Researchers and Managers

One of my favorite stories that captures perfectly the relationship between researchers and managers. I know. I’ve been in both places. 

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She reduced altitude and spotted a man below. She descended a bit more and shouted:

'Excuse me, can you help me? I needed to get home an hour ago but I don't know where I am..'

The man below replied, 'You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.'

'You must be an Researcher,' said the balloonist.

'I am,' replied the man, 'how did you know?'

'Well,' answered the balloonist, 'everything you have told me is probably technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information and the fact is, I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip by your talk.'

The man below responded, 'You must be in Management.'

'I am,' replied the balloonist, 'but how did you know?'

'Well,' said the man, 'you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now you blame it all on Research.'

Aspirations and Inventiveness: Bettiah’s Getting Better

 
When Nehru visited Bettiah in West Champaran, North Bihar to inaugurate one of India’s first hydropower plants, he envisioned that Bettiah would become the fifth metro of India. According to him the list should have read Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Madras and Bettiah. Unfortunately Bettiah didn’t realize that dream, but it has some other things going for it.

Valmiki Nagar - Bihar’s only Project Tiger Reserve and probably one of the most pristine forests in north India is located towards the north of the district. Although there’s only one old inspection bungalow where you can stay near the park, the government of Bihar has announced recent plans to provide some tourist infrastructure and they even want to have a celebrity brand ambassador to promote the park (like Mr.B is doing for Gir and Gujarat I guess).

On the outskirts of town on the smooth new road connecting Bettiah to Patna is a Korean / Japanese restaurant. The thing is, it's not one of those Punjabi-Chinese or Bihar-Chinese places. It’s an authentic Japanese restaurant, serving things like Sushi, Tempura, Domburi and other things you wouldn’t expect in the corner of the universe. And to ensure that things are done just so, it’s run by a Korean chef. With better roads and connectivity and the growing influx of Buddhist circuit tourists, seeing places like this dotted across the state is not a surprise.

Another pleasant surprise is the Ramnagar Primary Health Center (PHC) that I recently visited. In my mind it offers a shining example how the public sector is getting its act together.  The place is run by Dr. Kiran Jha. He’s very proud and involved in this new posting, and he should be given that this place was once run by his father who was also a doctor here, and given that he was born in its wards. But somewhere down the line, much like the history of the entire state, the place went to the dogs.  Over time, more and more of the PHC buildings fell apart and were abandoned, fewer staff were working there, and the center was essentially used as a venue to channel patients to the private clinics of various health providers in the town. Eventually the PHC became more commonly referred to as the bus stand, since local bus and taxi operators had taken over the large compound.

Over the last year or so, however things have changed, and what’s been notable is the resourcefulness of the PHC staff, and the simple fact that unlike many other PHCs that I’ve recently  visited, no one here was complaining that they didn’t have the funds or resources to improve the place. Dr. Kiran Jha and his team have realized that they can make huge changes with what they already have, it’s just a matter of being inventive.

After cajoling the bus operators to move out, the first thing they did wasn’t improve ward hygiene or something important like that. No, instead they hired a gardener and got many of the buildings painted – so that people would know that they PHC was operational and would start walking in again. They found an old metal stretcher, welded two poles to it and used it as a new sign board at the main entrance. They emptied out the rubble from one of the condemned buildings, put in some wooden planks found in the old pharmacy building and turned it into a patient’s waiting area. With some help from our colleagues at CARE they have made dramatic improvements to the actual functioning of the wards, the labor room and operations theatre. Dr Jha pulled out his iPad and started showing us ‘before and after’ photos of the place and records of how the client footfalls had dramatically increased, as had doctors and nurse attendance, and talked about a twitter campaign to draw attention to their success and their needs. This is my little plug for Dr Jha and team.

Seeing things like this make you realize that the changes happening in Bihar are real. Even if they are small and sporadic, they are happening.

Mr Sanghvi - Journo or Socialite

There's something odd going on in the Sunday Hindustan Times. It bothered me a little to start with but it has become a clear and present danger. In case you haven't noticed it, I am talking about the Jekyll and Hyde act that Mr Sanghi does in its pages.

He usually write the lead editorial in the broad sheet. This is consistently a piece that is extremely well researched, presents a unique viewpoint that is easy to understand and support. 

And then you turn to the Brunch magazine and his Rude Food section suddenly turns him into some aspiring socialite, desperately trying to drop names and references to his having lived the high life. Objectivity is thrown to the wind and what we end up with is a almost a personal vendetta or proclamations of ever lasting friendship that should really be restiricted to his personal letters and not for publication. 

If you jumble the letter in his name it becomes "Raving Shiv".

Catching up after a long time

It's been ages since I wrote anything but I guess some people just have a way with words and some not have.

Connecting the Mangar Trail with the Lost Lake

It was advertised as the “no one said it would be easy’ ride and more about exploration than about covering distance. So people who had to get back home or get to work turned back at various points and eventually 10 riders 'went for it' and managed to plot the trail that connects Mangar to Lost Lake.

The route is some of the best off-road cycling territory we've seen. It takes the pace and crunchy surface of the Mangar trail. Mixes it with the rocky and technical sections of the Lost Lake trail and presents you with a private lake right in the middle of the ride to take a break and fix your bikes.

We took the usual route via Behrampur village and climbed up through Bandhwari on to the Mangar trail where we immediately hit the first set of punctures to Ram’s cycle,

And Manpreet’s new cycle started announcing it’s general presence through a noise it discovered it could make from the front disk brakes.

After about 3km on the trail we peeled of to the right towards the Hanuman mandir. There we were greeted by the same friendly Baba from the Mangar mandir. He's now taken up residence at the Hanuman mandir and is in the process of building a new mandir, guest house, man-made lake and all.

From here we back-tracked a little and got onto the trail that would bring us to the Lost Lake. The trail was much more easier than when we had tried it the first and only time about 2 years ago.

 

It may have been that the CRPF use the area for training so it's been cleared of scrub and thorns, or it may just have been that we had a Garmin to guide us. Which ever it was we crossed that area in less than 30 minutes and came out at the Lost Lake. As always the Lake welcomed us with punctures galore and that gave us an excuse to take a break there (and Ram,who had the first puncture, thought about throwing himself into the lake).

On the way back we saw that the CRPF battalion had set up camp on the plateau and were there in full force, hence very few photos since they looked like they may confiscate cameras from intruders in the middle of top secret military reconnaissance exercises.

Overall a very successful ride.

New trail discovered- check

Puncture fest - check
Got dirty - check
Went where no man has gone before - check
Wildlife spotted (wild camels!!!) – check

And in the end it wasn't that hard.

Not the Lake at Winsome Breweries

On our second ride to the Lake we found out that the lake is actually called Indori lake after its major tributary, the Indori river.

The Lake at Winsome Breweries

The Bihari guard at the Manesar McDonalds looked apologetic and told me that they would not open till 7am. It was 6:20am and I was the first one to pull in to our designated meeting point. I explained to him that I was just going to park my car here for a while we rode our bikes and that we would definitely partake of the the excellent McDonalds menu on our return, but only if he would keep an eye on our cars. He couldn't figure out why the heck I was going to leave my car on NH-8 practically in middle of the night, why on earth I was instead going to take a cycle somewhere, and what was I up to waiting for another two cars, but having been tipped a couple of rupees he wasn't going to object, or report us for suspicious activities. 

The other two cars arrived shortly after and four bikes were pulled out from the various SUVs, front wheels assembled, geared up and prepared for the ride. Manish pulled out a shiny new metallic orange/brown Trek 4300. At the rate everyone is flocking to this great bike, I wonder if it isn't destined to overtake Atlas as the most sold bike in India? Rajesh had brought along his colleague, Elsa, who, after having survived Delhi for three months, had decided to throw caution to the wind and squeeze in one bike ride on her last day in India before going back to the US. 

The destination was an interesting looking water body I had spotted on Google Earth near Tauru (about 32 km from Manesar). The route would pass by a couple of golf courses, cut through Tauru town, and then head into Mewat disrict (right next to the Nation's Capital and the Millennium City but still one of India's most under-developed districts).  

Cycling on what looked like a quiet country road at 6:30am I was surprised by the number of fancy cars that overtook us in the dark, but soon learnt from Rajesh that the Classic Golf Course was hosting a major golf tournament sponsored by the Economic Times. Having survived the rush of corporate honchos in their Mercs, Beamers, and Porsches as well the poorer cousins in their Skodas and Hondas, the next stretch comprised the occasional truck. 

"Why do trucks have those air horns?" someone asked. A reasonable question considering that you can hear them grunting and rattling from miles away and the only purpose their horns serve is to mortify the cyclist and pedestrian into completely abandoning the road. 

The last stretch of the road till Tauru was patchy and bumpy so as we passed through the town we were hoping the road out of town would be better. 

It wasn't till we approached the lake (about 7km from Taura) that we got a smooth patch of road and everyone agreed that it felt like we were sailing on ice.

The Lake was magnificent! 

A gem hidden away right next to a planned industrial area.

It was a bit worrying to think that this lake could become very polluted with all these industries around it. But the sight of the Winsome Brewery plant, abandoned, shuttered and probably bankcrupt was reassuring.

This did however also mean that although the threat of the lake becoming polluted seemed remote, so did our chances of finding a place to get some chai and samosas. After much questioning we located the only chai shop within a 10km radius a little further up the road. As we arrived there was just one customer at the chai shop. By the time we had ordered our tea and samosas the entire village had surrounded us. News had spread quickly that there was a bunch of strangely attired city folks on cycles. Very Quickly the entire village came out to see. "Look there's a foreigner". "A woman". " On a bike!!". The Elsa fan club congregated in full force wide eyed and mouths agape.

 The young men struck poses and strained to be noticed.

The old men looked dumbstruck.

And the kids were more interested in the cycles. We had to eventually shoo them away mortified that as they peered closer and closer they would leave samples of nose guck on the saddles or handle bars!

The return journey was by the same route. As always, it was more tiring to get back, but felt much shorter. And when we did finally get back we put back some of the calories we had lost on the ride. Just so that we kept our word to the Chowkidaar

French Toast á la Badshahpur

If you're tired of Spanish omelets, bacon and sausages - we have a treat for you today.

Celebrity Chef Joseph (fondly call Bobby by those who have tasted his cooking) will today do an outdoor demonstration of how to cook a tasty, healthy farm fresh egg and bread breakfast. 

As a great believer in the philosophy "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime", Chef Bobby does this demonstration by revealing the closely held secret recipe to the local Sous chef. The master chef also demonstrates his ability to adapt cooking styles and be innovative in using the limited utensils and ingredients available in this rustic setting. Let’s now listen to the great chef instruct his pupil and the on-looking bikers.

Step 1. “Now if we are going to feed ten hungry bikers and keep them healthy we need to separate the egg white and yolk. We will give the yellow stuff to the slim and trim bikers, and the white stuff to the tubby ones who have already gorged on samosas. And this way we only need 10 eggs to make 20 two egg omelets (wah kya idea sirji!)”.

Step 2. “Then we whisk to make it fluffy. No no no, don’t bother cleaning the spoon – it’s part of the secret recipe.”

Step 3. “Then some freshly crushed black pepper, chopped green coriander, finely diced tomatoes, chopped onion shallots and add sea salt to taste. It’s best to use a sharp but rusty knife for this since we do want to get some iron into our bikers blood stream, and do sprinkle in some egg shells for strong bones”.

Step 4. “And so finally we are ready to fry the mix. If you have an oil sprayer and non-stick then use that, but here I will just shout at the buffoon to use as little oil as possible. I picked this tantrum thingy from my friend Ramsay and it usually works well, but here it seems that young Chef de Partie insists on doling out the oil – oh well c’est la vie. Throw the bread on the eggs and fry well till everything sticks together and there we have French Toast á la Badshahpur!”

Of course if you throw in a 50km bike ride, a changed flat tire, some great scenery, a visit to a deserted dargah, a conversation about “Saat Ajubey” with the locals and lots of wind in your hair (or helmet), you can make it taste like no other omelet you ever tasted.

About Waking up and Getting Home

The interesting part about these cycling trip that has not been written about so far is the torture of dragging yourself out of bed at 5am, and the recovery routine once you get home after the ride. As you can imagine this does not make for a very happy household. Basically the night before you get your bike ready and your cycling gear (clothes, shoes, pump, magic potion, tubes, camera etc) so that you don't have to fumble around for them in the morning and wake up the household. When the alarm goes off at 5am you don't have much time to think. It's either - get ready very quickly, but as quiet as a mouse and then get the hell out of your home before anyone wakes up, or tuck your head under the pillow dreaming about how unusually long and wonderful a short five minute nap is. 

Once your out of home there is the usual routine of waking the chowkidaar to open the gates and then as you ride to the meeting point you will get chased by some canine that couldn't get to sleep, or get asked for directions by a sleepy but bewildered taxi driver who probably has a very anxious and upset customer waiting for an airport drop. 

Once at the contact point you will find that your phone starts ringing and you get several simultaneous calls from  bikers trying to find out where the hell the pick up point is, or why you are late. Again, it is crucial you get out of your house before this starts, else expect trouble.  And if some riders don't show up then you can get them into trouble by giving them a call to ask them if they are coming or not. This is a wierd feeling, it's a bit like your six year old neighbour who rings your bell every evening to ask "can Rohan please come out to play today?" and part crank caller who is gleefully waking up a household in the middle of the night. Anyway with all the coordination done the group finally assembles and you are off!

Here are some pictures from last Saturdays ride when seven of us went back to climb the thorny hils of Compasspur, who's real name I still forget (see my blog of 21 Oct for the gruesome details of my previous lone visit).  Go here to see the ride route and other details.

Pictures below from left to right.

1. Trek 4300s parked together at the house of the now famous hookah gurgler

2. Assessing the ascent (pic courtesy Rajesh Kalra)

3. Happily climbing (pic courtesy Rajesh Kalra)

4. The photographer being photographed (pic courtesy Rajesh Kalra)

5. Carl with his son's back-pack (chweet nah!?)

6. Prabhat settling our fat breakfast bill

7. Caught in the sand 

8 & 9. The standard "proof of ride" group pictures

So you had a great ride, you watched the sun rise, laughed with your friends, sweated like a pig, probably feasted like one too (even "on one" if you can get some bacon), and then you get back home and you are exhausted. The first thing you do is re-hydrate and then you go and stand under the shower, wash off the Haryana sand and dust, get into some comfortable sleeping clothes, do some leg stretching exercises, and then crash out, waking up just in time for lunch.

As you can guess, my spouses is not too amused with this routine of finding me gone when she wakes up and then finding me asleep when I get back and I'm sure it leads to much domestic friction in many riders household. However I have conviced myself that this is the price one has to pay and that "Work-Life balance" isn't everything.... "Work-Life-Ride balance" is.

Revert and Respond

It really bothers me when I get emails where the closing line says something like "please revert on this". What most people think they are saying by this is that they would like you to respond to something. What most people don't realize however, is that they are actually asking you "to go back to an earlier condition".

re⋅vert: 

1.	to return to a former habit, practice, belief, condition, etc.:They reverted to the ways of their forefathers.

2.	Law. to go back to or return to the former owner or to his or her heirs.

3.	Biology. to return to an earlier or primitive type.

4.	to go back in thought or discussion: He constantly reverted to his childhood.

and it does not mean 'to respond'.

So the funny ones are when people write something like "please move forward on this and revert right away" which rather confusingly translates into "please take a step forward and take a step backwards right away".

Eventually the usage of the term revert will become universally incorrect and then it will take on a new meaning "to respond", but till then it would be nice if people used it correctly.

The Three Mistakes of My Sunday Ride

Today was a mistake, but one that I would gladly repeat. After the great ride on Saturday to Pathways School via Bhondsi I decided to build on the riding continue the momentum and head out on Sunday morning to Golden Greens to scope out the paths on the hills behind the golf course. 

The Saturday ride to Pathways via Bhondsi was wonderful (check out Rupesh's blog for a more engaging write-up and some great photos). But overall lots of nice views, pleasantly eventful, and some nice pics. 

We had a local try to palm off some dahi to Jacob as a substitute for his time tested magic potion, 

made friends with Panditji ka kutta,

terrorized the geese by close proximity salivation over the thought of roast duck, 

and were curious to find out how rich kids get up to no good when they are literally in the middle of nowhere.  

The Sunday ride however was very different. I went alone assuming that not many people would be interested in riding on a day when they wanted to rest their backsides and that it would be a short run to Golden Green, a pleasant walk up the hill and back to the club house for breakfast and then run back home in time to catch the Kabaddi wala. Hah - I should be so lucky!

Being alone, I managed to start early and had crossed Badshahpur by 6:15am. I crossed the golf course at about 7:15am and decided that I would first climb the hill then come back for breakfast. 

So I entered the village neighbouring the golf course (I don't remember the name of the village, but let's call it Compasspur for ease of reference) and started asking the locals for directions about how to get on top of the hill. In the process I made pretty good friends with a lot of them since I met them several times over the course of the morning. The first reason for this was that everyone had a different opinion about the path and kept sending me back the way I had just come. The second was to have them sympathize with me a few hours later as I walked around the village trying to find a puncture-wallah, but let me not jump the gun. 

After spending an hour back-tracking several times through the village I found two people who consecutively gave me the same directions about how to get on top of the hill. This was good enough for me. Near the start of the climb I also found a chowkidaar who volunteered to show me the path himself. This looked promising! As we started he did suggest that I leave the bike at his hut, but being the suspicious Gurgawaia (Gurgaon-ite in Bihari) that I am, I told him the bike was light and it would not be a problem walking with it up the path. This was mistake number two. 

As we walked up the trail Jamuna (that was his name) told me that it was a wide and rocky track, but that about a month ago some strange city folks in big cars with very very big tyres had managed to drive up to the top. At first the track looked pretty easy (see pic below of Jamuna next to bike on the track). 

And as I was more and more distracted by the view and our conversation of how he had come all the way from Samastipur to find a job here, I did not notice that we were getting into very rocky and very thorny terrain.  By the time I did it was probably too late as my front tyre was already flat and by back one was getting soft very quickly. With the damage done I decided I may as well enjoy the view of the sun rising over the Aravallis.

Breathtaking would not be an exaggeration to describe the view.

While I was busy clicking pictures Jamuna excused himself as he had to get back to duty. Alone at the top of the hill, with a strong breeze, abandoned buildings  and complete silence was an inspiring and slightly fearsome sensation.

If anyone has seen the movie “Picnic at Hanging Rock” then they may know what I’m getting at.

After about an hour of hanging out on the hill the sun came out in full force and I decided to return to Compasspur to assess the damage to my tyres. There one of the locals invited me to share some tea, which I was more than happy to accept that but I had to draw the line when he invited me to gurgle his hookah, preferring to stick to my own cancer sticks. 

An inspection of the wheels told me that the front was totally gone and that the rear one had a slow leak. I figured it would take me half an hour to change both the tubes till I looked in my backpack and was horrified when I realized I had just carried one tube with me. Mistake number three!

The nearest puncture-walla turned out to be in Hassanpur, about a three km walk. I had managed to change the front tube (at the home of the hookah- gurgler) and asked the tyrewalla to fix the rear one. He took out the tube, inflated it and stuck it in the water to see where the leak was and then smiled and stopped counting punctures once he crossed ten. At this point, with no other options, I accepted his offer to fit the closest size tube he had, which he said would probably get me the 18km back home (see route map and ride details here)

I did eventually get home at about 11am and since Lady Luck had walked out on me all morning, she decided to come back and smile on me finally in the form of the Kabaddi-walla who had almost finished his rounds of the apartment complex after an unusually busy morning. The list of things I sold included about 17 kilos of papers, several beer bottles, an old plastic stool and two not very old but very leaky tyre tubes. 

 

Par for the Course

Today was my fourth ride as part of the Gurgaon Cycling Group. So I should now qualify as a regular rider and be able to get by hands on one the uber-exclusive T-shirts that the group is in the process of designing and procuring. 

I think this ride was bit different from the last three since we mostly stayed on very small country roads, dirt tracks and sandy tractor lanes crossing some wonderful rural scenery and charming villages. Mostly importantly, once we got off the highway we were exposed to almost no traffic except the occasional tractor and tanga and closely followed a route drawn out using Google Maps.

Akshay, Prabhat and I met up on Sohna Road at the round-about at Uniworld Gardens. When no one else showed up, we started to phone people. First of all we called Carl who answered the phone in a very groggy state, clearly still tucked in bed. Next I got a call from Jacob, in an equally groggy state, apologizing that he would not be able to make it (clearly he had not had his magic potion the night before).  We also tried calling Vicky, who had probably put his phone on silent, so the three of us eventually started off taking the NH8 to Manesar.

Riding on the highway is never very comfortable. Sleep deprived truckers and hungover cab drivers racing to Jaipur means that you have to cycle defensively. However the pleasure of not paying at the toll gate is some compensation for the hair raising experience of a 30 ton dumper truck, air horn full blast, come tearing past you from behind.

We turned off the highway just before McDonalds, ensuring that we were not enticed into a burger breakfast once again - however, greater pleasures lay ahead. From here we closely followed the map and the GPS on my phone to get onto a 3.5 km dirt track that would take us, slipping and sliding, towards our refueling pit-stop. 

This stretch with its rocky inclines, sandy straights, and mud allowed me to finally put my “all terrain bikes” to full use. On the way we crossed a few villages, some beautiful scenery of fields being ploughed, had to get off the path to make way for a truck that just about fit on the track, overtook a noisy tractor, and turned a blind corner to find a rather surprised looking horse pulling an amused looking tanga driver.

Eventually we got back onto the tarmac and raced towards the Golden Greens Golf Resort. Riding confidently to the club house Prabhat used his charm to get them allow us into their restaurant. 

Most of the cycling group will agree that this is clearly a move in the wrong direction. I mean graduating from chai and glucose biscuits, to samosas and jalebis, to fillet of fish and happy meals at McDonalds, and now to the breakfast at the club house goes against the rough and tumble, outward bound nature of mountain biking. But what the heck, after all it was the only place to get anything to eat or drink for miles around.

Refueled, we took the narrow road that headed back to Badshahpur and Sohna Road. On the way we crossed the aptly named village of Darbaripur, with its palatial houses, all with the standard hooka on their front verandahs, and prized tractors parked in garages and SUVs lined up in the front yard.  The final stretch home was as usual the most painful, not just because I was tired but also because this ride had probably been more about the journey and less about the destination.  

Here are some more pictures from the ride

Akshay with donkey

Prabhat slipping and sliding on the sand

The stone quarry we passed on the way

Lots of fluids