Dog like life

While many of us working in IT Organizations do understand the BFSI business, we do not understand the pressure that the whole system is under.

In this world where we sell ice cream in Ladakh as special ice cream that can keep you warm, the core product of the company in the BFSI environment is Money itself, the company has to be responsible and proactive while providing and while getting back the money, which most often does not happen.

How does a loan get processed?

Many of you would understand the flow, the sales representative either working under a Team leader of the DSA or the Direct selling agent of the company would approach prospective customers either after making hopeless phone calls disturbing the average mobile user at the oddest of the places including the important meeting with the boss, when you are entering the loo for a quick relief , out with the family on the a holiday, roaming in the US of A or just about wherever you are. This is the first irritation point for each prospective customer.

By receiving numerous phone calls the customer is under the opinion that he is being offered loans for various purposes from multiple banks/Non-financial institutions, how does it in the end affect sales & credit for the bank/NBFI?

High level of bargaining power for the customer
True credit potential unknown
Multiple loans being held by the same individual
Committing fraud becoming increasingly easy

How does the company tackle this? How do they provide the loan? Why do they have to sell credit? – All these are questions that arise in the mind of every person who receives the call, he/she needs money at some point of time and then accepts the offer.

Then there is sales pressure and fraud that affects the whole system. The credit appraiser is responsible for credit and the solvency of the loan, how often does the sales presure act on him ? Yes, day in and day out he has to sign deviations from the norm, otherwise he is put in a difficult position by the sales managers who report into business heads .

Now sales achives their target of say 100 loans for an area, the next month it increases by another 50%, where do the sales guys get the people who need to borrow ?

Then comes the life of the collection agents, false promises, frauds and sales rule the roost. Lesser said better it is about collections.

In the end it is a dog like life

Taking photographs reduces life ?

In many interior parts of India there is a belief that taking a photograph of oneself reduces his lifespan. I was wondering why this belief may have come into existance, coming to think of it i started my photography very early in my life. In the mid 90s i bought my first SLR, since then there has been no looking back.

Early on in 2000 - 2001 i started feeling that photographs are taking away my experience of the event, more time is being spent on making the photograph than actually taking in the experience. This made me leave photography temporarily and now i am back in the full form pulling all resources together for making my photographs work.

In the olden days i believe there were large format cameras, which needed to be placed on a tripod, a black cloth thrown over it and the group shot needed to be taken. This process is time consuming and costly. There are also other points that i have in my mind

• In the absense of proper infrastructure for transport it might have been difficult to get the photographer from far away
• The time actually spent on taking a photograph might have been percived to be a waste of time

People would have started saying that taking a photograph means lot of time in my life, more the photographs more time wasted so on and so forth.... This has led to the belief that taking a photograph reduces one's life span. It is not actually the process of taking the photograph but the time consumed that they are reffering here.

Tsunami Warning from Birds

On 25th of December there was unusual behavior of birds(grouping irrespective of species,jittery actions,moving from tree to tree in groups, unusual calls but relatively soft) atleast a 1000 of them moving from the land towards the sea at around 5.30 PM.

My mother (also a student of the course) and myself were scared about the unusual behavior,the words 'natural calamity' escaped my mouth without us realising what was going to happen 12 hrs hence.I checked the television immediately for any news,in the morning we noticed there was no usual chirping of birds, the familiar crow(with a hooked beak) that comes at 5.45AM for the mandatory rice did not turn up,there was unusual calm in the locality full of parakeets,tree pie,grey shrike,crows,paraih kites,egrets,bulbuls,small bee eater,kingfishers,the pet peacock next door and many more.

The tremor occured at around 6.40 AM, there was still calm,we did not realise why they moved towards the sea,the tsunami was yet to come devastating whatever and whoever lay in its course for the first 200 meters from the sea.Only later in the day there was mild activity of birds.We live at Neelangarai(south chennai suburb), about 750 meters from the sea.

On research in the study material we found only a reference to in page 139 (vol 1) 3rd para about sensitivity of birds to infrasonic frequencies during seismic and meterological disturbances.I am writing this to you to not only enrich my knowledge in ornithology but also to help tell the world, people should be aware of natural predictors who warn us well in advance.

Technology predicts only of aftershocks of earthquake.This account may seem unreal to many,but we still shudder at the thought that we could have saved thousands of people along the coast.

Spotting the Tiger

Many a times i have gone into the forest looking out for the tiger, i have spent my time energy and money in doing this time and again but have never spotted a tiger.

Nagarhole was one such forest that i visited in the middle of Apr 2006 with a fairly large group of wildertrailers. While all of us had the hope of seeing the tiger, most animals were elusive for us during the brief 2 1/2 day stay we had.

It rained heavily pushing all the animals in to the forest.Then i met K M Chinnappa, the ex-wildlife warden of the sanctuary, but i call him the "Terror of Nagarhole". He is a staunch conservationist and belives that no outsider should enter the forest, atleast this will help preserve the 3-4% of the land area that is wild. This made me think about why so monay induviduals including me want to see the tiger.

We have many friends in our cities, how many times do we get to meet all of them accidentaly? (with this i mean bumping into someone without appoinment in a mall, road,etc) . The answer to this question for atleast 50-60 % of my friends is never, and of the remaining say 10% i have bumped into more often than the rest, why is this so ? we have common interests in the location where we meet.

In this context, What common interst do we share with the tiger ? Absolutely nothing... then why should the tiger meet us ?

Simply put we do not have an appointment with the tiger !!!

The tradition of Serving food in the Brahmin community

Last Sunday our family had visited a health restaurant in the city. It is one of the very popular, by the name Sanjeevanam.Nice restaurant and good food.

They serve a couple of soups first after eating them from left to right - This is supposed to heighten the effectiveness of the taste buds. Then you are served uncooked food after which comes semi cooked food and then finally cooked food. During the meal you are not served any water and at the end some Honey and to top it all a vegetable salad beeda.I was actually uncomfortable at all the rigor that was put into the order of eating the food. I was a little uncomfortable at the end of the meal physically too, but after 10 mins I could feel that the whole body was now relaxed and fresh.

All the rigour that is put into eating the meal has some medical significance as you eat the food first that is digested first inside your stomach... So on and so forth and it is healthy.

After a couple of days my mother started serving food in the same order. I felt a lot more comfortable. I now think is there a significance in the order that was always emphasized in my community that the vegetables should be served first and then the rice, sambar,rasam,etc. TO this day in all marriages the food is served in an order.

I certainly feel that there seems to be some significance in what our elders have been saying for years.

Lotus to god.. is actually water conservation

In india elders generally say that a particular flower is good for particular god.

I was just wondering whether there is anything scientific about this ?

My conclusions on this topic

• Lotus grows large leaves that repel water and spreads on the water body, this avoids evaporation
• In the rural areas people grow lotus just to give to god , wouldn't have the ponds that are required to grow them disappreared if not for this faith ?