Jog - An experience to treasure

After reading about the famous Jog Falls for many years in school, listening about its beauty in numerous folk songs and "bhaava geethe's ", I was literally ashamed that I had not for once in my life seen this place. Its splendor showcased in the movie "Mungaaru Male" was the tipping point. Being a true "Kannadiga" at heart, I could no longer take this embarrassment.

As soon as the planning for Goa trip started, I was keen on visiting this place. I got to know from various sources that the water was merely trickling in the falls. Yet, my mind was convinced that I had to visit it. And what a wonderful decision it turned out to be!

I knew I could not see Jog in its full glory, when you stand at the viewing platform and just admire the mother nature at its best. But, at some level, I always want to feel the waterfall by getting under it, and not by just being a spectator. Another thing I like about waterfalls is how secluded it is and how less crowded it is. Although Jog is not secluded by any stretch of imagination, thankfully it was tourist free. When we climbed down, we were met with a 800 ft water fall, which ended in a big pool of ice cold clear green water (it was quite deep). I thought god had made this place for us to enjoy the bath. This time, I was not the first to get in :-( . But swimming in ice cold morning in that natural pool was the most thrilling experience till then. After a pretty tiring swim me, bala, srinath and viji finally came up to the falls. I was constantly thinking "shit no one is here to take a photo of this". Only later I came to realize that no photo was required, since that image is permanently etched in my mind. Going under the falls was really an out-of-body experience for me. It felt like a thousand soft hands were massaging every muscle in my body. I could not stay under the falls for long as I was shivering like hell. The swim back was nice and relaxing.

While we were almost near the falls, Bala complained of nausea. But I felt he had gotten over it. Boy oh boy! Was I wrong. Once out of the water, I saw his skin turn yellow. I knew he was dehydrated. Only then did I realize that we had not carried any drinking water. Bala was so tired, he was almost sleep walking his way up the steps. Every 10 steps he had to take rest. Every drop of water/soda/juice was puked out. He slept for 20 minutes in shade when we were half way up. We did some orkut profiling photos. Seeing the rainbow in front of the falls was the icing on the cake. By this time, the tourists had started to pour in. I was really concerned about Bala's health. We had an entire trip to look forward to and the excitement had just begun. We carried him on our shoulders for the rest of the journey to the top. It was definitely the low point of the entire trip.

Now I believe, every person should visit Jog falls on two separate occasions. One during the peak monsoon or just after the monsoons in the month of September. And one more time in winter in the months of December and January. So come this September, anyone is planning to visit Jog can expect me there :-D

We left Jog with the knowledge that we will be back here in 7 months time. One of the best waterfalls I have ever been to. Gokarna was the next destination. More on it in the next post.

PS : This is my 50th post on the blog. So cheers to it :-)

And then there were Seven

Ufff!
It has been a planning marathon. For the last two weeks, we have made plans after plans, some new, some updating, some scraping, and finally some changing so much, it looked like new ones.

Ever since I got to know that I had a extended weekend holiday (credit to Republic Day), my mind was reeling with holiday possibilities. With 6 months of constant exams, I was so desperate to go out, I started asking everyone I knew, for a trip.

Ravi (IIM-A 1st year student), one of my closest friends was here for the New Year, and that was when the plan to do a Goa trip started. It was a long cherished dream of me, Bala, Srinath and Ravi. Initially we wanted to do this trip, with just the four of us. Since Ravi would be joining us in Goa directly from Ahmedabad, the rest of us decided to do this the 'Dil Chata Hai' way. Driving to Goa would be in itself an experience to remember. Till then it was FOUR.

Driving in my SX4 would mean there would be 2 vacant seats for the journey. This would imply extra cost per head. So we decided to call up common friends to join us. First it was Atul who gave the thumbs up. Then we were FIVE.

Viji and Naga decided to hold back their response and kept us guessing. Pnadey initially gave a thumbs up. So there were SIX.

Naga finally succumbed to the temptations and caved in. So there were SEVEN :-) . By this time we had ditched our plans to travel by my SX4. 6 grown men and a giant, even my SX4 cant handle that :-(. We had started to pursue other modes of transport. Self driven SUV's, Taxi's, Train and even Bus. Bus was unanimously ruled out. The waiting list in train was shocking. And to our surprise the Tatkal was also not available. So that was ruled out. Since it was our dream to drive to Goa, we pursued the Self driven vehicle concept till the end. But it turned out to be a costly affair. The rent itself was Rs 3000/- per day. This excluding the petrol bill. Although I was a bit disappointed, our only option was a taxi.

By now, even Viji was tempted to come. So there were EIGHT. But unfortunately Pandey had other commitments, so he had to drop out :-(. Finally there were SEVEN of us, six of us approaching Goa from Bangalore and one coming from Ahmedabad.

In between there were plans to go to Dandeli. That was scraped. The Gokarna part was planned, re-planned, scraped and again planned. The much hyped Goa part has had lots of planning. Hope it lives up to its expectations.

The planning itself has been so eventful. My eyes are gleaming, dreaming of the sunshine and sand.

Jungle Mount Adventures - A real Adventure

Nine friends, 2 cars, and one destination - Jungle Mount Adventures which is the boot camp of Tadiyandamol peak.

Saturday:

04:45 AM : My alarm rings. I am indeed alarmed as I had just had 4 hours of sleep.

05:20 AM : My SX4 gives a thundering roar in the early morning silence as I turn my keys.

05:35 AM : I am at office, our meeting point. Astonished to find out that I was the first person there. Start making frantic calls to others.

06:20 AM : Everyone is slowly trickling in. Already delayed by an hour. I give the general directions to Darshan and tell him to take the NICE road to reach Bangalore-Mysore road.

06:45 AM : My SX4 touches 180kmph. I am thrilled. My highest till date. Quite ironic that it is the same measurement as a quarter ;-). So I was HIGH on a quarter.

07:15 AM : Darshan fuels up his tank. Also the first group photo.

08:00 AM : Stop at the famous Mysore Mylari Hotel for breakfast. As usual the dosa was delicious.

09:00 AM : Stop in Maddur to pick up "stuff".

10:00 AM : Waiting for Darshan at the Mysore bypass near Srirangapatna. This road eventually saves us at least half an hour.

10:30 AM : Hit SH88 Mysore - Hunsur road. Awesome asphalt quality. Extremely smooth journey on this road.

Noon : Deviation to SH88A Hunsur Virajpet. Road is bad. Lots of potholes. Dusty road. And a very aggressive bus driver ahead of us.

01:15 PM : Finally arrive at Jungle Mount Adventures, after repeatedly asking for exact directions.

03:00 PM : Feeling very relaxed after a decent lunch. Waiting to do Waterfall Rappelling. But Sagar( the owner) calls and tells we can do canoeing and swimming in the river now and the rappelling the next day.

03:15 PM : Start wearing Life Jackets. As always I am the first to get into water :-)

04:15 PM : After a fun filled and a tiring swim in the ice cold water, we get out to try the canoes.

05:15 PM : A horrifying experience. Our canoe hits the bank of the river, and that startles two snakes, which fall of a tree onto the bank. They were long and fat. Our instincts kick in and we start to row towards the middle. But regret later that we failed to take snaps of the snake :-(

06:00 PM : Take a cold bath. Still some discussions on the snake and what we would have done, if it had fallen in the boat instead of the river bank.

07:00 PM : Finally our mobiles start to catch some signal. Call back home to report my safe arrival.

07:45 PM : The camp fire starts. So so does our party.

08:00 - 10:30 PM : The timeline garbled due to toxication. Just remember the outlines. Did manage to embarrass myself many times :-(

10:45 PM : The most thrilling drive of my life... wait the most thrilling experience of my life starts. Sagar takes us on a 'Night Adventure Drive' on the slopes of Tadiyandamol. None of are prepared for that kind of drive in his 4X4. He switches off his head lights, uses a pen torch intermittently and drives at speeds of 80kmph. We hold on to our dear lives. Lots of memorable dialogues come out. Unfortunately not recorded as we were praying for our dear lives.

Sunday:

00:30 AM : The "Death Drive" finished 30 minutes ago. But still talking about it. Remember laughing a lot, but not sure why!

01:00 AM : I think I went to sleep. Must confirm this with sober people :-)

07:00 AM : My alarm goes off again. And to my surprise I'm completely normal. No residues from last night. Pray to god (I do this everyday :-D)

08:00 AM : I am ready. Take a walk in the morning chill. But the sun rays are strong and pinching. Thinking of the hot day ahead. And again I'm the first (lazy buggers ;-))

09:00 AM : Most of them are up and ready by this time. Talk on what happened yesterday. They manage to convince me that I cried :-(

09:45 AM : Pooris are refreshing. Finished my most important meal of the day

10:00 AM : Mr. Muttu accompanies us to show us the way to waterfalls where we are supposed to do rappelling.

10:45 AM : After travelling through back breaking roads, similar to surface of moon, we arrive at the water fall. But the water fall is beautiful, and to our disappointment, just after our arrival a college trip manages to arrive. Bad timing :-(

11:15 AM : After a short trek and a bit of confusion we meet Sagar, who is preparing the gear for the rappelling. It looks a bit scary from the top.

11:30 AM : Sagar gives us the DO's and DO NOT's of rappelling. A very educative talk.

12:15 PM : My turn comes. I am the last to do that. Not that I was afraid or anything. Nidhi opts out and regrets later. Awesome sight from the top. Take a lot of Orkut profile snaps.

01:00 PM : Bid farewell to Sagar and head towards Kushalnagar. Roads are much better. But we end up going in circles for sometime.

03:00 PM : Reach Kushalnagar. See Nisargadhama on the way and decide to have lunch over there. Did not foresee that we would be losing so much time in it :-(

04:15 PM : Finish our lunch. Food was hot but not tasty. Leave Nisargadhama to go to Tibetan Monastery in Bayalkuppe.

04:30 PM : Arrival in the Tibetan settlement. My second time here in 6 months. I get a bit nostalgic, and end up acting as a tour guide :-(

06:00 PM : After some refreshments, we decide to head home. Again I give the general directions to Darshan I hit the road. Want to cover up as much as possible in day light. I hate driving in the night.

10:00 PM : Reach Kamat Lokaruchi on the Mysore road near Ramanagaram. Stop over for dinner. Awesome food.

11:00 PM : Leave Kamat and head towards office.

12:00 Midnight : Arrive in office.

Monday:

12:10 AM : I get a call. Darshan has a flat tyre just in front of the office. Have to give it to him for the timing.

12:20 AM : Changed to the spare tyre. Took some final snaps and left the place with the sad knowledge that we had to come to the same place to work tomorrow morning.

Will upload the photos soon :-)

Why managers fail?

It has been one and a half years (two years if you include my internship time) since I started working. I have come to the realization that studying was way more easier and fun compared to work. But another shocking realization is around two thirds of workers I have met in this period say the most stressful aspect of their jobs is their immediate boss, their line manager. Does this suggests a massive number of unhappy working relationships? So, does this mean that leadership is failing on a massive scale? Well, not exactly...

The outcome of this realization was that I felt bosses aren't inherently bad people (mostly ;-))but that the modern culture of work sets them up to fail. Here are the main reasons that I think leads to the failure of management.

1. Strict Hierarchies:
Leaders are at the top of the chain and are assumed to have all the answers, so they make most of the decisions. In reality knowledge and expertise is spread across people in organizations. But it's the leaders who must be seen to lead and so followers get frustrated because their superior knowledge and expertise is frequently ignored. This leads to:

2. Poor decision-making.
Leaders often don't make any better decisions than followers, and frequently make worse ones. This is another consequence of strict hierarchies. It's better to agree that leaders are not always the best people to make the decisions. Spreading the responsibility around, or using more participatory strategies for decision-making is often more effective. But this isn't the way things generally work, part of the problem is:

3. Huge pay differentials.
Followers often hate their leaders because of the huge difference in their salaries. It's hard to feel any sympathy for someone whose pay is stratospheric (average CEO pay is 179 times that of average workers). And, because more pay means more status, leaders can quickly come to believe they really deserve the God-like status their pay suggests, resulting in their thinking they have all the answers and that they have the right to treat their employees less than fairly. In the bosses' defense, though, there are:

4. Impossible standards for leaders.
Perhaps because of the huge pay and incredible demands, followers expect their leaders to be almost superhuman. The leadership literature identifies a whole range of personal qualities thought important for a good leader. These include integrity, persistence, humility, competence, decisiveness and being able to inspire the troops. While a leader may be high on one or two of these, they are unlikely to have the full set. Followers are almost bound to be disappointed by what is, after all, another fallible human who is just trying to:

5. Climb the greasy pole.
If the boss is nice to you, it's a bonus, because it's not required for them to get on in the organization. Leaders are promoted by those higher than them, not those below them - so it's only necessary for bosses to impress their bosses. This is a recipe for disaffection amongst the followers. Talking of which, forget the psychology of leadership, what do we know about the:

6. Psychology of follower-ship?
Although it's leadership that has been most extensively studied and discussed, most of us end up as followers. So really the psychology of follower-ship is more important than leadership. What is it that makes us follow someone else? And, more subversively: do we need leaders? For example, if people really know what they're doing, they resent having leadership imposed on them. Generally, though, there's little known about follower-ship, and how to avoid:

7. Alienation.
As a result of the strict hierarchies, huge pay differentials, poor decision-making, greasy-pole climbing and feeling powerless to change huge bureaucracies, followers naturally develop feelings of alienation, and alienation kills motivation and productivity, along with any hope of job satisfaction.

Solution:
By implication the way to rectify these perceived problems is to do the reverse. Don't instigate rigid hierarchies, discourage huge pay differentials, democratize decision-making and don't set impossible standards for leaders. Some organizations are already managing this - presumably those in which followers don't find their bosses the biggest sources of stress - but most are not.

Anyone wanting to make these types of changes across an organization would have to be a really great leader - and there are truly few of those around.

What do you think?
Do you recognize these problems in your organization? Has anyone tried to do anything about it? Are there other major reasons leaders fail?

PS : This post is in no way related to my workplace or management. It is just a general realization!

Review of Slumdog Millionaire

I have been waiting for long to write the review of a movie. But all my hopes were quashed, by the series of mind numbingly silly films released, till now! But here comes a film, that I truly admire, which has inspired me in many ways. I haven't felt like this in a long time. Probably the last Hollywood film that I was tempted to see again and again was The Pursuit of Happyness.

The plot of the movie is taken from the book Q & A by Vikas Swarup. An illiterate slum kid from Mumbai goes on the local TV version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and comes off winning Rs. 2 Crore. So why would you want to see something that you could have already seen in 'Kaun Banega Crorepati'. Well, for starters, it has not much to do with the game show. The underlying plot shows us how destiny plays a huge role in helping 'Jamaal' (a sensational Dev Patel) in answering the questions on the show.

You won't find many fairy tales that open with a graphic torture scene. The cops think 18-year-old 'chaai waala' Jamal Malik is a fraud. Goaded by the show's host (the superb Anil Kapoor), the police inspector (Irrfan Khan) is determined to beat the truth out of Jamal before he goes back on the show and hits the jackpot of 20 million rupees.

The film has got everything from humor to tragedy, from suspense to complete silliness. Yet it is nothing like the ubiquitous Indian Masala movie. Director Danny Boyle gives us a probable Oscar winner here. With amazing screenplay and sharp editing, the film pulls you towards it more than gravity does you to earth. The heart-wrenching story told through a series of flashbacks is aweinspiring. We learn the background of Jamaal and other characters, his wild older brother Salim (an outstanding Madhur Mittal), and his adored Latika (the achingly lovely Freida Pinto) in flashbacks, and as he answers the questions, we come to understand how his life experiences(believe me, this character has more 'life experience' than most of my friends put together) have helped him in answering them.

Every answer he gives, has been learnt in a hard way, and all the knowledge he has could have killed him. Accepted, the plot bends coincidence to the breaking point. But as I said before, the film is not about the quiz show, but Jamal's traumatic youth. Boyle makes magic realism part of the film's fabric, the essential part that lets in hope without compromising integrity.

A R Rehman has composed the score for this brilliant movie. Lot of hip-hop numbers. But the most I liked were the Instrumentals. Especially One track - Mausam & Escape is amazing.

Overall I would give this movie a 4.5/5. A must watch for any movie buff, and also non-movie buff's. This is how a film should be made.