Filed under: musings | Tags: education, Investiing, mutual funds, rupee cost averaging, school, SIP
Its taken me a few years and lots of reading and talking to people to understand the fact that I should invest and should start early since the later we start, the more I loose due to the principle of compounding and rupee cost averaging.
If we had a subject in school which taught us the ‘how to’ of investing, I am sure that a large majority of the working middle class would be much richer today than they actually are. Investing early and making the right calls in that domain would be highly beneficial to all. I would therefore request you, Mr.Sibal to please give some thought to this area and look at making it a policy decision to introduce Financial Education at school level and making it compulsory for all for at least 2-3 years.
It took me 4 years and reading books like ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ to actually appreciate the value of investing and investing early. We have a good domestic savings rate (the Gross Domestic Savings rate is approx. 37% according to the “Macroeconomic and Monetary Developments in 2008-09” report from the RBI) and am sure that we can better that by just including this simple addition to the curriculum.
Investing in instruments like ULIP and SIP should be made compulsory for college goers (at least for professional courses like MBA) at least in the metros, for a period of a year and then leave it at the discretion of the student to continue the same once they get a job and start work. The BFSI sector hires thousands of summer trainees every semester and while one would think that this alone would stimulate them to start investing on their own since they are usually involved in selling the same products to potential clients, that is sadly not the case. Hence company HR departments should take the onus to educate students on the benefits of investing early.
Investing regularly and wisely is the key to financial independence. A colleague of mine recently gave me the ideal savings plan. She suggested I start an SIP for each financial objective with a horizon of one year and above. E.g. In case i need to take a holiday next year to Goa or Mauritius and the cost is working out to be say, 1 Lakh then if I start an SIP worth 10,000/- per month i could be well on my way to having all the money i need to take that holiday.
We harp that the economic recession has not hit India hard due to the fact that we have a high savings rate. Had we started education on investing, in the last decade, we would have no doubt been in a shorter recession cycle here in India.
If there could be a contest of choosing an anthem for the strong folks who man the Human Resources departments world over, the song below might come close to the top on that list. (* But that’s just me. I have taken the liberty of editing out the slightly non-relevant lyrics.)
Cry…
I have seen peace. I have seen pain,
Resting on the shoulders of your name.
Do you see the truth through all their lies?
Do you see the world through troubled eyes?
And if you want to talk about it anymore,
Lie here on the floor and cry on my shoulder,
I’m a friend.
I have seen birth. I have seen death.
Do you see my guilt? Should I feel fright?
Is the fire of hesitation burning bright?
And if you want to talk about it once again,
On you I depend. I’ll cry on your shoulder.
You’re a friend.
You and I have been through many things.
I wouldn’t cry for anything,
But don’t go tearing your life apart.
I have seen fear. I have seen faith.
Seen the look of anger on your face.
And if you want to talk about what will be,
Come and sit with me, and cry on my shoulder,
I’m a friend.
And if you want to talk about it anymore,
Lie here on the floor and cry on my shoulder,
I’m a friend.
Filed under: Uncategorized
‘Ladies and Gentlemen – Indian Airlines announces the departure of Flight IC-471 from Delhi to Jodhpur. The flight is ready for boarding, please proceed to Gate 2, Thank You !’
This is what started that fateful journey to Mumbai via Jodhpur. The journey on which the airline lost my luggage. Normally i would only be carrying cabin baggage but this time, it was a multicity trip and over 3 days, hence i had to take along a suitcase. I got past the boarding gate and into the AC bus which whirled us away to the waiting aircraft. After the usual much ado in cases of boarding, we boarded the aircraft. Being July, the air outside was heavy with moisture from the rain in the morning and so the air being blown in through the aircon system on the plane was turning into misty white vapour over our heads. It looked so cool.
After the push-back from the gate, i relaxed with the day’s paper and then put it away as the engines spooled up to take off thrust. This happens with a delay after the power has been fed from the cockpit. So one minute there is nothing to tell you the engines are working but a low hum beneath you feet and outside the window and the very next you will be rocked with vibrations of the power coming from the engines.
Takeoff is always a rattly affair with something creaking and groaning in the aging Indian Airlines aircraft and you are left wondering in case a wheel came off and if you’ll will be able to land safely without it 
Anyways, the flight was normal. Hell broke only once i was waiting at the luggage carousel at 
Jodhpur. I waited and waited and waited and then waited some more. All the other passengers had gone before Iwent to the IA desk to enquire about my luggage. After the usual red-tape and communication with Delhi IA airport staff, the whole sky crashed around me when I was informed that my poor suitcase was currently in the air, on its way to Chennai. I almost fainted. I managed to convince the IA manager to get the best done to get my bag back and he assured me that it was ‘normal’ for them to have this. Apparently, his unfazed expression told me that this happens a lot.
Having no clean clothes in an alien city is a horrific experience. I had to shop for a few things and luckily i was staying in an upscale hotel which provided me my toiletries. I was on the phone with the Airport manager every second hour and asked my luggage to be traced to Chennai. Apparently the plane with my suitcase had developed a technical snag and had not taken off for Chennai. More calls and a whole lot of red-tape later, i got my bag recovered from the stricken aircraft.
The Jodhpur manager, may God Bless his soul, was very helpful and assured me that my luggage would be flown by the next available aircraft (meaning the same flight i came by) picking up my luggage and bringing it over the next day. The only problem was that i had a flight the next afternoon at 3PM from Jodhpur to Mumbai. And my aircraft would only land a few min before. So the IA manager got hold of the Jet Airways manager and struck a deal to transfer the bag between flights on the tarmac. The plan would have worked had it not been for the largely poor record of IA sticking to their on-time performance. Its a given that if the Govt. (meaning AI or IA) is flying you, its going to take it own sweet time to do so.
So the Jet Airways aircraft was boarding and yet IC 471 was still in the blue. I had to literally request the poor manager to have it sent on to Mumbai via the next flight. I must thank him again here for doing the needful. The flight carrying my bag was threatened to be hijacked and hence was rerouted to Pune. I was stuck for a day more before all the luggage was checked and the flight was allowed to 
move the next day. I missed my old suitcase with all its provisions.
My bag finally reached Mumbai the next morning. The only good thing from IA was that they dropped of the bag at my place rather than my having to pick it from the airport. The tag on the handle read. ‘Express Delivery’. !!! Next time i will send my bag with the courier company and take the plane.
Filed under: work | Tags: "economic slowdown", "job hopping", "Narayan Murthy", "salary hike", boss, EMI, jobs, laid off, salary
Some, rather most organizations rejected his CV today because he has
changed jobs frequently (10 in 14 years). Mr. JH, the ‘job hopper’,
does not mind it…. well he does not need to mind it at all. Having worked
full-time with 10 employer companies in just 14 years gives Mr. JH the
relaxing edge that most of the ‘company loyal’ employees are struggling for
today. Today, Mr. JH too is laid off like some other 14-15 year experienced
guys – the difference being the latter have just worked in 2-3 organizations in the same number of years. Here are the excerpts of an interview with Mr. JH:
Q: Why have you changed 10 jobs in 14 years?
A: To get financially sound and stable before getting laid off the second time.
Q: So you knew you would be laid off in the year 2009?
A: Well I was laid off first in the year 2002 due to the first global
economic slowdown. I had not got a full-time job before January 2003
when the economy started looking up; so I had struggled for almost a
year without job and with compromises.
Q: Which number of job was that?
A: That was my third job.
Q: So from Jan 2003 to Jan 2009, in 6 years, you have changed 8 jobs to make the count as 10 jobs in 14 years?
A: I had no other option. In my first 8 years of professional life, I
had worked only for 2 organizations thinking that jobs are deserved
after lot of hard work and one should stay with an employer company to
justify the saying ‘employer loyalty’. But I was an idiot.
Q: Why do you say so?
A: My salary in the first 8 years went up only marginally. I could not
save enough and also, I had thought that I had a ‘permanent’ job, so I
need not worry about ‘what will I do if I lose my job’. I could never
imagine losing a job because of economic slowdown and not because of
my performance. That was January 2002.
Q: Can you brief on what happened between January 2003 and 2009.
A: Well, I had learnt my lessons of being ‘company loyal’ and not
‘money earning and saving loyal’. But then you can save enough only
when you earn enough. So I shifted my loyalty towards money making and
saving – I changed 8 jobs in 6 years assuring all my interviewers
about my stability.
Q: So you lied to your interviewers; you had already planned to change the job for which you were being interviewed on a particular day?
A: Yes, you can change jobs only when the market is up and companies
are hiring. You tell me – can I get a job now because of the slowdown?
No. So one should change jobs for higher salaries only when the market
is up because that is the only time when companies hire and can afford
the expected salaries.
Q: What have you gained by doing such things?
A: That’s the question I was waiting for. In Jan 2003, I had a fixed
salary (without variables) of say Rs. X p.a. In January 2009, my
salary was 8X. So assuming my salary was Rs.3 lakh p.a. in Jan 2003,
my last drawn salary in Jan 2009 was Rs.24 lakh p.a. (without
variable). I never bothered about variable as I had no intention to
stay for 1 year and go through the appraisal process to wait for the
company to give me a hike.
Q: So you decided on your own hike?
A: Yes, in 2003, I could see the slowdown coming again in future like
it had happened in 2001-02. Though I was not sure by when the next
slowdown would come, I was pretty sure I wanted a ‘debt-free’ life
before being laid off again. So I planned my hike targets on a yearly
basis without waiting for the year to complete.
Q: So are you debt-free now?
A: Yes, I earned so much by virtue of job changes for money and spent
so little that today I have a loan free 2 BR flat (1200 sq. feet) plus
a loan free big car without bothering about any EMIs. I am laid off
too but I do not complain at all. If I have laid off companies for
money, it is OK if a company lays me off because of lack of money.
Q: Who is complaining?
A: All those guys who are not getting a job to pay their EMIs off are
complaining. They had made fun of me saying I am a job hopper and do
not have any company loyalty. Now I ask them what they gained by their
company loyalty; they too are laid off like me and pass comments to me
– why will you bother about us, you are already debt-free. They were
still in the bracket of 12-14 lakh p.a. when they were laid off.
Q: What is your advice to professionals?
A: Like Narayan Murthy had said – love your job and not your company
because you never know when your company will stop loving you. In the
same lines, love yourself and your family needs more than the
company’s needs. Companies can keep coming and going; family will
always remain the same. Make money for yourself first and
simultaneously make money for the company, not the other way around.
Q: What is your biggest pain point with companies?
A: When a company does well, its CEO etc will address the entire
company saying, ‘well done guys, it is YOUR company, keep up the hard
work, I am with you.” But when the slowdown happens and the company
does not do so well, the same CEO etc will say, “It is MY company and
to save the company, I have to take tough decisions including asking
people to go.” So think about your financial stability first; when you
get laid off, your kids will complain to you and not your boss.
* The views expressed in this post are those of Mr. JH and not necessarily mine. I found this on email and thought it was a good thing to get other views.
Filed under: writings | Tags: cars, CO2 emission, driving, G-8, indian life, Natalie Imbruglia, roads, trips, walking
I often comment to anyone who cares to listen; that Indian roads are the perfect holiday destination for anyone dying to loose weight. That’s because the ride over the rough and tumble of the moon-like-in-nature kind of roads with potholes resembling craters, will surely reduce the lard that any of us carry. So when Natalie Imbruglia can sing ‘I am wide awake and i can see that the perfect sky is torn….’, I know its true. (Its true America and similar G-8 nations have combined CO2 emissions totalling 34.2% of the total. So the sky ought to be torn there and the same is with the roads here in India. )
With a job like mine I have to travel a lot. And lots of that travel includes road trips. So this is an informed column.
So the more roads (and their apparent disrepair in most cases) are discussed in and out of the public mind, the less is done about their condition. Only the stock market talk can rival the amount which we discuss the conditions of the roads. A sure sign that we discuss roads is the fact that we map the distance not only in kilometers; but also by the condition of the particular stretch of road. For example if you ask me the distance from Pune to Nasik, I will not only give you the distance (202 Kms) but also warn you ‘that about 2/3rd of that distance is by single lane and not the expressway but the road is good’.
There are excellent roads – Mumbai-Pune expressway, Agra-Delhi causeway, Delhi-Ajmer link and of course the Pimpri – Pune expressway has now come into existence and the distance is reduced not in kms but in time in each case.
There are good roads but these are few and far between (the roads in Rajasthan, Gujrat and Uttarkhand are to die for (literally) cause all you do is speed at +80Kms/hr on those). But these examples are few and far between. The worst of the lot is in MP. Every turn is a sunken pit and each bump is just felt stronger that usual. Its like you are trying to jump from one bombed out dugout-to the next. Yes, its that uncomfortable. 
Now even if the PWD or similar Municipal authority finally pave a road, (especially applicable in cities.), the other dept of water or lord-knows-what comes in the next few days and uproots the whole stretch or part of it with digging for anything that they might be managing at the time. Main diggers include the P&T Dept, the Water Supply Dept, the PWD themselves to lay a drainage pipe which they didn’t plan for earlier. A popular joke doing the sms rounds translates loosely to mean ‘ I dug everywhere today and what is left will be dug tomorrow’.
This is a constant cycle, just like the circle of birth and death and rebirth. I wonder what the engineers who lay the roads and the other engineers who come to tear it up, find when they reach the Pearly Gates. St. Peter will ask,’How are you qualified to enter Heaven?’. And the engineers will say.’We were road engineers, we built roads.’ And St Peter 
would groan,’ What you built were mirages, for they stayed only for a time and then one of you uprooted them, so that they were gone. I cannot allow you to enter. Go back and redo your life as a road engineer and next time learn not to tear up the roads.’ So back them come and become the road engineers and we have the roads we still did 25 years ago in most places cause the same folks are doing the work and they are too lazy to improve, so signs like the one beside are what you need to heed.
Indian roads are so infamous that even auto majors roll out India-specific models. Suspensions are hardened, tyre sizes are altered, engines are retrofitted. All this to meet the inhuman challenges that roads post to the occupants of the 
car and the car itself. My car comes with a warranty, which will be invalid in case i do rally driving. I don’t understand why they are making a mistake here. Everyday on the road is rally-driving. The potholes which don’t swallow you will surely meet you again tomorrow; made larger and deeper by the monsoon rains. If you survive driving around in all of India, you will be a first class amateur rally driver anywhere in the developed world. (Cause most of the developing nations roads fall in our category road-wise)
The fact is that it is possible that we transform to better roads, like the case has been with the few excellent roads mentioned above. So i am waiting till the day that at least 50% of all roads in India look like that. Since this means a lot more road work, B-O-T type and even more so PPP type Infrastructure companies are going to do business and hence its a good idea to pick some stock. (Please don’t sue me, this is my tip, i didn’t say you needed to use it!) So I would love to see the roads get constructed and invest in that expansion. The following video gives me inspiration, for a better tomorrow. And the roads are yet not hellish enough(Thank goodness), cause i haven’t lost much weight travelling on them so far. !!!
But walking down them might help…..
Filed under: musings | Tags: future, India, microbes, tap, water, water purification
Ask me if in my entire lifetime in India, i have drunk straight from the tap, and the answer would be (No.) Or (Are you crazy?). I had only heard about such fancy stuff from my Aussie relatives. But no such luck in India, i thought….
But then reality changes and you land up in a modern apartment block with all the latest amenities and with an ‘RO’ plant to filter the water delivered to…….to your tap! You got it right! Now i drink from the tap.
It was disconcerting at most to be having to drink the water without some purifying equipment between the microbes in the water and the innocent walls of my tummy and then go on to give me a symptom. But here i was sipping from the tap and boasting about it to all those who cared to listen.
With water being the resource of the future and with lesser clean water in the world today, the business for water purifying is going to be very competitive. Hope you save some few drops of clean water for the next generation. Possibly i am an optimist to think, that technology would be so advanced by then that those few drops may just about churn out the next generation’s oceans. Think about that!!
India is changing. For good or worse, only time will tell. But the bottom line is that we will grow. Hell,. we have been at it for a few centuries now.
Being a foodie in India is to partake in a grand feast of the senses.
Color, spice, aroma and combinations differ across India. The best things I like about food in India are the snacks. The region in which they originate defines the nature of these snacks. One of all the snacks, I have liked best so far is the 
top honors go to the ‘MOMO’. Steamed and served piping hot, they are healthy (the steamed variety only not the fried) and can cater to both vegetarian and non-vegetarian tastes. A close second comes the Kutchhi Dabeli. I of course, being the weak-in-Hindi, convent-educated brat, was left wondering the first time I tasted the bun filled with peanuts, a vegetable cutlet, spices and lightly browned on a tawa, as to what was ‘katcha’ about the dabeli. That was because I heard and interpreted the name as ‘Katchi’ and not ‘Kutchi’ – the region in Gujarat where the snack evolved.
Another quick filler is the Bombay Bhelpuri – a puffed rice dish with potatoes and a tangy tamarind sauce. It is a type of
chaat or small plates of savory snacks, particularly identified with the beaches of Mumbai (Bombay), such as Chowpatty. This is again of Guajarati origin.
If some Indian politicians have their way, we may also see the rise of another snack as the Indian answer to the Big Mac. An IndiMac – viz. the humble Vada Paao, a spicy potato cutlet with chutney and enclosed in a bun.
Chaat and similar savories are the domain of the North. Lots of calories, lots of spice and all things nice. Samosa, katchori, pani-puri, chole-bature and the like spice the taste buds of the typical North Indians. While the stuffing of the samosa or putchka – as it is called in the East, are limited 
there are huge combinations to what can 
constitute another fav snack the mighty ‘Pakora’. Paneer, Onion, Chilli, Potato and a host of other veggies and non-veggies are dipped in batter and deep fried to give KFC a run for their money and make their finger-lickin’-good menu look limited.
Of course if you are looking for some heavy duty stuff, then the best place to head is into the heart of Delhi, Chandi-Chowk. A culinary visit to this capital of food lovers will not be complete without a stroll down, parantha-wale gali. Satisfaction is guaranteed with piping hot crisp paranthas deep fired to a golden brown in desi-ghee. Even for those with the biggest of tummies, a couple of these will surely drive out the hunger faster than Schumacher on an F1 track. There is 
also the option of a good dose of dahi-bhalla, delicately spiced, garnished with tangy tamarind chutney and again very filling.
Of course, the health factor is well taken care with the snacks from Southern India. Medhu-vada, steaming idli, and a range of similar eats. Here dosai can also be counted as a snack. And if you are lucky enough to visit the Karnatka Legislative Assembly canteen, the most scrumptious of the above 
await you with some of the best filter coffee if have had in the south. Thanks to a politically connected class-mate, we had the honor to dine there morning and noon, every day for a week, while on a field trip to Bangalore. The best part was the service, since seeing so many new faces (and pretty ones at that, the dominant portion of my MBA HR batch naturally being girls); the waiters would promptly leave the poor MLAs 
and similar civil servants to serve us first. No doubt more than a few would have very uncivil things to say about that!!
In my new workplace, food, and NOT Singh is King. When I arrived here, the only thing on my mind was to whittle down a few pounds but alas, my colleagues had other plans. They were always on a food ordering spree. And then to top it all, we in HR came up with an engagement program titled Foodie Friday. But who needs to wait for Friday, and if we had our way the week would look as follows, Milkshake Monday, Tikki-Tuesday, Vada-Wednesday, Tangri-Thrusday, Food-all-day-Friday and 
Sundae-Saturday. This would be the week according to the food-loving, easy going folks I spend my waking hours with. The new kid on the snack bloc hit me in the face one day. We ordered for SPDP. I kept wondering what the whole long-form stood for. Sweet-Puri, Dal-Papad. Sugar-Pav-Dhokla-Pullav. The long form was later told to me, Sev-Puri-Dahi-Puri.
Gujrat is also a land for the foodie, with great snacks like Dhokla, Khandvi and Patra. Another quick bite is a spiced masala-papad. But I am surprised at the way Pizza and ice-cream chains flourish there. Maybe it’s the NRI effect.
Now with all this talk and writing about snacks, its now evening and guess what, its snack time. So will I reach for the 4’O clock wonder snack (as Snickers would have me believe) or shall I reach for the IndiMac? What a dilemma !!!
Hey Diddle Diddle
I am getting quite round in the middle
And I hope to slim down soon
But that won’t happen, till my dish runs away with my spoon.
