Bengaluru Boys

The other day as I sat down to watch the Royal Challengers of Bengaluru play the Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League at Bengaluru I was struck at the emotional discord that Rahul Dravid seemed to be going through as he went out for the toss. Rahul received huge applause from a partisan Bengaluru crowd...they were cheering the enemy. Rahul Dravid skippers the RR from Jaipur.
The enormity of playing against your home team at a ground where you learnt your cricket must have sunk in, even as the crowd chanted his name. Rahul Dravid is talked about as the next big thing in cricket administration and one day is expected to be the chairman of the International Cricket Council, the premier role in cricket administration. The cap stone, to a wonderful career on and off the cricket field.
As Rahul Dravid, left the centre, post the toss, there was this other bloke, in the RCB dug out looking relaxed and cheerful. Another Bengaluru boy and legend, Anil Kumble now mentors the RCB. Anil played for the RCB a couple of years and retired immediately on hearing that he was not selected by the RCB. His reason for quitting was that he could not dream of playing against Bengaluru, should he be selected by another franchise, as in the case of Rahul Dravid. The ethos and principle is fantastic. One loves the game and just wants to play, the other wants to play within defined parameters and not against his own ex collegues. Both made their choices and right in their own way and both fantastic role models and individuals.
Importantly both great Bengaluru boys!
As Shakespeare said in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

Bangalore Tales!

About two score years ago, to this day, much before president Obama made a mention of the city and much before the word ‘Bangalored’ entered the English dictionary and hugely before Bangalore became Bengaluru much to the chagrin of the non Kannadiga, Bangalore was on the front pages of almost every major newspaper of the world.
It all started with, the former Indian Prime Minister being blown to bits by a suicide bomber in a small, decrepit, dust bowl of a town in Tamil Nadu called Sriperumbudur. The local master mind of this rather dastardly act relocated to Bangalore and made his home not too far from where I stay in the suburbs of Bangalore.
To cut to the chase, Sivarasan, more famously called the one eyed jack and his cronies died by their own hand when cornered by the police in the house that they were holed up in. Sivarasan blew his brains out and the rest chose to bite on a capsule of cyanide and apparently died in a ghastly embrace.
Apparently the police were lead to this solitary house by the local milk distributor, Haalina Muniyamma or milk Muniyamma. This brave lady showed the chutzpah to identify and inform the police of the whereabouts of the dangerous killers.
In the hoopla surrounding the event she was promised a reward, which has not materialized as promised. She is further astounded that Priyanka Gandhi, daughter of the slain PM, visited one of the conspirators in jail and ‘forgave’ her!( Vote Bank Politics is what some might say ) ‘What of my poor family?’, laments the old lady. ‘Does anybody care?’ To add insult to injury Muniyamma’s son was denied a police job because he could not grease the right palm, she says. She had led a simple life. Her life changed after the incident at Konakunte. For some time, she even had to live under police protection. "I was promised reward of Rs 10 lakh but nothing happened. After much pleading, I got Rs 60,000 in 1992,'' she recalls.
What a sham.Whoever said, that the world is a fair place?

The Quiet Bangalorean!

Two things struck me over the last week or so. The first being the fact that men in power clutch at anything and everything including straw when they fear they are drowning and two, the entertainment that the mundane provides.
Both have to do with the Indian cricket team’s performance in England and the recall of Rahul Dravid to the one day team after two years. It is not coincidental that India did not play top class teams abroad during this period and now that they are, performance clearly separates’ men from the boys.
While the cricketing pundits in India do not seem to be overly surprised, the man himself (Dravid) has since announced his retirement from pajama cricket, post the series for which he has been selected. He probably realizes that he will be jettisoned once the team returns to India and its flat tracks where the big boys with bigger endorsements will come out to murder hapless bowlers in the heat. He saved the selectors the trouble of dropping him.
Former India batter, Sanjay Manjerekar was at his best when he observed a few days ago that when people saw the God of cricket, Sachin Tendulkar when he was 14 years old there was no doubt that they were watching a genius in the making. Manjerekar later captained Rahul Dravid and says he never thought that Dravid would reach the heights that he has and the tough bloke that he has turned out to be. In short Dravid has over achieved.
In doing so he has shown us the importance of intelligence, dedication, simplicity, hard work and focus. Characteristics that never seem to go out of fashion, the size of endorsements not withstanding! You can also be certain that he will be there trying to keep the English bowlers out, while the Indian Institute of Management @ Ranchi, India, attempts to map beleaguered Indian captain M.S.Dhoni’s brain, to determine his leadership traits and style.
Slapstick and comedy are never in short supply.The probable reason why we smile amidst our daily chaos and silently salute quiet blokes like the Dravid's who keep us afloat!

Namma Bengaluru!

It is fairly routine these days to hear of people stamping Bengaluru as the next 'innovation' hub of the world.No less. I first heard it from my friend Bob Hoekstra, erstwhile chief of Philips in India and an avid admirer of the city.So much so, Bob has gone the extra mile in setting up an innovation centre in India and lives a good part of his life in Bengaluru.I was initially surprised, but see the sense in it now.
Every once in a lifetime there comes a time when things fall into place and as Malcolm Gladwell would say, we are at the 'Tipping Point'. Bengaluru's tipping point has arrived and is well recognized.
One of the contributors to its status as the next Silicon Valley, is its highly educated immigrant population and here it has echoed California's Silicon Valley. What drove innovation in the valley? The immigrants of course!Many Indian!
One could argue that Mumbai has just as many immigrants or more. Maybe true, but the qualitative difference is in the education levels of immigrants in Bengaluru. Few other cities come even within sniffing distance.Innovation needs education of the qualitative kind.
The immigrant is an interesting animal. He does not fear failure because he/she is fairly anonymous in a city which is not theirs. This fosters risk taking which is a vital ingredient for innovation and entrepreneurship. Indians fear failure and a person who fails is anathema to our society. An alien city provides the cover of a protective cloak to try, fail and rise again.
Are there challenges? Sure there are........corruption, resistance from earlier settlers to a changing way of life and so on and the former will have to be tackled and the latter respected.
Bengaluru is a melting pot of success and if you are not here you might just be missing history in the making!

Terror & Traffic....

This morning, I spent a couple of interesting hours at the Indian Institute of Science at Bengaluru. As we crossed the, gate and stopped at a security check post to sign in, I was puzzled to see, sparse security.
About five years ago,the institute, India's premier scientific research place was subject of a LeT sponsored, terrorist attack.The lone terrorist, firing indiscriminately killed one scientist and injured a handful. The attack was inept & poorly executed, though brilliantly conceptualized.
Just imagine a nation crippled with its top scientists in rocketry,physics, space and chemistry gone in a single attack!
I asked, the professor that I met, as to why, security was so poor & and he said, that the scientists were against having tight security on a educational campus. A true academician and contrast this with the way a terrorist thinks, in killing indiscriminately, with the larger goal of destroying our intellectual capital!
While the plan to attack the IISC was brilliant why was the execution, on the appointed day, so poor? It is well known fact that, in this part of the world, we plan brilliantly but execute poorly. Apparently, there was a second terrorist involved, but did not turn up with weapons at the appointed hour!!!!!!!!!!
How did this come about? Did the terrorist turn yellow & decide not to go through with the strike? In fact what saved, IISC that fateful day was, the Bengaluru traffic! The second terrorist was caught in a traffic snarl putting the entire operation into jeopardy...........
These days when I'm in bumper to bumper traffic, crawling, I don't curse, but just sigh, turn the AC up and listen to Selena Gomez crooning on the radio, with benign patience. After all the traffic jams did us some good!

To live and work at the Institute is a special privilege. In reflection, an exchange between Morris Travers, the first Director, and Lord Willingdon, the then Viceroy, is worth recounting. Willingdon went around the Institute in June 1914 and said: "I had no idea that there was anything like this in India". Travers responded: "There is nothing like it in India; and nothing better in Great Britain".

However as a lay Bangalorean, I would sleep better, if our places of higher education were protected better from gun toting thugs!!!!!!!!!!!