Dr. Time pass

Government’s Goldberg

2015-05-20T12:36:00.001+05:30

It’s surprising how most of my writing happens on Wednesdays; maybe I need to consult an astrologer to find out why. OK so today’s big news in the paper this morning was the Gold Monetization scheme. Gold Monetization is where Gold will be treated like Cash.

This scheme was announced by the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in this year’s Budget. The scheme is a two pronged answer to the Indian obsession with Gold.

1. The scheme shall allow public to deposit gold in scheduled banks and earn interest on their gold.

2. The scheme allows Banks to use the gold received in this scheme to meet the CRR and SLR requirements.

So what does this mean?

Simply put, you and I can deposit our gold in the bank and earn an interest after a fixed maturity period. How does this happen? Well it works just like cash, the Bank will measure, test and tag your gold, and then lend it to jewelers or other investors who may be willing to buy or borrow at a rate higher than the banks offer to pay you. The interest earned in this scheme is not taxable under income tax or tax from capital gains. Please note that interest will be calculated in terms of gold. That is, if you deposit 50g of gold, 10% would be 5g of gold.

This brings us to some simple but genuine questions

1. How will they pay interest? Will they add another gram to my bangle?

Well, no… Your gold will be treated just like cash. Meaning, you will not get to see the same gold bangle at maturity. If your bangle was 50g, then you will get 50g back + interest, but not in the same bangle. You may get the maturity amount as bullions of gold or you also have an option of redeeming it in cash. However there’s a catch, you need to specify if you want gold or cash while signing up for the scheme.

I’ll say what you’re thinking now… Nope, not gonna happen! My mom would never lose her bangles for 5% or 10% or even 30% if she’s never going to get a chance to see the bangles again.

So why make this scheme? Politicians and bearcats are probably smarter than us, they would obviously be aware of our attachment to personal jewels, why would they draft such a thing??

Well the answer is simple. The general public is not the target of this scheme. This is for investors who already have gold in their portfolio. Gold itself would grow its worth in time, imagine depositing it in banks and earning interest on it, that’s a double income on a single asset!

All this is fine and obvious. What are we missing? Well, tipping the rich to invest more is not the only goal here, the second leg,(which is actually the first) is that Banks would be able to allocate this gold to meet CRR and SLR requirements. Banks, need to place certain percentage of their deposits with the RBI, currently the CRR and SLR together constitute 21.5% of the deposits. Meaning, if a bank has 100B of deposits it needs to deposit 21.5B with the RBI. The remaining 78.5B can be used for their business that is; giving loans. So, now that gold has come into the picture, Banks may keep gold in the RBI and use more cash to give away more loans and hence increasing growth in the country.

So to summarize, what’s this scheme about?

1. Make big investors earn two times on a single asset.

2. Allow banks to use the gold to meet their duties and save cash to give more loans.

Will this reduce gold imports?

Will this make any difference to household gold?

Will this mean anything to small investors?

Do we need this scheme?

I don’t know.

Bubble On The Line

2014-11-18T12:15:00.000+05:30

This comes two days after the news broke about Ratan Tata investing in Urban Ladder. I somehow felt it was a mistake. I had a theory and it actually made a lot of sense when I found some interesting pattern.

Well I was actually whiling away time on another lazy Sunday afternoon when suddenly I thought of working on my dissertation paper for this winter. My topic happens to be in Financial Engineering. I’m trying to create some financial instruments to spot arbitrage opportunity created by the price difference between good sold online to those sold in brick and mortar stores.

So while I was working with some numbers I found that stuff was generally sold at a much lower price online. Duh big discovery! Of course stuff is sold cheaper online everyone knows this, so what’s the big discovery?

The big discovery is that they only sell at lower prices online. Selling online means selling at a loss. The mantra of e tailing these days is selling at such low prices that we lure the consumers to our shores and gain maximum market share. OK, what do you plan to do after you’ve lured them? Pull an Amazon? No way, you can do that in the airlines business or the hospitality industry but not online.

Amazon got into heaps of trouble and got called bad names because we found out that it charges more to returning customers. It’s not a sin really, everyone does that. But the problem is you can’t replicate it that easily in the online market place. There’s so many website that I would just move to someone else and buy stuff if he’s selling at a lower price. Come on! Its e business we’re talking, you can’t expect loyalty here. At least not that easily.

So I realized that this online market is a very competitive place and you just can’t raise your prices. The one who sells at the lowest price gets the customer. So the key to winning is to lose.

Nice right? But you know the thing about online, people are very comfortable being rude and demotivating. I got this one comment, check it out

The thought is kinda natural. There have been many other internet bubbles in the past and any industry growing as fast and big as ecommerce in a short span of time is generally thought to be an inflated bubble waiting to burst. Investment advisors and market gurus alike have expressed concern about this growing ecommerce boom. Their angle however has been about the quantum of capital raised by the ecom giants of India and the ‘creative’ accounting practices employed by these firms. There have been various issues on the valuation front too. There has been a general apprehension on the frequency of the call for capital from the ecom companies and obviously on the pace of their growth. But the focus has essentially been on speculation.

Anyway even got rude, well in my own sarcastic way

Back to the point. Things will not cost more online. Things will continue to grow costlier offline. Cuz face it, we only have so many natural resources.

Now you may be wondering how I could prove convincingly that it’s not a bubble? Well, there are websites that don’t sell a thing and yet make millions right? That’s it. Now don’t go telling everyone theres no ecommerce bubble. There’s sure is one... and it’s coming to get you!

Le Me of the Meme

2014-06-17T21:20:00.000+05:30

OK I was disappointed in myself for not having written anything in over 3 months, so.. well I had to write something.. but nothing really interesting is coming to my head, anyway so this is a small post, its about the million memes that have been doing rounds.. there doesnt exist a topic, public event or a celebrity who or who's actions havent been made into a meme.. people make memes of their friends, colleagues or even themselves .. here's one of the few that I made at work..

ok that wasnt my best, dont judge me yet.. it was a colleague at work, she wore a lot of rings thats all :D

Now, whats this post about, its about the me and normal people saga of the memes.

here's an example:

hilarious right? here's another

you see a pattern here?
No? ok here's one more.. this till with 1 comment.

You spot it yet? the comment reads "same here"
thats exactly the reaction I had and sometimes even made such comments on the "normal people and me" saga memes.

Theres some more memes like that.. heres a frisky one

I know perv thought.. but come on.. every guy thinks like that once hes hit high school.. or even less nowadays I guess..

OK one last one.. and this had the most "me too" comments

So what I'm trying to say is every damn person is "me" or Derp(the meme guy).. and no one really is the "normal people" So... everyones Derp and think the others are normal (lame and boring basically) so we can say being Derp is the normal thing to be.. every Derp is normal..

here's my meme..

As it Turnsout

2014-04-26T11:59:00.001+05:30

I always have an opinion about votes, but I almost always shy away from debates on voting. It’s frankly because till date I haven’t had an opportunity to vote. (I’ve seem almost 6 to 8 elections pass by btw) You can simply say I’m lazy, I don’t care about electing, or I still don’t feel empowered enough to actually believe that my vote can make a difference.

The General Elections of India are probably one of the biggest democratic exercises on the face of earth, and with it comes a lot of drama, games, schemes, garlands, and well... some shoes too. The problem in the Indian electoral system since the earliest times has been the voter turnout. People don’t see it to be worth the effort. The average voter turnout in the General Elections is around 60% meaning less than two thirds of the people were responsible for deciding whom to elect and assuming two thirds voted for the party(ies) forming the government, only about 40% of the total (voting) population of India chose the ruling party. So about 60% were in no way responsible for the central government! But I’m sure they had their share of complaining on how dysfunctional the government is. (Me included)

Ok here’s little info,

Voter turnout can actually say a lot, they are generally used to send political messages too. The 72% voter turnout in the Assembly election of Arunachal Pradesh in 2009 was hailed by the media and a few voices in India as a message against the Chinese aggressive pursuit of annexing Arunachal Pradesh. Similarly this time around (2014) certain groups... well ok terrorists (I was just trying do a Reuters and not use the word terrorist :D ) put up signs and distributed flyers telling people not to vote, in an attempt to show that Kashmiris don’t feel like voting or participating in the democratic system of India.

www.mirror.co.uk

Now lemme tell you why I haven’t had a chance to vote yet. When I turned 18 I was sure I could cast my vote in the coming election, I was born in the beginning of the year and by the time the next election came in 2008 I was eager and well, had not yet figured anything in politics but wanted to vote, I was eager and was taken by the ‘right to vote’ thing. But my name was not in the list, disappointment. The next election was in 2009, I tried to register myself, the clerk at the official looking koisk asked me to fill form and took 2 or 3 photos, loksabha election 2009 – ‘sorry your name is absent in the list’, ok. 2010 – Municipal election, the guys came home (supposedly) and we weren’t at home; result – no vote. It’s been so through till now. In the initial days I wanted a voter ID so that I can have an address proof, (then I got my passport, so lost interest all the more) Oh I forgot, last time I registered online, after everything is done, they want us to take a print of the sheet and goto the election commission office of our district, I got the print, but sadly never found time to do the submitting part. OK enough about me.

Speaking of Democracy itself, I feel it doesn’t work too well with India. I mean, in a country like India, the biggest and most diverse democracy of the world, we need to tailor the idea of democracy. What we currently have is a crude form of democracy that involves participation of everyone at once. How can you actually expect one hundred crore people to actually come out and vote? In fact if the 100 crore came out to vote, I’m not sure we have enough logistics to support that kind of a turn out. What I’m trying to say is this idea of total participative democracy is actually a failure. It doesn’t work. We cant have everyone voting at once... because ‘everyone’ is NOT everyone. Maybe we need stages, maybe increase the levels, cut the power, maybe increase hierarchy... who knows that might have its own problems, but my point is, low voter turnout will remain a problem in this crude form of total participation. Thats it!

Btw facebook pics, all the ‘be responsible’ ads and everything is making voting a glamorous thing, which is good.. might just get the urbans to vote.. but hey.. I still haven’t voted.. not even fashion can me vote.. I wonder how anyone would vote.

Right to Piggy Ride

2014-03-30T18:45:00.000+05:30

Amul’s comic snippets are loved by everyone. Marketing teachers are especially fond of them. I’m not sure how the professionals see it and what’s the correlation of those cartoons and sales, but it sure does a hell of a job with the TOMA.

What Amul does is it releases 1 comic per week and whatever happens that week is generally the theme of the comic. So people read the comic, relate to the news, smile to themselves and remember Amul. It’s ingenious, using news to sell yourself. No one calls them cheap or piggy back riders. Same happens to everyone during cricket season, FIFA world cup season etc etc.

So what caught my attention? The new ad of Hero Hf Deluxe. The ‘Talent’ theme. Here’s the vid.

Hero piggy back rode the elections. Make the buyer of Hf Deluxe look great, intelligent, rational, responsible and so damn patriotic. Oh btw Hero Honda took a dig at being patriotic a million years ago. Ok 8-10 years ago, Remember ‘desh ki dhadkan’ ?? Back when CBZ was new, I think I was in highschool. Bajaj was already famous for its Hamara Bajaj and came up with a new Hamara Bajaj for the new times, beautiful ad, you gotta watch it. Here,

So, now we have political parties taking it to the tv, online media and stuff, so why not use the elections as a USP? You know play a little with the Consumer’s head, Idea cellular also did that, the new ‘no ullu banao-ing’ thing, ofcouse, Idea has a history of making videos of showing idea users to be righteous and awesome but this thing about using elections to sell yourself is awesome! TATA tea started with the ‘Jagore’ program almost 6 to 7 years back.

It’s as the guy says says in the new Hf Deluxe ad, the elections are India’s biggest talent show. How can anyone refrain from making a buck, right?

AAP Bhi Aadmi Ho

2014-01-13T22:14:00.001+05:30

Arvind Kejriwal was sworn in as the 7^th Chief Minister of Delhi about 15 days ago. It was a big day in the politics and democracy of India. I wasn’t really happy about the Aam Aadmi Party taking Congress support to form the government in Delhi. The day when the news broke that AAP will form the government in Delhi with Congress aid, I made a sad facebook post. Here’s the pic:

Yeah, call me a sadist, and heres a comment by one of my high school teachers

And another friend of mine said:

Ofcouse I only had this to say:

And then the status died away.. and 5 days later Arvind Kejriwal was sworn in as the CM and he made quite a decent speech that day.

I made a status:

I realized that I was missing something and this congress alliance may not prove that damaging and AAP would still be able to play a dominating role and provide the people of Delhi some good governance.

The days that followed saw a lot of changes and decisions like the transfer of DJB higher management, 700 liters of free water per day and maybe a few more that I don’t remember. But all the while and media, other political parties and sympathizers and supporters of the NaMo Movement started posting pictures, excerpts and quotes of how Kejriwal and the AAP were switching sides, changing tunes etc etc.. the 3 biggest things that the people have found hardest to forget and forgive are:

1.       Kejriwal won’t fight an election – He contested and became CM

2.       Kejriwal won’t take VIP security or government facilities (car, house etc) – Well he did that

And the worst

3.       Kejriwal swore on his children that there would be no support taken from BJP or Congress – Well, we all know what happened.

Now, ofcourse I’m writing this post to well somewhat justify his statements, now these three have not risen from different sources. The one reason is, he’s green, that’s it.

Being a.. well talkative person I know that sometimes you go overboard, get carried away and say something of paramount proportion when you don’t know the complete picture. Haven’t we all seen people who are ‘confidently wrong’? That’s what happened here, it’s practically impossible to have a CM walking the streets without security. I’m not talking about the CM, the people would swarm the place and hurt one another.. its so with any celebrity and he or any celebrity has no control over it.. so this was an innocent ‘confidently wrong’ statement. How can he say something and we take his word for something that isn’t in his control?

Speaking of the swearing on children part, the same goes here, he was ‘confidently wrong’ because of his innocence, as I said, he’s still a little green, now what do we do of an innocent first timer? Do we show some consideration or we scrutinize and criticize his every move? Expect him to be perfect from day 1? That’s just too much expectation from us, the media and other politicians. Given time, maybe he’ll learn his limitations and learn that every word is counted.

To be a little neutral here, I really am concerned about the ‘370 pages of evidence against Shiela Dixit’ statement. Ofcouse, thinking realistically, there’s no such thing as ‘unconditional’ support. Lets leave it as that.

Finally, why did he enter politics, contest and become CM? well, We must think of why AAP was formed in the first place, there was no option left, right? No Lok Pal Bill would be passed with all the Anshans and people were simple getting bored and eventually fizz out.

This was a right decision, but sadly, we have a perception that nothing can be changed or that people who get down in the pit to clean also end up smelling like shit.. or people have no hopes of ever having a clean political system. Maybe.. but the one line I remember from The Shawshank Redumption is “No one can ever take away hope” So I’m gonna hope, hope that change is possible, change will happen and I will do my part. (by making blogs and fb posts? Sure why not)

Take A Look Around

2014-01-11T19:47:00.000+05:30

Well, its actually a song, a very famous song actually.. by Limp Bizkit.. Anyway here's a post asking you to do something.

Assuming that I have viewers and readers, I'm gonna post a link to the survey I'm conducting to know stuff about Travel and Tourism.

Its not a school project or an assignemnt that I need to get done, its.. hmmm.. we'll you know me right? I love traveling and it was about time I took some serious interest in it and tried to do something.. you know like start something.. don worry its no entrepreneurial idea.. or atleast not yet.. but its an idea never the less, to understand the traveling habits and a few perceptions.

So take a little breather and gimme10 mins.

Fill out this Form for me ok? You can mail me if your interested in the results, even otherwise I will post it here. So just do this for me ok.. Thanks!

Novice Poker Effect

2013-12-01T12:30:00.000+05:30

It had been a while since I had been sent out of a classroom… the last time this happened, I think It was in the OOPs lab in 2008, well teachers wouldn’t get offended that easily in UVCE I guess... anyway it was an interesting class of rural marketing and I seemed to be interested, but sadly I was caught fiddling with the phone and making some kinda tattoo on my hand and the teacher took offence at it and pushed me out of the class. But what I was googling about was the Myths involved in Rural Marketing. I’m not gonna bore you with what I found, heres a snap shot.

Something I remember from class held my attention for a long time. The prof had said ‘One of the biggest myths about rural marketing is that the marketers think we rural buyers don’t ask many questions, they ask more questions than urban buyers, they are smarter than the urban buyer. They sometimes ask questions that seem silly and make you laugh, but we fail to find answers to such questions and that’s what makes rural marketing more challenging.’

Yes, we’ve heard this being said a lot of times. It’s almost a cliché. But something doesn’t fit right, does it? How could rural buyers with less exposure and information about what’s happening be harder to outsmart? Why would they be harder to sell to? Why do they ask harder questions? Why are they tougher to convince? Do they know what we’re trying to do from before? Not really. I like to call it, The Novice Poker Effect.

It happened roughly 2 years ago; out of boredom I decided to teach my cousin how to play poker and tried to play him a little. I couldn’t read him, I couldn’t bluff him, I thought he bluffed when he played simple and I obviously lost. The reason is simple. A novice poker player is not playing you, he is just playing his cards. It’s the same with Rural Marketing, a rural buyer is just playing what’s on his cards, he isn’t bothered about what or why a marketer is trying to sell.

We could conclude that a rural buyer is not smart; he’s just like a novice poker player. Hard to read, hard to pick up trends and hard to know what he wants. It’s this Novice Poker Effect that makes us think a rural buyer is smart. If we understand that the rural buyer just looks at things from his side and dont try anything fancy against him, we would succeed.

So to round it up, learn to play poker with a kid, maybe you’ll excel in rural marketing.

A Crowd In Hand

2013-11-16T23:13:00.000+05:30

The last time I experienced Delhi winter I thought it was overrated and the 16 of Bangalore was colder than the 4 of Delhi. I accounted this to the wind speed and altitude difference. This time however the winter already seems cold. Maybe because I’ve been living in Delhi for a little over 4 months and pretty much accustomed to the windless oven. Now I see people leaving for home earlier, shops shutting down earlier, the sun shying away faster and a dead silence descending over the night.

It was the silence of the cold Friday night. I heard a railway horn blow at a distance. The line was about 1200 – 1500 meters away and would’ve been inaudible if it were not winter. It was in this silence that kept me awake. I finally decided to watch the movie Lucia.

I think it was August 2013, when I suddenly started seeing all these posts from on FB about how awesome Lucia is and surprisingly, I BMS-ed it and what do you know! A PVR in one of the malls of Gurgoan was actually showing Lucia. I didn’t have a lot of company to go watch it, I had found zero Kannadigas and my friends of Delhi weren’t really interested. This wouldn’t have happened if you’re in Bangalore. I’ve been dragged and I’ve dragged my friends to movies of the languages we didn’t follow, but it was fun and it happens often in Bangalore.

Anyway this post isn’t about language. It’s about the concept of crowd funding. The introduction credits of Lucia movie said that it’s the first CrowdFunded Kannada movie. I googled a little later and found a news result dated Nov 12, 2013. It said the first Crowd Funded Malayalam movie with a Tamil/Malayalam cast and a Bengali Director would release soon, cool so Kannada is ahead (yay :P) More googling lead to a Reuterspost about the movie. It says the story writer had made a blog post where he said that he had tried to source the movie but had failed for 3 years. Suddenly out of the blue he got 200,000 rupees into his bank account from a lady in UK. More funding from random strangers followed and that’s when they decided to make a movie out of funds from the crowd.

This idea is ingenious! Kannada film industry of the ‘Sandalwood’ is known for its low budget or its Tamil/Telugu adaptations; Lucia was so big and radical that people said it brought a paradigm shift. Though it was still a low budget movie, it was very well received. The plot of the movie itself is so delicate and complex. The actors did good and the songs were pretty good too. The movie all in all was good, it was also released in Pakistan; the Tribune even put a review of Lucia. Sadly I still don’t think I would find people who would want to try the movie. (it was released with subtitles ofcourse)

Last year I had authored a white paper dealing crowdsourcing for software testing and since then I had started to appreciate the benefits of using a crowd. I read a bit more about crowd funding and the more I read the more I was interested, this idea is already catching up, crowd funded movies were already famous in the west. The next result said Crowd Funded travelling; a site called Trevolta said it would sponsor trips! The idea is simple; travelers post their travel plans and the company tries to sponsor it, the sponsors may be from simply inspired and passionate travelers or marketers sponsoring for marketing use. Whatever the case, you get to go on a trip free of cost! Why wouldn’t it work?? The idea is relatively new and the site has very less right now, but you can check out their FB page just in case (I know free publicity right? They better fund one of my trips :P :D )

I was thinking hard about how to make use of this idea, maybe I could use CrowdFunding to raise capital for my entrepreneurial ideas too… and that’s when it hit me that this is what we do in India! A Ganesh mela or a Durga Puja pandal or holika dahan all happen with crowdfunding! We call it chanda and now we’re giving it a fancy name, come to think of it, it doesn’t seem so radical or big or new idea at all! And today, we have so much money; Banks, Investors and VC’s and ready to give you all the money if you have an idea, and if not these guys then you can just get money from the crowd! What we need is planning, transparency and proper IT integration and we could use CrowdFunding for anything! So... Go!

Piggybacking? No its just BBM on Android.

2013-10-26T17:29:00.000+05:30

In one week I saw more than a hundred people post their BBM pin on their fb timeline. A few of them sent me their Pins on my whatsapp too. Some of my friends asked me what it was and some asked me what my BBM pin was. Well, I’m not gonna install BBM on my phone yet, but I’ve got to say, I’m really surprised.

I tried to look up on it and searched for it on twitter and on google news. Suddenly, BlackBerry is all over the news! The BlackBerry Z10 launch wasn’t even half as famous as this! And it was supposedly the flagship!! It hit me! Piggyback marketing!

My friend Akshay had just started freelance photographing for friends. He took small projects like mehandi rituals, children’s portfolio etc., this was one such child portfolio for a friend. He wanted about perfect photos of his 4 year old angel. Akshay had clicked about 6 photos and apparently he wasn’t comfy with the money part. No wants to pay 3K for 6 photos, especially if the photographer is a friend. So I was sent to deliver the photos and extract money from him. Akshay had told me to get atleast 1.5K from him, and also spiced it with the line ‘I’ll give you an envelope, 10% of what you bring from her is yours.’ btw I was also a friend to that guy mind you.

I stuck to my guns of praising the baby and telling him how much Akshay would like to work with the baby again. I didn’t ask him for 3K. I just said ‘Akshay sent me here to deliver the photos and collect the money.’ He knew how much he had to pay, if I opened my mouth I would just ruin what’s cooking in his head.

Did he give 3K? Well you know how we are… He put 2K inside an envelope and wrote something about paying the rest when he comes back for the next session or something. The point is, I was scared, out of place, and so totally awkward about asking money from a friend, but I rode on Akshay. He and his photos were selling high, I just had to cling to him and do the job to collecting. And that’s all I did. Akshay later said that he got much more than what he’d expected and I got well… not the 10% but I learnt Piggybacking.

Now the main point, Piggybacking is what BlackBerry did unknowingly. More than 10 Million app downloads, twitter and news coverage from all over the world and here’s more, there’s even a scandal about fake app reviews. They couldn’t have got this much publicity even if they’d planned it.

The concept is again simple, Android is selling high, put BBM on Android and you’re famous again. One line!

Could this mean the big bosses of BlackBerry will get their heads together and try more piggybacking? Well that depends on how desperate they are. Piggybacking can be a taboo when you’re someone as big as BlackBerry. Wait, what about BBM on Apple? Is that be just as popular? Well people who use Apple already have lots of chat services that are cooler than the average Android messaging apps.. so… we’ll see.

My dearest Nokia tried it with Microsoft windows phone, but you don’t piggyback on something new, you’re pigs gotta be big right? And in case of Microsoft, the problem is Microsoft isn’t doing that great by itself, plus windows phone is new… so it’s like Nokia tried to ride an amputee pig with a new artificial leg! Ok you try making sense of that! Bye :P

Mass Production

2013-10-14T21:47:00.001+05:30

This one’s a long overdue post. I had thought of this hmmm… I think about 2 years ago. So we can say that this trend is almost 3 years old now. It’s about this explosion of south Indian movies on hindi tv channels. I was in love with the tamil movie annian. It was dubbed in hindi as aparichit and would premiere on zee cinema every now and then. There were a few others too, Kamal sir’s dasavataram was one such example.

I was shocked to see that atleast 1 south Indian movie running at any time I surfed about the movie channels, that’s when I thought there was a change, the bollywood audience had grown an appetite for the mass movies of the south. However I could not push myself to write about it as I was a south Indian and I lived in Bangalore, I obviously liked to see those movies, but did the average hindi tongued like them? may they did, but I had to know for myself.

Upon reaching Delhi I found that people actually enjoyed the movies of the south. Be it the Action of Chiranjeevi and Sudeep or the romance of Nagarjuna and Surya, or the sizzle of Sada or Trisha, they loved it. People asked me about the names of stars from movies and I could actually see them like it! And that’s why the tv channels ran more and more dubbed south Indian movies.

Soon, one could notice more of Surya, Vijay, allu arjun, Darshan, Sudeep and Chiranjeevi pictures on hindi tv channels. That’s the same time when movies like Ready, Bodyguard, Rawdy rathod and the like came out that had nothing but crazy songs and unreasonably long fight sequences. This was an adaptation of the southern movies, the “mass” movies to be more specific.

“What’s a mass movie?” I asked moms one day.

“the ones that bring the masses to the theater” he said as a matter of factly.

“so are all Rajkumar movies are mass movies?”

He obviously was shocked. He cursed me for a little over 10 mins and then said

“see, there are 2 types of movies; Class and Mass. Hmmm… but I’m not sure how to explain… have you seen Jogi? It’s a mass movie, and have you seen Amrutadhare? That’s a class movie.”

“ok.. so the one with lots of fighting is mass movie and the one with a sensitive story is class?”

“yeah maybe, somewhat like that, mass is what 2 and 3 wheeler owners watch and class is what 4 wheeler owners watch”

“haha.. mental you are moms!” I said and laughed off.. but that’s class and mass movies for you.

Coming back to the topic, we see a lot of such “mass” movies coming out from bollywood these days, since olden days, the mass movie of bollywood was mostly just a headless comedy that drove tons of people into the halls. But since the growth in popularity of Thalaiva and these numerous dubbed movies being liked by the hindi audience, maybe the directors of bollywood realised that it was about time they came to join the “mass” club.

All the best!

Theft at Gandhi's Grave

2013-10-02T20:12:00.000+05:30

“Holy day or just a holiday?” I took pride in this poor attempt at cynical pun. Today was a holiday but still I wasn’t happy when I woke up, reason being my father had told me that we would be going to Raj Ghat to see Gandhi’s tomb and pay our respects to him. I wasn’t interested; my mom even resented the idea.

It was hot but not far. We reached Raj Ghat in less than half an hour. The place wasn’t as crowded as I expected it to be. Not shockingly, Anna Hazare was also present, there was a small contingent of about 50 people around him, then there were tourists; local and foreign, a hoard of school children in Blue and white, and who could miss the loud and happy tamilians.

The tomb was beautifully flower decorated for the occasion. I could say it was special because there was more than just the Genda Phool that you find everywhere in Delhi. People stood by the tomb, near the flowers, behind the torch and posed at a thousand more places in the 15 X 15 space. Momdad went ahead close to the tomb to offer the fist full of Genda Phool that they had bought at the gate for 10 rupees. I decided to stand this one out, I stood leaning to the parapet wall surrounding the tomb and looked at the crowd. Some offered flowers, some bowed their head and some just wanted to click more and more photos.

Just a couple minutes later I saw my parents panic stricken faces. My mom’s purse had been stolen. A girl had put her hand into my mom’s handbag and had stolen the purse while in the crowd paying respects. We were aghast. Spoke to the security nearby, and looked for the purse hoping to find it fallen nearby, but it was stolen, deliberately and consciously stolen.

I was angry, at mother for being careless, at father for thinking up this useless plan and at myself for not bothering to stick with my mother in a crowd. Then I was angry at the thief, she had stolen right in front of Mahatma Gandhi’s tomb! Such irony!!

It reminded me of a line said by an 18^th century poet, he says “No man can be patriot on an empty stomach” Ofcourse he died 69 years before Gandhi was born. But there was only 1 Gandhi(and there were many other great patriots in history who almost fasted to their death), but the saying holds good for the thief, she was just trying to make a living, steal in front of Gandhi’s grave or from a pretty dame, it was just an attempt to feed herself.

We spent the whole journey back thinking of what was lost and talking about how we could’ve prevented it and how people have lost their conscience. Stealing in front of Bapu! 6 hours after the incident I was still thinking, not about our loss, but the Gandhi connection. How these values of truth and justice and honesty and everything has turned out to remain just a sound of humbug! I thought about the Irony again and again, Theft right in front of Gandhi’s grave, how ironic how ironic... I said that aloud once.. then silently again. Then it struck me.. this wasn’t ironic, it was symbolic. Theft at Gandhi’s grave.

AlphaBetting

2013-09-08T13:16:00.001+05:30

A strange word or rather a coalition of words caught my eye in The Hindu this week. Someone, I don’t remember the author or the article, but it was about a statement by someone regarding a minimum qualification for journalists. People, well journalists in particular were not so pleased by that. The word that caught my eye was Academic Inflation. It does raise one’s brow doesn’t it? I have this bad habit of observing words, vocab if you want to call it. I like to observe and think and rethink about meanings and reasons for use of certain vocab. I think I was 16 years old when my sister took me as a ‘subject’ for her psychology practical exam. I was given a test and in the end she announced that I had poor verbal abilities.

Ouch!

Years later, the CAT 2012 proved her right.

OK so my vocab sucks, maybe that’s why I’m interested in looking more closely at words and that’s how this caught me. Academic Inflation. It really is something, and it’s happening all around. How many times have you heard your peers saying “one degree just isn’t enough anymore”? My sister herself took up masters because she thought just having a bachelor’s degree was worthless. (I’m not sure how much she loved the subject, lemme not get on her bad side over a blogpost) My dad had also told me that I really need to pursue a master’s course. He too thinks one degree isn’t enough. Forget these people, I can point a finger at anyone in a crowd and say he has atleast 1 friend, if not himself, in the US studying MS. It’s the trend. Two degrees is mandatory.

My nephew was being admitted to a school and the enrolment application form said that both parents need to have a master’s degree. Seriously?? OK parents being graduates is common these days, but PG?? Come on!! So the value for education is decreasing. Today your kid can get a school admission if you’re a graduate, tomorrow you need to be a PG and then a PHD??

In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economyover a period of time. Or a reduction in the purchasing power per unit of money right? So Academic Inflation would mean the reduction in credibility providing power per unit of education? Or something like that.

We’ve heard most people saying that they go for a master’s degree to add more value to themselves, but a degree is not a certificate of competence, is it? So what does that mean? The people who do masters are actually people who are incompetent to survive with just a graduation degree? Then doesn’t that make them less intelligent?

With increasing popularity of Steve jobs and the kind; on the one side we have a propaganda about studies or structured education not being a necessity, and on the other we have people scrambling and swarming exam halls and classrooms because they want to be more credible. All these mean, the higher your educational qualification, the lower is your competence?

So if we take a clean sheet approach where each person is stripped of their qualification or background, and graded based on their ability to think, work and other performance measurement criteria, then where would each one stand? Nooo we don’t want to do that… Cuz its just easy to throw around my weight cuz I have a fancy MS or a Phd.. but wait... So does everyone else in my country!! I’m gonna buy more degrees! Another Phd perhaps??

Hermit at the office

2013-07-11T22:20:00.000+05:30

An interesting thought crossed my mind when the speakers started talking about their ‘past experience’ in the orientation program at my college. ( well yeah I’m back in the class room.. so you can expect more posts from me.. or lets see) they all said, I have 15 years experience in corporate world, I’ve learnt things for 30 years in a Bank or I have 6, 10, 12 years experience in the teaching profession . I said OK.

After a while it just occurred, if I do a BA in 5 years or an MBBS in 8 years or an MBA in 4 years, does that mean I know better than my friends who passed out in 2 years? No right? It means I was a poor student and I have less to credit myself. Here, more is less. But while speaking of work experience, more is more. Does it really have to be that way?

Why can I not learn how things done in 2 years? Or say 3 or 5 max… why do I have to do the same job for 10, 15 or 30 years to know all about it? Does that mean whatever I am doing each day is so less that I need to spend a long time to learn what I actually call my job? On the one side we are sacrificing so much in the name of work and then we realize that we have done and learnt so little then where’s the point of taking up such a job? Or living such a life??

If you are interested in collecting a vast experience base spanning over years then you’re aim is not to be the owner or leader of your business, it is simply to be the hermit, a hermit who has seen a lot of success over time and has learnt a lot, but only to end up as an old hermit with stories of his glorious past.

Well, my regular readers might be thinking why the sudden change in attitude… well I just feel that if you are training me to run in a rat race, then stop feeding me tales of the hermitage on the hill and teach me how to run faster! Thank you very much!

BMTC Ki Jai

2013-05-16T20:10:00.001+05:30

About time I wrote something about the Bangalore Metro Transport Corp. AKA the BMTC. History has known the bus service, then called BTS (and with love called Bitre Tigra Sigalla) to be a loss making and inefficient public mode of transport. The rickety buses that broke down without warnings to no bus for hours and a few other bad memories of Bangaloreans of the 90s were all taken care by the dissolution of the BTS and the formation of the BMTC.

Don’t worry, I’m not planning on boring you with history, but just know that the buses were not that good in olden times and are now better. That should be enough history.

So why did I start writing about BMTC? Well… I was always scared and unhappy about travelling in buses, as a 9-10 year old kid with his school just 3 stops away I had a lot to complain about. The bus would be so crowded, I couldn’t go deep in the bus or stand by the door and not to mention that I’d generally forget the pass and try to get by without paying. Apart from the school part, the 3 of us would take the bus on Sundays and on holidays to go visit the aquarium and other pet stores. I never really liked it. Once I remember someone sticking a burning cigarette in my ear while I was trying to get on. I guess smoking wasn’t banned in those days.

It was probably in 2002 that the BMTC first started reporting small profits. It still didn’t matter to me; I stayed 3 just stops away from my school and didn’t like travelling in the bus.

Oops! :D Even though I said I won’t bore you with history I guess I somehow still managed it. Anyway… So after I joined college, I was for the first time I was able to travel long distances. It was then that I fell in love with the buses and the BMTC.

By this time the BMTC had started reporting profits almost every year. They had increased their fairs, but they had also introduced new things that were never seen in Bangalore. They started by abandoning all old buses and got new coaches. Here they introduced the auto door system. The Driver would open the doors when there’s a stop and he would close it as soon as the bus departs from the stop. This idea of having a door surprised many people. People believed it just made things bad from the public, so we can’t climb onto the bus when the doors are not open? What about signals? Well, they generally wont let us in even there!

Then came a rush of ideas, a pass bus for all those who have passes, it was generally intended for students but everyone with a pass, even monthly and daily pass would be allowed. Then came the Pink Bus, the women’s special bus, it worked well first, but you might’ve seen the pic on fb, men got in and the idea failed. Then they still maintained the Pushpak bus, which has better suspensions and costly by a rupee.


A Lady Driver of the BMTC

There was also the advent of Vajra, the Vovlo AC bus. This took everyone by surprise. An AC city bus! Yay! After a couple of years, BMTC bought a few Marcopolo buses too, these are the AC buses that run on the streets of New Delhi. They are a little cheaper but eww! Look so ugly! :D

You can say BMTC is the Muhammad Bin Tughlaq of Bangalore, they came up with so many innovative ideas and well... Not all of them caught on.

Some such ideas were:

Janti vahana: Two coaches connected (like a train!)at the middle with a seating capacity of about 60

The Orange and Blue Lines: High Frequency buses that go around a route

Big 10: Buses that connect suburbs on 10 Big and famous roads to the center of the city.

The Atal Sarige: Named after PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the bus connects places with low income earning people with the city.

Bus Day

The Hopital Bus: Makes a route around the bigger hospitals in Bangalroe

The ORRCA: Outer Ring Road Companies Association route, that goes around the IT companies on Outer Ring Road.

The 156 Stops On Route 601

Ring Route Buses: These just keep circling around the city. My fav in Route # 601, it has 156 stops!!

Then theres the Vayu Vajra AKA the BIAS, it connects the city to the Airport, now this is interesting, the then transport minister R Ashoka tried a lot of new things here too, like LCDs and Mobile Pantry and WiFi hot spots on these buses. Some of them still work I suspect.

Bus Day: The 4^th of every month is to be Bus day in Bangalore. It’s to spread awareness of public transport, buses won’t cost less, but there would be many buses that day. And the officials of BMTC won’t use their personal vehicles that day.

Now there are the JnNurm Air Suspension buses, Metro Feeder service and a lot more. Another thing that deserves mentioning is the maintainance of these buses. Well, I'm not much of a mechanic, but you dont generally see a broken down bus these days :)


The Only Remaining Double Decker in Bangalore

So the thing about BMTC is that it’s sitting on a huge pile of money and the officials and ministers are not afraid of trying new things. Ofcourse all this came because they improved the service and improved their coverage. BMTC covers... well lakhs of KMs everyday and ferries even more people, you can look for more facts and figures on their site.

BTW they launched a new site a few days ago, check it out its got all the details from routes to fairs to maps and everything!

http://www.mybmtc.com/

KSRTC is not far behind; they have lots of services too, from regular non A/C to A/C pushback, multi-axel Volvo’s and Mercedes to buses with LCDs on the back of every seat, mini pantry and on board chemical toilet! The KSRTC has got to be one of the best state owned bus service in the country!

Recently, Or maybe that was last year, I read in the paper that BMTC and KSRTC are the only profit making Bus service in the country, and traveling in BMTC actually made me like buses now, I make it a point to take atleast 1 bus when I’m in another town.

The contrasts... well we’ll talk about it some other day :)

Here are a few more pictures

Collage of Airavata

A Fleet of KSRTC A/C Volvo Buses


Flower Decorated Mercedes Benz in Front of the Vidhana Sauda

Let It Count

2013-03-06T15:38:00.000+05:30

Ever since I read Freakanomics, I've been up in arms with whatever is happening around me. I'm just so hell bent on finding reasons behind why anyones doing what they are doing. I mostly think of bringing down politicians or celebs, but in general I’ve been thinking a lot, trying so hard to find patterns and answers to all kinds of questions. Actually there are not many questions, I’m just conspiring things to frame my own questions. After all, it’s good to question right?

That’s what my dad kept saying… sadly for him it only sounded good until I started asking questions.

Anyway.. So the deal with this post is my obsession with Freakanomics. Freakanomics generally means finding patterns or signs to explain economic, social or political decisions and happenings. I’m just posting a problem that I found while watching TV. I’ve cracked my head and come up with scenarios, but I still can’t find a solution.

Heres the problem:

Problem Statement: The latest trend in TV channels has been the addition of the timer. It started with movie channels and now can be found in all channels including news and music channels. The timer starts counting down from 2 mins with a board about it that says "show will be back in" or "movie continues in" or "more news is" etc.. the objective of implementing the timer is to hold the audience. If there is a timer then you will know that the show will be back in just 2 mins and will not change the channel.. therefore watching more advertisements.

But theres another angle... if you know that the show will resume in 2 mins, then you will change the channel knowing that the show won’t start for atleast 2 mins.

Also, not all add breaks are 2 mins long, they are 5 or say 8 mins long and so.. the timer won’t show up till the first 6 mins are past. In that case, I will switch to another channel and just keep checking if the timer has appeared. So the channel is losing viewership in the first 6 mins. But will they have views in the count down period.

But as seen earlier, once the timer comes up, the viewer will switch to other channel because he knows that the show won’t return for atleast 2 mins

So, is this idea of having the timer good or bad for the channel? If you were the customer would you want your product to be advertised in the 2 min window or before that? Or is the idea itself retrogressive and will reduce the viewer ship during breaks in the long run? Think!

That was the problem which I couldn’t solve as I’m thinking too much from customer, channel and the viewer’s POV. So I thought I might get some help if I posted this on the blog. Not to mention.. some comments :P :D

Keep digging!! You could just be right!

The Undertaker

2013-02-14T21:32:00.000+05:30

Smoke! Like the exhaust fumes were not enough, now there was smoke from burning wood in the middle of the road. Wait a minute, there was no fire on the road, sure the private bus depots close by set tires on fire sometimes, but this is wood smoke. That’s when I saw an aluminum chimney coughing thick black smoke. Don’t they have norms? Polluting the environment in broad day light and that too with such a short chimney? Isn’t anyone bothered? Or maybe they bribed the authorities to have a polluting factory in the heart of the city? Well to relieve me, it wasn’t a factory. It was the Shantinagar crematorium.

I had noticed the crematorium many times, spotted many ambulances or black vans used carry the deceased parked in the compound, hundreds of people, lots of flowers, chanting, drums and anything that’s generally found in the crematorium. It always looked like a celebration. Many people have the belief that we must send the dead with happy faces. Even though its practically impossible to be happy at our loved ones death, there is a festive mood, maybe not from the close ones, but hired professional... yeah professional dancers, drummers and singers who make the last ride joyous for the departed soul.

I was just thinking about all these when I thought about the undertaker, would he have a family? How does he get food and clothing? Does he wear cloths picked up off the dead bodies? Are the fruits that he gets to his children left behind by the family of the dead? Does he get flowers to his wife that were used to honor the dead? How can he have a wife? Who would want to marry an undertaker? Does he have kids? Would his boy grow up to be an entrepreneur? No, he’s just next in line to become the undertaker.

No wonder the undertaker never dies, Or maybe he was never alive.

Made in India, Banned in China

2013-01-07T15:04:00.000+05:30

I woke up early to wish my sister on her birthday. The day also brought about one of those days when I’m early to office. Well, on time actually. The Wednesday started early, and there were few mails that caught my interest; except the one from a colleague from the China office. The Chinese Had visited India a few days ago and I had actually managed to get close enough to be able to ask them to open my blog after they got back to China. I had always wanted page views from China. Ever since the rise of India and China cliché, I had my eyes set on China and well, getting Chinese eyes on my blog was also important.

Hi H,

Bad news for you, your blog is also banned in China. :(

Regards,

The first reaction was fear. Have I don’t something wrong? Have I written something bad? Am I in trouble? I was scared. But I hadn’t written anything about China at all. In the Anty Lifepost, I remember saying “But isn’t China doing good?” and that was the only time I had ever used the word! Why would you ban me? I recently wrote a post onPakistan, but that was also promoting Peace. Maybe the Chinese don’t want India and Pakistan to be in peace :P Thinking more, I remembered the Rich andResponsible Posts, where I had again mentioned China, but it was a post against America, or rather against Obama, did the Chinese like Obama? Everyone knows China has a lot of Forex and export business with USA, so maybe they don’t want their people to see me talk bad about USA.

After the first few minutes of fear passed, I felt happy and even started to feel a little proud. I had caught the eyes of the Chinese after all. My posts got to China! Wow that sounds so awesome! I’m actually a banned author! People would use proxy servers! search for me on Google and Twitter! And wait for me to make posts on other underground sites and blogs! I’m a banned author! So exhilarating!

Then I suddenly remembered there was no twitter in China! SY and AC had told us a little about China, there was no facebook, no twitter, no self-owned homes and no one cared if your house came in between a road widening project. It goes down! It takes a hundred years to take down a stray temple in the center of the road in India, leave alone houses! Why temple? even a cud chewing cow is stronger than a honking Million Rupee SUV!

‘Do you have strikes in China?’ I asked AC over some tea on their last day in India.

He said, ‘oh no no!’

‘There are never strikes in China. You can do Strike if you want, but you will be thrown in prison, maybe forever.’

The four of us had a hearty laugh, but fell silent. All of us thinking why we laughed.

This memory of banning, censoring and silencing came back when I was told I was banned in China. So like any other smart person, I Googled:

Why is my blog banned in China?

There were many results and a link to Wikipedia read, list of sites blocked in China. I hit it and saw some really good sites, facebook, twitter, youtube, Pikasa were all blocked in China! The number 13 on the list shot down my snout and showed me why my Blog is banned. It’s not me… it’s the whole of Blogspot!

Missing The Point

2012-12-20T14:12:00.000+05:30

This post is one of the smaller posts on the blog. It’s about the DelhiGangRape of a 23 year old Medical Student. The news of the atrocities of barbaric lust spread like fire in summer. TV channels, newspapers, celebrities, politicians, social media hid nothing and poured out all the anger after her anguish. The chills of her torture chilled the people of Delhi more than the cold air of Delhi winter.

The politicians sticking to their profession spoke of and about each other. Some spoke of more laws and reforms, but on the very same day there was a scuffle in the parliament (ministers hitting and fighting each other literally) and the house was adjourned at half day.

NGO’s, Human Rights people, Women’s Rights people and hundreds and thousands of people came down to the streets to protest. People came down to meet the CM and question her about each other’s safety in Delhi, but the reply they received was jets of water from a police hose.

Just today I got a message on my whatsapp, it read

Dear Delhi,

I know I don’t have your 4 lame roads, and metros, and posh kothis, my people drive on narrow roads, live in small houses, travel in non-ac locals. Maybe your winters have made all your hearts cold. My women are safe, irrespective of their cloths, the time or the mode of transport, because I am always watching, I never sleep.

Sincerely

Mumbai

I was both shocked and saddened by this. It’s adding insult to injury. It looks like the Mumbaikars just see this as a chance to undermine Delhi. Would they really do that? The people of Mumbai are better than that.

Another, rather popular concept is that our society tells women what to wear than teaching men not to rape. Yes, that does sound good, and also seems to make sense. But does it really??

In the two scenes above, we have looked at two different things,

1. It’s about Delhi

2. It’s about men

But we have forgotten the heart of the matter; the crime.

Delhi might have the highest number of rapes, eve teasing or other assaults on women, but it’s not about the place or the people. It’s the weakness of the system that fails to curb or punish the crime, thereby failing completely to instil any sort of fear in the perpetuators.

Coming to the second point; there is no meaning to making the crime sexist. Of course, we live in a male dominated society and women have been victimised even in this era. In most rape cases when women come forth to complain or fight, they have been called to be the reason for the rape, calling them (the victim) to be the reason for the crime. People have spoken as if the women deserved to be raped, and that’s where they said that women need to dress responsibly. Women or anyone would take offence at that. And that’s why there came the expression of “women are taught to dress instead of men taught not to rape”

Anyone who holds the victim responsible is surely out of his senses, but there is no reason to make it sexist. See the crime as a crime.

Why do we lock our doors at night? To save ourselves from being robbed. Does someone come up and say we live in a society that teaches us to lock our doors instead of teaching thieves not to steal? No.. because theres no problem in seeing a crime as a crime there. But when it comes to rape it suddenly gets sexist. Maybe if we had some male rape victims or female rapists then the story would’ve been different. But as Batman said, a criminal is not complicated. Nor is a crime, as long as we can see what’s in the heart of the crime and not what’s around its perimeter.

Fashionataion

2012-12-03T23:03:00.000+05:30

Hey why don’t you post it on your blog too? I’ll give you a free shirt :P thats the reason for this post :D

A friend of mine just joined hands with one of his friends from his days in the UK to deal in fashion. I didn’t really understand what they meant to do but I had a feeling that they were gonna make an online clothing store and sell cloths. As simple as that. But as it turns out, its not that simple.

I found out about the real deal of craziness… or lets say freakological obsession with fashion and sense of style was clearly pointing to the fact that they had their heads working on doing something bigger. My friend asked me to write an seo article that could help route traffic towards their site. It wasn’t really that hard, but this was only my second article on fashion. The first one was on nail art! :P

Anyway so as I went on writing I did realize that some of the things I said in the write were actually true! :O I know! That never happens in advertisement articles right? At least not mine! :P So I went ahead and looked at the site.. they really did have designers live on the site.. and I just wondered for a sec if I could get someone to stitch me something that’s exactly my size! :D ok im not that bothered about cloths.. cuz I kinda believed that it’s the ‘who’ more important than the ‘what’ or maybe I said it cuz I just couldn’t find fitting cloths :P (just in case your thinking I’m fat.. im not :P)

Ok so heres the article I wrote for him... I’m posting it here cuz hes my bud and well… yeah also for the free shirt :P

Fashionation is not a real word, at least not yet. It’s a made up word for fashion and fascination. Fashion in a bird’s eye view can mean a way of life where everything you do or wear intrigues and makes a statement. The general perception of fashion is looking good or using something that can make you look good. A fashionable phone or a fashionable article of clothing is generally perceived to be a good looking merchandise that brings you appreciation. Sadly, that’s probably the worst way of defining fashion.

As I’m writing this article in the wake of a new online clothing store that I saw over the weekend, let’s stick to cloths as fashion. Clothing is probably the biggest way of looking fashionable, and over centuries, people have been expressing themselves by creating and wearing different kinds of cloths. This idea of expression of feelings, thoughts and ideas through dressing cracked open a whole new world of designers and trend makers across the globe. Today as we make way for a world of freedom and expression, we see more and more people taking up this creative way of expressing and adding the much required glamour and valor to the cause.

The biggest dread of all fashion enthusiasts is keeping up with fashion. Being aware of where to find what and when to do what is another major road bump. Just the other day, my friend visiting Bangalore for the first time asked me ‘who’s cloths are hot in Bangalore this winter?’ I fell face first at that. I had no idea of the designers in Bangalore, I always bought from sites or stores that had decent looking cloths. I Looked up a few regular sites online, but couldn’t find anything that tells me who’s selling what. That’s when I stumbled upon www.mydesignersales.com

mydesignersales is the online store of a Bangalore based Clothing and Fashion Corporation called United Fashion Mart. The firm itself deals in the manufacture and sales of apparels and accessories with zeal for spreading awareness and tasteful sense of fashion across masses. mydesignersales being the online store makes access to fashion more reachable and affordable to all. Plus Being in Bangalore, it’s only a matter of time before there are free reigning fashion stylists running amok on the streets!

mydesignersales takes a whole new approach to selling cloths online. It’s like an online version of a boutique where you can get to personally see, meet and socialize with your designers online. mydesignersales has a list of the top selling fashion stylists from different cities across India, or maybe even the world. Going to Delhi for a week? Buy the top selling designs of Delhi in Bangalore and blend in to the Delhi crowd! Try! Designers like Julie Kagti, Anu Nagappa and Arjun Agarwal are some of the top selling labels on mydesignersales.

Apart from giving you the advantage of meeting your designer, if you’re really really nice and of course ready to pay a little, you can even place requests and get your own designs loaded onto the website! That’s definitely got to be a first! mydesignersales clearly has a lot of new things to offer. In the end, making people express themselves and reflect their personalities using the powers of fashion is what these FashionFreaks aim at. That’s why they say, each time you visit mydesignersales, you’re assured of fashionation! ;)

That was it! Buy clothes from my frn y’all :D

Oh btw.. if you think Im good at seo then.. you can mail me.. I write for free shirts all the time :P

Psalm E Pakistan

2012-11-26T22:19:00.000+05:30

The climax of the movie border always leaves a warm fuzzy hangover. Though it’s about a war, the song at the end does make you feel that the war was a mistake and both of us have so much more to worry about than fighting over boundaries or anything for that matter. I was always interested in Pakistan, and writing about Pakistan. Any Indian or Pakistani of the Present day or at least the youth would have strong feelings about the whole partition of India episode. Some objective and some perspective, but all of us have views, bends, feelings and a stance.

India was one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement in the 50s and 60s while the USA and the USSR were busy making pacts and treaties to make their respective power blocs bigger and stronger. Now one might say the Non-Aligned Movement was started by poor or the then 3^rd world nations because they just couldn’t risk supporting one and be the target of the other’s fury. As it is, the Non-Aligned Movement is based on a bigger idea. Its about Believing that it is possible to remain neutral at any time by anyone. And being an advocate of being objective I support this theory and hence have always held an objective view over Pakistan.

A few months ago, say 2 or 3 maybe I picked up Shashi Tharoor’s Pax Indica. It basically talks about India’s foreign policies, foreign relations and India’s place on a global setup. He spoke extensively about Pakistan and India. The chapter was rightly caller Brother Enemy. Pakistan is after all born out of India and the people are more or less Indian. They always have.

Mr. Tharoor speaks of partition, Kashmir, the different wars we’ve had and finally talks emphatically about terrorism. His points are straight and precise, and so yet sensitively carved live the curves of Megan fox. (Sorry whenever someone says curve I think of her :D)

He talks at length about the gaps between the INTELLIGENCE and the civilian government of Pakistan. Its a known fact that the INTELLIGENCE is sitting on tones of cash. In fact the INTELLIGENCE gets almost or more than half the total budget of 1 fiscal year. So in a situation where there is a serious lack of schools, hospitals, or in general amenities of life the army and INTELLIGENCE suck all the money out of the people of Pakistan. The army isn’t too keen on listening to the will of the civilian govt. and caters to its own goals, which may not always be intended at the best of India, and in turn resulting in the bad of Pakistan it self.

I was torn in half when I read these. Of course I knew that the army or Pakistan and the civilian govt. don’t always see eye to eye, but the revelation of the fact that the govt has limited hold on the army did raise my brows, like my eye brows was one with my hair.

Another question boiled into me was who’s gonna tend to the people? The politicians made a lot of noise and puffed up the people that theres a need to end Musharraf’s rein as president and there a need for proper democracy and what not. So the people did get excited and come out on streets and after a lot of crazy things (beyond my comprehension) there were elections and Muhammad Mian Soomro was elected president. And after Benazir Bhutto’s murder, the PPP was elected to power and Asif Ali Zardari became the President. All this is fine but what are these people doing?

Pakistani people are still struggling against the terrorists, there are criminals hiding in Pakistan thanks to the INTELLIGENCE’s invitation and reformers and socially responsible civilians are killed in broad day light. And if you’ve been complaining about the raise of fuel prices in India, the fuel price is way over a hundred rupees in Pakistan, and its gets worse, price determination happens every week!

So is the democracy drama and all the things these politicians did to overthrow Musharraf an eye wash? I asked my Pakistani Orkut friend of 3 years.

Yes!

The one answer with an exclamation mark was like a gun shot at point black.

He went on to say,

Things were very good in Musharraf regime, call him a dictator or whatever you want to but he is the man who supported freedom of media. Even pak's economy was boosting. And now things are pathetic. You know, he was the one who set Pak before Islam. That’s what a country needs.

It felt nice to listen to him. I probed more and asked,

Ok what do see for Pakistan in the Future?

I can not say anything here. If you see the history of pak, there have been some good times. But when they start building up they falter somewhere. so I can only hope that future is bright; which is only possible by imparting proper education. There is a dearth of rationality among masses and one simply CANNOT understand religion without education. Thats my opinion yours can differ obviously.

I definitely had no reason to differ there. I was also stunned at his strong emphasis on improving education. I liked that. I had never spoken much about national politics with this guy. It had always been about Harry Potter and cricket. Except one odd day when he’d told me he wanted to be a computer engineer.

So I bit the bullet and finally threw a tough ball at him.

Me:

cool... one big question thats really been eating me

your cool right?

He:

haha

yeah

Me:

yeah.. so

the question is

how does one remain patriotic and try not to be ashamed of his country and not choose to make rash decisions when there are so many figures pointing mistakes from outside and so little action been taken from those responsible?

He:

thats a tough one

and mature people here in pak do think about that

Me:

but good question right? ive been thinking a lot

He:

yeah good question!

but majority satisfies itself by conspiracy theories

it may sound weird to you

but majority here thinks that all these nations are anti Islam

anti pakistan

and that is the reason why all this blame game is being played

Me:

some ppl get high on substance.. some on religion

He:

true

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

It was really something. It gives a lot for the Brain and Heart when there are people thinking and acting like this guy. The teenager Malala is a example. She’s another example of the youth wanting rights and education for their people. She was a strong, neutral voice talking of the truth and that offended many a bad man. Too bad the system just won’t let such people run the country. It also reminds me of a beautiful video featuring mid/high school girls from Pakistan talking about how they really feel and how they are made to feel about the Indo-Pak relations.

Rounding up this post, I’m not going make comments on the partition of India or the numerous wars or other difference India has had with Pakistan because this was never a political write, the post was aimed at talking about the people in Pakistan. (I don’t know if they call themselves aam janta :D) I wanted to say that we need empathize with the people of Pakistan. On the one side there is the adamant army and intelligence with its own agenda (no one knows what the army wants) and on the other side there is the helpless civilian govt and politicians fishing for power and money. In this quarrel... what’s to happen of the people of Pakistan? Does anyone care about the people anymore?

Kaveri Amma

2012-10-06T12:32:00.001+05:30

I actually posted this on FB first.. but bah! no reason not to copy paste.. plus i can add more pictures here :D yay!

Considering only the monsoon season, the chart above shows, Karnataka gets 75% of its rains in the SW monsoon in the period of Jun-Sep, and the remaining in the NE monsoon in the period of Oct-Dec.
In case of TN, 40% rains are received in the SW monsoon and the remaining in the NE monsoon.
The problem that occurred this year was that the rain gods failed to show up. The SW monsoon disappointed all and there were severe water shortage in all parts of the country.

Scenario in September.

TN asks KA to release more Kaveri water and accuses KA of being illegal and inhuman.
You’ve seen the stats.
TN gets its major chunk of rains after Sep. KA hardly gets any rains after SEP, and this year especially there was a draught declared in close to 16 districts.
It’s true that SW monsoon has been a failure even in TN. But there is still hope for them in the NE monsoon, but for KA; NE monsoon doesn’t promise much, and in this situation where there won’t be much rain from now on, is it really wise to release KA’s only source of water?? Will TN give back kaveri water when they have rains in Nov? or does KA suffer from draught all over again in the winter?? Please think.

ok so thats all the things i posted on fb.. now a few more things I had worked out but couldnt get it on fb.. think on these too..

The biggest argument of TN is that Karnataka receives more rains than TN.. well sure the total average might be more.. but theres more to it.. the malnadu regions get thousands of mm of rains per year.. but the bayaluseeme plus north karnataka is as bad as a desert..

secondly.. tn uses more Kaveri water than its a reason for.. all the tributaries and the rain thats the reason to fill up the Kaveri is used by tn.. and yeah.. there are hardly any addition to the kaveri from any rivulets in tn..
well... before i go over board.. lemme hand the staff to a better person who knows better to explain this...

just follow this link...

Some guy who knows more than me

ok i worked late into the night making this list.. so damn! i gotta post it somewhere!! :D

King of All Times

2012-10-02T14:51:00.001+05:30

There are very few days when I’ve worked after dark, but whenever I do, I make sure to take a look at the lit glass buildings near my office and the fiery collation of brake lights on Richmond road. The UB city is hard to miss from my building. The lit elevator shaft and the blue and red of the helipad on top are always sites I envy. Yday I happened to see a few lit windows too. Mallya must be at work with his managers I thought, or maybe drunk? Whatever the case, but I don’t know if they could afford to burn so many lights I thought to myself and smiled.

As I was walking out towards the exit I caught a third eye’s view of the top floors of the UB city. He must be working so hard, maybe coming up with something ingenious. I was actually surprised at myself, Mallya has lost a lot of things while trying to revive his airline with a broken wing and yet I seem to have some strange confidence in him. Strange indeed, but that’s when I remembered reading the Forbes of July 20. The cover story said that Mallya and his managers never looked worried or desperate when they went to talk to their banks or investors. In fact there seemed to be an air of poised arrogance in their arguments and they had complete faith in their plans and were completely certain that the KFA would fly again. Their only argument was - FDI.

Banks together have lost close to rupees 7000 crore! More than half the staff of KFA is on strike and none of them have received their salaries from 6 months!! How the hell is he gonna come out of this one?? Then suddenly news comes out that there might be a deal with Diageo, the world’s largest liquor maker. Mallya and Diageo were in talks for 2 to 3 years and the talks had failed every time, maybe nows the end of the road when there needs to be some selling and sacrificing to get some inflow of money.

That’s when it struck me, how were Mallya and his men so confident of the FDI?

Just making casual conversation, I spoke with my friends:

Me: Boys! I gotta theory,

Me: Maybe, Mallya’s deal with either Heineken or Diageo took some serious turn and he got some prospects of cash, then with his charisma he cast a spell on the govt to pass the FDI, the govt is anyway in favor of the brave and the rich, so with pranav da gone, and chidu taking over finance ministry, Mallya had a chance. Chindu is anyway too close to the banks, his family or extended started 4 banks in tamil nadu right? So maybe Mallya worked closely with Chidu, Chaudhary and a few other bank and govt guys to convince them that if the FDI was passed he would get all the money he needed to make his kingfisher fly again, and maybe get a bit more.

Me: Andddd… with the FDI passed, he doesn’t have to make deals with both Heineken and Diageo, maybe that’s why he’s stalling the Heineken deal.. lets see.. its just a theory :D plus.. you should see his tweets on FDI :P

Friend: But It’s a tough deciesen for anyone to buy shares in a company with 7k crore in debt.

Me: dude! Anyone would buy once the govt is out of the way.. as in FDI is passed.. I know I would

Friend: dude.. KFA shares are at 16 rupees or something.. :P

Me: lol.. yeah I know.. ok heres the time for my ~serious statement making face~ I don’t buy shares for money dude.. I buy shares for my share. ~hunk look~

Friend: lol :P die.. its end game for Mallya dude.. hes gonna lose the dominant role in UB and US and even if he gets investors (fat chance) its gonna be pretty much the same on KFA.. and its all too famous that hes too hard to work when hes not the boss.

Me: hmmm…

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

So, the wide spread opinion about Mallya is that much has been ruined and the only way to keep his head afloat is to sell off everything and just be a pawn. Well, that’s ridicules.

Now, many people might not like him, his extravaganza or his business, people might call him an opportunist or even arrogant. I have members in my own family circles that don’t like him because he made money from the liquor that ruined so many families. Well, We can blame the Indian conservatives for that.

Speaking on Mallya, we all know who Vijay Mallya is; hes a rock star! How many Indians decided to buy an F1 team and name it after India? How many Indians decided to buy Tipu Sultan’s sword for 505,250 pounds? And who made sure India didn’t cut a sorry figure when we couldn’t stop the auctioning of Gandhi’s belongings in 2009?? Mallya.

There might be a lot of reasons to pull down Mallya and beat on him when hes low, but hes really a man of the riches who also means well. He doesn’t just want to be and feel rich alone; he wanted all of India to experience the riches. He wanted to give a luxury experience to the ppl of India, maybe that’s where he went wrong. When just a simple air travel is considered luxury in our country... maybe he went a little ahead of time to provide luxury to everyone in the country.

Ok.. where does he go from now? And what do I see for him?

It’s simple, the FDI was the last hurdle and now that hes beyond that, he should be clean. He just needs to watch out for a few months and then with his charm and elegant arrogance it would be no time before people joined him in catapulting the broken bird back in the air.

I believe the King of Good Times has proved it that he has no problems being the Baron at Bad Times… And to all those in strikes and literally being a pain in his ass... you better switch sides before hes rich again

Strike The Root of Penury, Strike Not the Heart

2012-09-14T23:38:00.000+05:30

Crisp Air turned Pungent and rolling wheels stuck. That’s the September of 2012 in Bangalore. Just after the BBMP called an indefinite Strike regarding the garbage clearing problem, five employ unions of the BMTC, KSRTC, NWKRTC and NEKRTC together called for an indefinite strike against the management calls of a 10% hike. The 10% salary Hike was not all that the Strike was based on, but it sure was the tipping point for the men.

Talking about Strikes, they are not bad things.(in fact very good things for school kids) Strikes, Bandhs and demonstrations are powerful tools in a democracy. But how you use it is the question. Hurling stones and glass buildings, setting old tires on fire and painting walls is all that happens in India. Now I dont want to talk a lot about the ways we Strike in India or why we do them, but lets think of the whats happens when people strike.

Obviously this article is coming but because of the Bus strike, so Im gonna talk about a few things I saw on tv. The Thousands of buses going off roads, lakhs of people stranded in bus stations. Some angry people throwing stones at buses, streets filled with cars and private vehicles, autos costing more than double or triple the meter price, or In short, everyone was having a bloody hard time. So can we conclude that the purpose of striking is to induce pain and cause damage??

isnt there a better way of striking?

lemme quote buzzle

"One of the most important Japan facts is that the Japanese are amongst the most hard-working people in the world. Once, the workers of a shoe factory in Japan went on strike. The way they protested, represents certain facts about Japan which are typical of its industrious population. They simply worked on the manufacturing of single shoes (only for one leg). This way the production remained on course, but the company couldn't sell the product. Once the issue was resolved, the other pair was manufactured, resulting in a win-win situation for both company and the workers."

Can’t we do something like that??

Bandhs are all too famous in india.. but finally its india losing.. not the govt or some specific group of people. Its Indias growth that gets hampered during bandhs, businesses counting losses when banks call strike, and people lakhs of em suffering when theres a strike by something as important as public transport.

We can’t be like Japan, we are different people all together. We’re not as hard working as them, and neither do we care if our inaction causes loss to the public. But we’re emotional people, and people like you, me and us built this nation and made what it is today. We made India as big and powerful as it is. Today, India constitutes upto 80% of the total GDP in all of South East Asia. We’re not as useless as we think, we’re good people. Everyone panics when pushed back to the wall. We just need to know how to think. All of us are the same, and if I don’t care for the greater good, then how could you?

PS: notepad typing, so spare my spellings pls :D

Kill Better Than Cure

2012-09-03T15:55:00.001+05:30

A fortnight before his 25^thBirthday, Kasab is hit by the news of his Death Sentence being upheld by the Supreme Court of India. Ajmal Kasab was the only one to be caught alive of the 10 member terrorist group who spray painted Mumbai in blood. This attack not only made us aware of what terrorists can do but also raised serious question on the Homeland Security of India. An act of waging war resulted in a Death Penalty for the only serving disoriented youth turned jihadi born in Pakistan.

This was more than well received by the people of India. The country rejoiced as it finally became apparent that India is ready to deliver harsh punishments to those who pose threat to the integrity of this great land. The Economist once said that the 26/11 trial will be a test of the Indian judiciary and the resolve of the people of India; if they meant pronouncing a death sentence as the great test then we have passed. People of India majorly have also accepted and applauded the SC’s call. People like Raj Thakare have even gone so far as to distribute sweets and call it a day of celebration. And in a country as democratic as India there are people who opposed the death sentence.

Not surprisingly, there are NGO’s, activists, past court judges, and the so called intellectuals who are against the death penalty. Firstpost made an informative post that meandered about the idea of death penalty. It spoke of how India is one among the few nations that still administer execution as a punishment. At the same time the post also spoke of how difficult it is to kill convicts. The stats said that in the past 17 years only 1 convict has been executed while there are still more than 300 convicts on the death roll.

All this is fine. Facts, numbers and stories speak the truth. India is weak in killing people, It does take a long time for our courts to move cases and we really have spent more than 50 crores for Kasab’s super security jail where he ate Biriyani twice a day. But what of him??

It’s very true that he is a terrorist who attacked India and all that is Indian, and we have spent a lot of money on him, he has stayed in jails for almost 4 years and had ‘Biriyani’. But does that mean he wanted this? Can you imagine how it must be to be caught in a prison was something like a terrorist attack? Receiving all those methods of physical and mental torture in the prisons (which of course doesn’t come out in the media) being disowned by his country, his parents and everything that he considered his must have played something on his head. How must it feel when no one knows what you feel inside and then come out and make comments, rejoice and celebrate something about you without knowing how you’ve felt.

It reminds me of my placement season in college. The placements were in full force. Companies kept flying in every day and almost everyone in the college had at least 1 job offer by the end of the first month. As the second and third months rolled on, my close friends, not so close ones, everyone had a job and some 2 or 3, but I had nothing in hand, I hadn’t even been able to attend interviews thanks to my root burrowing marks. Depression, deprivation, lowliness, loneliness and a few other ness-es crowded my life and I was a walking dead in a world full of opportunities. And finally at the fag end of the placement season, I found a job that suited me and incidentally it was the first company to announce the joining date. As months passed and everyone had joined work, we met once at college and everyone kept telling me how lucky I was to be the first one to start working, and how I ‘hit’ a jackpot in the end… well it wasn’t hard to smile at them but it was hard for me to tell them how much mental and emotional stress I had been in while they were boasting and toasting their placements oblivious to my sorrow.

The same is what I saw when Veerappan, the Elephant Ivory and Sandalwood thief and the much feared dacoit in the woods of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu was killed in an encounter with the Veerappan Special Task force in the October of 2004. As the people of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu celebrated the death of the dacoit, his family and thousands of forest dwellers mourned his death. It is also reported that thousands of people were gathered for his funeral. And on the other side there were people like us rejoicing his death. I ask you here, is it so hard to stay neutral? Empathise a little, people like Veerappan or Kasab might be bad, but they’re humans too.

Coming to Kasab, in some interrogations, he has switched sides, and the police express their shock at this. It is reported that Kasab said that his operators offered money and security to his family, and if the India Police did the same, he was ready to work for them as well. There are also outcomes in the interrogations that suggest Kasab had noidea what was there in the Quran, on being asked about it, he only spoke of Jihad, and only a few high sounding lines at that. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kasab chose death over a painful half-life.

I’m not supporting Kasab, and I am definitely not against his death. I’m just saying kill him fast. Finish the cursed case. He might just be a juvenile well-meaning for his family, or he might be a deadly terrorist, but he wronged. And for this he must be punished. Kill him, but don’t keep his body and mind in a place where no one wants him, don’t let him go mad, don’t torture him with uncertainty. Give him death, not cruelty.