newviewsonoldworld

The calls we have written for our kids ! Economic theories argue on whether public debt ( debt incurred by governments ) to meet the needs of exceeding expense over revenues ( fiscal deficits ) is an implicit burden on the future generation. If large part of such debt is used for capital expenditure and raising the infra levels , investment in education and technology then future generations would benefit from it .  More like the standard wisdom of our grandfathers sowing mango tress for us to enjoy the fruits ( well unfortunately we cut those trees since we want to develop the property commercially ! ) However if the debt is incurred by us to allow inefficient transfers and conspicuous consumption then it is like a liability where benefits are incurred now , payments would come later. But here we do not want to discuss the aspect of debt or deficits incurred by the governments. But today want to discuss on something that we ourselves are responsible for doing....

What are the qualities of a desginer ? Analytic mind ; a mind that can capture the patterns, decode them and also apply them ? yes ....... Skill .....definitely .....without physical attributation abstract designs are castles in the air... Art .......maybe not exactly because therein lies the difference between art and design. Art is an extension of the artist himself......an art form is created for the self satisfaction of the artist. Its beauty while evident to the world is actually meant for the artist himself / herself to revel in. A Design is different in that sense. A design is meant for OTHERS. The designer needs a quality more than the ones above and that is SENSITIVITY. A design is a utility object. Meant to satisfy the ones using it. And so the first thing that a desginer should think of is how can the design cature the expressed and unexpressed needs of the users using it. We in IT especially in Fin Services design systems. And so we must be focussed to our users and accept ...

Of Smiles and Sunshine ! Life gave me a very weird opportunity. An opportunity to work with the chronically ill children who suffer at very tender ages from chronic problems like leukemia and others. How does it feel to spend lives in the hospital wards, lives where at the ages of 3-4 years going home is a vacation. Life reminds them continuously that they are different, so the last thing that they want is us to do is to remind them that by telling them or worse by giving them the so called special attention they do not need. Let us take the case of a beautiful, angelic little girl of 6 years I will call Snow White ( actual name obviously suppressed) Snow White because she was kept in sleep by medication for almost the whole day so that she does not hurt herself. This little one suffered from a medium stage leukemia and was treated in one of the most reputed hospitals in Mumbai. She had a problem of hurting herself and others. She would bite people who came near her. She would bang her...

The Hrishi and Nandi Bail My grandfather read me a lot of stories ,most of them on our Gods. Did a fusion of a Saki story and a grandfather story and made a remix ………………….. In Lord Shiva’s temple there is, always at the gate the Nandi Bail, his carrier and faithful companion. Nandi is said to be blessed with great pragmatic wisdom and street-smartness that complements Bholenath’s bholapan ! A temple near my home has a big Nandi bail whom all children love. Nandi’s neighbor is an idol of a hrishimuni ( great saint ). One lazy afternoon when there were no people in the temple Nandi and the saint were engaged in a deep conversation on the temple rats. “ look how thin the rats have become in this season ……… the people are hardly offering anything ……….no fruits…nothing ! “ complained the saint whose heart went out for the poor rats. “Hrishivar, its recessionary time ……..and inflation is so high ……you cannot help eve...

All the small things! I“ Arre tame tamari gadiyal bhuli gaya “ ( you have forgotten your watch ) she shouted as she bade him goodbye that morning. “ na eno belt tuti gayo che .. akele main pehri nathi “ ( the belt is broken so I have not worn it) he smilingly replied as he waved and ran so that he would not miss 7.40am Churchgate fast. He loved his watch, she knew. It was his most cherished possession.. a gift from his father … when he appeared for his TYBCom. She could imagine how hard his mother and father would have saved to gift him the watch. She knew because she was also saving hard to gift him a pure leather belt for the watch on their first anniversary. And it was not easy to save when his salary was Rs300 and the hapta (EMI) on their one room kitchen was Rs 101. But she saved…. A Rupee here and there… selling raddi ( they both loved reading so newspapers and books was a luxury they allowed themselves to indulge in ) at the end of the month to tie the ends together. H...

Ek mahal ho sapno ka …… “kabar man jai ne su so to faristao ubha karse Ahin befaam koi pan jagah tari nathi hoti “ - Barkat “befaam” Virani A house has changed many a psychological forms since times. To us it is an investment opportunity and inadvertently all of us think of our homes as property- an asset class with a marketable value. For our parents it was an aspiration.. a realization of their dreams ,a fruition of their struggles .. a loan from HDFC ( the only housing loan available then ) paid @ 18% interest, the do deewane is sahar main ..ek aabudana thoondte hain “ kind of thrill. For our grandparents the home had no attachable value.. it was a consumable to be used lifelong ;preserved and used with no thoughts entertained about parting from it. But the house .. a home of MY OWN is the single largest dream known to all man. “chacha .. bahut aachi khabar hain .. hum log ko permanent ghar milne wala hai.. Zhopadpati Navnirman Program hain BMC ka ..court ka orde...

Pyar ke side effects! Yeh story hain do doston ki . Naam Abhijeet aur Siddharth. Dono cricket ke khiladi the aur cricket ki hare Indian ki tarah pooja karte the. That was until Pooja came into their lives. Abhijeet Hirani and Siddharth Asar were great friends and their friendship emanated from the fact that both of them played cricket – and played it really bad. Siddharth whose idol was Sachin ( though Sidd was left handed) had ambitions of opening the team batting. But he could not hit a football if it was thrown to him. When he tried to hit the cover drive the ball would edge to midwicket and when he tried to square cut like Saurav did all he could do was swing his bat wildly at the ball which if he was lucky would not edge to the slips.Abhi on the other end tried to swing the ball like Waqaur but found to his dismay that his ball never cross the 10mt mark and imperceptibly went short which at his pace would be perfect pull stroke for even a mediocre batsman. ...

" taro dushman tu che " - a gujrati saying. here is why : Kyunki saas bhi …. Their son was reputed in the entire family as being the most obedient of the lot ! they said he never did anything without asking his mother .. even playing football in college was affirmed by his Mummy .. and now he had done this to her !! One fine morning he had disclosed that he loved a girl and wanted to marry her : with or without consent. She and Mr.Shridhar ( his father) had to accept. And then he brought Shruti home. She was beautiful ( like the fair and lovely girl :as Mrs.Joshi called her ) with long wavy hair and a ringing laughter that filled their home.. a laughter that reverberated in Shri and Sonu ( her son Swaruup ) as an effect. Had she not loved them enough all these years that they had so quickly taken in to her !? Today she had taken a CL at work .. she was not feeling well. My god ! she will now interfere in my work the whole day. Trying to help .. may I cut the vegetabl...

not every call that rings for a second and gets cut is a missed call ... here is why : Missed call … Mumbai was under siege ! with 7 bombs blasting along the western railways line ..the blood lines of Mumbai carrying a traffic of 25 lakhs commuters a day during the peak hours. And it was a peak hour. At 6.55 pm IST the bomb blasted in a 1 st class compartment in a Borivali bound train near Santacruz. Sam was lying somewhere along the grasslands between Vile Parle and Santacruz some 30mts away from the inferno that the train was now.. he was injured badly with shrapnel piercing his unconscious body like aabhlas on a Navrati dancer’s dress. Preeti bent over him trying to check his pulse.. praying .. for an indication that the boy was alive. Yes ! he was but he would not be for a long time ..she reckoned .. if he did not receive medical attention. Preeti an employee of the famous brokers Motilal Oswal was returning home on what was a smashing day at her workplace with the Sensex j...

A peek in the multi-dimensional magic Nature sure is an artist ! in every flower pattern , every tree shape, in the flow of rivulets you see art and you hear music. Though most of it may seem beautiful to us due to its abstract nature, it is in fact as precise in form as it can get … it is in fact based on the language of mathematical poetry called probability. Probability is what brings about the patterns that we see in the flowers or the movement of birds ( though physics underlies the principles the patterns are still probabilistic not deterministic) or even the design of the cosmos. The rhythm of the cosmos i.e the frequencies at which matters vibrate due to a confluence of forces like gravity or the weak and the strong forces are all probabilistic. our very own light also is a probability wave. Information itself that is a manifestation of randomness ( the less likely is the occurrence of an event the greater is the information contained in it ) is is a function of probability. Wh...

How Google works? Have you wondered why after an ant finds out food how quickly the others arrive and how quickly do these tiny creatures take care of so big a load ! the ant work on collective wisdom to take decisions rather than individual intelligence and therein lies the power that enables them to optimize their meager resources. When the NASA spaceship Challenger unfortunately broke down taking lives of all astronauts and caused a huge shakeout in NASA’s program the blame of technical failure was laid upon three Companies that made the jet section, the fuel section and the communication section. The NASA took 2 weeks to point the blame on the Company making the jet lining. But the US stockmarket took less than 2 hours to proclaim the verdict. The stocks of all 3 Companies fell heavily immediately after the crash but recovered slightly as the day progressed – the only stock that did not recover that day was that of the Company making the jet lining. How did the stock market come to...

Bridge over troubled waters “ when you are feeling down….. I will lay me over, like a bridge over troubled waters” In the US in the good old times of Alan Greenspan the denizens of the Wall Street and Corporate US believed in a strange option which they called the Greenspan put. They believed that if the economy went through a downturn then the Fed will take measures to provide a bastion to the investors and the Corporate and allow them to recoup from their financial problems. Hence provide a virtual put to them on their investments. When the hedge fund LTCM went down after the Russian crisis and the crisis created fears of strangulating the liquidity in the markets and pushing the economy on the edge of a reversal ( the South East Asian crisis had already created a huge expectation factor towards an impending crisis ) . Alan Greenspan reduced the interest rates gradually in steps 17 times. This prevented a spiraling liquidity crunch ( liquidity crunch >> rising interest rates ...

The true contra man with the true contra stand “ two roads diverged by the woods and I took the one less traveled by and that is all that made the difference” -Robert Frost that is all that makes a difference ! between the guy who makes money and who makes a lot of money.. a guy who thinks opposite to what others think and has the cheek to think he is right when others think he is a insane ( they all say it because they all say it ! ) .. such an impetuous guy is the true contra man and such men made histories on the Wall Street and Dalal Street. The contra man thinks always in causalities.. he is a top what if thinker and can link the events in a necklace of time and geography to make seemingly worthless stones as beautiful as China jade. Now think… what if ( God forbid!) there is an earthquake in Tokyo ! and you are an investor with a lot of money. There is panic in the investors, everybody is selling yen and g...

Tamaso ma jyhotir gamay! ( deliverance from darkness to light) You are an entrepreneur in the semiconductor business and your Company has just received level 1 funding from a VC who has faith that your Company will the next revolution in the semiconductor circuit development. And aye uddi uddi uddi you are going home a happy man. You stop your bike at the signal and you see that the kid who sells peanuts is trying to read a comic series on the paper that he uses to wrap the peanuts ? you are overwhelmed and a prayer thanking God for your current state escapes your lips. You also know that the situation can be changed if the kid has enough educational resources. You swear at the country growing at 9%( and you are growing @20% p.a) and investing only 3% in education. You make a note to call your regular NGO ( because your firm makes many donations to it (Sec80G you see!) and make a small contribution. You reach home , India loses and you forget the world……. Entrepreneurs changed the Indi...

Small is Beautiful and Powerful too : “No coincidence should be dismissed as coincidence until it is proved that it is a coincidence”- Miss Marple Sometimes small and seemingly inconsequential things have a significant effect on the fiber of the time and society. For example the literacy rate went up from 1981 to 1991 census in India , sample this:literacy Total population 1981 1991 %change Persons 659.3 816.2 23.8 Males 340.8 423.6 24.3 Females 318.5 392.6 23.3 Population aged 7+ Persons Total 536.2 670.1 25.0 Literates 234.1 349.7 49.4 Illiterates 302.1 320.4 6.1 Males Total ...

Reductio ad absurdum ( proof by contradiction ) corporate finance is a funny field to do summers in ! and for those engineers and science guys it is like jumping through the rabbit hole into a wonder land of numbers. It is a land of numbers and numbers rule there and like the Queen of Hearts they overwhelm you by the sheer absurdity in their logic…. But like the queen the numbers get their whims fulfilled .. their power is too overwhelming to resist… and once you look at a credit proposal you cannot help but feel their hypnotic power…. You forsake your thinking and become a believer.. Imagine a company that has a gross profit of 10crores and a net profit of ( 10cr) on their P&L . They are on the mercy of their working capital lenders to issue BGs ( bank guarantees) and open LCs( letter of credit) for them to enable them purchase raw materials ( imported or inland ). And if such a company has contingent liabilities of 100cr you are shocked. And of the 100cr there are CGs ( corporat...