Blackhole

143 to 144

2011-06-07T12:38:00.000-07:00

We have read a lot about the Baba Ramdev and the related stories. There is no doubt that the move by congress to use force on peaceful protestors was atrocious. I hope you would be glad that if I mention that this post is not exactly about that incident.

Instead of evicting Ramdev, I feel, congress could have genuinely considered some of the demands of Baba. Though many points raised by him are valid, it’s not practical to implement it.

However two major demands raised by him appeal to me

1) Bringing back the black money stashed abroad in tax heavens and
2) Electing the PM directly.

It is easier said than done to bring back all the black money stashed abroad. Congress has been in power for the past 60 years. I am sure that most of the money would belong to the congress ministers / party members. No wonder 4 of the senior ministers went to the airport (or at least they were planning to) to convince Baba either to drop the demand or to convince him. The issue of graft has been haunting congress for quite some time now. DMK which has been a part of the congress ministry has also criticized Baba. I believe, if you note the parties which criticize Baba and trace the amount of black money stashed by the members such political parties, 80% of such black money can be brought back to India. It would be foolish to expect the government (any ruling party for that matter including BJP and congress in particular) to act on this as they would be directly affected by this. Who would bell the cat?

If people elect the Prime minister directly, he would have more power and authority. The PM would then be directly answerable to the public when it comes to important issues. However in the current scenario you can have a dummy person as a PM. However good he may be, he would not be in a position to act independently. Again it’s not easy to implement this. There would be several issues. For ex. What would happen if a person from one party gets elected as a PM and another party gets majority? Would he be heading the government, while the ministers would be from other parties? That would be chaotic.

I believe if we address the second point (somehow) we can easily address the first one quite easily.

A fish out of water

2011-01-16T08:31:00.000-08:00

“We lived in farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're gonna live on the internet!” I am sure you are aware of this quote; however, I am not sure whether we have realized the implications of this.

I am sure that most of us get frustrated if we do not have access to the social networking sites for a few days and I guess a majority of them would be women.

If Google ever takes a survey of who uses their chats most during the day, I believe, they would come up with an analysis that women use the chat windows more frequently when compared to men and for prolonged periods of time. Their active chat windows never cease to come down, whereas I observed that the active chat windows of guys are a few. For your record, I have not tried to peep into someone’s chat window. These observations are based on the casual glance of the screens of my colleagues as I walk past them.

What is the impact of these in the work place? You might think that it makes women concentrate less on the official work because of the online distractions. True. To some extent it has the effect of distracting them from their official work. But I cannot imagine a situation in which the internet access is blocked. It would frustrate them more and would make them less efficient.

Though the thoughts expressed above are gender neutral, I have focused on women as its impact would be more for the other gender, based on my experience. What’s your view on this?

Inflation and auto fare

2011-01-15T01:02:00.000-08:00

It has been a long time since I wrote a blog post. During this period if you analyze the front page news items, two major news items have dominated the front pages; Corruption and Inflation.

There are enough articles about corruption written by various columnists that I am bored of thinking about it let alone write on that.

Although inflation is equally talked about and discussed by everyone I thought of presenting a different analogy: A comparison of Inflation with auto fares. Why? One reason could be to make you to read further. Another, I happen to think about it. No specific reasoning behind it. Let me know whether this analogy appeals to you.

In my childhood days we rarely used to take auto. We generally used to travel by local bus as auto was considered to be costly. However since the public transport is not dependable sometimes we do travel by auto. During the late 80’s the auto fare for going to my uncles place from our place used to cost us Rs 5. For a government employee (clerical grade) the salary at that point of time was around Rs.5000.

Now auto fare for the same distance costs Rs.50. Auto fares keep increasing on a regular basis to factor the increase in the fuel prices and to factor in the inflation in the economy. Hence I thought considering this as a basis for the inflation is justified. Assuming that my assumption holds good (in sincerely believe it is), one should be earning Rs.50000 a month to be in the same category of the government clerk 20 years back. This shows how bad the purchasing power of a rupee has diminished over the years. If you consider the figure of 5000/50000 in the above example as net of tax, the gross figure should be around 65000-80000 (approx) assuming that you would be in a tax bracket of 25-30%

If you compare the above figures with your 5/6/7 figure salaries you can imagine at what level you are in the society vis-a-vis the government employee (clerk) a two decades back.

All these figures are for the period during administered pricing for the fossil fuels were in place. Going forward I cannot imagine a situation in which the prices keep fluctuating (read it as going up as the chances of downward revision is just a dream). Rupee has seriously lost value over the years, and what we have done is just added a few 0’s to our expenses and our salary. In actual terms either we have stagnated or went from bad to worse.

An Intriguing Inception

2010-08-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

Inception is one of the wonderful movies I have watched in the recent times. It has the potential to be crowned as the decade’s best movie. In case you have not watched the movie yet, I would advise you not to read the rest of the contents of this blog. Please watch the movie and then read this. The content of this blog post has the potential to spoil all the fun.

It has been a long time since the movie got released. I have watched it twice and many of us would have watched it twice by now. There are still some nagging questions about the movie which are still lingering in my mind, unless someone comes up with a proper logic for the questions. They are

1) Mal (Leonardo’s wife) is just shown as a projection. Or she lives in her mind or whatever. How can a projection take away the character from one level to another?

2) For the characters to go from one dream level to another, they need to be connected to the machine. However Fisher and Saito moved to other levels even when they are not connected to the machine!!

3) How did Saito find Cobb in the final dream level? Where did Saito get some men to work for him? Ideally Saito is not the dreamer. He neither has his own projection nor has the capability to defend an attack on his mind as Fisher did.

4) What was the kick for Cobb and Saito to come out of the limbo? If you assume that Saito shoots Cobb and shoots himself, then there is no need for Cobb to search for Saito. Saito could have killed himself anyway.

I think there could be some logic for these. Guess I may not have noted some of the assumptions in the movie. Do you have the answer for these questions? If so don’t forget to leave your comment.

The power of punctuation

2010-05-20T01:03:00.000-07:00

This is one of the shortest blogs i have ever written. Yesterday when i was travelling back home i was shocked when I peeped through the window. I was looking at the name board on top of a roadside shop which read as "Anus Hair Designer". Since I knew the local language as well, I checked out what was written in the local language. Then I realized that the name of the shop should read as "Anu's Hair Designer". Shows how powerful and important punctuation is, isn’t it?

In the dog house...

2010-05-18T01:20:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I updated my blog. I was contemplating different topics to write about in the blog: the telecom mess, failure of UPA II to address the price rise, naxal attack etc. But finally I decided to write about the topic which everyone could comment on. Yes, finally I am writing about cricket.

It had been quite some time since I watched cricket with interest. IPL, I thought, rekindled the interest in cricket across all sections of the society. For the past three years it has been attracting a lot of attention. But this year it has attracted a lot of negative publicity because of the heat it generated in political circles, ahead of the summer season.

When all is said and done, credit has to be given to Lalit Modi for making IPL a success. It is not a child’s play to conduct such a massive tournament, involving international players, in Indian soil with lots of domestic disruptions including the terrorist threats across the subcontinent. In the first year there was the challenge of making IPL a success by giving it a lot of publicity, conducting it in India in spite of the heat (peak summer season) and the disruptions like the bomb blast which ripped apart the pink city etc. Second year the problems were created by the Union government, as it was the election year. The tournament had to be shifted to South Africa in a very short notice. Still it was conducted successfully. The final year brought lot of negative publicity.

No doubt, when so much money is involved, most of the politicians in the country would watch like a hawk to ensure that they get their share. It’s taken for granted, that they should be getting their share, especially when they dole out so many tax sops for the tournament. This time, the infamous Shashi Taroor got involved in the bidding process, by openly supporting one of the bidders by being a mentor, which cost him the job. Modi then brought the ownership issue and then all hell broke loose. The government and BCCI woke up as if they knew anything about all this for three years. There were income tax raids on IPL franchisees, and there were rumors about the ownership and tax payment of various teams including KKR. Though there were raids by income tax department, there has been no action against any of the franchisees, as expected.

I am not sure what went wrong between Modi and Tharoor. But it’s clear that lot of money would have changed hands in the political circles. When the whole system blames one person for all the problems (especially when politicians are a part of the finger pointing exercise) you can be sure that they have identified a scapegoat. Modi has unfortunately been blamed for the entire mess, whereas everyone has a part to play in the whole affair.

At this point it looks like Modi is in the dog house. Let us see how things shape up after Modi’s response. He has submitted a response for 12000 pages. By the time BCCI reads it and takes action against Modi, I think the next IPL would be completed successfully.

The Hindu, which is against hindus

2010-02-26T03:45:00.000-08:00

A newspaper is a printed periodical whose purpose is to deliver news and other information in an up-to-date, factual manner. Though the news section only brings the facts, the facts can be interpreted in the editorial columns of newspapers.

Newspapers are supposed to provide views which are unbiased. Most of the newspapers in India try to balance their views. When it comes to religious views I believe most of the newspapers are secular. However there is one publication “The Hindu”, which has the habit of providing news and views which does not support the secular principles.

“The Hindu” claims to be secular in outlook. However, I find the articles are totally biased. Today when I read the article about MF Husain being given the citizenship of Qatar on the front page I was surprised. I wanted to check whether the same importance for this is given in other national papers. A quick check revealed none of them cared about this news item. However in Hindu, there were many articles about this apart from the front page article. The articles described this event as a national shame. I was wondering what is there in it to be considered as a national shame. There were many articles which carried views of various artists and film personalities toeing the line of “The Hindu”.

M F Husain is just an artist who derives pleasure in painting nude pictures of hindu goddess. Some people wonder how painting nude pictures of hindu god can be considered artistic. Lets not delve into that topic. Let us assume that it’s artistic. I am not sure why he does not try to paint Mother Mary in such a way? Why does he not try painting the picture of Prophet (leave alone nude pictures of him). I would have accepted that he has artistic tendencies if he had been impartial to any religion. However he has not done that. Had he painted the picture of prophet he would have been killed by the same country which has granted citizenship now.

I used to admire “The Hindu” for the quality of their English. However, the articles fail to impress me. I am sure if they continue to publish pseudo secular views; sooner or later the publication would have to find out a place in some other country where it can start it operations, just like the person whom they support.

MNIK review

2010-02-14T10:53:00.000-08:00

Last week started with huge expectations for the SRK fans and the movie goers. MNIK generated more publicity, thanks to shiv sena, who managed to help SRK indirectly by providing the much needed publicity.

I have not watched an SRK movie on the very first day. On watching the trailers of the movie I thought the movie would have some substance. The ratings provided by Times and other websites for the movie, fired us with enthusiasm. So we booked the tickets for the first day.

When you have huge expectations even an average performance could look dud. MNIK is not an exception. Right from the beginning I could not connect to the film. SRK has tried to act really well, as a person suffering from Asperger's syndrome. But there seems to be no connection to the character, the plot and the disease.

Karan Johar seems to be a confused man. He has taken a very heavy topic i.e muslim’s being treated as a terrorist in US. However, there seems to be no strong scenes to portray that they are treated badly. Most of the incidents portrayed in the film were silly. Seems he expected Kajol to create the magic which DDLJ had cast on the audience. But there is no such magic.

In fact there are a lot of irrelevant scenes in the movie, such as SRK shouting that he is not a terrorist during the visit of US president, helping kid in Georgia, Sam (Kajol’s kid) dying in the movie etc. No one was able to connect to the scenes or appreciate its relevance in the film.

When I heard that there was controversy over releasing the film in Mumbai, I thought SRK would not need or use such publicity. But after watching the movie, I guess shiv sena has a great role to play in providing publicity for that movie, without which it could have run out of theatres by now.

For a Noble Cause

2010-01-28T08:04:00.000-08:00

The day began with a lot of excitement and anxiety. When I entered office one of my colleagues was inviting everyone to participate in the Blood donation camp run by St. Johns medical college hospital in our office. I was in double mind, since I had never donated blood in my life. I was not sure whether to participate in the camp or not. My heart said that it’s a noble cause and its worth going there. However, bad memories of fainting during a blood test in my school days and the reluctance of some of our colleagues to donate blood restrained me from participating in the camp.

Finally after lunch when the HR lady came to my desk to check whether I have donated blood, I decided to give it a shot. Thankfully there were two colleagues of mine volunteered at the same time. I expressed my apprehensions to them. Since they had donated blood in the past, they informed me that it would not have any major effects on our body. Their encouragement helped me take a decision.

My mind was still filled with anxiety though I had taken the decision. The customary checks on the weight, blood group etc was over and I was interviewed by the doctor with the usual questions that they ask before donating the blood. There were ten beds in the hall and many of them were giving blood at that time. When the doctor was interviewing me I saw them collecting blood from the donors. It was almost the size of 500 ml milk packet. I was wondering whether there would be enough blood left in my body when they take 500 ml of blood. I had an urge to run back to my cubicle, but I restrained myself from doing so, realizing how bad publicity it would be if others come to know of it. When my turn came up a colleague of mine who had given blood had a black out. Looking at him my anxiety increased.

Finally I was in the bed thinking of what would be my status when I complete the activity. I was thinking whether god would have a list of people who have died by donating blood, and how the entrance of heaven and hell would be. But at last when the doctor came to me and told that the process is complete, I felt relieved. Finally I really felt good, because my blood could save a life in this planet. We would not get this opportunity on a daily basis. My suggestion to anyone who has not donated blood is to utilize these opportunities. To be frank, I never had any issues after donating blood. I was feeling a bit tired, which made me eat a lot of food during the day. Try it out at least once. It is worth the effort.

Finally when I was lying in the bed relieved that nothing bad has happened, one of the lady doctors came to me and encouraged me by saying that I had only given a small portion of the blood, which made me think about the sufferings that the other gender would undergo in the normal course of their life. Needless to mention, that this event increased my respect for the other gender.

Greatest Blunders in Indian history

2010-01-27T09:23:00.000-08:00

On the morning of Janurary 26 (60th republic day) I happened to read an article about the achievements of China. The article mentioned that China has made huge progress in construction, engineering, power generation, airport development, railways, space technology etc. There are high speed trains between Shanghai and Beijing which runs at the speed of 300 kms per hour, whereas our trains struggle to maintain an average speed of 100 kmph. Looking at the advancements that China has made, I realized that it would take 30 more years for us to come up to that level.

It made me think about our achievements in the past 63 years. Well, there is nothing much to talk about in terms of achievement. Hence I thought it would be better to write about the greatest blunders committed, which might be the root cause of our current status.

1) Nehru as Prime Minister: This can be considered to be one of the greatest blunders. I am not sure what made Gandhi choose Nehru over Patel. The policies of Nehru are being criticized by their own party men today. He neither had the vision nor was he a shrewd politician. He messed up the Kashmir issue, did not handle the relationship with China properly, his policies on NAM was total crap etc. We were not clear whether to align with erstwhile USSR or US. The first few years after a country’s independence is very vital for its development. Nehru ensured that we would not develop for the next 100 years by making terrible mistakes.

2) War with Pakistan: Most of us feel proud that we won the wars against Pakistan. Though the result of the war was favorable to us we did not get any benefit out of that. Ideally we should have used the opportunity to make Pakistan dance to our tunes. Alas! We did not!! Where in the world you can find a country which won the war and agreed to give away a part of its territory to the enemy. Ideally Pakistan should have been thrown out of Kashmir and shown its way out. We should have made them agree to the fact that Kashmir is a part of India and they would not mess up with us henceforth. We did neither. Instead we gave a part of Kashmir to them and agreed on the Line of control as the border. Had we resolved the Kashmir issue in 1970’s we could have easily concentrated on our development instead of fighting terrorism.

It is an irony that every one of us wants India to develop rapidly; however our political system is so corrupt that it would take decades to even come up to the level of present day China. While China was able to host Olympics and prove to the world that they are a major economic force, India is struggling to complete the infrastructure projects before commencement of common wealth games. Though I am not a great fan of communist principles, I am sure china would not have achieved so much in this short span had it been a democracy.

Exceptional exception

2010-01-19T11:05:00.000-08:00

Two movies that got released during December 2009 are the greatest hits ever: 3 Idiots (in Bollywood) and Avatar (in Hollywood).

If a movie has to be accepted by the majority of the audience, the script has to be extraordinary. The story line cannot be different these days. Only the script can make a difference.

I was not impressed with Chetan Bhagat’s book Five point someone. In fact I was half way through the book when I watched 3 idiots. Any script which involves taking you back to the college days is bound to be a hit unless the script is really bad. On top of that, if it is presented in a comical way, there can be no doubts about its success. In 3 idiots, the way in which the director has handled the heavy scenes are really good. For ex, though the scene involving Raju’s mom crying about the family situation is a bit irritating, the resulting scene is really hilarious. Similarly when the scene in which Rancho brings Raju back to normalcy is also good.

Apart from the normal stuff for which the film can be appreciated, I liked it because it questioned the conventional way of learning. I could never accept the conventional way of learning. Attending classes and mugging the stuff taught there takes us nowhere. There was no fun in learning in my school life, except for a few classes taught by teachers who taught with so much of enthusiasm. One should appreciate the director for providing such unconventional thoughts in a way that is acceptable to majority of the audience.

I was skeptical about the success of Avatar since I heard that it was based on science fiction. There are innumerable numbers of movies in Hollywood based on science fiction; movies where aliens attack our world, insects attacking human races etc etc. These doomsday theories and movies involving aliens used to irritate me a lot. Except for the technical excellence there was no other positive aspect in those films. Hence I had never watched SF movies in theaters.

But I liked Avatar because of three reasons. First, technically it is really brilliant. Almost all the scenes are based on imagination and there was no major mistake that I could find out. Second, handling emotional scenes involving aliens and for a change showing human beings as villains is refreshing. (In fact we are the villains in our own planet, leave alone other planets). Last but not the least; I liked it because it really had a theme which is closest to my heart. Destroying nature, especially trees, for human development is atrocious. And I could not accept the fact that humans destroyed the beautiful environment in alien land. Even though its fiction, the success of the movie lies in making us feel for destroying the nature. The film conveys that through nature we are all connected, and if nature is destroyed it is as good as destroying ourselves. Since the movie was exceptional, I thought having made an exception to the rule of not watching a fiction movie was worth it.

Charged by passion, Driven by egos

2009-11-02T09:45:00.000-08:00

It has been quite a while since I updated my blog. Though I promised to write more about Nigeria in my previous post, I could not find time to write about the experience. I thought my memories of Nigeria would fade over a period of time, making it difficult for me to recollect the experience. However it still seems to be lingering in my mind. The kind of brutal treatment meted out to the foreign tourists in the airport, lack of organized approach, failure to adhere to the rules etc made it a much more bitter experience in Lagos. In contrast, both my colleagues and the client were very friendly. How do I explain this? Can I say that it resembles India? Probably, yes.

Let’s move to the topic of this blog. Sometimes I wonder how boring it would be for the editors of the daily newspapers. If you categorize the front page news items in the last one year and sort it, do a count (*) and group by ( toad skills!!), you would probably get the following count.

26/11 and Pakistan’s involvement – 200
Warnings by Manmohan singh and ministers – 300 (sometimes they take off on Sundays and other holidays)
Pakistan’s rejection tactics – 250 (Sometimes AA Zardari would agree that terror elements in Pakistan is responsible for 26/11, then the next day he would release the arrested persons; even god cannot predict his behavior)
Kasab and his tactics – 120
Iraq bomb blast – 200
Afghan deaths – 150
Mukesh vs. Anil – 301.

I just gave 301 to the final item not just because it’s the topic of this post. In reality if you do the analysis you would certainly get this figure. Now imagine how difficult it would be for the editors.

Dhirubhai Ambani was passionate about his business and built reliance from scratch. It was very difficult for businessmen to do business in the license raj era. In spite of facing so many obstacles, he could grow it by leaps and bounds. The growth was possible because reliance was built with passion. Though there was negative publicity in the newspapers about reliance cheating the government, the public did not bother much because most of us cheat the government in some way or the other. I used to get inspired by the boldness of reliance group. Once there was some problem between reliance and BSE, I still remember the day on which I saw a full page advertisement by reliance about its intention to delist from BSE. Public debated that Ambani was stupid to do it. But, the next day BSE resolved the issue with Ambani. He was so powerful, yet he was not driven by ego, at least not in the eyes of public.

After his demise, the fight between Mukesh and Anil is the only story that keeps appearing in the front pages of the newspapers. They just want to prove each other, how powerful and mighty they are. Both have political clout, but yet they are not able to achieve success easily. I believe nowadays reliance group (Both RIL and ADAG group) is not able to achieve much because they are driven by egos, not charged by passion. If they have to as powerful as Dhirubhai Ambani, they should shed their egos and work passionately to achieve their objectives; else they would be riding for a fall.

My first impressions of “The dark continent”

2009-08-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

When I was asked to travel to Nigeria for a Project, I was not really excited. Especially after reading the travel warnings issued by the US and OZ. Nevertheless I had to travel. I had no other choice…

My total travel time to Nigeria took almost 22 hours including the stopover in Dubai for six hours (and excluding the six hours it took from Lagos to Abuja). When I was in Dubai, I thought those were the last few hours in a developed country.

Lagos and Abuja: Lagos is the economic and financial capital of Nigeria. Lagos was the capital of Nigeria from 1914 up to 1991; it was stripped of this title when the Federal Capital Territory was established at the purpose-built city of Abuja. Lagos is similar to Mumbai (so they say) and Abuja is like Delhi.

I was supposed to land in Lagos and take a connecting flight to Abuja. (Not a bad idea; I could cover two cities)

When I landed in Lagos, the flight attendant handed over a photo copy of the landing card (Yes Photo copy!! There are no printed landing cards). They set the expectations very clearly even before arrival. I filled up the landing card and went to the immigration section. There were two queues: One for the foreigners and the other for Nigerians. The foreigners queue was very quiet. I heard a commotion in the Nigerian side. Everyone was shouting at the top of their voice. No doubt the foreigners queue was very quiet. Obviously they were terrified at the sight of Nigerians fighting amongst themselves. They would have feared that they might show their anger on them at any point of time. Finally we came to know the subject of the discussion. Some of the Nigerians in the queue were terribly pissed off with the facilities available in the airport. One of them mentioned to the foreigners that the passengers have to pay $1 for the trolley in the airport.

The Lagos airport was very small. I could not imagine such a small airport for such a big city, esp., when it’s the commercial capital of the country. There was only one luggage conveyor belt. And there were passengers from many flights who were waiting for their baggage. There was confusion all around. I realized why the Nigerian was so agitated. This incident gave me the first assurance that at least some of them are good, if not all.
When you come out of Lagos airport, they have a system of verifying whether you have picked the correct luggage. I thought they might have such a system as some of the passengers might take others baggage and get away with it. A person verified my baggage tag on the boarding pass and on the luggage. Then he asked me to give him some chocolates. Somehow I managed to convince him that I do not have any chocolates and ran towards the driver who was waiting to pick me up and take me to the Lagos National airport, for my travel to Abuja. I was wondering what would be the state of the national airport esp., when the status of the international airport is in such a condition.

The national airport was ten minutes drive from the international airport. The landscape of Nigeria is similar to that of India. National airport was slightly better when compared to the international one. I checked in my baggage and waited for four hours to catch the connecting virgin flight to Abuja.

When I boarded the flight to Abuja, for the first time in my life I faced a situation where two people were assigned the same seat number in the aircraft. !!! Weird isn’t it? This confusion has happened even though the boarding pass is generated in the system. There were several people in the aircraft complaining of the same issue. The flight was delayed for an hour, because of this confusion. Some implementation of IT system has gone wrong!!

The flight to Abuja took off finally, when the flight attendant requested some of them to board another flight and some people were accommodated in the business class.

A wonderful first impression isn’t it? Expect more on Nigeria and its people in my following posts. Please post your comments on this post. Am expecting it :). Thanks in advance….

Shortcut to happiness

2009-07-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

Happiness is a state of mind. Nobody is happy at all times, but some people are definitely more fulfilled than others and it doesn't seem to have much to do with material goods or high achievement.

Not all events in our life fulfill our expectations. Destined events, good and bad are bound to happen in our lives. If you think about it spiritually, there is a reason for every event in your life. Bad events also help us learn certain things in life.

Also, when we get things in life after great struggle, it gives us immense satisfaction. In those days when I used to watch Doordarshan programmes like chitrahaar, if a good song is played in that, it would become the talk of the town next day. If they play a good movie on Sunday evening, all the roads will be empty. However nowadays we tend to ignore even the best movies, because we know that we can watch it some other day. When you get things easily, you would not realize the importance of the same. However when you struggle for something and get it finally, you cherish the same and value it. So don’t worry if you struggle in your life. You would taste success one day and enjoy the same.

It is said that “The best things in life are unexpected - because there were no expectations.” Hence scale down your expectations. This would keep you happy always.

Oh my god!! What a piece of philosphy I have written here…..Sorry guys I am feeling so sleepy. Hence I have written all this. Read the following paragraph. This will certainly provide you the shortcut to happiness.

First create a folder named “Happiness” in your computer. Then right click and create a shortcut. Then paste that shortcut in your desktop. There u go…..

Mediocre Media

2009-06-18T12:26:00.000-07:00

It has been quite sometime since I had blogged. I was looking for some interesting topic to post here. My last post evoked some interesting responses, especially, the comments on Madhavan. I was tempted to criticize Shahid Kapoor in this blog post, but since my post could disappoint his female fans, I refrained from doing so.

I was really annoyed by the news item that blocks half of the newspaper columns for the past few weeks. It’s about the racist attack on the Indians in Australia. True, some Australians have attacked Indian students and they suffered in that process. Do we need to react so much for that? This is very common in many parts of the world. Bad elements do exist in all the societies. In many cases the victims would be whites. How do the media know that the attacks were motivated by racist intentions? If Australians are racist, then why are they not attacking other Asian student communities? There are more than 100000 Chinese students studying in Australia. Why are they not being attacked? Why are they not protesting along with the Indian students?

If attacks on the foreigners can be termed as racist, then in India lot of foreigners are being mugged / beaten to death very frequently. Scarlett case is one such example. Did the western media term it as xenophobic?

The quality of journalism in the western world is much better compared to that of India. In BBC or CNN you can never notice a news reader airing his opinions on the subject. They bring in the expert to provide opinion. For ex, I was watching Sky news channel during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. The terrorists targeted British and American citizens in that attack. In spite of that, the news readers were calm and composed. The newsreaders did not air their opinion. They had invited political and other experts from Asian region to understand the nature of the attacks and the people / organization behind the attacks.

Majority of the Indians are driven by emotions. Indian media tries to utilize this and sensationalize every news item. They just try to achieve higher TRP’s in this process. When people start losing interest in this news item they move on to the next news item for a few days. Don’t you think the Indian media needs to mature? Please leave your comments...

Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo

2009-05-14T12:20:00.000-07:00

The effect of television advertisements upon the viewing public has been so successful and so pervasive that in some countries, it is considered impossible for a politician to wage a successful election campaign without the purchase of television advertising. Don’t worry!! For a change I am not going to write anything about politics.

Many television advertisements feature catchy jingles (songs or melodies) or catch-phrases (slogan) that generate sustained appeal, which may remain in the minds of television viewers long after the span of the advertising campaign. The advertisements relating to the telecom space has attracted so much of attention that it is almost impossible to ignore. Let’s take the good one first

THE GOOD

Of all the ads relating to the mobile / telecom sector, the advertisement which stands apart from the rest is the Airtel’s advertisement featuring Madhavan and Vidya Balan. This ad really connects to the audience. The background music is really pleasant. The chemistry between Maddy and Vidya is really great. The only thing that could be avoided is the Maddy’s grin from ear to ear ;).

THE BAD

No surprise here. It’s the ZooZoo ads. I am giving a bad rating to the zoozoo ad’s because most of these advertisements have tinge of negative element in it. Whey should a person pray only when he is on the verge of falling from a cliff?. Can’t they find out better situation for listening to a prayer? Moreover these advertisements are being aired at regular intervals making it very irritating at times. But there are many people who love these advertisements. In short, you can love zoozoo’s or hate them, but you cannot ignore them.

THE UGLY

The ugliest of all is the BSNL ads. In one of the ads, a person makes a call to another person only to listen to the caller tune. That too its a horrible song. On top of that he scolds the other person for picking up the call. “Pandu phone kyon uthaya yaar?”. In another ad of BSNL, a person is shown as a total failure. And then Deepika gives him a BSNL 3G phone. Then he becomes successful in everything he does.

Advertising is primarily a strategic weapon. A good advertisement puts enough emphasis upon your brand name so that consumers will remember it. And, it should give the viewers some positive information about your product. Don’t you think so?

In the name of Development

2009-05-06T20:57:00.000-07:00

My first visit to Bangalore in the early 90’s, was a memorable experience. The traffic was much less. There was lot of greenery around. I simply fell in love with Bangalore.

I used to wonder why Chennai does not have the same amount of green cover as that of Bangalore. There are two major parks in Bangalore which it can be proud of: Lalbagh and the Cubbon park. In contrast there was nothing in Chennai. I used to consider Chennai as a desert when compared to Bangalore.

Years have passed by. Bangalore has become one of the major cities in the south. Lot of development has happened over a period of time. What is the cost that Bangalore has paid for all this development? There is so much of pollution; the green cover in the city has reduced considerably. The climate in Bangalore is no longer the same.

Adding to the problem is the Namma Metro rail project, the alignment of which necessitates felling of trees and acquisition of land belonging to the Lalbagh botanical gardens. Huge numbers of trees are going to be removed from Lalbagh to facilitate Metro rail project. Many Bangaloreans have vehemently protested against cutting of trees in Lalbagh. Earlier, the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) had also proposed to cut nearly 3000 trees to make a road through Gandhi Krishi Vigyan Kendra (GKVK) campus.

Why can’t we have an underground passage for Metro rail throughout the city? It will involve some extra cost. But certainly it would not affect the environment. Even if the politicians forego 2% of what they make in a year, the additional cost of laying the metro can be met. In London most of the rail network is under the ground.

If our politicians have some sense left, they should try to construct the metro under the ground. They should try to implement all engineering projects with minimum environmental impact. If we continue to cut the trees and spoil the environment, it would have catastrophic effects on the next generation. Hope we realize this and take some positive measures.

Confusion Beyond Imagination

2009-04-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

By looking at the heading you should have figured out what I am trying to convey. Take another guess. Well, let me give you another clue. Cleared Before Investigation!! I know this time you would have got it.

For the past few weeks the Congress Bureau of Investigation has been very active in giving a clean chit to those involved in the 1984 Sikh riots and the Bofors case. These are high profile cases for which investigations were going on (or was it supposed to be) for several years. The first case has been going on for 24 years and the second one probably more than that. Are they not ashamed of giving a clean chit to those involved in these cases after 25 years?

MMS also proved to the world that he is a puppet by giving a statement that CBI has neither consulted him nor involved him in the Tytler’s case (http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1246855). CBI would have never bothered to consult Manmohan Singh. They seem to be acting on the basis of the instructions from the defacto prime minister.

These incidents clearly bring into light that congress is getting jitters about the results of the 2009 elections. There is a sense of nervousness among the congress top brass that they may not come to power again. Hence they are trying to use the last few days in office to clear off their names from these highly emotional and politically sensitive cases.

As far as congress is concerned, glory days seem to be a thing of the past. About MMS; less said, the better

Strategic move

2009-04-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

For those who closely watch the political situation in Sri Lanka and India, the recent victory of the Sri Lankan government should not be surprising. If I have to point out one major event which brought the downfall of LTTE, I would point out the brutal killing of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. This single event created a bad image about LTTE in the minds of the Indian public.

No one can blame Sonia Gandhi for the war in Sri Lanka directly. Nevertheless she has played a very important role in the same. It is a well known that its air force trained its Sri Lankan counterpart in precision-guided attacks. Without this help Sri Lanka would have never been in a position to win the war against LTTE. It is also eminent that Sri Lankan government heavily relied on the air strikes in its war against LTTE. The air strikes also helped them win the war with minimum casualties. Though many civilians were affected by the military offensive by the Sri Lankan government, the Indian government deliberately did not put any diplomatic pressure on the Sri Lanka, In spite of 40 MP’s from Tamil Nadu supporting this government at the centre. All the TN politicians in the ruling party have made themselves a laughing stock by reacting to the war when the war is about to be over. The war has been going on for more than three years, yet the reactions are pouring in only now because of elections.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. Sonia Gandhi had the opportunity to take revenge on the LTTE, after 17 years. And she has utilized it in the best possible way so that no one would be in a position to blame her. I truly admire her for the way she has taken the revenge.

Is it not a great strategic move by her? Leave your comments…..Till then adios amigos.

100 ways to kill Kasab

2009-04-21T11:59:00.000-07:00

Last week, I was surprised to read the article in the Times of India about the claim by the lawyer of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, who was involved in the 2.36363636 (26/11) attack, that he should be tried in the juvenile court.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Kasabs-claim-of-being-juvenile-dismissed-by-court/articleshow/4413081.cms

I am not sure why we take these matters to the court of law. When there is so much of evidence with us, why can’t we prosecute him directly and hang him without any trial? Or at least the process should be much quicker. I am sure this case would go on for a long time (10 years or may be more). Once the judgment is passed in the court, he would file a clemency petition with the President of India and the pseudo secular parties would support the same. Or Al-Qaeda would hijack a plane from India and demand the release of Kasab.

We all know that we cannot hang or punish to Kasab by following a democratic process. Let us try to find out some funny ways to kill him.

1) Since he has claimed that he should be treated as juvenile, the jail authorities should provide him only lactogen or cerelac 3 or 4 times a day. No other food item should be provided to him.

2) We can ask him to participate in bungee jumping event in Bangalore. There is high possibility that he might plunge to death as the harness could snap.

3) We can put him in a cage and collect money from people (nominal amount only) to throw slippers on him. That way the government can earn revenue and eventually he would die. At least we all would be happy that we have a role in it ;).

4) He can be asked to configure India localization modules of Oracle applications (that’s enough to kill him I guess). If that’s not sufficient, he can be asked to do work for reconciliation (read it as ‘R’) of differences between the modules. Working for ‘R’ he would certainly commit suicide.

5) He should be made as a personal assistant to M Karunanidhi (CM of Tamil Nadu). Then he should be asked to defend MK’s various statements and views on LTTE to the press. The press reporters would get frustrated and kill him probably….

Hey guys….y don’t u suggest 95 other ways of killing kasab. You can include it as a part of the comment.

Hasta la vista.

Puppet dance by MMS

2009-04-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

Hey! This post has nothing to do with Multimedia messaging service. It’s about Man Mohan Singh (MMS) the greatest puppet of modern times.

I have very high regards for Mr. Manmohan Singh as an individual and as an ex-finance minister (for his role in opening up the Indian economy in the early 1990’s), but not as the current Prime Minister of India. Most of us are aware that Advani challenged MMS for a debate in the television and MMS shied away from the debate. The funniest part was he accepted that he cannot match Advani in public debate. I felt that MMS was a few bricks short of a load.

To make this post interesting, let us assume that this challenge for the public debate is accepted by MMS and that Madam Sonia Gandhi sends the answers by email to MMS so that he can read it out. And Rajdeep Sardesai is the mediator for this debate.

Question 1
--------------
Advani – MMSJI, First of all let us discuss about terrorism. You have accepted publicly that your government has not been successful in warding off the terror attacks. Is it not one of the major failures of your government?

The live debate is being watched by the congress people also. There Sonia instructs some people to prepare the answers and send a mail to MMS.

MMS in a debilitated tone replies (after reading the reply by Sonia)....Congress government always stands for secularism. We are not communal party. Communal parties are the real threat to the country. Hence we thought we would not concentrate on terrorism.

Question 2
--------------

Advani – Sounds funny MMSJI, Ok. Lets talk about secularism then. Lets talk about the clean chit given to Jagdish Tytler by the CBI and the consequences. Chidambaram would have almost been hit by a shoe. Subsequently Tytler has apologized to the Sikh community. He has been denied ticket by congress. Why did Tytler apologize if he is innocent? Did it not prove that he is guilty and congress is shielding someone who killed lots of innocent Sikhs? Is this secularism?

Meanwhile Lallu joins Sonia’s team and sends a mail without their knowledge to MMS.

Poor puppet reads the message. “We are bothered only about Muslims because we know that we will get 18% of the votes. In our country secularism means giving protection to the Minority religion for getting their votes. But who demolished Bajri Masjid?”

Question 3
--------------

Advani – It was the congress government which was ruling India, and Narashimha Rao was the Prime minister when Babri Masjid was demolished. It was being covered by the press, TV crews etc. Don’t you think you could have avoided the demolition of Babri Masjid? Is it not the failure of Congress party?

Meanwhile Mulayam joins Sonia’s team and sends a mail without their knowledge to MMS.
Puppet reads the message again. “All the Television coverage was in English at that time. Hence we could not understand. That is the reason why we want English language to be abolished in India.”

Question 4
--------------

Advani – It seems you are reading the answers from the mails which are coming to you. This is why I mentioned that you are the weakest prime minister. However Pranabji (the joker) said India does not need wrestler as prime minister. Don’t you have people who can understand the context in which it has been said?

The computer in front of MMS crashes at that time. MMS was not sure how to respond, and starts crying like a baby thinking what would Sonia Gandhi say about this fiasco.

Meanwhile Rajdeep sardesai sensing that he has to defend congress some how, completes the debate by saying “You can see only women crying in Public. Now Mr.Manmohan Singh, by crying before the public has proved that he could also cry, thereby proving that he is really brave and strong”.

A figment of my imagination

2009-04-06T10:28:00.000-07:00

So far, all my posts in this blog (except the first one) have a serious tone. Hence I thought I would take up a serious topic and put it in a funny perspective. You may consider this as a mordant satire or thigh-slapper depending on your ability to take the joke (esp. if you are at the receiving end)

Imagine Arjun singh is appointed as the sports minister in the central government. Also assume that a world sports committee is formed and he becomes the head of that committee, with extraordinary powers. Now he has to prove himself!! What would he do? He does not know anything beyond reservation. So he decides to introduce reservation in the global sporting events. Not only does he include reservation, but also he changes the rules of the game so that the backward communities are given a fair chance at these events.

Olympics – Athletics 100 meters for men. – Our reserved candidates compete with the world record holders like Usain Bolt and Asafa powell. The race begins and Usain Bolt comes first in the race in 9.62 seconds. That’s a world record!!! But it is decided that the reserved candidate would be provided the gold medal because the rules say that a reserved candidate needs to run only for 33 meters in the 100 meters race. And the reserved candidate has completed the 33 meters in 9.61 seconds. Hence the reserved candidate is very happy. India winning first gold medal in the athletic events in Olympics triggers celebration throughout India. Also there were representations from many more communities that the minimum of 33 meters should be reduced to 10 meters for their caste. Arjun singh and congress, being champions of the under privileged promised that they would bring in this change after the elections.

Tennis – The rules of tennis are amended to include the provisions for the affirmative action. Persons participating in the reserved category need not hit the ball to the other side of the court. The reserved category players can hit the ball anywhere. A big line is drawn outside the stadium, within which the reserved category players are allowed to hit. The first match was between Nadal and a reserved category player. Nadal had to run all around the stadium, sometimes he has to jump into the audience to hit the ball. Finally nadal tries to hit a shot by running to the top most point in the stadium and has a near fatal fall from there.

Football – In foot ball the rules were amended to include self goals by the reserved category members of the team. This makes it very difficult for opponent teams, because they have to defend their goal posts in addition to defending the opponent’s goal posts when the reserved category members try to score self goal.

Eventually, people stopped watching sports channels as they were sure the reserved category would be declared the winners.

The above story is just to emphasize that successive governments in India have been cheating the general public with reservation politics. If they are genuinely interested in the well being of the people, they would have provided proper education to all the people.

Grass is greener

2009-03-31T12:03:00.000-07:00

In this fast paced world where people spend 4 hrs a day (sometimes even more) commuting between office and home, rarely our mind is in a state to be happy. Added to this there are a lot of irritants at office place which annoys us. Where do we find time to be happy?

How do we define happiness? How to identify its source?

Would we be happy if we have more money? After all we all work so hard to earn money. We try to be proactive, work hard at office place to get more increments, bonuses etc. Still we do not get satisfied when we get the money. For most people, apparently, happiness lies not in the absolute amount of "rewards" you have, but in whether or not you have more or less than others. So, happiness is relative. This also proves that money / wealth do not necessarily bring happiness.

One morning I went out of the clients place to have tea. One of my colleagues who accompanied me saw a beggar in the platform having sound sleep. He made a comment that his life was worse compared to that beggar who was happily sleeping at that time of the day without any worries. But, what he failed to notice was that, the beggar did not have a place to sleep. He was sleeping in that hot sun. Probably he was unconscious!!

On another occasion, when I was having lunch with our colleagues, the discussion came up regarding the public sector and the private sector jobs. This being a season of recession there was almost unanimous view on the table that the public sector jobs are the best because it’s the safest. What they failed to consider is the troubles which a person has to undergo in the public sector. People get riled up with the red-tapism associated with the public sector jobs.

Both the examples cited above have a common element in it. People looked at the positive aspect of other people’s life and felt that they are worse compared to them. The grass is always greener on the other side.

If you look at the other people’s lives from your point of view, it would always look better. If you put yourself in their shoes, you might take a different view. May be the grass would look green on your side.

Unfulfilled promises

2009-03-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

It is said “Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”

How true!! In 2004 the congress government was very lucky to come to power. In spite of good governance over a period of 5 years, BJP could not manage to win because of electoral reverses in a few states. The congress and our journalists misinterpreted the verdict thinking that the aam aadmi politics had paid dividends. Also the aam aadmi misinterpreted the politicians thinking that they would do something to them.

The congress government had a common minimum program which was supposed to be aam aadmi friendly. How many of the points in the common minimum program were executed properly? There are failures everywhere…..To name a few

1. Though the inflation is very low as of today, the prices of essential items have soared like anything. Prices of vegetables have sky rocketed. Other items like oil etc have gone beyond the reach of middle class. And this government promised that they will do many thing for the aam aadmi. Instead they have made life difficult for them.
2. Congress government has always been the root cause of all the scams. Right from Harshad methas security scam to the satyam episode, they have left their footprints everywhere.
3. National rural employment guarantee scheme (NREGS)which is one of the key points in the CMP is the biggest failure. Congress government had provided 15000+ crores as budgetary support. And many of the farmers do not even know the name of the scheme. Leave alone whether they received the money or not.
4. There have been several security lapses in the country. Innumerable bomb blasts had happened. We had an incompetent home minister who did not bother to even change the statements that he makes after the bomb blasts. Do I need to mention about Mumbai blasts? Enough has been written about this point, even in my blog.
5. Even the left parties which supported this government from outside had mentioned that the policies of this government were aimed at enriching the rich people.

We should realize that we have been fooled by the congress party for the past 5 years. At least in the 2009 election we should try to ensure that this government does not come to power.

India being a democratic country gives its citizens a carte blanche in the form of voting rights. Whether we exercise this right properly or not will decide the fate of our future.

Jai hind…..

Living on the edge

2009-02-25T15:08:00.000-08:00

Fundamentalist religion is one, that when confronted with a conflict between love, compassion and caring, and conformity to doctrine, will almost invariably choose the latter regardless of the effect it has on its followers or on the society of which it is a part.

Islamic followers have always upheld fundamentalist ideals. Taliban is not an exception. In fact they can be categorized as extreme fundamentalists.

The recent peace deal between the Pakistan government and the Taliban would put our country in a dangerous state, as we are precariously situated very close to the region of terror.

Nowhere in the world would the peace agreement between two warring factions (I believe Pakistan government is a minor faction now in that country, it does not control a major part of Pakistan anymore), be viewed with so much of skepticism. There are reports that a huge amount of money has been paid to Taliban for making them agree to the ceasefire. (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pak-paid-6m-for-Taliban-ceasefire/articleshow/4192559.cms). What would Taliban do with that money? Well, It’s a no-brainer.

The Mumbai attacks and the inability of India to force Pakistan to even accept that the terrorist attacks were planned in Pakistan has brought into light how inefficient we are in taking action on a state which perpetrates terror on us.

United States and its western allies, in spite of being the targets / victims of the terror attacks, could do nothing to identify the source or take action on the nation from which it has been perpetrated. I wonder whether US is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one. Or is it more worried about the Nuclear power going into the hands of rogue organizations like Taliban?

Since the world is incapable of dealing with Pakistan in an effective way, it is in India’s interest to defend its territories and be prepared for any offensive from Pakistan or Taliban. In fact, it would not be wrong to target the militant training camps in the PoK and the Pakistan region. When Pakistan can claim that it is not involved in the Mumbai terror attacks, we can also claim that we did not attack the terror camps in Pakistan. We just need to give some contradictory statements or the other on a daily basis. That would ensure that the world would stop asking us as to why we attacked Pakistan.

India should take proactive measures to defend itself from Taliban and Pakistan. If Taliban starts controlling Pakistan, we would have to face an enemy who would not think twice before using their nuclear arsenal.

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”