I had been to Bombay to participate in HeadStart Summer and I just fell in love with the city! When in Bombay, I could probably list 21 things, but right now, I’d be happy if I remember the top 7 ones.
Here they are in no particular order.
1. The city’s culture. Its awake in the night! Bombay is fast paced. On my first day in the city, I witnessed 1000s of people leaving their workplaces at 9:30. Bangalore starts getting deserted by that time (Yeah, our city had its hay days but they are long gone!) Even at 11:30 in the night you find several girls roaming around which speaks a bit about progressive society. Being a feminist I really appreciate this aspect.
2. Local Trains: Man I can write an indipendent story on them! They are just so consistent. I travelled on a lot of locals and not one of them missed its mark by more than 30 seconds. Besides, you can hang outside and enjoy the gush of cool air between Vashi and Navi Mumbai! You can hang out and notice the wheels changing tracks. It was fun. And then the design of the coach is a beauty. Its been designed to accommodate 48 people (yes I counted) in a 12/18 feet space. Its been designed in a way that makes it impossible for someone to just flick off your bag kept on the railings and there are lot of other interesting things (like water diverting turns in the rooftop that double up as a holder for the out hangers). Besides, I loved those automatic ticketing terminals! Didn’t see a big queue in front of them though. A slight learning curve for most people I guess. And last but not the least, the pickup! Its sexy.
3. Juhu Beach: This was the only beach that I could visit, but what fun we had! I absolutely loved the sea! I found it relatively cleaner and less crowded than Marina beach. But then I visited the latter on a Sunday and the former on a Monday, so that could have made the difference. And along with the beach, the sheer variety of delicacies – All the chaats and tikkis, golgappas, the Khatta Meetha gola (Milk Maid gola was a flop). Mumbaiya chaat ki to baat hi kuch aur hai!
4. Bade Miyan! Kya khaana hai boss! Mazaa Aa gaya!
5. Marine Drive! Perfect dating spot! But the thing that I liked the most was that the public was all cool with the couples coochicooing around the corners. No moral policing, and its a pretty chilled out atmosphere! I am not sure if I am the PDA types, but everyone should have the right to self expression devoid of “what people deem appropriate”. Just my views though. The place makes for an excellent jogging spot too. Cool breeze, leveled parapet.
6. Autos and Taxis! This is a big one. Out there you don’t have to bargain with the Auto walla or coax him to taking you by the meter. It goes without saying. And what shocked the hair out of me was that after paying them the exact change, they returned some of it back to me! Can you beat it? And here in Bangalore, you find yourself lucky if they charge you as per the meter!
7. The chicks: At the risk of sounding despo, I must acknowledge that the Bombay chicks have an Oomph factor. Its like they notice you checking them out (the “ah she’s cool” look), they watch you straight in the eye and look straight ahead and continue in stride. Typically a girl would just look down and walk through. And while you find a lot of hot chicks here in Bangalore too, but you’d find them in clubs or in cars or select parts of the city like Lavelle Road or Koramangala. In Bombay, they are everywhere, and they are on the street walking, talking in Hindi (Man I love people talking in Hindi) just like everyone else. There is no superficial sophistication, that I notice in some of my friends here.
Its become a yet another long post. But I enjoyed writing! Reminded me of all the fun moments I had there with friends! A big thanks to Mitesh for making my trip at Bombay really memorable!
There was a very interesting question posed by a gentleman in a mailing list. The question was,
“Should you just start up and figure out your big idea, or should you wait for the big idea before you startup?”
Its such a brilliant question. I asked myself the same so many times. So I thought I’ll put this small piece in my blog too.
To this question I replied,
I couldn’t agree more with xxxxx
My very short entrepreneurial journey so far has revealed exactly the things pointed out by xxxxx.
I noted down ideas that came to my mind for nearly 2 years in an “Idea Book” before I quit my job to finally start up on my own. I had treaded the same path many times when I felt that my idea was the next big thing, only to do some research and find out about many more who are doing the same goddamn thing or something better! I also had a few unique ones, but I gave myself excuse after excuse for not quiting my job to start up on my own. Those were the wannabe entrepreneur days! Then I quit my job and tried 2 of the ideas that I had kept in my idea book! I chose to do something that I would really love doing even if its not big enough to fit into my dream company’s paradigm. Usually your idea doesn’t seem so cool after discussing it with 10 people, right. But the real learning comes after you start executing it. Both the plans failed. I built a simple prototype for the first one, I got booed by the early adopters and I quit. The second one didn’t require anyone outside of me to boo it down and stop!! Of course there were a lot of “logical” reasons to stop as well, but I think the biggest learning for me was to realize how much my own and somebody else’s communication affected my actions. How much significance I attach to “failure”.
I am sharing all this because, in retrospect I feel that there are a lot of things that we need to learn before we become the self that can fulfill our vision.
Right now I am running a software services + training company. Its not exactly in congruence with my vision for my life and the world. But I am giving it my best here. I am also working side by side towards making it a fully functional entity which can run independently of my partner and me by March 2009. I am learning and growing. My partner and I consistently put around 10 hours (often more) every week researching our “probably big” ideas. I am meeting people, my future team mates/ co-founders/ evangelists! And I think I am doing the right thing.
I won’t say that I have grown over my limitations yet, but am definitely learning and learning fast. Starting up on my own, has brought me much closer to being the metaphor “entrepreneur” than my job could ever have.
Conclusion: Don’t wait for the big idea. Start up with your average ones. Get your hands dirty. Taste success/failure. Learn from them. You will be ready for the big one when it comes.
I had a wonderful experience recently. Since I have already written about the same on email, I won’t repeat the whole thing for this blog entry. At the same time, I want to remember this incident later on in my life. Its an interesting piece on how much I have grown as a person!
What follows is a response to the email I had sent to my fellow SELP mates.
———————————————————–
Hey Guys!
My play got canceled. Actually my role in the play got canceled. I had got the opportunity to act because an important character’s mom had to get an operation done on the dates of the play. But now her operation is postponed and he can act. I got to know it all just today, and I hope you all get to read this mail before planning anything.
But I really want to share with you the breakthrough I had in this incident. You know, the director told me that he would prefer the old character to perform instead of me because he had much more experience and I have not had an opportunity to rehearse properly (as in with the whole troupe) yet.
I said thats fine. And I was slightly upset. The breakthrough is that I was slightly upset for just 10 seconds flat. In those 10 seconds, I created a context that gave me power. As in, if I were playing a match, and a better player could replace me to help the team win the match, I would have willingly given him my position. And this is what I did. The whats-so is also that I had turned almost everything in my life upside down to make this play happen. (Memorizing the dialogs, taking audio clips and listening to them while riding, rehearsing in my free time, getting other people to fulfill my responsibilities, travel 60+km a day, give up a few things that I wanted to do over the week, etc… it was like a dream come true for me) And 1 day before the event I am told that I can’t do it……………………….
… And I don’t abuse them, I don’t get upset, and I actually enjoy the experience.
While riding back home, I was actually enjoying being in the present! No earphones, no dialogs. Smiling all along .
This is called ‘Living Life Powerfully’. And as I had mentioned, I am living a life I love anyways. So in essence, today I could feel the outcome that was promised in our SELP. I remember, I gave a 2 to ‘living life powerfully and living a life you love’ when we were asked to give a rating during our last few classrooms, but it did get delivered. I am standing pretty close to 5 now!
I don’t know if I am communicating it properly, but this is breakthrough for me and I want to thank YOU ………….. (read with your name in the space provided)………. individually for giving me this kind of a life. Thanks so much
How are you all? Lets meet sometime soon. I would love to know whats happening in you lives. Mine is rocking. Solid breakdowns and I am absolutely powerful on top of them. And breakthroughs are solid as well.
As a part of my future, I created a life I love. I am pretty much on the path there. Though I did not invent the possibility of acting, I guessed the possibility of my buddy Subash rubbed on to me. Guys, I am doing my first theater performance and am damn excited. All of you mean a lot to me and I want to celebrate this opportunity in your presence. I would really love if all of you come and enjoy the experience of my troupe (Aavega’s) touching play in Ranga Shankara.
Here are the details:
The Death Of A Salesman
Ranga Shankara
JP Nagar – Near Police Station.
Date – 20th May Tuesday (OR) 21st May Wednesday (Its being played on both days, you can plan and come on either day)
Time 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM
Ticket costs Rs 70/-
Thanks and Regards,
–
Amit Singh
98863 14456
PS. Its my first play and I have no idea how much or how little free time I would get to spend with you guys, but I would do my best to spend as much time with you all as possible.
The tickets will be available in the venue and you can also buy them from me. Bindas call madi.
By the way, I am a coach right now and its our community’s 2nd workday tomorrow. (Sunday) I would love if you guys come and witness the transformation that we are causing.
Truckloads of Love,
You guys are very special to me in my life,
Thanks for all that you have given me.
Amit
In my previous post I had mentioned my resolution of converting the ORs of my life to ANDs. I have been in action towards living that resolution, and by jove, its not easy. But it is real fun.
Take this for instance,
Right now I have 4 important things to do :-
Prepare for my play – “The Death of a Salesman”
Build/Test and publish the web app for my research on “Startup Pains” by 18th May.
Sell books and earn – involves giving presentations and all.
Build Website for Mumma. (I just finished it today)
Each of the above 4 are very important to me and I can’t ditch any of them. The amount of work involved in doing all 4 together looked almost impossible due to the sheer lack of time and inflexibility. For instance, I have to rehearse for my play everyday in the evenings and that is the time that I gotta make presentations for my books as well. Similarly, the web app would have easily taken about 20 hours of my time. SELP would take the whole of 18th, all monday evenings and about 10-15 hours in the week. Whatever… basically, doing all of them together looked impossible to me.
But my possibility of replacing the ORs with ANDs was equally inspiring. So I did this, I sent a mail to the Bangalore Ruby Users Group and asked if any of them want to work with me on building the web app (point 2). It was a proactive step and I had never considered it. It helped a lot, I got 2 replys. I went and met Satish Kota, of Heurion Consulting and he gladly took the responsibility of the whole website! Amazing, isn’t it! I earned myself about 15 free hours. I woke up at 5 today and finished designing Mumma’s website. I again requested Aashish to host it! So I save some more time by making powerful requests.
I am still struggling with time, but what I have realized is that, everything is possible if you really want to make it happen.
I have given Gyanesh, my director a word that I will memorize my dialogs before going tomorrow. Looks tough, but I shall do it. A word is a word.
I am beginning to realize what Stephen Covey calls ‘being proactive’ and what SELP calls ‘making powerful requests’. I am beginning to live an extraordinarily powerful life!
It was Aashish who called me up at 10 in the morning yesterday saying that their troupe is short of 1 guy for their play – “The Death of a Salesman”. He asked if I was interested, I immediately said YES. I went gave an audition and I got selected.
I had done a couple of plays in my school. I was the best actor in the Hindi play and I forgot my dialog in the English play!
I have to be truly extraordinary to make it to the rehearsals though. Been heavily out integrity in terms of work. I have at least 20 items in my to do list, stuff that I should have done by now but haven’t.
In fact, I was about to inform Aashish of my inability to participate because I had a lot of other work to be done. But when I thought for it a little more, I realized that what I was thinking was – ‘I am not good enough to manage all these things together‘. I dropped the conversation and said ‘hell, I am‘.
I have invented a sexy new possibility of replacing all the ORs of my life with ANDs. That is, I usually say, I can either do this OR do that. What I have taken on is, to do this AND that. All you need to have, to do this , is -
Integrity (honoring your word),
Existence Mechanism (Reminders in phone and daily/weekly/monthly planning),
Relationships (ability to make powerful requests) and
Powerful Communication.
Thats all it takes.
–
Wow! I had always imagined doing theater in Bangalore. That is happening!
5th May 00.20 AM – I am lying upside down on my bed, my head sunk in my pillow immersed in thoughts of my goals and why am I so far from them. (Essentially full of bull).
5th May 00.21 AM – Call from uncle! (I can never imagine my uncle to be awake at that hour!) He says something that summarizes to – ‘Amit I have met with a small accident. There is Aunty and a friend with me. Nobody is hurt. I need help. Aap aa Jaao.’ (Now it was great of uncle to have considered to remember me at a time of need. I am sure I would have been the last person to come on his mind had I not had a heart to heart chat the day before. That chat deserves another post. But I guess I wont write it cause – the bottom line of the conversation was my uncle making me realize how much an ‘Irresponsible bloody fool‘ I am! Both of us loved the conversation and I learned a lot about my uncle’s perception of me, it got us closer.)
… coming back to the melodrama
So I thank God for rescuing me from the dungeons of dark meaningless imagination and head off for Madiwalla, where my uncle had met with his fate.
I reach there and find uncle busy on the phone talking to a sleepy fellow after another. Even I called a few helplines and only the “Just Dial” fellow sounded awake. Our job was simple. Ensure Aunty and all reach home safely. Get the vehicle towed to a safe location. Preferably get an authorized Maruti dealer to take it to their workshop. Come back home and sleep.
What had happened was: My uncle hit a big stone that was lying innocently at a place where it should not be lying. Uncle didn’t see it and !#???^%!! Collision. The right tire meets the angels and so does the tie rod. A bent tie rod simply means that the vehicle can’t move.
Uncle’s friend drops aunty and others in his car, while uncle and I try to find out a tow. I ask Aashish and he searches his CityFind and gives me a couple of useful numbers. He even reminds me of his competitor – Just Dial’s number. After talking to about half a dozen service center numbers, uncle gave up. No one provided 24 hour service it seems. We wanted to tow the vehicle a few meters ahead, so that the vehicle can be off the road. The towing service people ask for 1500/- bucks. We say – ‘balls to you’ (not literally though). Some helpful Autowallah suggests that a service center at Bannerghetta Road might be open. So we decide to check it out. Instead of 1 we find 2. But both had no one but the security guard in the premises. We look at the watch. 2:40 AM it says. We come back to the car, reason that ‘we have put stones at a distance from the car to prevent people from banging it from behind + its right under a street light + it won’t be disturbing anyone so early in the morning ++ and chose to go back home at Banaswadi. We resolved to come back by 7.
Next morning… we come and are relieved to see that the car is just the same as we had left it the previous night. Some kind soul had put a lot more stones with small tree branches behind the car to prevent someone from hitting it. Just as we were appreciating the deed, we reached the back of the car and find it completely smashed. Some LMV had hit the car from behind. No wonder he put so many stones in place!
Uncle looks worried for 5 second and then gets completely normal and decides to go a Maruti Authorized Dealer. We reach some place at Bannerghetta Road and the manager there advices us to get an FIR launched. We spend an hour+ finding the police station. We reach the police station and the folks there refuse to take the complaint. Now we come back to the site of vehicle.
Wow! the the car had blocked the whole traffic! People had removed the stones and some irritated fellow picked up one of the stones and hit the windshield. So now we had 3 accidents. A broken tie-rod, a crashed backside and a broken windshield.
There was an amazing adventure with cops and how we finally managed to get the whole thing towed away. But its an old story now and I am short of time to write about it. In a gist, 4 different cops blasted us at 4 different times for obstructing the traffic. My uncle is a general manager of a big govt company. He was extraordinary in taking the bullshit! Hats off! Then the cops heroically stopped a traffic, pulled people out of the buses and lorries and asked them to lift the car and move it to a better place! … After a long tiring day dealing with the insurance and other stuff, we finally got free by around 3 o clock. Uncle treated me to some yum noodles at Taipan!
Pangea Day is a global event bringing the world together through film.
In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it’s easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that — to help people see themselves in others — through the power of film.
On May 10, 2008 — Pangea Day — sites in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro will be linked live to produce a program of powerful films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music.
Check out the video
(in case the video doesn’t load – check it out on youtube itself)
Its a 4 hour event.
24 films will be screened.
It starts at 11.30 PM IST and lasts till 3.30 AM IST. However you are welcome to drop in at the venue by 8PM and hang on till 5 AM the next day.
Deepak Ranjanna, Mansi Baranwal, Rahul and team from Yahoo took on this brilliant initiative of celebrating Pangea Day in Bangalore! And their effort has paid off with ThoughtWorks agreeing to host the event at their Domlur office. Hats off to Tina and the ThoughtWorks culture of getting things done in a short notice.
Register:
You can register here. Just enter you name by editing the wiki page.
Ya so I come out of National Market (read the post below), and discover that my Bajaj Discover is not where I parked it! I ask the parking fellow and he said that It was parked on the road and has been towed away! I think “Wow, what next”. Now I had recently given my bike for servicing and had forgotten my papers home. I couldn’t go and get my bike without the Registration Certificate!
Now under normal circumstances I would have said “WTF man, why did this have to happen now???”. But something is happening to me these days and I was surprised to realize that I said this to my self – “Awesome man, I get to go home in a bus from Majestic in after 3 years!” I was genuinely excited at the possibility!!! They talk about “Glass half full or half empty” right, I was realizing this.
Good things happen to happy people and I get a Volvo standing just for me.
I reach home and remember that I had not been able to find my home key in the morning so I had slammed the door tightly putting a sock in the chaukhat to keep the door from opening. I give a clearing* to find my home key and woosh I find it. I had spent an hour to find it in the morning. Next I realize that I have lost my bike’s papers. I search my home for 5 mins but no avail. But some how I am still not panicking. So I give a clearing of finding them. I search for another 2 mins and an impossible thought comes to my mind. I go downstairs and ask my landlady if she has seen my bike’s papers. OMG, she says yes! I had dropped them somewhere sometime?!? But it was a profound manifestation of the distinction called clearing.
I ask my best friend Braj to take me to the Bus-stop and we discuss Numerology, Moh Maya, Life’s purpose, Clearing, Friends and IPL en-route.
Then I get my bike and we both come back separately.
It was a great day! I had a breakthrough in seeing the bright side of things in tough circumstances. You know, as Spencer Johnson puts it in “The Present” – “Seeing what is Right right now”.
* What is clearing?
Clearing is a pure thought in which we imagine something and look for it to happen and it happens. These kind of things are tough to understand for some people. But thats ok. Clearing is basically a distinction I got as a LandmarkSELP coach.
I reached an hour late for the OCC meet that happened today at the Core Objects cafeteria. But I guess that I didn’t miss much because many were late and I reached within 10 – 15 mins of when the interesting conversations started. The theme was “Co-Founder”. Make everything you wanna make of the word and discuss.
It was fun as usual. Prateek of Muziboo, Ram of Kasenna, Rahul, Harsha of adventure and Amarinder of Core Objects shared their startup experiences. Abhishek spoke a bit about Venture Capital and I had a big chat with Ram about Seed Funding and Market Research.
I got some interesting insights.
Co-Founders are not necessarily the best of pals.
Chemistry and wavelength may go for a toss if you are not open to ideas.
Bootstrap it baby. But if you have the money, its best to do it fulltime.
This girl, I don’t know her name said that if you are < 25, you’ve got a friggin good chance to succeed. I think this statistic was pointed out by Marc Andreesen Zuckerberg.
I had the opportunity to speak to more than half of the 20+ people who were there. And I had a few interesting conversations. At one point of time during the discussions Vaibhav asked, “Who is searching for a co-founder?”. I raised my hand. I am in fact looking at implementing one of my ideas that I recently brainstormed with Saurabh at BCB6. I also met Deepan who is making educative games and stuff. Though what he is doing and what I intend to do are completely different. But the motivations are similar. I shared my ideas with him in significant depth. Spoke of the market and money. He is full time into his own venture, yet I offered him to club his ideas with mine and start off together. He said he was interested and took my number. Lets see if he calls up!
I had a whole big adventure after OCC, but that calls for another post later!
Oh and I completely forgot about the sandwich, but let it be!
Yeeayayaaay! I have finally started working towards my lifelong dream of being a good artist.Even though I have won many awards for my drawings as a kid, I never thought I was good enough an artist because I was good at copying. I could not imagine and draw cool stuff consistently. As in, you know it when you are good enough in our own eyes. It comes very naturally.
So I basically started with a sketching book for art students. It looks like just the thing for me. The stuff that probably a teacher will teach a student. Things like proportion and perspective. Its a book on drawing human figures, by Shankar Modekar. (hopefully I have spelt the name right).
So basically I have taken on drawing 1 page of the book everyday. I am on page 10 now. The book has 60. I haven’t sketched for 2 days in a row, so I will start posting my daily sketches here in my blog so that it keeps my motivation going. IfI survive till day 40, I am gonna come back to Bangalore and take the help of my good friend ‘Anju Pradeep’ who is an amazing artist to help me with the advanced sketches. They are made with charcoal and so many types of pencils.
As of now I am doing it just for fun. And I don’t think I would be able to give it 2 to 3 hours a day subsequently (when the sketches get tougher) so I may just leave it when the fun stops
I’ll put up the sketches that I have already made soon.
Can you beat it? And here in Bangalore, you find yourself lucky if they charge you as per the meter!
