The Udupi Paradigm- Sigma of Sigmas

Anybody growing up in Mumbai is very well conversant with the ubiquitious Udipi restaurants that dot the Mumbai landscape. As a child, I vividly remember landing up at Ferry Wharf (Bhau cha dhakka in the local lingo) , then catching a bus (I think it was BEST Bus No 44) to Crawford Market (which stubbornly refuses to morph into Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market in the public consciousness) and then have steaming idlis at Sadanand. years later, when I was doing my MMS, I was introduced to the terms like productivity, six sigma et al. And as any self respecting , shallow MBAs are wont to, I bandied these jargon shamelessly.And as time elapsed, and some wisdom sprouted purely by the sheer momentum of that entity called Father Time, I realized I did not have to go far to understand what all that meant. And what is more near than that friendly neighbourhood Udipi restaurant. So let me take you through a quasi-virtual walk through to illustrate my point.
So one lands up in the Ramakrishna Udipi Hotel ( Ramkrishna Udipi is 'Smith' of Udipi Hotels) and a waiter ( we will define waiter in the Udipi context as we go along. Suffice to say, the waiter now is the usher or the poor man's maitre'd) guides you to a seat. Before even you can put your glutatus maximus to anchor itself on the sunmica covered table, 4 glasses of water in steel tumbler materializes itself in front of you. And in a mime signal which would put any top notch baseball signaller to shame, the fan is switched on from the cash counter. You now take a dreg of water (in India we drink water, we dont sip) and even before it has cooled your innards, the waiter (yup, all he needs is a red cape and a modicum of biceps) thrusts the menu card to you. You scan the menu card and settle on the medu vada. He listens  though you are made to believe that he hears. He scoots to the kitchen landing and bellows out in a Pavarotti like voice "One medu vada". Before you can say Jack Robinson, he is back with a plate of medu vada and sambar and chutney.You believe nobody is watching you in the milling mass...But you are so wrong. The Force is with the waiter ( he is now a Jedi) and he senses 45 seconds before you are about to polish off the last morsel of the vada. He asks if you want to have tea or coffee. Afraid of antagonizing the man with those supreme powers, you order a cup of tea. The same Jack Robinson/Pavarotti routine is repeated and a cuppa tea is thrust before you.As you gulp the hot tea, he asks whether you need anything else. You, reluctantly decline. He fishes out bill book from his pocket, whips out the pen from behind his right ear lobe, scribbles the bill, plonks it on a small plate and then gives it to you. You pay the bill and you sense a disturbance in the Force which forces you sidle out of your seat and make your way out.
What struck me is how the behaviour pattern is to drive up the key productivity metric, which is , customers per table per hour. I am sure the average bill value would not be high, so sales will have to effected by higher customer turnover and it can only be attained with quick service, clean tables and tasty hygenic food. The Udipi restaurant cracked the quick service mode much before QSR became a buzzword and McDonalds brought the Veg Tikki burger to India. No wonder , the Udipi restaurant still resides cheek by jowl with the McD of India. This is my ode to the Udipi restaurant, the reason for so many memories...

Google Glass and Jarvis

So the new Google Glass is being sneak previewed by the Chosen Ones. Funny, how the world has changed when one attains celebrity status just by being allowed to play with one of the tech toys. I saw the demo video (as you may guess, I am not the chosen one ..at least not yet) of Google Glass and I was blown away. Blown away not by the technology (I have seen the future and it is bright) but the way it changes the way we percieve the world around us. For the non-initiate , Google Glass is a voice activated networked spectacles which allows the user to navigate , download info and pretty much do a lot of things on the go. The HUD (Heads Up Display) from the fighter pilots has been bastardized and then improved to create this tech marvel. So now theoritically everybody can be Maverick with the track "You take my breath away" literally playing away through the earphones. Paradoxically , an increasingly networked environment is making socially inept populace where increasingly there is no need for real interactions. They are just being replaced by real-time interactions. As a species, we are discovering and inventing newer technologies but have we evolved to assimilate these technologies?
I remember those magazines that I read while growing up which promised the flying cars. I need my flying cars and I need it now (and sorry Terrafuggia , it is not really a flying car if you have to go to the airport to fly the damn car!!!!).  My point is, we seemed to build those great technologies which take us deeper into the virtual world ( some things like the Second Life end up in the Valhalla of the virtual world or whatever is the equivalent) but we never seem to get the replacement to the Internal Combustion Engine. And the ICE has been around for more than 100 years .Interesting isnt,it?
The way things are moving, Jeeves is quickly being replaced by Jarvis . Hard luck, old chap and all that balderdash!!!
As the Chinese curse goes "May you live in interesting times"

Kalaripayattu

It is indeed a travesty that Kalaripayattu is not given the support it requires in India, unlike the other Asian countries wherein their flagship martial arts are given strong state support and is considered an inalienable part of their ethos. I started learning Kalaripayattu around a year and half back (yup, a late starter and reinforces my procrastinator status) and it has been a very fulfilling journey. Around 4-5 months back when I start undergoing some real serious personal issues, Kalaripayattu gave me the mooring I required. In that sense, I owe a serious debt to this art. In my future blogs, I will expounding on this. Like all martial arts, Kalari is a way of life and there are so many subtexts and layers to it, it is mind boggling. As you peel off the layers, you realize there is such a high spirituality content to it. No wonder, some of the exponents call it the "Warrior Yoga". Like all martial arts, it is finally victory over one self which is the final goal.One of the concepts that caught my eye is the concept of  'mei kannu' or "When the body becomes the eyes'. For all the Jedi fans, it is so prescient. But then one should not be surprised. After all George Lucas was influenced by Joseph Campbell who is in turn was very much influenced by the Asian narrative. I have been very lucky to get a great 'asan' or 'Guru' who has been magnaminious in sharing the secrets (and Kalari Asans are very secretive). Having said that, my body doth protest too much every day and that elusive 180 degree split is quite a distance away on my journey.

Why the Sunday Gentleman?

I have been thinking of writing a blog for sometime. And then I have been mulling over what name should I give to my blog. As you can guess, I am a good procrastinator. As I pondered over the issue, which by the way, was in a rat race with other pending issues including global warming, should I learn golf, and why does the pigeon want to crap in my terrace, from the mists of my ageing memory, I remembered a term called The Sunday Gentleman.
It seems in the 19th century, England was very tough on people not meeting their financial debts. So they were hounded and there existed the real potent danger of one being incarcerated with the unwashed masses.But on Sunday, that danger was mitigated. So all those people who disappeared on the weekdays would be out in their sartorial finery on Sunday. This blog is somewhat metaphorically akin to that. This is my Sunday wherein I can expound and expand (in other words, disseminate inane gyan to all on sundry without the fear of censure). And that to me is liberating!!!!