Special Delivery

Here's an article from The Mumbai Mirror about Dhruv Lakra's amazing courier-service-that-employs-the-deaf venture:

Mumbai’s ‘service’ industry hasn’t changed a great deal in the decades gone by; only the gurkha has become the suave guard; the milkman now delivers smart packages, the multi-tasking bai has remained the same. However, one of these services, the courier boy, is undergoing a radical change, thanks to a little-known Kashmiri entrepreneur. Twenty-eight year old Dhruv Lakra, an MBA graduate from Oxford University, recently flagged off operations of Mirakle Couriers, and all his employees are deaf. When we catch up with this ‘social entrepreneur’ in his South Mumbai office, he’s having an animated chat with his team. “When was the last time you interacted with a deaf person?” he asks us. Can’t recall? Well, chances are that you may not remember even seeing them. “They are ‘invisible’ in India!” he asserts, “While you can help a visually impaired person to catch a train or help someone on crutches to cross a road, deaf people are overlooked.” No wonder it’s one of the most underfunded disabilities in our country, despite it being home to an estimated 60 million of them. It was this realisation and a personal tragedy - Lakra’s father met with an accident last year and can’t walk anymore - which inspired him to quit his Merrill Lynch job to find his calling. His research indicated that the hearing imparied only found jobs in fields like candle or file-making. His Eureka moment occurred while receiving a courier delivery. “Here was a job made-to-order for these people. Reaching destinations and taking signatures does not require communication at all,” he says. And Mirakle Couriers came into being. However, Dhruv had to face and overcome, several challenges. The biggest being the attitude of his employees’ families. “While some are proud, most are over-protective about their children, especially girls,” he says. Also, he has to constantly up their self-esteem. The logistics of this business too was extraordinary. “I spent many weeks on-the-job with them, fine-tuning the process. I realised they wouldn’t hear the lift door musically crying if it’s unclosed, and what a misleading address can do to their confidence,” he says. Lakra attaches the ‘ISL’ sheet with each delivery His 15-member strong team then devised signs to communicate possibly everything we deem mundane. Such as names of places: wavy hands indicate Chowpatty or Charni Road, Vile Parle is indicated by a biscuit-bite gesture. Care is taken that each packet has a prominent landmark, and their boss is in touch with every boy on-field. “SMS is our lifeline at times,” he says. We start gesticulating more to know how the employees’ lives have changed. Ivan tells us of his run-ins with insensitive watchmen, Ravinder gestures how this job is better than carrying cement sacks. The company has three ladies too - Jyoti handles the administration while Reshma and Neena are responsible for the sorting. Be it the reticent Rakesh or Suraj, who went to Sachin Tendulkar’s home, we sense in them a common desire to be counted as equals. Alongwith fulfilling these, Lakra is spiritedly trying to expand the business. “I expect empathetic support from my clients; I am not running a charity,” he says. He also wants awareness about the deaf and the little-known Indian Sign Language (ISL). For his newly created Mirakle, his patient vision is the biggest asset. “I’m planning to go pan-India in the long run, be the next Fedex… with a difference.”

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Diwali...and snow!

Diwali was good...and unusual...this year. We got together with some friends for some good food, booze, fireworks, and snow! Even Sebastian came over from London and Melvin from Oxford. Ah, a great evening!

London apparently saw October snow for the first time in 70 years. Other parts of the country have seen October snow more recently. I for sure, have never seen snow in October - and certainly not on Diwali. And not just a sprinkling - there was probably over an inch on my car, and even more on the lawn - enough for us to bury the roman candles deep enough to stabilise them. Thankfully it stopped snowing well in time for us - and for the kids - to enjoy the fireworks. It was bitterly cold outside, though, and while I continued freezing my fingertips off in the snow with the kids, most people retired inside into the warmth long before we'd got half-way through the fireworks.

Pictures soon.


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Enduring friendship...

As we move through life we meet new people - at work, in the neighbourhood, at the gym, or through friends. Some acquaintances stay exactly that, some we lose touch with; others turn into friends. And some turn into friends we just know we'll be friends with for a very, very, long time.

The best friends are usually made during student life or very early into our career, when we tend to spend a lot of time with them. As we move on in life and get busy with family and work we still make new friends, but it is more difficult to forge the kind of friendships we took for granted in the yesteryears. It can (and does) still happen, but consider yourself fortunate if it does. I guess we never really spend enough time with these new friends or go through life's challenges together with them; we don't experience the emotional highs and lows together any more, nor face the exhilaration of overcoming obstacles together. Emotional bonding most likely doesn't get a chance.

The electronic age has certainly made things easier. Cheap phone calls, email, instant messaging, and a shrinking world, all help friends stay in touch. I have old friends I have not met in over 10 years - still I feel like I know them as well as I used to, and I know that reconnecting emotionally when we do meet, even after so long, will be easy.



And now I've had this opportunity - of being a student for the first time in 14 long years, and of being a fellow student with 220 classmates, spending one full year with them - studying and working hard through many nights, and then spending some other nights partying and drinking the stress away. I have valued this a lot more because like many others I'd never thought I would have this opportunity ever again. It had been way too long since my undergraduate degree.


Of course, 220 is too large a number of people to become friends with. Indeed, I hardly know a very large proportion of them. But I have certainly made a significant number of friends, friends that I know, like, and trust. Time will tell how many of these turn out to be enduring, or with how many of them I'll still be in touch with in, say, 10 years time. An enduring friendship, after all, is a two-way street. It requires effort, patience, trust, and in today's world, the ability to transcend time and distance.

One thing is for sure, though: I am a much richer person, relationship-wise, than I was going into the MBA programme, and I consider myself lucky to have had another chance so late in life.



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A courier company with a difference

Oxford classmate and friend Dhruv Lakra has decided to fore go a high-flying post-MBA corporate career and has just set up Mirakle Couriers, a courier company with a difference. Mirakle Couriers has been set up to provide employment to the disabled - only deaf people will be hired for pick-ups, drops, and back-office operations, providing them with hard-to-get employment, and perhaps more importantly, dignity in life. Operations are initially planned for the city of Mumbai. The idea is innovative but unproven. I, however, cannot see why the deaf cannot perform these tasks as efficiently as the more 'able', or why the business model should not take off. Look closely at the company's logo below and the depiction of sign language for the letter 'I', and you'll see how effectively it conveys the message.

The idea will attract customers who wish to do their bit for society, even though it may put off those who may see this as a risky business to hand over personal or valuable documents or parcels to, at least until Mirakle Couriers establishes a reputation for efficiency. As someone who believes in the innate 'goodness' of the common man, I suspect that there are enough people in the world who fall in the former category and therefore will contribute towards making the venture a success.

I would love to see the idea take flight and extend to the creation of opportunities for people with disabilities of other kinds. I hope Dhruv and Mirakle Couriers are establishing a trend here that sees the birth of many such ventures in the future. I urge all readers to spread the word, and Mumbai residents to use the services of Mirakle Couriers.

You can follow Dhruv's journey here.

A laudable effort, Dhruv. Kudos!



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The Oxford MBA Summer Options

As part of the Oxford MBA programme you have three options to spend the summer months - and to gain the two credits required for the programme. People contemplating the Oxford MBA read on. Others, pardon the detail.

The first of these is the Summer Consulting Project (SCP). This involves doing a short 6-8 week consulting project (pretty obvious!) for a company, building on and consolidating the academic learning from the course and combining it with past experience and general skills to present a solution for a real-life problem faced by the company. The SCP, which is worth two credits, involves working at the client site or remotely, presenting a practical solution for them, and writing a more academic 15,000 word piece for the formal assessment. The projects are typically sourced by the school (though you can source your own, subject to certain criteria being met), and students are often compensated for their work.

The second option is to take two 'summer elective' courses, each worth one credit. Each course consists of eight three-and-a-half-hour lectures condensed into one week, often accompanied by individual and group assignments. Some courses run concurrently (i.e., in the same week), and so depending on your choice of electives you could be attending 16 lectures in one week and working on the related assignments and practical work. Or you could choose one in the first week of the summer, and one in the last.

The third option is to write an Individual Academic Thesis on a subject of your choice. This is the most academically oriented option of the three, and therefore the least preferred option for most MBAs.

So, what did I do this summer, and what would I recommend to future students of the Oxford MBA? I elected to do the summer electives, and took both my electives in the first week of the summer. Of course this meant an extremely hectic first week - 50 hours of lectures in the week accompanied by several assignments. But it also meant that once I had ridden through that week, I was more or less done for the summer! There were still a couple of assignments left, but I could do them at relative leisure. And why would you want to do this? If you want an easy-going summer, wish to travel, spend time with family, or just utilise the time to look for a job. This option works particularly well for those opting to do internships over the summer, which are not academically assessed and therefore do not count towards the course. For such students, the practical option is to take the two electives and to then spend the rest of the summer completing the internship.

And who should do the SCP? Students who wish to build on what they have learnt in class during the year, those who wish to work for the company they are doing the project with, or those who wish to travel to different countries at the expense of that company (trips this year included those to India, China, Gambia, and Hungary). The report or presentation for the company, and the 15,000 word academic submission can make this pretty demanding in terms of time, though, and people may find they have little time left for anything else. Long term benefits depend on individual motivations, and I have found people in my class to have benefited in varying ways and to different degrees. There are some who are glad they took that option, others are more ambivalent about it and are unable to come up with concrete reasons for why they would recommend it. The process used to award the school-sourced projects is complex, however, and it involves bidding for the project(s) of your choice. The project that is right for you, therefore, is not guaranteed, but you commit to any other project you bid for, and are awarded. It is hard to come up with a process that is fair to everyone, and I'm sure the school and the projects office are working hard t improve on it all the time. Self-sourced projects, however, are not bid for and are therefore guaranteed.

The academic thesis is almost definitely for the more academically minded student - for someone who wishes to dig deep into a subject with a view to entering the world of academia or continuing academic / research work in the future. If you wish to work in the traditional avenues of industry, consulting, or finance, this may not be for you.



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Chef Alok

Tall claim, surely. Bordering on the atrocious, even.

Still, if it were a relative evaluation, I might just about qualify. For someone who has never really cooked in the 36 years of his life (my activities in the kitchen always limited to doing the dishes, cleaning up, and occasionally, very occasionally, cutting up the veggies), living away from family in Oxford has resulted in me becoming a little adventurous in the kitchen.

It started too late, perhaps in the last quarter of my year here. And it started with one disastrous attempt, followed by slightly more successful ones. Edible food, and gradually, reasonably tasty stuff. Often made with the help of ready-made sauces and gravies topped up with onions, tomatoes, and additional spices! And my repertoire depended on the type of gravy I could buy. My flatmate Varun often turned out to be the catalyst, suggesting we cook in rather than eat out. Incidentally Sebastian, my other flatmate, has never been around when I've cooked. Sheer coincidence though, each time, Seb. Honest

Antonio recently cooked an Italian meal for a bunch of friends at my place. I helped, but my help was limited to cutting the meat, peeling the potatoes, and the like. On another day I cooked some chicken together with another guy at Pranav's house - used some ready sauce to prepare some pretty decent stuff.

One is certainly more tolerant of one's own cooking, and so I persisted - for a while. Until the limited taste and range prompted further experimentation. For the first time, recently, I cooked butter chicken - from scratch. Yes, I took the help of a recipe I found on a random website, but the chicken turned out to finger-lickingly good. Ask Varun, Pranav, or Jitin for testimonials! Last night's chicken was pretty good, too!

For all those cooks sniggering away, trust me when I tell you it is a big deal for me! So who knows, for someone who has never really understood the point of cooking for several hours only for the food to be eaten up in 15 mins, this might just be the turning point. I might just turn chef - one day!

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Punting

One thing you've got to do when in Oxford, is go Punting. A couple of months ago I had written about my experience with punting (see here) when I'd gone with friends from Mansfield College. This time it was with friends from SBS. And thankfully, the conditions were absolutely perfect for punting, and we had a blast of a time! Here's proof.



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Capstone, and the Beginning of the End

In one of my previous posts I had promised to let you know about the final course of the Oxford MBA - the Capstone Course. Don't ask why it is called that, but it involves the development of scenarios for a client who is facing challenges presented by climate change. Working in small groups, we will identify key changes in the client's strategic environment likely to arise from developments relating to energy security and climate change, and develop a set of scenarios that will help them confront those changes. Should be pretty exciting!

It is a relatively short course, starting on the 8th of September and finishing on the 12th. Our MBA culminates in a black-tie 'farewell' dinner on the 12th and an 'end of course' ceremony on the 13th.

It has been an absolutely fantastic year for me! There's just over two weeks left, but I'm expecting the remaining days to be very eventful and memorable.



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Foila Car

Literally Foil-a-car, here's something interesting for car enthusiasts: foil from a company called Foila Car that can be applied onto a car's panels, thereby instantly adding a removable additional layer. The foil can be transparent and therefore only protective, or coloured to completely transform the appearance of the car. Apparently this is catching on in Dubai (where else?). Here's a few pictures of a car being, well, foil wrapped!! Click on play to view.




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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

I'm sorry, but I'll conveniently use this cliche to post another set of pictures...even though I am months late and the night in question was in late May. Some 'real' posts will follow. I promise!

The night in question was Pranav Garga's birthday, which started with dinner and a few drinks at Las Iguanas, and ended after many hours and a few (ahem!) more drinks at Anuba. The party, after we were kicked out of Anuba, moved on to Cranham Terrace where it continued until the small hours of the morning.






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The Oxford MBA 2008 Photo-book

For the last few weeks a group of volunteers has been working on creating a photo-book for the Oxford MBA class of 2007-08. It was hard work, but equally, a lot of fun. The photo-book is ready to be printed now, and should be available for us by Capstone week (what is that? I'll get to it - in time), that is, around the middle of September.

Here are some pictures of the team.





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Oxford in Pictures

Some pictures of Oxford, taken on a delightfully sunny day, not too long ago...



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Back...

...after a rather long, and unexpected, hiatus. My last post was just over two months ago, and though the 4-5 weeks after that were pretty much taken up in assignments and exams, there really is no reason why I shouldn't have posted anything for the last month or so.

Well, I'm back now, and hopefully will remain more consistent hereon.




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Croquet and Punting

Isn't it wonderful that the world is so full of obscure, intriguing things, many of which we have never heard about before? In my previous posts I have referred to Real Tennis, and more recently, Petanque. Well, now here are Croquet and Punting. I'd just about heard these words before I came to Oxford, but didn't quite know what they were about.

Last Saturday saw me learn about, and indulge in, both - courtesy the Mansfield College MCR. We played a bit of croquet on the college lawn. The game involves hitting balls through hoops using a big, wooden mallet, the objective being to pass your ball through a number of hoops in a particular sequence, and to end by hitting the ball onto a wooden post. It is not a game that requires a lot of skill, but tactics can play a big role in how you fare. Here are some pictures.

Why am I not in the pictures if I was playing, you ask? Well, as usual I am behind the camera!



Croquet was followed by punting on the river Cherwell. For those who are unaware of what punting is (like me, until a few months ago), it involves, well, punting a boat along a river - using a long metal pole (or a wooden one, if you are in Cambridge) to push yourself against the river bed. The pole is also used to steer the boat, along with a little paddle used at the front end of the boat.



The current on Saturday was strong, owing to a few weirs that had been opened upstream. And that meant that while we merrily punted our way downstream, turning around and making progress upstream was difficult. In fact, we went a little too far downstream, close to where the Cherwell joins the bigger (and faster) river Isis. Too close, one might say, for we found it difficult to turn around, and were being swept towards the Isis. At one point, I think, we were less than 10 ft. from the main Isis current!



So, heading back upstream proved to be a challenge. We often found ourselves at the same spot for over 10 mins, furiously trying to make progress. I was a passenger in the boat most of the time, and let more experienced punters (is that the right word?) do the job. When I did try, I realised how important it was to use the pole to steer the boat - to keep the front end of the boat pointing straight ahead. And, how difficult it is when the current is strong and skill levels are low.

Well, it turned out not to be the picnic we'd imagined it would be, and we got back to the boathouse a difficult two-and-a half hours later. What great fun, though! Would love to do it again, but after only after a quick check on the strength of the current!



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Petanque

I have mentioned Petanque, which I've never played before the Oxbridge a couple of weeks ago, in my previous post. I had never even heard of the game, and I expect most others never have, either. So, for those intrigued, here's how the game is played (taken from www.britishpetanque.org)

THE PLAY

You play with a metal ball called a “boule” and a jack made from wood. The boules have a diameter from 7.05 to 8.00 cm and a weight from 650 to 800 gram. At first sight they look identical but they differ greatly by being made from different metals with a wide range of markings or engravings

THE AIM OF THE GAME

To place your boules nearer to the jack than those of your opponents.

COMPOSITION OF TEAMS
Pétanque is a sport in which

	3 players play against 3 players (triples), each player uses 2 boules.
	2 players against 2 players (doubles), each player uses 3 boules
	1 player against 1 player (singles), each player uses 3 boules.

START OF THE GAME

To start a game the teams toss a coin to see which team will throw the jack (a small wooden ball of 25-35 mm in diameter). In the following example the Blue team has won the toss.

BEGINNING OF PLAY

A player of the Blue team draws a circle on the ground (35-50 cm diameters) from which the jack is thrown to a distance of 6-10 metres from the circle. When throwing the jack and boules both feet of the player must be within the circle and on the ground, until the played boule has touched the ground.

THE FIRST BALL

The Blue team now play their first ball by trying to get it as close to the jack as possible.

Then the first player of the Red team steps into the circle to play their first boule and it tries to beat the Blue team’s boule.

This can happen in one of two ways either by

POINTING

When the team pitches or rolls their boule, judging the distance so that it stops closer than the opponents boule

or by

SHOOTING

With a purposeful throw the thrown boule removes the opponent’s boule.

IF SUCCESSFUL

It is a player of the Blue team that must now play.

IF NOT SUCCESSFUL

The players of the Red team must continue to play, until either they place a boule closer to the jack than the opponent’s boule or they have no boules left to play.

If a team has no more boules, the other team now plays until they have played all their remaining boules.

THE POINTS

A team receives as many points as it has boules closest to the jack than those of their opponents (at least 1 point to a maximum of 6 points).

In our example Blue made 3 points.

The team winning the end draws the circle and throws the jack to start the next end.

THE END OF A PLAY

The team, which first reaches 13 points, is the winner.

SO VERY SIMPLE – SO WHY SHOULD IT BE SO FASCINATING?

The simple principle of this game leaves plenty of room for tactics and the imagination, with the result that every round looks different.

A tactical mistake is usually more serious than a badly played boule.

With every boule that is to be played, there are so many different ways of playing the game:

- shoot away your opponent’s boule

- obstruct the path to the jack

- change the position of the jack with the boule etc.

PLAYING TECHNIQUE AND TACTICS

In principle, there are two ways of playing a boule - in that you either point or shoot.

When pointing and when shooting, you should keep an eye on the correct hand position: you throw with the palm of the hand turned downwards.

This imparts a certain backspin to the boule, and when you get the hang of the idea, you can manipulate the boule as the nature of the ground and the situation of the game demands.

The tactics however are equally as important as mastering the technique, which is what makes the game so intriguing.

When playing with experienced players you will quickly learn the tactics, you have to make your mind up quickly to choose if a solution is too dangerous or maybe too late nd the only choice is to try and save the game by playing a defensive boule.



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