Air India, The best flight I had taken so far

After three months of boring tenure at Petaluma, CA and Boston,MA returned home on 24th April. I travelled by Air India from Chicago to Bangalore, a single flight with two stops in between. This is the first time I am flying in Air India. All my previous trips had been in Lufthansa and Cathay Pacific. Like many I too had apprehensions about the services offered by Air India. But having travelled 23 hours in the same flight I could say that its the best flight I had travelled so far. It has far better leg space in the economy class than Lufthansa (Cathay pacific is comparable to Air India in this regard), good Indian entertainment and above all good Indian food. The only thing that one needs to bear with Air India is the pathetic english in their in flight announcements. But that is one thing thats of least importance to me. All I care is better leg space to move around, good food and entertainment. Air India satisfied performed very well in all these.

Eating up other's time in the name of Direct Marketing

Finally I got a chance to visit MIT and Harvard Universities and go around them at the end of my stay in Boston. Me and my friend Arun went to Cambridge yesterday and took a long walk around MIT and Harvard and along the banks of the Charles river yesterday. But the happiness of that trip was almost spoilt at the end in the name of Direct Marketing. Before I go on what happened, a disclaimer: I dont have anything against the technique of Direct Marketing but its when they intrude into your privacy and eat up your valuable time it frustrates me.


While returning from Cambridge me and Arun decided to go to Burlington Shopping mall and just go around it. When we were about to leave the mall, two desis were approaching us. These two were totally strangers to us. One of them just keeps walking but the other guy just stops infront of us and opens up his talk by asking in English

"Excuse me I am quite new to this place. Is there any other outlet mall in this area other than this?"

Me being a stranger to that place too, I diverted the question to Arun. Arun gave them some directons to some other mall which were little far from that place. After getting them (I think he was never interested in those directions) he introduced himself and asked our names. We told him our names. Hearing the names "Sridhar" and "Arun" he curiously asked "Names sound South Indian to me. Which place are you from?". I said Coimbatore and Arun said Chennai. Immediately that guy in an effort to get more closer to us and start marketing started his Tanglish like this.

"Naanum from the adhe Chennai place dhan. Chennai-la endha place are you from?"


Hearing this something immediately struck me this guy is going to bore us for sometime and I felt as if slapping for this half baked Tamil+English. I was telling myself - "Dei !@#$%%^ onna tamil-la pesu illa english-la pesu. Ippadi rendayum kola pannadha"


My friend said he is from Ambattur and the guy continued like this.

"Naan from AnnaNagar. Its funny chennaila we never met but inga naama we are meeting paadhi world apart. Idha pesumpodhu I remember a story. One day some of my colleagues summa asked me and my friend, where you guys are from in Chennai. Naan, I was telling, naan Annanagar, SBOA school-la I studied. My friend also sonnan he too is from Anna nagar and avanum studied in SBOA. Then they asked, where do you stay? I told naan staying in some XXX apartment (I didnt hear this name, as I was never paying any attention to this brutal murder of 2 languages). He too sonnan that he is stayin in same apartment. Then my friends told us that dont tell us that you too are neighbours but still never met in Chennai. "


At this time the other guy who continued his walk before comes back and joins him. He too starts to ask Arun about some places to visit around there and continues his crappy Tanglish.


Finally thinking that as though they have become good friends of us they asked Arun if he can give his phone number so that they can contact him to get help on places around that area as they dont have anybody else to help. Arun by this time guessed where these folks are coming at and avoided giving his number. Then they opened the "Business" talk.

"Naanga, we are doing a kind of indha Amazon, e-Bay maadhiri business. Will you be interested to join us?"

Arun just cut them now saying that he knows where they are coming at and told he is not interested. Thank god I told them initially itself that I am just a visitor to that place and am on a Business visa and never paid any attention to their talks. Otherwise they could have asked my opinion on that business to and continued the crap. We left that place cutting their talk mid-way.

I had seen in Bangalore, about this direct marketing through people who are known to me. This is the first time I am seeing a total stranger coming and marketing to me though I have heard from some of my friends that they have been approached by total strangers in Bangalore too. One interesting tactic that one of my friend told, followed by the person who approached him is, first day he met my friend in Murugan Idly shop coming in normal dress and came walking. Second day he met him with a good jacket and came in bike. Third day he came and met him in a car as if to show he has become rich so soon through the direct marketing of Amway products.

I dont know why these people never realise that in the quest for money what they end up is losing good relationships. I am sure none of their friends would like to talk to them once they approach them for direct marketing. In the name of direct marketing what they end up is eating valuable time of others.

Staying Positive. It should be a collective thing

So many books on personality development talk about staying positive. But many of them miss the point that staying positive helps you achieve things or solve issues only in matters in which you are the only stake holder. In issues where more than one person is involved (typically in a team environment), its the collective spirit that matters. The same positive energy should be radiated by others. Imagine arguing something with a person who always turns you back with negative comments or doesnt look at the arguements with the right spirit. That will frustrate you at some point and will make you feel totally negative. I havent come across any experiences that suggests a better way to handle these kind of scenarios. Any magic formula for lifting the spirits of people surrounding you? Till I find one, let me continue to search for one.

Thoughts on how technology can help encourage voting by all

I was wondering what makes the educated people not to vote. Though they are the first to follow the current affairs and comment on whats happening through the media there is something that makes them not to vote in elections. He gets first hand information from the media and has the oppurtunity to analyse things in the right perspective. Thinking about this issue one can see that there is a distinct gap between the information that an educated person gets from the media and an average Indian villager gets the information from the media.

The way Indian media is heading sounds both encouraging and and alarming. The opening up of Indian market led to the mushrooming of private TV channels and of late many news channels. In their competition to make a difference each news channel is doing some sort of investigative journalism, exposing the corrupt politicians and law breakers. The recent exposure of bribe acceptance by MP's for raising issues in parliament, Media pressures on the failure of judicial system in convicting the culprits on the Jessica Lal case verdict etc.,. are examples of the positives that the media is bringing in India. At the same time most of the print and visual media are owned by people favoring some political party and the political views exposed by these channels and newspapers are biased.

For an average Indian who doesnt follow the different news channels and their investigative journalisms all he gets is the biased reports from papers and the prime time news telecast in the channels owned by people favoring some political party. Its these people who really vote. The educated Indian who follows the current affairs and analyses things in the right perspective almost never votes. All he does is express his views like me in blogs like this and give reader feedbacks in news website forums.

The election commision should take some major steps in encouraging the educated to vote. The present day educated, executives, are mostly the floating population. Most of the time they dont stay at the same city even for the period of a government. They will have their name in the voter's list at one location but will be residing at another location at the time of voting. Introducing a social security number kind of scheme in India and giving an identification smart card for every-citizen of India will solve this problem. Whenever the citizen migrates to a city he can go to a goverment installed kiosk and swipe his card and update his present details. At the time of voting all he needs to do is just swipe the card as a mark of identification and vote. Public kiosks can also be installed in cities for voting, instead of having to vote in polling booths. This removes the necessity to put the indelible ink mark on index finger and tracking of voters list in a polling booth. However India being a vast country with 80% of it being remote villages there is significant problem of feasibility in achieving this. As an initial step this scheme can be introduced in cities alone, where most of the migrating population live and step by step this can be introduced in the villages.

The I.T industry can think of coming up with products for these kind of requiements which will help India in the longer run. The government needs to fund for these kind of research and product development. Hopefully some educated bloke in the parliament / election commission hears this.