Saturday, December 29, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
SUCCESS MANTRA
‘You are the architect of your life’
PIALI DASGUPTA
I can’t sit on a platform and pontificate about how I made it in life. I have always compared myself to the dog on the streets who’s somehow managed to cross the street at peak hours. There’s no specific mantra or compass or map to success. Real achievers are people who have carved their own path to success and are intelligent enough to advise others to not follow their path. I can’t suggest a sure-shot path to success, since my reality and mental makeup is different from that of others.
I don’t believe in luck or any other invisible power guiding us. You alone are responsible for the events in your life. You are the architect of your life. Whatever I have accomplished so far has been because of my own endeavours. Various people in my life have obviously played significant roles, which has humbled me in the process. I have kept on re-inventing myself.
I have also been focussed. I have a demonic commitment to whatever I decide to do. I believe in deadlines and am accountable for my actions.
A defining moment of my life has been meeting U G Krishnamurthy, the greatest thinker human kind has ever produced.
He made me believe that as long as I try to become someone else, I’ll achieve nothing. My encounter with him was life altering. He was the lone star in the dark sky. He taught me to take failure in my stride.
And I did. My failures have taught me much more than success; success has only lulled me. It’s the lousiest teacher.
Having said that I understand that no one forgives a failure and that’s where success is important.
Criticism hurts. It breaks you. It’ll hurt you no matter how successful you are. But criticism holds a mirror to you. It helps you to constantly polish you ways and adding to your arsenal.There’s no full stop to life.
Today’s youth has an attitude and platitude borrowed from the media. They are like assembly line products.
I’d like to tell them to hold on to their distinctive attributes and not be a cheap copy of someone distinguished, because no two individuals are the same.
No experience of another person can be your raft to sail through the wild ocean of life.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
The Mother
Early years
Mirra Alfassa (Paris 21.2.1878 - Pondicherry 17.11.73) was born as the second child of an Egyptian mother and a Turkish father, a few months after her parents had settled in France. An extraordinarily gifted child, who became an accomplished painter and musician, she had many inner experiences from early childhood on. In her twenties she studied occultism in Algeria with Max Theon and his English wife Alma, who was a highly developed medium. After her return to Paris, the Mother worked with several different groups of spiritual seekers.
Meeting Sri Aurobindo
She first heard of Sri Aurobindo from her friend Alexandra David-Neel, who had visited him in Pondicherry in 1912; and in 1914, along with her second husband Paul Richard, she was able to travel to Pondicherry and meet him in person. There, she immediately recognised him as a mentor she had encountered in earlier visions, and knew that her future work was at his side. Although she had to leave India after the outbreak of the First World War, first returning to France, and then accompanying Richard to an official post in Japan, in April 1920 she returned to join Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry and never left again. Sri Aurobindo recognised in her an embodiment of the dynamic expressive aspect of evolutionary, creative Force, in India traditionally known and approached as the 'Supreme Mother'.
Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville
It was the Mother, as Sri Aurobindo's 'Shakti', who organised the growing group of followers around him into the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from November 1926 onwards, and who in 1952, after his passing in 1950, created the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education to fulfil his wish to provide a new kind of education for Indian youth. In 1968 she founded the international township project of Auroville as a yet wider field for practical attempts to implement Sri Aurobindo's vision of new forms of individual and collective life, preparing the way towards a brighter future for the whole earth.
Humanity is not the last rung of the terrestrial creation. Evolution continues and man will be surpassed. It is for each individual to know whether he wants to participate in the advent of this new species.
For those who are satisfied with the world as it is, Auroville obviously has no reason to exist.- The Mother, 1966
Consciousness beyond Mind
Both Sri Aurobindo and The Mother worked all their lives for the manifestation of a mode of consciousness beyond mind, which Sri Aurobindo named "Supermind" or "The Supramental". The full expression of this consciousness on earth would result not only in a new species, as far beyond Man as humanity is beyond the animals, but also in a modification of the whole terrestrial creation, even more complete than the change brought about by the entrance on the world scene of the human race.
Between humanity and the fully Supramental species there would have to be one or several transitional steps, represented by transitional beings, born in the human way, but able to contact and express the higher consciousness. These transitional beings would prepare the way for the advent of the Supramental Race by establishing suitable conditions.
Transformation
After Sri Aurobindo's passing, the Mother continued his work of psychological and physical transformation with the help of the new force. An account of her experiences in the course of this work is given in The Mother's Agenda, an intimate record of the last 18 years of her life.
Their work continues.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Television Rating Points - TRP
Presently, INTAM (Indian Television Audience Measurement) is the only electronic rating agency functioning in India. INTAM uses two methodologies for calculating TRP. First is frequency monitoring, in which 'people meters' are installed in sample homes and these electronic gadgets continuously record data about the channel watched by the family members. 'People meter' is a costly equipment, which is imported from abroad. It reads the frequencies of channels, which are later, decoded into the name of the channels and the agency prepares a national data on the basis of its sample homes readings. But there is a drawback in the technique, as cable operators frequently change the frequencies of the different channels before sending signals to the homes. It may be very misleading to read a channel according to a particular frequency even if the down linking frequency is same all over India.
Second technique is more reliable and relatively new to India. In picture matching technique people meter continuously records a small portion of the picture that is being watched on that particular television set. Along with this agency also records all the channels' data in the form of small picture portion. Data collected from the sample homes is later on matched with the main data bank to interpret the channel name. And this way national rating is produced
You've Got To Find What You Love - Steve Jobs Stanford Speech 2005
This is text of a speech by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at Stanford University. I'm sharing it here and hoping that few young souls might find it enlightening...
“I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with,
and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumour on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumour. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.”
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Will your loan become more expensive?
Come January 31 and the Reserve Bank of
On January 31, RBI governor Yaga Venugopal Reddy will take us through a quarterly review of the Indian economy before announcing key policy rates like the bank rate, repo rate, reverse repo rate, etc.
Already drowning in jargon? Didn't understand a word you read so far?
Let's find out what these technical sounding terms actually mean:
Bank Rate
This is the rate at which any central bank (RBI in
The bank rate signals the central bank's long-term outlook on interest rates. If the bank rate moves up, long-term interest rates also tend to move up, and vice-versa.
Banks make a profit by borrowing at a lower rate and lending the same funds at a higher rate of interest. If the RBI hikes the bank rate (this is currently 6 per cent), the interest that a bank pays for borrowing money (banks borrow money either from each other or from the RBI) increases. It, in turn, hikes its own lending rates to ensure it continues to make a profit.
Bankers, economists and stock market experts are most interested in how the RBI deals with this key policy rate. The general feeling among them is that the RBI may keep the bank rate unchanged, while increasing the repo rate and reverse repo rate to control inflation.
How this affects you: If the RBI keeps the bank rate unchanged, you may not really be affected. But if it increases the bank rate, be prepared to pay more for any loan you take from a financial institution.
The bank rate will also give you an idea of the RBI's long term view of the economy. If the bank rate goes up, it means things are going to get more expensive in the long run.
Repo (Repurchase) Rate
Repo rate is the rate at which banks borrow funds from the RBI to meet the gap between the demand they are facing for money (loans) and how much they have on hand to lend.
If the RBI wants to make it more expensive for the banks to borrow money, it increases the repo rate; similarly, if it wants to make it cheaper for banks to borrow money, it reduces the repo rate.
How this affects you: If the bank is paying a higher rate of interest to borrow money, you are the one who will bear the cost -- you will pay a higher rate of interest when you borrow money from them. This is how banks ensure that they continue to make a profit.
For example, let's say you need money for some reason and you apply for a loan. The bank may have already exhausted all its available money by lending to other borrowers and does not have enough money to lend to you.
This does not mean it will refuse your loan request.
The bank will go to the RBI and ask for money. The RBI lends this money to the bank at a fixed rate of interest (the repo rate fixed during the credit policy; the credit policy is announced every quarter). This tool helps the RBI increase the amount of money flowing into an economy (that is, it brings more money, as and when needed, into the banking system).
In the credit policy which was announced in October 2006, the RBI increased the repo rate from 7 per cent to 7.25 per cent. It did this in order to control the increasing inflation by controlling the amount of money that entered the economic system. In the last 18 months, inflation has increased from less that 4 per cent to almost 6 per cent.
Reverse Repo Rate
This is the exact opposite of repo rate.
The rate at which RBI borrows money from the banks (or banks lend money to the RBI) is termed the reverse repo rate. The RBI uses this tool when it feels there is too much money floating in the banking system; this too leads to inflation.
For example, take a look at the housing industry today -- there is so much of money available in terms of bank loans and increased salaries that the prices for homes, and for land, has sky-rocketed.
If the reverse repo rate is increased, it means the RBI will borrow money from the bank and offer them a lucrative rate of interest. As a result, banks would prefer to keep their money with the RBI (which is absolutely risk free) instead of lending it out (this option comes with a certain amount of risk)
Consequently, banks would have lesser funds to lend to their customers. This helps stem the flow of excess money into the economy.
Though RBI can use both repo and reverse repo to control the amount of money in the system, it is the reverse repo that the RBI prefers as a credit management tool. It was only during the October 2006 credit policy that the RBI, after a long gap, increased repo rate to control inflation.
As of today, the reverse repo rate stands at 6 per cent and the repo rate is 7.25 per cent. Any monetary authority lends money at a higher rate and borrows at a lower rate. RBI, too, is a clever money manager. It lends money to banks at 7.25 per cent (repo rate) and borrows money from banks (reverse repo rate) at only 6 per cent, maintaining a neat difference/ profit of 1.25 per cent.
How this affects you: Again, if the RBI increases the reverse repo rate, consider it bad news. It means the banks have less money to lend -- since they will keep quite a bit of it with the RBI. As a result, you will have to pay a higher rate of interest if you are planning to apply for a loan.
If you are lucky, though, and the bank does not want to lose you as a client, it may absorb the increased interest and not pass the cost to you.
Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF)
This is the mechanism through which the RBI drains out funds (reverse repo) or injects money (repo rate) into the banking system.
Actually this is the window through which the RBI conducts its repos and reverse repos.
RBI conducts both these operations depending on the demand and supply of funds in the banking system. If RBI thinks that there is more money chasing few goods it drains out the excess by opening the reverse repo window. If the money supply is tight, RBI opens the repo window.
Prime Lending Rate (PLR)
This is the rate at which banks lend money to their prime customers. This rate is often lower than the rate at which banks lend money to their other customers.
Most PLR customers are top blue-chip companies that have excellent credit records (have never defaulted on their interest payments to the banks from which they borrowed money).
If the RBI increases the bank rate on January 31, banks will go ahead and increase their PLRs.
How this affects you: This, in turn, will increase your home loan rates as they are linked to (benchmarked to) PLRs. Home loan rates are always priced below a bank's PLR as they fall under the priority sector category.
Personal loans and vehicle loans, on the other hand, are always priced above a bank's PLR.
Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR)
As a statutory obligation under Section 24 (b) of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, every bank has to keep a fixed minimum portion of their Net Demand (savings account) and Time (fixed deposits) Liabilities (NDTLs) aside at the end of every day.
The SLR can be in the form of cash, gold or bonds issued by the government (a financial instrument for which the government pays a fixed rate of interest to the buyer).
While demand deposits can be withdrawn any time without giving any prior notice, time deposits need a notice period for their withdrawal.
The SLR is always expressed as a percentage of the NDTL. If a bank's NDTL is Rs 100 on January 31 and the SLR fixed by the RBI is at 20%, then that bank has to either keep Rs 20 aside or invest it in gold, bonds or both. This means that only Rs 80 will be available to the bank for its lending operations.
The savings account deposits as well as fixed deposit amount that we deposit in a bank are the bank's liabilities. The SLR as of today stands at 25% and the RBI has the authority to increase it to a maximum of 40%.
Any reduction in the SLR level increases the amount of money available with banks for lending to individuals, companies or other banks. Any hike in the SLR has the opposite effect.
How this affects you: A reduction in SLR, ideally, means you should have to pay a cheaper rate of interest on your loans and vice versa.
Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR)
As per section 42 (1) of the RBI Act, 1934, every commercial bank has to maintain with the RBI (every fortnight) a minimum of 3% of its NDTLs compared to the previous Friday.
For example, if CRR is to be calculated today (assuming that today is that reporting fortnight), then it will be only 3% of the NDTLs on the previous Friday.
Found that confusing? Here's an example that should make it easier.
Assume January 26 is the Friday on which the bank has to make its report.
Bank A, which has a NDTL of Rs 100 on January 19 (the previous Friday), will have to maintain a CRR of Rs 3 with the RBI on January 26 (assuming it has been asked to keep a CRR of 3 per cent).
CRR, as of today, stands at 5.5 per cent. This is over and above the SLR requirement
Gross Domestic Product/ National Income (GDP)
It is the money value of all goods and services produced by a country in one accounting year. April 1 -- March 31 is considered as one accounting year, or a financial year, in
A labourer working in an iron mill, a weaver spinning yarn, a farmer harvesting crop or a software engineer writing code all get paid at the end of the month; in some way, they convert their effort into money.
If you read something like the RBI expects
Many people prefer to write national income instead of GDP.
Inflation
It is the general increase in the level of prices. The inflation rate is measured every week and announced on Friday. Most news publications report them on every Saturday. You can get this rate by Friday afternoon if you watch a business channel or surf online; you'll find it on rediff.com as well.
If someone tells you that prices of sugar, oil, fruits and pulses are increasing, what they actually mean is the inflation rate is increasing.
It is also calculated on a year-on-year (YoY) basis. If inflation on January 26, 2007, is say 5.9% it means that prices in general have increased by 5.9% when you compare it to the prices on January 26, 2006 (YoY).
Credit Policy
An announcement made by the RBI after a review of the Indian economy is termed as credit policy. It announces changes in key credit management tools like the bank rate, repo rate, reverse repo rate, SLR and CRR.
In its credit policy, the RBI makes a statement on the country's economy, expected GDP growth rate in a quarter or a year, the level of inflation that it will be comfortable with, and a host of other things.
As of now the RBI is concerned aboutr inflation, which has breached the 5.5 per cent level it was comfortable with. It is in this backdrop that the bankers, stock market punters and economists believe the RBI will hike key indicative rates like the CRR, reverse repo and the bank rate.
The RBI's decisions will impact banks, the stock markets, economists, various other economic agents and even you and me. It will affect our decision, or how much we have to pay for home loans, two-wheeler loans or personal loans.
Money Market
It is a market that helps banks borrow or lend money for a very short duration. Most of this lending/ borrowing is done for a day or two. It is also called the overnight market.
A bank that needs money to meet its short-term obligations borrows money; a bank having funds in excess of its requirement lends them. It functions like any other normal market where demand and supply dynamics decide upon the lending and borrowing rates.