Sunday, November 13, 2011
The startup blog goes private
We have been so caught up in the middle of execution in the last year that blogging on the startup has virtually stopped. This is a dangerous trend as not blogging in some sense is really "not thinking", not hearing your own voice in the din of noises around. And boy, are there noises. We have now spent roughly half the money given to us and a better part of the year in experimentation of different kinds. A visit to the second partner meet really brought home the point that while we began with plenty of thought and process, we did drop those ideas along the way in the pursuit of something more commercial. Here is an attempt to kickstart that process again.
Interestingly, this blog has the least number of visitor interest although it contains the most core ideas on how we are building this business and I have to often think several times of the benefits of keeping this blog public. Given the sensitivity of information I intend to put out on the blog, going forward the startup blog will be for private viewing only. The original idea was to assist other entrepreneurs who may be treading along similar paths. However, it is now inhibiting free expression to the point of futility, so relevant snippets if any will be posted back on this blog.
Adios, Ink.
Friday, October 07, 2011
The Moment has come...
A lovely article by David Pogue in today's Economic Times
Wednesday evening, Apple broke the news that Steve Jobs had died.
Since that moment, tributes, eulogies and retrospectives have poured over the world like rain. He changed industries, redefined business models, fused technology and art. People are comparing him to Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Leonardo da Vinci. And they’re saying that it will be a very long time before the world sees the likes of Steve Jobs again.
Probably true. But why not, do you suppose? After all, there are other brilliant marketers and business executives. They’re all over Silicon Valley — all over the world.
Many of them, maybe most of them, have studied Steve Jobs, tried to absorb his methods and his philosophy.
Surely if they pore over the Jobs playbook long enough, they can recreate some of his success.
But nobody ever does, even when they copy Mr Jobs’ moves down to the last eyebrow twitch. Why not? Here’s a guy who never finished college, never went to business school, never worked for anyone else a day in his adult life. So how did he become the visionary who changed every business he touched? Actually, he’s given us clues all along. Remember the “Think Different” ad campaign he introduced upon his return to Apple in 1997?
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.”
In other words, the story of Steve Jobs boils down to this: Don’t go with the flow.
Steve Jobs refused to go with the flow. If he saw something that could be made better, smarter or more beautiful, nothing else mattered. Not internal politics, not economic convention, not social graces. Apple has attained its current astonishing levels of influence and success because it’s nimble. It’s incredibly focused.
It’s had stunningly few flops. And that’s because Mr Jobs didn’t buy into focus groups, groupthink or decision by committee. Uncommon Sense
At its core, Apple existed to execute the visions in his brain. He oversaw every button, every corner, every chime. He lost sleep over the fonts in the menus, the cardboard of the packaging, the colour of the power cord. That’s just not how things are done. Often, his laser focus flew in the face of screamingly obvious common sense. He wanted to open a chain of retail stores — after the failure of Gateway’s chain had clearly demonstrated that the concept was doomed. He wanted to sell a smartphone that had no keyboard, when physical keys were precisely what had made the Black-Berry the most popular smartphone at the time. Over and over again, he took away our comfy blankets. He took away our floppy drives, our dial-up modems, our camcorder jacks, our nonglossy screens, our Flash, our DVD drives, our removable laptop batteries. How could he do that? You’re supposed to add features, not take them away, Steve! That’s just not done!
(Often, I was one of the bellyachers. And often, I’d hear from Mr Jobs. He’d call me at home, or when I was out to dinner, or when I was vacationing with my family. And he’d berate me for not seeing his bigger picture. On the other hand, sometimes he’d call to praise me for appreciating what he was going for. A CEO calling a reviewer at home? That’s just not done.)
Eventually, of course, most people realised that he was just doing that Steve Jobs thing again: being ahead of his time. Eventually, in fact, society adopted a cycle of reaction to Apple that became so predictable, it could have been a “Saturday Night Live” skit.
Phase 1: Steve Jobs takes the stage to introduce a new product.
Phase 2: The tech bloggers savage it. (“The iPad has no mouse, no keyboard, no GPS, no USB, no card slot, no camera, no Flash!? It’s dead on arrival!”)
Phase 3: The product comes out, the public goes nuts for it, the naysayers seem to disappear into the earth.
Phase 4: The rest of the industry leaps into high gear trying to do just what Apple did.
And so yes, there are other geniuses. There are other brilliant marketers, designers and business executives. Maybe, once or twice in a million, those skills even coincide in the same person. But will that person also have the vision? The name “Steve Jobs” may appear on 300 patents, but his gift wasn’t invention. It was seeing the promise in some early, clunky technology — and polishing it, refining it and simplifying it until it becomes a standard component. Like the mouse, menus, windows, the CD-ROM or Wi-Fi. Even at Apple, is there anyone with the imagination to pluck brilliant, previously unthinkable visions out of the air — and the conviction to see them through with monomaniacal attention to detail? Suppose there were. Suppose, by some miracle, that some kid in a garage somewhere at this moment possesses the marketing, invention, business and design skills of a Steve Jobs. What are the odds that that same person will be comfortable enough — or maybe uncomfortable enough — to swim upstream, all in pursuit of an unshakable vision? Zero. The odds are zero.
Mr Jobs is gone. Everyone who knew him feels that sorrow. But the ripples of that loss will widen in the days, weeks and years to come. In 2005, Steve Jobs gave the commencement address to the graduating students at Stanford. He told them the secret that defined him in every action, every decision, every creation of his tragically unfinished life: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Wednesday evening, Apple broke the news that Steve Jobs had died.
Since that moment, tributes, eulogies and retrospectives have poured over the world like rain. He changed industries, redefined business models, fused technology and art. People are comparing him to Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Leonardo da Vinci. And they’re saying that it will be a very long time before the world sees the likes of Steve Jobs again.
Probably true. But why not, do you suppose? After all, there are other brilliant marketers and business executives. They’re all over Silicon Valley — all over the world.
Many of them, maybe most of them, have studied Steve Jobs, tried to absorb his methods and his philosophy.
Surely if they pore over the Jobs playbook long enough, they can recreate some of his success.
But nobody ever does, even when they copy Mr Jobs’ moves down to the last eyebrow twitch. Why not? Here’s a guy who never finished college, never went to business school, never worked for anyone else a day in his adult life. So how did he become the visionary who changed every business he touched? Actually, he’s given us clues all along. Remember the “Think Different” ad campaign he introduced upon his return to Apple in 1997?
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.”
In other words, the story of Steve Jobs boils down to this: Don’t go with the flow.
Steve Jobs refused to go with the flow. If he saw something that could be made better, smarter or more beautiful, nothing else mattered. Not internal politics, not economic convention, not social graces. Apple has attained its current astonishing levels of influence and success because it’s nimble. It’s incredibly focused.
It’s had stunningly few flops. And that’s because Mr Jobs didn’t buy into focus groups, groupthink or decision by committee. Uncommon Sense
At its core, Apple existed to execute the visions in his brain. He oversaw every button, every corner, every chime. He lost sleep over the fonts in the menus, the cardboard of the packaging, the colour of the power cord. That’s just not how things are done. Often, his laser focus flew in the face of screamingly obvious common sense. He wanted to open a chain of retail stores — after the failure of Gateway’s chain had clearly demonstrated that the concept was doomed. He wanted to sell a smartphone that had no keyboard, when physical keys were precisely what had made the Black-Berry the most popular smartphone at the time. Over and over again, he took away our comfy blankets. He took away our floppy drives, our dial-up modems, our camcorder jacks, our nonglossy screens, our Flash, our DVD drives, our removable laptop batteries. How could he do that? You’re supposed to add features, not take them away, Steve! That’s just not done!
(Often, I was one of the bellyachers. And often, I’d hear from Mr Jobs. He’d call me at home, or when I was out to dinner, or when I was vacationing with my family. And he’d berate me for not seeing his bigger picture. On the other hand, sometimes he’d call to praise me for appreciating what he was going for. A CEO calling a reviewer at home? That’s just not done.)
Eventually, of course, most people realised that he was just doing that Steve Jobs thing again: being ahead of his time. Eventually, in fact, society adopted a cycle of reaction to Apple that became so predictable, it could have been a “Saturday Night Live” skit.
Phase 1: Steve Jobs takes the stage to introduce a new product.
Phase 2: The tech bloggers savage it. (“The iPad has no mouse, no keyboard, no GPS, no USB, no card slot, no camera, no Flash!? It’s dead on arrival!”)
Phase 3: The product comes out, the public goes nuts for it, the naysayers seem to disappear into the earth.
Phase 4: The rest of the industry leaps into high gear trying to do just what Apple did.
And so yes, there are other geniuses. There are other brilliant marketers, designers and business executives. Maybe, once or twice in a million, those skills even coincide in the same person. But will that person also have the vision? The name “Steve Jobs” may appear on 300 patents, but his gift wasn’t invention. It was seeing the promise in some early, clunky technology — and polishing it, refining it and simplifying it until it becomes a standard component. Like the mouse, menus, windows, the CD-ROM or Wi-Fi. Even at Apple, is there anyone with the imagination to pluck brilliant, previously unthinkable visions out of the air — and the conviction to see them through with monomaniacal attention to detail? Suppose there were. Suppose, by some miracle, that some kid in a garage somewhere at this moment possesses the marketing, invention, business and design skills of a Steve Jobs. What are the odds that that same person will be comfortable enough — or maybe uncomfortable enough — to swim upstream, all in pursuit of an unshakable vision? Zero. The odds are zero.
Mr Jobs is gone. Everyone who knew him feels that sorrow. But the ripples of that loss will widen in the days, weeks and years to come. In 2005, Steve Jobs gave the commencement address to the graduating students at Stanford. He told them the secret that defined him in every action, every decision, every creation of his tragically unfinished life: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Thursday, August 25, 2011
My Personal Hero.
To commemorate, what can only be described with great sadness, here is some space on my space for you. Wish you all the very best Mr Jobs. You remain a personal hero, shinning up in the sky as a guiding light. Someday when the sorrow of this moment has passed, I will write more in detail. Your story is remarkable, your strength, your courage, your flaws - all make you more loved in a way like no other. Hope you continue the miracles and defy all odds with your health.
With much love,
Another FAN
With much love,
Another FAN
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Water Color
Here is some brilliant water color paintings that A sent to me a couple of years back. The artist is a Maharashtrian painter called Narayan Peth. Enjoy!
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Contemporary Art Exhibition UB city
Here are some pictures of an on-going contemporary Indian art exhibition at UB city mall Bangalore. While it was great to bring together a collection of works from a collection of galleries across the country, I was a little disappointed with the overall quality of the work.
For being a 'contemporary' 'Indian' exhibition, I found the complexity of compositions, the use of abstraction, distortion, perspectives, dimension and most importantly, bringing in something that is uniquely Indian missing a bit for me. The paintings are in the affordable range from Ra 25,000 - Rs 5 lakhs. The most expensive one I saw was by a Malayali artist showcased by Sara Arrakal's gallery. Glad for the initiative, great to be in the midst of art but sadly, no "WOW! that blew my mind!" sorta moments typically experienced in the famed galleries of Europe and NY.
For being a 'contemporary' 'Indian' exhibition, I found the complexity of compositions, the use of abstraction, distortion, perspectives, dimension and most importantly, bringing in something that is uniquely Indian missing a bit for me. The paintings are in the affordable range from Ra 25,000 - Rs 5 lakhs. The most expensive one I saw was by a Malayali artist showcased by Sara Arrakal's gallery. Glad for the initiative, great to be in the midst of art but sadly, no "WOW! that blew my mind!" sorta moments typically experienced in the famed galleries of Europe and NY.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
"There is no Abstract Art"..
I have been reading some mind blowing art theory and have decided to type out some of the brilliant stuff here, so that I dont forget and it remains here for future reading. Also, any art lover out there can have a blast with this....I have always loved Picasso up until his obsession with the dog/ bird phase.....here are some excerpts from the mind of a genius.
Excerpts from "Conversations with Picasso" in Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1935 published in the book "Art Theory 1900-2000" - A critique of Modernism....
"In the old days, pictures went forward towards completion by stages. Every day brought something new. A picture used to be sum of additions. In my case, a picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture – then I destroy it. In the end though, nothing is lost; the red I took away from one place turns up somewhere else.
It would be very interesting to preserve photographically, not the stages but the metamorphosis of a picture. Possibly, one might then discover the path followed by the brain in materializing a dream. But there is a very odd thing – to notice that basically, a picture doesn’t change, that first ‘vision’ almost remains intact, in spite of appearances. I often ponder on a light and a dark when I put them into a picture, I try hard to break them up by interpolating a color that will create a different effect. When the work is photographed, I find that what I put in to correct my first ‘vision’ has disappeared, and that after all, the photographic image corresponds with my first vision before the transformation I insisted on.
A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it is finished, it still goes on changing, according to the mind of whoever is looking at it. A picture lives a life like a living creature, undergoing the changes imposed on us by our life from day to day. This is natural enough, as the picture lives only through the man who is looking at it. […]
When you begin a picture, you often make some pretty discoveries. You must be on guard against these. Destroy the thing; do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds. Otherwise, you become your own connoisseur. I sell myself nothing.
Abstract art is only painting. What about drama?
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward, you can remove all traces of reality. There is no danger then, because the idea of the object will have left an indelible mark. It is what stirred the artist off, excited his ideas and stirred up his emotions. Ideas and emotions will in the end be prisoners in his work. Whatever they do, they can’t escape from the picture. They form an integral part of it, even when their presence is no longer discernible. Whether he likes it or not, man is the instrument of nature. It forces on him its character and appearance, one cannot go against nature. It is stronger than the strongest man; it is pretty much in our interest to be on good terms with it! We may allow ourselves some liberties, but only in details.
Nor is there any ‘figurative’ and ‘nonfigurative’ art. Everything appears to us in the guise of a ‘figure’. Even in metaphysics, ideas are expressed in the guise of symbolic ‘figures’. See how ridiculous it is then to think of painting without ‘figuration’. A person, an object, a circle are all ‘figures’; they react on us more or less intensely. Some are nearer our sensations and produce emotions that touch our affective faculties, others appeal more directly to the intellect. They should all be allowed a place because I find my spirit has quite as much need of emotion as my senses.
Do you think it concerns me that a particular picture of mine represents two people? Though these two people once existed for me, they exist no longer. The ‘vision’ of them gave me a preliminary emotion; then little by little their actual presence became blurred; they developed into a kind of fiction and then disappeared altogether, or rather they were transformed into all kinds of problems. They are no longer two people, you see, but forms and colors, that have taken on, meanwhile, the idea of two people and preserve the vibration of their life.
The artist is a receptacle for all emotions that come from all over the place; from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web. That is why we must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned, there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it – except from our own works. I have a horror of copying myself. […]
[..] The painter goes through states of fullness and evaluation. That is the whole secret of art, I go for a walk in the forest of Fontainbleau, I get ‘green’ indigestion. I must get rid of this sensation into a picture. Green rules it. A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions.
People seize on painting to cover up their nakedness. They get what they can wherever they ca. In the end I can’t believe they get anything at all. They’ve simply cut a coat to the measure of their own ignorance. They make everything, from God to a picture, in their own image. That is why the picture-hook is the ruination of a painting –a painting always has certain significance, at least as much as the man who did it. As soon as it is bought and hung on a wall, it takes on quite a different kind of significance, and the painting is done for.
Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been deceived, but so well deceived that we can scarcely get back even a shadow of truth. The beauties of the Parthenon, Venuses, Nymphs, Narcissuses are so many lies. Art is not the application of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs. We love her with our desires – although everything has been done to try and apply a canon even to love. The Parthenon is really only a farmyard over which someone put a roof; colonnades and sculptures were added because there were people in Atens who happened to be working, and wanted to express themselves. It’s not what the artist does that counts, but what he is. Cezzanne would never have interested me a bit if had lived and through like Jacques Emile Blanche, even if the apple he painted had been ten times as beautiful. What forces out interest if Cezzanne’s anxiety – that’s Cezzanne’s lesson; the torments of Van Gogh –that is the actual drama of the man. The rest is a sham.
Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the songs of the bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world., though we can’t explain them. People who try to explain things often end up barking at the wrong tree. Gertrude Stein joyfully announced to me the other day that she had finally understood what my picture of three musicians meant to be. It was a still life!
How can you expect an onlooker to live a picture of mine as I lived it? A picture comes to me from miles away, who is to say from how far away I senses it, saw it, painted it; and yet, the next day I can’t see what I’ve done myself. How can anyone enter my dreams, my instincts, my desires, my thoughts, which have taken a long time to mature and to come out into the day light and above all grasp from them what I have been about – perhaps against my own will?
With the exception of few painters who are opening new horizons to painting, young painters today don’t know which way to go. Instead of taking up our researches in order to react clearly against us, they are absorbed with brining the past back to life – when truly the whole world is open before us everything waiting to be done, not just redone. Why cling desperately to everything that has already been fulfilled in terms of its promise! There are miles of painting ‘in the manner of’; but it is rare to find a young man working in his own way.
Does he wish to believe that a man can’t repeat himself? To repeat is to run counter to spiritual laws, essentially escapism.
I am no pessimist; I don’t loathe art, because I couldn’t live without devoting all my time to it. I love it as the only end of my life. Everything I do connected with it gives me intense pleasure. But still, I don’t see why the whole world should be taken up with art, demand its credentials, and on that subject, give free rein to its own stupidity.
Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. I don’t understand why revolutionary countries should have more prejudices about art than out-of-date countries! We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things. We have tied them up to a fiction, instead of trying to sense what inner life there was in the men who painted them. There ought to be an absolute dictatorship ….a dictatorship of painter….a dictatorship of one painter…to suppress all those who have betrayed us, to suppress the cheaters, to suppress the tricks, to suppress mannerisms, to suppress charms, to suppress history, to suppress a heap of other things. But common sense always gets away with it. Above all, let’s have a revolution against that! The true dictator will always be conquered by the dictatorship of common sense…and maybe not!
Excerpts from "Conversations with Picasso" in Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1935 published in the book "Art Theory 1900-2000" - A critique of Modernism....
"In the old days, pictures went forward towards completion by stages. Every day brought something new. A picture used to be sum of additions. In my case, a picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture – then I destroy it. In the end though, nothing is lost; the red I took away from one place turns up somewhere else. It would be very interesting to preserve photographically, not the stages but the metamorphosis of a picture. Possibly, one might then discover the path followed by the brain in materializing a dream. But there is a very odd thing – to notice that basically, a picture doesn’t change, that first ‘vision’ almost remains intact, in spite of appearances. I often ponder on a light and a dark when I put them into a picture, I try hard to break them up by interpolating a color that will create a different effect. When the work is photographed, I find that what I put in to correct my first ‘vision’ has disappeared, and that after all, the photographic image corresponds with my first vision before the transformation I insisted on.
A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it is finished, it still goes on changing, according to the mind of whoever is looking at it. A picture lives a life like a living creature, undergoing the changes imposed on us by our life from day to day. This is natural enough, as the picture lives only through the man who is looking at it. […]
When you begin a picture, you often make some pretty discoveries. You must be on guard against these. Destroy the thing; do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds. Otherwise, you become your own connoisseur. I sell myself nothing.
Abstract art is only painting. What about drama?
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward, you can remove all traces of reality. There is no danger then, because the idea of the object will have left an indelible mark. It is what stirred the artist off, excited his ideas and stirred up his emotions. Ideas and emotions will in the end be prisoners in his work. Whatever they do, they can’t escape from the picture. They form an integral part of it, even when their presence is no longer discernible. Whether he likes it or not, man is the instrument of nature. It forces on him its character and appearance, one cannot go against nature. It is stronger than the strongest man; it is pretty much in our interest to be on good terms with it! We may allow ourselves some liberties, but only in details. Nor is there any ‘figurative’ and ‘nonfigurative’ art. Everything appears to us in the guise of a ‘figure’. Even in metaphysics, ideas are expressed in the guise of symbolic ‘figures’. See how ridiculous it is then to think of painting without ‘figuration’. A person, an object, a circle are all ‘figures’; they react on us more or less intensely. Some are nearer our sensations and produce emotions that touch our affective faculties, others appeal more directly to the intellect. They should all be allowed a place because I find my spirit has quite as much need of emotion as my senses.
Do you think it concerns me that a particular picture of mine represents two people? Though these two people once existed for me, they exist no longer. The ‘vision’ of them gave me a preliminary emotion; then little by little their actual presence became blurred; they developed into a kind of fiction and then disappeared altogether, or rather they were transformed into all kinds of problems. They are no longer two people, you see, but forms and colors, that have taken on, meanwhile, the idea of two people and preserve the vibration of their life. The artist is a receptacle for all emotions that come from all over the place; from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web. That is why we must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned, there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it – except from our own works. I have a horror of copying myself. […]
[..] The painter goes through states of fullness and evaluation. That is the whole secret of art, I go for a walk in the forest of Fontainbleau, I get ‘green’ indigestion. I must get rid of this sensation into a picture. Green rules it. A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions.
People seize on painting to cover up their nakedness. They get what they can wherever they ca. In the end I can’t believe they get anything at all. They’ve simply cut a coat to the measure of their own ignorance. They make everything, from God to a picture, in their own image. That is why the picture-hook is the ruination of a painting –a painting always has certain significance, at least as much as the man who did it. As soon as it is bought and hung on a wall, it takes on quite a different kind of significance, and the painting is done for. 
Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been deceived, but so well deceived that we can scarcely get back even a shadow of truth. The beauties of the Parthenon, Venuses, Nymphs, Narcissuses are so many lies. Art is not the application of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs. We love her with our desires – although everything has been done to try and apply a canon even to love. The Parthenon is really only a farmyard over which someone put a roof; colonnades and sculptures were added because there were people in Atens who happened to be working, and wanted to express themselves. It’s not what the artist does that counts, but what he is. Cezzanne would never have interested me a bit if had lived and through like Jacques Emile Blanche, even if the apple he painted had been ten times as beautiful. What forces out interest if Cezzanne’s anxiety – that’s Cezzanne’s lesson; the torments of Van Gogh –that is the actual drama of the man. The rest is a sham. 
Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the songs of the bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world., though we can’t explain them. People who try to explain things often end up barking at the wrong tree. Gertrude Stein joyfully announced to me the other day that she had finally understood what my picture of three musicians meant to be. It was a still life!How can you expect an onlooker to live a picture of mine as I lived it? A picture comes to me from miles away, who is to say from how far away I senses it, saw it, painted it; and yet, the next day I can’t see what I’ve done myself. How can anyone enter my dreams, my instincts, my desires, my thoughts, which have taken a long time to mature and to come out into the day light and above all grasp from them what I have been about – perhaps against my own will?
With the exception of few painters who are opening new horizons to painting, young painters today don’t know which way to go. Instead of taking up our researches in order to react clearly against us, they are absorbed with brining the past back to life – when truly the whole world is open before us everything waiting to be done, not just redone. Why cling desperately to everything that has already been fulfilled in terms of its promise! There are miles of painting ‘in the manner of’; but it is rare to find a young man working in his own way.
Does he wish to believe that a man can’t repeat himself? To repeat is to run counter to spiritual laws, essentially escapism.
I am no pessimist; I don’t loathe art, because I couldn’t live without devoting all my time to it. I love it as the only end of my life. Everything I do connected with it gives me intense pleasure. But still, I don’t see why the whole world should be taken up with art, demand its credentials, and on that subject, give free rein to its own stupidity.
Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. I don’t understand why revolutionary countries should have more prejudices about art than out-of-date countries! We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things. We have tied them up to a fiction, instead of trying to sense what inner life there was in the men who painted them. There ought to be an absolute dictatorship ….a dictatorship of painter….a dictatorship of one painter…to suppress all those who have betrayed us, to suppress the cheaters, to suppress the tricks, to suppress mannerisms, to suppress charms, to suppress history, to suppress a heap of other things. But common sense always gets away with it. Above all, let’s have a revolution against that! The true dictator will always be conquered by the dictatorship of common sense…and maybe not!
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Steve Jobs
The internet is rife with rumours of Steve Jobs dying in 6 weeks. Here is a quote from the man himself at an earlier time on his illnesses and death....
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become."
He remains a personal inspiration and as Venkat mentioned ystd, even if he is dying, he is going away in his prime, with the world watching. Wish it could end better for him.
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become."
He remains a personal inspiration and as Venkat mentioned ystd, even if he is dying, he is going away in his prime, with the world watching. Wish it could end better for him.
Friday, February 18, 2011
At Evening
Let me now sleep, let me not think, let me
Not ache with inconsistent tenderness.
It was untenable delight; we are free--
Separate, equal--and if loverless,
Love consumes time which is more dear than love,
More unreplicable. With everything
Thus posited, the choice was clear enough
And daylight ratified our reckoning.
Now only movement marks the birds from the pines;
Now it's dark; the blinded stars appear;
I am alone, you cannot read these lines
Who are with me when no one else is here,
Who are with me and cannot hear my voice
And take my hand and abrogate the choice.
- Vikram Seth
Not ache with inconsistent tenderness.
It was untenable delight; we are free--
Separate, equal--and if loverless,
Love consumes time which is more dear than love,
More unreplicable. With everything
Thus posited, the choice was clear enough
And daylight ratified our reckoning.
Now only movement marks the birds from the pines;
Now it's dark; the blinded stars appear;
I am alone, you cannot read these lines
Who are with me when no one else is here,
Who are with me and cannot hear my voice
And take my hand and abrogate the choice.
- Vikram Seth
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Malegam Committee Report – First Thoughts
Death Knell for MFIs or time for transformation?
The much awaited Malegam committee report is finally here. A summary of key recommendations is as below:
• All NBFCs who have more than 90% of their loan portfolio dedicated to “low income borrowers” with loan sizes under Rs 25,000 are to be registered separately as NBFC – MFIs. All recommendations in the report apply only to this category of NBFC MFIs.
• “Low income” borrowers are defined as borrowers who’s annual income is less than Rs 50,000.
• All individual loan sizes are to be restricted to Rs 25,000.
• If the loan amount is less than Rs 15,000, the loan tenure must be minimum 1 year and if the loan amount exceeds Rs 15,000, the tenure must be at minimum 2 years
• Atleast 75% of loans given to be a borrower must be a business loan ie used for income generating purposes
• Interest rate cap of 24% per annum computed on a principal that declines with the loan installment repayment. This assumes a 15% Roe post tax and 3% roa at stable state.
• Maximum interest to be charged must also be capped at borrowing cost + 10% for large MFIs (loan portfolio of over Rs 100 crores) and borrowing cost + 12% for small MFIs
• Loan processing fee cap of 1% of the loan. No other charges allowed
• Only actual cost of insurance to be recovered, no other admin charges to be allowed
• Only 2 MFIs can lend to one borrower. MFIs to self regulate this through credit bureaus to be appointed and monitored by MFIN and Sa-dhan. If MFIs give loans to customers who have 2 loans already, the MFI granting the third loan should have a interest and principal moratorium until the previous loans are repaid
• No more collection at customers premises, only at a centralized location
• If coercive methods are used for recovery, management can be penalized under criminal laws
• AP act to be repealed
• Priority sector status to be removed.
• Entry barriers to new NBFC MFIs in the form of hike in capital requirements to Rs 15 crore from Rs 2 crore
• Social Development Fund to be set up to encourage social sector vcs who expect returns in the range of 10-12%
Key Issues
1. 2 MFIs to a customer: This is a near certain death knoll for the industry. Given that currently, there are more than 10 MFIs chasing customers actively and on an average 4-5 loans per customer, it means that at least one half of the industry needs to be wiped out.
Secondly, this will result into creation of a regulatory created monopolistic scenario with no benefits of any market mechanisms which could have led to interest rate falls. Malegam’s solution is to request banks to come into play with the BC model and also through the set up of more scheduled banks. BC models are yet to take off at the scale expected, and with exception of a few banks such as Axis or Corporation, several others are uninterested – perhaps due to inertia to evolve a new business model with thin margins.
Thirdly, implementation for the 2 MFI to a customer rule has been left to the discretion of the MFIs and credit beureus to be set up by MFIN and Sadhan are expected to address this. This is akin to the general who gives orders to a blind army and then blames the army for defeat. It is the RBI’s job to regulate and Malegam has not come out with any concrete suggestion for implementing any of its suggestions. Inability to verify across customers due to lack of a common field (until UID) remains a critical issue and customers could quite easily register under different names – they usually have inconsistent names and ages across documentation.
2. Transition to higher income customers with higher loan sizes: To ensure survival, most MFIs would try to now set up new entities that target the customers who’s family incomes are more than Rs 50,000 (most urban customers would fall into this bracket) and lend individual loans over Rs 25,000. This will ensure that they will not qualify as NBFC MFIs. There will now be a chase for customers in the Rs 50,000 – Rs 100,000 per annum bracket and individual loans appears to be the new direction for the industry.
In the meantime the industry will need to recover existing loans to make this transition. About Rs 20,000 crores has to be recovered, a large chunk from the sub Rs 50,000 segment. Given that there will be a freeze on new loans, one can start to see mass defaults (as repayment typically happened through refinancing of loans) and also, in the absence of new loans, the customers will not see a need to maintain creditworthiness. This remains an issue. The hope is the news of Malegam does not spread entirely to the field and customers continue to repay, however this is unlikely given that new loans have stopped for almost 2 months now and money lenders in AP have already hiked their rates by 100%. If news spreads, a mass default situation similar to the Muslim issue defaults are likely to happen. Perhaps why VM is mustering a lot of cheer on news channels.
Ofcourse, RBI may get wind of this and arbitrarily issue a circular to increase the annual income from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1,00,000. High degree of regulatory risk remains in the sector as through this report (if accepted as is currently), RBI will have signaled the direction of its thought process towards regulation – which is creation of a duopoly/ monopolistic scenario with very few players which will enable closer regulation. This fundamentally precludes the existence of the 50 odd or so MFIs actively present and the 10,000 others registered.
The market is likely to price a high premium for this risk and have low appetites for the sector. Aint looking so good for the Spandanas and Asmithas and Bandhans looking to IPO over the next couple of years.
The much awaited Malegam committee report is finally here. A summary of key recommendations is as below:
• All NBFCs who have more than 90% of their loan portfolio dedicated to “low income borrowers” with loan sizes under Rs 25,000 are to be registered separately as NBFC – MFIs. All recommendations in the report apply only to this category of NBFC MFIs.
• “Low income” borrowers are defined as borrowers who’s annual income is less than Rs 50,000.
• All individual loan sizes are to be restricted to Rs 25,000.
• If the loan amount is less than Rs 15,000, the loan tenure must be minimum 1 year and if the loan amount exceeds Rs 15,000, the tenure must be at minimum 2 years
• Atleast 75% of loans given to be a borrower must be a business loan ie used for income generating purposes
• Interest rate cap of 24% per annum computed on a principal that declines with the loan installment repayment. This assumes a 15% Roe post tax and 3% roa at stable state.
• Maximum interest to be charged must also be capped at borrowing cost + 10% for large MFIs (loan portfolio of over Rs 100 crores) and borrowing cost + 12% for small MFIs
• Loan processing fee cap of 1% of the loan. No other charges allowed
• Only actual cost of insurance to be recovered, no other admin charges to be allowed
• Only 2 MFIs can lend to one borrower. MFIs to self regulate this through credit bureaus to be appointed and monitored by MFIN and Sa-dhan. If MFIs give loans to customers who have 2 loans already, the MFI granting the third loan should have a interest and principal moratorium until the previous loans are repaid
• No more collection at customers premises, only at a centralized location
• If coercive methods are used for recovery, management can be penalized under criminal laws
• AP act to be repealed
• Priority sector status to be removed.
• Entry barriers to new NBFC MFIs in the form of hike in capital requirements to Rs 15 crore from Rs 2 crore
• Social Development Fund to be set up to encourage social sector vcs who expect returns in the range of 10-12%
Key Issues
1. 2 MFIs to a customer: This is a near certain death knoll for the industry. Given that currently, there are more than 10 MFIs chasing customers actively and on an average 4-5 loans per customer, it means that at least one half of the industry needs to be wiped out.
Secondly, this will result into creation of a regulatory created monopolistic scenario with no benefits of any market mechanisms which could have led to interest rate falls. Malegam’s solution is to request banks to come into play with the BC model and also through the set up of more scheduled banks. BC models are yet to take off at the scale expected, and with exception of a few banks such as Axis or Corporation, several others are uninterested – perhaps due to inertia to evolve a new business model with thin margins.
Thirdly, implementation for the 2 MFI to a customer rule has been left to the discretion of the MFIs and credit beureus to be set up by MFIN and Sadhan are expected to address this. This is akin to the general who gives orders to a blind army and then blames the army for defeat. It is the RBI’s job to regulate and Malegam has not come out with any concrete suggestion for implementing any of its suggestions. Inability to verify across customers due to lack of a common field (until UID) remains a critical issue and customers could quite easily register under different names – they usually have inconsistent names and ages across documentation.
2. Transition to higher income customers with higher loan sizes: To ensure survival, most MFIs would try to now set up new entities that target the customers who’s family incomes are more than Rs 50,000 (most urban customers would fall into this bracket) and lend individual loans over Rs 25,000. This will ensure that they will not qualify as NBFC MFIs. There will now be a chase for customers in the Rs 50,000 – Rs 100,000 per annum bracket and individual loans appears to be the new direction for the industry.
In the meantime the industry will need to recover existing loans to make this transition. About Rs 20,000 crores has to be recovered, a large chunk from the sub Rs 50,000 segment. Given that there will be a freeze on new loans, one can start to see mass defaults (as repayment typically happened through refinancing of loans) and also, in the absence of new loans, the customers will not see a need to maintain creditworthiness. This remains an issue. The hope is the news of Malegam does not spread entirely to the field and customers continue to repay, however this is unlikely given that new loans have stopped for almost 2 months now and money lenders in AP have already hiked their rates by 100%. If news spreads, a mass default situation similar to the Muslim issue defaults are likely to happen. Perhaps why VM is mustering a lot of cheer on news channels.
Ofcourse, RBI may get wind of this and arbitrarily issue a circular to increase the annual income from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1,00,000. High degree of regulatory risk remains in the sector as through this report (if accepted as is currently), RBI will have signaled the direction of its thought process towards regulation – which is creation of a duopoly/ monopolistic scenario with very few players which will enable closer regulation. This fundamentally precludes the existence of the 50 odd or so MFIs actively present and the 10,000 others registered.
The market is likely to price a high premium for this risk and have low appetites for the sector. Aint looking so good for the Spandanas and Asmithas and Bandhans looking to IPO over the next couple of years.
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