And now comes the main question. How can we teach kids to be happy? Aren’t kids already happy?

Mark Twain once famously said - Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.

But what if we could plan our education in a way that learning is also encouraged. Our education system does cover lot of academic information and also teaches a lot of ways to earn a living.  BTW it is important to for education to cover how to earn a living. Empty stomachs do not cause much happiness.

So the first thing is to teach how to apply brain in ambiguous scenarios. Life unfortunately or may be fortunately does not unfold in predictable manner. You can not prepare kids for all possible scenarios. You need to provide a thought framework which enables them to handle ambiguity. Unfortunately classrooms are not always the best places to learn. I remember a prof in IITK who used to ask students to observe things in campus and suggest better solution. You need to throw ambiguity to kids at an early stage. The framework develops not by finding a solution but also by thinking through what possible solutions can be.

Citizenship/Social Responsibility/Community Living has to be a taught subject. I was talking to a friend recently who is Income Tax commissioner and he was talking about why paying taxes has to be taught to kids. Let us accept it. Our mind becomes more rigid as we grow old. We need to learn few things early. Kids need to understand rights and responsibilities as early as possible.

Values over habits has been my favorite subject. Let us face it. The influences are many and you as a mentor, parent or teacher have a limited time to influence kids. You are competing with SRK, Sachin and Katrina Kaif here. Don’t waste your time on habits which most of us do. Figure out the values you want the kids to pick up. There is no universal framework on what the right value system is but focus on values over habits. A girl/boy friend will ensure that your kid learns to take bath and brush teeth daily but knowing that telling truth is important is not something you can learn all of a sudden at a later age.

Another important thing is to make kids understand how we can coexist with others. And it is not just about people, it is also about environment and other life forms. There have to be enough tasks which involve team work and dependency on others. Being socially aware is key to understanding the dynamics of relationships and I am sure that all of us will agree that good relationships are one of the biggest source of happiness for most of us.

As they say that Philosophy is the mother of all sciences. I think it has to be taught at a early stage. It enables an individual to raise fundamental questions about our belief systems and think through in a more elaborate manner. This again forms a great foundation for kids to develop an approach which enables them to experience things beyond senses.

Health and Nutrition are also things which often get neglected in our education system. It does not matter much when you are young but it matters a lot at a later stage. It is not possible for us to become health conscious all of a sudden. If these  concepts are explained at an early age, kids will find it easier to adopt healthy lifestyles.

BTW do you think did I digress from the main topic of happiness? Actually no. Few popular ways of achieving happiness are

- Achieving something – A good value system ensures you choose the right thing to achieve and ability to handle ambiguity builds you the right skills to achieve it

- Relationship – understanding dependencies from an early age always helps you handle things better here.

- Handle Adversity – I feel a philosophical orientation always helps in analyzing adversities in a better way. It enables you to look at things in a disconnected way and new solutions emerge when you do that.

- Good communities – Responsible citizens create better communities and good communities create happier people.

- Good Health is an essential aspect of happiness. Teaching it early helps.

Comments welcome.

Here is how I made it. It might not be the most correct way but I love it this way.

Pongal – Roast half katori moong dal in a kadhai till it becomes light brown. Take one katori of rice ( I used basmati ) and wash it and add it to roasted moong dal. Add approx 4 katoris of water, salt and some ghee to it and cook it in the kadhai. Fry half katori of kaaju in ghee and keep it separately. In a pan take few spoons of ghee and add ginger pieces, hing, jeera, mustard, pepper and kadi patta. Add fried kaju and cooked rice/dal also to it. Mix it well.

Chutney – Take 4 tomatoes and make a puree in a mixer. In a pan take some ghee. Add mustard, salt, hing and kadi patta. Add tomato puree when mustard is done. Cook for 10 mins on low flames and you are done.

Here are some visuals.

I have sinned. Not once but many times. This was during my Avatar as a restaurant guy. My sin is similar to what lot of people do in that domain but it still is a sin. Haven’t you ever ordered food from a restaurant and waited for food at home. You get hungry and angry at the same time when food does not arrive on time. You call up the restaurant guy and he promptly tells you that it will be delivered in 5 mins. The proverbial indian 5 mins which can last for any duration. I have done the same with so many customers when I was running Potluck.

I knew it was wrong but I still did it. I had no ways of predicting and figuring out where my staff was. Tough for me to figure out the location of my staff as well as my customers. Now we decided to change things in ZopNow. We do know that great logistics is a key piece to solve the eCommerce puzzle and we are hell bent on solving that. We are enabling GPS tracking on all deliveries and also enabling our customers to see where the delivery is in real time on a map.

Hope you enjoy this new feature.

Keep Zopping

Birla

Zindagi ki kadwahat, Aur safar ki gard ko
Dhote dhote hi, Na jane kitna waqt guzar jaata hai

Sambhalo chaahein jitna, ashqon ko palkon ke tale
Jab sailab umadta hai, to had se guzar jaata hai

Nahin likha hai har ek ashq pe, pochhne wale ka pata
Kandhe ko dekh kar, khud-ba-khud hi utar aata hai

Mere ek ashq ki, keemat hi kya hai is duniya main
Pani ka katra hi to, un ko nazar aata hai

Ham bhi ho jayenge gum, kisi roz kisi mode pe to
Aise jeene se to, ji apna bhi bhar jaata hai

Ek ashq aankhon se nikalta hai, Aur dil main utar jaata hai

So take a little bit of oil/ghee in a pan. Add jeera to it. Now you take vegetables and cut them into small pieces. Some of the things you can use are – green peas, gobhi, carrot, potatoes. Even if you have 1 or 2 of them, it is fine. Fry it well so that the vegetables get fully cooked. Add 1 katori of rice puree to this once vegetables are done. Add 2 spoons of aam ka achar with lot of achar masala in it. Use the type of achar which does not have the hard part of mango in it.  Add salt to taste. Add some water if it is too thick. Add cooked rice to this and mix it well. Have it with sweet chutney or raita.

But then the moment arrives and you realize that your assumptions and projections need to get aligned with reality or the other way round. And you have to bend all of them to make them converge. I know the toughest one to bend is reality but who told you entrepreneurship is easy anyway. This is the moment you wait for and prepare for all the time.

Our “Aha” moment at ZopNow happened happened last week. We launched our service for entire south Bangalore. Next few hours went in just seeing Real Time stats on Analytics and watching our logs. Few issues here and there but no major issues came up. We also did a marketing event on Sunday and tried to sell our services to home makers. We got good response and some of them also converted to buying customers. Overall a satisfying weekend to see all parts of our business kicking in.

I know it is early days and we have a long way to go but then memories of first few steps are always special. For a software professional, the moment of truth is when you can create a product so usable and simple that even a kid can figure out things. My moment of truth came when my 9 year old daughter completed the shopping without any problems. She just overheard me telling my wife that we launched. She just logged on and finished the shopping. I asked her how she did it and she did it in approx 3 min again despite the cartoons coming on TV. I got a chance to record that you can see for yourself how easy we are trying to make things for you.

Keep Zopping folks….

If you are a Bangalorean, you obviously know what Congress Peanuts are. The red spicy peanuts which you get at every bakery shop across the city. If you are not lucky enough to be a Bangalorean. Here is an easy way to make it.

Take split peanuts without skin ( not even the dark brown one ) and take some oil in a pan. Add Hing ( Asafoetida ) and Haldi ( turmeric ) powder and fry the nuts nicely. Add chilli powder and salt to taste. Be liberal in using the chili powder as it should be spicy ans should look red in the end. Now your Congress Peanuts are ready. Store them in air tight container.

Now you have done all the hard work, it is easy to make what we wanted to start with. Take a bun and cut it into two halves. Apply butter liberally on both sides and fill it up with Congress Peanuts. Enjoy the yummy dish with hot filter coffee.

Coming back to the pause button. We had two special friends who came for the meetup. The first one was Pandit Rajendra Kandalgaonkar. We were blessed to have his company for our meetup. I will admit that classical music is not something which I have ever listened to much. Not even recorded, forget about live. Rajendra Sir blessed our stage by showing us a small glimpse of his skills. I was just blown away. I have never seen a guy striking so many notes at the same time. His voice had an amazing smoothness which just took us to another world. I wish if I could hit a pause button and listen to him forever.

And if Pandit Ji was not enough we had another special friend who came over for the event - Kedar Indurkar. Kedar is a differently abled genius. Somebody who has not let his constraints come in way of helping others who need help. He is the winner of  National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities. Kedar has typed and translated twelve books in three languages into Braille. His works are proving extremely beneficial and are adding to the knowledge and education of the visually impaired in institutes in Karnataka and Maharashtra. The translated works include eight books of a noted writer and social worker, Sudha Murthy, and few other books in Hindi and Marathi. He sang the song – Zindagi Kaisi Hai Paheli Haaye and I had the privilege of holding the mic. All I can say is that it was a very touching moment for me. I wished if time had a pause button and I could hear Kedar’s inspirational words forever.

The meetup was made possible by two die hard music lovers – Ranjana Mishra and Mukesh Jha. Both of them worked tirelessly to make it happen. The fun started at 3PM and went all the way till 10PM. The songs ranged from gazals, filmi, sufi to marathi. Everybody pitched in to showcase musical talent. We even had a sporting wife dancing to her husband’s tunes ( I know this happens rarely ) during the event. Music lovers enjoyed every moment and I am sure it will keep lingering in our minds for months.

For those of you who prefer pictures over words check out the album below.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.252790474767724.59723.111281795585260&type=3

Few years passed by and we were organizing the cultural festival in IIT Kanpur. Jagjit Singh was the artist of choice. All of us worked tirelessly to make his event successful but I missed watching him live as I was busy with handling other responsibilities in the festival. Time flew and landed up in Bangalore to start my career with Infosys. Few month’s salary and some borrowed money and I was proud owner of a music system and Ghalib cassetes in Jagjit Singh voice were my prized possessions again. Spent countless days and nights listening to the velvety voice immersed in deep Ghalib poetry on the lovely terrace house we had in JP Nagar.

And the Ghalib CDs still occupy the maximum air time in my car today. That is the beauty of great artists. They never die. They live in our hearts, in our cars and in our rooms. So all I can tell you Jaggu Dada, thanks a lot for being a part of my life. You have enriched it and same holds true for music lovers. As you immerse yourself in deep sleep, all I would like to tell you is that you will be missed, loved and most importantly listened to again and again and again…..

RIP
This is the first song I loved in his voice.

I became a restauranter on 1st Jul, 2006. That was the date when I decided that I will get into building a restaurant. I had no idea at that point what it takes. I was edgy, nervous and lost. But then we did make it live on 10th Mar, 2007. We went through opening 3 restaurants although we had to close few of them due to various problems faced. It has been a very interesting journey although I can not call it very successful from a financial perspective. But the experience has been so enriching.

Another journey I started was Asklaila in Oct, 2006. Over the years we build a great business on Internet as well as mobile. Building a brand in consumer Internet space has been a very rewarding experience. Indian Internet space has grown by leaps and bounds and it was a constant challenge to keep up the pace.

These two journeys come to an end for me as I move on to do more things in life. I am closing my last restaurant in BTM and also moving on from Asklaila in terms of active responsibilities. I will still be open to cooking teaching assignments and also continue to be adviser to Asklaila.

Now few things about the new venture. The first task  I did was to find a partner who is 10 times smarter and can work 100 times harder compared to me. I found a very capable company in Mukri. We worked together in Amazon and he was certainly great inspiration as well as source of knowledge for me. OK Mukri dude, now remove that Bihari gun from my head. This is the most I can bullshit about you.

Let us talk more about our new venture. The name is ZopNow. If you didn’t click on the link, let me tell you we are building a startup in grocery ecommerce space. We realized that this is a space where customers are willing but businesses have not been able to get their act right. And obviously we do feel that we are the right set of guys to get the act right.

Big business is built on a customer pain point and somebody’s ability to solve it with an interesting and innovative solution.

Get back to building stuff dude…..