Happy new year

Wish each one of you a very very happy new year. Let us reaffirm our commitment to make this world more beautiful and peaceful in whatever we do, whatever we think and whatever we experience!

एक उड़ान ऐसी भी

ऐ ख़ुदा बख्शी है, तूने एक उड़ान ऐसी भी,
मोतियों से पिरोयीं है, तूने ये जहान ऐसी,
कितनी अनोखी है, यहाँ हर एक की कहानी,
ज़िन्दगी कभी लगती, बेगानी तो कभी सुहानी,

बेखबर क्या लिखा, हाथ की टेढ़ी लकीरों में,
ख़्वाबो का पुलिंदा, बाँध लिया मुसाफिरों ने,
मुकम्मल होते ख्वाब, बन गए मील का पत्थर,
अधूरे ख्वाब रह गए, अनकही दास्ताँ बनकर,

अधूरे ख़्वाबो में छिपे थे, कुछ सच्चे मायने,
हौसला और उम्मीद, निखर के आये सामने,
ख़ुदा ने बख्शी थी, रहमत में सिर्फ़ एक ज़िन्दगी,
ख़ुशी और ग़म के धारो में, बाट दी हमने ज़िन्दगी,

दिल तो दिल है, उड़ते रहना इसकी फिदरत है,
मोतियों से ज़िन्दगी को पिरोना एक जरुरत है...

Happy Holidays!

Winter has almost set in. There are festivities around the corner and most of the busy people are looking towards a peaceful and relaxing time. As the clock ticks to another ‘Big Day’ of Christmas, I go down memory lane and am greatly pleased to recall the experiences during this period:

1. In school, Christmas used to stand between a fun-filled vacation and results of annual examinations. Wow, what a wonderful way to start your vacation knowing you have graduated to next standard in studies. Though we did not see much of Santa Claus, vacations meant lots and lots of relief and more and more of play. Badminton was most commonly played sports in winters in our vicinity and what a sport – till day I miss those long hours of play with my cousins. The warmth of sitting with family around the fire was and is so refreshing. Only winters can offer such joy!

2. As school days finished and I moved to one of great cities as far as Christmas is concerned, the whole charm was kind of so alluring. I can easily relate to your feelings if you are right now somewhere in Park Street of Calcutta. Whole street looks like a newly-wed bride. Oh Calcutta! Chocolates, pastries and gifts became order of the day during this part of the life and obviously late night parties and hang-outs were so cool. Somehow, winters did seem to give so much of free time to relax and enjoy time with your own self. Long night chat with roomies was such an important part of day-to-day life and winter nights were more so special because of stillness it offered in each moment.

3. As life moved to working mode, the Christmas meant party time and rejuvenating holidays. Each one of us work hard every day and wait for this nice little break which gives ample space to connect with family and friends and finish other important tasks also. Christmas is a time of fun and excitement for us in India. However, culturally the importance of Christmas is more prominent outside India. Everyone forgets work and submerge in celebrations mode. My heart goes out to all the colleagues anywhere in the world who wait for this moment to come throughout the year.

Indeed, this is the time to refresh, make new commitments, look towards a newer horizons, introspect oneself and bask in glory of offerings of a magnificent life. Wish each one of you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. May God Bless You with Great Health and Peace of Mind.

P.S. – Do drink a lot if you like to drink and have a great time. Someone told me that beer is the best friend for a chilling night ;)

Performance is not only about intelligence...

They say life is a playground, you are the player and you are ordained to perform on this stage of life which is sometimes so pleasing, sometimes so painful and ultimately indifferent. But no matter what, expectation from you is to play, play and play. This stage could be a school, a college, an institute, an organization or any community for that matter, obviously where a group of people live and complement each other to earn their daily breads. e.g. I go to an organization to earn my piece of bread. Expectations are somewhat different at the place where you earn your bread. Perhaps because you gain greens in return for your work, business or occupation as you endeavour to march towards next level of Maslow’s hierarchy.

As I step back and ponder over what constitutes a good or outstanding performance, I ask a question to myself. Is intelligence enough to get such performance from someone? The answer is plain no. In dying days of his/ her school, a teen thinks of unthinkable and believes in his/ her super abilities which are means to reach greater heights of achievements. Those are the days when dreams and ambitions are more individualistic in nature. But as it happens, earning bread is not only about realizing individual dreams. You become a part of a chain and value creation is more important at all the layers which in turn uplifts the entire mass.

So what are the qualities that are needed to work towards a macro goal and emerge as a great leader of all time? Well, I am yet to learn the nuances of leadership and I am glad that I am in process of learning those nuances. From where I could see is that the leadership has more to do with behaviour, attitude and empathy. Trust me – intelligence takes a back seat here. Behaviour which helps you fill whole ambience with insurmountable joy, attitude that helps you generate undying positivity around your environment and empathy that helps you share happiness and sorrows of your peers, colleagues and subordinates. And the fact of the matter is that it is all the more difficult to harbour high levels of behaviour, attitude and empathy as compared to intelligence. As I continue to discover minute aspects of leadership, I tend to take a pause and salute all those great friends, peers and colleagues who have helped me learn important lessons of life. Thank You All!

The agony of Indian Airports

Growth is good, satisfying and inevitable. In every walk of life, we see, aspire and chase growth. But can growth sustain? The answer is it can and the key lies in how you embrace the growth and how manage the growth. There are leaders who have built the empires, who have broken all the records and who have reached the pinnacle by virtue of a great vision and ability to channelize the resources towards the aforesaid vision timely. They have done so because they managed to sustain the growth on both micro and macro levels. To manage sustainable growth, we need all round plans to support the developing economy such as ours and this includes necessary infrastructure. As for Indian aviation industry, the growth has been great when you look at the dramatic increase in number of passengers, flights and airport bases over past two decades. Sadly, the infrastructure plans to support the growth has been lackluster and untimely. Before the total breakdown happens, there is a need to upgrade all important airport bases in India. Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai have witnessed the much needed upgrade – though little late. Need of the hour is to upgrade Chennai, Kolkata and Pune airports immediately.

The scene at all of these three airports is utterly chaotic nowadays. While reaching and entering Pune airport is not that difficult, the difficulty starts right at the baggage x-ray machines. With very limited number of machines, you can end up waiting for 15-20 minutes in the queue. Another example of mismanagement is having greater no. of check-in counters for the flights which are scheduled to depart most late of them all. Security check and boarding facilities are pathetic. Air traffic is all the more bad. A real bad experience if one had to fly from Pune.

And if you are travelling from Pune to Chennai or vice versa, be prepared for a lifetime experience. Getting out of Chennai airport is one of the biggest challenges. There is unbelievable chaos outside the airport and to get to your destination is even more difficult. Thanks to poor infrastructure of the city. Same is the case when you have to catch a flight from Chennai. Even if you managed to reach the airport just in time after travelling one km in 25 minutes on road, you have to pass through the Babus who are more interested in memorizing spelling of your name at the gate. It will take you ages to locate x-ray machine of the flight you are taking. Check-in kiosks are lesser in number and unorganized in nature. Even worse experience if one had to fly in and out of Chennai.

Kolkata had been pretty good till about 12 months back. The city is most famous for ultimate bureaucrats who are known for changing the procedures for worse or adding wasteful procedure in a otherwise fine working process. So what do they do at Kolkata airport? To manage ever increasing traffic, they put all the security check points at one place which were earlier located at various places to facilitate better usage of aerobridges. And this results into inexpressible chaos. 25-30% of fliers could at least head towards the boarding gates easily but that did not go too well with our famous administrators. They wanted everyone to suffer equally and as a result, all 100% fliers are facing the chaos. What is worse is that you have 70% of morning flights between 6 and 7. It is not so difficult to locate your x-ray machine as they are only a few. Then you have airlines representatives using their rapport with security official to sneak in their passengers first irrespective of boarding time. Chennai and Kolkata are very close in terms of worst airports but if I had to choose, I would choose Kolkata airport as the worst. There is piece of advice for all the readers - simply avoid taking a morning flight (departure time - 6 to 7) from Kolkata. I have done it more often than not in the recent past and hence plan to reach airport before 5 am, if at all there is a need to fly once again.

Who said Growth cannot be mismanaged!

Airport Affairs – Few Hits and Many a Misses

Before I say anything, let me take this opportunity to thank each one of you who visit this page and read the posts once in a while. Big thanks for being part of this very calm space. There have been days when I craved to pen down something and yet could not do so. I feel quite upbeat when someone such as you still come and read pieces such as this. It is indeed a very special community where words are the only medium which ties us together. Raise a toast to blogosphere!

Encouraged by couple of posts on “the bliss of India airports” by one of the great bloggers, I am tempted to (in fact taking liberty to) rank few of the best and worst airports in India as far as passengers and baggage handling is concerned. It took me so long to realize that passengers also need safe and polite handling. Well, if I had to rank our airports three years ago, best airport award would have perhaps gone to an airport like Birsa Munda Airport in Ranchi or Raja Bhoj Airport in Bhopal for the sheer size of the operations. Any airport handling more than two thousand passengers and seven flights a day would have been vying for a spot in worst airport category then. But as they say change is the only permanent thing in life and so life has changed at airports too.

Having taken approx 250 flights in past 36 months, it is a challenge for me to rate the best of the airports in the country. Hence, to help my cause, I am discounting all the tier C cities’ airports which are still in developing stage and where still it take 20 minutes to reach the airport from the city. Though I have been to new airport of Bengaluru only once, I could feel the difference as compared to torturing experience of erstwhile airport at Marathalli. The facilities were really good and on the contrary, security guard was able to locate my name on the ticket very easily. Considering my limited exposure to the new airport, I would rate this as no. 3 in the best category.

If you happen to be from Bengaluru, please forgive me for being biased towards the city where I live now. Not so long ago, Delhi airport was one of the worst airports. Long queue at the main gate of terminal 1B on a winter morning was one horrible experience. Thank God – CWG brought much needed sanity at Indira Gandhi Airport. Facilities have improved drastically and hassles have gone down significantly with onset of first terminal 1D and now terminal 3. The jam at drop off point in the peak hours is a drawback of otherwise a very very modern airport. For the scale of operations and traffic loads, Delhi airport can be rated as no. 2 in the best category.

No prize for guessing the best airport I have come across within Indian Territory. For a very pleasant experience of entry, check-in, security check and boarding procedures offered at Hyderabad, Rajiv Gandhi Airport is the best Indian Airport in my opinion. Once inside the airport, you can enjoy outstanding eating and shopping stalls. Usage of aerobridges is at its best here. Traffic congestion has nothing to do with Hyderabad air space. You have 3 check points as against 7 of many other airports. State of the art infrastructure makes it truly nice place to fly from.

P.S. - If this was about the best, wait for the worst. Readers are highly encouraged to express their individual opinion on the matter.