My Visit to SPPD (Society for poor people development)

SPPD is situated between musiri & thuraiyur road, 5 kms from musiri.

On 19^th sep 2009 we (Visu & me) got down at musiri bus stand. Raju sir had sent his Bolero to pick us up (did not expect this initial reception).


We reached there around 11.00 AM. We were invited by the beautiful SPPD building that is built on special bricks. It is a low cost building and we heard from the residents that the aesthetics and maintenance of garden inside building attracts strangers quite often. I really wanted to build a house like that for me…thought that struck me immediately (Who knows?).

Inside the building were these beautiful office rooms. Mr.Raju was seated in a eco-cabin with a smiling face. He is all smiles all the time. He was all pleasant with his smiles and words (though he was confronted by immature questions from our side, he was handling all of them with his usual smile).

There was his childhood friend and one of the coordinators (Karate master too) Mr.Murugan. We were talking to Mr.Raju for more than 90 minutes about their activities. It was amazing to see that they have scaled huge heights, especially the 15 year old and continuing commitment. We understood that it would have been difficult for them to align their personal life & family to achieve what they are today. Their family should have been supporting a great deal too.

Mr.Murugan accompanied us for lunch and shared lots of insights about the origin and the growth of the organization. It was amazing to see that SPPD became a registered NGO when they were 21 years old.

I stayed that night at Ganga’s home & Visu proceeded to his house. I found again one more person related to these activities. That was Ganga’s mother Mrs. Saroja Sundararajan. She served as Headmaster in one of the schools in Musiri & had done many good things to students. To list few of them: she had donated footwear to all her students, had been instrumental in getting an government allotted but not donated (implemented) wheelchair to one of her girl students. I could feel how the mother of the girl, who had carried her daughter all the way to school everyday for years, would have felt.

We had a nice discussion. I could sense that she is more than willing to do something more, though she is retired from her services recently. I cautioned her that I may disturb her in future in activities related to education. She was readily obliging to help.



That night Ganga & I went to the nearby hill temple in his bullet. I hope Ganga would not mind since I have not pictured his bullet & displayed that here. Though the doors of the temple was closed, we enjoyed the sunset & climbing 300 small steps. We stood sometime in the wide Cauvery bridge, feeling the bridge vibrations whenever a heavy truck passes. We drove back to his home for dineer. I was very tired that I slept twice when I was pillion riding. I took the driver’s seat to concentrate and we were ready for the dinner.

We ate hot chappatis and retired early. Due to my tiredness I slept immediately.

20/9/09

Mr.Raju introduced Mr.Lenin, a retired military employee on the first day. We promised them that we would visit them the second day to take a look at machines not utilized in SPPD & for farm visit.

Visu & me took Ganga’s bullet the next day & visited SPPD on day2. Visu piloted the bullet & I was a worried person sitting behind experiencing uncertainty throughout.

We visited SPPD farm and came across the variety of things they do. It took us 15-20 min ride across different terrains to reach the farm. Mr.Lenin spearheaded us in his bike.

Though a 1 hour visit is not sufficient at all, we could feel if not un derstand the quantum of work going on. The two things that attracted us were the special and a different kind goat (with long ears) and the chicken incubator. It was really lovely & funny to se e the chick posing to our camera from inside. There, we saw two colored chicks. We commented that those were li ke cine stars among ordinary chicks, to entertain other chicks. Yes. They were brought from outside (not hatched in incubator).

Due to time constraint we rushed to SPPD main office & finished our lunch to return to Visu’s house. We handed over Ganga’s bullet in his house & took 3 buses to reach Visu’s place. It was nice traveling around/inside the village greenery. I used to experience that when I go to Madurai, but not in last 2 years.

We proceeded to trichy bus stand after finishing dinner at Visu’s place & after warm spiritual send off from Visu’s parents.

SPPD offered a one week trip to I-ViL members to visit SPPD & see how things can be done in collaboration. I am very sure that I am not aware of many more activities that SPPD do & have not described all in this travelogue. I am looking forward to stay there & cover all the activities they are involved in when I get a 1 week break. Lots of opportunities for learning….

Thanks to Visu’s brother Venkatesh who dropped us by riding triples on both the days. Thanks to Visu’s & Ganga’s mother for feeding us with lots of chapathi, Idly & Dosa (esp me). Thanks to Ganga for lending us his Bullet. Thanks people, you made this surprise trip lovely & memorable.

Why learning is good and important?

Learning something enables the need to communicate with others, listen to others and makes you open minded. You may otherwise stagnate without listening to others & hence will stop learning too.

The feeling of "unknown things" makes you humbler, politer and a good listener. May be I will call "Ignorance - a bliss" in this case, provided you decide to & keep moving from "These things are Known to me" to "Many things are Unknown to me".

You will become "Ignorant of your ignorance" otherwise. The "don't knows" drives us to ward-off the ignorance and this becomes a chain reaction while we learn. The other way is also a chain reaction. “Learning to Stagnation” also happens the same way. "I know - Lesser questions - Lesser listening - Closing up - I know".

If you love to listen to others, you are on the first & big step of learning.
Second step is making mistakes
Third step is improvement
Fourth step - Keep following any or all of steps 1 to 3



The beauty about this is: like the world and nature, learning also does not have any destination and there is abundant ignorance to be warded off as you proceed further.

Note: These are my own mid-night thoughts. The mention YOU refers to myself to get the message straight when I read this again.

Solar eclipse 220709

We (Vipul, Gopinath, Sailesh, Madhav & me) eagerly went to Birla Planetarium to witness the rare Longest eclipse of the century. On the way, we saw our BOSS (Deepak) sitting on Front gate busstop with his bag. He was coming back from his hometown. We picked him up too, balancing equally 3 people in each bike (Mine & Gopi's). After reaching BP, we saw a lengthhhhhy queue waiting to get the paper filament to see the eclipse. We were thinking that they are gonna screen in LCD, but they gave us the paper filament & told us that we can see from anywhere. So we came back to IIT and explored our own way to have a glimpse of the eclipse.

Thanks to Heman (Aero) for giving this idea to shoot in cam...

No more words in this blog, Jus enjoy the pics...










More Photos..... http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Album.aspx?uid=5766722579098459418&aid=1248206140

10 reasons why India will not become a superpower

These 10 reasons were published in a Rediff article & here is the link

http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2009/jul/14/slide-show-1-why-india-will-not-be-a-superpower.htm

1.Religious extremism
2. Left wing extremism
3. Corruption
4. Decline of public institutions
5. Rich-poor divide
6. Environmental degradation
7. Apathy of the media
8. Political chaos
9. Border disputes
10.Unstable neighbour



What is my role in this? Just read & go. I do not think so. So, in what ways I can contribute?

Here is the list having 10 reasons. I hereby pledge to do whatever I can in specific areas. Ofcourse I think I cannot involve myself in all the aspects mentioned here. So I decide to do my part (whichever of these 10 come on my way).

Why should not we use opportunities like this (whenever someone says that we cannot become superpower) to think in what ways we can do the improvement for our Mother India?

So here I go.

I pledge to take points 3,5 & 6 (Corruption, Rich-poor divide, Environmental degradation) on myself and will work towards nation's best interest.

YOU?

Smiles......

Smile may be an action or reaction. As action it can happen only in a few ways but it happens mostly as reaction. So reacting…….

I have categorized these smiles based on people whom I met at IIT Madras. These people are my classmates now. May add more people in future. This is arranged in alphabetical order. What do these ppl have in mind when they smile?.....Here we go..........

Anyways smile – Neetha, you cannot know what I am thinking, anyway I will smile since you are my classmate

Chuck it smile – Hey Guru shall we go for a movie? What? That movie? - Chuck it, shall we study for tomorrow’s exam? Its nothing – chuck it, Finance is difficult guru, It is not marketing - chuck it.

Content smile- KRK- who can turnaround this world? I have my own way let me walk & think

Continuous smile – Harshita Whats your name? smile, Oh I saw you in adyar – smile, Why don’t you talk little? – smile, Why are you smiling for everything? – smile, Okay she will not answer any of the questions, ok harshita see you later – smile

Don’t know smile – Vyas, he smiles often for this reason. Great guy – takes don’t knows as awards

Energy smile – Braggy it means there are few beats in high frequency because someone is drumming inside

Got it smile - Anu, her understanding on the topic or discussion is proportional to the frequency of her head sway

Not possible smile – Karthik, did u take that Xerox? There is so much, how will you take?

Planning smile – Ruchi,… how can I pull this guy’s leg – smile, crack some sledging – smile, tontinue – smile

Probing smile – Vaibhav, had this guy studied what I didn’t? ask him, get the info, smile, ask him, get the info, try again, smile, oh you didn study?, got the info, smile

Protective smile – Neelima, don’t ask me, I don’t have any opinion, anything is right, handle your headache yourself

Nothing but smile – Chinmay - I got 1^st prize - smile, I forgot my key – smile, your cycle is punctured? – smile, see you – smile

Sweet smile – Karthikeyan, its not that his smile is sweet, but he smiles because he is thinking about sweets

Targeted smile – Sudhakar, is any girl coming? Smile.....when will she come? – smile, Will she come at all? – smile

Thinking smile – Chetan Thinking...How to relate this to a PJ

Just smile – Balaji, I don’t have anything / any reason inside me for laughing, just spreading the sagging curve

If you do not like the way I have projected you, Please let me know, I will remove that content.

Others please don’t feel bad/happy that I did not write about you, it is not that you don’t smile; it is just that this ignorant fellow could not decipher and comprehend the content in your smile.

Anyways I will update this blog whenever this tube light glows, so keep smiling when we meet. (That’s what I want)...This is just a start....

Getting consumed in the process...

More than a blog, I want to convey a message to the readers through this blog which can inspire better thoughts and action.

Here is the flow of the idea that triggered this blog. I was taking tea in my temporary office. Tea is given in a paper cup here and there is a stirrer made of plastic given along with the cup.

We need to add sugar separately based on necessity and preference. I was looking at the stirrer and was thinking about how this plastic monster is occupying our lifestyle more and more. Suddenly this thought crossed my mind. We are given the stirrer to make the sugar dissolve. Why cannot we have a stirrer which is made of sugar and dissolves when we stir?

This is not new. My mind collects similar usages that are happening already. Don’t we eat cone ice-cream in a similar manner? Nothing is left at the end. Meaning NO residue, NO wastage and NO By-product. Candle works the similar way, yet it leaves fumes and wax again (wax out of wax).

Yet, the spoon or stirrer does not do the job perfectly. At the bottom of every cup there is at least 20% of sugar that we added before and is left for dustbin ants.

Can we relate this to basic and important blocks of any business? - Product and process design.

The above said examples fall into process from customer’s stand point. Product design of similar motive would have greater impact and yield beneficial results. But considering the easy of the lot, the process design, can we have processes which yield no residue, no waste and no by product? Will that not be so good to the environment which we deteriorate for/by our way of living everyday?

As a responsible managers or designers or persons for that matter, will that not be good way to alleviate environmental pollution?

For a feel, let us get into some arithmetic (If you got the point already, please skip to next paragraph)

There are 400+ working people in this office. Assuming everyone take 2 tea spoons of sugar for every cup, 2 cups of tea or coffee every day, the consumption is not only tea or coffee but

1. 800 paper cups (which cant be avoided unless if everyone choose to use their mugs to reduce paper cups consumption, Thanks to people who are already using their own mugs)
2. 800 plastic stirrers
3. 520 tea spoons of sugar (only the wastage)

If there is a product like a sugar stick which dissolves very fast and complete, then there is no need for this plastic stirrer. (24000 plastic stirrers / month getting dumped into soil will be avoided and 15600 tea spoons of sugar/month will not get wasted)

Is these kinds of considerations considered before designing a product or before implementing the way of consuming a product? God only knows.

If we can develop products or implement the processes in our daily life which gets consumed totally in the process itself, then I feel we are doing less harm to environment. There are many examples and justifications that can be told. One of them is

Carbon monoxide (CO) which is lethal than CO2 is formed just because of incomplete combustion of the fuel with less than enough oxygen (partial combustion). Achieving complete combustion is one of the struggles that haunts engine manufacturers today.

One of my professors told me that “One should not get consumed in the process and should be focusing on the greater picture in life”. That is very true for us (humans), but I feel it is not for the man made products and processes.

So please make so many processes where the product itself gets consumed in the process without any residue or sediments or by-products rather than using or producing external aids to process the consumables.

Completeness will be achieved only when there is complete dissolution and hence……Create your world which has products and processes that get consumed completely in the process itself.

"That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great." ~ Willa Cather

My Chennai marathon

Hi,
In this post, I have recorded my experiences about my participation in Chennai marathon happened on Feb 15 2009. I have orgainised the content into topics / Q&A format for better reading.







http://www.chennaimarathon.org/

Route:

Anna Square – Labour Statue – Gandhi Statue – Foreshore Estate – Greenways Point – Malar Hospital – Besant Avenue - 4th Main Road – Vellankanni Church and back..

Pre-race meal:

Had only water since the race started at 6.30AM. I was eagarly waiting for the race (to beat my last record of 9Kms non-stop) all along the night that I woke up 2 times in between to check the time.

Warm-up:

I did cycling for 15 min. It was a necessity for me to reach my Motor bike. And I walked half kilometer to the venue.


Race details-finish:

I stopped at 17KM mark. I decided to stop at 16KM when I was crossing 15KM mark. But fortunately, I could not find the 16KM mark on the way so was waiting for mark to finish my race. (The organizers wrote each kilometer on the road). I did not expect that I would run this much. I set my target as 12KM so that I would cross double digit at least. But to my surprise I held on and pushed my limits. But I went with an open mind of finished the 21.1Km race though I thought I may not be able to.

What went well?

I was determined not to miss this opportunity. I know that this is not a funny race to just try since I did that last time. I was into it and I know that I am going to benchmark this race for my future races. I believed that this is a golden chance to proving my physical fitness and perseverance to myself. I determined to grow in terms of the distance covered. My theme for the race was to run consistently at the same speed till I finish and the run should be a non-stop one.

For me the feeling of 120 minute non-stop run is too good to realise and relish, that I can hold-on my body running for this much time. I did not want to succumb to peer pressure by running fast (along with the group, which I did last time). I wanted to avoid the mistake of drinking water early as I did last time. I had my first sip at the end of 13KM, which was too much a time to have a sip of water according to my friend.

I chose to have only two sips and threw away the remaining instead of emptying the water packet. That helped me a lot. Last time I took a half liter water bottle at the end of 3Kms and was consuming that frequently, not wanting to throw the bottle with 75% water. That increased the resistance inside me last time. I was cautious about all those mistakes that I did last time and was closely observing the body on when & where it finds difficulty.


Lessons learnt / observations:

As I said was observing my body closely and I was eagerly waiting to know which part of my body tries to stop me.

5 km mark: I felt a little fatigue and pain on my right knee. After one more km, I felt pinching in my right hand side stomach due to mismatch of breathing and running. So I slowed down a bit and when I was comfortable again, I increased to normal speed. But I was telling to myself that I should never buckle to any of these smaller issues, but when distance increases each of these smaller issues will seem to be much bigger and will try to stop.

9 km mark: The knee pain and the pinch came back but little strongly. These reactions are real ones, related to the distance. I told my body to accustom to these, and I can tell that the body will really get accustomed to these when one runs 2 to 3 kms with those. And after sometime I felt not to stop and keep continuing.

10km mark: I felt my hands getting little numb because of repeated to and fro motions. I rose my hands up and was doing some horizontal and vertical stretch while running. This broke the monotony.

13km mark: But as I crossed 13kms, the frequency of the numbness increased and I need to do the stretches frequently.

Finally the one thing that made me stop was the heat that was generated at my foot and it was getting transmitted towards my knees. I felt this at 13km itself and tried spraying some water on my knees but it did not help much. Literally my mind did not wanted to stop but this heat made my legs tired. I discussed with my friend (who finished half marathon) later and he said he did not feel that much heat. My conclusion is that I need to work on choosing my shoes. May be I am thinking of buying an appropriate shoe for marathon running.

What I need to work on?

I need to work on the timing. 17KM in 120 minutes is very slow and I need to test my body at different speeds.