Suresh Chandrasekaran's Blog, page 16

Words Matter!

The single most important reason why I am not a Jeff Bezos or a Elon Musk is the fact that I never really understood the fact that words matter. (Other than minor things like lack of talent, drive and the unshakable belief that anything is better done tomorrow than today? Yeah! So?) If only I had realized it early in life...hmm, what's the point moaning about that now?You see, take the least

The Real Action movie

I blame the staid media of my days for my burying myself in fiction to the exclusion of current affairs. I mean, it was so dull and boring to be reading of the foreign minister mouthing platitudes in USA and making genial remarks in China; or the Home minister talking about Aman and Shanthi in the country. Think of James Bond gunning for Blofeld or Veeru taking on Gabbar Singh...I mean, where's

The 'Expert' trap?

I have always wanted to be looked up to as an expert...on something or the other. You want to be a famous cricketer like a Tendulkar or a Kohli but all this waking up early, putting in hours at the gym and the Nets etc etc...that's a bit too much, no? Even assuming the talent. That's the way I felt about this Expert thing. I loved the idea of BEING respected as an expert but this process of

The Confidence hack

I never really understood how to speak confidently in any gathering. (Yeah, yeah, the litany of what I never understood is long. So? You, of course, understand everything from the Big Bang to the String theory, from Nanotech to drones...good for you.) More often than not, I start bleating, "But..." and get drowned out by others who hardly seem to have noticed that I even opened my mouth. (

Now I realize

I keep reflecting on that one answer that Yudhishtra was supposed to have given the Yaksha in reply to the question, "What is the greatest miracle?" The eldest Pandava is supposed to have said, "Despite seeing human beings dying all around them, no-one expects to die himself." As usual, I am giving my own loose understanding here. (So what's new you ask? Well, as though you do not come here to

Creating content

I thought that this creating a portfolio thing was exclusive to models and actors. You know, sort of showcasing that you can leer, grimace, grin, laugh, whatever without causing the viewer to retch uncontrollably. Apparently, even in this writing content, you need to show a 'portfolio'...sample pieces so that people can look them up and see if you suit them.Not that I was really keen on starting

The 'Viral' Virus

There is apparently a serious virus - more contagious than Covid - which afflicts humanity. The virus manifests itself in the insatiable desire for your social media outpourings to go 'viral'. When it affects someone severely, the patient will do anything - absolutely anything - for their posts to have a huge number of 'Likes', 'Shares' and comments.The problem with viruses, in general, is that

Segmentation Experts?

We, management guys, take a lot of credit for a lot of concepts. A lot of those concepts are those for which all we contributed was a catchy name. Others we defined and practiced, and assumed that we were the best practitioners of those concepts. The problem, though, is that most management concepts have been in practice for ages and the best we have done is refine them and make it possible for

Natural Intelligence?

There used to be this joke about a chap who went out for data collection. He goes into this house and asks the lady, "Are you married?" The lady says, "No!" He goes on to the next question in his list and asks, "How many children?" And gets roundly abused for insulting her. Assuming that he had got the order of questions wrong, he goes to the next house and asks the lady, 'How many children?" She

The lost art - Empathy

Come to think of it, Empathy is not really a lost art. I mean, you can only lose something which you first had. And I am not too sure that most of us ever had empathy. As in being able to see the world from the point of view of another person - sort of walk in his shoes as it were. True that, like logic or honor or any such thing, empathy is one of those things which we had always been quick to