I can see ghosts...

I am on the other side now. I work for a large global organisation and almost everyday meet atleast two startups who pitch for the business ( imagines or otherwise ) that we can give them. Having been on the side of running a startup, raising money, pitching a concept, managing starvation and creating a viable business, I can imagine the eagerness of the guys to prove themselves. And I can see through the shallowness of the concepts. I wonder why there are no mentors who can guide these entrepreuners through the stage where they are fodder for corporates.  I was told once that outside DAKC, the Reliance ADAG headquarters are deadbodies of startups that perished trying to service Relaince ADAG's demands. Am sure if I look carefully we would also have a few skeletons outside out gates.

And honestly most of the companies that I have see do not solve any big problem, they are either derivatives of existing ideas, waiting for just enough mass so that they can find a buyer (prefer google, but facebook will do). It is painful to have to go through shoddy presentations, fake accents and fake stories and get to the core of the ideas.

Am yet to see a great idea that can change the game, something that can make me cry out with joy. Instead I can see ghosts, tired ones, like stale jokers who have lost their mojo. Cottage industries that will get consumed by either the greed of people like me or screwed by investors.

Yesterday, on way to the company, had an idea - can I get 500 people to invest Rs 2000 - the cost of a good dinner in Mumbai, which we can invest in a noble idea like Nurture Talent ( www.nurturetalent.com) that educates startups or in a venture that is exceptional - I do not know what exceptional is as of now, but am sure like love and death, one will know when one is close.

I want to explore the opportunity in water, in waste management and education. In visual display of information. In a micro funding model for artisans. And not take more than 5% equity in the company for the Rs 1000000 that would get invested using the crowdsource model.

Would you help me?

The importance of Badal Sircar

July 1992, it had been raining for most of the last week of the month. We had made it to the last year of BSc. without too many mishaps. Dreams intact in a just liberalised India. PV Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh was slowly unleashing a creaky India onto the world stage. Cable satellite and STAR was fairly new and MTV grind was in vogue. Most of us thought of MBAs, MMS, MCS and such fancy degrees, which would ensure a safe job in a safe company. And heartaches were heartaches that never really went away.

Nowrosjee Wadia College still had Prof. Moogat, Dr Aston, Dr Bhise, Dr Andhar and Prof Rao to make us believe that life was not all that bad, provided you attended their lectures. Somewhere between those lectures we were told of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of the college. The students were to put up a play and the professors were to put up one where the best talent in the college would participate.

The resident TV and stage actor Dr Bhise ( he has played the role of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar in a Marathi movie) decided to experiment, the final outcome was a play written by Badal Sircar - Saari Raat - last performed by Amrish Puri and directed by Girish Karnad. The cast was a mix of students and teachers. Mahesh Gaikwad (lost in the sands of time), Gurtez Ehtas ( Tv actress ), Dr Bhise were the actors. I wandered in just to watch was going on, good friend Rajeev Dubey gave company. With nothing better to do, we ended up staying back everyday, bunking classes, not that it mattered in any manner. Eventually, I ended up creating the sets for the play, was the guy who pointed out the wrong dialogues, the steps the actors needed to take. I had been active in the street play category for a couple of years and wrote for the local newspapers, this was an interesting experience. A Bengali play by a playwright I had never heard of, translated by a linguist called Prathibha Agarwal into Hindi, a language that I was familair with in a manner of speaking. I had learnt it in school but the nuances came alive here. I have somewhere a post card which gave us the permission to stage his play for a royalty of Rs 125. 

This play taught me to focus, to understand what was being said, to look beyond the ordinary language. It taught me poetry, the verse Saari Saari Raat jaga hoon mein sapnon ke dar se, ke ankhen kahin zhapak na jaaye is kaaran kiya hain sangharsh.... ( have stayed awake for an eternity in the fear of my dreams, have struggled to keep my eyes wide open) still remains with me. The simplicity of the idea of a man born out of a woman's desire to be free and seeing him in the human form in an abandoned shack in the middle of a rainy night was beautiful.

I did not understand a lot of what was underneath the surface, at 21 you do not really know the meaning of what the married woman really wanted. Today I do not claim to understand it fully either.

The play was a full scale production, 90- minutes of it, with background music, lights and songs. We had two performances, the first in front of a packed audience in the college and the second one a commercial performance, for which people paid money to buy tickets. We were good.

Three weeks before the first performance, India destroyed its facade of being a secular tolerant state, Babri Masjid was demolised.

The final and third performance was to be held at Bombay in January 1993. It never happened. We went on into a new life after 3 months. Mumbai was never the same again.

In the years that have passed, have read Evam Indrajit, and a few more of Badal Sircar's plays, helped Dr Bhise in his thesis for his PhD - The theater of the Absurd. Started the Pune Literary Forum and the Bombay Literature Cafe which is now Caferati.

I wonder of I would have been any different if I had not wandered into the Wadia college assembly hall that afternoon. I was a drifter then, 6 months later, I did what my dad said was amazing - stayed with one project for a long time till it completed. That defined me, the detail of what I could do. The going through of rehersals till each word was correct. Costume changes, holding the three actors together when the scenes got charged.

Badal Sircar lived an interesting life. The play gave me a chance to meet Nissim Ezekiel, Kolhatkar, Mohan Agashe, Lagoo, Puranik and so many theater stalwarts. It gave me an interesting life.

Sircar passed away this week, it did not make headlines, I discovered the news of his death in Mint - a business newspaper.

For those who never heard of Badal Sircar, here is the link to his wikipedia page

of things gone by

On 31 Octoner 2006, in a moment of madness, I resigned from the small digital agency I was help run in Mumbai, with it I said goodbye to a stable income, peace of mind and sanity. Two guys who knew me wanted to make TV serials and were looking at raising money. Over bottles of beer, in a cramped room at the Hotel Savera, the two half drunk gentlemen went on about making entertainment. Youtube had just got funded and there were a rash of 'tube' clones that had sprouted up.  The more I heard the two of them speak, the more it made sense to me that we must create content for the net.

nautanki.tv was doomed from the start, it was trying to do things that no one else had done. It was not youtube, it was a made for internet entertainment channel that aggregated / made / bought content. It was a network of content pieces which was layered with an ad network. A social network which allowed its users to create playlists, share the playlist and run channels of their own. It was the first to get a sponsored show (Metro Shoes sponsored their Spring Summer collection videos), it was the first to be paid to be a platform (SaharaOne paid money to use the platform to live stream their awards ceremony). 38 TV channels partnered with it, over 300 short films were showcased, 5 internet only channels, 60 hours of content created everyday by a team of 45. It was mad, it was fun, it was insane. The team raised close to 7 crores in funding, had some of the brightest investors and was acquired by a rockstar of new media economy.

And yet it failed.

Last week several people told me that it was too early for its time, it was ahead of the curve. Old friend Amit Grover who now runs a mentoring outfit for startups said it when he told me that sometimes, it is better that something does not work, it plants the seeds of something big. The mistakes we make (expensive ones at that) are the ones that fuel the new ideas.

I tried again with a refined model, something that factored in 4G and the surge in wired entertainment and multiscreen alternate broadcast in 2010. It got 2 investments, one I said no to, and the second decided that I was too much of a risk. They bought the business, I gave up trying to convince people of things that they cannot see.

So on the other side of the year, the cycle completes. We never grow old, ideas never go old. Here is to that spirit and to a whole new experiment. This time I will make it make money for someone atleast. if not me ;)

Break ke baad - layered cookie

I took an unintentional break for a few weeks. Did not find anything interesting to write about in the middle of moving homes, Tamara's big yellow schoolbus, the job, painters, furniture moving, electrician and carpenters and tailors.

A couple of days ago Tamara, mom and Hema went on their annual vacation. This allows mom and Tamara to spend a few weeks with my sister and my nephew, Tamara gets to boss around her 'Braather' and I get sometime to myself. I get to lazy around, think, watch tv and generally live like a single man for a month. By the end of the first 48 hours, I usually get bored out of my mind, especially if its a weekend.

So between reading the entire Calvin & Hobbes collection (yes I have the hardbound copy gifted by a friend), and the option of going across to a coffee shop, today I opted to stay at home. I made a simple Rice Noodle and Sprout Pulao for dinner. All you need is some rice noodles and some simple spices and a heart to innovate. You cannot fail.

Dinner done by 8 30 pm! and I wanted something more - options are go to the nearest coffee shop, the amul icecream parlour or to the Iyengar's Bakery on Veera Desai.

I opted to stay at home and make something with whatever was available. It is baking right now as i type and I will know if it worked in around another 15 mins.

Here is what I did - The help had left some chapatti dough for tomorrow - the size of a normal adult male fist. Or dough made with half a standard tea cup of regular flour. Add to the ready dough two table spoons of ghee and four tables spoons of sugar. Knead it into a nice glossy ball and leave it in the fridge.

Take 7-9 dried figs, half a cup of almonds, an half inch of ginger, 1\2 teaspoon cardamom powder, four teaspoons of sugar, some peanuts and pulse all of this together until you get a rough mix.

Take the cold dough and divide into 3 portions, roll the 3 portaions to make 3 half plate sized sheets on a foil using enough flour so that the dough does not stick to the foil. Now layer the sheets with the fix and almond mix. Crimp the sides and brush it with egg wash and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

Preheat over to 200 degrees cel. and bake for 30 mins till the crust turns golden brown.

I am not sure what it is going to be like, but what the heck.

The oven beeped and my cookie ( i will call it a cookie, you can call it whatever you want ) is ready

I have to wait for it to cool and the cut it into small wedges. It smells great.

It tastes, nice, kind of nutty with caramalised sugar.

Hope you enjoy making it.


(I did not use any baking powder or bicarbonate of soda, hence the crust is dense and not crumbly, you might want to use the two to get a slightly more crumbly cookie)

Bliss!

I want to be Homai Vyarawalla

She started her career in 1930s and thereafter received noticed at the national level when she moved to Mumbai in 1942 with her family, before moving to Delhi where in the next thirty years she shot many political and national leaders, including Gandhi, Nehru, Indira Gandhi and the Nehru-Gandhi family working as a press photographer. At the onset of the World War II, she started working on assignments of the Bombay based The Illustrated Weekly of India magazine which over the years till 1970, published many of her black and white images, which later became iconic. (wikipedia)

I want to be Homai Vyarawalla - I want to have seen the last 80 years standing at the threshold of monumental events. Always seeing the world through the eyes of a metal and glass apparatus, recording and preserving history as if it belonged to just her. I want to have seen the lament on the face of Mountbatten, the sorrow in the eyes of Nehru and the passage of time. Of having recorded the same streets every year and knowing how her country changed.

Its like being a rock - a lighthouse - at the mouth of a busy harbour - watching ships go by.

Its an amazing life. Wonder if someone would be interested in making a movie out of her story. Keep those pictures in a chronological order and fade into them and recreate those events on celluloid. Go deeper into her thoughts at that time. It would make wonderful viewing.


I wish i could be her.

The tethered thought bubble

Am sure most of us have grown up reading some form of comic book. It must have been a curious mix of Indrajal, DC, War, Asterix, Archies, TinTin, Chacha Chowdhary, Amar Chitra Katha and so on. Every character in these comics spoke to us readers in little bubbles with a pointy end aimed at the character. THAT is how we figured who was saying what and with what emotion. In comics like Asterix and TinTin it also helped us define our image of the personality of the characters, their voices and their behaviour. You had to read them again and again to discover things in their personalities that changed as we grew up

In real life to know a person is to interact with him or her over long hours, over conversations, over politics, interpersonal relationships and so on. One can never 'know' a person unless you have spent time with him or her and even after that we can never know how the person is in his personal space. Years can change and wax and wane the depth of knowing. New people / characters join in and out of our personal life and professional arenas.

We have now become those comic book characters! The things that we do on our social life while we are tethered to the internet through multiple devices define what we are and what our 'friends' think we are like. The thoughts communicated via the likes, comments, status messages, shares, tweets, blogs and so on hang above our heads in a virtual bubble. If one were to follow these thought bubbles of individuals, we would be able to get a fair approximation of what the individual would be like. We can judge a person's likes and dislikes, political leanings, preferences and personal life by mapping what he does via his social activities. I can visualise this as an invisible thought bubble hanging above the head with every changing updates of everything that ones does.

And worst still is that all of it is visible for all and sundry to see and analyse. And judge. So be careful what trails you leave behind everyday, someone might be keeping an excel of what you have in your thought bubble and create a character sketch based on it.

Social Networks and the art of being a sycopant

Lets define the terms mentioned in the title of this blog post first before we go ahead - Social Networks - Facebook, Linkedin, Orkut
syc·o·phant  /ˈsɪkəfənt, -ˌfænt, ˈsaɪkə-/ Show Sp[sik-uh-fuhnt, -fant, sahy-kuh-]

a self-seeking, servile flatterer; fawning parasite.

 

Social Networks are hugely successful because they satisfy a basic Human need - they allow us to advertise ourselves to our friends, co-workers and acquaintances in order to gain their attention, affection and acceptance. The social networks allow us to portray ourselves in colours that are flattering so that people who know us and people who hear of us are attracted to who we are. Its like a UGC advertising. A sort of frame work which has existed for eons where people duelled in the open with their opponents and displayed their spoils of war in the open. Why am I complaining? I too use FB for the same purpose. The constant cool quotes, the links and the comments are all designed to provide a profile that screams - He is THE man you want for the job or He is THE man for you. Somewhere in between all this attention seeking are honest messages to people who are real friends - most of these messages are hidden in the private sections where the 'audience' cannot see them and figure out the real me.

 

And then there are the sycopants, those men and women who will seek out and follow movie stars, VCs, CEOs, Writers, Social Media Experts, Angel Investors and so on. These souls hang on to every comments and every link from the people they follow. Most of their comments are loud claps on everything that is said, or encouragements that are supposed to have that sweet sound of sucking up accompanying them.

Its sad really! I am not even sure if the men and women they fawn over in the open even know about their existence or do they revel in the cacophony of people who are like groupies of rock stars and rock bands. 

Or do these sycopants use these comments to show that they are close to the people they follow? Sort of that old Delhi malice where everyone knows the chacha of the minister in power.