Honking in traffic

The incessant honking on our roads is starting to get to me and I have been trying to think about why we Indians tend to honk so much. The primary reason, I have come to believe is that most drivers and riders use honking as advance notice of claiming right-of-way. If they see someone about to cross the road ahead of them, they jam the horn button and speed up. This is peculiar to India. In any other country, the usual response is to slow down and let the other person pass. In some countries of course, drivers would pull out a shotgun and blow the offender away. Fortunately, that kind of road rage is relatively rare in the civilized parts of India.

I wonder if this tendency to claim right of way and speed up instead of slowing down is a result of growing up in constrained circumstances. We are hard-wired to stand nut-to-butt behind the guy ahead of us in line, lest someone should cut in before us. And with waiting lists on the train bookings and a limited amount of milk available at the milk kiosk, this would mean going home empty-handed.

So there - honk away and claim your right.

Pilot action

They say air travel is safer than driving your own car, in that the changes of meeting your maker after an air crash are far, far lower than the chances of dying in an automobile accident. Some years ago, especially after 9-11, there was a slight tinge of worry about hijackings, but with increasing airport security, it was easy to put that thought out of one's mind.

Now we have pilot suicide to worry about. The Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps was all but certainly a result of the co-pilot deciding to end his own life; and too bad for the other 150 souls on board. MH 370 is also starting to look suspiciously like pilot action rather than pilot error or equipment malfunction.

So now we have one more thing to worry about. You might want to take a good look at the eyes of the cockpit crew as they board the aircraft when you are in the queue at the gate waiting to board.

Just saying.

Lee Kuan Yew

One of my heroes passed away earlier this week.

Lee Kuan Yew became Prime Minister of Singapore when the little island was asked to leave the Malaysian Union on August 9, 1965. He steered the course of the young country taking it from a swampy fishing village with per capita income of $ 450 to one of the richest countries in the world today with a per capita income of $ 56,000, ahead of Switzerland and the United States and behind only Qatar, UAE, Norway and Luxembourg. Three of these top four countries have oil income and the fourth was until recently a place where people kept their money at zero interest.

Singapore has been a story of how one man with a clear vision and an iron will can take his people to the heights of glory. He worked hard to keep the government small and profitable. He realized that a country, like a household should not, cannot, spend more than it earns. The Singapore government has run a surplus budget for decades. They run the country with the financial prudence and discipline that many corporations of today would do well to emulate.

He was also wary of well-intentioned but poorly managed social security programs in many nations that have devolved into Ponzi schemes, with the government collecting money from one set of people today to pay another set of people and hoping that this will run in perpetuity.

He built a nation that is exceptionally safe with a fair and efficient judicial system. The administration is corruption free. The legal framework is enforced. Some foreigners thought they could get away in Singapore with the nonsense that would have worked in their own country. Michael Fay comes to mind.

One of the chapters in the second volume of his autobiography, 'The Singapore Story', is 'Fair state - not welfare state'.  This seemingly simple phrase, all of five words, says a lot. Those of us in India can see the irony. If anyone could have delivered on that laudable target, it would be Lee Kuan Yew. And he did.

His passing marks, truly, the end of an era.

Young India - an indicator

In the 1980s, Doordarshan used to telecast 'Ramayan' and 'Mahabharat' on Sunday mornings at 9:30 am. I loved those Sunday mornings, when I could drive on the roads of Pune like it were the Buddh International Circuit. I was the only person on the road.

I realized last Sunday, that such a situation is not likely to happen again. You see, back in the 80s, the only people who owned and used automobiles were in their forties and beyond; and they really liked to watch 'Ramayan' and 'Mahabharat'. So much so, that all other things on Sundays were scheduled around the telecast schedules.

Youth today, I suspect is not going to put their lives on pause for a TV show. Which brings me to my point. An interesting indicator of the age and vibrancy of a population is how empty the roads are going to be when a particular show is being aired.

May we never have empty roads again.

On Jeremy Clarkson

I used to be an admirer of Jeremy Clarkson, an ardent fan even, of his style of presenting and his irreverent humour on Top Gear since 1988. However, it appears that there comes a point in the life of many celebrities where they start to believe they can do no wrong. This point signals the beginning of the end.

I had begun to notice my own displeasure with Jeremy's runaway hubris in the last couple of years. It started with him referring to Tata as a company 'which makes horrid cars for people who are fed up with falling off their motor scooters'. Perhaps this joke would hurt only an Indian, but then he went on to call a Burmese person a 'slope' which is about equivalent of calling a black person a 'n-g--r'. He did that too, used the N word as part of a nursery rhyme he made up. And he was reprimanded by the BBC for drinking a gin-and-tonic while behind the wheel of a pickup truck.

All this culminated earlier this month with him verbally abusing a producer on Top Gear for serving him a cold meal when he wanted a steak. It does not end there. His Jereminess then proceeded to physically assault the producer Oisin Tymon, giving him a broken lip and bleeding nose. Even after the assault, he continued to verbally assault Oisin for another half hour in so loud a voice that he could be heard in the bedrooms in the hotel.

Kudos to the BBC for suspending him. The decision is especially admirable given that Top Gear generates a revenue of $225 million, but as BBC said, "he crossed a line".

A solemn nod to the BBC.

Professions and remunerations

Venture Capitalists would like to bet on people who change the future. What are the professions that are most likely to cause the biggest changes in our lives in the next fifty years? Shouldn't these be the professions that are valued the most and remunerated accordingly?

Until as recently as the 1990s, the best paid professions were in engineering and medicine. The world used to value the services of people who created things and saved lives, and the best paying jobs were in Computer Science, Medicine and Genetics. Today the highest paying jobs are in financial services, legal services and management. Are these professions really the creators of value or are they specialists in redistribution of wealth created by others? We have all shaken our heads at the 2008 financial crisis and the bizarre fact that the people who caused the crash with their warped mathematics and logic got paid millions in bonuses while the creators of wealth lost their jobs in the aftermath.

What profession should we remunerate the most generously?
What profession builds the people who will make tomorrow a better place?
My top pick for such a profession: Teaching.

On hoarding

I took another stab at cleaning house a couple of weeks ago with a vengeance. After having emptied a number of drawers and closets on the floor, I set about deciding what to keep and which items need to go.

Each item had to make it past two filters to stay. One, it had to have been used at least once in the last year, and two, there was no similar item that had been purchased later as a replacement or upgrade to this one.

I have often joked about how Americans keep their hundred-thousand-dollar cars outside on the driveway and store useless junk in their garages. As Indians, we are getting there fast. With incomes rising and our generation being a little more liberal with our spending, we have been collecting stuff at a worrisome rate. It gets worse. Our Indian mindset of reuse and recycle has a serious downside; we are unable to throw old stuff away. We hoard it on the off chance that we might need it some day. I was amazed at how much junk has been collecting in our garage over the years. I am going to clean out the place this summer and I plan to do it ruthlessly. There is stuff in there that has not been used for 20 years and yet we have been unable to throw it away or give it away.

I realized a few days ago why hotel rooms feel so luxurious. It might have less to do with the interior decor and more to do with how uncluttered they are. The night-stand next to the bed has a lamp and an alarm clock and nothing else. The desk has one folder with hotel brochures and nothing else. The bathroom has only one set of toiletries neatly arranged in a drawer or a wicker tray and no more. The towel rack has 2 towels and no more and the closet has one bathrobe and a few hangers.

Now imagine trying to place the magazine you have been reading at bedtime on the night stand next to your bed at home. Mine has a lamp, a phone, 3 chargers and mobile phones, books, the contents of my pockets that I emptied there that evening, a comb, assorted envelopes and some bubble wrap that came with my last amazon purchase. You get the picture. Ditto with our kitchen cabinet surface. The interior decorator had shown us a 3D rendering with just three things on the surface; a microwave oven, a toaster and a vase. I don't need to tell you how many items are on there now.

I would have liked to have believed that I am not a hoarder; the evidence has not been encouraging.

Joy from possessions

I followed Tal Ben Shahar's advice as given in his book 'Happier' and made a list of 100 things that have made me happy and that I am grateful for. To my surprise, only 6 items in the list were possessions. The other 94 were experiences.

Interesting then, that we spend so much of our lives striving to reach a point where we can afford to buy that big house and that nice car and all those other status symbols.

Even more intriguing is what possesses us to buy all the junk that is a must have at the time of purchase but languishes unused, un-noticed and un-missed in our lives.

The March Short

The starting line of the rat race is that point where you start to believe that you have a lot to lose if you do not run the race.

Notes for an Entrepreneur - Selling

One of the most difficult parts of entrepreneurship is selling. When I started out, I had a fear of selling, which I understand now was the fear of rejection. A friend in Singapore helped clarify this issue for me way back in 1993

He said that we develop a dislike for selling because we have seen our family shut the door on salesmen who visited our homes to sell us soaps and detergents. That was not sales, he said. That was peddling. Peddling is when you are trying to push a product that offers no incremental value to the prospective customer.

Selling, on the other hand, is communication designed to make the prospect aware of the benefits you offer.

One of the best books on selling I have read, and I have read a lot of them, is Strategic Selling by Heimann and Miller. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is responsible for selling in a complex sale environment.

The authors define a complex sale as one where multiple people within the buying organization need to say 'yes' for the sale to conclude but not all have to say 'no' to nix the deal.

The authors propose that there are at least three buyer roles within a complex sale situation that you need to convince. The Financial Buyer is the person or organization that will release the funds for your product or service.The Technical Buyer is the person or organization that will verify that the specifications of your offering meet their needs. The User Buyer is the person that will actually use your product or service and they need to believe that it will make their work easier or richer.

You need to cover your bases with all three. Ignore them at your own peril.

Notes for an Entrepreneur - Discounts

Every single time I teach a Marketing course at a Business School, I find myself spending a fair bit of time discussing the impact of discounts on revenues and profits.

A number of students will propose offering a discount as a means to garnering more sales. While this approach might be acceptable in the short run, the adverse impact on the bottom line can be disproportionately large. This is especially true when you are dealing with a product where the marginal cost of producing a unit is a large proportion of the selling price.

Consider a product that you can manufacture for Rs 90 and that you can sell for Rs 100 thus yielding a gross profit margin of 10% on selling price. When you offer a 5% discount, the selling price drops to Rs 95. Presuming that your cost structure does not change in the short run, your gross profit margin drops from 10% to 5% of selling price. To make this offer worthwhile, the entrepreneur needs to be bullish about one of two things. One, the 5% discount will bring in more than double the sales volume, thus implying a rather high price elasticity of demand. Or two, the increase in sales volume will remain sticky even after the discount has been withdrawn. Discounts then, offer a relatively simple way to possibly increase top line, but at a large cost to the bottom line.

I have been misleading in my use of this example though. The situation changes when we consider a product or service where the marginal cost of producing an incremental unit is near zero. Examples would be a software company selling a software package on the internet for download or an airline selling an incremental seat on a flight. In such cases, a 5% discount might affect the contribution by an equal percentage. This is the reason why we notice so many software companies willing to give away their product for free in a bid to buy sticky behaviour. In some cases like Whatsapp, this gamble can pay off spectacularly.

There is a spate of internet companies giving away their product for free or below cost price and making losses for years. This is easier to fathom when these companies are spending Venture Capitalists' money. Once in a while, one loss making taxi company is bought by another for ridiculous amounts of money.

The entrepreneur would do well to remember however, that this strategy of hoping for such an event is roughly the equivalent of buying a lottery ticket.

Notes for an Entrepreneur - On Debt

A friend called to comment that I seem to be rabidly opposed to debt and that this might be an unreasonable stance for new entrepreneur to take. I thought I would devote this post to clarify my stand.

I am not opposed to debt per-se, though I will admit my own personal preference to avoid it. My argument is that debt is best taken for setting up infrastructure that is required to run a business and perhaps to accommodate the first 3 months of working capital. For financing infrastructure, a term loan with fixed payment installments beats an open line of credit, if for no other reason than to engender discipline in paying back the debt in good time. Ongoing debt mechanisms such as credit lines often mask inefficiencies in the business, most often a poor credit cycle.

Here is a thumb rule that I would try to follow. Debt should be used to finance assets that appreciate; e.g. land and building in India. If you are considering taking on debt to finance assets that depreciate rapidly, such as cars or computers, you might want to think about that a little more. At the very least, ensure that gross margins are strong enough to compensate for the depreciation of the assets.

Notes for an Entrepreneur - Collecting your dues Part 2

Aakash Rungta wrote in his comment to the first post on Collecting that it is very difficult not to give a line of credit to customers and to pay the bank on time.

I have admitted in the post that it is indeed difficult to collect on time. But there are measures an entrepreneur can take to ensure survival. My own algorithm is to not do business with owner run companies, where the Lala-ji needs to sign your cheque. In these companies, usually SMEs, the owner has a direct benefit in not paying you on time or not paying you fully. We have often heard stories in this country about the price being re-negotiated after the job was done. The amount not paid to you is a direct addition to the bottom line of the person who signs the cheque.

I decided a long long time ago to work only with large professionally managed companies where the accounts department clerk who prepares the cheque and the manager who signs it has no personal benefit in delaying your payments. My personal experience in working with MNCs has been superb. Payments come in on time without the need to follow up on them.

With this rule, one can steer clear of needing a credit line from a bank. In the interest of transparency, I need to mention here that there have been clients who have not paid me on time, and in one case, not paid me at all. But then, in these cases I had broken my own second rule: I was doing business with companies with very poor gross margins. It did not help that the promoter of one of these client companies was a flamboyant playboy who has been selling the family silver to finance his lifestyle.

It is quite straight forward then, steer clear of doing business with client companies that have poor margins or poor cash-flows and if you have to work with owner run companies - work only after you have been paid.

Notes for an Entrepreneur - The value of your offering

Kayani bakery in Pune sells its wares at prices way above the standard market rates for bakery products. Yet people stand in line to buy their Shrewsbury biscuits and Mava cakes. No-one dares argue with the Parsi proprietor about their prices lest they are asked to leave the store.

If you find your customers are negotiating with you on the monetary cost component of your quote, you have been unable to convince them of the benefits of your offering.

Marketing 101 has taught us that customers seek to maximize value, defined as Benefit - Cost. If they do not see incremental benefit in your offering over a competitor's, then the only way for them to try to maximize value is to try and hammer you down on cost. This is your cue to steer the discussion back to incremental value. If you do not offer incremental value, you need to ask yourself why you deserve a premium over the competitor.

Notes for an Entrepreneur - Partnering

I was once in negotiations with a party who seemed to be trying very hard to convince me that they wished to find a partner not a vendor. At the same time, this party was pushing for a quote that was clearly below my cost price. I told them as much and explained my cost structure. I also suggested that I would help them find another vendor who might have a lower cost structure than mine. Paradoxically, they were unwilling to consider another vendor; they insisted they wanted to partner with me but that I had to drop my quote.

After I got tired of running around in circles, I said half-jokingly, "I do not really wish to partner with you. I wish to be paid on time at a rate that I find profitable." I added that if they insisted on partnering with me, I would like them to share their cost structure with the same transparency that I had and be willing to add in a clause that included an up-side for me as well. That this idea was unpalatable to them was a signal to walk away from the negotiating table. I am so glad I did.

Notes for an Entrepreneur - Partners

For any partnership to work, each partner has to need the other and more importantly, has to be able to clearly articulate why he or she needs the other. If this condition is not met, each partner will soon start to question what the other side is doing to earn his or her share of the pie.

Notes for an Entrepreneur - Collecting your dues

A number of my entrepreneur friends have excellent relationships with their banks. Within a year of starting their businesses, their bank managers convinced them to avail of facilities like a line of credit to help them tide over working capital needs and to have access to funds for growth. As the businesses grew, so did the line of credit. Banks are only too happy to lend to people with a good record of servicing debt, i.e. paying interest on time.

The problem here is that with most of these folks, the credit line is almost always fully drawn. These folks are working for the bank. They would be wise to compute how long it would take to pay off the debt.

An entrepreneur needs to do two things well to run and grow a business. One is to protect strong gross margins and the other is to collect on time. This second is notoriously difficult. Even well-meaning clients have cash flow pressures and a lot of companies treat their vendors like a line of credit. It is the entrepreneur's job to ensure that he is not extending a free line of credit to his customers while he is paying his bank.

Interestingly, the one way to avoid falling into this trap is to work with customers who also have a strong gross margin and a good collection cycle. If they are making good money every month, there should be no reason for them to pay you late.

Notes for an Entrepreneur - Negotiations

Ever so often in the past, I have found myself in a midst of business negotiations that were starting to taste a little bitter. The ones I disliked the most were of the nature where the other party truly believed that they were doing me a favour by doing business with me. The implication was that having their name on my company's CV would help me get access to more business and that by walking away from that deal, I would be giving up an opportunity of a lifetime. One person has even had the gall to ask me what I would be willing to pay him for the privilege of doing business with him.

The meanest trick that a strong-arming negotiator can play on you is to lead you to believe that you have a lot to lose. You don't.

When I look back at some of the opportunities I regretted losing at the time, I am so glad that I did not invest time, money and effort in those unprofitable deals.

If there is one critical success factor in business, it is the ability to say 'no' and to stay true to your walk away point, the one you decided before you got to the negotiating table.

Notes for an Entrepreneur - Guarding your gross margins

One of things I have learned over the last 15 years of being an entrepreneur is that one has to hold gross profit margins sacrosanct. If you are running a business or thinking of starting one soon, decide now a gross profit margin in percentage terms that you will want. Then, draw this line in the sand.

Overheads have a nasty way of creeping up, and if you do not have strong gross margins, pretty soon you will find yourself cross subsidizing one line of product or service. The free hand of the market will then ensure that sooner rather than later, the only business you are able to get is the one where you make little or no money. Strong gross margins are critical to survival, the very first step.

Next you need to keep overheads in control and collect on time, but these are topics for other posts.

Notes for an Entrepreneur - The Parsi way of doing business

Google's motto is 'Don't Be Evil'. I have been thinking for many years about the guiding principles that I would like to do business by, and it is not easy coming up with something that is simple and yet encapsulates what is non-negotiable.

One that I have been able to live by is what I call the Parsi way of doing business: Do good work, do it long enough, and eventually it will pay in gold. 

When enough people learn to value the quality of your work, you do not need to discount your offering. When this stage is achieved, I aspire to graduate to a higher guiding principle: 'Be Generous'. 

You don't have to own it to enjoy it

I visited a friend's farm near Dapoli in the Konkan region some years ago. It was September and the weather was superb, the air cool and the foliage a verdant green. He had built a stone cottage on his farm with a sit-out verandah. I was so taken by the setting that I began to seriously consider buying a plot of land for myself in the region.

When I started to visit to check out opportunities, I realized that it is far more fun to visit for a few days than to have to live there. Power supply was iffy, insects and slugs rampant and local villagers noisy on festival days. Soon, summer approached, the scenery that was lush green turned a pale dusty brown and the streams started to run dry.

As the glamour of owning a farmhouse started to fade, I realized first hand that ownership is not a pre-requisite for enjoyment. The scenery is there for you to enjoy, for free. Ownership brings with it the burden of responsibility.

Hope for India - Part 2

Gurucharan Das, ex CEO of Procter and Gamble India, is a self-proclaimed libertarian and an India optimist. He has been a strong believer in the future of India ever since liberalization in 1991. I had the chance to meet with him at a function at a B-School in Pune some years ago and asked him, how he was able to maintain his optimism in the face of all the corruption that was the norm within the ruling classes.

His answer was telling. He said every country has gone through different stages on its path to becoming a developed country and India is tracking that path. His optimism, he said, stems from the growth of literacy and the growth of the middle class. When more than half of the voter base is comprised of literate people and the middle class realizes that their numbers are large enough to make a difference, they will change the trajectory of the country's development.

That day is here now. Our domestic help is now literate, they read the newspaper, they watch the news on TV. Their children now study in English medium schools and they have learned to value education. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, even the masons now pull out the calculator on their mobile phones to compute the amount you owe them. They are aware of the value of their services and are not afraid to ask for a fair price. More importantly, they are no longer mute spectators to whatever the politicians might do. They are willing to force a change with their votes.

We have crossed the first hurdle; we are unlikely, as a country to descend into chaos like a Nigeria, a Pakistan or a Russia. We the people need to hang in there and keep the politicians honest, for as recent events have shown, we can.

Hope for India - Part 1

Yesterday, I finished reading 'Red Notice' by Bill Browder. The book is sub-titled 'A true story of high finance, murder, and one man's fight for justice.' The book outlines the author's experiences with running a hedge fund business in Russia from 1996 until the time he was debarred from entering Russia in 2005-2006. The book starts with how the Russian authorities sold shares in State Owned Enterprises at a 99% discount through a mechanism that was supposedly designed to let the common man partake of ownership in these companies, but in truth, was rigged to enable a few favoured people to buy up huge stakes. These people became the Russian oligarchs.

It does not end there. The oligarchs then teamed up with the mafia and corrupt elements in the police force to then rig up another plan to loot the Russian tax payers. The modus operandi was for the police to raid the offices of law firms under false warrants and confiscate company documents and seals of the law-firms and their client companies. With the original documents and the seals, the ownership of these companies would be transferred to the mafia. The oligarchs would then 'buy' judicial decrees against these companies that caused their profits for prior years to be adjusted downwards. The mafia owners would promptly file for a tax refund, which was processed within days and the refund paid out to the current owners - the mafia and the oligarchs. You can watch the YouTube videos here and here.

We often complain about how corrupt the Indian system is and how our politicians have amassed wealth beyond their declared sources of income. It is the fearless courage and perseverance of people like Anna Hazare that have prevented our politicians from doing to India what the Russian oligarchs have done to their country. For all our faults, we have a free press and an independent judicial system.

We might do well to learn to appreciate what we do have.

To be continued...

Happier

I recently re-read 'Happier' by Tal Ben Shahar, an amazing book. One learning from the book is that to achieve lasting happiness, we need both pleasure and purpose. Either one alone is not sufficient to make us happy.

Imagine you won an all-expenses-paid vacation at a resort of your choice, valid as long as you stayed put. Sure, this sounds pleasurable, but how long would it be before you got bored and started to yearn for something to do?  At the other end of the spectrum, consider the prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. A number of them developed a purpose - to survive the ordeal, one day at a time. By no stretch of imagination could we believe that they were happy. But imagine that you have found your calling, say teaching or working for the underprivileged, and you actually enjoy what you do, it is very likely that you find life quite fulfilling. If we can find a purpose in life and we enjoy the work required to get us there, then we might have found the holy grail of happiness.

The author sums it up well. A life with neither pleasure nor purpose would be nihilistic.
Pleasure without purpose suggests hedonism. Purpose without pleasure might be symptomatic of someone caught in a rat race. Pleasure and purpose together, in the same person at the same time, that's where you want to be.

The Googol

On the drive home, I got to thinking some more about the 100 thing challenge. I realized once more how difficult the human mind finds it to grapple with non linear relationships. While it might prove nearly impossible to live with no more than 100 possessions, it might be do-able with perhaps 300, and we might be hard pressed to list 1000. We might not even know anyone with 2000 possessions.

I remembered an article that tried to explain how big a sum $1 Billion really is; even if you could spend $1000 per day, the sum would last you 3000 years. We tend to think of a billion as just a large sum, but 3000 years puts it in a completely different orbit.

Which brings me to the title of this piece, the Googol, which is a number written as a 1 followed by 100 zeros. 1 *10^100 in scientific notation if it pleases you. It is difficult to truly wrap ones head around how big this number really is.

If you check this article or this one, you will see that the total number of atoms in the known observable universe is between 10^78 and 10^82.

The googol, then, is a perfectly useless number in practical terms. Interesting how the human mind can make up abstractions without really 'getting' them.

What makes sit-coms popular

We had a discussion at the coffee machine in our office about what has been the greatest sit-com ever. There were arguments for and against Seinfeld, Friends, Big Bang Theory and a couple of others.

It got me thinking about what makes sit-coms popular. I have a theory ; people are attracted to situations that they can identify with or aspire to.

Seinfeld fits in the first category, situations we can identify with. It is a show about the minutiae of daily life. About which place sells the best soup and how the proprietor is a mental case. About the locations of the best washrooms in a city. About our disappointment when we leave a large tip but nobody notices.

Big Bang Theory falls in the second category, depicting the lives of geeks who get to travel to the International Space Station, meet Stephen Hawking and date the gorgeous girl across the hall. The protagonists are not bigger than life heroes like James Bond or Gandalf the Grey or Harry Potter. They are like you and me, nerds who worked hard at academics and went to good schools and got respectable degrees and are perhaps slightly socially inept.

Friends, straddles the two. On one hand, it offers the familiarity of life in an apartment block in a big city with a group of friends who meet for coffee at the Central Perk and have fairly normal lives. Yet there are aspirational elements too. The nerd finally gets the pretty girl. The actor can make a living - though I haven't quite figured out how, and a couple keep their relationship under wraps.

I think this theory might fit soap operas too, but I suspect, that like me, the readers of this blog do not watch them enough to be able to confirm or negate this hypothesis.

100 things - Not so simple after all

I took a good hard look at the stuff at home and I have to admit that this 100 thing challenge might not be so simple after all. Not unless you are will to invest a lot of time in mundane chores.

Take for example the washing machine at home, and the dishwasher and the solar water heater for the shower. We need at least a couple of buckets in the home and a hose to wash the car with. And then we have the gas range to cook on and the various pots and pans and cooking utensils. We have a microwave oven, and a blender and a toaster and the space heater we bought this winter. How did I miss the huge refrigerator? I counted the bed and the nightstands, but I missed the bed-sheets and the pillow cases and the floor-mats. While I am at it, I need to count the electrical fittings in the home, the light fittings, the doorbell and the clocks.

One could argue that we could have the maid wash and iron our clothes, and we could technically toast our bread on a griddle on the gas range, and the microwave oven is a lazy man's gadget, and we have a watch in our mobile phones. You get the picture.

The trade-off then is to live simply and invest a lot of time in chores or live well and have technology do a bunch of things for us. Plus, I would definitely want the insurance the washing machine provides against absenteeism by the maid.

I guess I am not quite ready for the simple life yet.

100 things

I chanced upon the '100-thing-challenge' on David Michael Bruno's blog. I was wondering if I could manage to live life with no more than 100 possessions. Turns out, it might not be all that difficult.

Of course, I am going to take some liberty with some of the rules. I will not count items that the government or companies mandate, like a Passport, or driving licence or ID cards or access cards for the office. And I am not counting consumables like soap and toothpaste and food.

So let's see. What are the 100 things I would find it difficult to live without? Here they are listed in the order I encounter them in the course of a normal day.

1 toothbrush
1 razor
1 comb
1 wallet
1 pen

55 pieces of clothing (7 pairs of trousers, 14 T shirts, 10 Formal shirts, 5 shorts, 7 boxers, 2 belts, 10 pairs of socks)

1 backpack
2 pairs of formal shoes for office wear
2 pairs of sneakers
1 cabin size bag for business trips
1 large suitcase for holidays
2 mobile phones (I could get rid of one really, and I have pretty much stopped using the landline phone)
1 laptop
2 cars (I don't think I want to get rid of either)
1 motorcycle (currently my son uses this)
2 air-conditioners (one in the bedroom and one in the living room)

That makes 75 items that I would personally not want to be without.
Now let me add the shared items in the family.

1 house
1 TV set
1 DVD player
2 sound systems
1 projector
1 sofa set
1 dining table set
2 dining sets (crockery + cutlery)
1 desk in my study at home
1 office chair in the study
1 comfy chair in the bedroom
1 bed
2 night stands
2 wardrobes
2 chests of drawers

The count stands at 94 now.

Add the stuff we don't use every day - but need to have at home
1 first-aid kit
1 clinical thermometer
1 digital sphygmomanometer
1 toolkit with screwdrivers and socket set

That makes it 98.

So why is there so much stuff in our homes? Mostly it is stuff that got purchased along the way because it seemed like a good idea at the time, souvenirs from our travels, fridge magnets, that cute vase and other kitsch.

Time to spring clean the home then.

The monkey or the soldier?

Another in the series on middle class upbringing. Why is it that students from the middle class tend to do better in academics than children from economically challenged homes or from very well off homes? A classmate at B-School articulated it well.

Imagine a child visiting a fair with his parent. As they pass the toy stall, he asks his parent to buy him a couple of toys, say a monkey and a soldier. If the parent were a rich person, she would buy both those toys and they would move on. If the parent were economically challenged, they would be able to buy neither and might even scold the child for making unreasonable demands.

The middle class parent would check out the prices and give the child a choice. "You can have one. Would you like the monkey? Or the soldier?" The child is now forced to think, to make a choice, evaluate the trade-off. "Would I rather have the monkey? Or the soldier? There are already enough soldiers amongst my friends... the monkey on the other hand..."

The advantage comes from being forced to think from an early age. It is this setting that trains the mind to realize that decisions have consequences. We carry this into our adult lives too. Do I want to fly or take the train? Would I rather spend more money at the destination or in getting there?

The day you stop thinking about these trade-offs, you are at the top of a slippery slope that leads to running your life inefficiently. The next thing you know, you are swimming in debt, or worse, credit-card debt.

Managing traffic in small batch sizes

Ever so often, I get stuck in traffic and notice that the traffic lights at the intersection are on the blink. The cops are trying to do their best to keep it moving, but end up making things worse. Here is what is probably going wrong.

Unlike the programmed traffic lights, that rotate every 30 or 40 seconds, the cops try to clear one side of traffic completely before they switch directions. While this one side is moving, congestion builds up behind one of the other sides. Two-wheeler and auto rickshaws that try and pirate in on the wrong side of the road add to the problem. Pretty soon there is a grid lock involving a couple of intersections.

Another example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The cops are not trying to cause a jam. They are trying to direct traffic the best they can. But clearly, their best is not disciplined enough.

What can we do to avoid this mess? If the objective is to prevent grid locks, then we need to manage traffic movement in small batch sizes and the key is to keep traffic from all directions moving along nicely. An experiment worth trying is to issue timers to the traffic cops set to say 30 seconds. Every time the timer goes 'ding', they hit the reset button and switch sides. What about the cost of issuing so many timers? A small app on their smartphones shouldn't cost much at all, and there are cheap timers readily available that do not require electricity. They are called Egg Timers.

Laws - enforcement and redressal

The first reaction of the Government of India to any problem old or new is to draft a new law and enact it. We have laws against dowry, atrocities against minorities and more recently, sexual harassment. We also have laws that specify the requisite number of spittoons that every factory needs to install.

Unfortunately, the government has been found lacking in enforcement of law. We have often lamented on how criminals make merry while the constabulary is busy with bandobast duties and escorting VIPs from the airport lounge to the loo. The police force is not the only component of the enforcement mechanism, however. The judicial system is critical too, lest we rapidly devolve into a police state.

It is not often that we pause to consider the weight of new laws on the already overburdened judicial system. Lawmakers would do well to consider the incremental requirement in capacity of the justice system with the new laws they intend to pass. The result of not heeding this advise is all too obvious with the long delay in administration of justice in our system.