Switzerland

Switzerland is like a 5-star hotel in Mumbai, surrounded by relative mediocrity & poverty. Everyone outside is enamoured by its splendid facade, has heard stories of its spas & beach-facing swimming pools, and the tabloids catch the rich & famous zipping in & out.

Back in the day, when this 'hotel' started out, some of its enterprising owners realized their great location advantage, and invested in creating the best infrastructure for the biggest marketing campaign of all time - the Swiss Alps. Needless to say, it was a roaring success. And since so much money & effort was put behind making all this infrastructure, the 'prices' had to be prohibitively expensive. This meant only the richest of the rich could come & 'stay'.

As this started happening, the enterprising Swiss figured a common thread running through these rich visitors - their need to stash away their cash, secretly. So the 'hotel' started offering 'other' services as well, very discreetly. The rich paid more & more to enjoy the benefits. Over time, everyone from the waiters to the guy who sorted the hotel trash started earning enough to be driving around in Mercs - some did, some chose not to and even left. The 'hotel' continued to get facelifts, and the common people outside continued to look on with awe. But the 'benefits' that the hotel provided, known only to the rich few, became one of the biggest USPs of the hotel, keeping it well ahead of other magnificent hotels.

But then two strange things happened in quick succession.

The owners of the hotel were impressed with the stupendous growth the hotel was seeing, and wanted more. They realized that too many people were leaving and not enough coming in, especially for the kind of growth they wanted. So they decided, undoubtedly correctly, to let anyone from around the locality in to help work at the hotel. This was a strange thing as this was never ever done in the history of the hotel, which was always a closed, selective community. But it brought in fresh ideas & 'unspoilt' people who were willing to do whatever it takes to make their lives, and by design, the hotel's future a success.

The other strange thing that happened was that laws got passed to have a 'camera' in all 'hotels', including Switzerland, with full access for global governments. The carefully built, and biggest standing, USP of the hotel was no more. The rich and famous could no longer come in & get other services without having Big Brother watching them through that wretched tin can on the wall. Many clients swore never to come again. There were murmurs of some other hotels somehow having the ability to have a few rooms without cameras. Many of the rich & famous promptly began going there.

Business dropped dramatically at the hotel. Enough clients were not coming in.

What's worse, some of the original inhabitants of the hotel started complaining that the stream of folks from the locality were getting too many. There were meetings & demonstrations, and open rejection of some of the cultural ideas of the ‘new ones’.

The owners had no clue what had hit them. They had two problems to solve at the same time. One, how to get business back. And two, how to quell this discontent amongst some of its inhabitants against the people coming in.

Interestingly enough, these problems might be linked. But more on that, and the first problem, later.

Bowing to pressure from this dissenting group, the owners did the unthinkable. They made it everybody's problem by asking them to vote on whether the people from the locality should be allowed in. They thought, rather naively that this group was a minority and the problem would solve itself with the vote saying that everything's fine, “keep 'em comin' in”.

The result of that vote came on Sunday evening. A shocker, to say the least. 44% of the people didn't even bother voting. Of the 56% that did, 50.3% were the dissenting group. That's well less than a third of the total. But as it happens, the owners have to go by the result, and tell all those locality groups that they cannot allow people to come in indiscriminately. The two problems are now even bigger.

Had the owners' thoughts of a victory in the vote materialized, the people from the locality would have come in, with fresh ideas, hard work & ambition, and helped solve the first problem, of business going down. Because people trying hard find a way, eventually.

The once magnificent hotel is now at a crossroads, its future uncertain. The best bet for the owners would probably be to go back to the original USP, around which in the first wave of business was built - beautiful, natural gifts complemented with amazing infrastructure, and a dazzling marketing campaign. But they would need people, and if not recruiting from around the locality is a constraint, they might well fall short. They might need to take down pricing in pockets, so as to gain volumes, but then would existing infrastructure suffice?

Strong positive, business building steps need to be taken…

Else, the hotel is destined to die a slow, painful death, eventually taken over by those dissenters who think they can do without help.

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As a new member of the hotel staff, I find myself in the midst of this calm chaos. The natural wonders that this place possesses coupled with the painstakingly built infrastructure is even more amazing than what it looked from the outside. But the murmurs of dissent against 'us' just got a voice today. Albeit only 28%. Hope they realize that we're all eventually working for the prosperity of the same hotel, that's how the system was designed.

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Here's a link to the vote that happened - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/09/swiss-referendum-immigration-quotas

Happiness - II

In my first post on this topic, I had just about started exploring what is it that makes people happy. Its been over two months since that post...! (So much for trying to continue the series 'over the weekend'! How time flies..!)

Anyways, I had observed then that people in the towns and villages seemed visibly far happier than their big-city counterparts. I put this down to the lower expectations they had with their lives. Let me explore this notion a little further...

We're bombarded by information today. Be it the newspapers, television, internet or radio, they're all feeding us with reams and reams of data. This shapes the way perceive ourselves and the world around us, how we think, what we look forward to, what we detest...

Small town people live in relative oblivion. They're in their own little worlds - the place they live, their little locality and the place they work - things are generally very simple. When you speak with them, you're generally greeted by warm smiles and you can't help but notice their absolute zest and joy for life. (I came across a bunch of labourers in a small town close to Tirupati few days back... and these people were having a ball while working - passing around bricks and cement, singing songs and smiling ear to ear). One might argue that they're also exposed to a lot of information - Television & radio are now far more prevalent... Yes, but still, the language barrier means that they still watch and follow local programs. Their perceptions, thoughts, dreams are still largely, and very happily, local.

The situation is different for the city folk. My conjecture is that since city people are exposed to so much more information, they see a bigger world around them... They see that they're still not completely a part of this world.. Consequently, they want more money, a better job, more out of their relationships, better food... the list is endless.

Of course, there's nothing wrong in wanting it, is there? Everyone has ambitions. But the problem starts arising when they start expecting it, when they start saying "My life sucks coz I don't have x, y, z..." How often have we heard that statement? People live in frustration & denial of what they don't have yet... While, unfortunately, forgetting what they already have.

The concept of peer-pressure is also stronger in the city environment. Competition is intense, and no-one really wants to be left away from the crowd. Most people find it difficult to stay true to themselves in their eagerness to 'fit in' or 'get ahead'. This is where the city-folk differ most from their up-country counterparts. They are well and truly in the rat race to nowhere. They see people around them getting there and when they don't, it opens the door for Mr/Ms Unhappiness to walk right in.

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Where does the discussion so far then leave us? Are we any closer to unraveling the mystery behind the small-town happiness?

(to be continued...)

Stop

Two unpublished drafts stare at my numb mind as I watch in shock at the events happening in Bombay. I'm sick in the stomach. Uncontrollable tears. Confusion. Anger. Despair.

Please stop. Please.

Of Flying Condoms :-S

I came across this article in today's Times of India, and couldn't help but wonder - WHY, o WHY!?

UN to send 220,000 condoms to Burma

Bangkok: The UN will send nearly a quarter of a million condoms into cyclone-hit Myanmar to help needy survivors with no access to contraceptives, a UN official said on Tuesday.
So far the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) says it has sent 72 800 condoms to survivors struggling to maintain their family planning after the storm hit in early May. A total of 218,400 condoms will be delivered, UNFPA aid advisor Chaiyos Kunanusont said. Flights are also carrying reproductive health kits, which include razors for cutting umbilical cords, clean sheets for delivering babies and enough contraceptive pills and injections to last 3 390 women three months. AFP

I wonder if people would be even thinking about sex (let alone safe sex!) when there's no food to eat or a roof over their heads!?

The UN would probably (I sure hope so) have decided to send stuff to help pregnant women out, and also added a few condoms to kinda fill the package. But what gets highlighted in the media (with the 'catchy' headline) is that a quarter of a million condoms are flying out to Burma!

Wake up!

If it weren't for the amount of sports I watched and played, I could have safely been called a geek. An ardent fan of The National Geographic Channel & The Discovery Channel, I am often frowned upon by my "I love VH1 / MTV / Channel V" brother :-D

The NGC programming is fantastic. The well-written scripts, clear enunciation and breathtaking photography (and off late, digital imagery) make it a pleasurable experience. My favourite programs are nearly always ones which focus on some of the endangered species. I think such programmes deserve special attention from the government as they can go a long way in educating the masses about how grave the situation is. Maybe, it could offer some concessions to the channel for 'x' hours of such programming. There's a lot of stuff about dinosaurs and pre-historic creatures, which although thoroughly entertaining, doesn't fall under the purview of the 'special attention' I mentioned.

Take for example, the Siberian Tiger, the world's largest cat. Oh what I'd give to see it in the wild some day!! A most magnificent animal. I've seen several programmes dedicated to it, each one of them leaving me awestruck, but also sad. Sad, because there are only about 500 left in the wild today. There was a time when thousands of these beautiful creatures roamed the snowy forests of Russia and China. But a century of savage hunting & logging by irresponsible and selfish humans brought the population into double-digits! Its with the support & education by channels like the NGC that this figure is up to where it is today.

I was wondering how it would be to go on a tour to Siberia and its surrounding regions. A quick google search helped me to this link. Its an Australian Adventure Travel company and has a tour which sounds quite exciting.

Noticeably, I couldn't quickly find any Indian companies which seem to organize such exotic tours. Maybe they operate in a very niche market and are not really visible on the net. But this does look like a possible business opportunity. I know there have been b-plans presented with tours and tie-ups for such kind of places within the country, but there is a chance to build like a world-wide brand which does ONLY such kind of tours. If its sold well to the right people, maybe it could do well.

Coming to the Discovery Channel, unfortunately I lost interest once our cable operator started beaming only the Hindi version, which sucks, quite a bit. Earlier, the programmes on Health, Science and Technology were engaging and informative. I'd go to the extent of saying that I learnt more from the DC than from some of my text-books. Now, sadly, the channel seems to be veering towards sensationalist programming, like one of the several terrible news channels around... trying to make a suspense thriller out of some natural situation, complete with acting, props et al. But that's what the public seems to be demanding.

Look around the newspapers and you'll know what I'm talking about. The Times of India has been reduced to a newspaper with lots of sleazy pics, snippets of gore and some semblance of 'real news' in between. (And not to mention endless ads).

Check out the Pg.4 from today's TOI. This, apparently, is CITY 'news'. When is the world going to wake up!?!?

The Why of it

Two months of intense action - including the likes of watching endless hours of HIMYM, movies, chatting, random browsing (TV & Internet) & not to mention, 32 trips to the friggin Mumbai passport office - has, unfortunately, started getting quite boring. So I thought to myself 'Lets change it around a lil bit' and here is my 2nd attempt at a blog.. (ooh how incredibly exciting) What happened to the first one? Well, 'twas on for quite a while, in my engineering days, but had like 7 posts in 2 years, and after joining work, it promptly went off the radar.

With still a month to go before I (re)-join the corporate world, I'm attempting to give my chances of getting the Carpel Tunnel Syndrome a boost. Hopefully, its something I'll continue even after I start work, but fingers crossed about that...

So, here goes nothin...!