Sreeram Srinivasan

  Have been thinking….. Am 60 now and probably have a fifth of my life left before am too feeble to keep the quality of life I have enjoyed all these years. So I decided a few months ago that i shall think BIGGER (I mean BGR).  The BGR principle.  no Bitterness  no Guilt  no Regrets  And thanks to this there is no Brooding, no worries in the manner of speaking and an amazing ability to accept as it comes and prioritize only the most important things in our remaining “quinmester” of life.  Am only human, a fallible one at that and have made spur of moment decisions, have been spontaneous and even led myself to be charmed by someone’s inescapable mystique, and made judgements that I can brood all day. I could also feel bitter about the opportunities I passed up in life or the way someone treated me. Is there a point in this last fifth of my healthy life? I could also keep feeling I’ve been a bad brother, a bad father, a bad husband, a bad boss or colleag...

The title may outrage some but read on...... A pandemic like this is a great chance and as the sayings goes, "great opportunities come not when pianos are playing in the Ballroom but bombs are landing in the harbor". How are we going to prepare ourselves and exploit this great chance - by "Intelligence of Thought" or our "Smartness of Being". This is what I mean by IOT and SOB in the title! In these days of the COVID 19 pandemic, see too many companies and people trying to be "smart" or even "smarting". Hear of companies negotiating hard on IPs of life saving products, understand a large company just announced that they will suspend all payments to suppliers invoking some legalese in the contract. We can stop paying the little guy, we can take advantage of the powerless, we can be hard-nosed even with the Government as it has its back to wall with illness and death on its hands. Similarly, we could constantly tweet sitting at home...

The Coronavirus or Covid-19 crisis has thrown up several possibilities. Am seeing several products and companies that were just about surviving or even dying get a sudden lease of life while the traditional businesses are locked down or sulking silently. Images of the mass migrations back to their villages in spite of a "curfew" by the migrants is also heart wrenching. They are braving not only the elements but possibly the risk of spreading the infection to their families and friends back in the villages. It remains to be seen if these migrants indeed migrate back to the cities post this crisis or simply decide to live on MGNREGA and other doles. If I may hazard a guess, the returns may be just about 60% but may take over a whole year if conditions do return to normal. Others may simply decide to "settle down" in their villages and not fight the inertia that would set in invariably. Herein lies our greatest opportunity and the positive fallout of the crisis as ...

Have you ever felt apprehensive about a chore or an assignment or a Project you absolutely need to finish but dreaded it for any number of reasons – starting trouble, the quantum of work involved, fear of the unknown, fear of failure knowing that others before you have, fear of facing uncertainty or unknown faces or a difficult person, physical strain, etc. Worry not for the "No mind" method will work for you! Read on. The insight of No Mind comes from the movie The Last Samurai (2003). In what I feel is the defining moment in the film when the protagonist Capt. Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) comes to understand his Japanese Captors. The scene is Capt. Algren having a "friendly duel" with a young officer in rebel army in the village where he is held captive. He is soundly defeated each time in spite of Capt. Algren's exemplary record as a soldier and a warrior. Unable to understand, he looks for answers only to find it the words of a village child, Nobutada - Too...

Execution for us in India is always a challenge. We come up with the best of plans and designs and conjure up awesome things but fall woefully short, mostly in time to delivery or quality of the work. Oftentimes it is not necessarily for want of resources but of the deep execution DNA - the rigor, the micro detailing and passion for the "checklist" and structured reviews.... Here are a few laws I came up with some years back to illustrate to my colleagues the importance of getting it done and may be nudge them towards better execution. The name Grams' Laws was coined out of gratitude and in dedication to my ex-colleague, Grams. He is a brilliant IT engineer and a great visionary when it came to dreaming up a scheme for a software program/module. He would tirelessly present the minutest of details of how this piece of code would work and what it would do and how it would be the mother of all programs that would solve not only our but even some of world's pr...

Its 100 years since Einstein published his general theory of relativity, truly a path-breaking discovery and postulate regarding this Universe. It is one of the secrets of the universe revealed, in effect. Einstein has been quoted as saying that he stumbled on to the General Theory of Relativity through deep thought and intuition but did not derive it via mathematical logic. The equations and math followed later.  Many of our rishis or great thinkers speak of the same deep meditation and thought that helped them to decipher the secrets of the universe. They probably revealed it to us but in cryptological terms that we fail to fathom. And they shrouded it in rituals, images, structures and even the "mantras" - the holy scripts that we see, hear and even chant without knowing the deep secrets within. In the book, The Da Vinci Code, the secret of Christ's bloodline is deeply encrypted in many ways and unravels ever so slowly through deep meditative thought, intuition and ...

Have been tempted to pen this follow-up blog to the one I wrote about Inner Engineering a few weeks back. So here I am succumbing to that temptation..... Every person (and all living things really) comes into this world with four essential ingredients, a) Body, b) Mind, c) Emotions, and d) Life Energy. We originate from an infinite energy source and revert back to it once our time is done here in this life. Now Karma, as we loosely refer to it, according to the learned and enlightened Masters is nothing but memory that we carry into this being or life. Yes. I know the word Karma is used by us in day to day vernacular with many connotations and often negatively. We use it to explain away our misery and suffering while forgetting about it in good times!!! The Karma or Memory is "written" into each of the four ingredients mentioned above of our being, viz., Body, Mind, Emotions and Life energy. Thus, how we act or react with our body, mind, emotions and the unseen...

Inner engineering - had heard so much about this program that I finally succumbed to my curiosity. Am also in a transition phase in my career and thought I had done so much of outer Engineering - Education, Networking, continuous learning of techniques and tools so felt it is time for some Inner Engineering. A three and a half day investment seemed quite appropriate as well at the Isha Centre in a scenic setting near Coimbatore. Here are some key learnings and insights for the ones interested….. First, it is a completely new journey into a realm that is beyond our normal logical, questioning mind. It calls for a leap of faith into a new dimension not easily explained by the axioms we are so familiar with in day to day life. However, it is done in a very "secular", non denominational, non-religious manner without pushing you too much. So well packaged and marketed in my view!! Second, it is an intense program both mentally and physically. You are in the program 24 hrs...

With many years of Corporate and work experience, have written quite a few Resignation letters and have also received many. Have noticed an interesting pattern and personality profiles in them and have listed them for you below for your ready reference 1. The Value Assessor 2. The Aspirer 3. The Mover on 4. The Boss Leaver 5. The Deliverance seeker 1. Value Assessor These guys come in and seriously "talk" about having got an awesome opportunity and of leaving the job and even ask how soon they can be relieved. As you talk to them more and more, they indulge in self-flagellation but quickly warm up when you speak of their strengths and achievements. They start to light up like a X'mas tree when you say how much value they add to the organisation. Finally, when you ask them to stay, they offer a token resistance and even say they have to discuss with family and come back on their decisions. Sometimes they will resist and wait for the Boss' boss to also sp...

On this eve of the close of another year, a dark cloud, upon this Nation, its child, a braveheart, in a shroud. So many mourners, deep in anguish, cry out aloud, the rulers clueless, think ways to silence the crowd. Why this fate for a li'l gal, to only dream she dared? So many thoughtless, so very mindless the word. Solutions before analysis, bane for a nation so proud, from dress codes to how a gang ought be disavowed. Let's look for the real causes, for years of female foeticide, has left us bereft of sisters, wives n of friends to be loved. A happy New year may yet usher upon this great land, when parents bring to life li'l boys n gals equal in count.. Wishing you a very Happy 2013!

These are not quite the times to be speaking of economies or economics, leave alone that of the World. The weary aftermath of the great downturn of 2008-2010 followed by a series of aftershocks are still being felt across continents. The recent deceleration of the emerging markets, those that arguably bailed out the Globe during the dark days of 2009-2010, is another grim surprise. China, that looked invincible just a couple of years back, is stuck in a low growth phase. All the cockiness that was India just about 20 months ago has gone into quiet introspection. Brazil and Russia never made too much noise and hence are excused for the general slowdown that their economies are going through. Africa is probabaly the only exception. If anything, there is widespread realisation that the World is ever more inter-connected and the developed World needs the emerging one as much as the other. It, therefore, takes great courage or utter foolishness to make a prediction going forward. Yours trul...

(wrote this to cheer up my class mate (she) whose d'ter is getting married and leaving home soon) Felt your tiny li'l heart beats, your presence I so well sense, a kick as you swim aside, in the cocoon your life that commence. When you were ready to leave your li'l home, a day so intense, will live within me no more, but bring cheer to this mere existence. Day again dawns to let you go, tiny tears that fill in an instance, seeing you go to get your wings, and knowledge to fill your sense. Then another day to see you fly, to watch you soar over the fence, hard at work, achieving each day, proud to see your perseverance. All the happiness watching you grow mix with a new pretense, a lingering worry takes hold, a mother's duty there to dispense. When comes a day to let go again, that I so wished in all my penance, why then this mind so disturbed, at the thought of your absence....? Oh! Baby... I will so miss you.... Oh! Baby... I will so mi...

Why this glorious union of a man and a woman called sex? Why only three li'l letters for what takes one to the apex? Is it just a hormonal sensation, or thing deep within the cortex? Whatever the source or game, an emotion seldom fails to perplex. Call it coitus, call it copulation, or some psychological complex, or intercourse or make whoopee, or a term from a medical index. So many names, so much ado, man's obsession for this reflex, but so limited are the ways of it, still so mystically it infects. Myths, mythology, spirituality gives it a respectable pretext, Phallus n female form, so holy a symbol for Hindus to Aztecs. Is sex a sop nature throws us for the genetic pool that it protects? or is it the eternal bliss that soul seeks, served out in tiny specks? Pleasure, progeny or a fetish that sucks one into this vortex, so consummate a joy, when there's consent and the latex...

"To be with an other woman is French, but to get caught is American.......", prophetic words spoken by French Inspector André in the 1988 comedy flick, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. This wonderful comedy, set in the French Riviera, is about a couple of con-artists aided and abetted by the local Police Inspector André. Here's the irony. What we saw playing out last few weeks is one of biggest names in France, Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), getting "caught" by the Americans for being with another woman, of all things. Its almost as if the Americans have been smarting over this comment Inspector André made, half in wit, for over 2 decades and have finally seen a chance to get even!! Media's penchant for conspiracy theories was apparent within the few days of the arrest. From Russian mafias to political vendetta to the French Right were blamed for this "entrapment" of DSK. After all, they said, he was a shoo in for the next President of France and so...

Women's tennis has always been a thing of beauty and elegance as is the game itself. Several names of yore have adorned the Ladies game of lawn tennis from Maureen Connolly in the 50s to Margaret Court, Virginia Wade and Billie Jean King in the 60s. The 70s belonged to a lovely lady by the name of Chris Evert! The 80s were dominated by a very manly and muscular Martina Navratilova, representing the first winds of change in the Women's game of tennis. Power game was in. The soft touch and finesse gave way to power serves and even powerful returns. Ms. Navratilova faded away in the early 90s giving way to a host of successors that seemed to keep up "softness and elegance" tradition of the Women's tennis in the form of Steffi Graf, Gabriella Sabatini, Monica Seles. Ms. Navratilova seemed, therefore, a one-off aberration. Later part of 90s and the first decade of the new millennium saw the likes of Martina Hingis, Kim Clijsters, Maria Sharapova and the Williams Sister...

The Economist, while reporting recently on the 100 years of IBM, said businesses founded on an idea last longer than ones based on a specific product(s) or service. It is common knowledge that only <2% of the Companies that were leaders five decades ago are still surviving. And going forward, only that many will be around in 50 years. Studies show that the average life span of a company is about 12.5 years!! Leading businesses of today will slowly fade away over the next few decades. The reasons for such an evolution are what I will refer by the acronym, OUCH! OUCH! Firstly, Obsolescence (of the product or service), second, Unsustainability due to regulatory changes (Government banning the product for any reason or evidence that such a product causes harm to health, safety and environment), third, Competition (coming up with a better value-proposition or a more innovative product or service) and the final one simply is Hubris that sets in within the company owing to its leaders...