Murud Janjira

The first weekend trip out of Mumbai in the 2+ years we've been here !

Destination : Murud

Gang : Chakro, Maini, Kulki & Asif

Date : Oct 2/3 (yea! dry day the first, but we had our stock)

After multiple deliberations, we chose to head out to the Golden Swan resort by the beach in Murud. It was a big effort to wake up on time Saturday morning for an early departure. The bags carried by Chakro and Maini took us by shock. Somewhere I suspected they thought it was a weeklong trip. Was promptly reminded a one week trip would require more luggage!

Nevertheless, we took off in the i20 with Kesha and David Guetta setting the mood. The onward journey was marked with heavy traffic, missed roads, an unintentional tour of the JNPT (yea the containers are massive!) and twisted roads inside villages before we got on to the right highway. The experience so flustering, we kept confirming the route at every town while we entered the Raigad region. The roads got narrower and the vehicles got more aggressive. One Scorpio behind, honked the hell out of us like they were getting late for a Gang war in the town! Straight out of a Priyadarshan movie scene I say!. Asif managed to scare an old man elsewhere, shouting "bhaisaab bhaisaab" asking directions in his south indian rapid style ; it almost sounded "peshaab peshaab", to which the old man hurriedly pointed in some random direction!

We finally hit Murud by late noon and immediately hogged on the buffet spread. Decent place, okayish food, an almost private beach. not bad we thought!

It was beach time! The best part of the evening was spent inventing a game similar to volleyball with just 3 players. We chose to call it the "Mercedes Ball" since the court we drew(invention again) was in the shape of the Merc symbol. It truly was simple and awesome. I think we should make it official and write a rule book! The beach was surprisingly shallow. Close to 50 mts into the sea and water was still around knee level.

As the sun set, we kicked in with our drinks discussing Indian economy, labour problems, logistics business, Arundhati Roy, Chidambaram and Chinnai( yea - thats what Maini and apparently all Punjabi's pronounce Chennai). Put together 4 MBAs and what do you expect!

Sunday morning was welcomed with awesome Poha at breakfast. We checked out and headed to the Janjira Qila, a fort standing for close to 10 centuries in the sea now. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murud-Janjira . It is truly an overwhelming place, the trip all the more spiced up with some Munna'bhai style guide. The depth of Indian heritage continues to startle me and I only wonder why the government is doing nothing to promote this awesome destination. Public private partnerships can do wonders to these places.

T'was time to head back to Mumbai. The return was fairly quite with occasional discussions of extreme weird villain names in Bollywood.

All in all a weekend well spent! (I'm discounting the Sunday night which was ruined by a pathetic movie titled Anjaana-Anjaani)!

Sound Horn - (Not) Ok!

Incessant honking on Indian roads is a peril that people have accepted as a part of life. Seems like the average Indian driver takes it as a part of effective driving on the Indian roads (the other attributes of effective driving include: cutting lanes, crossing the yellow lines, always stopping beyond the pedestrian strip at a traffic signal etc etc).

Honking has always been considered more of a precautionary activity, even when there is no clear being in sight. The whole logic behind providing a horn to the automobile seems to have taken a new definition. People honk when there is a traffic jam assuming that desperate honking will clear the mess. People honk when the traffic signal is about change from amber to green trying to ensure the guy ahead is alert enough to start moving even before the signal changes!. The examples can just go on and on. It is a problem in every city and there seems to be no obvious sense of responsibility to curb the urge to honk at every blink of the eye.

While one tries to think of ways to make people aware of this issue, it may never be as effective as it would be in case of a penalty. How about some kind of a penalty for extra honking? How can one be penalized for using( rather abusing) the sound horn? To put it the other way around, how about providing incentives for frugal usage of the sound horn.

One method (as frivolous as it may sound) is to link the fuel consumption with honking. There should be some kind of a meter which will ensure that some amount of fuel(very minute) is wasted if the sound horn is used beyond a specific limit. This limit can be an absolute value calculated by some statistical analysis on the data collected from different cities with varying kind of traffic scenarios . Like the Euro 2 or Bharat 2 emission norms enforced in each new vehicle, a honko-meter or some kind of a mechanism can be instilled in every new automobile manufactured. The psychological impact of the cost(however minute) may instill a sense of discipline that is required.

This can ensure that every driver is conservative about using the sound horn because it will burn a hole in his/her pocket if the horn is used excessively. It will also build in some amount of patience among the drivers which can help in ensuring lesser traffic jams and better adherence to the traffic rules.

Of course, such a solution will run into implementation hurdles, but it remains a fact that unless one is not incentivized for frugal usage of the horn, honking will remain a bane.

DCP

The emergence of web 2.0 has also brought along with it the perils of DCP. For the un-initiated DCP = Desperate Class Participation; a term coined in the B school circles to define arbitrary non sensical class participation (in some cases to add to their grade components and in many cases due to inherent tendencies to "participate at any cost").

My twitter and facebook pages are cluttered with DCP from people who just have to express an opinion about pretty much everything that is the flavor of the season.

Lately, there are the highly annoying expert comments on football from people who barely know the sport or the players . Broadly most of the comments can be segregated into :

• Repeating the obvious -Examples being "Goal!" or "Looks like Germany will win" or "Vuvuzelas are loud!" - you get the drift!

• Re- stating common opinions - like "Messi is God" - Hello! do you know anything about his background and skills and why he is referred to as one!? or "Maradona is showing his magic as a coach" - Do you know what football coaching is all about? Do you even know that he chooses players based on the strategy he sets? Do you know that there is a "strategy" to it in the first place?

• Pseudo Expert comments - These are usually based on the limited knowledge of the game but extrapolated into expert sounding comments. Most of the people tend to support England or think they are a strong team only because EPL shows up primetime on weekends and they have been going to the Man-U cafe with the crowds. Many people pretended to have lost their minds when Brazil was beaten, not knowing that their styles of play have changed over years and that they were indeed beatable. Next few days will see people anointing Iniesta as the God of football 'striker' s . Pity!
  

It is not about having an opinion. Of course you have the right to one. But please make sure you KNOW what you're saying and logic behind the same. Save the world of your DCP! (it shows when you make an opinion and yourself instantly put "like" on the same!

Leagues vs Playoffs

This post stems from the Arsenal-Man Utd match earlier yesterday(31st Jan). For a sports buff like me, it was a Super Sunday with the Australian open finals and then the awaited EPL game later in the evening.

Arsenal were handed one of their worst defeats by Man Utd and before you knew, the game was over. What disappointed me more, was the attitude of the Arsenal players as soon as they were down by two goals. There was enough time to go in the game and they could have fought back strong(they did create few chances), but they just looked so down that the third Man-Utd goal was but impending. They are a class side mind you, but it was just the mindset that let them down.

This game was extremely important to both the sides in their race for the EPL title. But I wonder, if the intensity would have been different had this been a playoff game in Champion's league. In a playoff game of any sport, the teams go for the kill even when they are down in dumps, because its then or never. The fighting spirit is so strong till the dying minutes of the game that sometimes lead to miraculous outcomes. I am not sure if a league format really brings that out amongst the teams unless its nearing the end of the season where the final few games are left to make that final push for the championship. Some crucial games like the one I talked about are the equivalent of playoff games in a league format.

I am sure there are benefits of the league format as well, which is probably why it continues to stay. Just a thought - what if it was otherwise!