Anyway you are a loser , so why don't you get married ??

Anyway you are a loser , so why don't you get
married ??

8 pm. I just asked Binoj “what you are doing for dinner?” I knew that his wife had gone to her parents’ place. So, he is half and anyway I am full & permanent bachelor. I guessed he would prefer cooking but just asked. He is no doubt my good friend and a great company.
I never expected that those few words would make him emotionally angry. He waved “ No I will be cooking. What about you?” . I replied in the same boring fashion “ No, not sure just checking which restaurant will be okay for my stomach”. It became a big stimulant for him. He rolled his eyes on me “tell me one thing. why you are not getting married? You are already 29 , you are in Chennai , you don’t have a Girl friend and you are not a party lover. So, what you are waiting for?” It was an emotional earthquake for me. He was so right that I lost my words for few seconds. May be I did not expect so much crude data about my life from him. I prepared myself to face the fact. I replied calmly “I just don’t want responsibility. I love my loneliness.” These words created a proper battleground. “What do you mean by that .asshole! Every night you are begging in front of everyone to go dinner with you and you love your loneliness??? In restaurant you will not get the lovely touch what your wife can give you with food.” He stopped his AK47 and looked happy. Bloody terrorist.


I put my point “ So, are you saying because I am going to a restaurant for dinner , I should get married ?? Then I can hire a cook. What is the point of getting married??” “You are not getting my point” He was really confident. “ Do you go to parties with girls ?” “No” “Your house is clean??” “Normally it is but for last 3 days my maid is not coming , So ..” “Do you go to phuket for sex massage?” “ I go to phuket for massage . It is my favorite place for leisure travel but not for sex.” “see I told you . Why don’t you understand that you are a loser?? So why don’t you get married. At least somebody will be there to take care of you. Put one thing in your mind that you don’t even have anything to loose.“ He stopped. Somehow I controlled my tears. Shit. I did not even know that he was having such brilliant thoughts about me. I tried to shout on him professionally.


“Don’t you think, in childhood your parents told you not to do all these which actually I am not doing now? That sex massages things …….” “Boss, be professional. You took their words seriously or what?? You must be joking.” I was totally surprised. It was really hard to find such a shameless & confident justification.But he proved that he is my good friend.
“I know your problem. I was also having these thoughts before I got married.” He continued with a cool tone. “I am sure you think that after marriage you have to take care of your wife. You have to think about what does she want? You have to spend enough time with her etc. etc. But actually it’s wrong. No need.” . I did not have any clue about what he was saying. Flood of advice was tending to Tsunami. “ Yes believe me. I am correct . No need to take of care of her at all. Even if you forget about her , she will love you. That’s the only positive point of been an Indian male. Just don’t be nasty with other girls. This is the only thing they want. Anyway you are going to watch movies every weekend, so just buy two tickets. Sometimes good restaurant also works.” At last he again repeated the horrible sentence. “Boss, anyway you are a loser .You stayed in Jakarta but never touched a girl. So, why are you wasting time now? Just get married.” I surrendered myself in front of him. Not all but most of his points were correct. But I am also an adamant man. I shouted politely.

“What do you want?? You want me to get married??? Then stop drinking??? Then have children and change their potty pans?? You are my friend or enemy.” His voice changed. He tried to correct me, like Einstein came down to correct my relativity theory quiz copy. It was a totally new tone “No body will ask you stop drinking, God has given this alcohol, a social lubricant, which makes man brave and makes woman loose. I understand that it does not work for you. Then at least stop swimming around your mind. That’s the dangerous neighborhood he should not go alone. Its not movie, so stop behaving like Morgan Freeman.” I frowned. Why life does not have skype smiles.

Ask Questions to the HR team

TCS offered fifteen jobs in IIT Kgp Campus. Here are the questions candidates asked The HR team .

Bengali: Cigarette is allowed in the campus?

North east ka kancha : Is there any restaurant near by to your office where I will get dog meat ?

Bihari : Will you check original mark sheets ?

UP ka bhaiya : How many MOTI BHABIS you have in the office ?

MP ka bhaiya: Will you do police verification also ?

Chattisgar ka bhaiya : Your company is not sponsoring the NAKSALS , correct ?? (Angry)

Rajasthani: How many hours I will get drinking water in the office ?

Kashmiri : Do you have enough security for terrorist attacks ?

Sardar : How far is the local "Daru ka adda" from your office ?

Baniya : Can I access Indian stock market websites from your office ?

Marathi : Is it possible to get an one and half BHK flat with 20% of my HRA in less than 1 Km distance from the office.Slam is also okay for me. If not , will I have to travel in local train ?? Will you give the first class ticket allowance ??

Oriya: On Friday can I ware dhoti??

Telegu : how many Telengana people are there in the office ??

Bangaluru ka macha : How many pubs are there in that city ??

Tamil : Will I get Sambar & idly in the office canteen ?? I hope it does not cost more than 6 rupees.

Mallu ( kerala) :I heard most of the people are communists in the office . Do they have union?? How many strikes they do every week??

HR team fainted.


It is done by me. Please feel free to copy paste.

Angkor Apsara : An Indelible beauty of history

Angkor Apsara : An Indelible beauty of history

The moment I landed in Siem Reap , I felt this is the place I was searching for so many years. I loved the milieu. But I agree they don’t like Indians. Why?? Because Indians don’t take guides like the other people to visit Hindu temples. Cambodia is really in a deep shit. They have already declared national food emergency but still the 100 years old stony sculptures give you a feeling of great and prosperous history. In present these thousand years old temples are the bread and butter of the Government. Cambodian people are really good. Though not like Thailand or Bali but yes, they have their own charm.

The driver was waiting for me outside the airport. A gentle middle aged person, having a name board of mine, was waiting for me. This service is free from the guest house which I booked for 5 days. I know, you guys are thinking that five days have too many seconds to spend in that place, may be in some sense you are correct but it was hardly sufficient time for an amateur director, like me, to make a documentary on Angkor Wat . I took the videos of Angkor Wat and all other near by temples. Also I spent a day in Mekong Delta , digested great cockroach snacks and crocodile lunch.


But I am not in a mood to talk about all this boring stuffs. Every traveler is doing the same thing in Angkor for last 20-30 years. I explored Angkor through a different set of eyes. The eyes of a history lover but very soon “history” got replaced by my “virginity”.I know you are surprised. But It is fact. My hooded eyes relinquished myself in front of the 2500 topless Apsara sculptures. I am sorry Mr. Jayavarman VII, the king who built most of Angkor Wat. Please excuse me. Life and time has changed. I really envy you and your system which gave you the permission to have more than 3000 beautiful Apsaras in your palace. My mother is not that good .She will like kill me even she gets the fact that I am jealous with you. Indian mothers are like that only. Once I asked my mother “you got married when you were 19 .You enjoyed your life in the best time and think about me. Just because I am not interested to get married, does it mean I will be forbidden from everything?” She frowned and squinted at me through her high power glasses just like a strict school head mistress and murmured “I have got 3 girls photo. You have to finalize by today”. I hate dead lines.


For a bag packer like me Angkor was a cultural relief. The stony Apsaras became live in front of me and I started playing with those coquettish beauties. I asked them to give me a good back massage, to play some old love snuggle games and thousands of love stories of their time. Cambodians had a relationship with the present Thailand in those days also, sometimes like a friend & sometimes as an enemy. I found so many Thai Apsara dancers in the topmost gallery. They are different than the others, in look, in hair style and in posture. They are fairly plump comparing to the Cambodian ones. Hindu priests had a tough rule in Angkor Wat . Only senior most Brahmins got the opportunity to reach to the final gallery. Then how come the Thai girls got portrayed in such a prestigious place?? That’s why the Cambodian Apsaras don’t talk to those Thai ones. Once I was passing through a lonely corridor crammed with so many Apsaras , I saw one of them was trying to give a dancing shrug. I went to see her. A very old , wet smell was teasing my nose. She put her beautiful hand near my right ear and whispered “They behave well but they are the betrayers. They killed our king. Don’t talk to them ” . I smiled and waved “Madam, in this bloody earth hardly there is a country when people love and behave well with Indians. I am sorry for your king but they did not look bad to me. They are just like you.” She jostled with a polite anger. It was funny. Obviously she did not like me but I created my image. Gandhi giri (the policy of Gandhi: behave well with the bad guy) worked again.


Next day when I went to visit other temples, every where I heard the stones were whispering about me. Sometime it was irritating. But every time they ended their talk with a cute short laugh. I never heard such beautiful sounds in my life. I punished one of them differently. I went close to her just to take a photo, touched the face & the healthy breasts, scrunched the open navel. She was dying in shame. My hand was roaming casually over her soft skin. An Indelible beauty of history. She melted and that gave me the inaudible permission to travel further. I reached her back. I could not resist grasping her one globe in my hand and pulling her closer to me. She raised her leg , wrapping it around my hip . I can still feel the hit of her month, moist stony skin surrounding me.

I liked the exploration, listening to her rapid breathing, the way her body shrugged responses without saying her anything. She panted as if she was fighting for a breathe. Fool camera !!! could not capture these moments. She breathed deep on my shoulder and again became stone. I could hear the desperate whisper among the neighbor stones while I was leaving. Then three days I visited all near by temples, searched the same face . I think the artists knew that after 1200 years one guy would come from India and fall in love with one of their wonderful creation. That’s the reason they made her unique. I could not find another such an immortally beautiful face.


Last day I took time to study Angkor. I took 500 photos and 2 hrs of video. Sun said good bye. I could not notice. Suddenly a bunch of black, young, chubby clouds came as a sudden death of sun light. My Camera gave up. Auto night vision started working. I stopped it to save the battery .I glanced on the sky . The old , scattered library ruins were looking dark . It was drizzling. I packed my all technical stuffs and took the stairs. The clouds were fast on the sky. The whole thousand Buddhas’ gallery became dark. I was walking slowly through the wet , old stony stairs. The only leaving beast was me in the world’s biggest Hindu temple. Suddenly somebody pulled my hand. I got scared and turned my head. It was a shock. Those three Thai Apsaras were standing in front of me with an incredibly innocent smile on their faces. Before I would react something, they rolled their eyes on me and whispered “you are the guy we have been searching for last 600 years. Follow us.” They disappeared in the darkness. I was not very much sure what I saw was real or not. They hypnotized me. I followed them and their giggle landed me in a long dark corridor. I was hardly able to see anything. Only some abated light . That’s also was too far. Bad things came my mind. They controlled my foot steps. I stopped. My heart started talking with my brain.


“No one lady, yes one lady is there.” I became mobile again. One step was just like a decade for me. I was becoming stone. I felt enumerable number of Apsaras watching me. The light was becoming brighter and brighter. I stuck after sometime. Her face became visible. That unique creation of old artists, that same girl I loved in the temple. She jumped on me and rested on my chest. I was feeling like I did not even have a shy bone in my body. My all Indian orthodox & hypocrisy emotions were brushed away. My manliness was burning off the excess energy. I kissed her chin. She smiled and murmured “Wait . I am coming”.

That’s it. I heard a sudden dark, loud voice and everything vanished.

“Whose there?? Temple is closed. What you are doing??? “

Police were shouting on me. They thought I was trying to steal the sculptures. Poor police did not even know what I stole from Angkor Wat .


Next day morning I took the first flight from Siem Reap to Jakarta, Indonesia. I was working there. All the historical loving drama was still dizzying my mind. I took a taxi from the airport and preparing to become the same old profession duck in next one hour. It was running heaving outside. While I was trying to shut the taxi window, I saw one very familiar, beautiful lady waiting in the bus stand anxiously. I asked the driver to stop. I already understood who she was. I went to her and asked “Are you ok. I know you Katrina (famous Bollywood Actress). You need any help.”

Her Engel deep eyes cried “I have a shooting here but I lost everything on the taxi. Even my passport. Can you please help me?”

An American Affair : Great "Magic bullet" look

An American Affair: Catharine, Adam &
John F. Kennedy

I don’t know anything about John F. Kennedy except the magic bullet stuff. I heard Marilyn Monroe committed suicide for him .That’s really too much to digest, at least for an Asian. Anyway, even without any knowledge about American history, the movie “An American affair” is fully enjoyable. Audience will watch the story through the eyes of a 13 years old kid , Adam . He was just a normal kid studying in a Christian Missionary school and having normal attractions about simple things. Thousand of curiosities and little confusions about illogical things were the bricks and mortar of his imaginary world. His parents were journalists. The movie perfectly portraits the American political instability in that period. Even one character cracked a joke “ is there any life in Washington without politics ??” Unanswered answer “No”. I will say, director tried to embellish it too much. In anywhere in this world, irrespective of year & date, intellectual people talk like that only. Movie starts its story when the kid became fascinated about his “Girl next door”. A middle aged lady, artist, loves to capture nature, different shades of life in her pictures.

Catharine did like to destroy any type of perfect form, figures of life. No doubt the character entered in the screen with a haze of mysteries. Mystery started climbing through a convex curve. Suddenly in one evening Adam discovered Jhon F. Kennedy at her door in an emotional moment. The camera angels through the window and the behavior of the body guards created a perfect secrecy for the scene. It was a dame need. New links about Catharine’s life started becoming clear. She had a son. Why & how she lost him are not clear and not needed also. Through the eyes of a young kid the director tried to analyze the bloody politics. Catharine had lots of contacts. All big shots. They loved her. I am not sure she loved them or not but yes , she gave herself. But why??? May be she was confused, May be she was lonely. All these questions are unanswered and that makes the movie more interesting. With time Adam’s attraction became affection. It is not right to call it love. Because his kiddy mind was very much aware about love, kiss and sex. He tried to have a girl friend but the failure compelled him more towards Catharine.

Movie perfectly describes the unstable situation of Washington DC in 1952. Contrast creates beauty. In one hand the audience will face the ugly side of politics and on the other hand , they will nurture the cuteness and innocence of Adam. I really liked the evening scene. Adam got caught by Catharine’s ex-husband while his eyes were flying through the windows her house and forcefully entered in the house. The milieu was great. Catharine was having wine with her friends. Dim yellow light like life had lost its strength. Classical Indian music was a great addition in that calm atmosphere. Husband did not like it. He was dunk and started shouting. It became very awkward for Catharine when he begged her to come back in front of everyone. She realized her husband is giving her a hint that she was just a prostitute for Jhon F Kennedy, like the thousand others of white house. She was stoned by these words. Sometimes in life, you want to keep few things only in your subconscious mind. The emotional vibration which originated from her deep heart, touched the eye shadows, “Like the lazy ocean hugs the shore”. She waved ,” You cant hurt me anymore Graham , not you, not your Government , no one can touch me.” Surprised Adam was standing at the corner of the room. Two matured people were shouting for love but he could only feel love between them.

Catharine was really close to Kennedy. It became clear to Adam but it hardly mattered to him. Adam’s childish mind could not understand the depth and real meaning of her relationship with the president. She got used by her husband and the bad people who were planning to kill Kennedy. She used to write all her words in a diary which Adam took wrongly in a very critical scene. She was having sex with “one” of her boy friends and Adam was watching that from the cupboard. His eyes were wet and shocked. She caught him but said “don’t be ashamed of being excited. Just don’t do it again.”

The bad Cuban killed Kennedy. Whole Country was crying. Catharine tried her best but it was his fate. The murders were scared of only one thing. That diary. She had written everything in that. They were searching for it madly. Ultimately they got it from Adam’s house and in front of him, they burnt it. Adam understood something bad was going to happen but it was too late. He was coming to meet and tell the thing to Catharine but in the subway , her dead body was lying alone. Blood was coming out from her head. Eyes were open.

Director compared her last moments with big condolence ceremony of Kennedy. Catharine at least got a pure love. The last scene was great. Adams got a present from Catharine Cowel. It was an artistic love which was indifferent of fate, time & form. Curtain dropped. An old jazzy number slowly captured the wind.

“Why does by my heart go on beating
Why do eyes of mine cry “

My Redpill Journey as a Data Miner

My 3 years journey with Data

Hi ,

I am Chiranjit , I was working for Redpill as a data miner. I joined Repill in Jan ’07. Got wonderful opportunity to play with data and solve the business problems. Among all the statistical solutions we have given to the client,70% is scorecards and 25% is segmentation and the remaining is KPI analysis.

Now we will discuss few things about the scorecard building. No doubt this is the bread and butter for us.

Before starting the details or process, lets take a glance of what exactly we have done till now.

In Asia Pacific & Middle East, we have given statistical solutions to n number of banks and telecom companies. Now Bank is a big word. Every Bank is having different Line of Businesses or LOBs and we have worked with most of the LOBs.

Like credit card, starting from credit cards, how to acquire good customers, How to increase the revenue from the existing base, How to manage the loss, how to stop attrition all these.

Same things for Retail banking, where they have Saving, Current accounts, Term deposits, Loans etc , SME and microfinance we have worked with. Also we have helped telecom companies in attrition management.

Let me take you to the vantage point now and you will get a bird eye view of a statistical scorecard that we sell to the client. All our analysis is just to come to this point , we find the best characteristics for the customers depending on the objective , then for each category we estimate the weight and summarizing all these we get a score or probability . It helps in the solution.

Now I want to do a little quiz before starting what is Scorecard. Tell me, you are going to a HDFC branch and asking for your saving account balance to the Personal banker how much does it costs to the Bank?? You are going to ATM and taking your last 5 transactions slip how much does it cost?? On an average it costs 12-15 rupees for a bank to call a customer for Personal loan or Credit card.

So the point is , it is very important to prioritize their action . It is impossible for HDFC bank, ICICI or Citi bank to call all their salary account customers and sell Personal loan. If they take randomly 10000 customers which is their capacity may be they will get 100 customers taking PLS but if it is possible to find the highly likely 10000 customers , they will 500 -1000 customers taking , Cost is same but profit is 5-10 times. So the point is prioritization and that what scorecard is doing.

In broader sense, there are two different aspects of this prioritization. First is , customer centricity , because you are using historical data so you know what exactly the customer wants . If one customer is calling to phone banking service , the executive is having in the system what is the best product for him or her that bank can offer.

The Second benefit is, it will make the organization very very scientific. Standing in November you can forecast what is the total loss going to hit you in the next 1 year. Accordingly, you will stop hiring sales people and you will start searching people for collection.

But its very confusing because we are not taking about 10 thousand customers, the banking base can be 5 mio , 10 mio may be more than that. How will you manage the whole thing? It is very difficult to channelize everything. China’s 3rd biggest bank’s loan portfolio is higher than Indian’s GDP. So you can understand it is tough to do this prioritization across the Bank.

That’s why every bank divides the analytical projects into two parts. One, risk scores where your objective is to decrease the risk and another one marketing score, where your objective is to increase the revenue .Now if you marry both, you will get a stable Revenue growth, manageable loss numbers and as a result bank will get good profit which means good salary, bonus to its employees, Good return its share holders. The cherished Goal that every organization is having.

Now the question is, what the things that we can offer in risk and marketing. In risk the objective is to manage the loss. Now the products that we can offer in risk are

Application scorecard: If you are asking for PL or credit card or any loan products should I give you the product or not, because there is a change that you will not pay.

Behavior scorecard: bank is having good existing customers thinking to sell a loan to them , so whom they should and whom they should not.

Collection Scorecard: Now bank is having customers not paying their credit card minimum fee , now few customers are good .They just forgot to pay and few customers are genuinely bad. So ,the collection manager needs a strategy to call people.

Recovery Scorecard: From the list of total defaulters who are highly likely to pay

Bankruptcy Scorecard: Again helping you in the loss forecast.

For marketing where the objective is to increase revenue, you can do

Market Demand/Competition Analysis:

You can do an analysis if there is any segment in the model that you have not touched till now. Is it possible to design a product for them?

Look-a-like Model :

Till now you have not lunched any campaign and particular product but from the historical data you can find out what is the profile of customers taken this product in past , so you can go more focused now.

Cross-sell/Propensity Model: You want to know the customers’ propensity to take your product

Next best product algorithm: If the customer is already having a product what will be the next product to sell him.

Segmentation: You want to know how many different types of segments are there in your portfolio, so you can understand if there is any need for new product.

So that was a global idea about Scorecard and its usage. Now let me start how to build a good scorecard

There are 5 steps that you have to follow to build a successful scorecard.

First is the business understanding, when I was presenting my first Credit card X-sell scorecard in redpill , my age was 25 and the person I was presenting to , means client , he was having 25 years of experience in credit card. So, you can understand if he is having a problem he will not to my level. I have to reach there and understand it and have to give the solution in his business language. He liked my scorecard and they implemented it and the result was really good. But you know this good is just an English word, you have to calculate the Good = How much is incremental revenue? Because you have to show to the client what is the benefit they are getting from us.

Second is Data, If your data is wrong all the other 3 steps will be just waste. It’s like garbage is and garbage out.

Third, Variables creation. Show your creativity and try to create variables which will be surrogates of the customers’ characteristics.

Then the scorecard building where you will calculate the propensity using regression model . You have to check the statistical statistics to get the best one.

Last is validation, you have to prove that your solution is time independent.

Let me discuss the points in details. When client will give you the problem, it will be in their languages. Your business understanding will translate the problem in a statistical problem and through the statistics you will try to solve the statistical problem.

Like,

• My credit card portfolio annual attrition rate of 20%, that’s it .Client wants the solution.
Now, because you know their business, you will convert it “Need to identify customers highly likely to attrite”. Because they can action on that. Same like

• My SME portfolio is having only 10% loan and 90% Saving account customers

• Only 6% of my Saving account base use debit card every month

• My personal loan delinquency has crossed 8%

• 12% of my personal loan customers are foreclosing their loans

So the statistical solutions will be:

• Need to identify SME customers highly likely to take loans

• Need to identify customers less propensity to use debit card

• Need to identify customers highly likely to default

• Need to identify customers having higher propensity to prepay ( indirect attrition)

After understanding the problem, you will go to the data. Fix the observation period and prediction period, means you will take the data about the customer characteristics from the observation period and you will do your independent variable tagging (good / Bad or Takers / Non takers) in the prediction. We have an automated data extraction query, written in SAS / SQL. After getting the data we do cleaning, validation. We do basic statistics to find out the outliers. Next you have to do a scorecard building. There are few patent statistics that you have to check. Final step is validation. You have to prove that your solutions are time independent.

Analytics is not only about giving solutions or earning money, it is to become more and more logical and to teach your mind that for everything there is a reason.