NIKHIL BANSAL: March 2012

Thursday, March 15, 2012

What's the secret ingredient ?

How much time it takes us to make things easy, from crappy, hazy idea to transform it into worthy information or does it really worth to consider about it ? There are lots of such questions often comes into one's mind. But condition applies, only when it's given a thought prior to move on. The Indian education system has evolved a lot from earlier time as I am being told by my father. But somewhere down the line we remained unable to erase the foot prints. So we can say we have improve our walking style but we still like to follow the engraved foot prints.

Someone has nicely said, "for gazelle every morning starts with a thought how much it should run fast so that it can save itself from the fastest of the fast lion and for a lion the same morning starts with a thought how to prey on the slowest of the slow gazelle so that it doesn't sleep hungry." Things are subjective indeed.

It's really important to express what we feel, but what is more important is that we have a healthy discussion over it. Conversation often makes things easy. What we can say about it is, it's a free service what can give you a lot. This time I am going to share similar sort of conversation with an army person who was also a victim of day to day increasing inflation like other common men and is ready to discuss about his air tight budget planning anytime with those whom he feels can understand what budget means. Though it was nothing related to family budget since he was a retired army person and I am a college student. According to him it's hard to understand the meaning of monthly budget for me.

I met the army person at a salon where he came to get his not so lengthy hair get trimmed. It was an interesting discussion going on between the person and the barber that in this inflation it's really hard to survive. According to him he can get 19-20k per month and in this salary he has to survive with his wife and children. He said for the people like him, not to talk about hotel food where it's hard to arrange pulses. It remind me the recent planning commission's report where it suggested Rs.32 per day earner is not a BPL !

His talk about hotel remind me a post I read sometime back where he says people come in restaurants because it's an occasion for them, he goes there because it's a requirement. Nice observation indeed ! But this time situation was different. For the army person it's neither requirement nor occasion but still he wants to visit hotels and restaurants. I find nothing wrong in this. Why would anyone find it wrong ? Don't we visit our neighbors without any reason ? Don't we go to amusement parks, movies without any reason ? He wants to go but can't because according to him it's the thing that only rich person afford not a common man. I was shocked it's the condition when we say in India we are enjoying ever high per capita income of around 60K !  Certainly we don't have equal distribution of money around. well...

We generally prefer home food than hotel or restaurant food for various reasons. Affordability is one of the reasons. But in India food is not the thing which can be taken for granted anytime. People have their own tastes, flavors and colors. It's not necessary that all these qualities can only be found in a restaurant food. How can we forget about Indian street food. These street vendors serve the same taste and flavor but yeah hygiene remains an issue most of the time. Here money comes into action. These street vendors have to arrange things in limited funds where they have to trade off between taste and ambiance. They choose ambiance most of the time.

I have no idea what a student is being taught in a hotel management institute. If they are feed with conventional knowledge or taught about above it, because we are always not sure about what we are taught in a B-school. Why can't we get a place where a person thinks first about what should he eat than to how much should be in his wallet to eat that ? After all we like pay for what we eat not like to eat what we can pay for. It's worth thinking about what can be the secret ingredient that can make one's food available for everyone prior to noticeable barriers.

Cheers !!