What you do, you become!

I read quite a long back that what one does one becomes. I mean, the personality is shaped by your profession. So, it is safe to stereotype a salesman as a talker, a restaurant owner to be hospitable, an accountant to be calculative, a store manager to be bin-counter, a banker to be money-minded, a teacher to be patient and instructive, a share-broker to be intuitive (or impulsive).........

Why this topic on my blog. Because I have seen two phases of my professional life - one with Bank, other with Development Agencies. Both have defined my personality in distinctly identifiable way. And the latest one, the bank, seems to be doing it rather ferociously and perhaps long-lastingly. Good or bad is a matter of being judgemental, and me being the subject, I am unable to be. However, Objectivity tells me that the shaping up process is for my good. Fingers crossed till a next change, after which I will look at this phase dispassionately and weigh it with what I had, what I got and lost, and what I kept for posterity.

Hmm..... Balance sheet analysis, very banker-like.........

You got my point, I hope.

First play at Prithvi, Mumbai

Today went to see a play at Prithvi Theatres in Mumbai. The play was named "One small day" (directed by Jayant Kriplani) ..... the experience of watching the live performance was good. Play was moderately average, if that much could be said about it. Overall, I will remember the experience because of the theatre...... which is a really nice one...... Not the play. Next time I want to go to NCPA, Mumbai.......

Thinking Big vs Not thinking at all

I have wondered how the exposure to higher and better world leaves one with a sense of expanse..... I still know of people (my acquintance form school and college) who think of a 9-to-5 secured job as be-all and end all. Most content to a be a primary school teacher or a panchayat cleric they are. And I have few of my friends thinking of floating companies, employing big reosurces, generating employment and being what I call an alter ego of people of first group. Surprisingly, similar kind of education and environment gave birth to both types. Probably the seed was same, the manure seems to be making difference.

Food Processing and its problems - Litchi

Food Processing can be highly simple or technical depending upon

- Basic volatality and preservation problems seen in many agri commodities,

- Complexity of processes involved,

- Quality of man power required to control processes,

- Amount of invetsment required for providing controlled environment,

- Maturity of marketing channels involved in the value-chain, and

- Evolution of market.

Lets take an example to test these out. I come from Muzaffarpur, place famous world over for its exotic fruit Litchi.

Litchi is a plantation crop. Its plantation resemples mango orchard, and fruit is similar to strawberry in look. But its taste.... is like no other. If you ever lay your hands on Shahi Litchi (the royal variety of fruit), you will know what god had in mind when he designed nectar.

Well, seems like exaggeration. Taste it to know that I am not lying.

This fruit is so good..... and like all good things/ persons, it doesn't last long. It has an yearly fruiting cycle of only two weeks. When it is plucked from tree, it is green going red. Within 36 hours, it grows full red and you can have it. In fact, thats the only time you can have it, because in few hours (in 48 hours) it will turn purple and will start going bad.

Now, lets list out food processing challenges with this fruit and test my hypothesis given at the start.

- Basic volatality and preservation problems seen in many agri commodities

Litchi has this problem in abundance. You can't put it in cold storage as it has a pulp and a cover that doesn't sustain too cold a temperature. Its shelf life is maximum of two days. Equity analysts habituated of having comfort of price barriers in stock market and matured commodity markets will go mad if they are told of litchi price-graph in a short span of 2 months and probably at the same time but in different markets. Price at the start of fruiting season at Muzaffarpur is around Rs. 20 for 100 litchi fruits (or 0.50 Dollars). Around 15 litchi fruits make 1 Kg (i.e. 1000 Grams), hence one Kg of Litchi costs Rs. 1.30 at Muzaffarpur. When the same licthi is sold in Mumbai, Delhi or Hyderabad, price could be anything between Rs. 30 to Rs. 100 per Kg. Can anyone tell me RoE and RoI in this case. Or will the calculator return infinite as result?

There are few more issues but crux of the matter is - Preserving litchi is not easy. The market is imperfect, hence price fluctuations are erractic and unmanageable. Because of such high volatality, the producers either sell too cheap or bear the brunt of downward trends (if they wait).

- Complexity of processes involved,
How will you preserve a fruit with shelf life of 48 days? Do some mixing, chemical bleaching, do something with its pulp, and add preservatives so that it lasts in your stock for future processing and conversion in to different products. Sounds simple but is very difficult. Government of India as well as many corporates have identified this challenge and have set aside a committed fund to solve this issue. Scieintific community is also engaged deeply, looking at option, testing out new methods and evolving newer commercially viable presrvatives. Success still eludes in a techincal sense, few bright spots along the journey suggest that they are on right track. Enough on complexity of processes involved.

- Quality of man power required to control processes,

If the best politicians, administrators, scientists and industrialists are involved at grand scale, quality of human intervention is easy to acknowledge. When industry matures, the complexity of processes involved will decide which quality of man power will be required to man the operations of a jelly-mixing unit or a juice-extractor or a wine brewer (possible uses of Litchi, i dream of!).

- Amount of invetsment required for providing controlled environment,

Need to say a wine brewer will need continuous supply of litchi. That will need a good preserving unit. That will need good technology. Good technology costs.

A pulp making and preserving unit needs scientific intervention first to make it happen, and a commercial sense to make it feasible. Anywhichway, it costs.

The plantations are perennial, but the fruiting cycle is so short and the land availability so fastly reducing that any future plantation will carry a pay-off analysis. The productivity enhancement attempts are already underway, and better species are round-the-corner (not literally. It may take another year or so, or perhaps years, till we jump into red-revolution).

How much money will it take India to reach there? very many, I believe.

- Maturity of marketing channels involved in the value-chain

Think of tetra pack juices, high quality wines, delicious jams, crunchy biscuits....... think of Mega malls, retail stores, grocery stalls, market places with bill boards, trucks transporitng goods, trains carrying boxes and crates......... Corner shop selling cigarettes and biscuits, vegetable vendors delivering your order at your door step........ ok, enough.

That is dream. Reality is - the market for lithci products are not as established as, say, for grains, instant food, coffee, tea, and soaps. Its a premium product which many people haven't even heard of....... So, maturity of marketing channels is low. We have farmers as plantation/ orchard owners, and small time vendors and vetetable shop owners which double up as commission agents. And then there are small retailers and finally consumers. Really simple. No complexity involved. No value addition, hence not much need for marketing (hey, its a big statement and almost defines why marketing is needed).

But we need to move on and create that market. So, complexity goes up directly (or probably exponentially)!

- Evolution of market

point well taken. Same logic as above.

Now, you see. I am a fool who wants to take a plunge.

I am not alone. This world is full of such fools.

Success is anybody's guess.

Food Processing and Entrepreneurship

Food Processing as an industry is signified by few factors:

1. Medium to High Capital Investment
2. Robust procurement channel
3. Sufficient and efficient storage
4. High tech and technically proficient processing technique
5. Sufficiently advanced machinary
6. Forward market linkage
7. Economies of scale
8. Sufficient points of sale

As an entrepreneur with low capital support, it is difficult to have any of these conditions fulfilled right at the start.

Does it mean no start ups will be seen in food processing industry? No, not at all. It only indicates possibilities (and hence opportunities). Each of above stated factors are so independent and viable as business activity that they can actually be taken up by the entrepreneurs independently based upon their skill set and capital available. Once one stage is perfected, the enrepreneur will move upward or downward in value chain.

Blood Diamond - conflict zones and the economics of precious commodity

While watching Blood Diamond, which is about global forces running Diamond Industry in African backyard and their effect on Diamond trade, I couldn't stop myself from relating how SURAT (and hence India) is an important link in this bloody chain. All of us have heard about sierra-leone and liberia and such other places facing rebellion. Ever wondered how much of this is INTERNAL (and about tribal group fighting the one-up-manship games and aboutattempts to control boundaries) and how much of is EXTERNAL (and about maintaining links for continued trade with outside world even if it means applying illegal means and killing lakhs of innocent people). The film defines what conflict-diamond means, how it represents the ugly face of human race, of colonialism and how macro business interests destroy existence of communities at micro level.

Leonardo Di Caprio has shown tremendous maturity in designing progress of his film career by selecting meaningful roles throughout since Titanic (1996). He is superb again as the Diamond mediator-cum-smuggler who had a troubled life so far and seems to have lost ability to be humane. There is a lady journalist who starts by pursuing him for story (on blood diamond). She so beautifully and subtely falls in love with the smuggler that audience is left with just the emotion and not the fact (that she loved him, and which was reciprocated) when the film comes to an end. Haven't seen many hollywood movies being so expressive without being displayful.

Blood diamond is story of Solomon, the african fisherman who loses touch with his family when diamond rebels attack his village and makes him a captive labour in diamond-mines. He is pursued and later helped by Diamond racketeer (colonel and his mark-man, played to perfection by leonardo) in search of a diamond stone which Solomon had hidden during his work at mines. Everyone is after it beacause it is perhaps the biggest diamond till date. The journalist helps Solomon in his search for his family. Among many twists and turns, there are issues of human tragedy, migration, peace forces, food programs, refugee camps, human emotions, upbringing, greed, faith, love, betrayal, fear, good, evil, economics and power; all of this interwoven in a storyline which is pacy, activity driven, in-the-face, and comprehensive.

When the viewer comes out of the theatres, no doubt is left about what will they ask the next time they go to buy a diamond ring or necklace. "Please tell me/ certify that this piece of diamond doesn't come from a conflict zone". If the film does that on a sustained basis, it would have done much more than what other mediums of advocacy could. A film that I will place alongwith Syriana, a film on Oil Diplomacy which has taken equally nasty and bloody turns in last four decades of our present day world.

NAMESAKE - Uprooted we feel! Canvaas changes, characters too!!

For the fact that she was able to capture and make significant a simple action of naming a child into a story having bearing on how one defines his/her personality and life, I must congratulate Meera Nair. Acknowledgements are due for her sensitive and well controlled portrayal of Gangulies, Gogol and Nikolai Gogol (who as a name itself was a character in the storyline, and had good capacity to define course of movements).

So, what happens when you are born in a surrounding which is perhaps natural to you but your parents had invested their prime in adjusting to it. What happens when a family migrates, settles down and sees their children grow with mixed identities of belonging to both and none.

I think we all who have experience migration in some form or other can understand the above mentioned paradox, albeit in varying degrees. We (professionals) move around the country, contributing to the overall economic development, and in the process realinging-n-expandig our cultural-linguistic-culinary-religious identities to incorporate the local understanding. Do we feel uprooted. Or we belong somewhere? Nature has space and value for all kinds of germplasm - for banyan and grass/ flower alike. Roots may seem important for one specie (Banyan), and not for the other (Grass). Being not able to root oneself can also be seen as feeling uprooted. But there is also a situation wherein the need for finding root dies down, and one is happy being grass. the grass just grows on surface, spreads not deep down the soil but through air and upper soil.

NAMESAKE brought the conflict out, beautifully. Gogol, in reply to her wife's remark (perhaps being bengali was not enough for both of us) says, "Thats not the reason why I love you."

Defining remark found on the book authored by namesake gifted by his father many years ago frees GOGOL's spirit. It reads "To you whose name was modelled on his name, given by someone who brought you with a name." The films is smooth, easy flowing, compact, and touches you with its nuggets - you question the narrator's sensibility and try to understand whether its american or indian. And at times you forget the comparison because it could not be anything but indian. Zoom to the scenes.
1. In a hep hair cutting saloon, Gogol getting his head shaved after his father has died. When, later, tabu replies it wasn't necessary, he says he felt it was.
2. Maxy leaves crying, masima remarks "Don't cry, we all are pained at his (Mr. ganguly's) loss". And Maxy looks blankly.
3. Tabu understands whom her daughter-in-law is talking to even tough she doesn't know french.
4. Mr Ganguly tells gogol the other reason behind him being named such. Gogol asks, is this what he remembers each time he calls his name. Mr. Ganguly replies, "No. It makes me remember everything that took place every day after that. Each day has been a gift since then."

Jhumpa Lahiri must be happy to found a sensibility that is equal in measure, and has an interpretation which is as original as fiction could be. After all, what we feel gets translated. Finding an identity is definitely a worthy endevour for this journey.

Kal Penn(Gogol), you traslate the imagery well. Keep it up.

Significance of Woman's Day

I asked few women (acquaintances/ friends) on the eve of International Women's day "whats its significance for you?" Here are few answers I got.

1. It reminds that I have presence in society. For the first time I am greeted for being a woman. There is a lot to be done so that it no longer remains a conscious decision by anyone. - Archana Singh, AKRSP-I
2. Let girls be born, let women live. - Nupur Basu Das, CINI
3. Thanks a load. It does not have any significance becasue every day I celebrate being born a woman. Woman! So beautiful yet (and) so strong. Hmm... - Monica Whangaham, Packard Foundation
4. Thank you very much. The significance it carries for me is that this day is for being myself. The woman who is really an important part of world is given respect and honour and that is why this day is celebrated (and you don’t see men’s day being celebrated). - Janaki Iyer, BPO
5. I am happy that I am a lady and we have a day to celebrate unlike men! feminist, Huh! – Annie, KMBL
6. Hi. Thanks. Nothing special about the day. Just one more regular day. Tell me if you have got interesting answers from others. – Hafsa, ICICI Bank
7. The significance is in the fact that it results in enlightened men (like you) to remember us and our worth. – Rashmi, Intellicap
8. Not much need till men like you are there. – Rupa, Kolkata
9. It helps me purposefully remember women of great strength and character, and inspire me to do a bit more than what I am already doing. - Nimisha, Ace Pharma
10. When was it? - Dr. Deodhar, Ex-AKHSI.

Move - from here to there

How shall one judge what other person wants and what (what all) he/she will be ready to forego to get it. How to negotiate?

My organisation would like me to move. That costs - at personal level, and in monetary terms. Monetary part will surely be taken care of. Hopefully the personal cost can be paid off by professional gains. And i share the flat with one of my best friends there. Lets see.....

Somethings on personal front need to be cleared/ settled before i move. It includes obvious ones like rentals and fees, and belongings to be moved from here to there; and few non-obvious but rather crucial one's - real personal choices.

Good Cinema is possible without great story.

How difficult it is to manage telling an interesting story...... balance of fun and sensibility that Hrishikeshda achieved while doing so was marvellous. I wondered if that kind of cinema has gone out of fashion.... but last few years in the industry have been so good, touch wood. Dil Chahata Hai, Hum Tum, Taal, Munnabhai, Jhankaar beats, Dor, Iqbal, and today - Honeymoon travels Pvt. Ltd. Had a good time, and also had few questions added to the existing confusion of life and love.

The stereo types are so convenient, they help us live conveniently without questioning the status quo. And many times, if they are not too bad, their re-inforcements help us relax and relate. Remember, we all luaghing out when partho remarks - democracy abhi khatam nahin hua hai.