Movies do derive their story-lines from real life (except most of Tamil & Hindi movies, where somewhere towards the climax the story takes a line that never happens in life). But how often do you watch a movie based on the story that you

After about 3 months, we, as two families – sister’s and mine – went to see a movie. After series of comedy movies, Kamal has taken a serious role. He is such a versatile actor. It is always a joy to watch him. Though it could be termed as Kaka Kaka Part II, the camera is just awesome. I was thrilled to see Hollywood style in a Tamil movie. Other than camera, the music scores well. For such a hyped movie, the story falls flat though. Good watch for one time.

Most of you know that I’m a voracious reader. I have tons of books on topics that interest me – theology, philosophy, psychology and so on. Yet I was never into reading novels.

That was until now.

With the recent attention towards ‘Da Vinci’ code, my sister bought all the four novels of Dan Brown and few other novels too. Now that I spend most of the weekends at my sister’s house, I started reading them. I didn’t read ‘Da Vinci’ code. ‘Digital Fortress’ is a bore. Around the middle of the book, it slows down and becomes a never ending bore. ‘Angels & Demons’ is better. Brown captures the attention. But with the final twist the characters loose their intensity. (At least that is what I felt). The best one was ‘Deception Point’. I loved it until the end.

I also read ‘Master of the game’ by Sidney Sheldon. That was an awesome piece of work.

A banal is not expected out of a director like Steven Spielberg. Having seen so many movies which portray, ‘I haven’t seen anything like this before’ concepts, it is kind of boring to see another one having a similar storyline. Even graphics and like fail to impress.

Added to it, I saw the movie in a crappy theatre – AVM theatre. Someone at the back kept spitting (thank God it was not on us, but next to his seat). The gang at the front seat kept whistling and shouting.

There was one thing positive though: I didn’t go alone, I went with my brother-in-law, who is here on an official trip and with another mutual friend of his and mine.

Ricardo Semler inherited his father’s business, which was run, like most of the companies, in an autocratic way. There was a rule for every contingency, layers of management, and not to mention employee’s disdain. But Semler changed it all as narrated in his book – ‘Maverick, The success story behind the world’s most unusual workplace’. It is fast-paced, motivating and thought-provoking. I just couldn’t keep the book down. I kept reading through day and night, stopping now and then to assimilate whatever I had read. I am still going through whatever I read to see how I could implement this wonderful philosophy. He says this could be implemented at any level, though change from the top would be favorable.

His revolution was to have complete employee participation in running the business – be it promotion, acquisition, profit-sharing or just about the color of wall next to an employee. The company is composed of self-managing teams, for there is no hierarchy in his firm. The balance sheet of the firm is publicly available and discussed, so even the lowermost employee knows how much profit is made. And the teams evaluate their bosses. End result of all this is, there is lot of trust between employees and employer, high productivity and every party reap the benefit. What a wonderful world to live in!

He doesn’t only paint a rosy picture, he also describes the hurdles he faced in implementing this system. But I am sure his satisfaction compensates for all the pain that he underwent.

After a long read, today I finished the autobiography of Jack Welch, ex-CEO of the legendary firm in corporate America – General Electric. It is his only company, joining as an executive he stayed with GE for 41 years to retire as a CEO. He had three wives, but worked in a single company. Man! he is different from anyone I know.

One principle that hit me was, “Build great people, they build great products and provide great services”. Ever since I read these words, I try hard – it is really hard in a company culture which thinks otherwise – to follow them. I see it working among the six guys for whom I am responsible for.

However, I find it hard to take another of his philosophy. He advocates to eliminate the lower 10% of employees, on the basis of performance. I am not able to comprehend how this would suit Indian software firms, where the biggest population is doing production support. You don’t need to be a genius to do that job. In fact out of 120 members in our project, there are around 5 spectacular developers and one or two managers worth working for. That is less than 10% on the top side!

The book makes an interesting read, how he became a CEO and then after 21 years how he spent sleepless nights to choose his successor out of three of his best boys. In between these pages, there are lots of info about deals, acquisitions, firings and so on and on, typical events of any big company. But the writing style isn’t as mesmerizing as, ‘The beautiful Mind’, the story of John Nash. Probably Jack and his author would disagree, but that is how I feel in my gut!

My brother-in-law arranged for us (my sister, he, his brother and myself) to go for a latest Tamil movie – Boys. Though I was in Madras for 4 years before going to Belgium, I never went to a theater to watch a movie. So I was little bit excited how it is going to be. Also, I heard lots of good reviews about the movie itself. It was a night show starting at 21h45 and ending at around 01h00.

There were some ads in the begining. What I didnt know (and came to know) was that even ads have to go via the censor board. Well after few ads, it was time for Boys.
It is a story of 5 college going guys and one girl. How they defy tradition and suffer for it. As in all movies, they succeed in the end. There is love, dance, songs and all that rightly belongs to a Tamil movie. But the direction is not. This is not a typical Tamil movie. There is not one piece in the movie (songs, dances, dialogues) that is out of the main thread. You dont feel bored. There is nothing illusionary in the movie. The story, dialogues all seems so real to you. You can identify with the characters and the plot. In short, it is well done. Hope there will be more creativity in Tamil movies like this one.