Scale blind-spot ..

My flight to SFO from Frankfurt was not the regular one. This time, I was kind of excited to get in to the new A380, humongous airbus.

They have done a nice job of keeping all the economy (950 seats) in the ground floor, broken in to many compartments, with multiple sky bridges connecting. So that boarding and un-boarding becomes parallel.

Upper deck is entirely First and Business, creating enough separation between cattle class and rich class.

Good so far. So the kind of scale issues one would expect in boarding and un-boarding the airlines have taken care of well.

Now, when the journey finished and I had to come out to stand in the immigration line, I realized the scale blind-spot. All of a sudden 1200 people (more than twice of what one plane really carries) together queuing up at the same number of counters.

It took more than 2.5 hours to clear the line up.

My experiments with truth

Something I should have read a long time ago !! Long long time ago. Being a book lover, I feel ashamed that I ve not read the "experiments with truth" - auto biography of Mahatma Gandhi for so long !

So, when I had the first opportunity to sit on a 24 hrs flight, I picked this book up. Much to my surprise, its so refreshing after 90 yrs of being written. Nothing has really changed.

The "Mahatma" known for Amhisa - non-violence, that is universally known as the greatest ever piece of ammunition to throw British out, tried the meat-eating to be strong to throw British out in the first place.

End of the day - its all experiments ! And some do come true. Help one out and become a trusted tool. Not all tools are perfect for all jobs. For sure !!

Mahatma, before he was known as mahatma, was sure that being strong by eating meat, will make Indian's as strong as British rulers, and was the way to fight them out of the country. And this, when eating meat was a sin for him, his religion and in the view of his family. He tried it in hiding !!





The intention was very much the same. The experiments were different. Some failed, and one clicked. That's all that need to click.

Simple yet profound !

As I go on with this book, I will have few more interesting excerpts here in betaal-speak !

progressive lenses .. regressive technology

Its a master con, that I should have deciphered on my own. With the slightest bit of logical reasoning.

A pair of glasses, that cost a fortune, would heal the dent on the pride when one turns 40. huh !! !

Bi-focal vs. multi-focal a.k.a Progressive lenses. The moment of truth always occurs after its over.. aint it ?


These damned pair of expensive glasses, come with lots of pain - headache, botched vision.

And, it was all so clear - simple logic like "glass once made is fixed, and its the eye muscles that need to do all the work to make sure the progressive glasses progress well".

But the logic failed, once again, on time :)

Warning to all those becoming 40, and I am sure all of you will be. When you go to your ophthalmologist to check your sight, don't buy the progressive lens crap. Never !

Its regressive !! hiding behind progressive .. and painful too.

faith ..

One of my close friends and colleagues, posted this fact (not a story) ! Pretty amazing.


A man got a dream that there is a temple buried in some place, and was asked by the God himself to go uncover it.

He ignored the dream once, and then twice.

Third time - he could not sleep after getting the same dream with vivid details of the land and what he is expected to see when he excavates that land.

He goes and narrates the dream to the land owner (which belongs to my friend and colleague's family). They had trust in his persistence and did the excavation !

And guess what ! There was a Krishna Idol (unique one with mustache and with Rukmini - no Radha),  underneath. Scientists estimate that idol to be 400 yrs old !

There is a subconscious connectivity with the supreme after all.. !??? When the mortal minds can not explain it leaves it to be explained by "faith".

Needle in the eye !!

I have serious needle anxiety. So when the doctor said, a minor surgery need to happen in my left eye to take care of a small cyst, I freaked out !!

And the Dr. was not helping much ! No talk, no explanation of how the procedure is going to be. He just said, come over when you have 30-40 mins, and we will do it.  I kept asking for what the procedure would be.. a run down !

He did not answer the question - but asked, "was there any injury in the eye ?" I thought back and remembered a bad poke in my eye months ago in that portion, by my own spectacle frame !

He asked, was it painful ? I said, yes .. painful for almost a few hours, but then life moved on.
Then he said, were you afraid before that happened ? I said NO.. I did not know it was coming !! So there is no way I would have been afraid :)

He said, this surgery will be almost painless, in comparison to that. Only difference is that, you know when the needle will go in. Of course followed by a warm smile.

I got it done, the next day !!

Limits of need..

We all know that "needs" have no upper limit. Lots of philosophers talk about it.
When human being gets something, he sets the goal for the next. Most of us, live through it - so let me move to the real point I want to make :)

Met a person, via. a close philosopher friend, who used to be a mover and shaker in the IT corporate world. Successful in his career. Who is also a real life case of "The Monk who had a Ferrari" - quit all that, went to periphery of the city, took over a few acres of land that he inherited and started farming for a living. He shares his produce with workers. No money paid. He home-schools the kids. Has a few cows for milk and fertilizer. A small pond in the yard.

Again, nothing unheard of so far. We have seen a lot of people doing that now a days !
However, one thing this person said - which was profound !!

"Just like the need does not have an upper limit, it does not have a lower limit too." Which means, one can take stuff away one by one from his/her list, and will still have something to give up.

Product positioning ...

Betaal has been quiet for a while. Yes ! Focus moved to some other, more private writing. But the writing did not stop. However, I got a few messages from "anonymous" readers of the blog to start putting my thoughts again .. but continued to sleep on it.

My not-so-anonymous friends at the tea table, would suggest not to stop. Ignored those too for a while.

But what woke me up to open "Betaal Speak" after a long while is the creativity of a small business owner, who is trying to advertise his "False ceiling and Roofing" business on the web !! And without paying a dime to "google" :)

I had written an article here long time ago - stake on the roof ! Which of course shows up in google search if one does search on "Roof". He finds the article and sends me a simple comment - "Nice article ! Thank you .. For false ceilings and roof work please contact " ! 

Product positioning, embedding in to the content :) ala a Karan Johar movie !!!