Musings

For those living in Bengaluru these days, the one major source of discomfort is traffic on the roads. It is remarkable how much vehicular traffic seems to be increasing by, every few months! Obviously, we have not done a good job with executing on plans to improve the infrastructure in time for this increase. The Metro project may well be one of the most delayed of its kind, anywhere in the world. It seems like the Namma Metro has been in progress forever and all we see are new dates for completion every few weeks in the newspapers. The whining about the traffic is never ending, just as the traffic on the roads. For a daily commuter, the stream of vehicles, the abrupt lane shifts, the late decisions to turn, the bus and/ or truck breakdowns seem never ending and ubiquitous. Sometimes, I look at newcomers to the city, from smaller towns and villages and notice their lost look. They

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I look at my daughter as she goes around testing waters every where. Given a pencil and told to not write on the walls, she tests us out. She spends a little time scribbling on paper and then, slowly, she starts scribbling on the wall. She runs a test on us. Are we watching? What repercussions will she have to bear? Given a new toy, she will play around with it for a little while before trying to take it apart. The curious mind of the toddler is fun to watch. Quality Assurance is very much like that. I am reminded of an ad for the LYF phones on TV nowadays. They bounce a Table Tennis ball off the screen, the drop it down from a height and show that it still works. How fun is that? The child in us would love to try all these little antics with our phones or whatever other equipment that we may have.

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My grandmother passed away recently, after spending the last few years of her life fighting all sorts of maladies. She was touching 90 years of age.  From the last 15-20 years or so, she would always bring up her impending death during every conversation. She would have one thing to say – “when will I die? I want to die”. Of course, the curse (or blessing) of choosing the moment of death was only given to Bhishma in the Mahabharata. So it was, that my grandmother would spend her years lying in wait of the moment when it would come to pass. Her last 4-5 years were spent on the bed, with a nurse/ maid for company. She had lost her memory, could only eat semi solid food and was yearning for a life support system. Eventually, old age and fever conspired to relieve her of her bond with life. Her condition towards the end begs the question – do

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  Reading this article from the CEO of YatraGenie, I cannot say that I am surprised by his analysis. He talks about how the current Taxi Aggregator model in India is bound to collapse since the operators (drivers who are also the taxi owners) are not cared for and not paid on par with the efforts that they put in. There is no doubt that it is a tough life for the taxi drivers. They have to work at least 12 hours in a day and often chose to do a night shift also so their family can lead a life better than their own. They are, in essence, no different from majority of the population in the cities, especially, who sacrifice their own health, time and joys in favor of a hope for a brighter life for their families. Some basic napkin stuff math tells me that assuming that the car is a Toyota Etios (running on diesel as

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And so it has come to this. Sleep – that wonderful part of our daily life that we yearn for and look forward to, is now part of extensive research, more so than ever before. What started off in the 1930s as a research in a University that would later become Carnegie Mellon, has now been quantified as a potentially 79 billion USD business! Really?! We talk about out-of-the-box thinking so much and here, all we need to do is break down everything that we do every day and it is a topic of immense research and potential for business. A recent article on this topic in the Fortune India magazine gave me food for thought. Companies such as Fitbit report millions of dollars in revenues quarter over quarter thanks to their wearable Tech products which basically charts how much sleep and seemingly more importantly, how much quality sleep you are able to get. How much it helps us is

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