An Independent nation's predicament

With the usual dilemma of how to celebrate Independence Day, I stepped out of home this morning with my daughter in tow -her only incentive being the éclair that usually is the flag hoisting sweet that my apartment’s residents society distributes on Independence day. The event itself did not begin before multiple announcements on the public address system goading the citizenry to come down. Many agonizing minutes later the flag was hoisted followed by the patriotic singing of the national anthem which most of the folks from the generation after mine could barely sing. The oldest gentleman in our society delivered a very energetic but nostalgic speech glorifying the achievements the nation had managed in these 63 years.

I often wonder about the nation’s journey and importantly the whole Idea of India and its multiple predicaments. It is generally believed that the people get a nation that they deserve and also the vice versa. While I agree with the probably septaugenarian gentleman this morning who proudly listed all the great achievements in various fields viz science, technology, medicine, economics, education etc. I have never been convinced that freedom actually brought societal stability or affluence. We are still as heterogeneous as a nation, cynical as a society than probably most of the 120 countries that became independent from some sort of colonial domination between 1947 and 1962. Some of these countries tried to make such changes too quickly and the process to introduce affluence, order while still trying to maintain the new found freedom and ended up in one party rule, neo-colonial domination, dictatorship or plain anarchy (You can see it all in the neighborhood). I am proud when it comes to India having managed to retain its democratic framework while silently triggering off revolutions in economic development and prosperity. Critics may argue that this is a pittance when compared to where we should have been in the 60+ years. Back in school, we were taught that India survives on two virtues –democracy and pluralism. Interestingly both of these ideas consummate the strength of my country and also challenge it so much (all the bandhs, free speech and the freedom of the press). The beauty of this nation is that we are pluralist and not monist. Our founding fathers had never thought about achieving a nationhood by flattening religions, linguistic variety and cultural differences, but by harmonizing them and building on them. Sometimes, it does seem that the ideological difference is bigger than national pride. But in the end, I am confident that my country will emerge stronger and elements on the fringe will realize the rational and see the value of growing with this great nation. A nation where as simple as a game of Cricket can be the binding force which can bestow a distinct Indian character to nationalism.

While the celebrations end as the flag is lowered in the evening, thoughts race as the nation prepares for another week of nation building. Does anyone remember anything more than what has to be done on a Monday morning? Isn’t it a question of existence after all? Life has to continue and thank god-it is a Monday again!

An incredible nation, my lovely motherland full of vibrant cultural heritage and spiritual mysticism - what more can i say but ' I ♥ India '

The ageless prince and his digital weaponry

During my school days in the late 80s and early 90s, when we were old enough to be fascinated by computers, the IBM desktop PCs were considered a sign of technological arrival. These were super machines that could be used to silently type and save typed content as 'files' in addition to compute fairly complex calculations. Losing your files on a shared computer meant the worst - usually someone's conspiracy or ignorance. Unmonitored availability of the desktop meant playing DOS games - what a rage they were Prince of Persia, Mario Bros, Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego!, asteroids, centipede and Roadrash. In all, laying your hands on one these games meant premium screen time those days. The other way to play those games would be on hand-held consoles from Nintendo, Atari, Game Boy, Sega and Sony's Pocket Station. These would be mostly be available to a lucky few in school who had that visiting Uncle or Cousin picking it up for them or the really passionate ones would hunt one down in the gray markets of Madras, Bombay or sometimes in Bangalore. Gaming has never looked dull since then with so many of the kids from my generation onwards taking up video and later computer gaming seriously at the cost of real physical sport. This is so much more rampant in the west- I have seen a Play Station or a Nintendo/Wii or an X Box 360 in most homes of friends and colleagues from work that i have visited in the US. A few of them even insisting that a Wii should be a definite carry-back gift from the states especially the one that promises fitness through movement simulated sports/exercises. Gaming has surely evolved from the arrow key movements to help Mario jump trenches and the familiar key navigation to enable the prince leap over chasms, jump through fires, avoid beds of knives and almost impossibly save the princes before the evil vizier could finish her off. A friend's son recently reviewed the new version of the game much to my ignorant amusement. The new version of Prince of Persia is now completely loaded with 3-D graphics, loaded avatars with the Prince battling the evil with his all powerful digital weaponry. Multiple versions and generation of millions of gamers later, Prince of Persia is now a Disney movie starring Gemma Arterton and Jake Gyllenhaal. Meanwhile, being in the software industry for a decade plus now, one of the challenges of application software remains multiplatform support. Gaming has since become a billion dollar industry with more and more of puzzle solving challenges that require agile manipulation of objects - and, not to mention Kids' reflexes being so much better these days. As in software application development, Gaming too has found its challenge in multiplatform support - if you have heard of XBox 380, Nintendo/Wii and Sony's Playstations...

Yes Chief - you are in command.

It had never occurred to me what titles could do to the human psyche until a couple of years ago when I noticed the lapel on the Subway sandwich maker’s shirt in Alabama emblazoned with the phrase ‘sandwich artist’ which left me baffled. A few summers later, I still wonder if the sandwich artist made sandwiches any better. The 6 inch veggie sandwich, staple and simple remains my all time favorite at Subway and has been my savior many an occasion when there simply wasn’t a choice for vegans like me. Over the years, one thing I have noticed while meeting people at work, interviewing candidates for my company, vendors, partners is the pride they carry flaunting titles. When it comes to job titles, we live in an age of rampant inflation. Everyone you come across is a chief or a president or a director of some variety not to mention the few grand prefixes such as ‘global’, ’interface’ and customer, and hey presto


While some of these titles add color and dignity to the task itself, I believe there is a lot of motivation for people to be called a ‘specialist’. A growing number of companies have a chief for everything from knowledge to diversity. This was certainly turning out to be so interesting that I decided to spend some time researching on it and what I discovered left me amused if not shocked. Fathom this- Southwest airlines have a chief twitter officer while Coca-Cola and Marriott have chief blogging officers (these must be the easiest of the CXO league-or is it!) Kodak must surely be the trendsetter-they even have a chief listening officer (had heard of agony aunts!). Some more that I found from America’s International Association of Administrative professionals ‘ defined umbrella of job titles were paper boys can be called as ‘media distribution officers’, Binmen are ‘recycling officers’ and ‘lavatory cleaners are ‘sanitation consultants’. Even the linguistically pure French are not behind, the cleaning ladies are called ‘techniciennes de surface’ (surface technicians). I am not sure what is the rationale behind such titles, one obvious and probably a structural reason could be the growing complexity of businesses. You now need a VP for a product and also for a geography and end up with something like Vice President for Espresso vender –Asia Pacific !

The cult of flexibility is also the fact that inflationary and flat hierarchies have the paradoxical effect of multiple meaningless job titles. A feeling of ascending the ranks (although illusionary) is what the human psyche craves for. The technology industry has been the forerunner in introducing all sorts of new fangled job titles. The IT types like me and others continue to dub ourselves as gurus, scrum master s and the hottest one these days is the ninja. Meanwhile, I need to get to bed early and be ready for that 10 AM meeting with my ‘automation specialist’ to resolve that nagging issue with automating pdf reports. Over the years, I have been called a subject matter expert, outbound specialist, ‘manual tester’, ’automation engineer’, 'DB tester' and with all the experience and a few gray hairs and ofcourse the tester’s holy grail in hand – Am I a test evangelist yet? Or does it even matter!