. Computers moved from large offices to small business and homes.

The story of MS goes on of business acumen rather then innovation. MS-DOS and later MS-Windows thrived as it was easily pirated, cheap licenses and simplicity (compared to Unix) and soon it found its way in every house and small business. MS then built windows hinging on X-Windows, Excel was copied from Lotus-123, Word from Wordstar and so on. Though windows kept crashing, it's price and piracy and simplicity... let many third party application being developed to make it really rule the world. I was personally devastated when giants like Digital VAX VMS was devoured by a PC maker called Compaq. This is not goliath vs david story! This was a real pittance. Digital was a legend on which Unix was invented and which now people have forgotten. What followed was worse. I remember working on Silicon Graphics Terminal (SGI), Sun, HP, IBM servers. Some of them survived but some of them collapsed. Legends like SGI, Siemens and Sun collapsed.

MS came with its own servers to compete with Unix servers and actually people started to use them for high end applications. MS has in late 1990's become so big that they wanted to control everything. Explorer was made part of the OS. EU and US at that time considered braking MS into smaller companies. That was the heights of MS. Around this time, Bill decides to leave the top decision making in MS and pursue his philanthropic interests. Things start to change.

Java came around this time which offered interoprablity and platform independence. More and more application became web based thus needing to do away with a client side of platform. Only a browser was needed which was HTML standards complaint. Around this time a revolution started to happen in open source technologies. More and more companies started to offer hosted, cloud based and pay per use products. Ubuntu and more Linux clones came into existence which were GUI based and offered full range of applications which were mostly open source and free.

What is going to happen to MS? Who needs MS? Only if you use legacy windows based application like India's popular Tally software, you would need MS. Else shifting to Ubuntu is fun. It has much more variety, themes and customization then Windows would ever have. Google, Facebook and others generate their revenues from pay per use whereas MS still drives it revenues from perpetual licenses. Windows 10 is their last release... Office... there are enough options on Linux... their servers... like IIS, LDAP.... why would people pay for these unstable proprietary technologies... Who uses IIS when WAMP or LAMP is open-source and wonderful... Once we had a great product in VB, VC about 20 years back and I loved VS. Now they brought in .NET to rival Java/SOAP. .NET is cumbersome and again very platform dependent. So eventually, Visual Studio lost its charm. MS bought Nokia, killed Symbain with their OS. This is not a bad move although MS itself has written off this investment. I think, one product which is still popular from MS is skype. Things like Bing will not survive as Google moves at a very fast pace.

The stock of Google doubled this year whereas MS stocks fell by 50%. These markets are smart and can sense the wind much more then we technical folks.

MS is now hiring external companies like Deloitte for audit of small (actually very small companies with 2-3 users). I think it will be double whammy for MS. First they will pay throguth their nose to companies like Deliote, secondly they will only loose users who in first place made Windows popular. More and more apps will be Web based and than who will need MS?

About Myself : Ajay Garg, spend over 25 years working for companies like Siemens, Erricsson, BMC, Syntel, Globallogic, AVL leading very large enterprise delivery teams in US, Germany, Switzerland, Greece and across all continents.

The rise and fall of Genband @ GlobalLogic

I always say that momentum will keep the ship running for some time and than the changes will start to show effect. Same is true for a leadership change. A new leader comes and it takes some time... some time even a year before the impact of the change start to show. I joined GlobalLogic in 2010 to head a very precarious and a strategic account. It was Genband.

Leaders are born. Shashi Choudhary is one of them. People can love him or loath him... but he is a great leader. Someone who has power and he knows how to yield it. A leader is who entrust his team and this is what he does best. He entrusted me this account and fully backed me. Many people will remember the day (any also the way), I was introduced to my team. I would not have done it this way. This was not my way. However, it was very effective as most of the existing leadership left the team and I had all the field for myself.

Boris Schnayder, who was the global head of Telecom BU, fully supported the move and the journey began. Genband was a Goliath who devoured the cash rich business of Nortel. SBC was their sunshine product. A product that was part of the strategic IMS roadmap. Unfortunately, SBC (session border controller) had a legacy which GLobalLogic had to handle. It had serious quality issues. Sally Graves, then R&D head at Genband, was troubled with GlobalLogic's handling of this product. There was too much of back and forth between GL and Genband and the relationship was getting worse. SBC was a bad decision by Genband which was good for GL. A codebase which was 12 years old at that time should have been moved to sustaining. Genband should have either developed or acquired another SBC. They kept on increasing the features and capacity of SBC all the time.

If there is challenge, take it, face it and enjoy it. However, It was fun. The aggression of Sally combined with Steve was a killer. We did all the work and also a lot of talking and a lot of presentations to keep them cool. Another bad thing at Genband was frequent leadership changes. BG came as the boss of Sally and first thing he did was to fire Sally and bring on DJ. DJ was a technical genius and a great manager. He did not show but he had lot of aggression. His strength showed in his actions which he voiced against the mess. DJ was let go and Randy Rutherford took his place. Randy was soon let go... the leadership heads kept on rolling.

My relationship with Sally was professional and I was very attentive to her. With DJ and Randy I enjoyed a cordial and warm relationship. It was just too good. Around this time we made some tough decisions to restructure our team. It was a smooth ship for around three years. Then some changes were made by Sunil Singh, our India MD at that time and these changes impacted me. I will write about these changes soon. :)

One thing, that was best at GL days was my team. Manish, Ashish, Anil.. these people are gems. I think there was almost no attrition in my direct report during my entire time... We grew to 170+ and we did team events all the time. It was fun and I miss this team. There were committees (!thanks to Sanju) just like the Japanese Quality Circles... independent, self executing... just create them once and they will run for you forever...

Good things came to an end. I moved on and Sanjay Singh came over. During my handover discussions, he asked me why I am leaving and I told him the fact. I think, one can only report to someone he or she respects. If the management forces such decisions, they will eventually backfire.

Folks... so watch out... I want to write about Peter Harrison and Bob Beauchamp, two best CEOs that I have worked for. I have worked at BMC, at Syntel, at Aricent, at Siemens, at Erricsson.... I will write more about my experiences with great leaders...

The Purple Trapezium

Adrian half smiled. “I hope I am wrong… maybe Daniel was interested in some things that are related to the dreadful past of Germany…?”

“You mean the holocaust?” Maya was surprised

“Not really that but it could be one of the indirect outcomes…” Adrian tried to explain

Maya had inkling, “Is it the about the pure race… the Aryans… the Swastika…”

Aryan was upset. He was brought up in Switzerland not very far from the German border. He knew how it feels to think about the dreadful past and the horrific acts of holocaust, the cleansing.

He tried to explain. “Everybody in Germany is terrified of the events of the World War II except a few. Some events in the current times are disturbing. There were few, handful people and unfortunately in the younger generation who secretly and rarely in open, take pride in the works done by Hitler. These are called as neo-Nazis and there are more people elsewhere in the world who believe in the white supremacy. There are people who believe in the pure Aryan race theory, put forward by Heinrich Himmler… maybe Daniel was one of them”.

Maya was aware of the myths around Aryans which become complicated since many westerners eyed it with suspicion. The confusion was if Aryanism relates to a culture or race i.e. the breed of people. In 1938, Heinrich Himmler organized a search in Tibet to find a remnant of the white Atlantis which as per some researchers is related to the “Fifth Pure Race”. Some people considered Heinrich Himmler was a great mystic and a very spiritual man. Heinrich Himmler who was the Reichsfuhrer, the person who was ordered by Adolf Hitler to implement the final solution the Holocaust, told his personal masseur Emanuel Kirsten that he always carried with him a copy of the ancient Aryan scripture, the Bhagavad Gita because it relieved him of guilt about what he was doing and he felt that like the warrior Arjuna. He was simply doing his duty without attachment to his actions. These and other ideas evolved into the Nazi’s use of the term "Aryan race" to refer to what they saw as being a master race of people of northern European descent. They worked to maintain the purity of this race through eugenic programs like compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill and cleansing of the impure races like the Jews.

Maya protested, “The Nazis were a perverted lot. No one in his absolute mind can justify the holocaust, the cleansing… but…” she paused.

“…but …what?” Adrian tried to anticipate

“Yes… but whatever the Nazis did, it cannot alter the facts. The facts and the studies… Does not your science of Anthropology talks about races… the whites, the blacks and the Mongoloid race…?” Maya was angry.

“Stop this discussion…” Adrian almost yelled. This discussion was going too far. This topic he had debated so many times with Bill. The same thoughts what Bill, Dr William Clark Bryce, his mentor had, Maya was repeating. The purple trapezium was a proof that human existed before and not evolved from apes as per the Charles Darwin theory of human evolution.

“Hold this carefully with your both hands...” Jürgen said gently explaining the skinny old man, how to hold the baton like object.

The old man looked at the strange object and winked before extending his hand. Jürgen placed the object in his hands. The object was heavier then expected and the old man was surprised. The object was not only heavy but also cold, rather very cold. The old man was puzzled holding this strange, alien object, something he had never seen or visualized.

The object was in the shape of a trapezium, about eight inches tall, the top about two square inches and the bottom of four square inches. The object was freezing cold. The surface was shining as if it was greasy. The texture was translucent like an unpolished sapphire. The color was deep purple.

The purple trapezium was cold and the old man felt as if the object will drop from his hands and he pleadingly looked at Jürgen for his help.

“Yes… here… give it to me…” Jürgen took back the object from the old man and told him in a thankful gesture.

The Nuremberg Trials, Nuremberg, October 1946.

World War II war crime tribunal, the special court setup to prosecute the Nazi regime for the crimes committed on the German soil as well as the occupied territories. The tribunal pronounced the judgment on Emanuel Kerstin, the personal masseur of Herr Heinrich Himmler.

Alexandra was heartbroken as she tightly clutched the hands of her young son Jürgen Kirsten. She looked across the hall, at her husband who was looking back at her.

There was no remorse in his eyes as he looked at Alexandra. He smiled at her, smiled in pain, smiled resolutely, his jaws clenching.

“I am not worried how the world will know me. I am not worried what the people will say. I am dying for the cause which my master believed and I wish that my son carry on the same wishes…. Alexandra… promise me that my son will learn what I have learnt… Alexandra… promise me that my son will understand the cause for which I have laid my life…” Emanuel Kirsten spoke to his wife thirty minutes before his sentence was served.

Not a tear came from Alexandra’s eyes as she looked for the last time at her husband. Jürgen was too young to understand the world around him. Emanuel cuddled his baby son last time as the matron told them that the meeting time was over.

Emanuel was quick to earn the trust and confidence of the Nazi army. He soon became a close confidant of Heinrich Himmler, the left hand man of Adolph Hitler.

Emanuel adored and worshipped Heinrich Himmler. Almost every other day, he would fall in debate with Rudolf about the philosophy and the ideas of Heinrich Himmler. Emanuel did not realize when he became part of the Nazi army.

“We are a pure race… whereas the Jews are impure… they are the ordinary humans of this planet…” Emanuel boasted to his friends.

His arguments led to the claim that Nordic peoples of northern Europe were the ideal model of the "Aryan race. In the mid nineteenth century, it was commonly believed that the Aryans originated in the southwestern steppes of present-day Russia. However, by the late nineteenth century the steppe theory of Aryan origins was challenged by view that the Aryans originated in ancient Germany.

Emanuel spent time in gathering more information about the pure race. He learnt that H.P. Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophical Society in US, believed that the humanity had descended from a series of ‘Root Races’, naming the fifth root race out of the seven as the Aryan race. She thought that the Aryans originally came from Atlantis, which was part of the fourth Root Race. The Aryan Root Race was only one more step in the evolutionary progress and it would eventually be superseded by a more spiritual Root Race, the sixth. She believed that the Semitic peoples were later Aryans who have become ‘degenerated in spirituality and perfected in materiality’ However, she did not encourage any feeling of superiority by any person or race, spreading the idea of the common origin and destiny of all humanity, and establishing the principle of universal brotherhood as the First Object of the Theosophical Society. She said that the Theosophists respect the Bible as much as they do the sacred scriptures like the Vedas, the Zend-Avesta.

“They did not preach Aryan supremacy like the esoteric and occult racial theories of Adolph Hitler” Emanuel told Alexandra Kirsten.

When the war ended, Emanuel was convicted by the Nuremberg Trial courts and was found guilty of being a party to the holocaust. The day before he was hanged to death, Rudolf met Emanuel who handed him two manuscripts; one was Gita which was the personal copy of Heinrich Himmler. The second manuscript was an old worn out script, appeared to be in tatters which was carefully tied together. The script was written in some ancient language that he did not understand. The Nazi symbol of Swastika was engraved on the worn out thick cover of the book.