In any moment of decision, the BEST THING you can do is the RIGHT THING, the next best thing is the WRONG THING, and the worst thing you can do is NOTHING.

Heart touching thought of life…Laash pani par tairti kyo he..?kyun ki,,,Dubne k liye zindagi chahiye!

1980 - 1) Study hard so you can find a good company to work for.
2) Write an impressive resume to find a job.

2010 - 1) Study hard so you can find a good company to buy!
2) write a strong business plans to create good jobs!

Patience is powerful. If you are desperate for instant results you make it all too easy to be taken advantage of.

The world is not Fair! Knowing that we must protect ourselves.

A dedicated fiction reader, who once upon a time used to complete a 400 page book during a Bombay - Delhi - Bombay flight including the waiting time at the airports; over the past year or so found my reading habits breaking away completely, more maybe from the fact that I do not travel at all these days, a little less from the fact that have been watching more movies, tweeting?

Having said that had decided to rectify the situation this year. Flipping thru Flipkart sometime a fortnight ago, saw some Indian authors, whose books sounded simple, in terms of story & price both. Ended up ordering the following:

Love, A rather Bad Idea….All it gives is a lousy hangover by Anirban Mukherjee
Zero Percentile..Missed IIT Kissed Russia by Neeraj Chhibba
Nothing can be as crazy by Ajay Mohan Jain &
The Dork by Sidin Vadukut (heavily tweeted on twitter by his well wishers)

Whilst this was in transit, I made a trip to Malvan and picked up a book at the Goa airport - Devil in Pinstripes by Ravi Subramanian having read his earlier ‘If God was a Banker’

Then overcome with work, did not even glance at those till, last week, when glancing through them, saw that most of them were 200 pages easy to read font & decided to go for them & so began:

Devil in Pinstripes - A good book taking a look at the Banking & financial segment, boss, mentor, couple relationship etc. nudging & offering some insight of what it is all about in a superficial way.

Dork - A good enough book, that gives an insight into Management placement, Consulting industry, taking a swipe at the perception & hype created vs how actually it works.

Zero Percentile - Halfway decent writing, that takes a look at lower middle class home, destiny mish mash. A book that can be missed without missing anything

Nothing can be as Crazy A decent book on the Banking Industry with neither a complete coverage on banking or institutional politics. There but cannot be there.

Love, A rather Bad Idea - A breezy book trying to convey that IIT has everything that the world can show and friendship, love, loyalty overcomes everything.

Having said that, some common factors which are not so surprising:)

Out of the 5 authors 2 are from IIT & 2 are from IIM or combination of both.
All the books can be called “ILIT” that has sex, loyalty, destiny, family & happy ending with of course IIT or IIM as background.
A bit of superiority “we were there, we are better, and now besides we can write” comes through.
The cost of the book is sub 200/- something like ‘chiclit’ take it on the flight & throw it.

As the DNA & Sunday Midday of 22nd February says that 1000 copies is enough to break even all of them have broken even, if nothing else but through their network, loyalty, friends & relatives.

What is painful is that such intelligent (obviously with IIT & IIM tags) people have chosen extremely mediocre, flat subjects to write their novels on, truly hope that they come out of their comfort zone & contribute more.

The Question this raises now is - “Do Indian Authors need to be IIT or IIM”

BUT in the end Hey they have written, published & people read, whilst I have not, so whilst this may sound, it is NOT sour grapes.

A couple of weeks ago RTNE invited me to look at what they had achieved in the past one year.

Whilst I would have loved to travel on the Highway from Bombay to Goa, paucity of time forced me to follow their instructions and so my journey began.

If flew from Bombay to Goa where I was received by Prathmesh a young local from Kudal who has been trained as the DMC (Destination Management Company) Officer who does the local level liaison.

We drove down on NH 17 passing Kudal, Sanatwadi before reaching Malvan at around 4.30 pm. Once checked into an RTNE trusted Stay Swami Samarth a nice stay right on a private beach, was taken around to meet other home stay owners, recce their property as well as understand the philosophy.

I was stunned to see the number of home stays that had evolved and more importantly, the kind of numbers that were bandied about by the owners.

The stays were well done, clean, with nearly 3+ star category at the most economical rates possible. Amongst the ones I visited were Omkar Deluxe, God’s garden, Satguru Kripa, Sidhivinayak (of Pednekar bandhu).

Having completed the recce, went to see the sunset at Devbagh Sangam. Then a spot of relaxing, before dinner was called around 9.30 pm.

Mind you, the dinner is cooked specially for you after asked about your choices & imagine eating on your private beach with the waves crashing, bit of wind whistling & distant light. (In Goa during my previous avataar we used to charge Rs. 15,000/- ++ for something like this). The menu was amazing - Sol kadi; Golpa; Halwa rassa & fried; warm chappati; rice.

I could barely keep my eyes open after this repast. After a long time, I was fast asleep at 10pm opening my eyes at 8 am the next morning.

Some amazing kande Poha, accompanied by fresh coconut water, though I gave the malai a miss started the day just right for my drive back to Goa & then back to Bombay. With no camera, but my trusty Nokia, managed to take some photographs, unfortunately do not do justice to the place.

With the new airport coming up soon, this place is going to just take off. I recommend that you visit the place before this happens. To read more about this, click here & to book here

We had a great party season that ended with our traditional “Undhiyu” party on the 25th January. A common questions that friends, keep asking -

Q How do you manage to host so many parties successfully?
Q Is it difficult? Time consuming?

Besides the fact that I have a supportive wife & now daughter - both who are of great help, over the years have learnt & now follow those points that ensures the success of the evening.

So, all of you who have been asking, here goes, for whatever it is worth:)

A) Make sure enough starters, some are always more hungry than others - We normally have 2 dry/cold - peanuts, chips kind & 2 hot/prepared starters.

B) As the Host, ensure they are well taken care of. Top up the drinks, starters coming enough, juices & soft drinks, everything from ice, lime, lemon, juice, soda, olives & right enough glasses. Whilst, mostly parties do end with dessert, we always ensure that there is coffee or liqueurs to end the night

C) Music - soft - This is one point where there have always been ambivalent feelings, since mostly at our place, we end up switching it off as there is enough to catch up, meet, discuss that at times, it starts intruding.

D) Invite people from different professions, that’s one way to make sure party not office - This has been the mainstay of our parties. Whilst there may the usual close group, however a couple of new people get rotated which acts as a lubricant to great conversation.

E) Make space in your house - When you invite people, you have to accept that kids would need to sit separately, watch TV etc. so space would need to be made.

F) Rules - Avoid passionate debates about Politics & Religion. If it feels getting out of hand, ease somebody out. Yeah yeah, bad taste and all that but, has to be done.

So, Go on Party!

Disclaimer: This comparison is from purely a customer perspective & neither airline or any other airline paid for my tickets.

After a long time, I had an opportunity to fly on SpiceJet & IndiGo thanks to the organization who had invited me & booked the tickets.

I flew IndiGo Bombay - Goa whilst Goa - Bombay - Chennai was by SpiceJet whereas Chennai - Bombay was by IndiGo.

The parameters on which I evaluated both of them were Baggage Handling, Check in, Transport, Seats, Service, Food, Flight

Baggage Handling - Both airlines were good, given the fact that space & other restrictions

Check In - SpiceJet was good in Goa, whereas in Bombay was not energetic enough. Allotted seat was different from the one asked for & confirmed. Information about Flight Delay was not forthcoming at both places. And the refrain was “Due to incoming flight coming late”
IndiGo was Perfect from both Bombay & Chennai, polite, seat allocation was perfect & Flight on time both ways.

Transport - The IndiGo buses were new, better, height of step perfect, a great help for those with knee trouble & old people. Another excellent aspect was the stairs to the aircraft, they actually had a ramp instead of stairs - very easy & convenient. SpiceJet buses were nice, but wonder if they were expecting floods everyday, since the height was very much, though in Goa there was a additional wooden step kept that helped. But the stairs, I presume were rental from Airport were horrible.

Seat & Service - Seats were equally good in both, as was inflight service. IndiGo offers water from a Jug in a glass, whilst SpiceJet offers a bottle & though having heard about water being refused a second time, this was not the case at all.

Food - The quality of food was good on both airlines, however IndiGo offered more variety, whilst SpiceJet offered discount if booked along with the ticket, which was a good idea

Flight - This was good on both airlines, with competent crew, aircrafts and all.

IndiGo gets my vote & edges SpiceJet due to On Time flight, small extras such as the bus, ramp which is welcome.

Last month I of all the people along with @chhavi was asked by Techtree to discuss the popular social media trends they expect to see in 2010. You can watch it here

And then in the same week, CNN IBN featured me amongst a lot others in Virtually yours. You can watch it here.

Do let me have your comments:)