My Vacation!!

The advantages of traveling in a train over taking a flight are numerous. You get to wallow in the languid comfort curled up with a book as the scenic kaleidoscope passes you by. In those lazy hours you get to do a lot of people gazing. People boarding and alighting. Proud parents traveling to join their newly employed son, stationed in a city they are traveling for the first time to, perhaps. Patients, leisure travelers, routine travelers, people with hope gleaming from their eyes, people harried by the hardships of life, people longing to meet their loved ones, people who have seen their loved ones off on a long journey out of home. The bedlam, the whiffs of sweat, the smell of fresh paint on the platform walls concoct a heady brew that reminds you that you are finally free and on a journey that takes you back to life.

I dont think there is any body in this world who would not be happier if certain thinngs shape up in a better way than they are presently. And I guess there will be only rare few who are entirely happy with the state of affaires at hand.

But the muslim muftis have made a profession of whipping up each single inconvenience as huge injustice to the whole community and inseminate hatred by portraying smallest of issues as a instutionalized pogrom against the kaum.... Thats what I sensed when I travelled with this deoband mufti for 30 hours...

Indi Go

There are low cost air lines. And then there is Indigo. They make you clean your seat. That too they wake you up midway in the flight to clean up your seat.

Indigo.... Think twice before go...

Lohgarh Fort

Of late I have been going on a lot many trips and treks to see nature and feel life. There are only a few things one can do when staying in Mumbai all alone. Go to a movie (or malls) with friends, booze or go out on treks. The location of Mumbai on the geographical map of india is very well suited for the last. The other two ofcourse are there because of Mumbai's rank in the Indian economical map. Contrary to popular belief that Mumbaites dont have any time and lead really busy lives, you can see hordes of Mumbaites going out on trips and treks over the weekend. Infact the routes leading out of Mumbai become jammed on Saturday's owing to the mass exodus.

My last trip was a trek to the Lohgarh Fort. On the top of a hill in a place about 15 kms from Lonavala, this beautiful fort was built by Shivaji and was considered to be impregnable in its time. Now I know why.

The trip was organized by Soni, the head instrutor at the gym my friend Shashank goes to. Shashank and I have been going on such treks for about 3-4 months now. Our first trip together was a night trek to the hill which looked like a thumb. The view from the top of the hill was amazing in the early morning sun. Sadly we did not have a camera to capture the beauty. Anyways, this time we were prepared. Shashank's new moto razr can take really good pics.
We had to reach the gym early morning at 6:15 on Sunday. I stayed over at Shashank's place saturday night so that we could reach the gym early. Even with our best efforts we could manage to reach the place at around 6:40. But to our surprise only half the people had come till then. I met 3 gym instructors. Soni, the main instructor, with a pefectly built body was very stylish. He had his wife and cute little daughter coming in as well. Deepak was a dark bull kind of a guy. He came with another lady (forgot her name) say lady of deepak. She had a different kind of a face but was very bubbly and street smart. The third instructor was lanky and had a girl friend stowed in as well which I came to find out later. His girl friend was small and dark, but with a deadly figure and walk.

Other than these people there were 3 more guys and 2 more girls. One was a fatty (motu) who had a car of his own, which was used along with the Tavera for transportation. Motu had a huge bag of his own stowed away in his car which had almost everything, including a huge umbrella. Then there was one guy who is doing hotel management somewhere in cochin and is here in Mumbai on a training. Dont know much about the third guy, because he was hardly noticeable. But found out towards mid of the journey that he also could be charming. So lets call him Mr Charming. Now out of the two remaining ladies one was a perfect match for motu (Moti) except for her colour which was atleast 4 shades darker than motu. But later we find out that dark or light doesn't matter much when you have comparable weights. The last lady was a slim girl who kept giving glances to me. I found out towards the end of the journey that she has been doing this with Shashank as well. Lets call her Miss Glance.

So we started on our journey in the Tavera and the Zen, after a long wait and a cup of tea, at around 8:30. There were just one too many people to fit into these two vehicles, but somehow we managed. Moti, Deepak and Lady of Deepak cramped into the back cabin, with Moti occupying one full seat and Deepak and his lady sharing what was meant for only two buttocks by somehow keeping three. As the journey started, Moti who was later rechristened as Radio Mirchi started abusing our ears using her mouth. And slowly everyone joined in in the masti. Looking at the enthusiasm in the crowd and the way they all mixed up, it was difficult for me to grasp the limit of dearthness of my societal skills. Shashank probably would come in a close second after me if we were to be ranked according to our pathetic societal skills inside the Tavera.

So after much hullabaloo we finally managed to reach a place midway where we were allowed to rest our lower abdomens and give some work to the upper abdomens. I mean we halted at a petrol pump cum food court. Took some snaps, talked to near and dear ones and then restarted on our journey.

Trying out color

This is the image that inspired me to take my next trip..

No, I am not going to talk about the trip here, because it was a sort of wash-out.

And no, I am not talking about the model here, 'cause the sketch does not speak true. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental :), not due to the best effort of mine.

All I wanted to say was,now trying my hand at crayons n oil pastels for the first time. Mmm, first time since class 3 maybe. And it is so so difficult ! No wonder all those drawings kids make in prep classes are ssso on the messy side. All those colors, they just dont appear where you want them to .. they start overlapping everywhere ! And then there are no erasers to rub them off; at least I didnt have any..
So the first time I tried an experimental A for Apple, it looked like a blob of red, but thats it. Then i moved on to a B for beach ball. I am pretty sure when I did this stuff way back in class 3 I did better :D

ok so I improved a bit, ;) now I am on H for holiday, which is this pic .. but then theres a lot of way to cover .. so if u know any really really good websites for this, then do tell me !

n do you know, a small pack of wax crayons from faber-castell costs only rs 5 !

stock report

two years.

three contributors,

who have, in this period,

worked with 5 different companies,

lived in six different cities.

50 measly posts.

Thats like the productivity of MBAs for you ! ;)

Whats an MBA that cant even tell some tall tales ?

Out of the movie

I am trying my hand at painting now. This one's in the making. My handycam has a pathetic resolution, so the pic is not very clear. I hope to comeplete this in another months time. [:D]

eye see

The eyes ..

SafePack (TM)

The Indian Post Office Amendment Bill, 2006.

For people who still might not know what this means, it states that India Posts, the central government’s postal service, will have the monopoly to deliver all letters weighing up to 300 gms across the country.

In effect, it will be illegal to use a courier service of your choice to send across any sort of mail. Urgent business communication, last minute applications, whatever. Time to destination be damned, assurance of delivery be damned.

Is it true ?! You ask yourself. Maybe you rub your eyes a little in surprise. But then you look at other recent happenings .. Reservations in elite educational institutions. Reservations in private sector jobs. Suddenly this monopolistic bill seems trivial, just a peg in the whole scheme of moving towards an inefficient, uncompetitive enterprise.

Ah, who cares !

I just want to evaluate - What would be the market size for 'SafePack' (a sturdy protective envelope for sending letters across) ?

And the best part of the deal is, it would weigh exactly 301 grams. Hey, presto - you are above the Law!

Now you can courier to your heart's content - they charge you the equivalent of 500gms minimum per each letter anyway, so this aint gonna cost you any more.

Except for SafePack, and that will be available to you at a discount, depending on my arrangement with the courier company.

So welcome to the world where you stay assured of the safe delivery of your correspondence. On time; and no waiting at unmanned counters . (err.. which were supposed to be manned, we are not talking about automation here. Not in India post; not yet. )

Get SafePack today ! Available in three different colours: Red, Burgundy and Maroon. With a special limited Burnt-Sienna edition mega-pack of Six for the price of Five! The more you courier, the more you gain!!

And oh, if you are pally with someone who can move a bill in the parliament against competition in the business of envelopes weighing 301 gms, do let me know.

Cobainish Detachment

When my Girl friend asked what is it in Lucky Ali that you like so much, I did not have a ready answer. To further complicate the affairs at hand, she said, a lot of the songs that he croons are the same soporific love ballads as the sonus and the ashas of the game will sing. Later during the dinner I came to realize what it is about Lucky that makes his love ballads lot better than other mushy crooners?

A lot of his lyrics are fluffy and dreamy. Yet only few of them are chocolaty and candy-floss. Some of his songs about love are very passionate, yet none of them border on insanity(even when he sings ‘paagalpan kii siima kya hai’). They always very much are sung by a person who is in absolute control of his emotions, with a definite coat of pragmatism. Even his songs with the romantic airiness are rendered in a groovy voice that is inherently detached. That is the insignia of a happy man who is relishing his moment of being in honest love. Love that is a commitment but not a bondage. Even when they are not anthems of unadulterated bliss, they never hint the incapacity of the man to deal with the turmoil of nascent love.

The sense of detachment in his voice is very Cobainish. Remember ‘My girl, where did you sleep last night?’ May be it is the gifted voice that wafts in a sense of unbounded freedom, even when they are lamenting for their love.

good morning

Woke up today morning with a young early-summer sun in my face.

It felt different. The birds were chirping. Could distinctly hear at least ten different bird sounds. Plus an occasional squirrel, too.

Suddenly, childhood memories started flooding by. It was so much like the days when we had summer vacations.

It was only a few moments later I realised why it felt so good.

There was absolutely no sound of traffic.

IQBAL BALLE BALLE

Munaf Patel is not the quintessential Indian cricketer that you see. He is rustic and uncouth with a dialect heavy accent, yet with a passionate fire in his eyes to excel. His ruthless pace and piercing sharpness, not only ushers the much awaited speed-machine into the growing Indian pace brigade, it also firmly marks the coming of age of the hitherto marginalized economically backward villagers into the mainstream of Indian cricket. At this very moment it is hard to overlook the similarity of his story with that of Iqbal, the fantastic portrayal of the triumph of perseverance and hope, over the daunting odds in the big bad world of Indian cricket. Not long before, a berth in Indian cricket was the bastion of the deals of dalmiyas and the power play of the pawars of the business. Rife with regionalism, it scarcely inspired the youth from such remote corners to strive and make their mark. That thing might not have changed entirely. But the irrfans and the munafs are ample testimony to the fact that the times, that are certainly a’changin. That is very encouraging for Indian cricket, for the longer these fiery youngsters keep their faith, the more is the chance that we discover new world-beating talent. The pinnacle of the pursuit for the cricketing youth from various corners of India is uniform, a coveted berth in the Indian team. The examples of Munaf’s and Irfan’s will keep the hopes alive for these youngsters and will encourage them to hone themselves to deliver for India.

The media has had an undeniable role to play in the ushering of many of these changes in Indian cricket. Stronger and well circulated coverage of the achievements of various players at regional level and the public analysis of selection rationale has certainly helped the selectors, by keeping them informed and vigilant. At the same time the media should not over-sensationalize the achievements of such raw talent. Munaf has certainly a long distance to go, to discipline himself a lot more so as to mature to the level of the Akrams and the Lilees. (Just look at the statement: A storm called Munaf Patel rocked England's cricketing juggernaut in Baroda today, and England's batting ship was left floundering)

A definite breeze of change is sweeping Indian cricket. The office bearers are becoming increasingly accountable and responsible with a national vision. Young talent is forcing the well-entrenched seniors to re-invent themselves to earn their places. The 'I-am-indispensible' haughtiness is being replaced by 'Let's prove ourselves' humility. The media and the advertising agencies will do well not to hijack such emerging talent in their early rawness.

Death of Internet

Google, succumbing to the pressure tactic of Chinese government, is an ominous portent for what the future holds for the free spirit of internet. The internet thrived because of its free spirit, because of the independence it allowed the users to publish their mind. And search engines were the means by which this information was made available to wider audience. Of course some people used internet for not so good purposes like the militants sending encrypted mails and images. That probably necessitated some amount of overt censorship of the freedom, where the activity was unqustionably wrong. (I beleive exploiting internet to spread the network of terror is undeniably unethical). But disallowing a certain section's voice to be suppressed because of the pressure from a hegemonic behemoth, certainly hints that the days of unbridled freedom of information over the internet are numbered. One section's propaganda is another section's truth. And I beleive marginalising the voice of a section because of its economic incapacity, is a sharp reversal from the philosophy of internet that we grew up with.

Google, which was a torch-bearer of the spirit of freedom, with its mega-assortment of free to use tools, is increasingly becoming a shrewd corporate entity, as its grip over the internet becomes tighter. As it increasingly is becoming indispensible on the web, its image of a maverick internet company, managed by a set of magnanimous nerds is sharp becoming obsolete. What is unfolding may not just yet be a sinister plot to colonialize the web, but its certainly disturbing. Once it fully grows into the Walled Box that it is modelling itself to be on the lines of Microsoft, may be some other phoenix will rise in the web sphere to give voice the economically unviable section of the mankind. But the question that still remains how long will the free spirit of such entities be intact before snowballing into the greenbacks of greed? How long is it before the capitalistic intentions of seemingly innocuous web-entities fatally jeopardises the spirit of freedom, with which the internet thrived?

After Sahu It's My Turn Now

I tried making Angelina Jolie. But I think mine's more beautiful than the original. [:D] To be frank Sahu is the best, I can only try.

Discourses on Live, Death and everything

PART I

I was feeling dreary, lackadaisical. In the morning when I was waking up I was not getting the right amount of ego boost to wear my consultant’s tie neatly, to prolong my day with the (haz)ardous banalities that my job invariably brought along, to perpetuate the vainglory of rendering the processes more efficient for my client. Rather I was perennially jacuzzied in the miasma of the eternal dilemma.. am I getting enough out of life? I needed a solution. The elusive solution was so desperately sought that I was ready to sacrify the daily dose of causticities that we magnanimously sprinkled on life, job, boss, girl friend, weather, traffic, congress party over the sutta breaks, the only mechanism by which we reassured ourselves that we mattered on this earth. I was anxious and feverish in the pursuit to get over it. When affordable opulence and decadent profligacy malfunctioned, I turned to morning TV. I went on long vacations. I exasperated my nerves with yoga and took a short course in transcendental meditation. Dabbled with social service. The day I got desperate with my inability to spend some quality time with myself to arrive at the cause of such misfortune, I declared the root-cause for all this to be the fact: FOR FAR TOO LONG I HAD BEEN TAKING MY LIFE FOR GRANTED. As any gaddamn consultant will tell you, once you arrive at the root-cause and you have enough data, arriving at the solution is no big deal. So there I was, with the root-cause of my despair. All I needed was some data and bingo. I was going to live my life to the fullest. As a A pointer in Advanced Market Research, I decided to start with secondary data.

People take life for granted until they wake up to the phenomenon of death. That’s what Manoj Das told me in the opening line of his memoir. I tried waking myself to the phenomenon of death upon reading this. This was not to trivialize the phenomenon that it was but purely as a noble pursuit to infuse an over-arching sense of pathos in those surrounding me, who invariably looked overjoyed, inspired by my fatal cynicism.

I knew at the outset that this concept will infuse unparalleled enthusiasm in the group, by the sheer enormity of pessimism that it was capable of whipping up. As you must have realized by now, in the group very much like me, one thing we all had trouble in bearing was overdose of pessimism. We all deeply cherished pessimism and any passing mention of pessimism was ravenously thrashed about with a sense of unparalleled belongingness that manifested in frenzied hollering and consequent unavoidable gleefulness. And it was unwarranted joy that we all doubted and more precisely despised. The thing that we cherished so dearly always landed us in state from where we desperately wanted to get out of. And that was the genesis of my quest.

kahaani likhne ka avyaas

Its been four years since I appeared for the B-school admissions. And two years since placements. Which is why, I was sort of out of touch with the "name a situation .. " sort of questions asked in interviews, until a friend faced with the interview grind forwarded a list for suggestions..

Reading those questions, was like re-living those golden days when the only things you did were to find "suitable" answers, watch TV and copy assignments .. the answer to these questions, however, did not look so difficult this time..
Aur han, sach to yeh hai ki once you get over the initial unnecessary hurdle of sticking to facts, fir to kahani likhne mein mazaa hi aataa hai !

"Adversity faced in life .. ?"

The classic answer to this is, of course, "maan taayefoyed se bimaar thi, behen ki shaadi karni thi, aur mere college ke gold medallist certificates ko koi dekhne ko tayaar nahi tha, koi naukri nahi thi .."

Chances are, however, that ur life has been comparatively more protected than the best-case scenario painted above. So you will probably start rummaging through your memory desperately for some hint of an incident that would probably fit in here ..
Of course, your biggest adversity in life is your current boss. Or the maths professor in your second year. However, you can't mention that ..

Who are you fooling anyway. Adversity was when you were in the last five of your class in college to yet get a job. Adversity was when you were told that u were not good enough for the school basketball team. Adversity was when your kid bro got all the swiss chocolates your uncle brought, and wouldnt share them with you ..

Adversity was when your ex broke up with you.

The mere thought of that still brings a wry smile to your face.

Adversity is filling up this form. Adversity was when you could not make it to the college of your choice in the first attempt.

hey wait.. that actually sounds good! A promising base for a story which talks of a year of sweat and patience and determination and all those good stuff

Of course, as dilbert would say - no challenges, no learning opportunities .

You note down the incident as "to be developed further", and move on to the next question..


"Distinct contributions to the society by you or your family members..."

Assuming that this calls for something more important than all the five-paisa coins you used to dole out at the mandir gates in the days gone by, you curse yourself for having laughed at Soni's idea of going to that blind school for taking weekend classes..
Maybe you can pay them a visit this weekend and somehow elaborate on that point ?

Of course, there's the time when your hostel decided not to celebrate diwali, but donate all the money collected for the lighting to the Flood Relief fund. Why, you can be the one who suggested the idea and saw it through.

ah, but one does not add meat enough.
Does that blood donation camp that happened in college qualify ? Or maybe, yes all those NSS classes you spent digging ditches and planting saplings ..

"My formative years…"

Irrespective of all mamma's admonitions ki bachpana kab chootega, it seems, we have all grown up. Can you put up the line about life being a continual learning process ? Nah, too smart alecky, too risky you, decide. Better stick to how you watched father work, surrounded by corrupt officials, and learnt honesty.
Or how you went to government school when your father was posted at a remote plant, and learnt about simple living and working hard..

"Explain a situation when you were a part of a team where the group process and/or intended outcome failed. What was your role, how did you contribute to the process or outcome, and what did you learn?"

When I was a part of a team and we failed ? Now, when did that last NOT happen !? But well, picking up an incident for this one is easy. We lost ALL our league matches in basketball in my final year. I am just spoilt for choice.

"Describe an instance in which you took the strongest stand of your value system. What specific values were violated and what was at stake for you?"

This one's easy, too. The very second day in camp when u finally decided to take up a strong stand and queued up at the infirmiry instead of the parade grounds, based on your firm belief in the values of an undisturbed morning's sleep. At stake was the constructive effects of beauty sleep on the development of the human mind. Hah. What would the thick-headed Captain Jaitley know.
But again, the one thing that the world does not really value is truth. You decide to re-use the same old story about when you decided not to follow Prasanth's example and go help yourself to the question-papers for the state engineering entrance exams which were available in the market a day before ..
That the sneak Prasanth never felt it important to tell you and you only knew about the leak from the next days newspapers is another matter. Thank God, however, that the paper was scrapped ..

"Explain a situation where you have brought about any improvement either in your self, work or society."

Doosron ka yeh help karke mein society ka bhalaa hi to kar rahaa hoon.. And writing blogs at work is definitely an improvement over recording minutes of meetings ..