Midlife Vices 1 – 25 years after COEP

Random Thoughts over 25 years!

1. A generation identifies itself with the songs that played during its youth. So when the time comes for a generation to meet again, a generation later, it wants to relive its youth by hearing these signature songs. They want the hired orchestra to play these songs. Better still, they want friends to sing those songs. Best of all, is when the entire group batch sings, dances and lets their hair loose. That is what happened when we heard ‘Pyaar hamein kis mod pe le aaya..’. It brought the house down, and the gang up on their feet. An astute observation by Vinayak Bhide on the dancing style of yours truly is that it was a combination of jumping up – and trying to catch the ill-fitting shorts on the way down!
2. On the subject of shorts, it was observed that of the 130 people who took part – 3 wore shorts. That is a 200% growth over 2014 – when yours truly was the only proponent of the Indian National Cycling Dress. From an engineering perspective, it is about mechanical design impacting our daily wear. If it were not for the chain and the grease, I would not be wearing what I wear. Yet, it’s just not about the grease. One of my IIMC friends, V Arun Kumar, wears a dhoti once a month to work. Nothing to beat a dhoti’s ventilation – but the shorts would come a close second. I wonder why more of us do not wear shorts to work. If there is anything apart from cricket that the Aussies can teach us, it is the shorts culture!
3. Well ventilated clothing would make people like Anant Joshi unhappy though. If people wear more comfortable clothes – they would avoid Air conditioning. Anant makes a living selling ACs! But I will let you in on a trade secret – our great Antya drives a BMW X1, but does not have an AC in his own house! One of the greatest misconceptions of civilization is property. The reality is that we own nothing. We are merely custodians. Our duty is to ensure that when we leave, things are way better than we got them in. Cycle, if you can. If you can’t, use a motorcycle, maybe with a driver like our friend Kiran Shah does. If you can’t even do that – car pool. And that is what I did – must thank Ajay Jandial and Abhay Ghate for allowing the extra passenger in their cars!
4. Met with Bharat Oswal as my car pooling co-passenger on the way to Ambrosia. His utensils are gracing the kitchens of Africa for the last few years. Working out the permutations of dies and aluminum sheet thicknesses in manufacturing an awesome range of utensils has made him lose a lot of hair over the years!
5. Mukund Wankhede, probably our batch’s most dynamic FB personage, had come down all the way from Detroit. He works with GM, which got over a rough patch in the US, by declaring bankruptcy – and getting rid of what was a suicide pill – retiree health care! Even though GM may have rediscovered its cache in the US, the GM story in India is quite different. Their cars just don’t seem to be selling here. Indian car sales are a function of Initial cost, Running cost and Resale Cost. I was talking to a second hand vehicle dealer – who observed that models, which do well on the resale market, are ones which continue to have lower operating costs, less maintenance costs and spares availability, for many years after their resale. Another interesting factor which Wanko mentioned is the aspirational one. Those of you who have follow GM’s history would know that when it started, Ford was already producing a million cars a year. GM beat them by playing to aspiration, whilst Ford played to cost. Ford had only got the Model T, whereas GM had a car for every segment. So when the old Fords finished their life, owners who were looking at ‘upgrades’ had nowhere to go, except GM! One interesting tidbit from Wanko – Buick is a low-end, low-selling brand in the US, but it is GM’s top seller in China. It so happens that it was the car used by the Emperor of China!
6. Continuing with the theme of transport, another interesting chat was with Anup Sable. Anup sees the future of electric vehicles more in the realm of public transport. We do need fewer cars and many more buses! Anup’s company, KPIT, is working on hybrid systems for use in city public transport buses. This increases fuel efficiency by almost 15%, by the use of regenerative braking. When vehicles decelerate, the energy is normally dissipated as heat in the brakes. With regenerative braking, you drive a generator, which also functions as a motor, and store this braking energy in batteries for use in the next acceleration cycle.
7. Pravin Darade is the only IAS administrator of our batch. He was earlier posted at Nagpur and got noticed by the current CM as a guy who gets things done. So Devendra bhai got him into his office on becoming CM. Pravin is a workaholic – both he and his boss start work at 0900 hours and continue till 0200 hrs. This is because Devendra manages so many of the departments himself. Clearly following his role model, Narendra Bhai. I had an opportunity to listen to Devendra bhai live in Nagpur on the World Yoga day. His speech did not impress me too much – and I mentioned that to Pravin. With the kind of workload he has, Devendra bhai probably does not get too much time to rehearse his speeches nowadays!
8. Prof Anil Sahasrabuddhe was our guest of honor. After a marathon 10 year stint, as Principal of COEP, he is leaving for Delhi, to take over as the chairman of AICTE. I was curious about what the current status of AICTE is – and was assured that the Supreme Court has validated AICTE’s existence, with all its powers intact. Prof Sahasrabuddhe has been a person with vision, and has managed to actually up the standards at COEP. The college is in much better shape today than what we guys had left it in 1990. I asked Prof Sahasrabuddhe what his vision for AICTE was, especially in light of the falling demand for engineers and their general un-employability. AICTE’s mandate is bigger than just engineering, it includes management too. Prof Sahasrabuddhe is going to be looking at skill improvement as his prime focus. He takes over the post this month, and we are all ‘honestly’ looking forward to his doing a great job over there!
9. I hope that the next Principal (my preference would be for Prof BB Ahuja) also has an equally long stint at the top. Because to achieve greatness, you need tenure. Look at all the out-performing corporates – TCS, HDFC Bank. They have all had CEOs with average tenures that are measured in decades not years.
10. Have to acknowledge that the organizing team did a fantastic job this time too. Unlike last year, we had sponsors this time. Vijay Chheda and Anil Jhamtani sponsored the orchestra and T shirts respectively. Compared to other alumni meets that I have attended off late, what I liked was the no-booze culture of our meet. (Am sure there are many who will not agree with me on this one). The organizers also did well by doing away with the Skype talks, which had not worked out too well last time. For me a very unfortunate part of this meet was my inability to chat up with new people. In the last meet, had spent some time with Akbar Bombaywala of the Metallurgy batch – and was impressed. (He did not turn up this time.) This time most of us were too ensconced in our comfort zones. Maybe meeting frequencies need to come down. Maybe we need to organize things differently. Here is what I would propose for the next meet:
    1. Break the audience into smaller groups. Rotate the group compositions – have groups are from the same branch, another where groups are from the same industry and finally one where they are from different branches.
    2. Have quizzes where we come up with live problems that we are facing – and we hear out what our friends have to say about the same.
    3. Have more audience participation in the entertainment. Keep the ‘professional’ orchestras out. I think we prefer that the singers be from amongst our friends. Encourage the non singers by having small karaoke groups. Get the gang to move their feet around by creating a dance floor.
    4. My tuppence of thoughts as an eco-activist. Let us work to reduce the atrocious use of mineral water bottles. I myself downed at least half a dozen. And next time we could do without fireworks!
    5. Have more talks by our achievers – both at professional and non professional levels. It would be an interesting idea to get our ‘achiever’ children to speak. I think we all need to learn from the next generation. I still remember Abhay Ghate’s son stumping me with some great math questions. For this generation to be relevant, it needs to learn from the next!

COEP 90 – Get together in 2014

Recently attended the COEP 90 batch get together in Pune. Got a call today from Nitin Gaekwad, our Mech batchmate, who could not attend because of a friend’s sickness. Nitin asked me:

‘How did the 90 batch get together go?’

‘Paisa Wasool’

‘Did you strike any deals?’

‘No’

‘How many of the 120 that attended do you remember?’

‘Not too many – in face I am pretty sure that I did not know more than 40 or so even when I was in College. And the girls still refused to talk to me!’

‘So where is the paisa wasool?’

‘The Paisa wasool is in the study of history. As Anup Sable put it, we have definitely crossed the half life of our careers now. 25 years later is a good time to go back in time and see what people have been up to.’

My personal agenda was always to meet up with strangers, who have a large part of their background common with me. The same middle class upbringing, the same great college that they graduated from. So what have these guys been up to?

Akbar Bombaywalla is one such stranger. Chatted with him for about 10 minutes – and found out what makes great businessmen tick. Akbar is from Metallurgy. Worked for some time with SAIL – then went back to Yavatmal to join his dad’s hardware business. Soon added a MRF tyre dealership. Found that most of the large customers for his tyres were mine owners – and added an explosives factory, to serve the same customers. Then went on to add a trading establishment in mining tools. Exploited opportunities by taking over a canning unit – which concentrates on only 2-3 product lines. And his latest is a pharma ingredient unit – which is in the works. Tablets require fillers – as the active ingredient is not very high as a weight percentage.

The fillers are made of cellulose – and cotton is a very cost efficient source of the same. He is currently looking for technology – and would be surprised if his new venture is not running by the time we meet him next.

So what does one learn from the likes of Akbar? Something that I have to unlearn from my IIM-Calcutta-Michael-Porter theory – that there is no core competence? Or how important it is to trust and delegate?’

Was nice chatting up with Prof Mandke, who I can consider an old friend. I remember being one of the first people who nudged on Sir to start the alumni association – and one of the first contributors of the Rs. 500 membership fee. Honestly, not much has been done since then by me – apart from trying to teach Industrial Management to a batch of TE (Mech) students a decade ago. They slept through it, like we did during our days.

Was nice listening to Lila Poonawala talk about making a difference to girls. As a father of two girls, I wish her tribe increases. Was nice to see debates with Lila on the business model of scholarships Vs Loans. As I escorted her to the car, I thanked her for an ad that she released for our MESA magazine 25 years ago – where yours truly was the editor of the cash strapped departmental magazine..

Was nice to see how the fathers of our batch suddenly started remembering their kids – after the batch mothers started mentioning them in their introductions.

Was nice reacquainting with friends who you only had met in the last meet – and many more who you were meeting with after 24 years.. Am looking forward to chatting with Dattatray Parkhi next time – and learn more about the challenges of teaching at a community college in Kolhapur.

One thing that all batchmates need to think of – is about giving back to society. The trust is a good beginning. There are some of us who have volunteered – kudos to all of them. For the majority like me, who did not, we also need to do something at our own personal levels. Mukesh Kanaskar is a difficult role model to follow – but the moot question is what part of society would we want to change in our life times? A good beginning would be to donate our time. I think what society needs is more of our time than our money….