In today’s Mint newspaper there was an interview by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev of ISHA Foundation titled “Indian businesses don’t understand branding”. He precisely lists what’s holding back Indian businesses – Branding, friendly finance & Marketing capabilities. Being an entrepreneur myself I couldn’t agree more with what Sadhguru has said.
He continues that for some of them them language is the issue-the language of business; Unless a transaction benefits both the parties, it will not be sustainable, whether it’s marriage or market place; how to train businesses to be sure of themselves to take the next big jump for growth (its like in a trapeze bar, unless you are sure you can catch the other bar you won’t leave this one); a leader should understand that he must have something to contribute to everybody’s lives.
Watch the Bloomberg TV interview for an insight into the subject:
If you are wondering what is the above photo of water bottles mean?
They have water from Kaveri river brought to our house in Chennai by my uncle after his visit to Trichy this week. It is believed bathing in Kaveri river during this month washes your sins and brings you divine blessings. In Tamil calendar, this month is called as Aypasi (ஐப்பசி) alias Thula Month (துலா மாதம்). In this month it is believed by Hindus that all rivers in India including Ganges, Yamuna, Narmada, Sindhu come to South, to Kaveri to cleanse themselves of the sins people bath away in them. Interesting legend!
We all have read Jim Collins’ Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, learning about companies in USA which are truly exceptional and have been running for over one hundred years. But how much we know about Indian Companies that have lasted that long or more, especially the small and regional companies. Apart from general curiosity my interest is enhanced due to my family business at LIFCO Books (Little Flower Company). Founded in 1929, LIFCO publishes its famous Dictionaries and Religious books on Tamil.
I was happy to see Hindustan Times’ Mint newspaper address this need. Today’s Mint section “Lounge” carries this report on small, regional pre-independence companies which braved liberalization and have left an imprint on our local, collective memory. Read Survivors from the 1800s to Now. Companies featured include Higginbothams, DuckPack, Kalimark, Nilgris, HMV and more.
After our visits to must go places in Tanjore – the Palace and Museum the next day after the wedding we went to another popular destination which is the PunnaiNallur Mariamman temple which is 5Kms from Tanjore. It is always crowded, we could get darshan in about 1 hour or so.
Just like in every other temple in India you have shops selling everything for Pooja (Coconuts, Flowers, Turmeric, Kumkum, BeetleNuts, Banana), Pictures of the main deity, cool drinks and biscuits.
Our final destination was to shopping area in Tanjore around Anna Salai.
The below photos were taken near shops in Burma Bazaar, near Abraham Pandither Road & Jupiter theatre in Thanjavur.
When we went there was a book fair happening in the historic Sri Besant Lodge in Tanjore.
This is the fourth part in my series on my visit to Tanjore in January 2012 – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. I am writing about my visit to the historic Tanjore Big Temple – Brihadisvara Temple. This is a living temple with poojas being offered daily for last thousand years.
We went to the temple in the evening few hours before sunset and could get some lovely photos taken.
In the evening sunset light the 216 feet tall tower was so beautiful and breath-taking.
We went inside and had a good darshan at the main sanctum-Santorum (no photos allowed there). The below lingam is one of the many in the complex.
You will find many old scriptures in Tamil all around the temple complex
Finally by the time we came out it was night time and there was buzzing activity in the night bazaar setup opposite the temple complex.
Inside the Tanjore palace apart from the main Art Musuem you can see few other places of interest. There is Saraswathi Mahal Library, Serfoji’s Memorial Hall Musuem, Mahratta Dharbar Hall & Royal Museum. Each of these are maintained by different parties – ASI / Tamil Nadu Government, The Descendants of Serfoji and so you need to buy over half-a-dozen tickets. Each of these tickets costs between Re.1 to Re.20, if they combine it and make it a single entry it will make it easy for tourists.
Saraswathi Mahal Library is one of the main attractions here. The Library contains books collected from the period of Nayaks in 1535 A.D. and enhanced during King Serfoji II during 1798 A.D. The books collection exceeds over 60,000 and many rare European language books are present here. I found it interesting to find on display pages from a book titled Chinese prisoner tortures – unbelievable and inhuman.
The next stop was the Royal Museum which houses some utensils, elephant bells, turbans (head gear) and weapons used in the olden days.
The next was Serfoji’s Memorial Hall Musuem. The path to the place is poorly maintained, vegetation’s grown all around threatening the survival of the palace.
Inside the museum there is not much of interest in display, other than old furniture’s, coins and daily use items.
There was a sign saying path to secret passage subway, we walked down few steps and found the place to be not lit at all with all kinds of sounds coming from beneath. Not wishing to go further and encounter bats or rats we retraced our path back.
The last stop was the Mahratta Dharbar Hall (assembly hall). I couldn’t help comparing with the Dharbar Hall I have seen in Mysore Palace or Jaipur palace – both being maintained in fine condition compared to this.
Overall the trip to Tanjore palace was interesting and useful to get a feel of history in this part of my India. You can see the full set of photographs I took from here.
On the first day of our visit to Tanjore after morning breakfast we went to Thanjavur Palace. It was good we had over half-a-day to spend in the palace visit, for you to appreciate the artefacts and history you need to go around without rush. And for us taking photographs took quite a bit of time as well.
After you enter the main courtyard of the palace which is now an Art Musuem maintained by Archaeological society of India you are welcomed by hundreds of statues and sculptures which were unearthed by researches over the centuries in this part of Tamil Nadu. Most of them had names plates for you to understand but there was no guide or information to explain more about the palace and the displayed artefacts.
Just like in Chennai’s Egmore Museum I saw many fine bronze statues of Nataraja and other gods in display at the museum here.
There were many winding steps you can take to climb the tower to the top (about six levels I think)
And from the top you get wonderful view of the surroundings and city, you can see the Big Temple as well:
There were many boards warning not to damage or write on walls of the tower insides, but few seem to care about it. I felt pain seeing many scribbling’s all across the walls of what is a national historic treasure. It is believed that growth in Literacy and Economy will make a population and culture respect and protect its history but that seems to be not true in India. We seem to have a blatant disregard in preserving.
See the sorry state of maintenance of the walls and structures (see in the right of the picture below) in many places around the palace.
At the first level they have kept a display of skeleton of a 92 feet Whale that washed ashore near tranquebar in 1955. It is displayed in poor condition. Other than occupying an empty hall it doesn’t fit into the theme of the other displays and the place.
Government of India recently introduced a dedicated symbol for its currency (Rupee). Rupee (Rs.) is being used by several other countries including our neighbours Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka & others. So having a dedicated symbol for India becomes necessitated for it to be differentiated from others. Initially I was sceptical about this symbol, considered this to be a publicity effort by the central government and that the symbol has to be accepted by all language speakers in the country. In the last few weeks as I see the growing usage of this in Media and elsewhere, I am convinced that this is a welcome move and it is needed to reinforce India’s growing Economy and its importance in the World stage.
Now the question is how do you start using this in PCs.
- Some companies immediately on government announcement shipped font files containing this character. Two of them (Foradian, Artech) have mapped this symbol to ~ (Tilde character above the Tab key in your keyboard). This is nothing but a Quick ‘n’ Dirty temporary fix. I will not recommend this as it doesn’t provide any interoperability. At the worst it can be used on Presentations and Brochures for display only.
- The proper process for using this character is that Unicode consortium & then ISO have to give it a unique number (location ID in the code-chart), which they have done tentatively in their recent meeting in USA. Department of Information Technology announced that Unicode has allocated U+20B9 location for the new Rupee Symbol unique to India. The existing location of U+20A8 (that displays Rs) will still continue for use by others. Now this has to ratified and published in their upcoming standards document and then Software vendors (Operating System mainly) have to implement this by shipping this Glyph in their default fonts and enabling typing of this character in their Keyboard Inputs. This is the only route to ensure that your documents (Word files, Excel spread sheets or even a webpage) having this character will show up the same in someone else PC.
A company called Foradian Technologies have released here, a free software to type the new Rupee Symbol and display it according to the proposed Unicode location, making this symbol available before it gets Operating System vendor official support.
இன்று தமிழ் ஆசிரியர் திரு.பெ.கி.பிரபாகரன் ஐயா அவர்களைப் பார்த்தப் போது தான் அவரின் தூண்டுதலில் நாங்கள் பதினொன்றாம் வகுப்பில் எடுத்தப் பேட்டி பள்ளி இதழில் வந்தது நினைவிற்கு வந்தது. அதை தேடி எடுத்தேன்.
இப்போது தான் மத்திய அரசில் பெண்கள் இட ஒதுக்கீடு என்று பேசுகிறார்கள், ஆனால் சார்க் நாடுகள் 1991ம் ஆண்டே பெண் குழங்தைகள் ஆண்டாக அறிவித்திருந்தது. இதைப் பற்றி மக்கள் சமுதாயத்திற்காகப் பாடுபடும் நல்லோர்களின் கருத்தையறிய முற்பட்டோம். எங்கள் பள்ளி செயலாளர், முதல்வர், கவிஞர் பொன்னடியான், தாமரைத் திரு ஜெயா அருணாசலம், எழுத்தாளர் அனுராதா ரமணன் ஆகியப்பலரை நாங்கள் நேரில் சென்று பேட்டி எடுத்தோம். அத்தொகுப்பு அந்த ஆண்டு (1991) எங்கள் பள்ளியின் இதழில் (Voice of Vailankanni) வெளிவந்தது. இப்படி ஒரு வலுவான தலைப்பை கொடுத்து கவிஞர்களை, எழுத்தாளர்களை நாங்கள் பயப்படாமல் கேள்விகள் கேட்கவும், அதைத் தெளிவாக எழுதவும் வைத்தவர் ஆசிரியர் திரு.பெ.கி.பிரபாகரன் அவர்கள் தான். எங்களிடம் கொடுத்துவிட்டு அவரே எல்லாவற்றையும் செய்யவில்லை, பேட்டியெடுக்கும் போது எங்களை நம்பி தனியாக தான் விட்டார், நாங்கள் தான் கடைசிவரைக் கட்டுரையை எழுதி முடித்தோம் – இது எல்லாம் இப்போது நினைத்துப் பார்க்கையில் எவ்வளவு சிறந்த வாய்ப்பு, பயிற்சி என்று விளங்குகிறது. அத்தொகுப்பை சுமார் இருபது ஆண்டுகள் கழித்து உங்களுக்காக இப்போது வருடியில்(Scanner) வருடி இங்கே தந்துள்ளேன்.
Like any other Indian I was devastated at what happened in Mumbai on 26th Nov 2008. Watching Television over the last 4 days it was a mixed feeling of Anger, Scare, Sorry & Disappointment. I pray for the departed souls to rest in peace and for almighty to give strength to the families that lost their loved ones and for the injured for speedy recovery.
Since lot has been reported about the incident around the world, I was not sure whether I too should be writing about this. Then I decided that every Indian has to raise his/her voice against this atrocity, so here is what I feel on this:
Indian Political establishment, the government & the intelligence machinery have failed spectacularly once more. There is no point in blaming the present Central or State Government for this, this is a failure of government at all levels over the last two decades – ever since the fall of "Cold War" and the raise of "Global Terrorism"
Over the decades, time and again Indian Government and Indian Civil Service have shown by their non-action that they don’t value the loss of a life especially of a ordinary Citizen. For them only the lives of Political Party Chiefs, Ministers and their immediate family members lives have any value
I just can’t come to terms on how easy it was for the Terrorists to come into India without being stopped and how easy it was for them to smuggle huge arms and ammunitions. Does India have any coastal guards and navy worth mentioning?
I am glad that there was no negotiation or surrender were made. Unlike previous incidents were our government was ready to bend backwards rightaway in the Indian Airlines – Khandagar incident in 1999 or in the Rubaiya (daughter of then India’s Home Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed) incident in 1989. In the Mumbai Incident now, it appears that the security forces were given a free hand to do their job, which they have done
Though I felt the operation by security forces was very slow, we should commend them for handling it skillfully with no civilian lives lost due to their firing, for not using disproportionate gun power and for capturing one terrorist alive
I am at loss on why our security forces don’t seem to be taking advantage of technology. For two days they kept saying they don’t know the number of terrorists and where they are inside the buildings. Why didn’t they use any Infra-Red Scanners, Motion Detectors, Satellite Sensors and the other modern fighting gadgets we see the American Armed Forces using skillfully in Iraq?. Does Indian Armed Forces have any of these or just like everything else in Indian Government was the budgets allocated for these swindled by Corruption?
Without these modern gadgets how does Indian Armed Forces dream about fighting even a conventional battle – with the changing world order wars are fought nowadays in Cities and not in deserts. Are these gadgets too expensive for India to buy, I don’t think so especially when treasury can spent US$14 Billion (INR 70,000 Crores) on the famous farm waivers and for issuing government bonds for subsidizing "Fuel" – both of which yielded Political capital
Though I don’t agree with American & George Bush policies on their International Policies and Iraq War. Still due credit should be given to them for protecting their country (USA) in the last 8 years. After thedevastating 9/11 there have been no major Terror Attacks with in the United States. In a sense they skillfully moved the battlefield of the Global war on Terror from being within USA borders to outside USA
As an Indian, I feel ashamed that we still don’t have any Crisis Management Infrastructure in India as Mr.Ratan Tata rightfully pointed out. We don’t even have the basics like a US "911" helpline in India. I am not sure how many people who got stuck inside the hotels knew who to call for help – I certainly don’t know
India needs all the help it can get especially from US, Israel and other countries with huge expertise on fighting terror. Now is not the time to trumpet how great Indian Scientist are, or on how great our technology is, or being self-reliant, etc. But I am afraid our civil service will ensure this opportunity is missed to work with the world to our advantage by their outdated bureaucracy. A fine example of this happened today when the FBI was detained for hours in Mumbai Airport
One of my friends sent me a nice email summarizing on what he feels will happen from here which is worth reproducing here on his own words: "I really don’t want any more cries of "Indian resilience", peace and harmony. Indian resilience is nothing but casual indifference if not directly affected. We’ll go back to watching our stupid soaps and reality shows once the real-life "reality show" of the terror attacks are over. A few discussions over dinner and drinks and we’re done. We’re mostly peaceful and harmonious people – but the ones massacring us aren’t. So these kind of displays don’t really do anything. What we need now is a strong government with a strong anti-terror law. One that can have the guts to take out terrorists wherever and whoever they are…Till then, I will remain cynical and angry"
Having said all this I am still an optimist at heart and that is the reason I have a photograph of the NSG team on the start of this post. Finally, I salute the brave men and women from Mumbai Police, National Security Guards & Army who lost their lives in the battle.
The content of this site are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway. In addition, my thoughts and opinions often change, and as a weblog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time snapshot you should not consider out of date posts to reflect my current thoughts and opinions.
