Overcoming the literal Train barrier - an idea pitch

 I recently shared an idea with Google Maps. I do hope they look at it and get back to me to discuss ways to implement and test it. I am sure it adds great value to folks that regularly navigate manned level crossings on their drive to work or otherwise. Check out the full document here.

A snippet of the problem statement that I aim to address - 

India, my country, my home. We have mastered the art of the many. The concept of Economies of Scale has always found a testing ground here, with plenty of resources and human capital, and has often yielded extremely positive returns for anyone that could imagine a brilliant idea and find opportunities to scale it to fruition.

Opportunities bring challenges. Challenges lead to new opportunities. This is the cycle that keeps economies running. One of the challenges I face very frequently is Trains. Well, I love trains! Who doesn’t! However, who enjoys watching a moving train while sitting restless in their cars or bikes? Particularly when traffic is piling up behind you? I speak of most dreaded, unexpected causes of traffic pile up on roads! Yes, the Level Crossing!

Business Standard reports* that there are nearly 18,000 manned and unmanned Level Crossings across India. A majority of these crossings have adequate safety equipment and personnel with plans to improve safety as well as eliminate crossings using over/under-bridges. Nevertheless, one aspect of the level crossings can never be eliminated – the traffic pile-up at the junction of the railway and roadway, particularly if the crossing is in a densely populated region.

This is the problem I am addressing. How helpful would it be if I was notified through Google Maps, when I plan my journey, of approximate minutes traffic would grow at level crossings? I could then already defer my travel time, or start as many minutes early to pass through the crossing before the train arrived there.

The consequence of the unexpected increase in traffic concentration is subtle, yet significant at this co ordinate while the rest of the road around this junction seems green and free. Primarily:

• Adds unexpected delay to planned travel time.
• Time spent at the junction increases if the train is arriving, but unusually slower than usual.
• Time spent at junction increases if the train is suddenly delayed, and the personnel is unable to pull up the gates fearing traffic pile-up on the railway track. 
• Time spent at the junction is proportional to the time taken by the personnel to reopen the gates.
• Time spent at the junction is proportional to the unexpected increase in traffic density when the gates are pulled up owing to vehicles blocking each other from opposite directions, particularly because of the presence of highly erratic drivers/riders in India. 

And here's the snippet of the solution that I propose - 

Google Maps already uses Crowdsourcing to determine the speed of vehicles, thanks to location services enabled by drivers on their smartphones. Anonymous data transmitted to google servers enables the algorithms to determine if a higher density of vehicles are slowing down or speeding up. This, coupled with historical trends and predictive AI, enables maps to give us valuable insights into dynamic traffic conditions and calculate ETA between source and destination. 

My idea is to extend this model from the roadways to the railways. A railway track can show a particular color (say a dotted green line) if there are no trains running on it. A dotted amber line can be shown, say upto 5 KM ahead of a moving train. A dotted red line can be shown at the exact location of a moving train. 

So how to achieve this? A combination of principles from Google’s Crowdsourcing, Google’s historical trends and Predictive AI using Graph Neural Networks (DeepMind), and Google’s Waze and government data overlay, can be used to determine speed of a moving vehicle – trains – on a railway track. The principle can be applied to the vast network of railway tracks across a town, district, state, nation or even the entire world. 

There is a clear difference between data collected and used from typical crowdsourcing, and data collected from railway travelers. Specifically – 

• Threshold of expected data points will be significantly lesser. Consider a concentration of between 300 and 600 data points from location service enabled smartphones. I call this the ‘Passenger Dataset’.
• Besides considering how fast or slow the Passenger Dataset is moving, gather information about where this data set in dynamically positioned as well. 
• Overlay this information with the dynamic traffic data of roadways. This would enable Maps to determine potentially exact times when trains pass coordinates intersecting with roadways. 
• When the Passenger Dataset is stationary, i.e., coordinates of the data set have not changed for more than a min, the train can be considered as not moving.
• When the coordinates of the dataset have changed every min, the train can be considered as moving. The direction of the motion, coupled with the rate of change of coordinates can be used to determine how fast or slow the train is moving. Accordingly, the length of the amber and the red can be adjusted dynamically. As the speed increases, the length of red line in front of the train can be longer as compared to when it is moving slower. Similarly, the length of the amber in front of the red line can be adjusted. 
• This collective information can then be coupled with the road traffic data to notify smartphones of potential delays at junctions intersecting the railways. 

 

Seasons

A montage of the cherry tree outside my window... Started photographing during winter, through spring, summer and autumn..

Do you like your own voice?

Yes, did you ever listen to yourself speak? I bet you always do. But do you like what you hear? Sure enough, you do!

Now, do you think what you hear about your own voice is what the others hear too? Well, this question amazed me while I was on a call for over 2 hours with one of my clients. So, I switched on the voice recorder on my phone and let it record my voice for the remainder of my call. Later, I played back my recording to listen to my own voice... I was surprised! I realized that this was the voice that was heard on the other end of the line during my call... and I was happy about it.. =)

So, this is what I found. The voice I hear when I listen to myself speak is very different from the voice I hear played back from the recorder. There is an explanation to this - something on the lines of external and internal stimuli, where the person listening to you hears only the external stimulus of your voice, while you hear both internal and external stimuli of your voice. It was an amazing discovery and I involuntarily got to analyze my speech making mental notes about altering it for a better perception from the listener.

Curious, I checked if there were any singers who disliked their own voices, and found some pretty interesting information. Voices we perceive as beautiful or pleasant, may not necessarily be perceived the same way by the person voicing it. .  Hmm.. I guess this thought has helped produce some beautiful music...

eh! I'll get back to my business.
Nevertheless, try it.. See if you love your voice or hate it. !

Cheers..

A beautiful alliance

How often have you walked up to a stranger and said “Hi…” ? How often do you think you have maintained that smile on your face instinctively when speaking to some one you never knew? Do you put your ego and inhibitions above camaraderie? ….
It’s been a year since I switched from the aged Company busses to the mostly frantically driven Company cabs, and nothing exciting seemed to have happened since then, except for the fact that cabs were more comfortable and dropped me home faster than the busses. But the comfy part soon faded when more and more of our breed were stuffed into less and less reliable cabs. Nevertheless, more members in the cab meant less room for complacency and more room for conversations . And if company meant a good looking lady, then the journey couldn’t have been more enjoyable.. ;).
It was on one such occasion when I had the privilege of being in the early morning shift for my project (privilege because I get to go home by 4 in the evening Everyday) and one of those rare honours of having a graceful lady being picked up by the same cab as mine, that I managed to add up a “H” and an “i” into a beautiful alliance. I will refer to this smart and interesting lady as Cherry.
Getting back home one evening at 4 in a jam packed cab with Cherry beside me, I mustered the courage and said “Hi…” with a smile, hoping to be returned the greeting without being jeered at by her.
Cherry : “Hi..” (smiling )
Me : So..where are you from, Cherry?
Cherry : I’m from Mysore, but was educated partly in Coimbatore… Where are you from?
Me : I’m from Mysore too…. Pretty jam packed cab, eh?
Cherry : Yeah ( making a frustrated face .. looking cute :) )
Me : Blah blah…
Cherry : Blah Blah…
And so went the conversation on and on till the time came for her to alight at J Street. After exchanging our Goodbyes, I got thinking about this encounter. What did it take for me to be know her? Just a smile and a Hi… and the will to put myself before my ego and extend my greeting with an intention to break the reticence so common in most of us. I am grateful that I took this step and 4 months since, we have discovered most of our interests, some of them common, lunched together, watched movies together and now share a great friendship.
There are more instances. This approach helped me make new friends with a gentleman from the Navy( trust me, he was in my Organization for some time ); a guy who is ready to trade his job for higher studies; another dude whose passion is to travel and gather info about supercars; a person from the clientele who happens to share my hometown and prefers Indian Ghazals over Metallica and Deep Purple, among others. The point is, I did what I believed will help me break the ice..and I suggest we do it once a while when we meet people and do it when the time is right, like when you travel or get off the bus early in the morning, or when you come out for lunch in office, for it is at these times that all of us are relaxed and relieved of work for a little while and are open to something outside the box. What’s more, you could discover that you were sitting on the Pandora’s box of joy, waiting to be unleashed all this while..
Cheers!!

Excerpts - diary of a brother

This is based on a true life incident.. written from a brother's view, a brother who once had a dear sister. Here goes...

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Strange are the ways life treats you and your loved ones. Just when you feel everything is going your way, something happens that turns the tables upside down.. and then you find yourself sifting through the shattered pieces of your life, trying to pick the ones that you can hold on to as you move on. This is my story. A story that lived with me for a good 20 years, when I had my sister by my side to share my glory and pain.

The sun shone brighter on 28^th October 1990. This day, a new being made its way onto this world to bring smiles and happiness on the faces of many. Dad and mom received the best gift of their lives and I got a friend, a comrade, a reason for me to keep smiling. A sister that I would love and protect for the rest of my life. We called her Precious.

I watched my little sis as she made her way from being a toddler, to a talented dancer in school, to a respected adolescent that everybody admired in college. I remember her beautiful eyes, her warm smile that never left her face even as responsibilities kept piling up on her, and her soft and beautiful voice that even the singing birds would envy. She would come running to me when I got back from school on some days and show me her Barbie doll on her outstretched arms. On other days, barbies would be replaced by teddy bears and miniature kitchen cutlery and anything that a girl that age would aspire to have in her possession. Well, I envied her, because dad and mom gave me far lesser gifts than they gave to my little sis. I guess, they were bored buying me the same old 2 and 4 wheeled toys and G-I Joes that changed only in their colour and dimensions. But, boy! I still love those toys. Give your young man one of these, and rest assured, he’ll be occupied with it for atleast a few months.

It was not long before I realised that Precious had outgrown her tiny pink skirts and was ready to start a new life at school. We went to the same school and my days ever since, became smaller, trying to fit in my studies and responsibilities of a big brother. Precious became an instant hit with her teachers and fellow students. Her approach to simple matters of Mathematics and Science that a school would teach to first graders would leave her fellow 5 year olds and 30 year olds baffled alike. Well, I guess it’s all in the genes. So it didn’t surprise me that my dad, who is a brilliant accounts manager with a leading business solutions provider, would have a daughter who would one day compete with him equally in the same arena. Well, when it’s in the genes, why would mom’s mischievousness be off of her? I would often get called to the principal’s office as I was the first point of contact for the school authorities to report of my little sis’s mischievous acts. Though I had to maintain a straight face before them – that is expected from a big brother in such situations, I sincerely adored her in my mind. Proud that Precious was my little sister. On such occasions, we would treat ourselves to huge scoops of Vanilla fudge ripple and Cherry and Butter pecan at Corner House, just outside the school gates.

School uniforms gradually gave way to denims and tees. As I got into the competitive corporate world, Precious aced her way into a very reputed college in the city. With college, came bigger responsibilities, of growing up, of dealing with the world, of living a fast life, of a bigger list of friends, and most important of all, of charting out her career on her own. And she handled it all with aplomb. And that is when I met Adarsh, the charming young graduate from the same college, that Precious had decided to spend her life with. Dad mom and I were glad that she had found a smart dude for herself.

Just as I made my way to work one wintery December morning, with Christmas jingles playing on the radio, I received a call from dad on my phone. Precious had lost consciousness at the breakfast table and dad and mom had rushed her to the hospital. I immediately called in sick and took a detour to the hospital. As I reached the emergency room, I found her sitting on the bed, smiling as ever, with dad and mom beside her, mom gently stroking the strands of hair that ran across her graceful face. Dad tried hard to discover a smile in his own face burdened with sorrow. I hugged Precious and took dad to the waiting area and asked him what was wrong. He broke down.

The doctors had diagnosed Precious with malignant tumour in her brain. Unfortunately, since she never showed any symptoms of the tumour before, it had grown to become life threatening and had now become impossible to be treated. Though the doctors had suggested a second opinion from a neighbouring hospital, I trusted them, for they had very efficiently treated dad and mom whenever they visited the place for treatment. I pleaded with them to do all that it would take for them to make a miracle happen to give my little sis a new lease of life. They promised that they would do their best, but also added that they only can hope for another couple of years in her life should the worst happen before they succeed.

It is in times like these that you begin to curse the Lord above. You begin to introspect your own life to check if there had been anything you did wrong, the reprisal of which is being vent upon the one you truly love. You begin to lose faith and hope seems hard to live with. But, I never gave up. I read more about the disease. I came closer to Precious in a very subtle manner. I advised dad and mom to be strong and never let her know of the unfortunate discovery. We always maintained before her that what she had was a common condition called Migraine and that it was a result of the stress she has been taking lately in college. All she had to do was to go with me to the hospital regularly for routine checkups.

I lived my entire life over the next 2 years. I prayed to God more often, regularly visited the doctors and always encouraged them to do what they did best. I shifted my work timings to be by my sis when she got home from college. She went on to live life with frolic, joy and lots of love. We visited places that she had in her list to be visited before she completed college. Basically, we maintained a very normal atmosphere at home and outside, taking utmost care not to let her ease herself of her smile. And I was pleased, I had succeeded. Or, had I?

It was one of those days when Precious came home telling me about how she mischievously pulled a prank on a lecturer in her class, and got out of it with just a warning. Only, this time, I was not summoned, because, what happens within college walls, more often than not, remains within those walls. So, there we were, sitting in our favourite place, devouring a large serving of Butter pecan ice cream. Over the years, the Corner House folks grew friendlier to us and occasionally exchanged pleasantries with us. Then, just as we got up to get back home, Precious turned pale. I held her tight as she was about to drop onto the floor. I knew that the time had finally arrived despite all our efforts. With some help from the friendly folks there, I got her to the hospital where the doctors gave me the news I already knew. Precious had embarked on another journey...a journey beyond life.

As I sat down with my diary to capture the beautiful memories I had with my little sis, I stumbled upon her diary. The last entry was made during Christmas 2 years ago. It read:

“25^th Dec 2008
Dear Diary,

I fainted today while having breakfast. I don’t really know what happened next. I only cherish the moment when Ryan came upto my bed in the hospital and hugged me warmly. I learnt from the doctor later during the day about my condition and made him promise that he would not reveal my knowledge about it to Ryan and my parents.

I want to live the best possible moments of my life with Ryan and dad and mom from now on. I’ve told Adarsh that we shall remain as good friends till the end of my time. And I would want to give them all my best. So, dear diary, I am afraid, this will be the last story of my life that I would be sharing with you. I would expect you to stand by me as I live every moment of my life beautifully with Ryan from now on. I’m sure you will..

Good Bye, dear Diary... forever...”

Drive over the EC expressway..

The Drive

Nothing can ever beat the pleasure of a long drive on a smooth highway that takes you away from the hustle bustle of the city life and into the serene beauty of nature. So, on one of those lazy Saturday evenings, Sam decided to take a drive to Nandi Hills. Sam's sister, June, his mom and I decided to tag along too.

The alarm went off at 6 in the morning.. Snooze till 7.. after the morning chores and a healthy breakfast, it was back to bed till 12 noon. Bangalore weather, of late, has never been friendly to travellers. The morning weather greeted me with a dull blue sky, mostly occupied by rain clouds and the morning sun only being allowed a sneak peek into the ground once a while. I was hence very apprehensive of the travel plan to the hills. Nevertheless, we decided to go on.

The journey began at around 4 in the evening. It was a relief to find very few vehicles on the roads. A few minutes into the drive, with Flo Rida playing softly on the radio, gentle showers poured itself on us. Amidst the crooning of the tyres against the rain, we reached the Air Force base when, to our excitement, an IL 78 of the Indian Air Force whooshed over us across the highway. That view coupled with the sounds of the massive jets was simply tantalizing. We then passed by the International airport and finally into the quiet boulevard leading us to the base of the hills.

We came across a troop of monkeys lazing around on the parapet walls lining the road along the hill. All they did was look at us in unison with their visibly tired eyes, maybe after a long day of monkeying around. A few curves and then a few bends and we finally parked beside a garden housing the well know summer residence that Tippu supposedly once used to relax in. What then followed was a mixture of satisfaction and disappointment. Satisfaction because we made it despite the odds of the weather, disappointment because that satisfaction did not last long.

We gradually walked over the rocks towards the spot which gives a panoramic view of the city outskirts besides the chill breeze and calm, seemingly unknown to city lifers. We waited as June payed her respects to the Gods in one of the temples. Then, the skies opened and misty drops of water fell over the rocks in a continuous drizzle. If it wasn't for our concern for Sam and June's mom, we would have navigated ourselves to the famous Tippu's drop enjoying the feel of rain on us. We had no choice, but to turn back and shelter ourselves in a tea shop opposite the temple. As we waited in vain for the rains to show mercy on us, we ordered for tea which took about as much time as the rains to stop. The waiter however, justified this delay to his preparation of "special" tea for all of us. Well, in reality, I can prepare better tea.

With no respite and dusk soon falling on us, we made our way back to the car. Should I now say the drive down was more enthralling than the one to the top.? Well, I believe, it definitely was. It was dark, the woods a pale grey outlined against the indigo sky. The cicadas absolutely quiet, the ambiance was reminiscent of the Silent Valley. One particular curve gave a brilliant view of the city lights. We halted, walked up to the edge of the parapet and stood there looking at the the distant lights of the city on the horizon-shimmering through the humid air, of the highway we navigated on and of the vehicles making their way into and out of the hill below us through the woods. It was akin to a deep blue canvas, painted with dark shadows of hills on either sides and a thousand spots of glittering white and yellow in between. The experience was simply Priceless.

The journey that we embarked on finally had come to an end. We slowly and silently made our way back to the car and set our course to the very horizon that mesmerized us, back to the hustle and bustle, to the stress and disturbance of our daily routine, contented enough to have had the time to break free of it and experience what nature has to offer us. It was indeed a day well spent, memories of which will last a lifetime...

Cheers..