Finance & Accounting - The Shifting Mandate

Three decades ago, we celebrated when the Trial Balance, and Balance sheet would tally. We would manually write Journal Entries, Post Leaders, create Trial Balance and Balance Sheet. Generation today, might not even know what tallying a Trial Balance or for that matter what even a Trial Balance is, except for something that they would have studied in some accounting book. A typical accounting office was filled with books, papers, files and dust.

With Technology, and ERP's in place, slowly, things started getting automated, and the number of books and papers around started reducing. Office became partially paperless; outsourcing, offshoring, and shared services started becoming very popular. ERP's like JD Edward, SAP, Oracle, People soft took care of Accounting, there were Data storage systems like Hyperion, Crest etc. and reporting tools like COGNOS, Essbase. This enabled moving activities to a central location, as businesses started growing global and so was born shared service centre.

I ) Shared Service Centre's:

During initial days in setting up of SSC (Shared Service Centre), the main objective was Cost Reduction. SSCs since then have evolved and focus has shifted from cost reduction to best-in-class unit within an organization. Best-in-Class includes rendering service with efficiency improvement, automation of processes, Service Level Agreement for various processes and become a strategic value/finance partner for the company. The 3 main phases of SSC are as under:
Phase I - Setup and stabilization phase - during initial 1-2 years company will have 10-15% of cost savings due to consolidation of resources, giving up space at each Business Unit (BU), multitasking of resources among others.
Phase 2 – Development Phase – during 3-6 years of functioning of SSC there will be further cost saving of almost 15-20% (hence by end of 6th year of SSC the total cost saving will be in the range of 25-35%). Further the below benefits will accrue to the organization as a whole; Greater knowledge of processes and improving the activities for increased efficiencies; Turning data into analytics for the organization to take informed decisions (like spend analytics, supplier groupings, reduced procurement cost, improved coordination among BU’s); Better productivity and stronger controls (mitigation of risks); Sharing of best practices.
Phase 3 – World Class Operations phase – from year 7 onwards, the SSC will function at the best in class level. This will involve, automation of processes, real time dashboard of health of SSC, contribution of SSC towards organizational goals, integration of all functions to work seamlessly. Additionally the SSC and organization can have following achievements; SSC able to generate revenue by charging to BU’s for the services provided; have a robust SLA in place which measures the performance; Can be spin-off as a separate entity and provide service to larger industry; Should be able to cater to international BU’s (global scale of operations); Digitization of work flow (paper-less processing); Robotics Process Automation.

II) Outsourcing: Make or Buy:

Examining the relevant costs of keeping activities in-house versus outsourcing, organisations capitalise on the expertise of another company that is more efficient, effective, or knowledgeable at performing a specialized task that is peripheral to the firm's core business competencies which help them to focus on strategic revenue-generating activities. We have global firms, providing specialized services in implementing new technology, managing change, even for the Finance and Accounts activities both onshore and offsite, rendering the book closure with improved quality and timeliness. This do come with knowledge "give-away", confidentiality issues, limited flexibility, reduced quality control and lessened process control to name a few.



III) Changing Technology - Upgrade:

The current business environment is complex and uncertain. Yet in the midst of it, many enterprises are finding and harnessing opportunities to compete and grow. This is having a particular impact on CFOs and their teams. Given all the M&A activity, boards are insisting that finance expand its focus and priorities beyond the bottom line. Boards expect CFOs to become strategic partners supporting enterprise strategy and driving growth – while managing risk and compliance, market volatility, and creative destruction. And they are seeking ones who embrace new ways of working. F&A teams across industries are combining digital technologies and analytics with new skills and capabilities to turn finance into a strategic partner. This empowers workforce, rethinks compliance, and delivers accurate forecasts and performance insights that shape business decisions. Digital and Analytics, Business process automation and robotics, Machine languages - help access state of the art techniques. Today, AI can review large data sets to connect the dots, identify patterns,and easily produce results and new intelligence. With AI performing more time-consuming transactional work, F&A teams can use the analysis and insight to get better outcomes. This is augmented intelligence – where the combination of human with machine intelligence delivers real business results, such as growth, profitability, competitive advantage, and customer satisfaction. AI can take on transactional work and elevate F&A personnel in areas like invoice exceptions in accounts payable. While robotic process automation (RPA) is effective at rules-based, high-volume automation, such as supplier invoice and receipt matching, there are exceptions where a bot can't finish the job. By analyzing structured and unstructured data, both internal and external, AI also surfaces insights that can make decisions more accurate. With a centralized data foundation, different functions and people work with the same, consistent data sets. But you also need people with data engineering and master data management skills to create and maintain the pipelines going into the lake so that your data is clean and comprehensive. AI bias can creep in when decisions made by AI reflect the conscious or unconscious values of the people who designed it or data it's based on, for example, when finance teams make decisions on customers' credit or payment terms. Applying AI to F&A creates new demands for teams with both business and technical skills. People need industry and functional knowledge to provide essential context and review algorithms. Advanced teams are even hiring behavioral scientists and anthropologists. But they also need technical skills, such as forecasting, data scientists, and engineers, analytics, design thinking, and agile programming. Once you have the right people, they need the right infrastructure to work with. With easy access to intuitive technology at home, a workplace with outdated, clunky systems won't encourage them to stay.

Rather than redesigning entire systems and processes, you can take a modular approach using pretrained AI accelerators. Find solutions that use insights unique to your industry and can plug and play into core business processes to improve experiences, accuracy, and efficiency at previously impossible speeds. Anyone who has deployed a large-scale, transformative financial system such as Workday Financial Management will tell you about the pressure they faced to prove the business value of the investment. So what do you need to get the full benefits of your Workday Financial Management solution?
1. Focus on speed from the outset: Your leadership team will no longer wait 12 to 24 months for payoff. They need to see it now. But you should plan this payoff well ahead of any investment. It can't be an afterthought.
2. Align platform design to your business needs: Powerful platforms can only prove their worth if they're designed to meet your business' needs and are based on your team's skills.
3. Focus on quick implementation: As soon as you design your solution, you need to have it up and running quickly.
4. Look outside the business for expert skill sets: We all have skills shortages in the workplace – getting the right talent can be time-consuming and costly. Identify the gaps you have and ways to fill them. Harness the existing talent, and help them grow, by providing necessary training.

The Workday EIB (Enterprise Interface Builder) is an easy to use tool, not needing any coding that supplies users with both a guided and graphical interface which can supplement programming and is not a replacement. Developers use EIBs to insert simple components into their larger code and for recording different types of data. The two primary options are outbound EIBs and inbound EIBs. An outbound EIB withdraws data from a specific source and then saves extracted data for further use or sends it to be processed. The majority of outbound EIBs use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to transfer data. An inbound EIB rather than using FTP, transfers data directly, are extremely simple to use and have friendly interfaces that are modeled on familiar items, like spreadsheets which allows for quick adoption. Along with this, one might need to have support from 3rd party, cloud connect, and a bit of manual intervention too; but the use of devises which was equivalent to a weapon for an accountant like calculators and macro enabled spreadsheets, has been considerably reduced.

Maximizing the benefit of your Workday investment does not need to be complicated. The Cloud Based technology, help you access the data on your go, even on your mobile. No more papers, sleepless nights to get your Balance Sheet right, have different systems for ERP, Consolidation of reports etc.; you can have all under one roof, easily accessible from anywhere at anytime; even linking HR and Finance data.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - Arundhati Roy

After 20 years of her Booker winning debut novel, here is her second; where the narrative spans across decades and locations, but primarily takes place in Delhi and Kashmir and characters run the gamut of Indian society including an intersex woman (hijra) Anjum, a rebellious architect Tilottama, and her landlord who is a supervisor in the intelligence service. The two central stories never convincingly come together.

Anjum a muslim, has both male and female genitals, but was raised as a boy, she is born as Aftab, the long-awaited son of Jahanara Begum and Mulaqat Ali. . In her adolescence she leaves her family to live as a woman and joins a haveli filled with other intersex and trans people. They are a collective and family and become even more so when Anjum adopts an abandoned child named Zainab. When she takes this three-year old girl in: “Her body felt like a generous host instead of a battlefield.” It’s so beautiful and moving the way this individual whose family feel disgraced by her and who is scorned by the majority of society finds a way to pour her love into caring for someone instead of allowing herself to be crippled by being branded as a hijra outcast. However, we quickly learn that in her later years Anjum leaves her haveli called Khwabgah (the House of Dreams) to live in a graveyard where she gradually establishes a home for herself and eventually forms a community of individuals displaced by social conflict. She has a wonderfully unprejudiced view when taking people in stating: “I don’t care what you are… Muslim, Hindu, man, woman, this caste, that caste, or a camel’s arsehole.”

On her visit to a Gujarati shrine, Anjum gets caught in a massacre of Hindu pilgrims and subsequent government reprisals against Muslims. She is anxious about the future of her own community, especially the new generation. Zainab is brought up at Khwabgah and later goes on to become a fashion designer who marries Saddam.

Roy introduces a dizzying array of people all connected with particular political movements, social clashes or devastating disasters. These centre largely around a location of vast protest called Jantar Mantar. In the centre of this vast amount of voices of dissent, a baby is abandoned and kidnapped. Who this baby is, where she came from, why she was left and what happened to her is gradually explained over a few hundred pages. But built around her story are the tales of people still caught within the repercussions of Partition, national/religious battles and especially the conflicts within Kashmir, the northernmost part of the Indian subcontinent. The novel mostly focuses on a group of people who knew each other in childhood and worked together in a theatrical production in their youth, but have gone on to take different sides in the political struggles.

There is no grudging marriage of art and politics in her work; as John Berger, one of her longtime interlocutors and a formative influence, wrote, “Far from my dragging politics into art, art has dragged me into politics.” Roy’s work conveys a similar spirit. She is a great admirer of the world. Her strongest writing is always at the margins of the main story—the pleasure of finding “an egg hot from a hen,”. From the fine-grained affection that stirs her imagination springs an ethical imperative—after all, how can one appreciate the world without desiring to defend it? And it must be defended not merely from war or political calamity, but from that natural, more insidious phenomenon: forgetting. This is the literary tradition that Roy belongs to—and that was intimately transmitted to her by Berger and her other great friend, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano (she has called him her twin), for whom the great tragedy of humanity wasn’t that we die or suffer or make each other suffer. It was that we forget. And because we are so prone to forgetting—because it is so easy to make us forget—we accept the conditions of our suffering as inevitable and cannot fathom alternatives. (“The world, which is the private property of a few, suffers from amnesia,” Galeano once said. “It is not an innocent amnesia. The owners prefer not to remember that the world was born yearning to be a home for everyone.”)

Tilottama (With shades of her) is a student at the Architecture School who is estranged from her Syrian Christian mother - Mariyam Ipe.
Tilo becomes friends with three men - Musa Yewsi, Nagaraj Hariharan and Biplab Dasgupta whom she meets while working on sets and lighting design for the play Norman, Is That You? directed by David Quartermaine. Nagaraj Hariharan, Cast as Norman in the play. He later becomes a top-notch journalist who works in Kashmir. Tilo marries Naga as suggested by Musa for strategic reasons and later abandons him. Musa Yeswi (Commander Gulrez) Musa is a reticent Kashmiri man who is classmates with Tilo in Architecture School and her boyfriend. Musa later returns to his homeland to become a militant and fight for Azadi. Musa marries Arifa and fathers Miss Jebeen the First. Biplab Dasgupta - Biplab was to play the role of Garson Hobart in the play Norman, Is That You?. He later works for the Intelligence Bureau as Deputy Station Head for. Biplab secretly loves Tilo and rents her room after she walks out on Naga.

The author weaves together a dazzling narrative nearly as complex as the reality of the fallout of the bloody partition by forcing her characters through themes of Hindu nationalism and Kashmiri separatism and exposing them to atrocities like the 1969 Gujarat riots, the most deadly incident of Hindu-Muslim violence since the 1947 divide, until the 1989 Bhagalpur riots.

It charts their various romances, quests for revenge and how they’re helplessly drawn into conflicts that seem to have no end. The story goes all over the place. There is near-total confusion about point of view.

"Yellow mustard flowers sprouting from a corpse’s clenched fist, which symbolizes resilience and hope amid violence and grief" 

“Still the Amaltas bloomed, a brilliant, defiant yellow. Each blazing summer it reached up and whispered to the hot brown sky, Fuck You.” — another striking image of defiant natural beauty 

amidst turmoil 

Do these refer to Kani Konna (Cassia fistula) flower or something else?

A poem tucked into the pages of Roy’s novel seems to encapsulate the author's own intentions: “How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By slowly becoming everything.” As was true of The God of Small Things, there is more than a touch of fairy tale in the book’s moral simplicity—or clarity, if you’re feeling charitable. Consider the book’s dedication—“To, The Unconsoled.” Note the cover photograph, a grave, and the setting: The story begins and ends in a graveyard. It tours India’s fault lines, as Roy has, from the brutal suppression of tribal populations to the 2002 pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat. Roy has imagined an inverse of the Garden of Eden—a paradise whose defining feature, rather than innocence, is experience and endurance.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton - whodathunk

Have been thinking about Sun and Moon always, especially today morning, and therefore this book captivated me.

“The proper way to understand any social system was to view it from above.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

There is certainly a lot to like about Eleanor's novel. Its structure is fascinatingly clever and reminds me a lot of the way Nabokov divided Ada, or Ardor. Part 1: 360 pgs, 12 chapters Part 2: 160 pgs, 11 chapters Part 3: 104 pgs, 10 chapters; Part 4: 96 pgs, 9 chapters; Part 5: 40 pages,8 chapters; Part 6: 26 pages, 7 chapters; Part 7: 13 pages, 6 chapters; Part 8: 10 pgs,5 chapters Part 9: 6 pgs, 4 chapters; Part 10: 6 pgs,3 chapters Part 11: 4 pages, 2 chapters, Part 12: 4 pages, 1 Chapter. The first chapters are endless with one-line introductions - the last chapters are shorter than their introductions. This gives The Luminaries the shape of a golden spiral. It also acts like a spiral – or, to keep up the celestial theme, a black hole, stripping out information as it goes. Everything fits perfectly, and this perfection entwines with the story which starts out as a confusing mess but ends with all the answers. Another interesting fact is that this story takes its focal point in Walter Moody, but at the same time it's not at all about Walter Moody. It is set in New Zealand among gold diggers; however, very little of the story deals with actual gold digging. With its exotic and varied cast of characters whose lives all affect each other and whose fates are intricately entwined, amounts to anything like the moral and emotional weight one would expect of it. The Luminaries is replete with diggers, businessmen, politicians, Chinese miners and dispensers of opium, ladies of the evening, to use the appropriate Victorian vernacular. Twelve men meet at the Crown Hotel in Hokitika, New Zealand, on 27 January, 1866 (Mercury in Sagittarius). A thirteenth, Walter Moody, an educated man from Edinburgh who has come here to find his fortune in gold, walks in. As it unfolds, the interlocking stories and shifting narrative perspectives of the twelve--now thirteen--men bring forth a mystery that all are trying to solve, including Walter Moody, who has just gotten off the Godspeed ship with secrets of his own that intertwine with the other men's concerns. The plot winds through time, conveying the reader through the perceptions of a dozen characters.The way that tale is told changes throughout the book, moving from a story told by insiders to an outsider, to the narration of a series of connected events, finally ending with its beginning.

The characters were based on star-sign attributes. The story in The Luminaries is seasoned with astrology but not overwhelmed by it. It is beautifully structured around stars and destinies among stars. Twelve of Catton’s characters (the twelve men interrupted by Walter Moody) represent the signs of the zodiac; another seven represent planetary bodies (Moody is Mercury, for instance). As mentioned in a comment in Goodreads:

"Te Rau Tauwhare (a greenstone hunter):Aries the Ram thrusts forward, discarding the past except as a symbol of what has been overcome. Fearsome, single-minded Aries! This book does not fall under the sign of Aries; it is invested in the past, it is enchanted by it. The past is such an important part of the novel that the narrative continues after its climactic resolution with a series of escalating chapters that take the reader back to where it all began. The Luminaries' characters live under the shadow of their own pasts, they judge others by their past actions as well. Aries is well-represented by Te Rau Tauwhare, a Maori greenstone hunter.

Charlie Frost (a banker):Taurus the Bull is a sign of love, in all of its strength and awkwardness, its earthiness and purity. Obstinate, strong-willed Taurus! This book has a strong Taurean influence: it has at its heart a passionate and moving story of star-crossed lovers, determined to persevere, blind to reason - two parts of a whole that yearn to merge. Taurus is represented - poorly - by the aloof banker Charlie Frost.

Benjamin Lowenthal (a newspaperman):Gemini the Twins, sharp and cutting, a sign of the mind, of the air. Impulsive and restless Gemini! This book has a marked Gemini influence in its clever narrative voice, one often sidelined by description and dialogue yet still distinct, full of wit and sly innuendo. Gemini's influence is even stronger when considering the almost dizzying ingenuity of the book's look-at-me structure and its increasingly cheeky chapter introductions. Gemini is represented by Benjamin Lowenthal, a Jewish newspaper editor and a character in need of richer development.

Edgar Clinch (an hotelier):Cancer the Crab moons about in its shell, moody and self-absorbed, yet caring and loyal to the end. Complicated, sensitive Cancer! The Crab has little to do with The Luminaries, except when looking at the novel in general terms. A strong and thick hardcover book, a complicated structure, a soft heart lurking within. Cancer is well-represented by the hotelier Edgar Clinch.

Dick Mannering (a goldfields magnate):Leo the Lion sits back, the very image of self-satisfaction, a magnet to lesser men, a sun that would have the whole universe revolve around it. Confident and surprisingly generous Leo! The heavy-lidded sensuality of the Lion holds court throughout The Luminaries, its beautiful imagery and its rich descriptive prowess openly displayed; well-hung Leo also clearly influenced this book's impressive length. Leo is represented by Dick (lol) Mannering, a goldfields magnate.

Quee Long (a goldsmith): Virgo the Virgin is the sign of this reviewer. It is the most wonderful sign imaginable: critical yet fair, judgmental but only in the most loving of ways, altruistic, well-read, self-sacrificing, practically perfect in every way, the Mary Poppins of the Zodiac. All must bow to the wonder of Virgo! The Virgin is terribly represented by Quee Long, who is about the opposite of any decent Virgo. For shame, Eleanor Catton, you have betrayed the Zodiac with your libelous portrait of a so-called Virgo!

Harald Nilssen (a commission merchant):Libra the Scales is a sign of beauty, and much like Beauty itself, displays both grace and superficiality, charisma and vanity. Lovely, indecisive Libra! Libra's scales are seldom in balance; this sign seeks to make things equal and often fails. And so it is with the author of The Luminaries, a Libra on the cusp of Virgo. Her favorites among the novel's astrological characters are dynamic and richly developed; those less-favored are given mere cameo appearances. But don't look for fairness from a Libra - look for beauty! And there is much beauty within the pages of The Luminaries. Exquisite prose, gorgeous imagery, lovely moments within its lovely love story; the beautiful mind of its author, yearning to be recognized for its brilliance - and rewarded by the 2013 Man Booker Prize. Libra is represented - perfectly - by Harald Nilssen, a commission merchant.

Joseph Pritchard (a chemist): Scorpio is the Scorpion, and the Eagle as well. It soars above the earth and lives in its holes. This strange sign is the Investigator of the Zodiac and is also its greatest conundrum - secretive to its core, yet suspicious of secrets in others; dark and unyielding; often cold yet deeply sexual. Mysterious, obsessive Scorpio! The Luminaries is intimately connected to the Scorpion, in its basic nature as a Mystery Novel and in its refusal to solve certain mysteries, to keep them shrouded in ambiguity. The Eagle dislikes having to explain itself. Scorpio is represented by Joseph Pritchard, a chemist and a perfectly executed character who is left almost entirely off of the page. Perhaps Catton feared the perverse potential lurking within him and so curtailed her exploration of his depths. I also felt the Scorpio influence upon this novel's villain, the dark, manipulative, unknowable Francis Carver.

Thomas Balfour (a shipping agent):Sagittarius the Archer shoots an arrow into the future, his true place; Sagittarius the Centaur gallops quickly, heedless of those too simple and slow to keep his pace. Strong-willed, independent Sagittarius! This sign's influence on The Luminaries is striking: it has no patience for readers of the idiot class. It makes scarce concessions to those longing for explanations or a simple plotline; it will give you the opportunity to come into its world and be surrounded, enveloped... and it will leave you behind if you are unable to keep up. Sagittarius is well-represented by Thomas Balfour, a shipping agent.

Aubert Gascoigne (a justice's clerk):Capricorn the Sea-Goat: "still waters run deep" was surely coined for this sign, one whose stable and inhibited surface appearance belies the complicated ambitions within. Patient, resourceful Capricorn! A courageous introvert, a fastidious intellectual, virile yet chilly, dignified and aloof and rich with hidden depths. The novel The Luminaries was born under the sign of Capricorn. The novel's birth sign is represented - perfectly - by Aubert Gascoigne, a justice's clerk.

Sook Yongsheng (a hatter):Aquarius the Water-bearer abhors restrictions and eschews barriers, seeking the enlightenment beyond, traveling the stars without and within, ever in search of wisdom. Inventive, rebellious Aquarius! A shallow reviewer of the novel would find little influence from the Water-bearer as the book is a carefully constructed puzzle rather than an ingenious invention, a mathematically mapped-out pièce de résistance rather than a spontaneous improvisation. But dig deeper and you shall find the sublime Aquarian ruling an eerie and haunting love story, one full of unexplainable visions and brazen leaps of faith. Aquarius is well-represented by Sook Yongsheng, a Chinese hatter and lover of opium.

Cowell Devlin (a chaplain): Pisces the Fish, Pisces the dreamer, the last sign and the oldest. Pisces yearns for escape, in dreams, in drugs, in art, in the dark damp spaces. Elusive Pisces, the sign of self-undoing! I had a Piscean experience when reading this novel. It was my go-to book for a certain period of time, a little bit nearly every morning and every afternoon, for almost 3 months. I escaped into its depths, it was my sweet sweet drug and I fear that I am suffering from withdrawal. This lengthy review was an attempt to live in it again. Alas, now even this review is over. Pisces is represented - rather poorly - by Cowell Devlin, a chaplain. "

Another set of characters is associated with heavenly bodies within the solar system.
Walter Moody: Mercury
Lydia (Wells) Carver née Greenway: Venus - Crosbie Wells widow and Frank Carvers girl friend
Francis Carver: Mars - Captain of a ship Godspeed- Man at the heart of all these strange occurrence
Alistair Lauderback: Jupiter - Crosbie Wells half brother
George Shepard: Saturn - Lawman
Anna Wetherell: The Sun/The Moon - Prostitute helping Lydia in her new venture - Arrested for trying to kill herself
Emery Staines: The Moon/The Sun - The missing Man who pop us and is sentenced to jail

A bit on the plot:

A couple of weeks earlier to the 12 people meeting, a hermit named Crosbie Wells was found dead in his cottage, and a not inconsiderable fortune soon after. Around the same time, a young woman (Anna Wetherell) was found unconscious from opium (Ah Sook is the dealer) in the road, apparently having tried to commit suicide. Through acquaintance with each other, each of the twelve men discovered that he was somehow connected to these events; so they decided to gather together in this room to discuss what may have happened, and what could be done. We never find out, how the central murder happens, or whether Staines get shot for real, or its a supernatural occurrence, we can piece together our own thoughts, theories and observations. At the end of the day, when all the intrigue, violence, and greediness around gold is over, it's really the love affair between Anna and Emery that emerges as having been central all along. Whodathunk (Who would have thought?) At the end of the day, it all comes back to relationship. - Love will keep us together. But this might be annoying to some and hence not equally loved by all readers; after all the suspense, drama and thrill the expectations would have been different.

The Luminaries – an upside-down, southern hemisphere kind of a place with its own astrological calendar that casts its own kind of influence, its own light. The clue is in the title, after all, and in the confusing frontispiece that the publishers might have made more of, to alert the general reader to the fabulous trick of the book they hold: that this great, intricately crafted doorstopper of a historical novel, with its portentous introduction, astrological tables, character charts and all the rest, in fact weighs nothing at all. Even before we know the "why", the title tell us the "Who"

Bleachers - John Grisham

Oops my 'Bibliophile' has no books by John Grisham, Really? Can easily remember having read at least five - One a huge collection of short stories, trying to recollect the name. Let me check it out.

Was attracted to him when just out of school, on taking commerce - on knowing about a great writer - who was an accountant turned lawyer cum writer; eventually turned out to be a politician as well. For me he was a self made, complete family man. Most of his books were legal thrillers.

Another reason I was attracted to him was on reading that Grisham was converted to The Presbyterian Church. Let me check out for the books of his that I have read, meanwhile on the one in hand now - 'Bleachers' - meaning 'a cheap bench seat at a sports ground, typically in an outdoor uncovered stand' is not from the legal genre but one of his passions from childhood day - American football (Rugby).

The book focuses on whether the famous Eddie Rake, former coach of the Messina High School football team, was loved or hated by his former players. When the story begins, most of the 714 football players Rake had coached in his 34 years at Messina High School return to the town for the funeral of the legendary coach, a man both beloved and reviled. Among them was Neely Crenshaw, born in 1969, is a high school All-American quarterback, who has been Messina High School's 'golden boy,' expected to lead them to the state title. Neely was a highly recruited quarterback with a golden arm, fast feet, plenty of sizes, maybe the greatest Messina quarterback ever. When Neely was younger and playing football with his friends, a man watching him approached Neely, saying "You're going to play football for the Spartans." Crenshaw suffers a career-ending knee injury on a late hit,
and subsequently drops football for the real estate business.

In 1987, after trailing 31-0 at halftime to East Pike, and crippled by a broken hand, the gutsy quarterback rallies the Spartans to a 34-31 victory for Messina's first state championship in seven years, achieved without the assistance of coach Rake. His hand injury is caused when Neely punches Coach Eddie Rake in the face, after Coach Rake backhands him, causing him to break his nose. Neely Crenshaw had decided he would never meet Eddie Rake during his lifetime.

Rake ends his career with 418 wins, 62 losses, and 13 state championships. During a grueling unsanctioned Sunday morning practice in 1992, Messina player Scotty Reardon died of a heat stroke. Rake's brutal training methods are called into question and the superintendent of education, who also is Reardon's uncle, fires Rake.

In a letter revealed at Rake's funeral, the coach states the two regrets of his life were losing Scotty Reardon and for striking All-American quarterback Neely Crenshaw at halftime of the 1987 championship game against East Pike. He was laid to rest next to Scotty.

At the funeral, Neely ends up forgiving coach after all those years of debating whether he likes or dislikes Eddie Rake. There was no proper way to decline a eulogy.

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Games are for ever or not; one playing it is not forever. But playing it - the teachings of the Coach are for ever - It included:
1) Fear is inevitable, and it is not always bad. Harness your fear and use it to your advantage.
2) Pick yourself up, set a goal, work harder than everybody else, stick to the basics, execute perfectly, be confident, be brave, and never, never quit.

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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? - Jeannette Winterson

| Creative work bridges time because the energy of art is not time-bound. If it were we should have no interest in the art of the past, except as history or documentary. But our interest in art is our interest in ourselves both now and always.

For a Happiness Always! person, the title was enough, for me to want the book; though not in complete alignment of my thoughts, was curious to know what it was all about.


| Pursuing happiness, and I did, and still do, is not at all the same as being happy—which I think is fleeting, dependent on
circumstances, and a bit bovine. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centered. The pursuit isn’t
all or nothing —it’s all AND nothing. Like all Quest Stories.

Jeanette Winterson comes of age in a home deprived of happiness or joy. Her life with her adoptive parents was often appalling, but it made her the writer she is. Her mother constantly tells her that “the Devil” led her and her husband to “the wrong crib” when they selected Jeanette at the adoption society. Mrs. Winterson, who is obsessed with End Time and the coming of the Apocalypse, emotionally abuses Jeanette and forces Mr. Winterson to dole out physical punishments. Jeanette is often locked outside of the house and left on the street or sent underground to the family’s claustrophobic coal-hole. Though Jeanette’s childhood has a few bright spots—she does, for a while, enjoy the “exciting” tent revivals of her family’s church, and she finds refuge, solace, and kinship in her intense love of books and literature—she is mostly miserable. She’s unable to make friends, fearful of abandonment, and constantly suffering under her parents’ abusive ways.

| We were matched in our lost and losing. I had lost the warm safe place, however chaotic, of the first person I loved. I had lost my name and my identity. Adopted children are dislodged. My mother felt that the whole of life was a grand dislodgement. We both wanted to go Home.

At fifteen, Jeanette falls in love with an older girl from church, Helen. When Mrs. Winterson discovers the relationship between the two girls, the Wintersons and their church force Jeanette to undergo an exorcism, which leaves both her and her parents emotionally scarred. When Jeanette pursues another romantic relationship with a classmate named Janey a year later, she is kicked out of the Winterson household and begins living in her Mini Cooper. She is taken in, eventually, by the head of English at her junior college, the kindly and eccentric Mrs. Ratlow, who coaches Jeanette through her Oxford entrance exams and eventually helps her to secure an offer of admission. At Oxford, Jeanette is frustrated by the patriarchal nature of the university, but her love of reading and books deepens, and she feels the world opening up to her. After a disastrous trip home at Christmastime after her first term at school, Jeanette parts ways with her mother, never to see her again.

| I am interested in nature/nurture. I notice that I hate Ann criticizing Mrs. Winterson. She was a monster but she was my monster.

The narrative flashes forward to the year 2007—Jeanette, now an acclaimed and world-renowned writer, is struggling in her life, as the demons of her past have finally caught up with her. After the dissolution of a tumultuous romantic relationship, Jeanette attempts suicide—she fails, and realizes that she must begin to confront the “creature” within her, the scarred and angry version of her younger self, who has threatened her all her life.

| Mother is our first love affair. And if we hate her, we take that rage with us into other lovers. And if we lose her, where do we find her again?

After a period of healing, Jeanette, with the help of her new partner Susie, embarks on a journey to find her birth mother. Jeanette has found her birth certificate while cleaning out her father’s home after the death of his second wife, and the discovery has sparked new questions about her heritage. Jeanette, Susie, and Jeanette’s social worker Ria encounter a series of brick walls and red tape as they negotiate the distant and unhelpful government agencies which keep the truth of Jeanette’s past and the identity of her birth parents just out of reach. Eventually, through a combination of sheer will and intrepid detective work, Jeanette discovers the identity of her birth mother—a woman named Ann S. who lives outside of Manchester—and reconnects with her.
The book ends with Jeanette having found some measure of peace in her reconnecting with Ann, though she is still uncertain of both how she feels about her birth mother and what her own future might hold.

| I understood something. I understood twice born was not just about being alive, but about choosing life. Choosing to be alive and consciously committing to life, in all its exuberant chaos—and pain.

The book made be curious to know more about the writer as well, as this book had connections to the earlier one, and had not read autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. These two books are called silent twins, separated from Oranges by a quarter of a century, she speaks more frankly and accurately about the traumas she endured.

| We have a capacity for language. We have a capacity for love. We need other people to release those capacities. In my work I found a way to talk about love—and that was real. I had not found a way to love. That was changing.

“When people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant,” she says, “I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language — and that is what poetry is.”

Born in Manchester to a seventeen-year-old factory worker and adopted by the Winterson family —a devout Pentecostal Evangelist Christian couple with no children of their own— six months after her birth, Jeanette Winterson was raised in Accrington, a manufacturing city in Northern England. A prolific writer, Winterson is the author of over twenty-five books of fiction, nonfiction, and literature for children. She is married to Susie Orbach a British psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer and social critic.

| Happy endings are only a pause. There are three kids of big endings: Revenge. Tragedy. Forgiveness. Revenge and Tragedy often happen together. Forgiveness redeems the past. Forgiveness unblocks the future.

Sale wars: Online vs offline

All Financiers are busy running Festival Schemes for Dealers, Customers. Products are being sold, both online and offline at discounted prize -
One, brands realise that disruptive pricing for just one channel affects overall sales. Two, no one wants to take any chances given the weak consumer sentiment.

The online market place is ready & already have penetrated, not only the big sellers like Amazon and Flip-kart, but also with many householders turning online marketers, with various modes of sales, including whatsapp.

The Offline is trying to survive by approaching the customers, brands & The Government through various legitimate forms of protests with the help of Associations, Meetings. Malls, the modern temples are loosing prominence. Though we do find crowd there, fifty percent of them are window shopping.

The GDP growth slowed down to 5% for the quarter ended June 2019. Two ways to beat any slowdown are mobilizing investments and stimulating demand. The sales during the festival season, would increase manufacture and thereby growth.

The e-commerce giant Amazon already launched robots in its warehouses 5 years back in 2014. These robots do most of the tasks, from sorting to picking and stacking. The company has used more than one lakh robots, mainly in the US. These great selections of Amazon’s robots are developed by a US firm known as Kiva Systems. Amazon later on funded and acquired this company. They further name it as Amazon Robotics.

Flipkart employed 340 little orange cuboids as robots to its current fleet of 110, they call them bots or perhaps automated guided vehicles (AGVs), those transfer products within a fenced location bereft of humans. These robots are carrying anything with them, from publications to appliances to mobile phones.

In India, collaborative robots known as Cobots are increasing as automating tasks are human-intensive, tedious, and repetitive.The motion of the Cobots is similar to an automatic traffic management process and is handled by machine learning algorithms.

It’s evident that data science and artificial intelligence are the talks of the data for the e-commerce industry and Indian e-commerce majors are engrossing the benefits of AI right from customer segregation, sales, and delivery to after-sales and further recommending products to the customers.

Hope this sales war boost the economy - and the offline marketers are able to cope up by undoing and redoing to cope up with time.

Balance Scorecard Vs. Objectives and Key Results - BSC Vs. OKR

Both are focused on objectives — broad goals designed to propel the organization forward — and metrics (called Key Results in the OKRs field and measures in the BSC) that gauge your success in achieving the objective.

The Balanced Scorecard is a strategic performance measurement and management framework developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton. Its objective is to translate an organization’s mission and vision (implement strategy) into actual (operational) actions (strategic planning)(Performance measures).

| If you Can't measure it, you can't manage it.

Used for managing strategy - The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a strategic planning and management system that organizations use to:

- Communicate what they are trying to accomplish
- Align the day-to-day work that everyone is doing with strategy
- Prioritize projects, products, and services
- Measure and monitor progress towards strategic targets


The system connects the dots between big picture strategy elements such as mission (our purpose), vision (what we aspire for), core values (what we believe in), strategic focus areas (themes, results and/or goals) and the more operational elements such as objectives (continuous improvement activities), measures (or key performance indicators, or KPIs, which track strategic performance), targets (our desired level of performance), and initiatives (projects that help you reach your targets).

The balance within:

As the name suggests, the equilibrium or balance is an important principle in the balanced scorecard model. There must be a balance between the short-term and the long-term objectives, financial and non-financial criteria, leading and lagging indicators and external and internal perspectives. It is about cohesion in which an improvement in one perspective must not be an obstacle in another perspective.
This cohesion is reflected in the model through the mutually connected arrows between the four perspectives viz:

1) Financial: (How do we look to our shareholders) often renamed Stewardship or other more appropriate name in the public sector, this perspective views organizational financial performance and the use of financial resources. Examples of performance measures would include profitability, Return on Investment, Revenue growth etc.

2) Customer/Stakeholder: (How do customers see us) this perspective views organizational performance from the point of view the customer or other key stakeholders that the organization is designed to serve. Examples of performance measures would include customer satisfaction, retention, acquisition and market share.

3) Internal Process: (What must we excel at) views organizational performance through the lenses of the quality and efficiency related to our product or services or other key business processes. This would cover three business process area viz.
i) Innovation identifying the needs of the customers;
ii) Operations viz supplementing financial measures with quality, technological capability and redirecting cycle time to build long term strategy and
iii) Post sale services involves adding value to the product by getting feedback

4) Organizational Capacity (originally called Learning and Growth): (Can we continue to improve and create value) views organizational performance through the lenses of human capital, infrastructure, technology, culture and other capacities that are key to breakthrough performance. It covers categories like Employee skill sets, information system capabilities, Motivation and organisational alignment.

While financial perspective looks at the past, Customer, Internal business process and Learning and growth focus on the future.

Based on an analysis of its internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats, the firm determines critical success factors (CSF's) for each of the four perspectives. Each factor is assigned a measurement unit. Linking the four scorecard perspectives eith the firm's strategy requires the use of three principles:

1) Cause and effect relationship - It can be hypothesized using if-then statements. Example - If the firm improves its training program; its business process will be improved, it will boost customer satisfaction; greater customer satisfaction will increase sales, increased sales will improve financial results.

2) Outcome measures (OM) and performance drivers (PD) - OM is Historical or lagging indicator and PD is leading indicator.

3) Links to financial measures.

The implementation of the Balanced Scorecard can be carried out in different manners.

Broadly, this could include the following steps:

- Set up a vision, mission and strategic objectives.
- Perform a stakeholder analysis to gauge the expectations of customers and shareholders.
- Make an inventory of the critical success factors
- Translate strategic objectives into (personal) goals
- Set up key performance indicators to measure the objectives
- Determine the values for the objectives that are to be achieve
- Translate the objectives into operational activities.

When it was developed it was used primarily as a measurement system – helping organizations balance financial and non-financial indicators. It has evolved over the years, and we’ve seen the creation of Strategy Maps, and the linkage of the Scorecard to risk, budgeting, and other key facets of the organization.

Both are subject to 'interpretation' by practitioners and academics." Executes are less interested in academic understanding of the concepts, but more in solving real problems, doesn't matter under what buzz word the solution comes.

OKR (Objectives & Key Results) has risen to prominence over the last 10 years The development of OKRs is generally attributed to Andy Grove the "Father of OKRs", who introduced the approach to Intel during his tenure there and documented this in his 1983 book High Output Management. Google's success in it's implementation have prompted start ups to use OKR's.

OKRs suggest a goal setting approach with ambitious, qualitative Objectives that are made measurable with the help of Key Results.

An Objective is simply what is to be achieved, no more and no less. By definition, objectives are significant, concrete, action-oriented, and (ideally) inspirational. When properly designed and deployed, they’re a vaccine against fuzzy thinking—and fuzzy execution. Qualitative descriptions of what you want to achieve.

Key Results benchmark and monitor how we get to the objective. Effective KRs are specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic. Most of all, they are measurable and verifiable. You either meet a key result’s requirements or you don’t; there is no gray area, no room for doubt. At the end of the designated period, typically a quarter, a regular check is done and grade the key results as fulfilled or not.
Where an objective can be long-lived, rolled over for a year or longer, key results evolve as the work progresses. Once they are all completed, the objective is necessarily achieved. KR's are a set of metrics (quantitative) that measure your progress towards the Objective

| “If it does not have a number, it is not a Key Result.”

OKRs can be two things, committed or aspirational.
Committed ones are like their name suggests—commitments. When graded at the end of a cycle, a committed OKR is expected to have a passing grade.
Aspirational ones, on-the-other-hand, are sometimes called stretch goals or "moonshots." The pathway to an aspirational OKR is expected to be forged since no one else has gotten there before. They also may be long-term and live beyond an OKR cycle or even be transferred between team members to stretch employee engagement.

An advantage of OKR is, the shorter cadence. As things are changing faster than ever, it’s vital we have metrics that allow us to be agile in our approach.

One common reason for weak OKR results is people's tendency to confuse achieving the Key Result(s) with achieving the Objective. Instead of chasing the Objective, they chase the Key Results. That's what's called "surrogation" - confusing what's being measured (the 'O') with the metric being used ( the KRs). OKR's are not task lists, there should not be too many objectives, and it should not be in isolation but aligned.

Days Without End - Sebastian Barry

In 'Days Without End', Sebastian Barry presents us with Thomas McNulty, looking back as old man, who flees to Canada in mid 19th century and then America to escape the Great Famine in Ireland . In the US, Thomas is many things, at the beginning, having teamed up with a boy named John Cole, he is a dancer, rigged out in women’s clothing to entertain miners starved of female company; a so-called “prairie fairy”. But when the bloom of youth departs the pair at 17, they volunteer for the US Army and join the Oregon trail to California. A brutal raid on an Indian settlement follows, there is an orphanage on fire – the transformative effect of such destruction on its participants is memorably captured. There are increasingly complex interactions with indigenous communities, the development of Thomas and John’s relationship and sexual attraction, Thomas albeit briefly and in clandestine fashion, Thomasina with John act as parents to a Sioux child, Winona, who has been wrested from her family.

A group of Oglala Sioux stalk Thomas’s company for miles across the Missouri Breaks, terrifying them and then shocking them with a sudden display of compassionate hospitality; but a brief period of co‑existence yields to more bloodshed, to raped women and children snatched or left dead. In the years immediately before the civil war from 1861 to 1865, America is shown as a country defined by lawlessness, ambition and plasticity; afterwards, it seems more hopelessly fractured, haunted by what has befallen it. What Tom has observed among the Sioux is that men can choose to dress as squaws at home but, in battle, still be warriors. This thought becomes his guide. He feels at home in a dress but, as a soldier, follows orders even when they are treacherous, learning that there are good men and bad on any side. During one of the many journeys the characters make across state lines, Thomas, John and Winona meet a Shawnee Indian, impoverished and fishing for mussels. He is unable to speak to Winona because they don’t share a common language; they are both not where they are supposed to be. Thomas's desire to dress as a woman and his maternal feelings for Winona – is set apart from his stereotypically masculine capacity for war, in part derived from his sense of loyalty to his fellow soldiers.

The novel was awarded the Costa Book Award 2016.The judges of the prize called it “A miracle of a book – both epic and intimate – that manages to create spaces for love and safety in the noise and chaos of history.”

Thomas states how “We were two wood-shavings of humanity in a rough world.” While the meaning of conflicts being fought in the battlefields remains ambiguous for Thomas, the conviction he and John feel about their desire and love for each other is certain. Tom, John and Winona survive battlefields and atrocities, trek across America’s great plains into the agonised, villainous aftermath of the war between the states. Barry makes us understand how. Grief may freeze the heart, the body be tested to extremes, but where there’s life there’s hope, and love is what makes life worth living,

The book indeed is a mix of humor and horror, blunt, with the main characters living in frontier country - writing on the beauty of landscape is a masterpiece, not just the landscape but the atmosphere as well like crossing the plane in winter - frost bites, vs. absolutely brutal slaughter of native Americans. It is completely different from romanticist Gone with the wind, though battle scenes are common, this is implicitly about ethics of war, and what it is to be a soldier. People slaughtering women and children.

There is no sense or saying what is right or wrong - author leaves it to the readers to understand and decide.

Moral complexity is enormous. ..It hurts just knowing War continues in our world.

“Killing hurts the heart, and soils the soul”.

The Human Line - Ellen Bass

Ellen Bass is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She currently teaches in the low residency MFA writing program at Pacific University.

With a deft touch and a sure voice Bass takes on many of the crucial moral issues of our times, and she delights with portrayals of life’s endearing absurdities. Offering homage to each transient moment, she reminds us to treasure the small, the plain, the surprising — those instances that lash us to The human line. (https://www.ellenbass.com/books/the-human-line/)

This includes -

Gate C22

God's Grief

If You Knew

Pray for Peace - (As below)
--------------

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah. Raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekhina, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Then pray to the bus driver who takes you to work.
On the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus,
for everyone riding buses all over the world.
Drop some silver and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latte and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

To Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, pray.
Bow down to terriers and shepherds and Siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already prayer.
Skin, and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile cases we are poured into.

If you’re hungry, pray. If you’re tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else’s legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheelchair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer as the earth revolves:
less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail,
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, twirling pizzas–

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your Visa card. Scoop your holy water
from the gutter. Gnaw your crust.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

Other similar interesting ones are:

Like a beggar - In her newest collection, Ellen Bass’s deft poetic touch and piercingly intimate voice continues an ongoing exploration of life’s essential question: how do we go on? These poems vividly inhabit sorrow and suffering, yet are rich with praise, delighting in the absurdity and humor of our flawed human intelligence. Like a Beggar handles the “the hard evidence of the earth” with grace, elegantly connecting the humble to the luminous.

Saturn's Rings

Nakedness

The Morning After

What Did I Love

“The irony is that Like a Beggar is a book about riches. These are luxurious poems, full of gorgeous language; and they also 'muddy their hands with the actual,' they 'handle the hard evidence of the earth.' With great intelligence and heart, Bass wakes us up to the riches and reminds us of our better selves. The way Bass brings together the humble and the luminous in this elegant book sets it apart and makes it thrilling. Good poets help us to see the world in a new way; great ones open the mind to new ways of conceiving that world and our connections to it. Like a Beggar does this for me.”—Toi Derricotte on Like a Beggar
-------------

Mules of Love::

Balancing heart-intelligent intimacy and surprising humor, the poems in Ellen Bass’s Mules of Love illuminate the essential dynamics of our lives: family, community, sexual love, joy, loss, religion and death. The poems also explore the darker aspects of humanity—personal, cultural, historical and environmental violence—all of which are handled with compassion and grace. Bass’s poetic gift is her ability to commiserate with others afflicted by similar hungers and grief.

For My Daughter on Her Twenty-First Birthday

And What If I Spoke of Despair

Jack Gottlieb's in Love

Brooklyn - Colm Toibinis

“No one who went to America missed home. Instead they were happy there and proud." Could that be true? I too wonder as Eilis Lacey concerned about things adding up in both columns :-) and whose debit and credit columns will be affected.

A 2009 novel by Irish author Colm Toibinis the first part is a delightful picture of small-town Ireland in the 1950s. Eilis Lacey has few prospects in life; there are no available jobs and even fewer available men. So when a priest offers to sponsor her to emigrate to the U.S. Even though she’s sad to leave her mother and older sister, Rose; she accepts the invitation and migrates to America. The middle two parts chart Eilis’ arrival and settling in to life and study in Brooklyn. She’s desperately homesick. That eases up when, with the help of that same priest, she takes night school bookkeeping courses; she also meets a charming Italian-American man, Tony. All is going well until she’s called back to Ireland. She’s modest, sensible and hard-working, but she’s also got a fine sense of humour. The department store – its billing system, how the store adjusts to the times; when its savvy owner realizes the neighbourhood is changing, it begins catering to African-American customers, and it’s fascinating to see how Eilis reacts. This is the new world, with opportunities for all. There’s also a tiny scene about one of Eilis’s instructors, whose family was killed in the Holocaust. Eili and Tony's romance becomes more serious, and Tony confesses his love for Eilis, and his plans to build a home on Long Island. Then comes her return home. One day while Eilis is working she learns from Father Flood that her sister Rose has died in her sleep from a pre-existing heart condition. She secretly marries Tony before she leaves. In Ireland she falls back into the town society easily. She goes to the beach with Nancy, George and their friend Jim Farrell, who is interested in her. Eilis is forced to spend time with Jim and eventually starts a brief relationship with him. He is a local pub owner, to whom she had been attracted before immigrating to America. Eilis's mother is desperate for her to settle back in Ireland and marry Jim, as Eilis has not confided in her or her friends about her marriage. Eilis procrastinates about a return to her new life by extending her stay. She saves Tony's letters unopened thinking at times that she no longer loves him. Eventually a local busybody, Miss Kelly, tells Eilis she knows her secret because Madge Kehoe is her cousin and somehow the story is out in New York. This is the turning point for Eilis and she immediately books her return passage, telling her mother the truth about her marriage and posting a farewell note to Jim as she leaves town by taxi for the docks.

Literary fiction helps us get deep into character, to understand where people come from, not just geographically but psychologically and emotionally.

Lesson Learned: Decisions are always important, but every so often a decision so powerful will come along that either direction you take will completely alter your life hereafter. We’ve all experienced that moment, a moment where if you went down a certain path (as Robert Frost would say- “the road not taken”) our life would be different today. Some moments are just that strong; they don’t come along very often, but when they do they linger for what feels like an eternity. Sometimes something, or someone, comes along that threatens to change the game completely. Your life becomes something else, and your reaction to it may come to define the rest of your days.

The Valuable Time of Maturity - Poem by Mário de Andrade

by Mario de Andrade (poet, novelist, essayist and musicologist. One of the founders of Brazilian Modernism)

The Valuable Time of Maturity - Poem by Mário de Andrade

" I counted my years and discovered that I have
less time to live going forward than I have lived until now.

I have more past than future.
I feel like the boy who received a bowl of candies.
The first ones, he ate ungracious,
but when he realized there were only a few left,
he began to taste them deeply.

I do not have time to deal with mediocrity.
I do not want to be in meetings where parade inflamed egos.

I am bothered by the envious, who seek to discredit
the most able, to usurp their places,
coveting their seats, talent, achievements and luck.

I do not have time for endless conversations,
useless to discuss about the lives of others
who are not part of mine.

I do not have time to manage sensitivities of people
who despite their chronological age, are immature.

I cannot stand the result that generates
from those struggling for power.

People do not discuss content, only the labels.
My time has become scarce to discuss labels,
I want the essence, my soul is in a hurry…
Not many candies in the bowl…

I want to live close to human people,
very human, who laugh of their own stumbles,
and away from those turned smug and overconfident
with their triumphs,
away from those filled with self-importance,
Who does not run away from their responsibilities ..
Who defends human dignity.
And who only want to walk on the side of truth
and honesty.
The essential is what makes
life worthwhile.

I want to surround myself with people,
who knows how to touch the hearts of people ….
People to whom the hard knocks of life,
taught them to grow with softness in their soul.

Yes …. I am in a hurry … to live with intensity,
that only maturity can bring.
I intend not to waste any part of the goodies
I have left …
I'm sure they will be more exquisite,
that most of which so far I've eaten.

My goal is to arrive to the end satisfied and in peace
with my loved ones and my conscience.
I hope that your goal is the same,
because either way you will get there too .. "

Mário de Andrade
---------------------

I counted my years and realized that I have less time to live by, than I have lived so far.

I feel like a child who won a pack of candies: at first, he ate them with pleasure but when he realized that there was little left, he began to taste them intensely.

I have no time for endless meetings where the statutes, rules, procedures and internal regulations are discussed, knowing that nothing will be done.

I no longer have the patience to stand absurd people who, despite their chronological age, have not grown up.

My time is too short: I want the essence; my spirit is in a hurry. I do not have much candy in the package anymore.

I want to live next to humans, very realistic people who know how to laugh at their mistakes and who are not inflated by their own triumphs and who take responsibility for their actions. In this way, human dignity is defended and we live in truth and honesty.

It is the essentials that make life useful.

I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch the hearts of those whom hard strokes of life have learned to grow with sweet touches of the soul.

Yes, I’m in a hurry. I’m in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.

I do not intend to waste any of the remaining desserts. I am sure they will be exquisite, much more than those eaten so far.

My goal is to reach the end satisfied and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.

We have two lives and the second begins when you realize you only have one.

---------------------

Human Body - The most amazing machine...

What do you think is the most amazing machine in the universe?

Keep thinking...how amazing, and well designed machinery is human body. It contains many other separate, interconnected machines. Each machine (heart, lungs, intestines, etc.) runs at its own individual speed, but all function in a specific, predetermined relationship to each other. There are basically 11 organ systems in the body that control all of the functions viz. circulatory, respiratory, digestive, excretory, nervous and endocrine, immune, integumentary, skeletal, muscle and reproductive systems.



Bright Spark: The Brain and Nervous System: The nervous system controls all the others. The central nervous system consists of the brain and the spinal cord, which serve as the main control centers for the body and process all incoming and outgoing messages. The peripheral nervous system includes all the nerves in your body that bring messages to the central nervous system and from the CNS to the muscles. Whereas the nervous system mainly uses electrical signals to communicate between cells, the endocrine system relies upon chemicals, called hormones, to send long distance messages through the body. The human brain is the central command system for the whole body. It’s a mass of about 180-100 billion neurons. Neurons have multiple synapses that create a network of over 100 trillion connections!

The Beat Goes On: The Heart and Circulatory System: Heart of the Matter The heart is one big pump made of muscle fibres. There are so many blood vessels that, laid out end to end, would span 60 000 miles.

Just Breathe Fresh Air: The Respiratory System: The Lungs and Respiratory System Humans have two lungs side by side, but they’re not the same size. The left lung is slightly smaller to make room for the heart. Each lung is divided into lobes. The right lung has three lobes, the left, two.

Feeling Hungry: The Digestive System - Breaking Down Digestion – Acrostic The digestive system begins with the mouth, where teeth mash food, the tongue moves it around, and saliva lubricates it and begins digestion. Upon swallowing, food travels down the oesophagus and into the stomach where acid kills bacteria and breaks down food further. The liquid food then enters the small intestine where the acid is neutralized, and enzymes break down fat, protein and carbohydrates for absorption by tiny hairs called villi. After travelling through 20 feet of small intestine, food passes into the large intestine, or colon, where water is absorbed and bacteria both extract and manufacture important vitamins. The colon is five feet long. The final stop is the rectum, where indigestible food matter and gas are passed through the anus as faeces and flatulence. The study of the digestive system is called gastroenterology.

Attack! The Immune System: The human immune system is the military of the body. It is comprised of white blood cells and antibodies. These seek out and destroy foreign bodies including viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi and abnormal cells. White blood cells are created in bone marrow are carried in the bloodstream and lymphatic system.

The Reproductive System - Circle of Life - Baby Talk A woman’s reproductive organs include a pair of ovaries that form eggs and the uterus, where a baby gestates until it’s ready to be born. A man’s reproductive organs include the testes, where sperm is formed, and a penis for delivering sperm into the uterus. When an egg and sperm cell fuse as a result of sexual intercourse, conception occurs and a baby begins to grow.

To the bone: The Skeleton Humans are vertebrates, meaning they have a backbone or spinal column. An adult skeleton has 206 bones. A baby has 300 bones at birth and some fuse together as they grow. Half of these bones are in your hands and feet! The largest and strongest bone in the body is the femur. The smallest bones are in the middle ear.

Let’s Move:Mighty Muscles: Appreciation The human body is incredibly flexible and able to move in thousands of ways, all thanks to 320 pairs of skeletal muscles. Muscles are made when muscle proteins form strands of muscle fibre. These then form bundles which make up larger skeletal muscles. Skeletal muscles occur in pairs, when one muscle group contracts, the opposing pair relaxes.

Now guess the seven wonders of the world? Ancient, Modern and All time....Its to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to feel, to laugh and to love.

How we ignore basic things and run behind the exterior worldly things....

Stumbled upon these book;

Inside Out Human Body: Explore the World's Most Amazing Machine-You! - by Luann Columbo. It has answers about the way our bodies work as it takes us through a journey of the muscular system, the “bone zone,” the digestive system, circulatory system and 47-mile long nervous system, along with introducing younger readers to different objects, mostly involving bodies, by peeling away the layers.

If Our Bodies Could Talk - Operating and Maintaining a Human Body; Author: James Hamblin; It is a more intricate, delicate, complex machine than any device we have -- but we know more about other machines than this. Hamblin explores the human stories behind health questions that never seem to go away—and which tend to be mischaracterized and oversimplified by marketing and news media. He covers topics such as sleep, aging, diet, and much more.


The body breaks down because of various reasons: genetics, the environment, intake of junk food and lack of sleep. Health is the first of our life - most important for survival and to be healthy, one need to take utmost care of ones body and mind. It has tremendous power to tolerate any amount of nuisance which normally we carry on. As machines need maintenance to run efficiently on continuous basis, so is the case with our bodies. It needs care for its survival.

Take Care of your health! Have a Healthy, Happy life. Be Wealthy and at peace. Enjoy the spark, and the beat. Appreciate.

AMMI: letter to a democratic mother - Saeed Mirza

A lovely farewell gift from a'daughter' to her ' mother' - Can't Thank you enough for this my dear Christy. You will remain my only little daughter forever.

Saeed Mirza, Well known screen writer and director of hindi films and television, takes us through the life of his parents and some turbulent times. Combative and lyrical, moving and relentlessly inquiring, "Ammi" offers a way of seeing our history and our future.

In the author’s own words, the book is

“a kind of refelctive, personal journey set in a background of idea, politics and history”

“This is a story about a young man and a young woman, and how they met and fell in love with each other, It is also a story about a time and a place.”

The story starts in an old haveli in Quetta, ruled by Shahbobo, Jahanara is her granddaughter and here is where she meets her aunt’s brother Nusrat Beg, her father agrees to the match against his family’s apprehensions and the young couple move to Sibi, a dry an arid place in Balochistan. There are tales from the author’s childhood, stories of Aryabhata, Ekalvya, sufis, saints, maulvis and couplets by Mirza Ghalib. He then takes us through his growing up years, how English and everything western started influencing him, his years in the film school, incidents from his film making years, gripping encounters with unusual people met during his travels and so on. All through this are thrown around snippets of conversations with his mother on subjects as diverse as Vietnam war, intercaste marriages, the sikh riots, communal wars and the like.

The book also brings out author's suppressed anguish that he could neither spend enough time with her nor talk to her as much as she would have wanted him to.The story is as much about him as his mother.

“were bahanas. ‘Letters’, you said, ‘should be about things that people want to say. Not what they ought to say”

So no Bahanas please my dear. Though read this book long before - somehow was missing it.

Dosa's & Idli's - The true breakfast of champions!

Dosa's & Idli's: How have they not made the leap to Other countries especially west? Would it be because it was difficult to ferment in the cold climate? Which is better Dosa or Idli (the dosa’s mal-adjusted cousin)? Was a common discussion during our walk, and my friend send this - Finally the grand leap:

This made our day, she could not resist sharing this, and our joy knew no bound. So was idli the winner? Will vary from person to person depending on the taste buds.

DOSA

Dosas, is a delicious breakfast food that originated in South India but has spread across the sub-continent, breaking down barriers and defying all odds. It's exact birthplace is subject to conjecture. According to food historian K. T. Achaya, dosa (as dosai) was already in use in ancient Tamil country around the 1st Century A.D. as per references in the Sangam literature. According to the historian P. Thankappan Nair, dosa originated in the Udupi town of present day Karnataka. The original Tamil dosa was softer and thicker - from our kitchen

The thinner and crispier version popular all over the world, seems to be from Karnataka.



Eventually more than 100 varieties of Dosas have evolved and keep evolving and some with fillings, and a mix of vegetarian and Non Vegetarian. Here is the Spanish Dosa with chicken fillings, keep wondering why the name Spanish Dosha:


A recipe for dosa (as dosaka) can be found in Manasollasa, a 12th century Sanskrit encyclopedia compiled by Someshvara 111, who ruled present day Karnataka. Now, in matters of food I tend to specialise in the eating department, not the preparation, but this sums it up - " A ladle filled with batter is nothing but a compass with a pencil. You just need to draw the perfect dosa - Word Architect:


Basically we can use one versatile batter for all kind of recipes whether idli, dosa or uttapam. Take one glass urad dal and fenugreek seeds in one bowl and 4 glass rice in another.Soak them in sufficient water for at least 5-6 hours. First Grind lentils into the fine paste. The batter should be light, fluffy and smooth. How we check is, when we touch the batter, it should not stick to our hands. Next grind rice, pour this rice batter into the same bowl with urad dal batter. Cover the bowl with plate (do NOT use tight fitting lid) and let it ferment without disturbing. Fermenting time may vary depending of the weather and temperature. Now add salt to the batter. Lightly, gently mix it. Do not stir vigorously. Take required amount of batter in separate bowl and add little water to make thick yet runny consistency of batter, depending on what you want to make. The batter is ready. For Dosa we use cast iron tawa, or the non stick pan(not prefered).

Idli's

Chavundaraya II, the author of Kannada encyclopaedia, Lokopakara (c. 1025 CE), describes the preparation of 'iḍḍarikā' by soaking black gram in buttermilk, ground to a fine paste, and mixed with the clear water of curd and spices. The modern idli recipe include the use of rice (not just black gram), the long fermentation of the mix, and the steaming for fluffiness. K. T. Achaya speculates that the modern idli recipe might have originated in present-day Indonesia, which has a long tradition of fermented food. Idli's too are found in different varieties based on ingredients used and size. For idli we need the specific idli maker - vessel.

Sambar and coconut chutney are the perfect accompaniments for both dosa's and idli's. Sambar is delicious and warming; it actually makes you feel healthy just by eating it. Moreover, the coconut chutney adds a dynamic flair and can be added according to taste. It's smooth and rich, and in combination with dosa, the textures and layers reach staggering proportions. I prefer just tiny bits of chutney, but I've seen friends consume half a litre with one small dosa or idli. It's all up to you.


The dosa's and idli's, friend and confidant, you can have them for breakfast, lunch and dinner; and for a all time foodie like me, it serves as a midnight snack as well the true breakfast of champions!

Navratri: For Each Their Own

Dasha Hara is a Sanskrit word which means removal of ten bad qualities within you.

Kama Vasana (Lust)
Krodha (Anger)
Moha (Attachment)
Lobha (Greed)
Mada (Over Pride)
Matsara (Jealousy)
Swartha (Selfishness)
Anyaaya (Injustice)
Amanavta (Cruelty)
Ahankara (Ego)

It's also known as 'Vijaydashami'- which means Vijaya over these ten bad qualities. This festival is about conquering the basic qualities of existence: May this be a day of victory for you.

Durga Puja in West Bengal, Odisha, Assam & Bihar Mother Goddess and the victory of the revered warrior Goddess Durga over the evil buffalo demon Mahishasura is celebrated. The festival honors the powerful female force (shakti) in the Universe. The sounds of Dhol, Dhak, Dhunuchi nachh, is all around

In Tamil Nadu, it is celebrated as the doll festival (navratri kolu), where they decorate their temple with small idols of gods and goddesses on flower-bedecked wooden steps; and it is “Batukamma Panduga” in Andra Pradesh

In Gujarat in the evening, an earthen pot with holes and diyas inside, also known as “Garbi”, is lighted and women perform arti with it. During Navratri, Garba dance and Dandiya Raas are popular forms of dances performed by both men and women, wearing their traditional dresses. Similar is the celebration in Maharashtra too.

In Himachal Pradesh People celebrate the tenth day, also known as “Kullu Dussehra” as the day of return of Lord Rama to Ayodhya. On this day, the idols from the temples are taken out in processions.

In Punjab, the people keep fast on the first 7 days of Navratri and end their fast on Ashthami or Navami by worshipping 9 little girls and a boy, which is known as “Kanjika”.

In Kerala, Navratri is associated with education. As this festival marks the victory of good over evil, Keralites consider these days as the most auspicious for learning or starting something new. During the last three days, they worship Goddess Saraswati and place books next to her statue in their homes. They call Saraswati Pooja

Apart from worshipping Goddess Durga, playing dandiyas, fasting, making special Navratri foods, many people also follow special colours of Navratri; 9 days and 9 colours that have different significance.

DAY 1 - ORANGE
The festival begins with the bright and vibrant Orange. This colour signifies energy and happiness. Hindus worship Goddess Shailputri on this day.
DAY 2 - WHITE
White is the colour for Day 2, which is a symbol of peace and purity. Hindus worship Goddess Brahmacharini on this day.
DAY 3 - RED
People wear red colour on the third day of Navratri. It signifies beauty and fearlessness. Hindus worship Goddess Chandraghanta on this day.
DAY 4 - ROYAL BLUE
The colour of the fourth day of Navratri is royal blue. This colour is considered good for health and wealth. Hindus worship Goddess Kushmanda on this day.
DAY 5 - YELLOW
People wear the colour yellow on the fifth day of the festival. The colour stands for happiness and brightness. Hindus worship Goddess Skandamata on Day 5.
DAY 6 - GREEN
This colour of the sixth day signifies new beginnings and growth. Hindus worship Goddess Katyayani on Day 6.
DAY 7 - GREY
The colour of the seventh day is grey, a colour which stands for the strength of transforming. Hindus worship Goddess Kalaratri on Day 6 and this day is called the Saptami.
DAY 8 - PURPLE
Called Ashtami, many people perform Kanjaks on this day. The colour of the day, purple, signifies the power of intellect and peace. People worship Goddess Mahagauri on this day.
DAY 9 - PEACOCK GREEN
This day is called Navami and is the last day of the Navratri festival. Rituals are performed on this day and Goddess Siddhidhatri is worshipped. The colour peacock green is believed to fulfill the desires of devotees.

Interesting fact is that the end of the fifteen-day period of ‘shradha’, when Hindus perform pujas in memory of their ancestors and deceased relatives, heralds the start of the festival of Navratri.

Connections, Co-incidences or Divine Interventions Rendezvous with Simi

http://www.simigarewal.com/

An amazing lady, - What a pleasure it was to watch her rendezvous episodes love to know that she is set to return with her celebrity chat show after over a decade, her demeanor throughout the show remains static yet so vibrant and vocal, bringing out the personal details of so many celebrities not only from films or from India but from a wider spectrum across countries. Its such an inspiration to watch a woman single handed managing her life and carrying herself with poise. She has created a legacy for herself which no one else would be able to replace. An actress, writer, director, Producer, editor, who does not look like a lady who has crossed 70 years, thereby putting time and age on hold. Its so serene to see her always in white and therefore nick named as the Lady in white. A perfectionist, her immaculate dressing sense an inspiration for many and she herself ahead of her time. She keeps motivating everyone around her, by spreading positivity, and the interviews with some of our legends are wonderful, if not for her, some priceless information might have got lost out of History.

“We, I would venture to guess, are the books we have read, the paintings we have seen, the music we have heard and forgotten, the streets we have walked. We are our childhood, our family, some friends, a few loves, more than a few disappointments. A sum reduced by infinite subtractions. We are shaped by different times, hobbies and creeds.”

-Sergio Pitol, ‘The Art Of Flight’

How time fly, too quick. We wait anxiously to know what is ahead of us - which might hit us hard and then turn out to be the best that could happen; which might look like a great opportunity but turn out to be a mis-fit for our talent and ability. Whatever happens, it is sure to teach us and make us stronger. But we often wonder - why do things happen the way they do? Are they connections, coincidences or divine intervention?

Was spell bound and excited to see Simi respond to my message to her!