There have been tons of articles written about Steve Jobs in the recent past but the following article particularly caught my attention and is making a lot of rounds in facebook:

http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_comment-steve-jobs-wasnt-great-he-wasnt-even-close_1596888

I spent some time in introspection and have come up with a reply to the author. Here is my letter:

Dear Mr. Neeraj,

This is with reference to the article which you had written about Steve Jobs not being great nor close to being great. I would like to present you my point of view as follows…

In my opinion, “How you do” is more important than “What you do” (but make sure that whatever you do is legal from the law’s point of view). If everyone on the earth wants to become a philanthropist, where will we have leaders in other fields? :)

For example, in 1930s, if Gandhi also wanted to become like Mother Teresa, we would not have got freedom for several more decades. We needed a Gandhi to move ahead in political field, we needed Mother Teresa to move ahead in the humanitarian field. We need leaders in every field, only then the world will progress in an overall manner. I would say Steve Jobs was the Messiah of the technology industry due to the simple reason that he wanted to bring something to the masses which otherwise would be catering only to the nerds who constitute just 0.01% of the population. Yes, he brought technology to masses and also made money for himself and the origanization. But that was a part of his job and he did his job with utmost dedication. Isnt that what the Gita also say? That doing your job with utmost dedication is what matter rather than the job itself. Can I downgrade a professional executioner just because of the fact that he sends the guilty to gallows which leads to their death? Thats his job. Similarly, when you have an organization, you have employees to feed, shareholders to impress. Your job is to show profit, and thats what Steve did. Can we downgrade him just because he is a businessman?

Technically speaking (from a bird’s eyeview), you are right about his re-packaging of the music player and introducing it as iPod. For that matter, the music player existed even in 1970s and was called Walkman by Sony which by itself was revolutionary. But again, technically speaking, Sony also had repackaged what was already existing i.e the cassette player which again was nothing but a prepackaging and transformation of the Gramaphone player. I can go on recursively but you get the idea :)

Although he must get credit for his innovative repackaging of existing gadgets, it is precisely not that reason we call him great. We call him great because of other reasons which is beyond technology and economics. The reason is philosophical. It has not got to do with how much GB iPod he introduced but it is about how much of inspiration he introduced. It is not about how many billions he added to Apple’s cash reserves, but it is about how much passion he demonstrated in achieving his goals. If Jobs has 80 or 10 billions, it is not going to affect me. But if Jobs shows that even with pancreatic cancer and being on medical leave, you can actively and passionately continue working like as if nothing has happened, it affects me, and it affects me positively.
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/apples-steve-jobs-on-medical-leave-but-still-working/748814/0

Come to think of it, such a weak, old man who knows that death would knock him down anytime soon, voluntarily calls for a conference call throughout the day to make decisions about iPad-2. Did he do it out of greed? Making money would be the last thing one would think of in his deathbed. Then what did he do for? Passion and his strive for excellence in whatever he has chosen to do.

When someone overcomes all the barriers to follow his dream and is passionate about it, he automatically becomes a source of inspiration and a role model. The more success he achieves and the wider the audience getting impacted by his work, the more fans he has.
Thats the reason when an inspirational school teacher dies, 100 students mourn, when an inspirational local leader dies, thousands mourn, when an inspirational international leader dies millions mourn. The very fact that the news of Steve’s death triggered a flurry of obituaries on millions of facebook walls shows the extent of his influence on such a wide audience base.

In our world, we have 2 types of poverty. One is financial poverty (the usual poverty we talk about) and the other is mental poverty (lack of confidence, inspiration, faith etc). While some of the philanthropists like Buffet and Gates are helping allievate financial poverty in the world, people like Steve Jobs indirectly have allievated the mental poverty. We can easily see that out of every 100 entrepreneurs, 98 of them consider Jobs as their role model because he has demonstrated that impossible is nothing when you have the passion and dedication. I agree he did all those not for the uplifment of the poor people but to do his business of creating a successful company. But it is these actions which we see and learn from.

For example, in Mahabharata, all the moral lessons we learn is through a violent war which was fought to satisfy their own egos. They did not fight to uplift the poor. Their intentions were just like that of businessmen. Do anything but win the war. However, we learnt a lot of lessons and hence we have the Gita which lifts our spirits in times of confusion/failure/desperation etc. I dont want to compare Lord Krishna with mere mortals like Gates or Steve but you get the idea. Each of them should be seen as a character and their deeds as inspiration for us to take lessons from. If Krishna inspires a billion people to take right decisions during their course of action, Jobs inspires thousands of entrepreneurs. And his dedication to perfection even during his last stages of cancer inspires millions of us to desire for excellence in whatever we try to do.

Maybe if you had always strived for excellence in whatever you do, you would have tried to study a little bit about Steve’s history before coming to such half baked conclusions about him. (I could see you mentioning about iPod/iPhone from 2000s and first Mac from 1980s. Please do a little more research of late 1980s about NeXT & 1990s about Pixar.)

Or maybe you took Steve’s philosophy of “Think Different” very seriously. When everybody is showering respect and tributes, you might have thought about how to think different and downplay him. Anyway, everyone is entitled to an opinion. I dont intend to push my views down your throat. I respect your views because every individual is unique, and so are his views. Whether you think he is great or not is not going to change history..

Regards,
Guruprasad

Note: Those who have a facebook account might find the discussions here interesting:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2456345137239&set=a.1770961003064.221799.1510418566&type=1&theater

1960, Mexico.
Dr. Norman Borlaug showing his High Yielding Variety (HYV) semi-dwarf wheat in Mexico which was created as a result of his intense research of crossing different varieties of wheat. Norman passed away in 2009 at the age of 95.

In one of the previous pics, we saw how India had faced severe food shortage in 1960s and there was a mention about Green Revolution which made India self sufficient in grains.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2020033869730&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=1

If Dr. M.S.Swaminathan is called the father of Indian Green Revolution, then Dr. Norman Borlaug can be called the grandfather :)

Let me share some info about Norman and his work leading to global green revolution, so that we can appreciate his role in Indian green revolution.

Borlaug started his career wih DuPont (one of the most reputed chemical companies) in 1942. But he always wanted to do something good for the society. During 1940s, Mexico was reeling under food shortage due to its rapidly increasing population and it started becoming a cause of concern for Borlaug. The Rockefeller foundation started a project to work on solving this problem and invited volunteers to join. Borlaug did not hesitate to quit his job at DuPont and join the foundation to work full time on the “Mexican hunger” project.

He used to spend 12-15 hours on the farm fields, carefully examining every kind of crop, soil, and researching on the effect of fertilizers on crop growth and so on. He tried some innovative methods of cross breeding between different varieties of wheat to come up with new ones (He headed a team which eventually made 6000 individual crossings of wheat of all combinations!!). During his research, he found that adding fertilizer causes the wheat to grow 2-3 times its height and improve yield, but it caused another problem. Such high rise lean crops used to sway a lot due to winds and most of them would fall off, hence effectively decreasing the overall produce.

So, he started experimenting with shorter wheat variety from Japan which was of semi-dwarf category and came up with a new breed of High Yielding Variety (HYV) which had 2-3 times the yield and at the same time did not grow tall and stayed thick and resistant to falling off. This was his major breakthrough which fuelled the green revolution in Mexico. There were many varieties of such HYV wheat he came up with, each being suitable for a certain climatic and soil condition. One such variety which was named “K68″ was used for the Green Revolution in India. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize later for his contribution to the society in curbing hunger.

How did Swaminathan from India come in contact with Norman? Although Norman & Swaminathan wanted to solve India’s hunger problem, did they receive a warm welcome from Indian bureaucracy or did they have to fight with Indian bureaucrats to solve India’s problems? Which event finally led to the bureaucrats to succumb and allow these visionaries to carry out the green revolution in India? How long did it take for India to become self sufficient? All these questions will be answered using different photos and narrations later :)

1966.
News article from US newspaper.

In the mid 1960s, India faced a severe food shortage (mainly in Bihar) and nearly escaped from a major famine.

In 1959 itself, A team from the USA had warned India about a serious food shorage after studying its birth rate and crop growth rate. They had mentioned in their report that if things continue as it is, there would be a major famine in 1966. The Indian govt under Nehru gave some attention to the report but did not take it as seriously as what the team had hoped.

A summary of the report from 1959 TIME magazine article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892492,00.html

You can read the point from the article which says “The Ford report got respectful attention in New Delhi, but not the hoped-for galvanizing of resolve”

The first signs of severe food shortage began showing up in 1965.
Lal Bahadur Shastri who was the PM in 1965 took it up as high priority (unlike his previous PM) and the first step he took was to create awareness among people and asking them to participate in the campaign to save food and attempt to increase grain output by appealing farmers to grow more than 1 crop an year. Also, he encouraged people to clean up their backyard and start growing crops and vegetables. One of the most popular initiative was the “miss a meal” campaign wherein the nation’s newspapers carried out a full page ad saying “Today is a Dinnerless day” i.e asking people to skip today’s dinner.

More about that in the 1965 TIME magazine article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,842253-1,00.html

Also, Shasri went on to give more importance to farmers because they were the real soldiers of country who could fight against food shortages which had become India’s biggest enemy. Remember the slogan “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan”?

However, India needed external support as well. Although such initiatives were helping India in some way, the food production went to an all time low in 1966 (as predicted by the report from USA). That was when India requested USA to supply grains and USA offered wholehearted support. They began supplying 20,000 tons of grains on a daily basis and during the peak time of the famine, they were supplying almost 50,000 tons of grains daily. There was an article which said that ships would arrive Indian port once in every 5 minutes!! There were even “ship traffic jams” because of several ships coming so frequently. That was the kind of food shortage India had, and the support given by US helped India to narrowly escape from a disaster.

As I mentioned earlier, Shastri had started lots of initiatives to curb food shortages and such initiatives in turn paved the way for some of the revolutionary policies in agriculture which resulted in Green Revolution. I will narrate more about the Green Revolution later.

If the govt had taken such precautionary steps after getting the report in 1959, India never had to witness such a famine. Thanks to some of the visionary leaders like Shastri who gave more importance to farmers, India overcame its food shortage and after Green revolution, we are now self sufficient and in a comfortable stage of donating some grains to other countries also. Apart from the Green Revolution, Shastri was instrumental in starting the White Revolution also. Hats off to Shastri. I wonder how advanced we would be now, if Shastri had been the Prime Minister for few more years :)

I will narrate more about Green Revolution & White Revolution later using different pics :)

Dr. M Visvesvaraya. (Sir MV)

Most of us would have studied about Sir MV in our school days. Info like where he was born and when, what is his contribution to the nation etc. So I will try to give some information which most of us would not have studied or maybe forgotten by now.

Born in a poor family in Muddenahalli of Karnataka (then Mysore State), MV came to Bangalore for higher education. If you remember the first photo in this album, it was of Bangalore High School which later became Central College, and it was in Central college where MV studied.

Just to remind you of Bangalore High School
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1770961043065&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=1&theater

Keeping all the other info for some other day, today, I will share some events and the habits through which MV demonstrated the following qualities
-Honesty & Work Ethics
-Discipline
-Absence of ego
-Dedication & excellence

Honesty & Work Ehics: While being in govt service, MV got a car from govt. While all his colleagues who had got such cars used it for their personal use also, MV bought a car from his savings to use it for his personal use. There is another ineresting anecdote about MV’s work ethics. Once a friend went to meet him in the evening when he was writing a document. MV asked him to wait. After sometime, MV turned off the lamp, kept his pen & papers aside. And pulled out another lamp, lit it, and took another set of pen and papers. The friend asked what was wrong with the other pen/paper/lamp. MV told him that he was doing office work till now. So he used office lamp and stationery. Now, he will do personal work, so this is his personal lamp & stationery!! That was he kind of work ethics he had.

Discipline: MV used to get up at 4:30am every morning and would report to office by 7am with clean and tidy clothes which he used to himself wash and iron. From 7am, he used to work till 8pm. Whenever he was supposed to give a speech, he would rehearse it for hours with discipline.

Absence of ego: During his old age, he went to USA with his Indian group & visited a factory. The factory officer showed them the working of several machines and when they came across a huge machine, the officer said that to know how it works, one has to climb the 75 foot ladder. Immediately, the old aged MV went ahead and started climbing the ladder while his group members were standing there and thinking it is not their job to climb.

Dedication & excellence: He did his work with passion & dedication and always gave his best. One of his popular quote is: “Remember, your work may be only to sweep a railway crossing, but it is your duty to keep it so clean that no other crossing in the world is as clean as yours”

This is just a brief overview of his qualities. There are still lot more things to know about him and learn from him. The technologies he invented. The factories he built. How he was influential in creating educational institutes. There are more examples demonstrating his integrity and honesty. His moral values & lack of ego.
I will narrate all those using different pics later :)

There is a nice 15 min video clip about Sir MV, his qualities, achievements and contribution to the nation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1LbPgeTekw

While watching the above clip, pause it at 2:07 min. you can see a photo of the 1866 matriculation batch of the same group which is the first pic in this album :)
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1770961043065&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=1&theater

But MV was not a part of that 1866 batch because he was born in 1861 and would have completed his matriculation sometime in 1877.

The legendary Infosys wives in the initial days.

From left to right: Mrs.Kumari Shibulal, Mrs.Rohini Nilekani & Mrs. Sudha Murthy.

In one of the previous pics, we saw how the Infosys couples met and got married.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2010407029065&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=1&theater

We had questions like how did their wives play significant roles during the founding of Infosys.
Lets discuss that today.

During the initial days, most of the founders (NRN, Nandan, Dinesh and others) were into writing codes day in and day out. Sudha being from a technical background, helped them in every aspect including writing code, acting as a clerk, secretary, office assitant etc. At the same time, Rohini and Mrs Gopalkrishna were also into helping them in administration work. During the night, when Sudha used to help the founders technically in coding, Rohini used to look after Sudha’s children. Mrs Shibulal used to cook for everybody.

They had a tough time juggling between work and family life (especially the ladies since they had an additional burden of housekeeping too) but they made sure they have some fun too, by going for outings once in a while. Sudha Murthy was happy with her new career and was looking forward to making it big and being part of the IT revolution. After a few months, Narayana Murthy posed a difficult decision to the Infosys wives. He said that only one person from each family should be involved i.e Either him or Sudha (and similarly either Nandan or Rohini). It was a collecive decision taken by the founders. This was because they felt that in order to make Infosys a success, each person has to give his 100%. At the same time, they wanted to make sure that family values are also taken care, which meant one person should focus only on Infosys and the other on family.
Narayana Murthy even offered to Sudha that if she wants to take up the responsibility of working for Infosys, then he is ready to take care of children.

Sudha was in a fix. She was happy with her career taking off and she was also happy to take care of her kids. She thought about this for days and finally came to a conclusion. She realized that Infosys was NRN’s dream and if he was allowed to work on his dream, he would create lakhs of new careers in India. Whereas if she asks him to take care of kids and work for the company, she would be fulfilling her ambition of having a good career for herself.
So the choice was

-Whether to realize her dream and get herself a vibrant career.
-Whether to allow NRN to realize his dream and create lakhs of careers.

She chose the latter and finally agreed to take care of the family (Similarly the other wives also agreed and allowed their husbands to focus on work while they provided motivation and took care of homes). But she had no regrets because she knew that her decision would eventually prove to be the best decision ever. If Infosys has created more than a lakh jobs today, part of the credit goes to Sudha for having taken that decision of stepping back and allowing NRN in the driver’s seat.

The most thought provoking part in this story is about the sacrifice of women. It is not just Sudha Murthy, but millions of women who are making sacrifices everyday, keeping their interests aside and supporting their husbands to achieve their dreams. They sacrifice their comfort for their children.
They sacrifice their ambitions to run their homes. But at the same time, when the situation demands, they have come forward and done hard work and even done men’s jobs. For example, we saw Ningamma working as a bus driver to run her home:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2006280605907&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=1&theater

Now, coming back to the Infosys story, after this tough decision was taken, the husbands focussed totally on developing the company. Was it a smooth ride? Did the license raj and govt red tape affect the growth of Infosys? Since growing a company involves lot of risks and living in austerity and success is never guaranteed, did the founders ever feel like giving up and joining stable jobs? (They could have easily got General Manager jobs in any company).
All these questions will be answered using different photos and narrations later :)

1873
Group of Parsi students with their master at Elphinstone School of Bombay.

Source of the pic:
http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/92037/4E892E73654BD554C4E7D9F5955358EAF4814A59.html?query=europeana_uri%3A%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.europeana.eu%2Fresolve%2Frecord%2F92037%2F6A765304D5D701887395F104D516A6B940944B58%22&start=3&startPage=1&pageId=brd

(
In the above link, you can see related photos, one of which is the 1866 photo which is the first entry of this album. I have updated the description of that entry:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1770961043065&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=1&theater
)

The history of Parsi community in India dates back to the 8th century. Some part of the Zorasrian population migrated from Persia to India as refugees after Arabs invaded them. They initially landed at Diu in Gujarat where the local Hindu ruler was kind enough to grant them land and gave a lease of new life. They were actually not called Parsis but the Indians called them Parsis because they came from Persia which was called Pars by Indians.

Thats how their journey began. Later, most of the Parsis spread to different towns, notably Surat and Bombay. Sometime in 17th century, British had come up with a master plan to develop Bombay into a commercial centre and started provding lots of opportunities and benefits to anyone who was interested in being a part of this plan. British invited people to come to Bombay and guaranteed them religious freedom, protection and even announced that such people would be considered citizens of England (British desperately wanted to set Bombay as a major commercial establishment as soon as possible).

Most of the other communities were a little skeptic about getting involved in this plan, but the Parsis very quickly recognized the potential of this and siezed most of the attractive opportunities related to industries, trading ship building etc. (However, slowly other communities also joined but they Parsis were clever enough to take the creamy opportunities).

Parsis got involved in most of the industrial revolutions that took place in India. The cotton industry boom, the ship building boom, iron & steel etc. We shall see more of such Industrial revolutions and how Parsis were involved and which were the popular families and related stuff in later pics and stories.

This way, the British had a very good impression about Parsis from 17th century itself. They felt Parsis were Indians in blood but English in taste and opinion. In 19th century, when British planned to bring a new educational system to India, they considered Parsis as their interpreters who would learn this system from them and impart it to rest of the country and this led to the foundation of their systematic modern education.

In 1820, Elphinstone School was established at Bombay (This photo is of a classroom from that School in 1873). Parsis were well educated, such modern education led to some reform in the community by banishing blind superstitious beliefs which did not seem logical. They became more open in terms of thinking and behavior. Women were also educated and given equal rights. British was very happy to see this kind of reform taking place but little did they know that it would backfire them. As the Parsis became got more education and increased social awareness, they realized how British has been exploiting India and slowly started revolting against them. One of the best examples being Dadabhai Naoroji who published a book titled “Poverty and Un-British Rule in India” which showed how wealth is being drained out of India and pushed into Britain. Discussing about the freedom struggle is a different thing altogether which can run into hundreds of pages, lets keep that discussion for some other day and talk only about Parsi community here.

So, in a way, Parsi community has been instrumental in the industrial development of India. Why did they choose to migrate to India when they had several other choices? How were they received by Indians? Did the Parsis try to influence Hindus or did the Hindus try to influence Parsis? How were they involved in Industrial revolution. What makes Bombay a very special place for them? Who were the most popular Parsi families? Since Parsis had a good relationship with British in terms of industry/trading and Mahatma Gandhi being a firm opposer of industries and much firmer opposition against British, What opinion did Mahatma Gandhi have about Parsis? All these questions will be answered using different photos and narrations later :)

References:
http://www.the-south-asian.com/april2001/Parsis-the%20Zoroastrians%20of%20India.htm

http://books.google.com/books?id=Y0HwAAAAMAAJ&q=inauthor%3A%22Dadabhai+Naoroji%22&dq=inauthor%3A%22Dadabhai+Naoroji%22&hl=en&ei=a2PqTeDZC4GAvgPoqczKDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA

http://theory.tifr.res.in/bombay/history/ethnic/parsi.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsi

Upper pic: The legendary Infosys couples during its early days.
Lower pic: Recent photos of the same couples.

From the previous pics of the album, we got to know a little about Narayana Murthy’s younger days
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1971607419099&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=1

Also, Sudha Murthy’s bold initiatives against gender discrimination:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2006280605907&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=1

Today, we shall know more about these couples so that we will be able appreciate the story of Infosys in future pics.

NRN and Sudha got introduced to each other though a common friend (Prasanna). NRN was a shy, simple, introvert guy. Sudha was bold, cheerful, extrovert gal. But as they say, opposites attract, they both started meeting more often. One day, NRN proposed to Sudha and she asked her parents for approval. Sudha’s father rejected it outright because NRN did not have a stable job (he could have easily got a job but he wanted to be a research engineer), he had communist ideas (Sudha’s father did not like it) and seemed to be a confused chap. Sudha respected her father’s decision and put things on hold.

However, they still continued seeing each other. Since he did not have a stable job, NRN was always running out of money. Although they used to meet for dinner and movies, it was Sudha who would end up paying the bills. She had maintained a diary keeping an account of all his borrowings (They were not yet married, so it was all considered loan to be repayed later)

Finally, NRN decided to take up a job as General Manager at Patni Computers and proposed her again.
Sudha’s father agreed for the marriage and the knot was tied in 1978. NRN never repayed the “loans” which Sudha had noted in her diary and after the wedding, she tore it down :)

Now, coming to Nandan Nilekani’s story. While doing his bachelors at IIT Bombay, Nandan was active in extra cirricular activities like organizing events and conducting quizzes. It was during one such quiz, he met Rohini. Since they had common friends, they also started meeting each other with friends (like how NRN and Sudha started). Similar to NRN’s story, Nandan and Rohini also started liking each other after several meets over dinner and eventually tied the knot :)

The reason I wanted tell this story is because these ladies played a significant role during the initial days of Infosys.
What role did they play? Did they write code? Did they train new joinees? Did they ignore their kids and focus on building the new company? Or were they able to manage work life balance inspite of working for the startup? All these questions will be answered later using different pics and narrations :)

In one of the prev pics in this album, we saw how Air India hired Anglo-Indians as flight attendants and had an European dress code
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1989626909575&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=1&theater

We had questions about when did they change the dress code to saris. Also, I had mentioned that some of the business tycoons fell in love with flight attendants and eventually married them. Lets see all those in today’s story.

For almost 2 decades Air India was happy with the European style of dresses but slowly as they started advertising India as a tourist destination in foreign newspapers, they realized that it was time to give a royal treatment to passengers in Indian style. They started hiring Indian girls and had 2 kinds of dress code. One was totally royal with the cabin decorated in palace style with flight attendants in Ghagra Choli as shown in the left side ad. Another dress code was the Sari worn in the most elegant manner. By 1970s, the Sari went on to become the permanent dress code in Air India.

The era of 1970s was the peak time for these flight attendants because in those days, such job was done out of passion and not as a means of livelihood. These attendants were in heavy demand by the advertising industry as well. There was a time when someone wanted to make an ad, the first thing they would do was approach Air India for auditions. It was the one stop place for advertising, modelling, and also a place of match making for high profile businessmen :)

It was during this time, some of the business tycoons fell in love with these flight attendants.
Some of the popular ones include:
-Adi Godrej, head of Godrej industries, married Parmeshwar Godrej.
-Nusli Wadia, head of Bombay Dyeing, married Maureen Wadia.
-Liquor Baron Vijay Mallya met his first wife Sameera Mallya in a Plane.
-Biscuit king Rajan Pillai married Nina Pillai.

Now these beauty queens have grown old but they are still leading an active social life. Maureen heads Gladrags magazine. Parmeshwar is into social awareness, philanthropy and a mentor in the fashion industry. Nina is a Mumbai socialite.

Some recent pics:

Parmeshwar Godrej
http://www.mid-day.com/imagedata/2009/may/Adi.jpg

Maureen Wadia
http://missmalini.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/normal_maureen-wadia-at-cn.jpg

Nina Pillai
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020714/her2.jpg

Air India and its service was considered to be one of the best in the world in 1970s. In fact, Singapore Airlines flight attendants were given training by our very own Air India. Today, Singapore Airlines, which learnt from us, is considered as the best, while ours has lost the charm.

Why did Air India’s service start going downhill? Was it because of some wrong decisions taken by it’s management or due to Govt? How did such an airline which stressed on having the most beautiful flight attendants end up having aunties?
All these questions will be answered using different photos and narrations later :)

March 2005.
Karnataka transport dept hires Ningamma as it’s first woman bus driver.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2005/03/09/stories/2005030902590300.htm

India was once envied upon for it’s gender equality where women were treated with utmost dignity. This has been mentioned not only in our ancient scriptures but also in foreign documents like those written by Hieun Tsang from China.
Even till 1500 AD, women were as equal as men in India. But something happened after that. For the last 500 years, women were denied equality. Maybe due to Mughal invasion or maybe due to British strategy.

But things are changing in the past few decades. The constitution of India stated equality in 1950 but practically it took more time for this equality to be implemented. Things did not happen overnight. There were social activists and common people who fought for their rights, demonstrated their capability that they are no lesser than men.

As a result of it, today we can see women in professions which were at one point of time considered sole ownership of men.
Today, we have women in almost all professions and this photo of KSRTC appointing woman driver is an example of it.

Doesnt she look like Sudha Murthy? :)

Talking about Sudha Murthy (Wife of Infosys Narayana Murthy), I feel she might have played a significant role in demanding women’s rights and demonstrating such capabilities. Let me share a small story about her which is relevant in this context.

While studying her masters at IISc, Sudha came across a job requirement ad from TELCO (now Tata Motors) calling for young, intelligent graduates with excellent academic record. She had all the mentioned qualities. But when she read the last line which said “Lady candidates need not apply”, she was enraged and felt discriminated.
So she wrote a letter to JRD Tata demanding why such a prestigeous company like Tata has still not come out of clutches like gender discrimination. Within days, she got a telegram asking her to attend the interview at Pune with the travel expenses borne by company. During the interview, she answered all the questions correctly and the panel was impressed. But the panel tried to convince her saying the job requirement is for factory shop floor and they dont have confidence in ladies and they had never hired ladies for such jobs before and offered her a desk job instead.
But Sudha was very bold and replied saying they have to start somewhere, otherwise no woman will be able to work in factories ever. Finally, after lots of internal discussions among panel members, she was offered the job. She worked there for few years and performed better than her male counterparts. Due to this, Tatas started getting more confidence and hired more females into their factories. Maybe that started a ripple in the industry and gradually women were given such jobs and responsibilities in male dominated industries.

Maybe the reason for Ningamma (in this photo) getting a job in KSRTC traces back its roots to Sudha Murthy’s bold attitude of demanding for women’s rights in male dominated jobs.

Talking about professional ladies, flight attendants also come to our mind. Lots of readers have been asking me to continue the Air India story and reveal details about who were the business tycoons who fell in love with flight attendants. I will definitely post that story tomorrow :)

1981.
A major breakthrough for Microsoft.

In the previous pic, we saw how Bill took the industry by storm and started revolutionizing the computer industry. But his vision of having a computer on every desk with Microsoft software was still a dream.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2001987778589&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=1&theater

Today, lets see what happens next. This is a very interesting story and if someone asks you what was the most dramatic event in the history of computer industry, you can tell them this story :)

Throughout 1970s, companies like IBM & HP had underestimated the potential of personal computer and ignored it. In 1970s, companies like Apple & Microsoft took the risk of getting into this niche industry and the results were there for everyone to see. The personal computer indeed had a market. So, in 1980, IBM finally realized the potential of personal computer and decided to make one (not wanting to be left behind in this race).

Apple & Microsoft reacted in different ways to IBM’s announcement. Apple saw it as a threat to its business and to hide its fear, a full front page ad was published. Read more about it here:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1938142582499&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=1&theater

But Microsoft reacted differently. Unlike Apple who saw IBM as threat, Microsoft considered IBM as its savior. Bill knew that IBM had the potential and power to bring a computer to every desk and he saw this as an opportunity to fulfill his vision by making sure his software goes into it.
Luck was in favor of Bill. Because IBM tried contacting Digital Research asking for an OS (Operating System), but the negotiation failed. Later, IBM called up Microsoft and asked the team to come to their HQ to discuss about their OS.

Here comes the most dramatic part. During the meet, Bill convinced IBM that they have an OS which will satisfy all their requirements. But the fact was that they did not have any OS at all. Talk about selling something that you dont even have. Bill had the guts to do it :) But Bill knew that he could somehow get such an OS (Paul had told him earlier that he knew somebody who was developing an OS).

The most interesting part of this deal was about revenue sharing. IBM wanted to pay a one time amount to Bill. But Bill wanted to license it to IBM and still retain ownership of the OS so that he can license it to other hardware manufacturers apart from IBM also. IBM saw this as an immature decision from Bill and asked him to reconsider, saying they are giving him a good offer and nobody else would be interested in his software. But Bill was adamant, and IBM happily accepted his agreement.

What happened next was very interesting. They got the deal from IBM, but had no OS. Paul rushed to the person who had developed an OS called QDOS (Quick & Dirty Operating System) and requested him to sell it to him for $50,000. This person was dumbstruck to find that someone is ready to pay “so much” for his OS and happily sold it to Paul. Bill & his team did some tweaking on this code and got the final OS ready and called it MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System). That is how, our legendary DOS command prompt was born.

In Aug 1981, the IBM-PC was launched with great fanfare. IBM not only relied on its brand value, but also lot of effort into marketing and the PC became an instant success.
Here is an interesting ad of the IBM PC of 1981
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPLGvI03Vrk

Soon after this, the floodgates opened up for Bill. Since he had good relations with some of the Japanese vendors, he made a deal with them to licence his OS for their hardware as well.
Today’s uploaded photo shows Bill & Paul sitting in a sea of computers from different vendors which started using his OS.

The IBM deal and QDOS purchase is very well dramatized in the movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley”.
Watch the 5-min clip here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCn8IkEuHKk

MS-DOS was their first major breakthrough but that did not stop MS from pushing further. Today, Microsoft is synonymous with Windows (with mouse and GUI). What tempted Bill to try his hands on GUI/mouse? How did they come up with their first windows software? How much of innovation went behind it? Did they buy something called quick and dirty windows (like QDOS) from someone and renamed it to MS-Windows? Or was there some other wicked planning in making windows? All these interesting questions will be later answered with more interesting stories using different interesting pics :)

Now, what is thought provoking in this? No doubt, Bill was hard working (he had proven his hard working capability by working day and night writing the BASIC interpreter as we saw in one of the prev pics). It was because of his hard work and determination, Microsoft was formed and went to the stage where IBM considered it for an OS. But this event shows that apart from hard working, one should have the risk taking ability, and to identify the right strategy of being at the right place at the right time.

If you remember one of the prev pics in this album, we had seen how a Grizzly bear takes a bit of risk to stand at the edge of a waterfall at the right time and waits for fishes to jump directly into its mouth.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1929966218095&set=a.1921166078097.235311.1510418566&type=1&theater

Wasnt Bill’s strategy also a little similar to Grizzly bear’s. Being at the right place at the right time to reap the benefits :)
Means, hard work, risk and strategy, all these are important to be very successful. Hard work is like the foundation of a building, risk is like outer design (because even outsiders can see that you are taking a risk), strategy is like interior design (because only insiders know what is the strategy). All these are necessary to make a beautiful building :)