Buying a property in Bangalore looks like the top priority of every IT guy in this city (among others am not aware of?). For many, it is like the you-can-be-a-millionaire-in-a-day-in-stocks syndrome (plus tax benefits, of course!). For some others, it is part of the hype that this is the ultimate city to be in and if you dont buy property here right now you can't afford it any more. Either be the case, the whole frenzy has created a state in the city where fraudsters thrive.

When I moved in to Bangalore around a year back, the urgency to buy a plot caught me in no time! All of your colleagues and the whole city are talking about it. Always there is talk about a third person who made huge profits investing in land. Always there is talk about a missed opportunity to be a millionaire. By then, most places where I would have wished to stay was beyond me in price. So I went on looking for places in farther areas of the city, then for apartments and finally for building your own apartment as a group - in that order, dismissing the earlier in each case seeing it is not feasible financially (or rather, the finance/convenience trade-off was becoming too much skewed towards an inconvenient solution). In the meanwhile, I did have my share of fraudsters looting money (Mr. Manoj of MN Real Estate at Kundalahalli is yet to return Rs.10,000 taken as token advance for a plot in Laughing Waters, Mr. Aswath of Kasero Landscapes Pvt. Ltd. at Koramangala is yet to return Rs. 1,00,000 taken as booking amount for a green-belt land they tried to sell as residential property).

What we have in Bangalore is a scenario highly in favor of the supplier, more so due to market manipulation than due to a real gap in Supply-Demand. You have apartment complexes with 3000 units selling out in a week with bulk-buyers taking most of it. Then it comes to the real market at regulated quantities, adding 10-20% margin every month. And all this for something set to be delivered after 3 years!

Now it is sort of a challenge to materialise the apartment plan - am not for leaving anything half way. We have a group of around 40 friends who are for it, partly because they trust me to do a good job and mostly because the price we end up with is somewhere near half of what big names sell. What we are negotiating upon is to have a top constructor who do work for groups like SJR or Prestige do our work, employing the same architects. With some trusted supervisors in our hands, we are expecting to land a property with same quality at a significantly lower cost.

Probably more Aswaths and Manojs are on the way to cheat, or probably we would have a rally up the curve. Either way, am trying my best - and you know why I link to Seth Godin articles.

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Today did not start quite alright. All the minute things that make the day go smooth were going wrong. The guy who delivers milk seem to have forgot to do that today. For a South Indian family, the morning tea being disrupted is a somewhat serious issue. Resorts to dairy whitener with reluctance. Now comes the next... the maid did not turn up either! Sini is allergic to dish-washing soap and am generally lazy in the mornings, which means the dishes stay piled up for another day. All those is pushed aside and we find merry in the fact that the whole family is together (though it is almost time for my parents and sis to leave). About to leave and lo, the car is not washed either! C'mon... this is going beyond coincidence!

Off we head for the airport, drop my family and turn back in 20 minutes. I should have remembered to avoid this part of the city at this hour. For the next 40 minutes we drive less than 2 km. Am almost there to take the exit to the ring-road (sort of like a freeway) when a Tata Indica (KA05 C9321) rushes through the parking lot of a textile shop and zooms into the lane am in, in front of a Maruthi 800 (KA04 N3548) ahead of me. Those cars collide and I hit behind the Maruthi. Fortunately there is nobody hurt seriously. Sini hit the front glass and it got cracks (she dint wear the seatbelt - people, it is very important to wear your seatbelts!), but luckily she is not hurt. So we ended up with a bulged bumper, broken radiator pipe, coolant sprayed everywhere and a broken front glass. Wow, this is what kept the day incomplete - an accident!

The worst part is that the Indica guy fled off instantly. He did not stop to see the damage he caused or even to see if someone was hurt. Last week I saw a Toyota Qualis which had virtually flown off the road and hit an advertisement hoarding before landing in the ditch below. That vehicle too belonged to a call-center. In Bangalore, these vehicles working for call-centers (BPO) drive very rash and cause many accidents very often (you can spot at least one every day on the ring road where a call-center vehicle is involved). Though these vehicles carry a sticker behind (the usual "How do I drive?" stuff), that does not seem to be sufficiently backed up by training on the company's part (the BPO or the logistics provider) or ethics on the driver's part. Without putting any pre-requisites in selecting and employing drivers, just putting a sticker behind the vehicle does not make you a responsible company! There are hundreds of oil tankers that drive from Mangalore (MRPL?) to Bangalore. I have never caught a single one of them driving rash. Some investment and thought have definitely gone behind it. In short, the logistics provider is responsible in part, if not entirely, for the very bad attitude shown by their drivers on road. And it is high time companies like Aviva, AOL, 24x7, ICICI and the like started showing some concern over the chaos caused on road by their logistics partners.


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Seth Godin has a great article regarding goals, success and comfort-zones that arrest your growth. He explains it with a simple chart where a comfort-zone called Local Max keeps most of us from reaching the Big Max. A must read for anyone who dream big.

Of course, it's not just about growing sales or revenues. The Big Max/Local Max paradox affects everything from education to non-profits to politicians. If you have a "Max", whatever you're measuring, the odds are you're actually dealing with a Local Max, not the Big one.

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Based on some Technorati math, here is a site that calculates the worth of your blog. Try out here!



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This blog (Brutalities in Bangalore) came in today as a forward. It just wouldn't leave my mind, after the reading. One voice keeps repeating in me... it could have been me, or someone dear to me! And the people who doubt the credibility of this guy (an IIML/ITBHU) who went to see off his fiance, would surely dismiss me without even a second thought.

The RPF comprising of one sub-inspector/inspector and four constables, appeared on the scene. The surrounding public was whisked away. None of the railway police officials cared to listen to me and they started hitting me indiscriminately with lathis. They dragged me out, and all the 4 constables continued hitting me with lathis from Platform 1 to Platform 3/5, till we reached the station master's cabin

Why are we like this?! This same thing happening in a railway station in Delhi or Mumbai would not disturb me as much. Only the possibility of happening to self touches us, it seems. And that exactly is what help morons like the ones described in this article thrive (he call them Railway Police, I guess).

I suppose there might have been a slight provocation from the blog author's part (provocation in the sense, not lowering your head and talking like a slave in front of police - we are supposed to do that in this part of the world). Even if he uttered something in protest, even if he did not have a platform ticket, those b*s have no right whatsoever to lay their hands on him.

The same feeling is coming down on me, the one I get while seeing very well-behaved airport and customs officials everywhere else in the world. The way I was ashamed of being surprised at seeing a well-behaved police-man the first time I've been to US. The fact that am surprised at civil behaviour, on reflection, makes me sad - for my land and the many nice people here.

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Those full-page ads have left me wondering most of the times about how good the claims really are. Thinking, if they are really so good (better than IIM), why are they spending so much on advertisements. Not to mention the buildings that house it did not exactly look like a 'campus' to me as explained in the ads.

Came across a post today which took me through a few hours of blogscape journey. That is the good thing of being between projects, you have the luxury of indulging in what you want to do ;)

However, the information out there on many blogs is really disturbing. And the fact that IIPM choose to threaten these people instead of coming out with an explanation tends to give credibility to the claims in these articles. And in most cases, people who speak for IIPM seem to lack the basic language skills. whew!

This article titled The fraud that is IIPM is what started me on the news (and the follow ups). It points to a JAM magazine article titled The Truth About IIPM's Tall Claims which raises a few questions. Any would-be IIPM student would be better-off to have a look into these and having things cleared, before making a decision.

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Other Manager: Can I use him for a month?
My Manager: No no… I need him next month. Can’t spare…
Other Manager: That’s fine, I’m asking for just a month.
My Manager: No, I can’t give him now. Well, let me think and get back.

C’mon guys, you’re talking about me!
It made me feel like some commodity, say a frying pan or smthing (if not like a bitch)

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Used to love math a lot. Still does, despite the best effort of this lecturer at engineering college to make many of us hate it. In those years when I believed math is everything, heard my dad say one day that lack of social science knowledge among engineers is a bad thing making them prone to not-so-wise decisions. Gave it some thought and dismissed thinking it should be a prejudice of a psychology major. Math could define everything, math is life, nature with its strange balances is the greatest mathmatician. Years pass by and you are no longer a kid, and then suddenly one and one doesn’t add up to two always! Then you realise that the difference between two and that value is the difference between a precise decision and a correct decision. And that you can’t notate that it math… and you wish your dad is wrong and life is indeed as simple as math!

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The long awaited vacation starts tomorrow… a lot of distance and a lot of places in 10 days. It would be fun and possibly strenuous too. With such a big group (14), chances of someone not getting used to the weather and such is high. Juz hoping that everything goes smooth, like Bhutan! But as Kiran reminds me every now and then, don’t expect even half the decensy of the people we met there… this is India. Yeah… sad, but you’re right. Nooooo, i won’t start this trip with prejudice :P We’re going to meet only nice people (selective amnesia lets me forget our operator has already went back on a few promises) and this tour is gonna be even better than Bhutan or any of the smaller ones we had!

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Sini's friend Reshmi and family had come during the weekend. We had a great time, but this post is not about that ;). This is about the sunday night when we went to drop them back at the rail station.

We went to KR Puram well in time and since they have a 6-year old and some luggage, decided to position ourselves correctly for the AS2 coach. On enquiry we were told it comes at 4/5 positions. And when the train did come (it is on time these days!), it seems they decided to put the a/c coaches after the sleeper ones, for a change. We had to run to 15th coach position, me with the kid. Discovered that with 20kg in hand the max I can run is 9 coaches of a train (go figure) before collapse. Well, I dint really fall down... juz managed to put her down and drag her along. With two minutes to complete a dash like that, the confusion and anxiety the situation creates is huge. Indian Railways should have some better sense to offer services that could at least be called civil. Last time it was total chaos when the train came coz they did not mark any of the coaches. When we finally managed to get in, I asked the TT about it. The ever-so-serious TT (whose father obviously owns the train) said the coaches are marked on the other side of the train which doesn't face the platform! Wow!

Speaking of trains, there was this one time I did a really nasty thing at Calicut. Was bound to college after a weekend and when I got to the station, saw that my train was leaving from the third platform. Without thinking for a minute, dashed across the 1/2 platforms and the rails in between and got into the train which by then had gained good speed. People inside were tensed seeing me and there was this elderly person who patted me on the back and just said "vandi iniyum varum" (trains will come again). He did not elaborate on it, but everything was plain in the calm but cautioning tone in which he said that. Don't remember that face now, but I think of those words in many situations where I'm hasting into a decision with too much risk... he meant it or not, I can't help but think of the philosophical overtones of those words.

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