Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Being a big fan of Vajpayee, I constantly keep looking for videos of his speeches or articles throwing new light on his life and principles.

Today, I was reading the transcript of Karan Thapar's interview of Brajesh Mishra in 2009, who was the principal secretary of PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1999-2004). This excerpt was just brilliant:

Karan Thapar: What was the special quality that Mr Vajpayee had that allowed him to hold a party like the BJP together and a government of 24 members together without any real major problems?

Brajesh Mishra: The first quality that he has is that he is very generous at heart. He never denied anybody the opportunity to speak his or her mind even though it may be critical of him. He dominated the meetings through his silence. Innumerable meetings of the Cabinet, he would keep quiet. Every member who wanted to speak or say were allowed to speak their minds. At the end of session, Mr Vajpayee would say just one sentence -- 'Shall we do it this way?' And that was it. This quality of his was a rare one. That's why I call him a statesman and not a politician. He understands people, he gives them all the opportunity that they want. It's human nature that once you have been given the opportunity to put your say forward, then you tend to be more amiable to decisions being taken.

Karan Thapar:You are clearly saying that both by giving people opportunity to speak and also by his masterful silences where he withheld what he himself would be thinking was actually a master tactician?

Brajesh Mishra: If you want to call him a master tactician, I would say that was something inborn. That was within in nature. Perhaps this tactician business is a by-product of his nature rather than something which he has cultivated deliberately.

Karan Thapar: The second corollary, the first from what you are saying is that because of his character, he always got the better of the sort of person who wants to burst out and speak first.

Brajesh Mishra: Yes.

Karan Thapar: He was never scared of others jumping into the fray wanting to speak and voice their opinion?

Brajesh Mishra: No, never.

Karan Thapar: It seems he got the better of his entire Cabinet?

Brajesh Mishra: I gave you instances. He let everyone speak but at the end he finished it with one sentence.

Freedom Park - Lokpal

At the height of the August agitation against corruption led by Anna Hazare, the people started coming on the streets, the numbers increasing day by day from August 16th. I started supporting the movement wholeheartedly after reviewing the points of the government, Anna's team and the sequence of events.

For sequence of events, please read the minutes of meeting (which not many people seem to be aware of):

http://www.lokpalbillconsultation.org/page.php?page=3

For the synopsis of Lokpal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CHcKlIsvAQ

On day 6 of the movement, I finally managed to go to Freedom Park, the epicenter of movement in Bangalore. I arrived at 2:30pm and headed to the stage area where all the events were happening.

The stage area had around 20 - 30 people fasting, including a woman who was fasting from Aug 16 without water. Actor Vishnuvardhan's wife was also present among these people. But otherwise, the stage hosted various speakers and singers throughout the day.

When I arrived, the mobile phone numbers of all Members of Parliament were being announced so that people could sms and call these to ask each one of them for support. Creative stuff... good engagement with the crowd and increased the energy level.

Next, a swamiji came on stage who spoke in kannada but had the crowd on such a high with his speech on corruption ranging in both politics and religion. Wherever I could follow, it was really good stuff. Crowd was whistling and cheering wildly.

Among some other highlights for the 4 hours I spent were some children singing patriotic songs and other good speeches. But the ultimate of them all was the one from the head of the Gurudwara in bangalore who had some 300 people with him from the Sikh community. He apologized on behalf of his community for the actions of Manmohan Singh... making a really bold speech on how even though the PM maintained a very clean image of himself his claim to ignorance on corruption happening around him was just nonsense, and how it took 3 years for his government to arrest Raja but took only 3 days to take a wrong decision to arrest Anna. The crowd couldn't really expect to hear a more bold speech from a person taking pride in his community.

Some images of the crowd:

The crowd shouting slogans and waving tricolor all around, let me say this on a level headed basis that it was a very genuine coming together of people for a heartfelt cause. There is nothing superficial about this and especially I, an otherwise skeptic about everything, am convinced that now the government has no other go but to listen to the demands of the people. People on both sides now understand that the MPs and MLAs are public servants. We dont need to fight elections to make our voice heard, its rather the government who should understand our essential needs and listen to us.

Little drops make a mighty ocean indeed... and now I believe.

During this whole time of course, there were songs from Vandemataram (ARR), Rang de Basanti, Lagaan etc being played in between all the speeches and stage programs which gave the crowd a reason to sing, rejoice and get entertained. As "V" says in "V for Vendetta": Whats a revolution without a celebration?

Bangalore - Calicut Bike trip

Bino decided to go on a bike trip during the weekend of good friday, April 22 - 24 and he forced me to say yes to come along. I was thinking of going to Mangalore but then we were looking for other alternatives. Sanjay and Gayatri had planned to go the Kappad beach resort near Calicut and we decided to join them. They left on the friday and reached there by evening on Sanjay's car. The 354km route seemed like a good choice:


Me and Bino had planned to leave on Saturday morning by 5:00 am but because of heavy rains and lack of rain pants forced us to leave late at 9:00am. Heavy traffic delayed our reaching the outskirt of the city on the Mysore road. After a minor bike repair, we resumed journey and stopped at Barista to have breakfast by 11am. We reached Mysore by 1pm and continued through Bandipur and Vayanad reserve forest area. Some pics:



After Vayanad started the decent and the traffic slowed down our journey. However, the view of the valley and the beautiful greenery along the curved wet roads more than compensated for the slow pace. After reaching the start of the plains and with more 100km to go, heavy rain started at 5:30pm before Kalpetta. But after taking a small break, we decided to resume journey for there would surely be no end to the rain. And it turned out to be right for the next 3 hours.
There was a point where Bino couldn't see anything because of rain flooding his glasses and so I had to ride at 30km/h for 1 whole hour and him following me neck to neck!

But finally rain subsided by 8:30pm and we managed to reach the resort by 9:30pm. We had our room booked next to Sanjay's. We had dinner and slept by 1:30am.

Next morning I got up at 7am to my own surprise and took a small walk outside. Some more pics:


All of us had breakfast by 9:30am and we hit the swimming pool. After an hour in pool, we took a small walk on the beach and headed back to the room to pack our bags for the return journey. The beach was very neat, clean and had lot of huge crabs... I could spot only one though, out in the open.




We had a nice lunch and headed back:


The return journey was quite enjoyable too. Overtaking the rash Mallu drivers was a bit of fun. There was this stretch in the reserve forest where these hugh bamboo-like trees created this arch kind of cover to the whole road... awesome. But couldn't capture it on camera properly.

By the time we reached the outskirts and had our dinner, it was 11pm. I was feeling super sleepy and was forced to put coffee and sutts. We reached Bino's place by 1:30 and I just hit the bed.

MARKETTING IN DAILY LIFE

Its important to be able to sell our ideas for finding acceptance, whether in business or in daily life. Nothing works in an absolute way ever… everything is compared, assessed and accepted, as I am rediscovering in life.

I was sort of good at doing this, at one point in life. In 4^th year collg, my prof had asked me to “jugaad” a bunch of 15 people for a weekend (the next day) at Indian Bank office in mylapore, Chennai, for some vague officers interaction with IITians for better expectations in personal banking. Now having boring discussion with PSU banking people is the last thing on our junta’s minds. So, with 1 day to go, I had to come up with something our guys wouldn’t really want to refuse.

Now, usually officer’s meetings had good lunches, and by “good” I don’t mean 5-star class but good by undergrad standards. Also they had offered us reimbursement for travel to-fro. Another good thing which worked to my advantage was that it was a day when everyone would be getting together for an official morning group class photoshoot. So here was the email I shot to our group:

Here's your chance

Do you wanna have a grand lunch tomorrow absolutely free ?
And that too free travel to the place where this grand lunch is being organized ?

And there is absolutely no catch.

Indian bank is having its manager's training program tomorrow at a place in mylapore. They want to invite some IITians to answer some of their questions regarding expectations from a bank w.r.t. job and things related to this from final and pre final year students. Dont worry guys, you dont need any kind of preparation for this. Just go there and answer their questions.

There is no restriction on the number of people they want to invite. Travel to the place and back will be reimbursed at the venue, so you can go by call taxi. You ll have top be there by 12, so be ready by 11. And the thing ends at 2.

Anyone interested can contact me.
6 seats taken already.

Vishwa

Ahem… and the rest was history (read as: me in, me too, how many seats remaining? ,I will be coming 10 min late so wait for me… etc). Some 13 people turned up finally. Once there, I was only afraid that if the lunch was not good, I might get ass kicked, but fortunately food was hot and ordinary and everyone was hungry by the time we ate. And there was a 50ml ice cream cup too :)