On Namma Bengaluru

It has been close to nine months since I've moved to Bangalore, from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso (my previous pit stop). So how have the three-quarters of a year past been - professionally it has been nothing short of mind blowing - doing as I am at Vanguard Business School stuff that my dreams are made of makes it so much fun, BUT there is a small caveat. That caveat is my cyclic love-hate relationship with Namma Bengaluru.

The fact is that about a day into my arrival in Bengaluru I fell in love with the seraphic weather of the garden city.A week into my stay I had made peace  with the City's traffic and the sad fact that it slept at 10 p.m. and was dead by 11:30 p.m.( Not that I was at all thrilled with this development). A month into Bangalore, I began to literally hate the city's guts from the deeps of my soul. Now, that  abhorrence has given way to a dull numb sensation somewhere left of my right shin. I am now ready  for the next emotion on this roller coaster ride to take hold of me - only - even I don't know what that emotion is going to be.

Enumerating my Bangy Blues a bit further, I seem to find  I can safely classify my positives in one category and my negatives into two, viz. :

Positives - Weather
Negatives - Traffic, Sleepy Town

Bengaluru Weather

'Agar Firdaus bar ru-e zamin hast. Hami asto. Hami asto. Hami ast' - Jehangir on Kashmir

If there is a  Metropolitan City anywhere in the World with perfect weather then this is it, this is it, this is it. Nitpicking pundits of the Anti-Bengaluru camp will rush in here to point out the severe pollen infested nature of Bengaluru's climes and how it debilitates any asthmatic the moment he enters Bangalore's airspace, but, at this juncture I clarify, I am not asthmatic, and I couldn't care about the handicaps imposed by this aspect of Bengaluru on people bronchially, alveolically or asthmatically challenged, because to me  the Weather here is supremely refreshing and rejuvenating.

In fact the weather here is so so good that it partly nullifies  the two huge negatives I am about to enumerate below. People who know me will know the tremendous currency I place on having decent options for entertainment post working hours, which for me is THE definition of a good city to live in. The fact that  I am not detesting every ticking second in Bangalore means that yes, in short, the weather is that good !!

Bengaluru Traffic


Back when there was nothing but primordial goo , even back then, two things existed - Angry birds and Headless chicken.

Now, living Bengaluru traffic is a special combination of Cars,Truckers, Bikers, Pedestrians, Traffic Cops, and- wait for it....Bengaluru's specials - The tractor hitched pull cart that could carry anything from Iron Rails to Grass to Water , the perambulating Bullock/cow, and of course the Jaywalker. Each of the above mentioned elements to Bangy traffic (except the serenely supreme Cow who is a respected and loved entity for precisely this reason) is part Angry bird and part Headless chicken, the exact proportions may vary but then a more detailed description of each category will only increase my stress levels so I'll let it go...

The non-living components of Bangalore Traffic involves weird one-ways, dangerously ill-lit roads, poorly placed and illegible signposts, road dividers that cause more accidents than prevent them, and there's also that ethereal sense of bewilderment that faces most Bangalore newbies when they ask bystanders for directions ( this one's my favourite Bangalore peeve by the way - that 3G navigation tools are selling like hot cakes in India is largely due to this in Bangalore at least!)

But while still on traffic woes I recently read THIS pretty funny blog by George Thomas on his recent experience of Pune traffic, and i want to underline that Bangalore Traffic is by far worse, much more most worstest !!

Sleepy Town Bengaluru


Namma Bengaluru is fast asleep at 10 p.m. This fact of Bangalore (which is reputed to be a pretty fly place for partying , and  was in fact the first city to boast of a massively touted pub culture) depresses me so much that you'll excuse me if I don't write too much on this and  brings things to a quick close on this front.

What's Ahead, Bengaluru ?


If Bangalore can get it's traffic act together (the recent Metro inauguration augurs new hope although that hope is at least another 5 years coming because the current opened metro stretch doesn't really mean much to Bangalore's traffic woes) and find a way to stay awake beyond it's rather tame curfew limit of 10 p.m. i could learn to love this city a lot. Coming from Mumbai (which I have always considered my home and barring miracles/ cataclysm will always in the future continue to hold as my home) it's unlikely  Bengaluru will catch up with Mumbai's frenetic and unbelievably varied nightlife very soon BUT I'm afraid a couple of all-night biryani joints doesn't count for much and Bangalore needs to get its act together in this department before I can unreservedly call Bangalore my home away from home

On What India needs..

Somewhere close to our 64th Independence day, I'd floated a tweet with the message that what  India really needs going forward is good education and good healthcare and that with these two taken care of most everything else would naturally follow.

There were a few sharp reactions to this tweet-o-mine, as might be naturally expected when you solve a centuries old problem in the space of 140 characters. The one reaction that I remember came from a dear old friend of mine Prabhu Narasimhan.His take on this was that education & healthcare are fine but what India really needs is a mature and clean Polity first and foremost.Now this chap, has and remains, in my short life, the most difficult person to win an argument against , and therefore I was pretty happy at his reaction because  on this I feel I have a winnable argument.

To state my case:

Is an honest  and mature Polity likely to solve all of India's problems ? That's too loaded a statement to merit a serious answer, because while clearly  there can only be an affirmative answer to this question, it automatically begs the question -how do we put in place a mature and honest Polity?

My bet is that  an honest and mature polity can never really come about as a result of  a lone crusade led by a JP or an Anna Hazare. It comes about gradually :-

• When Government after successive Government does serious work on cleaning up our rather corrupt system.
• When Generation after succeeding Generation feels that corruption is less prevalent around them than it was in the past, and as an extended corollary feels it is less acceptable than  it was in the past.
• When IAS official after succeeding IAS official realizes that lining his pockets doesn't help him as much as getting caught would damage his career, reputation and standing in society.
• When Minister after succeeding minister is forced to understand that corruption ,indolence and lack of initiative will result in two things , (a) him not getting elected ever again and (b) the wrath of the same constituency that had idolized him (or her, for that matter) and voted him into power.

All of this takes time, and more importantly, it takes an educated electorate to react consistently over a period of time to bunglers, cheats and lazy bureaucrats/politicians. It's only after these bunglers/cheats/indolents realize that the electorate won't reward them any further for shabby and slipshod work willl they be prodded to change themselves, And this is why I feel that without a redoubled effort to educate our masses on their civil responsibilities and duties; on the rights conferred  to them by our constitution; we can never (not in the distant future , not decades from now, not in a rosy scenario a few years down the line, but NEVER!) arrive at  a day when we have an honest and Mature Polity in place.

That's my education angle.

The healthcare angle is something I feel even more strongly about. India can never catapult itself into its glory days without addressing its severe lack of effort in the healthcare space. Having  stayed for more than three years in Sub-Saharan Africa , I feel entitled to my opinion that Indians deserve better healthcare than they have access to today. I feel this way because we have access to better doctors than sub-Saharan Africans have access to, and yet, our average healthcare facilities are at best at par with facilities there and in most cases - shame on us - worse than theirs. Oh yes, the best healthcare facilities we Indians have access to is definitely slightly better than the best facilities sub-Saharan Africans have access to , but that isn't much to be proud of !
Also, in a couple of years from now, given our tendency to gloat when we shouldn't, I wouldn't even bet on this last scenario being true anymore.

That's my healhtcare angle.

Let's just get these two things right, because frankly no one has even bothered to do anything on these issues till date.

The Genesis of Chakravyuh

Reproduced with (I hope :D ) the blessings of my quizzing seniors at the BCQC is the story of how one of India's finest  open general quizzes started off.
I was lucky to be studying in COEP the years 1999-2003 and being part of the Boat Club Quiz Club, one of the finest quizzing legacies / club anywhere in the world...I still very much remain a part of this fraternity , though I be domiciled in distant lands nowadays...

Here then (links to BCQCs own website  on the title to this blog post) reproduced  is the blog (LINK TO POST HERE) by my immediate quizzing senior (Gaurav Sabnis who passed out of COEP in 2002 ) :

The Genesis of Chakravyuh

This is a mail i had sent on the Inquizitive list a couple of years back, describing the birth of COEP's own quiz, Chakravyuh. The mail was written at a time when it looked as if Pune quizzing was dead, and the rejuvenation from VIT and Fergusson had not taken place.

I must be one of the luckiest quizzers in Pune, timewise. Boat Club (BC) quizzing was in a state of rapid evolution from the time I was in first year until the time I was in the final year. Those must definitely be the best 4 years (if not among the best) of quality quizzing in COEP and in Pune. There were great quizzes and quizzers in colleges like AIT, Fergusson, AFMC (grudgingly, I admit, they make the cut), COEP and of course PICT and a really good Verve quiz (very ephimeral, driven by just one exceptional individual - Hirak Parikh). Of late, the zenith has been reached with a Mastermind from our midst. But all other indicators suggest of a stagnation, if not a decline. I must wait to see the questions from BCJ and Chakravyuh 2003 before I can pass a final judgement on what is happening to Pune quizzing.

This is the story behind the birth of Chakravyuh. It was an age where men were men, women were women, children were children, and so on, but basically quizzers were quizzers. Every batch in COEP had at least 2 or 3 "dedicated" quizzers. Most of them were top class quizzers too, but most importantly, they were dedicated. Wherever we went, we always had the biggest contingent of quizzers (In fact, I suggest that BCJ registration be at a subsidised rate for us, since we have always come with at least 6 or 7 teams, even in the leanest year =-)). I still remember quizzing in my first and second year( 1999 and 2000). The teams of George and Kunal, Jitendra and Salil (whatever happened to those two??) and Sujay and Ramanand used to be there in almost every final of a quiz in Pune. We would either win or come second, since the only competition came in form of "Bhatta plus 1" from AFMC or the "big four" of AIT (Kapil, Samrat, Navneet and Shrikanth, for the uninitiated) in different permutations (I did my bit winning the Mood-I Conundrums in my Second Year). With such domination of the quizzing (which was to keep growing), we often wondered why COEP did not have its own quiz. Domkundwar was the Principal and George told a harrowing story of what happened when he had made an attempt to start one. When he had gone to Dommy with the idea for such a quiz, he was met with a barrage of hostile questions like "What is your attendance?" , "Show me your class notes", and "I shall speak to your project guide about how you work". Needless to say that the idea had been vetoed as emphatically as possible.

There was a general sense of resignation amongst us COEP-ians with everyone believing in the "It's a government college, nothing can change" adage. This was of course in my first and second year. What made us shake off this inertia when I reached Third Year (2000-2001) was a noticeable change in the quizzing culture of the BC that no one has quite spoken about at length. During this phase, there was a slow but steady paradigm shift in our quizzing, with the culture moving from a more "quiz oriented" to a "question oriented" direction. This means that while earlier, emphasis was laid on the fact that there was a quiz, with the minimal level of competency, now we laid more emphasis on the quality of questions. Making great questions was considered as much of an achievement as winning a quiz. While earlier getting questions from quiznet or the KCircle sites was acceptable, it now became a sacrilege. So the days of "two people getting 60 questions every saturday" to the Boat Club were gone, simply because the level had improved, and emphasis was placed on originality.

Since quizmastering became as reverred as quizzing, there was a renewed thrust towards efforts for a COEP quiz. Domkundwar was slated to retire and that helped too. So in my third year, when he finally made way for an interim Princi, Mrs. Jog, we tried again. This of course was the "Year of the Grandslam". It started with me and Neeraj winning the Fergusson Inquizzitions, and later, Sujay and Ramanand sweeping each and every major quiz in sight (Verve, BCJ, Mensa, Shyam Bhatt, and some more). The list of COEP quizzing achievements was nothing to be scoffed at. With this impressive list, I drafted a proposal in February for a quiz to be held in March, during the college gathering and went to meet Jog.

As is usual in COEP, students are given the last priority for meeting the Princi. I waited alone outside the office for hours together on many afternoons before I finally got to meet the grand dame. She took one look at the letter and shot it down saying "I am just a temporary principal, and there is already Fervour going on. I can not spare staff". I tried the arguments "It hardly needs any money, we don't need any staff, we need only the audi and nothing else", but to no avail. She was firm. She could not sanction an event at this stage. My frustration reached its peak and it showed on my face. This probably led to her saying "There is a Gathering Committee meeting next week, give me this proposal then, and we will think about it. But don't get your hopes too high".

As I reported this to the then quizzers, i.e, Sujay, Ramanand, Harish and Neeraj, there was again this general sense of resignation, like "Is college ka kuch nahi ho sakta". No one had any hopes from the Gathering Meeting since the committee was not really very sympathetic to our demands, interested more in spending 20,000 on a crummy music show than 3,000 (yes, that was our measly demand) on a quiz.

But the morning before the meeting as I was about to leave for college, I had a brainwave. I decided to redraft the covering letter for the proposal and rely on emotion to get us through. Earlier it was waxing eloquent on our achievements, like the long list of wins that year (about 10 or so, including smalltime quizzes). Now I decided to go for the lady's jugular. I filled it with a lot of emotion. I don't have the letter right now, it must be on my computer at home, but this is basically the gist of it -

"We have been dedicatedly practising our quizzing every Saturday. We work hard to maintain our standards. And this hard work has been rewarded with great results. We have won each and every quiz in sight, even done well in quizzes in Mumbai despite no financial assistance from the college. There is NO OTHER sport or field, be it debate, rowing, football, drama, in which the domination of COEP is so complete. Because of us, COEP's name is synonymous with success in the quizzing scene. Our list of victories speaks for itself. We do this despite having no annual budget allotted to us. Whatever is sanctioned is usurped by the Debate Club for their travels. Inspite of zero assistance from the college, we are doing so well.

And now we just wish to have our own quiz. We don't ask for any vast amount, just 3000 rupees. Is that too much to ask? When 20,000 are spent on an internal music show, 3000 is less than peanuts. We don't ask for any staff to help us. We will manage on our own with the small number of volunteers. All we want is the auditorium for some hours. And we are utterly dejected that such meagre demands are summarily rejected.

It is as if the college does not care whether we do well or not. There is no appreciation of our wins, and we get a step motherly treatment. We are very disappointed and the whole zest for quizzing may die out......."

blah blah blah, I whined on and on, hoping it would have an effect on the lady.

What happened in the meeting (I was not there) was that after all matters were discussed, Sujay, who was present there being the Football Secretary, said "Ma'am there is the matter of the quiz..." and she interrupted him. Then she spoke, under the effect of the letter, apparently, telling the committee about the "poor quizzers" who do se well despite the lack of any support and how they deserved to have the quiz since they were asking for just 3000 rupees and all. The committee of course agreed. In fact Jog talked of drawing up a resolution so that funds from the money that the college makes for transcripts be allotted to the quiz so that it will not be dependent on the Gathering. Wonder what happened to that.

So anyway, a friend of mine, who was the HAM Club secretary called me up from the college and conveyed the good news that the quiz had been sanctioned. After this we started working on war footing. Questions were never a problem, but we had little experience of how to publicise it properly. We decided that all five of us senior quizzers would make questions, i.e, Ramu, Sujay, Harish, Neeraj and moi so that we could not participate, and COEP winning would be unlikely (like AIT and unlike AFMC, we were wary about even the smallest hint of the R-word). It was decided to have an intra-COEP Mastermind like contest ( indicator of the future glory?) during the time when elims were checked so that COEP-ians did not feel excluded from the participants scene. We did all the running around, like getting an LCD projector allotted (no easy job, though the college had 3), getting the auditorium set up, the sound system working, and all.

It was decided to make it a seamless quiz, with nothing like a separate "audio" or "visual" round. That would be our USP, everything mixed. Each of us five made 30 questions and finally integrated it one midnight in the august company of mosquitoes on the Boat Club, where the Punt Formation practice was taking place. Getting a computer assigned from the college would have been a full day job and we were so sick and tired of all the bureaucractic hassles we had endured till then that we decided to use my comp. Neeraj got his car all the way from Vimannagar early morning and we lugged the PC to the college. The publicity could have been better, but really did not get much help from the FE and SE kids(indicators of the future non-glory?) except for the ever sincere Bimal and Nupur . Credit must however be given to Manish mahajan for coming up with the name - Chakravyuh. Just the five of us handling the questions, red tape and the publicity was too much. Still, about 40 teams turned up. This is where the difference made by the freshers helping out at BCJ shows. Anyway, March 16 dawned, and the quiz happened on time.

The quiz went pretty fine and a detailed report of the finals can be found on the inquizitive archives. The compering was shared by Sujay, Ramanand and Harish, and Neeraj and I handled the computer and other off-stage things. I don't exactly remember the entire line-up for the finals, but here's a shot at it. There was the Infy team of Shrirang and Amalesh, there was an ex-AIT team of Samrat and Navneet, we had Niranjan and Swapnil teaming up, and there was a COEP team of Amrish and..someone. The Infy team won it with a vast margin, and the ex-AITians came second, with Niranjan and Swapnil (named "Suvarnagram", a combo of the names of us 5 organisers, a great gesture) came third. Rahul Srinivas won "Abhimanyu",the intra-college Mastermind contest with the topic "Harry Potter Books".

By this time, though the interim Princi Jog had left, and the new Principal, Ghatol had just taken charge a day ago. We sent someone to invite him, and he actually turned up, stayed for the whole quiz, and was apparently loving it. When we invited him on stage to give away the prizes, he gushed a lot about what a great event the quiz was and how he was thinking hard for every question. He complimented us on having the best event of the gathering (he said this some days later at the closing ceremony of the gathering too).

Chakravyuh 2001 ended with the new Princi in the saddle being an admirer of the quiz (a fact that helped things the following year). Everyone appreciated the questions, the punctuality, and the organisation. Finally, COEP's own quiz had happened, and it was a smashing success.

It was great coming back to Chakravyuh in 2004 as a participant, and win it teamed up with Neeraj. Looking forward to Chakravyuh 2005

My usual quizzing pardner Maniche & Self  had a couple of cracks at Chakravyuh & Abhimanyu with some not so major achievements . We did qualify on stage for the 2002 edition if my memory serves me correctly. I also qualified for the finals of Abhimanyu( COEP's intra- Mastermind style solo quiz) in the very first edition 2001, but that year the solo crown belonged to my other occasional Quizzing-pardner-in-crime Rahul Srinivas, my quizzing exploits with whom formed part of another blog post  (LINK HERE)

Chakravyuh is very , very special to me and I hope that I can team up (ideally with Maniche) with someone to take the Chakravyuh (open quiz) crown. Till that day arrives, I shall always remain a quizzer with a point to prove...

Comments Invited ...

On Countries visited so far...and in the future

Ok so with a count++ on the list of countries I've been to accomplished as a result of shifting base from Cotonou to Ouagadougou, let me enumerate the countries I've visited so far. For sake of clarity let us exclude airports transitted and stick to thos countries where I've atleast:
1) Stayed a night at a hotel/ friends place
2) Spoken to atleast 10 locals and interacted meaningfully with at least 3 locals to get their views on what works and does not in their country
3) Had a meal at a restaurant
4) Done business/ had professional interaction
5) Done something fun

So Kenya is out of my discussion on counts #1&4 .

The countries that qualify as visited :
India, Singapore, Indonesia, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Nigeria and latest addition to the list : Burkina Faso

The counties I hope to add soon to the list:
Am hoping to add Niger (probability- 1) &amp [ Update : Already visited Niger!!] ; Cote d'ivoire( probability - 0.9)and to lower probabilities Chad & Cameroon to this list pretty soon. On my wish list but with undefined probabilities in order of wishfulness are - China, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Japan,USA / Canada, UK, Malaysia , Thailand, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Algeria,France, Italy, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, Ethiopia, Algeria, Denmark, Netherlands and Korea rounding this list to a nice round figure of 40.

Now would be thrilled if this list was attained by the age of 35 but will settle for 40 as well .

More on what I've seen and why these countries in particular on demand ( just leave a comment) , time permitting...

Deja Vu ??

We are extremely glad for the overwhelming participation in the preliminary round of "QUEST - A Business Quiz for the B-Schools" held on January 10, 2007, wherein a total of 198 teams participated across the 12 B-Schools.

It gives us immense pleasure to announce the results of the preliminary round. The first list consists of the various institute toppers from the respective institute, while the second list consists of the top 8 teams from the 12 institute toppers, who have qualified for the final round of QUEST.

INSTITUTE TOPPERS

Sl. No.	Institute	Team Name	Reg. No.	Participant 1	Participant 2
1	FMS, Delhi	Forty-Two	22027274	Suvagata Roy	Satish T
2	IIM-A	Phlegm Fatale	22067574	Dushyant Mullur	Keerthi Raghavan
3	IIM-B	Flaming	22069793	Vishnu Nandan	Atulya Bharadwaj
4	IIM-C	Da D Team	22092103	D V S Bharath	Dhritiman B
5	IIM-I	The Gunners	22087022	Wayne Fernandes	Kasturi Rangan
6	IIM-K	Janus	22056586	Vishal Bondwal	Malavika Narayan
7	IIM-L	Verve	22070745	Rritu Saurabha	Suraj Krishnaswami
8	IIFT, Delhi	Veni Vidi	22053333	Arka Bhattacharya	Nishant singh
9	JBIMS, Mumbai	Mavericks	22050065	Aditya Shende	Tejas Nadkar
10	MDI, Gurgaon	Funny Bunnies	22021336	Ramesh	Gurudatt Bhobe
11	XIM-B	The Last of Mochians	22006363	Anurag Mohanty	Dharamteja Mansingh
12	XLRI	Waldo	22032777	Raghu M Reddy	Shrikanth N

* The above 12 teams will receive a certificate from the Bank for topping the respective institute.

THE 8 TEAMS QUALIFYING FOR THE FINAL ROUND

1.	FMS, Delhi	Suvagata Roy, Satish T
2.	IIM Ahmedabad	Dushyant Mullur, Keerthi Raghavan
3	IIM Bangalore	Vishnu Nandan, Atulya Bharadwaj
4	IIM Calcutta	D V S Bharath, Dhritiman B
5	IIM Kozhikode	Vishal Bondwal, Malavika Narayan
6	IIFT, Delhi	Arka Bhattacharya, Nishant Singh
7	MDI, Gurgaon	Ramesh, Gurudatt Bhobe
8	XLRI, Jamshedpur	Raghu M Reddy, Shrikanth N

We congratulate the winners of the preliminary round, and appreciate the time taken by all the participants to appear for the test. We look forward to similar participation in future as well.



The Deja Vu-ing part of course comes in with the quiz meister "Harsha Bhogle" whom i shall be seeing again. If you recollect , he was also the quizmaster and Moderator at the National finals of the BT-Acumen Quiz and Debate finals (which IIFT won).
Here's hoping Nishant and me can pull off an encore for IIFT here too....

On Quizzing and breaks from...

It's been ages since I've participated in a Quiz ..and while there is no dearth of open quizzes in Bombay or Pune, which from my home at Vashi is only a 3 hour journey, the snag really,is that I have weekends working and Sunday is the usual day for such dos..

So today there is a quiz at FC.."Inquizzition "...LINK HERE...now this happened to be the first quiz where me and my usual partner in crime Manish Mahajan tasted complete victory in Quizzes (i.e a First place as opposed to the 2nd and 3rds we'd been piling up)..and it was like the proverbial tasting of blood, our duo then notched up several subsequent good wins...However, and here is the moot point, my college was choc full of super-stud quizzing seniors, and even our victory at Inquizziton (2002??) could partially be ascribed to the no-show (or If you ask Gaurav,showed-up-but-disallowed) by the final year team of Gaurav-Neeraj from our college.

Anyways, the open quizzes were places where the usual suspects like Samrat,Ramanand ,Niranjan,Gaurav,Hirak,etc. would turn up and win with impunity...and that is where our performances got better after this victory, we notched up several reasonable performances after that in open quizzes like the Shyam Bhatt & Gen BCJ memorials ( we've yet to winan open quiz, but then "Time!...is on our side..."..:)..)

As far as I know, today at Inquizzition , there is going to be a small team of Ramanand & Gaurav
participating...If you're a betting person, call this an informed tip as to the likely winners of this quiz... prize money stands at 12,000/- bucks... 6k for the winner... damn my job, which prevents me from being there...also, dang!! they never had a cash prize when we won...boo hoo!......:(...