Planned growth (or a random walk)

If the stock market is to be believed, India is out of the recession. It has grown by about 60% in the span of a few months leaving quite a few economists with a sheepish grin on their faces and their complete inability to provide an explanation to wtf is going on.
There are some who made a lot of money here. Some of us  exited the market at 9000 and congratulated themselves at their superior sense of timing and heard their lower jaw hit the floor when the market breached 15000. It hit 18000 two days back.
There. I needed to vent a bit about the 'unearned income'.
I have not been able to post for a really long time. Some of it is because of being busy -
Last time this time was about - A very hot summer with power cuts, an office move, some more clients, hiring new people, meeting new companies and getting a bit more serious about what I have to do and where I have to be... and some of it is about not finding too much to write about. More accurately, not being able to decide what to write about..
This time, some of last year makes a reappearance. We are still hiring - this time for growth and not due to attrition, we have an office but need to plan an expansion. New things this year include the fact that Envigo is offering more services now - we have started to dabble with mobile applications and facebook games and social media marketing.. we are working for two French websites.

Personally, life is moving in a nice little routine with the two of us. We got ourselves a new car and are planning a few new road trips. Let us see when and where.

We took the car and went straight to the pandit - keeps everyone happy - Mother, wife and may be even God (in that order of importance). Below is a snap from April 9th... a nice evening spent at Olive with a bottle of wine, good food and decent weather....what else is there? (Planned as a surprise by the wife.. which made it all the more fun)

repo 105

The internet is ablaze today with repo 105. Everyone is searching for it and twittering about it. "Repo 105" is one of the top 100 searched terms on Google today.
The world of high finance - with its exotic products - has to fall back upon simple lies to dress up its balance sheet. Lehman's financial pundits did basically this - 'sell' something toxic off their balance sheet every quarter with a guarantee to buy it back soon after. It appeared as a sale, when it was actually just parking. You had to do more and more of it every quarter. Oh yes and the CEO was not aware of it - not $50 billion worth of it.
Ernst and Young were ok with it - they reported for numbers till nov 2007 that the numbers were fairly presented inspite of whistle-blowing by an insider.

I would love to retain E&Y any time I need help with the HMRC. Oh yes and Linklaters as well.

Crooked E and PWC have company now. And given the similarity of events, this line will only grow longer.

1942

I was a 20 year old bachelor. I lived in Mastichak,a village close to Seetalpur, just north of the Ganga. The independence movement was getting restless. So was I. Youth is a wonderful thing - it lets you dream and it makes you act. 

My father had died when my brothers and I were still young boys. Responsibility at a young age had made my elder brothers very cautious. They decided to get me married. They hoped that a new bride will calm me down and keep me at home. I got married to Ms. Rajkumari on May 6 1942. She was 18 years old. I remember this date because of the events which were about to happen.My wife thinks otherwise and is equally sure that we were married in June. After 68 years of being married, it is hard to remember.

On Aug 8th, Gandhiji had asked us to ' Do or Die'. The country shook into action. every day, we heard reports of arrests and torture. All Congress leaders were jailed. The movement however continued and gained in strength.

Kilometers of railway track was uprooted and laid waste. Telegraph and telephone lines were cut. In Ballia, a small town closeby in UP, the British administration was overthrown. The jail was broken into and everyone was released. A local leader called Pandeyji led the revolt at Balliia. 

There were rallies, sit-ins and speeches everyday. We hoisted the national flag on a police station. The district administration caught us in the act and we made a run for it. The DC was sympathetic. He ordered the police to fire in the air and not at us. There was a police investigation nonetheless and my house was visited a few times by white policemen. I went into hiding for a few weeks. My sister-in-law's husband went to jail during this period for some time. 

In 1947 my country was liberated. It was a humbling experience. We were elated but saw the horrors of partition.  I was at the Gandhi Maidan at Patna on Aug 15 1947. It was as if all of Patna was also there. The air rippled with excitement. We did not know what would happen next, but we were free.

I wanted to take part in the  first Congress session of free India. I took leave from the Chapra post office. My supervisor thought I was crazy as I was not even a member of the Congress then. I took a loan to pay for my travel. I boarded trains, buses and bullock carts and made my way to Jaipur. I was there. I saw everyone - 

Acharya Kriplani, Nehruji, Sitaramayya, CR, Azad, Patel. India seemed safe in the hands of these men. The crowd was even larger than Patna in 47. 

Now that I look back, I am amazed at the times I have lived through.

I did not go to jail pre-1947 because of which I was not able to claim being a freedom fighter. 

Had I been one, I would get free train tickets, which would make my wife happier. 

___________________________________________________________

As narrated to me by my grand father who will turn 88 this year. 

Post script: My grand father passed away a year later. He was very happy when I wrote this out as a blog. He was quick to write out another story for me. I have that piece of paper with me. It is very precious. I only wish I had spoken more to him about his youth. 

Siamese Saga

The wife and I packed up our bags and left for Krabi via Bangkok on the 12th of December. I was only too happy to leave - there were too many people all over the place and she was also the centre of all attention, which is bearable only for about 5 minutes in real life.
Our flights ensued that we stayed awake for about 36 straight hours, so by the time we were on our last leg, she was nodding off constantly. Krabi airport reminded me instantly of Mohanbari airport (Dibrugarh) - the single runway and the greenery all around, but the airport itself was a miniature version of Mumbai airport - spanking clean and modern. Krabi is one of the lesser developed provinces in Thailand for this part of Thailand, but the roads were smooth and undulating. (I will rattle off facts thanks to the 900 page lonely planet which I bought). As a normal red-blooded north Indian, I was not very happy to note that even countries so close to home and so looked-down upon in India (development is supposed to have happened only in the US, UK, Western Europe, Australia) are better off than us.

(Mr and Mrs and our shiny black SUV in the corner)

Our itinerary for Thailand was as follows: 

Ko Lanta (6 days), Ko Phi Phi Don (2 days) and then Bangkok (2 days). 

Ko Lanta was exactly as isolated as I had wanted it to be - a private beach for the resort but not isolated enough to compromise on any of the comforts. 

Phi Phi has been made famous by 'The Beach' - a movie which is about a secret beach. The beach in 'The Beach' is Maya beach on Ko Phi Phi Leh, a smaller island close to Phi Phi Don.

(approaching Maya Beach (above) in a long tail (see below))

The coolest parts of the trip: 

3) View point #2, Ko Phi Phi Don - This was a 45 minute staircase trek to the topmost point of the island. The island, which is actually a paid of islands joined by an isthmus, with giant limestone rocks, was quite imposing. We timed it well so that we were there as the sun began to set. Also, we could not find the camera and used the mobile instead, only to realise later that we were in fact carrying in the camera. 

2) Snorkeling aoff the island of Ko Rok - We snorkeled at 4-5 different places but the best by far was the first one which took us to Ko Rok. There were no jellyfish, the coral was colourful, the water was clean and most of all, there were plenty of fish of lots of different colours. The best by far, for sure. We had lunch and got to laze around on Ko Rok for a couple of hours - we took pics during that but not of the snorkeling as we did not have a waterproof camera. 

1) Emerald cove, which was an enclosed beach which could only be reached after swimming through a tunnel of water for about 80 meters.

(The mouth of the tunnel and the inland beach at the Emerald Cove)

A parked long tail below