Cyril Maithily Gupta's Blog

A few thousand years ago humanity gingerly took its first step into trade with barter: Exchanging goods for goods. Later the money system was introduced, then slowly modern economic phenomenon like banking, companies, industrialisation started appearing. There have been business leaders in every age, but none have been able to maintain the lead for a very long time. They just couldn’t cope with the changes.

“The Corleone family is thinking of giving up all its interests in the olive oil business and settling out here.”
Michael ‘Godfather’ Corleone

Like the senior Godfather, Michael Corleone too had a head for business. All through his career, he was always ahead of the time. Anticipating change, or causing it. He knew that the drug war would make his home state Nevada an unfriendly place and so he decided to move to Las Vegas, so that he could place his family and his business away from the meddling hands of the other mafia bosses. He was ready to give up the business his family had built up over the years and enter a field entirely knew to him, Casinos.

He was doing what his good businessman’s instincts told him to do. Exiting a business which was increasingly becoming insecure to enter one where he saw potential.

Smell Change Before It Arrives

In the late 1950s, a former petrol attendant in Aden arrived back in India and set up a small fabric trading house. At that time, cotton was the dominant fabric, with almost all of the trade happening in cotton. Polyester had just been invented, but was rejected by the cotton traders who believed it could not challenge the dominance of cotton. This trader felt different. He invested all his money in polyester. The fabric was a raging success due to its shine and durability, and that trader became the polyester prince of India. He was Dhirubhai Ambani, and the company he founded is Reliance Industries. India’s first Fortune 500 company.

Ambani’s knack of smelling change earned his company the status it has achieved. In fact, e did not just smell change, he caused it. Many years later his telecom venture shook the very foundations of telecom business in India by introducing call rates that were less than a tenth of the nearest competition. It wasn’t surprising that the company got a huge chunk of the market share before competitors could react.

Change is About Minimizing Your Losses

Change is inevitable, and constant. Your market and business is changing constantly due to the impact of many forces. There are social factors, new discoveries, trends, changes in incomes, demographics, almost everything is changing. If you can flow with the tide you will not only survive, but also prosper. Stay rooted at a spot, and you will be washed out.

In the 1990s the market for audio CDs and cassettes in India was exploding. All the companies seemed to be doing well, and there was a new ‘pop-sensation’ almost everyday. By the arrival of 2000, the trend had declined. Suddenly sales weren’t high as earlier and were falling at an alarming rate. Before the industry knew the earth moved from under their feet. Many companies went bankrupt. What was the factor that caused so drastic a change? MP3 Music, the Internet, and multiple FM radio stations that played good music all day and night long.

Many companies understood the new business dynamics and changed themselves according to it. Some of them stepped into movie production, while others cut spending heavily. They survived.

Change is about opportunities too

The changing face of the music industry brought fresh opportunities. Ventures like MP3.com, Napster, Raaga.com, etc. became popular just as fast as the traditional companies faded out. People were looking for only one kind of music – Digital.

Many years later a super-product emerged from this transformation. The iPod. The iPod was a revolution that was borne of the change that destroyed so many music companies. A success so spectacular it changed the fortunes of Apple Inc. One man’s threat became another’s opportunity.

Know that if you can exploit change properly, it can turn your world around.

And remember

Change is constant, so prepare yourself for it constantly.

Being at the helm is the most difficult job in the company. You have the responsibility to keep the company afloat and sailing briskly, no matter how troubled the waters are. Most small and medium business owners don’t have the benefits of a qualified research team, experienced managers, and business specialists. It’s up to you, and only you to make your business a success. Make a mistake, and you’ll pay for it. In the Godfather’s world, mistakes had to be often paid for by blood. That’s why he learnt the lesson early.

“I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can be careless, but not men.”
Vito “Godfather” Corleone

If you’re outraged by the sexist remark. Don’t. The godfather didn’t have a need to be politically correct. Not in Sicily, where he hailed from. Let me re-interpret the comment for you. The godfather is telling you that you can only afford to be careless if you have someone else to take care of things if you make a mistake. If you have responsibilities then you can’t afford to make mistakes.

Be careful lest you miss an opportunity

Many decisions yield immediate benefits, but may not be so fruitful in the longer term. There are too many lessons to be learnt from businesses that have failed due to the carelessness of the decision makers.

A classic case is IBM. When the company licensed MS-DOS from then a fledgling Microsoft, it could have easily added an exclusivity clause in the contract, and Microsoft would have had to oblige. Instead, IBM believed that it was only in the business of making computers, and allowed Microsoft to sell its OS to others. As a result Microsoft could leverage its contract with IBM to promote MS-DOS in a big way. Eventually it outgrew IBM itself.

No matter what line you are in, always understand that your most important task is to turn a profit. Imagine if IBM had an exclusivity contract with Microsoft, or had bought MS-DOS instead of licensing it, IBM could be where Microsoft is now.

Plan for the future, not for the day

The Godfather always had his sight on the future. He carefully analysed every fact, every incident to gain a deep understanding of the trends. He went with the flow when he had to, and stood his ground when he could. Be like that. In your life, live for today, but in business, always work for tomorrow.

In 1994 a small time hedge fund manager quit his job to pursue an opportunity he smelled on the Internet. He started Amazon.com when the web was still young. That was Jeff Bezos. Amazon.com grew rapidly, but it was still plagued by huge losses. Investors ran up huge bills keeping the operation afloat, and feared that the company could cave in any day. All through this time Jeff Bezos clung to his conviction. Amazon.com would turn a profit.

Finally in 2001, six years after it was started, Amazon.com showed profit for the first time. It has come a long way since then. But who could have had the tenacity to hang on all these years? Only a long term planner who carefully steered his company from the quagmire to the cliff.

Short-Term Benefits Do Not Last Forever

When the Godfather refused be a part of the drug cartel, he did so because he knew that drugs would attract extremely severe law enforcement, and bad publicity. He wasn’t ready to sacrifice the future of his business to be a part of something that would yield immediate profits, but threaten his family’s very existence in the future.

Try to have that foresight.

And remember

Be careful, your every mistake is an opportunity for someone else.

When I picked up this book by Immanuel Velikovsky from the book pile at the pavement (for all of Rs. 10), I expected it to be science fiction. It could have been about alien civilizations fighting against each other, or maybe a different earth in a different time facing a threat from its own colonies. No, none of that. When Immanuel Velikovsky picks a title, he means it literally.

This book is a bestseller of a bygone era. It’s like one of those books on conspiracy theories, but on a scale so grand that you’d have trouble imagining. Worlds in collision proposes: -

1. Earth has been hit by Venus.

2. Earth has been hit by Mars or has passed so close to it that there has been a devastation on Earth due to Mars.

3. Venus and Mars have collided.

4. Earth’s petroleum is of Venusian origin.

5. The legend of Exodus, and other legends about great floods and cataclysms have their root in the incidents above.

Velikovsky starts this book at a very nice note. In the beginning he points at the various scientific facts that create unanswered questions. Then he takes us through many of the legends prevalent in the ancient civilizations about these questions. And then he reveals his theories layer by layer as if peeling an onion. This is a great technique because if he had delivered the full blows right at the beginning then most readers would have found the claims too ridiculous to read on. By drawing the user into the net Velikovsky keeps him captured.

I did find many of Velikovsky’s theories intriguing, but since I know nothing about the sources he has quoted, I can’t verify if any of the information present in the book is true, though I have no reason to believe it is false either.

Considering all the evidence he has presented in the book, maybe I can venture to consider 1 or 2 of the things he has proposed, but it’s nearly impossible to accept all he has claimed.

I searched for Velikovsky on the Internet and found that he caused quite an uproar in the scientific community when he released this book. Most scientists rubbished his claims,  but it was considered important enough for Carl Sagan to organise a press meet and issue clarifications. There were some who believe that Velikovsky’s theories should have been considered more seriously, there could be answers lying there.

I found the book enjoyable in the beginning, but as I got deeper into it I found it repetitive. Maybe I would have liked it better if it was written like a plain old conspiracy theory.

Unless you’re running a mom-pop store that operates free of external influences, and does not attract competition from sharks, you’re going to face some sort of legal wrangle sooner or later. There could be payment trouble, employee issues, intellectual property complications, patent and branding disputes, consumer disagreements, you can think of the rest. Here’s what the senior don has to say about this: -

“A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.”
Vito ‘Godfather’ Corleone

The Godfather knew the threat and the power of the legal system. When working against you it can eat up your time, run up your legal bills and make you anxious. When working for you, it can give your opposition sleepless nights and force them to concede. The Godfather’s adopted son and consigliere Tom Hagen is an expert lawyer. The Don uses him efficiently to make sure his grounds are covered legally whenever he takes a new step. But if you don’t have a loyal guide like Hagen, don’t get into a legal mess.

Don’t go inviting legal trouble

It’s a long known truth that whenever two businesses file a lawsuit against each other, the only gainers are the lawyers. Most business lawsuits are eventually settled anyway. Take the legal wrangle between Intel and Taiwan’s chipmaker Via. When Via started making gains in the chipset business, Intel allegedly used its clout to stop motherboard makers from buying Via chipsets.

Via started making its own motherboards. Later, Intel filed a patent violation lawsuit against Via. Via countered with a lawsuit against Intel’s P4, alleging that Intel stole Via’s patents, and other lawsuits claiming that Intel used unfair practices to stop Via’s growth. Months later both the companies settled after running up huge legal bills in 11 lawsuits, and attracting a lot of bad publicity.

The lawsuits didn’t stop Via from making chipsets and motherboards, and it didn’t stop Intel from selling P4, but Intel paid a big price on legal bills, and also became a public laughing stock when it tried to stop a much smaller company from doing business. Before this lawsuit Intel had a better image. It was seen as competitive, but not as a shark. After the lawsuit it started attracting anti-monopoly activists.

The Godfather knew that it’s in a lawyer’s favour to keep the flame alive, to keep the lawsuit going, and he will often do that even if it is a fruitless exercise. The Godfather had enough fortitude to make one of his own son’s an expert in the field so that he could have someone he could trust. Unlike Godfather most of us are not lawyers, and don’t have trained lawyers on board.

Settle As Soon As You Can

Sometimes a business pays for the mistakes made by its staff. A rude customer support executive can result in a consumer lawsuit. If you’re in a similar situation when things have unavoidably resulted in a lawsuit, settle on the first opportunity. Most likely the opposition party is hassled with the lawsuit costs and proceedings too and will agree to fair terms of settlement.

By settling fast you can avoid big legal bills, undue anxiety, and time consuming legal procedures and maybe bad publicity. You’ve got better things to do than visit lawyers and courts.

Don’t avoid filing suits if you have to

You’ve been wronged by one of your competitors? Cheated by an employee? An unpaying customer? Don’t avoid falling a lawsuit when the damage is real and substantial. Just make sure you’re on solid grounds. Never file a lawsuit on flimsy grounds like Intel did, otherwise you’ll end up losing. When it comes to legal matters, you shouldn’t rely on your opposition’s stupidity.

Always get the best help

In matters concerning the authorities it is vital to always get the best counsel that you can. An established expert has a reputation to protect, and would most likely give you fair advice. If you have someone

There is a word in Hindi: ‘Gyan’. A simple word, but for it there is no exact translation in the English language. It falls somewhere between consciousness and knowledge. It’s a combination of both. It stands for knowledge that is awareness, or leads to awareness. It is not information. It is a higher ideal.

I read on the Internet that today is the day when Osho died. When he was alive I was too young to understand what he said. Now I am older and even though I still can’t comprehend his message, his words hide a great secret.

Osho was the perfect prophet for the ‘kali-yuga’, brash, controversial, and dirty. He could have been the Christ of our time, if only his message was not diluted, and not so blatantly commercialized by those who followed him. I believe that he will still be the Christ of our age. His message is too great to be lost so easily.

Osho is the messiah for the depressed. He is the salve for tired, aching hearts, who long to give it all up and sleep the endless, dark sleep. Osho teaches to be a witness to oneself, and he makes the world more bearable with his message. He teaches to witness pain and ecstasy, even to experience it, but to always understand that it is an experience, and to transcend the experience.

I have not understood Osho, but I have read him. I have read his discourses, his messages, and his contradictions. Even his contradictions are full of confidence. He said he spoke the truth then, and he speaks it now, and I believe him.

Osho does not preach godliness, he does not preach religion, he only preaches practicality and disappointment, but he also preaches that enlightenment is in witnessing disappointment the same way as witnessing success, and revelling in both.

When you are plagued by the darkness, ask Osho for help. Read his words. He will reach out to you.

He is not a god. He is not even a prophet. He is only a human being, and that’s why he’s special. Because he was utterly human.

Thank you for visiting us Osho.

The average human life expectancy has risen from 40 to over 60 in the last millennia. People live a whopping 50% longer than earlier, and they’re healthier too. Someone who is 50 can plan to open a new business, make it profitable and then retire in leisure all in the life he has left. A far cry from the older days when by 50 you were ashes, or preparing to become so.

Increasing life span is an interesting phenomenon. Let me explain why I believe a long life can help advance the speed of social and scientific development.

Today doctors start learning their trade by the time they’re 18, but are able to achieve specialisation and step into a proper practice only by they reach 28. Similarly other professions too require a long time in learning, either in an institution or under a master of the art. This is appropriate as the complexity in almost every field has gone up. There is a wider amount of information to assimilate, and achieving expert level status in a field, good enough to allow you to take it further ahead, needs a lot of time.

That is why a long life span is vital to maintain the advancement rate of today. Already a researcher spends as much as 20 years just studying his topic before he can confidently announce results, or make an invention. Even then it’s not an individual but teams of them who can make significant breakthroughs.

Experience and honed intuition is vital in making progress, and if a person is healthy up to an advanced stage, he or she can give back a lot more to the society.

I think by the end of this century human life expectancy would be touching the 100 year mark, and people will be able to maintain an active life easily till they’re 75 or more. This will create a huge knowledge pool to the society.

Humankind is set to become a race of predominantly elderly, not young people. Social demographics are changing, and it will be interesting to see if this race of old people is still able to pursue the pasttimes of the young like war and fighting.

What better way to give voice to those conflicting inner thoughts than dialogs? Stanislaw Lem may not be first to present this sort of text, but I am inspired by him. This, could be the first in a small series.

On a sunny wintry morning, Veervrata sat at the edge of the thick forest at Yamuna banks, contemplating when Vicharvarna walked on him.

Vicharvarna: What do you think of that has put you in so deep a trance oh Veervrata?

Veervrata: Vicharwarna? I was only thinking about the god, our almighty creator. If only I could be sure he existed?

Vicharvarna: But why? Is it not enough to revel in the beauty of the world? Why at all do you need to seek who created it?

Veervrata: I only seek so that I can be on the right path. I am drawn between the two extremes.

Vicharvarna: And what are those Veervrata?

Veervrata: I cannot decide whether I should be a thiest, or an atheist?

Vicharvarna: Why not just pick one and leave the other oh Veervrata?

Veervrata: I feel inside that I can’t make a choice of which I am unsure oh Vicharvarna.

Vicharvarna: Unsurity makes you insecure? But isn’t unsurity the very nature of existence? See the beauty in the irony that we can’t be sure of anything.

Veervrata: I wish I had your eyes Vicharwarna. But do tell. What is your opinion on the topic?

Vicharvarna: On this topic, I choose to have no opinion.

Veervrata: No opinion? Does that mean you don’t believe in God?

Vicharvrata: Yes, but I don’t believe in God not existing either.

Veervrata: You don’t believe in God and yet you believe he could exist? Isn’t there a contradiction somewhere in here?

Vicharvarna: Contradiction? I only see a scientific reasoning.

Veervrata: That is surprising to me oh Vicharvarna. Most scientists do not believe that there is a god. In fact the scientific theory of evolution, and big bang are often cited as counter-arguments against theists by atheists.

Vicharvarna: I do not think that atheists stand up to scientific reasoning Veervrata.

Veervrata: They do not? Pray, why do you think so, when the very basis of atheism is hard, cold science. That everything can be explained scientifically, and there’s no supreme power over nature.

Vicharvarna: Veervrata, while the first part of your statement, that everything can be explained scientifically is true, the second part may not be.

Veervrata: How Vicharvarna?

Vicharvarna: Is science not just another name for the truth? When truth comes to light, and is explained in proper manner, it becomes science. Thus hypnosis may be called a science, and in future if humankind develops the ability to lift boulders by mere thought, that would be science.

(more…)

What kind of science fiction fan am I to read one of the most legendary science fiction books so late? I am talking about Robert A Heinlein’s Strange In A Strange Land. Between Children of the Dune, and this book I’ve read 4 others, but none remarkable.

While Children of Dune was astonishing in the duplicity of character, and politics it portrayed, Stranger In A Strange Land is amazing because of its religious philosophy.

I am not even going to try to review Heinlein’s thoughts on religion in this book. Just let me say that he’s a profound agnost. His character Jubal unmistakably speaks for Heinlein, and it talks of all the doubts, all the uncertainties that only a true agnost can have. Organized religion — he manages to totally rubbish and glorify in the same instance.

The lead character of the book was Valentine Michael Smith, but the hero undoubtedly was Jubal Harshaw. The one who guided ‘The Man From The Mars’ in the beginning, and the one who watched him evolve into the Archangel Michael. He was the only one who understood the politics and the religions of the times the book is set in. It could be set in today. Just change a few names.

Stranger In A Strange Land is only a storybook, but so is the Geeta. In books like these, the story is nothing but connecting threads, to keep the the enlightenment together. Stranger… is not Geeta, but the words in it are not wasted. It is written to provoke thought in a mind that is un-corrupted by religion. It is written for an agnost who questions everything, and it assists in this questioning. It questions religion, the world, humanity, and each and every man that has ever lived on this planet. It questions our system, our society, our customs, and even our language.

It is complex, with layers, and layers of meaning that has to be unwrapped carefully. Much of the book is symbolic, and to ‘grok it in fullness’ needs a lot of effort and time. I suspect I haven’t done that yet. Maybe when I read it again, and again I will grok more.

Robert Heinlein may be an agnost, but he understood religion very well. But then I guess, that’s what a true agnost should be like. He has a strong distaste for the scriptures, and rituals, but he believes in the essence of religion. Not the spirit of it. The essence. That’s why when his characters say ‘Thou art god’, they really mean it, because that’s what Heinlein must believe in. At least while he wrote this book. Oh I wish it was R. A. Heinlein, and not L. R Hubbard who founded a new religion.

This book I will not recommend to everybody. No, I will not recommend it to anybody. It can only be in your destiny to read it.

I am creating a new web service for one of my new projects that require communication with our website. Had some trouble setting up the web service to work on the web server, and had to spent more than 2 hours looking for a solution, which when I found was so easy that it should have been obvious.

1. If you create a web service using Visual Studio Web Developer 3.5, it will place the code of the service in a code behind file. This will require you to place the code in a Virtual directory in IIS if you want to run it.

2. If you put the code in the asmx file itself, then you don’t need to run it in a virtual directory.

I kept trying to run my code without a virtual directory even though I had the code separately in a code behind module, well that just doesn’t kick it if you’re talking about web services.

Remember to create a virtual directory to run the service in, otherwise you will spend a lot of time not getting anywhere. Creating a virtual directory in IIS is pretty easy, just right click on the root directory and find ‘Create Virtual directory’. You can place your web service here, and then when you try to execute the ASMX file, the service will show.

Another tip:

If you’ve got your web service in a one project, and your client application in another one, you can still link the client to the web service. Just run the service, find the port number that it’s running on (right click on the server icon that shows up on the taskbar menu when you run the service), and then just add a web reference to ‘http://localhost:portnumber’.

Pretty easy. I’ve been working on LINQ to SQL to. Maybe I will write some about that later.

Many Indians are prospering thanks to the new wave of globalisation. They love the concept of a modern nation with modern training and a more open, westernized culture, because that’s what has made them successful. On the other hand, there are those who haven’t had the taste of this prosperity and still live in the old India where culture and traditions are more important than financial success, or a cosmopolitan life.

This second India hates the new Indian ‘elite’ for the very same reasons that the elite considers itself superior. Their love for the English language, the western culture, openness, pro-globalisation stance, pro-mnc leanings, weakening religious ties, and so on. These ‘pseudo-elite’ Indians are now the ‘chamchas’ of the ‘firangi’ and are leading our country into a death-trap, believes the second India, or at least the intellectuals in the second India (or is the first India, and the ‘pseudo-elite’ are the second India?)

I am not trying to have an opinion or call anyone names over here, but the fact is that I’ve seen the more ‘earthy’ or traditional Indian intellectuals have very strong view against anything that stands for the cosmpolitan India, even institutions like IITs and IIMs. These, they say, are the cause of everything wrong in the Indian society.

Although it’s true that globalisation and modernity is changing a lot of the older belief system, but it’s equally true that it’s going to be pretty impossible to stop this from happening. Only change is static, and to understand that is to flow with the change so that one can get to places.

My only desire is that in this new, more prosperous future of India, everyone gets a stake. That’s the only fair thing.