Kerala trip: Rest of it

It's actually no fun posting the pics months after the excitement of coming back from a nice trip has died down. But to keep with the flow, after having posted pics of the first part of the trip in Cochin, I will post the rest.

I have become so seriously involved in photography that I have little to write these days. The information overload of trying to know how to get the best out of your equipment can be daunting. The budget always comes up too! :( And posting images on my facebook artist page and getting instant 'Like's and comments from friends who would have never read it on the blog is an altogether different thing! :)

Anyways I won't punish you further! Here are the pics :)

Here was a local romeo zooming off into the munnar hills on his bike :)

Any grocery shop worth its salt has to have a few varieties of bananas.

Going by the lavish ads the jewelry and saree industry enjoyed, it felt like these were the two prospering industries there (recession or not). We rarely saw any other billboards. It also looked like most of the models were from Mumbai. We even got to see an ad with what looked like Sayali Bhagat in one of them.

Why was I so interested in billboards of all the things? Some of the road journeys got a little monotonous and these were the interesting things we saw. And another thing is that each of these ads is a lesson in itself, if one wants to learn the art of fashion/commercial photography. How it can be and in some cases, how it shouldn't.

One thing that I think that definitely distinguishes Kerala is the windowless buses there. Keeps one completely in tune with the elements! ;)

Munnar was the best part of the trip if you ask me. It was unlike the other places that I have seen before. The tea estates had a charm. But it was the trees in the forests with trunks more than a 100 feet tall, growing on steep hills towering above us. All this after we ascend so many hundreds of meters up into the hills. The sheer scale was hard to imagine!

The main part of the Munnar town was a dusty little high altitude garbage dump. Was a little embarrassing to see what we are turning a pretty little hill station into. Rubble strewn all over, many new constructions not in tune with the landscape, and heaps of burning garbage. No, I did not take any pics there. :(

It is very hard to express the beauty of a place when every time you click the picture, the camera seems to interpret the scene in a different way, although equally beautiful. Very enigmatic.

And then it was down into the hot humid plains into the backwaters. The mandatory houseboat ride. The best part of this ride was the unique glimpse into life along the backwaters. Unique because I feel that there is nothing else like this in this country.

The last part of the trip was Kovalam beach. We did go to Kanyakumari but I did not like the place. Quarrelsome hotel managers and bad service marked our stay there and we realised that apart from the novelty of being on the tip of India and the Vivekananda rock, there isn't much to the place.

Kovalam beach was not such a great beach but it has this nice light house that you should not miss. The view from the top is worth dying for. ;)

Kerala - Cochin

We landed late in the evening and checked into the homestay called Rossitta Wood Castle and it turned out to be a beautiful place. A building built in 1706 now converted into a lovely homestay. Visiting a historical building is one thing and staying in one is entirely another. Of course, it also had all the luxuries like heated water and air-conditioning! :)

If you like nice little streets with character, the streets around Fort Kochi (the homestay was located here) and the Jewish town are places to be.

We were lucky that we got to see Sunday morning service in progress when we visited the historical St Francis church.

I felt our stay in Cochin (two days) was too short as I wanted to visit the Jewish town when the light was good but we just could not make it on time and the shops there close very early (5:30pm if I remember right). There went some good photo-opportunities. All I had was snaps of the streets in harsh light.

To completely absorb the essence of Cochin and walk unhurriedly through the silent streets, we need at least two or three days in this place. Good we did not take a package tour.

The Paud Church

I have noticed this church by the road every time I go to Mulshi. Nestled in the Pirangut valley, surrounded by the Sahyadri hills, this stone built church has an air of mystery about it. The looming monsoon clouds and the beautiful hills behind it only added to its beauty.

This church is named Paud Church, after the village it is adjacent to. I had entered the church compound once long ago when I was here with Everyman but it was a Saturday and this place was closed. I came to know from a passer by that they have service every Sunday, but I was somehow never there at the right time.

Finally, a couple of Sundays ago, we were going by this church and we decided to stop. This time I was with family and friends. We walked into the church compound admiring the building, wondering how old the walls were, when the pastor came in right behind us to open the doors. He told us that service was about to begin and we realised that we were in luck! We decided we will attend at least attend a part of the service before going ahead on our journey to Mulshi.

The pastor told us that this church was built by the British in 1912 and had seen better days. Now there are only about five Christian families left in the village. They just manage to keep the place going as they do not have a lot of funds.

This church has an old world charm that is hard to find. The first time I saw it, I had thought it may have been abandoned. But inside these dark walls, every week, the place comes alive with the voices of singing, led by the baritone voice of the friendly pastor.

Zappos

The prelude (You can skip this if you are more about the destination than about the journey and go straight to the book review. I wanted to make seperate posts on how I came to review the book and the review itself but decided to combine them!):

If you talk to any senior colleague who might have been in the company since around the time of its inception, you might hear one thing from them that's common: 'Things are not what they used to be.' Change is the only permanent thing (© Buddha circa 400 B.C )

Change is usually for the better. But most probably you will hear them wistfully talking about how things got a little less warm. 'At the start everyone knew everyone. There was less bureaucracy and fewer restrictive rules. There was a time when Orkutting was allowed but one fine day Orkut, Facebook, Blogger, etc were blocked. The company at its inception had a few people who were very passionate about what they were starting. For each of them the company was like their own. As the company expanded to about a few hundred, many of them turned out to be not that passionate anymore.' (This is actually a compilation of what many different people had to say on this!)

Have you heard this often? I have heard this so often that I had almost decided it is the norm rather than an exception. Was this even avoidable? At least some of it! There must be a way. I also had a lot of questions about what it is about a workplace that makes you want to stick around, work, and still be happy about it. It is true that if you do what you love chances are you will be happier. But this is not everything as I came to know the hard way from my own experiences. The culture at your work place goes a long way. By culture, my initial idea was of a place where everyone was friendly and none was the kind who would make things hard for you due to some vested interest. I realized that is not all! Why not have a culture that is not only a place where no one messes with you but is also about fun, togetherness, a lot of group activity very much like what we were evolutionarily programmed to do: be part of a 'tribe' in a way that would make us feel happy from within. I would recommend you read this book to know more: http://www.triballeadership.net/book. I haven't read it yet so do let me what you think of it!

I started regularly reading articles on http://positivesharing.com/ and I got to know a lot of things about the science of workplace happiness (that I was so missing at that time! ) . I also came to know about a workplace where happiness is given top priority and has also proved that it affects the company bottom line positively (almost nothing to $1 billion in ten years!). That company is Zappos.

Initially, the idea that such a company existed intrigued me and I started researching more on it online trying to find out if the skeptic in me was right. The skeptic in me said that such a thing might look good on paper but was it practical? I told about Zappos to one of my friends who has been working for about 20 years in a corporate environment and he told me it would not be possible unless the number of people was way less than 500. Then I googled for the total number of employees in Zappos and YES there are more than 500 people in Zappos! I also found Zappos is now among the Fortune list of 100 best companies to work for.

And now for the best part. I happened upon this link about a month ago: http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com. I found that Tony (CEO of Zappos) has written a book about his journey as an entrepreneur and how it led him to become part of Zappos. All I had to do to get a pre-release copy was to fill a form with my address and agree to review it with my honest opinion on the day of its release, which is today, 7th of June!

I was very thrilled to get the UPS courier from Zappos in a few days and was pleasantly surprised to find two copies inside instead of one! They managed to create WOW there too!

I opened the envelope and just could not help taking a pic:

The review:

Anyhoo, here is the review:

This book has a nice conversational style and I enjoyed reading it. Tony peppers the narration with little anecdotes that make it all the more interesting. There are quite a few sections that were contributed by other people who talk about their take on how their experience with Zappos was.

You might find some concepts repetitive in the later half as different people write about their experience but talk about similar ideas. At some places I found that the font used to denote transcripts of emails is a little low on readability, especially if you have more than a page of that text.

This book might not be a masterpiece in terms of writing style. Tony says he refused to use any ghost writers to make sure it was straight out of the horse's mouth, so to speak, in all it's rawness. But I would still value this book and seriously recommend it for the message that it holds. Those of you to whom organizational behavior, science of happiness and workplace psychology are a topic of interest, this book is not to be missed!

This book might turn out to be a first in corporate history to document what has been confounding many corporations (ironically): What makes employees truly happy? How come hefty raises and perks fail to retain some employees? ...and many other questions.

As you can see I was almost a fan of Zappos even before I read this book. But I have tried to give an honest opinion of this book both in terms of reading experience and the value of the ideas it conveys.

The Conclusion:
Highly recommended! 4.5 stars out of 5.

The giveaway:
I am going to giveaway one of the free copies to anyone who is interested. I will mail it to the address you are at and don't mind bearing the postage. I have no financial benefit from doing this but it feels great to spreading the message that this book has!

You can also buy this book at: http://www.amazon.com/deliveringhappiness



Further reading:

Some of the content and links that I randomly collected before I read this book and wrote this review are here. Instead of rewriting it, I decided I might as well paste it here. I have tried to include links where the material might be copyrighted. If any of it violates copyrights I will remove it.


http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zappos_ceo_talks_culture_fit_a.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZpU8oIT8tM&feature=player_embedded

Interesting transcripts from the video:
"If you get the culture right, then most of the other stuff, like great customer service or building a brand will just happen naturally."

"For us, actually customer service is not our number one priority. Our number one priority is company culture. Our whole belief is that if you get the culture right then most of the other stuff like great customer service or building a great brand will just happen naturally."

"For us we formalize the definition of our company culture into ten core values and hire and fire people based on those values. We actually have two sets of interviews. The hiring manager and his or her team will do the standard interview and the HR panel does a separate interview for culture fit."


Some interesting stuff at this link:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/making-sure-the-shoe-fits-at-zapposcom/

"Be positive!" ...even if your tail is on fire?

As you can see, my posts are getting less frequent. Am I busy with other things in life? Do I have no time to blog? Have I stopped taking pictures? Yes, no, and no. I have plenty of things to do but I also hate the phrase 'I have no time'. I guess if we love something strongly enough we will always look for ways to find time for it. Oh yes, I still love blogging but now there are quite a few other things I love that I am giving my time for.

Since a couple of days I have been trying to give this blog a makeover in terms of look and feel. I just realized it is not very easy with the limited choices in templates and what all you can do with them (when you have a limited knowledge of HTML!).

I also realised one thing about this blog:
I have been writing less and posting snaps more and it started getting pretty monotonous! So, for a change, I have been looking for something that would make me write and here it is:

Just this morning I read this interesting post at http://positivesharing.com/2009/11/the-happiness-hat-will-hurt-you-until-you-smile/ which got me thinking about this 'Be positive' phrase that you must be hearing very often.

I think one of the problems in simply saying 'Be Happy!', is in the way it is said. Saying just that without 'Real Caring' (a phrase so nicely put by one of the commentors on that blog), makes it insensitive and therefore more irritating and depressing. And people who show you Real Care do not need to say 'Be Happy!' ever. They spread happiness without saying it!

The phrase 'Be Happy' itself gives us a very important clue about what it is, which we often miss. We 'be' happy, we never 'do it' like it were some work. So it is not like we have a happiness switch that can be turned on and off! And sometimes the pain that precedes it is important to let us know that there maybe something we need to sort out before we feel that bliss. Yes, it is sometimes important to make good use of the wisdom we gain from a bad phase! And when we are happy it does not mean we would be grinning from ear to ear 24/7 either! :)

Monsoon Calling

This silent valley has so much to say

A million shades of green and blue

The mountains spout a hundred waterfalls

of cool crystal hue

As the monsoon comes calling

Watch the green grass wave happily in the wind

and dance to the raindrops falling

I have been to this place again, again, again, and again. It just keeps getting better :).

Back to the Roots

He made sure he is financially secure for a lifetime and took an early retirement. He has romanced the sitar for about 30 years now, a little more than for how many years he has run the company he started from scratch. Now he has broken free from the responsibility of co-owning that company. Now he has gone back to the sitar once and for all. He has gone back to what he loves most.

Road to School: Memory Lane

It was sometime in '94 that I walked down this road to school. About a week ago I went down that road again. It is as beautiful as ever. The green tree canopy is greener. Totally another world.

Lace Curtains and Wind Chimes

I always wanted to have lace curtains and a wind chime right along... now I do :)

She

Silence and the River

"Be passive--as you sit by the river and the river flows by and you simply watch. There is no eagerness, no urgency, no emergency. Nobody is forcing you. Even if you miss, there is nothing missed. You simply watch, you just look. Even the word watch is not good, because the very word watch gives a feeling of being active. You simply look, not having anything to do. You simply sit by the bank of the river, you look, and the river flows by."

-Osho

Ant Safari

I was in Mysore a few weeks ago. One dull boring afternoon, I set out into the 'vast expanses' of the portico of our home in search of some interesting ants. When you are looking for ants even a portico is a very very large place... except that you can easily cover it in less than an hour. :D

Framing a fast moving ant is not very easy...


Sometimes you realise that the huge orb that it is about to bite is actually your toe... you see the butt of that ant sticking from under the toe? I made a quick retreat after that shot...

Here is an ant in what is maybe the one of the most exotic locations it could be in... a pink hibiscus... my mom hates it when I crop the flower like that!! :D

Under the Mango Tree

Coconut Land 2

I shall not speak...

A little bit of Malgudi...

Like RK Narayan says, Malgudi could be any little village in India. This Pujari looked straight out of Malgudi immortalised by RK Laxman's cartoons... thought the sepia tone would make it look pre-independence! :D


And a passerby on the street...



Then, there was this trio looking like they were not particularly sure about what to do next...



A ritual in progress...

Smiles to Remember

My cousin and I went to the nearby villages to distribute wedding cards to all our relatives in the nearby villages. One of our relatives is a teacher in a little village school. Here is her entire school:

Yes, that's the ENTIRE school. It has two teachers!

It was a long time since I had seen school kids who looked stress-free!!

I told them to show all their teeth... :D

Coconut Land

The Godavari Delta of Andhra Pradesh has some beautiful landscapes. This place is about half an hour from Amalapuram and has rich clay soil. What you see in the foreground is a pond used for fish farming. Some fish apparently grow upto 2-3 feet in length!

Tried an HDR with a single RAW image file...

My Granny

While my niece is the youngest in the family, my granny is the eldest. My mom's mom. One of the most beautiful people I know. She has beautiful eyes. Her wrinkles tell a thousand stories. She is more than eighty and some say ninety, as it seems some people did not really have birth certificates then. She still reads the newspaper and can discuss politics :) Quite a lady!