Oh Tiger...Where art Thou??

They say that the lessons of life are best learnt the hard way... And our trip to Ranthambore churned out more learnings than we were prepared to handle.

Having had our fill of the mountains we decided to head towards the sandy forests of Ranthambore in search of the elusive Tiger. I am not a big fan of the desert but was motivated by the experience of an acquaintance who met Sher Singh up close. I got the heebie jeebies just recalling his experience and it seemed too tempting to resist.

The First Mistake

 Having missed a couple of opportunities for getaways on long weekends me and the Mrs decided that we couldn't miss the holi opportunity. Having never tried travelling on holi and having spent the last 6 odd years in the South of the country where holi is (almost) irrelevant I wasn't really prepared for what awaited us. We were warned upfront by people (my dad will be nodding furiously if/when he reads this) but the bookings had been done and we had decided to start our journey at the unearthly hour of 4 am in order to avoid any incidents. 

We felt safe and had an uneventful journey till around 10 am after which the fun started. As soon as we crossed one of the toll plazas on the state highway we found a roadblock manned by a team of youngsters armed with flimsy looking sticks. Since I had never experienced something like this earlier and was accompanied by 2 ladies, I was alarmed and decided to turn back to the toll booth 500 mtrs in the opposite direction where I had noticed a police jeep. 

The cops were unhelpful and/or in cahoots with the Holi mafia and we were asked to register a complaint with the area police station who would then send another jeep. They too were kind enough to remind me of the mistake of venturing out on Holi (Dad! stop shaking your head). After waiting for a 10 minute eternity we were met by another Sikh couple who were travelling to Ranthambore with their 3 teen-aged daughters (and you thought I had it bad). There were other folks who were travelling on that day as well but they were the only ones who cared enough to stop. The couple and their caravan were coming from Jaipur and told us that they had crossed many such Holi toll booths along the way and a mere 20 bucks will get us through them. That gave us confidence and we followed them all the way to our destination crossing roughly 30 such Holi toll booths.
It was the Sikh gentleman's calm and tactful behavior while dealing with these groups that comforted us and honestly speaking this was something I can definitely learn and implement.

Lesson learnt: In the end we got to our destination safely, however given the mood of the folks on the roadblocks and my short-tempered nature anything could have happen. This is a mistake I am not likely to repeat in a hurry.

The Second Mistake

This happened on the way back from Ranthambore when we were speeding down a empty stretch of the highway and noticed a mini traffic jam at a distance. A bit of questioning informed us that there had been an accident and the villagers had blocked the road. Since the jam seems a little ominous we followed a person who seemed to know a parallel road running through the fields. The road was one of those very narrow lanes which separates one farm from another and are mostly (or only) meant for tractors. Anyway everything seemed to be going smoothly when a moments lapse of concentration (I was trying to see the traffic buildup on the highway) led the entire left side of the car into a mini ditch. 

It wasn't a totally lost cause since we were going really slowly on a really bumpy road but my Precious was stuck deep and I was nearly on the verge of tears. The partial saving grace was that we went down in front of a villager's house and he was able to summon a group of 10-12 youngsters who actually lifted the not so light Swift dzire from the ditch and onto the so called road. The real sigh of relief came when the car started and moved ahead without any signs of damage to the axel. 

One set of villagers lead us into the ditch (I played my part in it as well) and another set of villagers got us out. We offered them money in return for their help but they furiously refused to accept. By the time we negotiated the rest of the village road and got back onto tarred roads the highway had been cleared but the thought of being the idiot in that village had not quite cleared.

Lesson learnt: Stay on the ROAD and Keep your eyes on it at all times.


Dude!! but where is the friggin Tiger in all of this. I guess if you have been reading till now that is exactly what you are thinking.... aren't you? Well we did see the Tiger and we did have a relaxing time while we were there. 

The Place - Rantambore National park is located about 15 kms from the small town of Sawai Madhopur. The city area has nothing much to offer and seems pretty backward even though there are quite a few foreigners who come to catch a glimpse of he sun and Sher Singh. Mostly locals tend to stare at you as if you have landed from a different planet. 

The Hotel - We stayed at Raj palace resorts which is located at the outskirts of Sawai Madhopur. The hotel had a very nice garden and the rooms were really classy for the 1600 a night that we paid. The hotel has a decent sized swimming pool as well and being a water baby I was really thrilled. The crowd was a good mixture of families like ours from Delhi and other neighboring cities with a generous helpings of foreigners. The only sore point of the hotel was the food they only serve buffets for all meals which are (very) excessively priced. We had most of our meals outside the restaurant since we as usual wanted to enjoy the local cuisine of dal baati churma etc. 

The Safari - We took the early morning safari and weren't really prepared for the biting cold that was waiting for us. So if you decide to go in the winters then...... All the best. Living in concrete jungles we city dwellers generally get really fascinated by even the most common of animals or birds. And the park has a large amount of peacocks, wild boar, spotted deers, sambhar etc.

Among the more exotic kinds we saw the kingfisher, herons, blue bull, crocodiles, and baby crocodiles. The tiger was elusive during the safari, although we came close to crossing paths on a couple of occasions. We did see the tiger that afternoon when we visited the Rantambore fort, the road to the fort goes from within the park and that is when Sheru was kind enough to show us his posterior. He was lazing below a bush just 10 feet away from the road and as a consequence there was a sizeable queue of paparazzi's trying to get a piece of the action, apparently Sheru's behind was as popular as JLO's. 

The Route - We referred the blog from Ghumakkar and used route 1 on our way there and route 2 on our way back. Its a little difficult to catch route 2 on your way out of Delhi unless you know your way around Daruheda. Our experience on route 2 was marginally better due to lesser traffic and better roads. For details on the routes refer the blog.

In conclusion, the travelling spirit was shaken but still lived on to travel another day.

The Adventures of Deputy Dawg

Courtesy: www.hilarious-pictures.com

I met Deputy Dawg on the metro headed towards connaught place. I did not notice him enter but could not miss his sprawled body on the floor of the ladies compartment. He was a shepherd from Germany recruited by the CISF to sniff out the baddies. 

As I noticed him lying there I wondered if his passing out had anything to do with the frequent and deadly flatulence by metro commuters. I mean he was OUT!

He was accompanied by a human colleague and once the train reached CS (one of the busier stations) a swift command from the human and Deputy Dawg literally jumped to his feet quicker than Usain Bolt taking off for the 100 mtr dash. (hahaha) Sorry can't control myself when I am reminded of the reactions that his sudden awakening elicited from the already petrified women.

Not only had deputy Dawg woken up but was keen and raring to go at the first hint of a command from the lesser human. Once the train moved from the station the human barked another command and Deputy sprawled himself on the ground as swiftly as he had woken up. He fell close to the feet of the women occupying the 2 seaters next to the door, their expressions seemed to suggest that they soiled themselves a wee bit.
I bid adieu to Deputy Dawg after a couple of stops but wasn't able to forget the discipline, obedience, agility and enthusiasm that he displayed. This blog is a very small tribute to all you Deputy Dawg's out there (sniff sniff bow wow).

Too cool for hockey ....

You know that feeling when there is so much you have to say that you just don't know where to start..... I guess it may be better if I just started from the beginning.

My first encounter (per my hard drive) with hockey was when I was around 8 years old and when Pargat Singh and Jagbir Singh (the hockey player from yesteryears....not me) used to don the Indian colors. We kids used to gather at the park of our army flats and go all out for each others shins, we were in the age group of 7 to 15 what else do you expect. This lasted for 3 years and once dad got posted out I have had the opportunity to play hockey only in our front yard with my brother and cousins. I guess its worth mentioning that even those couple of yrs we played hockey it was only used to fill in the gap from soccer, swimming, cricket, and a failed attempt at horse riding. 


Given all of that (i.e. my limited exposure to the game) I find it difficult to explain this love and passion that resides deep inside. The passion that I struggle to control when I see a forward dribbling the ball past defenders, or when I hold a hockey stick in my hands, or when I feel the crack of a meaty strike, or from the sense of achievement from trapping a ball hit at you with lightening speed (well it feels like lightening speed anyway).

It may not be the beautiful game or one for the gentlemen but once you've experienced it you wouldn't want to turn back. I was lucky enough to have experienced it but unfortunate not to have played for longer. It was always so hard to convince people to play the game, cricket or soccer always seemed more attractive given that Indians in general hate to run and are too afraid to walk away from the field with a couple of bruises (or atleast their parents are).

In my view hockey's latest avatar is even better than soccer given that they've done away with the offside rule and made it super fast and exciting.  However, I am a little more than disturbed to see people around me totally ignorant to hockey and the action packed 70 minutes it provides. Ofcourse I know that in India cricket rules the lazy masses but I also know that there are a sizeable bunch of Indians who passionately follow the English Premier League teams like they belong to their own respective neighbourhoods. Its time you people poured half of that passion into your hockey teams... Why?? Well coz its fast, its exciting, filled with goals and your own city/state has a team vying for the silverware.

This brings us to the World Series Hockey and the lukewarm response its getting as compared to the IPL or EPL. My suggestion to all the Indians out there is to give the game a fighting chance, I assure you it won't disappoint you. The venues are cleaner and better than any cricket stadium in the country, the tickets are dirt cheap, the dhol beats are invigorating and the excitement is unlimited. 

I have a lot more to say on this but would leave it for another day. In the meantime why don't you Just Catch the match.

Global Service Jam - 2012

The weekend of Feb 26th, 2012 Thoughtworks hosted the Global Service Jam @ Bangalore,  Pune and Gurgaon. 

Being part of the organizing team at the Gurgaon event, I thought I'll share our experiences about this new and rather unique event.

What is Global Service Jam (GSJ) all about?
GSJ is a event held globally on an annual basis (actually this is just their 2nd year) which aims to build upon the concept of service design and give the participants a real world flavor of this concept. GSJ is not a conference and neither is it meant only for techies, for most of us in the IT space service tends to webservices; Service Design is much bigger and better. 

What is Service Design?
Service Design (my borrowed perspective) is a concept that guides and facilitates the management of resources in such a manner that provides a unique and satisfying experience to the consumers of a service. View the better explanation.

What or who is the driving force behind GSJ?
GSJ is run and promoted as a non-profit volunteer activity. The parent organization has virtually no staff and budget. They are just driven to spread the message and get your creative juices flowing.

Ok!!!...but what is this jam sham business???
Well to put this simply you get a group of motivated people with diverse backgrounds and divide them into teams, then you give them a (abstract) theme and 48 hours to brainstorm and prototype a real-life service around the theme. Jammers (aka. participants) are expected to experiment, innovate and cooperate all along the way.

Who would be interested in something like that??
26 in Gurgaon, 80 odd in Bangalore, and 30 odd in Pune. They were furniture designers, Phd scholars, design specialists, product managers, students and even retired individuals. Sadly Thoughtworkers (atleast from Gurgaon) were in short attendance.

Hmmm.. In that case I bet the prizes must have been really Exciting!!
Yes, if you think that interacting with people from different spheres of life to imagine and create innovative solutions and expanding your mental capabilities is worth anything.

What was the outcome?

Day 1 

We started the event in the evening with a keynote address where we focussed on educating the participants on the GSJ, basic concepts of Service Design, and some basic rules of he game. We figured that the since we as organizers were new to the concept we needed to educate the participants. Ice breaker. We planned a fun ice breaker to get the Jammers into the groove and it worked out really well (some people still insist on calling me Just-Mast Jagbir). 
The Jammers were then divided into 3 teams of 8-9, we wanted to keep the numbers high on each team to ensure that the teams could work even if some people opted out. Since this was a first of its kind in India we were not really sure about its uptake till the end. The theme & the ideas This years theme was "Hidden Treasure" and after the initial brainstorming sessions each of the teams were asked to share their ideas with the entire group. The ideas were really impressive and so was the approach taken by the teams to determine them. We ended day 1 here to come back and start afresh. 

Day 2

As mentioned earlier we (organizers) were a little worried about the turnout after the teams had experienced the initial brainstorming sessions. However, response from the Jammers was fantastic and our eyes and hearts brightened with the energy they brought along. We started the day with a small presentation on what was expected from the teams and shared the Business Model Canvas and the prototyping methods to help guide them. We also shared the various concepts from the previous years to help them understand the concept development and prototyping aspects. To our benefit showing the previous years concepts also served as a nice break for the participants. Again the energy and dedication of the Jammers was amazing through out the day and this was visible in their outputs.

Day 3

I had planned to skip the event on Sunday (the wife had a long list of chores lined up) but the enthusiasm of the participants was infectious and I was tempted to see the shape their ideas took. The teams had a bit of a mad dash in the end to finish their prototypes but they just about made it in the end. The quality of their ideas was reflected in their prototypes as well and they once again managed to leave us spell bound. 

To sum it up we loved the energy, enthusiasm, cooperative attitude, excellent quality ideas and their execution. We learnt, we laughed, we mingled,and were left asking for more.... 

 View final presentations here.

The 'clouds end' but the magic doesn't ...

The trip to Clouds End, Mussoorie was a long awaited one for me and the Mrs. We hadn't been on a getaway for sometime and the long weekend was too hard to resist.
Sharing some of our bitter-sweet experiences from the trip.

The hard facts:

- How far is it? - Mussoorie is roughly 280 kms from Delhi. And clouds end is around 10 kms from Mussoorie.
- How to get there from Delhi? - The route we took is Delhi - Modi Nagar - Meerut - Muzzafarnagar - Rorkee - Dehradun - Mussoorie.
- Where did we stay? - Clouds End forest resort.

The sweetness of it:

The Snowies

The property - The best part about Clouds End forest resort is its location. Its located on a 400 acre forested area which is around 10 kms from the (Mussoorie) city center. The property is a refurbished villa from the colonial era and is ideally located with a clear view of the snow capped himalayan peaks.

Sunrise

The views & sounds - The views from almost any place were breathtaking the best being the views of the snow capped peaks, the Sunrise and Sunset. One of the interesting facts that we learnt on the trip is that the South facing side of a mountain is always more barren than the North facing one. The reason for this phenomenon is that the south facing side tends to get more direct sun hence less hummidity (and less germination) hence less growth. Whereas the North facing side gets less SunThe peace and quiet of the hills with the distant (and not so distant) calls of various animals is something that still brings a easy calm to yours truly.

View of the barren & the lush green

The People - In my experience the people you interact with on the hills (locals not outsiders) are mild mannered and willing to go that extra mile to help you. I just love that about them and hope that we city dwellers don't (also) pollute this aspect of life at the hills.
The trek - There is a wonderful trek from the resort to the adjoining hill (with a temple on its peak) which gives a closer and awesomer view of the snow capped beauties. Although the view in the end is the best the fun is in the journey to the top especially since we took a slightly offbeat path to the peak which went through the less traveled paths with amazing views on the way. The wife had a field day clicking snaps and ran the darn camera out of battery.
The adorable puppies - There were these adorable puppies at the resort (around 8 weeks old) and being a dog lover I was thrilled. I've always wanted to own a pet but it'd be criminal considering that we spend most of the day at work and live in a apartment (with no open spaces).

The Naughty One

What was unique about this particular breed was their aggressive behavior with each other and also how their mother handled them. I have seen quite a few interactions between these animals but have never seen them play with such an aggressive intent. It was interesting to experience this trait which seems unique to this breed.

The bitterness:

The roads - The roads in our country are bound to feature in this section and the road to Mussorie is no exception. The only stretch that is worth anything is the one between Meerut and Muzzafarnagar, which provides a much needed breather. So if you are travelling make sure that you start early so that you are not pressed for time.
The jumping jack - The only other minor sore point were the kids of a couple residing in the room directly above ours. They seemed to be practicing for the 100 mtr dash at the Olympics while simultaneously practicing for the long jump event.

Side attractions:

This was my first real visit to Dehradun (the earlier visits were too far back) and I was amazed at the numerous schools and colleges that throng the relatively small town and the  vibrancy the young crowd brings to the equation. Also, given the population of youngsters it wasn't really surprising to find the large bouquet of brands (clothing, accessories, financial institutions, automobiles etc) lining up the congested lanes that criss-cross the city.

Thats all for now....more to follow soon....

My First....My Preciousss

I am one of those people who never really took to blogging, infact I am one of those who actually mocked the concept when I first learnt about it and for a significant period of time afterwards.

So what am I doing here you ask???

Well after having thought long and hard about this I realized that I need to have good reasons to start blogging, and mine are:

Why I decided to start?

- To Capture my experiences, thoughts and opinions for my own self.... rather than anyone else. So that I can relive them at sometime.

- To Improve my writing skills and develop the ability to put my thoughts in a sensible congruent manner.

- To Discover and experiment with something new, something that brings me out of my comfort zone. (like most men im not very good at sharing stuff)

- To Make effective use of the 3 hrs I spend each day travelling to and from work.

 Once I have got this sorted out I need to figure out what to blog about and here are some of the things I thought I could write about:

- Work life balance
- Travel
- Sports
- Funny incidents from life & relationships
- Software project management and my experiences with Agile project execution.

 Challenges to overcome in this journey:
- Being regular
- Being clear and concise
- Writing with passion & purpose