Random Musings

Last week was fully occupied by Satyam scam, most of the time being spent in jumping to extreme conclusions - one that says Raju confessed the truth and that Satyam is in trouble and the other being that he used the confession letter to start another scam and that money has been siphoned to Maytas/property buying, so Satyam may recover.

I have quite a few close friends (apart from ISBians) who are with Satyam and Maytas. Incidentally both the sectors these firms operate in have been hit hard by recession already and this scam comes another major blow.

Only reason that I could come up with for Raju's action is that as one climbs the ladder of success, he starts attracting too many close people around, who may not be connected to the reasons of your success and in the noise of their advise, rationale is lost and results in this kind of disaster.

I have traveled to Lonavala near Mumbai on an official trip. The most horrible thing is the Mumbai traffic. During this trip I managed to finish Arvind Adiga's "The White Tiger," and it's effect on me is this - it amplified my hatred towards the luxury car owners of Delhi (though Honda City, which is used in the book, is not a luxury car).

Traffic in Delhi is always a Prisoner's Dilemma situation. Everyone wants to go ahead but knows that following rules in a normal situation is the best behavior but then in Delhi no day is a normal day, so breaking the traffic rules is the only way to reach your destination. Always stay in the wrong lane, better in the middle of two lanes so that you can turn to the one that is moving fast. Every time I enter a traffic signal situation, almost invariable the car from the left cuts me and zooms ahead.

Every other car driver (or owner) thinks that his car is a Ferrari and every other car has to give way.

The other book I'm reading a little slowly is the Biography of Warren Buffet, written by Alice Schroeder. The author reiterates time and again that Warren Buffet has made much higher returns than the market while taking less risk. I have read little about Buffet earlier and I am relatively new to the Market, but from what I read, I felt that Mr. Buffet was taking unsystematic risk in a systematic way, there could've been a gain or loss. This must be the way to beat the market - take unsystematic risk in a systematic way and insure yourself.

Delhi's winter has been horrible and I am sure that the summer would be too. I am planning to visit Old Delhi and take long walks as I used to do in Hyderabad before the weather becomes really hot. Would appreciate any guidance.

That's all for now. See you again shortly

A Very Happy New Year

I always wondered why do we celebrate a New Year. Strongest association I have with a new year is that I would keep wrongly writing the year part of the date for sometime. Apart from this the zillion number of times I would repeat wish you happy new year. It feels nice that we have some reason to gift a wish and smile to each other as we tend to make good mornings formal and serious very quickly even at any place. In the bigger scheme of things I don't know how a year matters but as human beings we tend to make any kind of measure seriously and a year seems to be an important one.

Last year at ISB, I wasn't very happy with my performance, despite my diversity, dean's list, success in the most-participated-at-ISB-competition, I wasn't shortlisted by any of the consulting companies but then I have learnt my lesson in life that your plan and God's plan need not be the same and if your plan fails, God's plan will prevail - nice and easy way to excuse oneself of any sort of failure. After all human beings are supposed to be thinkers to make sense (awkward phrase).

2009 promises to be a year of different kind. Mankind screwed itself in a big way and created a catastrophe of a different kind. Will the collective intelligence succeed in coming up a with a text book solution and be able to implement it as meticulously; would be noble-prize or other-great-prize winning intellectuals be able to predict how the future would like; would be growth again or will it be sustainability or will it be the Green agenda. Lots of questions but no answers, in fact I don't think even the most powerful man can predict what route humanity is going to take in 2009.

We can take respite in one thing atleast. 2009 cannot be as bad as we are expecting it to be. Take my own case, my firm has been awarded the first ever license to build and operate a transmission line on the first day of the year and the project is going to take off even while three other project bids are under process. For me it's going to be year completely different from 2008. 2008 despite bringing me the most success in terms of money and fame has been a disappointing one from learning perspective but 2009 is already promising.

My reading has picked up and I'm reading a wide variety of books. I am reading Snowball, Stories by Sudha Murthy, some nice Telugu literature, apart from all the random readings. I have just started Snowball and I don't know why but I see lots of similarities between this book and Godfather (by Mario Puzo). Let's see how I would feel as I move further.

2009 is a year of challenge - it's going to test each and everyone of us on how we are going to take it up and handle it. Just keep the phrase "This too shall pass" in mind if you ever get bogged down