I want to Run

I want to Run
Run away to obscurity
To a place where they dont know me
Where there are no presumptions and no baggage
A place that offers to more than just a house and a place to sleep
To a life where we stop playing the chase the fame game and stop living the dream

Throw the Blackberry Away

Quote of the day comes from Andrew Lahde. He said

I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life.

Sandesh Trivedi on Birthdays

Sandesh Trivedi is a very very talented young man. When congratulated on his birthday, he said
har saal aata hain n makes me loose my compettive advantage each yr
He is a value investor and I have high hopes on him. He blogs about his investment ideas here.

Stolen Necklace


Title: Stolen Necklace
Equipment: Canon A75
Date: 04 Oct 2008
Time: ?
Place: Marine Drive, Mumbai

Self Realization

While working, I realized
I am interested in way too many things. At the same time. Need to prioritize. Need to find what I want

Impromptu Shayar

Yesterday I was traveling from my office to some place and it was an hour's rick ride. I had my mobile phone and I thought, how about some improptu shayari from miyan on-the-fly shayar? I came up with two gems.

Bhai saab bhai saab.
Dekh deen duniya deti dard dho dho
Khela kala kauva kahin kabhi kabhi kho kho
Raat rahe raat raat ro ro
Mainkya mu me lo mu me lo


And the other one
Kahin door mast gagan main
Tez teekhi peeli dhoop main
Sard mausam ki masti main
Patjhad kay gire patton main
Bheegi baarish ke geele paani main
Bolo bolo kahan kahan loge
Mu main mu main mu main
Dedicated to Team MML.

Coming Soon ...

The "New" India Post

Although I try to avoid comments on anything related to work, but this has caught my attention. Exchange4Media reports that India Post has unveiled a new campaign to try and resurrect the 154 year old organization. As a part of the campaign, O&M Delhi has come up with a new logo and a tagline - "Giving wings to your dreams", which in my humble opinions looks like a line created with Dilbert Mission Statement Generator

New India Post Logo


The agency says that the new logo "depicts yellow flourish on a red rectangle, symbolizing an envelope. Yellow represents a rising sun, while red, signifies the dawn of a new era." I mean all that is fine but it lacks the class and panache of the simple, classic and yet powerful logo. Who would remember the "dawn of a new era" few years from now? I did not even realize that the yellow pseudo-swoosh on the red background is supposed to resemble folds of an envelope.

What about all the people that India post touches? Think for a minute about people who live in semi-urban and rural India? For a lot of them, postmen and post-offices act as sources of information, news, money, access to reading and writing, gossip etc. Would these people be able to adapt to the new logo easily? Would that trust on the postal system stay concrete? Wouldnt there be a disconnect in their minds when all of a sudden they see changes in the colors and imagery?

India Post - Old Logo


Agreed that the 150 year old institution is reeling under the pressure from Telephony and Internet (emails substituting letters and postcards), private courier companies (for freight carriage and bulky deliveries) and so and so forth. Agreed that India Post is seen as yet another sarkaari company with bureaucracy, painfully slow work environment, lack of enthusiasm and motivation amongst employees but just a new logo and communication is not the way to go about it.

Project Arrow was an initiative in the right direction - to make post offices more than just delivery and access points for mails (there were talks of setting up Internet kiosks, selling insurance, data collection etc.). The idea was to modernize the postal system and revitalize it. They hired McKinsey to work on the turnaround strategy and with the work so far, I am not very impressed. So much for consults being top preference for management graduates.

Ideally along with a management consult, India Post should be hiring a HR consultant to put some sense in their employees to start with. And then the marketing and branding consultants to help out with communication part. Its always an incremental process and has to be like one baby step as a time.

I am very disappointed with the new logo. And since we live in a democracy, I can not really do anything to stop Mr. Scindhia Junior to actually not use it. And with due course of time we will get used to it. We saw the same with Godrej, Shoppers Stop, Canara Bank, Axis Bank, Union Bank of India and their new logos. There is a huge hue and cry when the new logos are revealed. And with passage of time, people get busy with their lives and forget. The institution losses. The identity is lost. The classic era fades away. Only entity to win is the agency that has created the new logo and has charged pretty bucks for it.

Please note, the opinions herein are purely mine and mine only. Please also see my Discovery of India. The timing of the new logo and my discovery is purely coincidental!

Why Travel?


The thrill of exploring the unknown,
The adventure of going down a road that you dont know,
The mystery behind the tun that you are about to take,
The feeling when you meet new people and you try to come across as interesting,
The realization that you get once you know that you are yet another human being,

are simply too rewarding and too tempting to make you seek travel.

The Nidhi Kapoor Story

Did you like this post? May be you want to read my first book - The Nidhi Kapoor Story.

Check it out on Amazon or Flipkart?