A Blogger

Marooned on an information island,
Deep within the Internet Ocean.

I scribble on a palm leaf, put it inside a bottle
and throw it out on the sea.

Some one may some day read my message,
and savour the thoughts I had.

Happy Birthday Blogger.com

चलो कावेरी स्कूल चलो।।

चलो कावेरी स्कूल चलो।।
अज्ञान के अंधकार को हरने।
चलो कावेरी स्कूल चलो।।
नया दिवस है। सूर्य उदित है।
ब्रह्मज्ञान से देश उदित हो।
विज्ञान ही ब्रह्मज्ञान है।
तुम इसमे भी विज्ञः बनो।
चलो कावेरी स्कूल चलो।।
इंटरनेट ने दसुदेव को कुटुम्भः बनाया।
तुम इस विद्या ने प्रवीन बनो।
चलो कावेरी स्कूल चलो।।
सूर्य पूर्व मे प्रकाशमान है।
विज्ञान से विश्व प्रकाशमान है।।
देश मे फिर क्यौं अंधकार है।
अज्ञान के अंधकार को हरने।
चलो कावेरी स्कूल चलो।।
सूर्य पूर्व मे प्रकाशमान है।
सूर्य से तुम प्रकाशमान हो।।
ॠतिज के तुम क्षितिज पर पहुंचो।
ज्ञान ॠतिज से देश को तुम उदित करो।
चलो कावेरी स्कूल चलो।।
--आशीष बंध्योपाध्याय -२००४ (c) www.Ashish.Banerjee.name, 2004

The Joy Of Entrepreneurship

Testing limits of possibilities is an incorrigible human instinct. Trying to extend those limits is what drives the people driven by passions, from formulae I racers to mountaineers to entrepreneurs.

So who is an entrepreneur? The Cambridge dictionary defines entrepreneur as someone who starts their own business, especially when it involves risks.

Having said that, we must differentiate between taking controlled risks and gambling. In gambling you loose all and sometimes win some. Yudhishtir, the lord of justs, in the Indian epic of Mahabhrata, certainly did not demonstrate an entrepreneurship spirit, when he lost all his wealth and wife in a gambling spree with uncle Shakuni. Shakuni was using a biased dice. Had Yudhishtir been an entrepreneur, he would have cut his losses early on in the gaming session. Then would have struck an partnership with uncle Shakuni and patented his dice design, then would have sold the gaming rights along with franchising to the Las Vegas casinos!

Therefore entrepreneurship is about, identifying an opportunity out of a threat and then moving ahead with a strategic intent to make money.

Entrepreneurs are the first generation business entrants, with guts of steel and who are determined to make money out of the ideas, that they are passionate about.

To start your own business you need not have a ton of cash. Microsoft, HP, Ford Motors, Infosys, Biocon all started small and at times in a garage!

No holds bar

Age is also no bar. Bill Gates started his company when he was a teenager and KFC founder Colonel Sanders started his enterprise in his sixty's.

Qualification is also no bar. Dhirubhai Ambani was a high school graduate while Narayan Murthy has an engineering degree from IIT.

In fact, I can cite more college drop outs as successful entrepreneurs than who have fancy degrees. Michael Dell dropped out of University of Texas at Austin when he was 19 years old to start Dell, with a $1000 investment. Dell is now the largest computer hardware company. Bill Gates also dropped out of college to start Microsoft in his parent's garage.

In the Indian context, I have already mentioned that Dhirubhai Ambani was high school pass out.

Lijjat Papad was started was seven semi literate poor women with a borrowed Rs. 80. It took four decades of entrepreneurship to clock a Rs. 281 crore turnover in financial year 2001-2002 compared to Rs. 6,196 in the first year of operation.

Why there are so many successful drop-outs who have made it big?

There are two dominant schools of thought on this issue. First one says that the opportunity cost of a college graduate to start a new venture, which has a success rate of 1 in 10, is higher than a dropped out colleague. That is so, because a graduate is more likely to get a job than a drop-out.

Another school of thought says that the drop outs are non conformists and they can therefore think differently. Albert Einstein was written off by his maths teachers at school and after passing out from Swiss National Polytechnic in Zürich, and his teachers there did not think highly of him.

The same school of thought suggest that the college graduates are conformists and therefore only suitable for the corporate rat race. And, even if you win the rat race, you still end up being a rat.

How to get out of the rat race?

Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, defines a cash flow quadrant. I strongly recommend this book to escape the rat race. In a nutshell he says that it is not your employer duty to make you rich. You have to do it yourself. Your employer will give you enough to survive and a bit more to keep you running up the hamsters treadmill.

In order to get rich or at least to get the thrill of trying to get rich, start your own enterprise.

How much money is needed to start a venture?

His or her prime resources are human capital and not financial capital. In fact, entrepreneurship is about converting the human capital into financial capital. For example Lijjat Papad started with a Rs. 80 of funding. Do you have Rs. 80 in your pocket now? If not! Then you could always borrow, just like the seven enterprising founders of Lijjat did.

Next step:

So now that you know that you can garner the magic sum of rupees eighty, you need to know how to go about starting your own money making venture.

You can contact one of the Technology Entrepreneur's Park promoted by Department of Science and Technology near you. Or you can contact TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) chapter near you, see http://www.tie.org.

I wish you luck and I am sure you will find it a thrilling experience.

The joy of entrepreneurship is walking the talk, on a tight rope with no strings attached.

Suggested Reading and References:

The Lijjat Papad story: http://www.indiatogether.org/2003/feb/eco-lijpapad.htm

The Rich Dad, Poor Dad. http://www.richdad.com/rich-dad-poor-dad-book.html

The Indus Entrepreneurs. Http://www.tie.org

STEP Noida : http://pib.nic.in/archieve/lreleng/lyr2001/ raug2001/29082001/r290820019.html

Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive by Harvey Mackay (ASIN:0394577361)

High Stakes, No Prisoners by Charles Ferguson (ISBN: 0812931432 )

About the Author:

Ashish Banerjee, ashish@oecom.co.uk, is CTO and founder of Osprey E-Commerce Ltd.,UK. He has also founded VServe Solutions Ltd. In UK.

Ashish Banerjee has more than 16 years of experience as a software developer. He has experience of designing and developing software for USA, UK and Germany. He has been a nominee for Dewang Mehta award for Innovation in IT for year 2002-2003. He has guided more than 12 masters of technology level projects with IETE (Institute of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers). He has contributed a number of articles in trade magazines and Internet. He has co-authored a C# Web Services book (ISBN: 1861004397) published by Wrox in USA and UK. He has been recognised by Microsoft as Dot Net Community Star of India.

Warped Spacetime

Infinite states of mind,
change over spacetime.
Infinite instances flow over time.
Infinite instances, but one design.
One design and one goal,
to explore the unknown,
to explore the Self,
to improve over time.
Its an infinite journey over the N-dimension,
but warped to 4-dimensioned spacetime.
Its an endless journey,
of Self discovery.
Over the endless pathways,
on a Mobis strip of curved spacetime.
-- Ashish Banerjee 6 August 2004.

Julie: A Film Review

Julie: a film review

rating: 2 star (so-so)

© Ashish Banerjee, All rights reserved, 2004.

In a nutshell, it is more or less a soft pornographic docudrama. Where a small town girl is justified in taking to prostitution for having rejected an indecent proposal. Then the prostitute is married to a famous industrialist on a live TV show.

The main character of this film, Julie is a small town simple girl from Goa.

Her first boyfriend ditches her after their first physical encounter in favour of a richer girl, to grab his father-in-law's business. Julie then moves to Mumbai, helped by her air hostess friend, she lands into a personal assistant's job in a construction company.

Her suggestion to change the colour scheme of a housing project is an instant hit and she develops a reputation of a sort in the housing construction industry as a savy designer.

The reigning designer of her company looses his job on her account, but they fall in love. She again develops a physical relationship, in a span of a few meetings. This is in spite of having burnt herself once before. Probably she has not been aware of the adage, “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me!”

Her jobless designer boyfriend, uses her relationship with her and her charisma in the housing industry to land himself a big design contract with her current employer's competitor.

Here she quite easily agrees to work for her current employer while providing active help to the competitor. She has no moral issues on that; as she is probably not aware of non compete employment clauses nor does she has any moral obligation to the company which is providing her with a descent lively hood.

She then moves with her boyfriend and probably leaves her current employment. Loads of explicit scenes follows. She dares to bare but is not as saucy as Bipasha Basu. Probably this may be attributed to her studied detachment to the act of “love” making.

Her body language is separated from her emotions, making it look more like a pornographic stuff. I am talking about the scenes, when she is supposed to be passionately in love and not yet been initiated to the fold of the glamorised prostitution.

Anyway, her boyfriend's client gives her an indecent proposal, which she rejects tactlessly and ironically by her own free will, becomes a prostitute shortly thereafter!

A digression:

In the last 17 years of my career in software business, I have come across many female professionals in UK, USA, France and India, who have confided to me about many such incidences where they came across indecent proposals during the defining points of their career. All of them have overcome them without compromising, by the virtue of their ability to say NO without breaking the deal or offending the personal ego of the man with the power to say YES to the deal. Such is the power of personalty the successful women have, which sadly Julie lacks.

Sorry to digress, but I must narrate an incidence in my professional career. I was a technology consultant setting up a supercomputing research lab for a company. I had a big budget to spend on computers, so lots of companies were chasing me. Most persuasive was a gorgeous sales person, who had the propensity to wear short skirts and deeply cut blouses, revealing her well endowed assets. She had honed the act of “innocently” revealing her knickers into a fine art.

I took a great pleasure to make my then girl friend jealous by telling her that I was writing a program to compute the co-relation between the silky texture of the sales person skin and the curvatures of her cleavage and legs.

However, as the proposal did not make sense to me, I pleasantly rejected her company's proposal, after carefully studying her fascinating contours. I asked her if she minded my ogling, she had a good laugh and complemented my honest confession, but she said that she was sad that her instrument of virtual desire did not work on me, yet she appreciated my professional integrity.

She also challenged me that she will get the deal in spite of my objections. The bet was going out to have a cup of coffee, and I had to pay if she got the order, else she would pay. I gladly accepted it as I like “Win-Win” situations. (sorry wife, if you are reading this)

She then approached the program director. After each meeting she would come to say hello to me and would update me on how nearly the director's eyes fell off their sockets! Once she told me that the director literally drooled and slurped.

One day she came out red faced and confided to me about the indecent proposal our program director had made to her. I was about to react, by blowing the whistle, when she reminded me about the little bet we had. I asked her if she would stoop so low as to take it laying? She winked at me and said “What you see is all you get!”. She then stopped visiting us thereafter.

I was quite frank with the program director, he was quite open to me as well, to the extent that he would drop me to dates during the office hours! Since I had complained that I was not paid well enough to afford a car while my girlfriend had one of her own!

So, I went to him and took the mickey out of him for not being able to take the gorgeous sales person out, even for a simple cup of coffee! Visibly perturbed, he challenged me, if I could invite her to a cup of coffee. Since, I already had a “win-win” deal with her I went for a high stake bet with the director.

After a few days she came back in a stunning dress, the director was already having withdrawal symptoms for not having ogled at her stunning legs. When he asked the reasons for her long absence, she said that she wanted to visit him regularly, but her boss has asked her not to waste any more time with us as she is not able to clinch the deal. And if he wanted to see her any more she needed the order for her company.

In spite of my written objections, she promptly got the order without compromising herself physically and I happily paid for the coffee!

So the moral of the story is that one can reject an indecent proposal and yet clinch the deal without walking the last mile and into the sleaze.

My apologies for going off the tangent again, but you see the film was so illogical and boring that one tends to wander off. Anyway, lets come back to the film.

So Julie walks away in a huff rejecting the indecent proposal of the client, and tells her boyfriend, who rather than advising her to be diplomatic, encourages her to sleep with the client.

Rather than reasoning it out, she throws a tantrum. Thus Julie walk away from her boyfriend as well.

The script writer then tries to justify the broken relationship for her becoming a prostitute! This is the most absurd thing in this otherwise sensible script.

If she can justify becoming a prostitute because a client asked to her to sleep with him then she would have been much better off accepting the offer!

If she had any morals, and did not want it to be compromised, she had many other options open to her. Like, going back to Goa, to run her father's bakery. Or, if she wanted to stay in Mumbai, she was already well known as a designer within the housing and real estate industry and could have got a job in any other construction company.

But strangely, after refusing to sleep with the client she takes a pimp's advice and becomes a prostitute. Talk about fickle mindedness and life of short cuts.

Whatever her justifications are, she becomes a high flying call girl.

Julie's woody expressions during the explicit scenes could have been exploited by the director to depict her emotional detachment with the act of physical “love” making for sole reason for making money. But sadly the director fails to do so.

After a series of romantic accidents the most eligible bachelor, Shandilya, who is also a famous industrialist falls in love with her. Without caring to know about her background, proposes to her for a marriage. He talks about her, without naming her in a TV interview.

Julie ceases this opportunity and hounds the TV anchor for an interview. She tells the anchor, that she is a prostitute and in love with this famous person so she must interview her.

During this live interview, Shandilya arrives in the studio and agrees to marry her in spite of her professional and moral inclinations.

One good thing about this movie is that the regular melodramatic Bollywood baddies are thankfully missing.

But, if you are going to watch this film to drool at beautiful bodies than I would suggest you to go to the nude beaches at Cannes, south of France. The French women are more artistic in celebrating their heavenly gifts. Airfares are too expensive you say? Then next best option is to watch Bay-watch on Star TV, you will save a lots of time.

Then watching Bay-watch has many positive side effects. It will make your wife (or girl friend) jealous enough to workout regularly and to chisel out a great body, so that you could ogle at her. Thereafter, you would not have to go and watch movies like Julie and would spend more time together copulatively!