Muses and ramblings

Striking Interpretations

2011-02-14T16:42:00.000-08:00

Two went to a new city,
Two were welcomed into the new city,
Two were honored, hosted and feted,
One thought..these people take good care of me, they must be GODS!
The other thought..these people take good care of me, I must be a GOD..

Dinner date with little green men

2011-02-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

When I started my career,
I knew nothing and did little.

Sometime later, I got to know a little,
And I tried to do everything.

I always looked up to my boss,
Who I thought knew everything but did nothing.

So, I sincerely hoped to come across those who knew everything and did everything,
I have finally found an end to my quest :- little green men are taking me out for dinner tonight.

Nightly Coffee

2011-02-10T15:44:00.000-08:00

My arms and legs have mutinied against me,
The only time I could be standing still is during an earthquake.

It's probably all that coffee I drank this evening,
My eyes will stay open even if I sneeze now,
And yes, I will surely be sleeping with my eyes open when I do get to that part.

Yet another long night at the office,
Hail all the silent night workers of my tribe,
None who may have blinked since the last lunar eclipse.

Come fight with me

2011-02-09T15:43:00.000-08:00

Quarrels and fights come about,
Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

To equal one war of words with another between two,
Is to confound in common minds the passing shades of color,
And to incite the commission of a greater foolhardy by one so as to prevent the detection of the lesser by the other one.

Chronology for a day

2011-02-08T16:14:00.000-08:00

You think in the morning,
And you act in the noon.

Should you curse your wife at evening,
You will sleep alone at night.

Working the nights

2011-02-07T16:00:00.000-08:00

So, the doctor said..
One hour's sleep before midnight is better than three after it,
Why do you still work the BPO night shifts? Get a day job soon..

And I said,
Let's look at it this way...
At least I don't get to hate myself in the mornings,
For I sleep till the noon.

Sleeping on it

2011-02-04T15:55:00.000-08:00

So, what's your style of working?

Well, I sleep on it...

Sleep on it?

Oh! Yes..Sleep on it...

And why?

Well, If I sleep, I sleep for myself;

And if I work, I know not for whom...

A take on revolutions

2011-02-03T02:15:00.000-08:00

Two revolutions that I followed start to end through 2010 and 2011:-

Red Shirt Protest, 2010, Thailand,

Lack of justice and an independent judicial system were the flash points,

88 protesters were killed and more than 1800 injured in spring of 2010,

Street protests lasted 68 days and towards the end, the government offered to hold an early election in 2010 but launched a violent crackdown in May 2010.

People’s Revolution, 2010-11, Tunisia,

High unemployment, food inflation, corruption, lack of freedom of speech and political freedom were the flashpoints,

Heavy scores of deaths and injuries as a result of action by police and security forces against demonstrators,

Street protests lasted 28 days and towards the end, it brought down curtains on Tunisian President Ben Ali’s 23 year rule.

As Mahatma Gandhi would say, the chronology of a revolution is thus:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

(P.S:One revolution that I am now keenly watching - Egypt)

Ascendancy of new leaders

2011-02-02T01:35:00.000-08:00

O! To be valued by men and women,

And to be fetched from afar,

So to manage collective minds, hands and feet.

That will be an easy job for him to do,

For he is steeped in power to pummel and to bind,

He will indeed be a great leader.

Yet we do find from history that he who reaches out to seize power,

Ceases not of pitting the mighty force against the meek and powerless,

He shall soon be flat on the ground when he is loud in speech alone, but of power despoiled.

The Essay that never got written

2011-02-01T06:36:00.000-08:00

It was always coming but it never arrived,

My moment of epiphany, like tomorrow, never came on today,

I was clutching onto a hope, like a promissory note which is up for redemption, that I may draft the best essay for my submission.

So, I wrote out random verses but I was still voiceless and meaningless,

That flight to an elevated sense of meaning was wingless but I fluttered still,

The deadline for submission had come; time didn’t stop and passed by.

A day later, I am sorry for myself though I could write I had hardly moved my pen,

The cat got my tongue and the dog chewed out my brain – All I got to show for it now is this lousy post.

Adieu

2011-01-31T10:55:00.000-08:00

The more they were taken, the more they were left behind,

Yes, those were footsteps caused by treading softly on the earth.

Like a box that holds keys without locks,

He left behind him a legacy that could unlock any tormented soul.

He is gone now, there is no doubting that,

He could not be stopped even though it ripped apart the hearts of loved ones.

Now, I look out for him in the stars as he comes to witness each night,

Its only that he is lost to sight each day.

Together now...

2011-01-28T11:10:00.000-08:00

She could turn it around,

Or I could turn it around,

It didn’t matter anyhow.

What is out will not get in,

What is in will not get out,

And that’s part of the fun.

She is not quiet,

I am not loud,

Yet, for us God fashioned our fates together.

Brainy Limits

2011-01-27T10:07:00.000-08:00

I went round and round the problem,
But never into the solution.

So, is it the way our brains work?
Always looking for and finding familiar patterns,
And grossly complaining when they are not there.

Bind it to the routine and it walks effortlessly,
Loosen it to the wilderness and it stops.

The Talkathon

2011-01-26T09:37:00.000-08:00

Would conversation between Adam and Eve had been difficult?
For they obviously would have had nobody to talk about.

Ah! The obvious scarcity in conversations of today,
We would need people to talk about people.

Hey! But don't you talk about yourself,
For it will be done when you leave.

The One Act

2011-01-25T11:20:00.000-08:00

When I am sleeping, you may be awake,

When he is eating, she may be sneezing,

When someone’s walking, somebody else could be driving...

Yet there is one thing that binds us all,

And we do it all together, in unison and perfect synchronization,

All at the same time, and none left out – the greatest complex act ever put simply together.

Come to think of it – don’t we all age together in this time boat?

Customizing city landscape

2011-01-24T10:57:00.000-08:00

It runs and runs and never tires, down and down and never up,
There is a stream by the hill behind where I live.

To cross the brook, it is the way – above the water but not touching it,
There is a bridge over the stream that neither swims nor moves.

The hill, the brook and the bridge –Well, I lied to you,
There is none of that here in this concrete jungle where I live.

Wherever I go, my imaginary hills, brooks and bridges follow close behind,
For this is all I yearn to have around me and this is how I relate to nature’s own backyard.

Tennis Gurus

2011-01-21T10:32:00.000-08:00

There is an old joke about Tennis that I know,

What it is that can be served but not eaten? A tennis ball.

Competitive tennis today is all about player rankings,

And of course the number of grand slam titles won,

So, is there a perfect age for tennis players to max the system?

If you’re going to be a really top player in the world,

Then you would need to post your first major ATP title by age 21,

And then get a five years window to amass more such titleships,

Because as you age 26, a sell-by date in this profession, you would lose your edge to the new younger recruits.

So, is that it – win as many matches as possible and make hay while the sun shines,

Perhaps, there are a few deeper lesson here – may be like reacting the same to winning and losing,

Because let’s not forget here that there is going to be a life after tennis that’s a lot longer than the tennis life.

Incessant Fighter

2011-01-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

Like a long snake with a stinging bite,

He stays coiled up until he starts a fight.

He will cross the ocean to fight a challenger,

But he won’t cross the street to meet an old friend.

The reason he fights a war is to win a war,

Thereby causing no more war!

Perhaps, he forgets where there is no merit in the fight,

There is also no glory in the triumph.

Lazy Respect

2011-01-19T05:38:00.000-08:00

If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person,

They will find an easier way to do it,

Because progress isn’t made by early risers,

But by lazy men and women trying to find easier ways to do something.

Yet it is true that a lazy person, whatever be his talents,

Condemns himself to lazy habits of thinking and second-rate friends,

A lazy man who goes to borrow a spade,

Might just be thinking to himself – I hope I won’t find one.

So, when you tell me that laziness is the mother of all the bad habits,

I will certainly agree with you but I am biased to point it back to you:

That ultimately she is a mother and shouldn’t we respect her for that?

Baby's day out

2011-01-18T04:33:00.000-08:00

What was I doing there?

Totally out of my league, those corridors of high influence – the rich, the famous and the gifted – was not a passageway for me.

Wrong man at wrong place!

How would you reason that now?

Now, you see babies at the beach; don’t you?

They don’t need a vacation for they have never worked a day in their life; but you still see them there – don’t you?

So, it is then...

I got the walk of my life in those hallowed corridors because I have had a certain god father (more like a brother considering his age) who took me on a baby’s day out.

Pressure

2011-01-17T09:09:00.000-08:00

When is there’s a freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from?

It’s when the safety-values of the heart and mind burst open under the pressure of conformity.

There were 4 monkeys in a tree,

Why did the first monkey fall out of the tree? – It died,

Why did the second monkey fall out of the tree? – It was tied on to the first monkey,

Why did the third monkey fall out of the tree? – It got hit by the first two,

Why did the fourth monkey fall out of the tree? – Peer pressure.

Currency Vikings and a defense called Tobin Tax

2011-01-14T09:51:00.000-08:00

The Vikings lived a thousand years ago,

They sailed in long ships made of wood,

They would burn and pillage any small village,

And steal everything they could.

Fast forward a thousand years, and there is a new breed of Vikings now,

Having long given up on the clumsiness of war, they found a smarter way of getting rich now,

Out went the sword, the spear and the sheath for they are redundant now,

Standing in now are shiny suits, computers, ECN forex markets and wad loads of currency,

The “Currency Vikings” now raid the economies of the world with a concept called hot money.

"Hot money" refers to speculative funds that are churned by investors in global currency markets for purely short-term returns,

What’s wrong with it, you say? Everything about it is awesomely sweet when the money first flows into a nation’s economy,

But it’s the way out, often at momentarily short notices, that leaves behind a trail of financial mess for those behind to sort out,

Do we need to dissuade global short-term currency trades, which amount to the gargantuan size of trillions of dollars each day? Do we need to spurn speculative funds in favour of long term investments?

James Tobin, Ph.D., a Nobel laureate economist at Yale certainly favoured the above proposition,

His suggestion to tame the hot money was a simple measure – impose sales taxes on currency trades,

Tobin Taxes, named in his honour, would make each currency trade dearer by about 0.1 to 0.25 percent – often enough to make the short-term trade unprofitable but will leave the long-term productive investments enough,

The Tobin Tax concept has been much debated and is probably not any nearer for an immediate implementation – but each time there is turbulence in global financial markets and currency crises erupt time and again, there is always renewed interest to bring out this sheath in defence against the currency Vikings.

How many currencies?

2011-01-13T05:35:00.000-08:00

Money acts as a unit of account, a store of value, and a medium of exchange,

So, it must be a good thing, right? Good things need to be shared, isn’t it?

Then why don’t all the countries in the world share the same currency?

Imagine a common world currency, what happens next?

The logical elimination of world’s biggest market – Foreign Exchange,

And the resultant reduction in transaction costs in global trading.

Great! So, what’s stopping us then from embracing one unified currency?

Perhaps for the same reason that the world is not made of one country but several,

Every nation sees for itself the role of a league team playing for a championship trophy,

Now, who would want to compromise on their strongest tactics while competing to top the charts?

Having a currency of your own gives the freedom of printing it per your own whims and fancies,

And that is too important a weapon to give a miss in the areas of monetary and fiscal policy management,

Human civilization is several thousand years old, and the 196 odd countries with a UN seat in comparison are only the age of an infant,

And there are only two things a child will share willingly: communicable diseases and throwing tantrums in tandem.

Money and its value

2011-01-12T04:36:00.000-08:00

This hundred rupee note that I hold in my hand,

Wonder what would be its value anyway?

This may well have been the fruit of my industry,

And the reward of labour, sweat and relentless toil,

It is sacred to me but it’s just an airy bubble of paper currency.

It is just fiat money; it has value only because the government says it does,

Having no real value in itself it depends for support upon those in the central bank who prop it,

As Adam Smith once said, the problem with any fiat currency is that it rewards the minority (read powerful bankers and businessmen) that can handle the money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved the money.

While I still struggle with money as the means of procuring the necessities and alleviating the afflictions of life,

I know of a friend who has replaced the currency in his wallet with snapshots of his kids.

War on wants

2011-01-11T09:45:00.000-08:00

This earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs,

But clearly not enough to satisfy every man’s wants, thus spake Mahatma Gandhi,

But how could anyone wage a war on wants to preserve the earth?

Now, could the answer lie in money?

Money makes it easier and cheaper to transact in a consumerist world,

What if we could rediscover barter system in some form and manner in our modern society,

Surely the double coincidence of wants* will have put some brakes on reckless consumption.

*Double coincidence of wants is a situation where the supplier of good A wants good B and the supplier of good B wants good A.