Growing up in Mysore

This article is a reproduction of many a forward on my WhatsApp messenger. Nostalgia and nothing else each time I read it. Thought of saving it here for posterity.

Mysore or Mysuru, cannot be experienced in holidays or weekends. Like a creeper growing and encircling the bark, you have to live, and grow with Mysore to experience it. You have to be with the ajjis who have seen you from the time you were soooo small, where the maid who works in your house is your family maid, your ajji had “recruited” her mother.

When you go on an evening walk, and the pujari of the Ram Mandir, stops and chats with you, and moves on saying there is a puja at 5 next morning, that’s Mysore for you.

When you walk a little ahead and the librarian says he has the latest copy of “Kasturi” or “Mayura”, that’s Mysore for you.

When the milkman sees you on a walk, and delivers an extra half litre without being asked, that’s  Mysore for you.

Mysore is when you board a bus at the bus stand and conductor-uncle gives you a ticket without asking. Mysore is when you collect little red ‘gulganji’ seeds on your way back home from Kukkarahalli Lake.

Mysore is when you come by the Tipu Express, and you find someone going in your direction to drop you off without hesitation.

Mysore is when elephants are marched in from the forests for Dasara.

Mysore is when the English movies are only at Rajkamal. Or Sterling.

Mysore is when you wait for your copy of Star of Mysore,Mysuru Mitra or Sadhvi

Mysore is when you look for your KEB uncle to book tickets at Woodlands.

Mysore is when there are student body elections in Sarada Vilas. Mysore is the eternal SJCE-NIE feud. Mysore is when Jayciana is in full swing.

Mysore is when you got your project report bound at Venkateshwara Binders in Saraswathipuram.

Mysore is having grape juice at RTO Circle.

Mysore is buying vegetables at Agrahara. Mysore is buying plantain leaves in Nanjumalige, savouring the aroma of the agarbathi factory behind.

Mysore is eating ice-creams at Phalaamrutha or Penguin. Mysore is eating dosa at GTR or Mylari Hotel. Mysore is having biriyani early in the morning, near St. Philos Church. Mysore is drinking sugarcane juice near Kukkarahalli Lake. Mysore is munching corn-on-the-cob in the Palace foreground. Mysore is masalpuri at Ballal Circle and Shetty churumuri.

Mysore is when I grew up in Mysore. My Mysore.

Good Bye eBay India

A Trillion Dollar testimony

Apple this week achieved a milestone that no corporate had achieved so far when it became a trillion dollar enterprise. Garage start-upto greatness in precisely 42 years and a vision to do the right things and deliver  products that are awaited year after year by an aspirational consumer base. Productization has been the cornerstone of this journey right from designing the core product, packaging and user literature - all top class and most of us in the IT product and services industry have struggled to achieve but with mixed success. Design and a functional one along with the focus on exclusivity in positioning every product is in my view what makes Apple sell their devices at a Priceline that many cannot afford yet most decide to buy.  A $1000 phone is no longer something successful executives carry but could be seen in the hands of millennials which explains the popularity and the value people associate with the brand. Personally I would like to see similar sentiments in the mechanical wrist watch industry that the Swiss have dominated by their unparalleled design and precision engineering
After all anything that's small, designed and engineered well is a joy to behold and treasured for life!

Spam your customer

My day job involves helping my customers enhance the shopper and engagement experience of their customers when they shop online or at their stores. A lot of effort and resource is invested by my customers to understand as much as possible about their customers through intelligent analytics, personalized offers, understanding the customer preferences and customizing offers that suit individual tastes, choices and budgetary considerations. Data is right at the centre of all these initiatives and often forms the core of their marketing and promotional strategy. Typical sources of such data collection are social media streams, feedback surveys, and transactional data from the multiple channels that customers use to communicate with the brand. This, you can probably imagine has shifted the power of control from the business owners to the customer.

I have been involved in testing data analytics of various hues and complexity for about 18 years now and the journey that began with Excel based analytics tool that could do everything you needed to do back then viz. summarise, visualise and manipulate data as part of basic day to day analytics. With data becoming more valuable and an expensive commodity that many enterprises run on today, the need for tools that can analyse this data providing you the right context and knowledge required to address a business problem.  I have since spent much time working on architecting and testing solutions using IBM Cognos, Splunk, SAP BO, Apache Spark, SAS Enterprise Miner and Visual Analytics and Tableau for retailers, consumer goods, Digital marketing companies and High street banks and Insurance companies

After many years in this industry, I often reflect on my own experience as a customer and how my data is being used by the numerous businesses that have almost unrestricted access to my data all the way from a simple cookie on my browser or that a data broker might have collected and shared with digital marketers. A recent instance of usage of this data triggered a number of questions in my mind. Recently my  mobile service provider of nearly 20 years sent me a barrage of text messages luring me with an offer of a chance to win a possible trip to Goa (an exotic seaside location in India) and a hundred thousand rupees along with gold (yes!) thrown in if I subscribed to a caller tune service (A caller tune service is fairly popular in India where subscribers can choose what music/song your caller can listen to until their call is answered) – Nothing wrong with the service as such. However what baffles me is the fact that after 20 years of providing me a mobile telephone service, how much of my needs does my service provider understand when they flood me with such offers – For one, I could do with international roaming and extra mobile data that helps me conduct my business when traveling and equally importantly be connected with my family. Now, this would be really clever if only they understood my needs from the data from my service usage every time my phone recognizes a foreign mobile network when I am outside my city, state and country over trying to induce me into buying a service that I or my callers would ever appreciate .

So why does this not work as envisioned – Are all the intelligence built around these technologies proving to be an irritant? I would tend to argue that there has not been sufficient effort to understand the human aspect of data analytics as it is too tempting to believe that numerical science over human fallibility and even data can be subjective. So a 40 something mid-management professional would need something more relevant than machine driven ‘artificial’ intelligence. In the meantime, just call me and ask!

 

Gandhi would have been unimpressed

I have now worked and lived in Britain for a full two years and have taken a liking for everything and anything that has a link to the erstwhile empire and particularly anything remotely related to my homeland, India. The Parliament Square in London now has a statue to honour the Mahatma. Call it mature politics or simple admiration of a man who represented a nation that was once oppressed. Britain  honored the Mahatma with a 2.75 metre statue which was unveiled at  the Parliament Square by Mr Arun Jaitley in the presence of Mr David Cameron and Mr Amitabh Bachchan. The statue was apparently inspired by a photograph of the Mahatma outside 10, Downing Street in 1931. This is significant when many believe that the passion, conviction and the inspiration from modern politics is all but gone.
Watching the unveiling of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square, home of his one time oppressors, one could only marvel at the undiminished strength of the message that is his legacy. I am looking to get to Parliament Square soon to see Gandhi and Churchill see eye to eye!
Thanks to everyone who made this happen and reminding this generation of the greatness of Gandhi and his message to mankind. I am impressed!

Stupor wisdom