Religion should be confined within the walls.

It's good to love the Gods and believe in their powers and doing stuff to appease them. I have no problems with that. But who gave you the rights to do these stuff on the road, right on the road, during maddening office rush hours when men and women possessing sanity and wisdom are on the verge of nervous breakdown.

We need to learn some civic sense. Serving cold sweet water to everyone and anyone may be an act of "Punya kamana" but the half a kilometer long trail of traffic jam is no sweet a sight and the ensuing tempers of those caught in the jam, is far away from being sweet.

Life is unfair

It is unfair that life is fair for someone and unfair for others. And I am not being jealous here. My only grudge here is that the for those privileged ones for whom life isn't exaclty a battle and struggle of household budgets and existence and completing chores should be considerate for the others.
Baaki life hain, chalti rahegi!

Those painful farewells

Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together?  I guess that wouldn't work.  Someone would leave.  Someone always leaves.  Then we would have to say good-bye.  I hate good-byes.  I know what I need.  I need more hellos.  ~Charles M. Schulz

My life's most beautiful year(yet?) comes to an end. 

I am loaded with nostalgia.

Friendships where nothing else mattered, except that we were friends. No one was judged or measured, we were what we were, never trying to be someone or something. That is bliss.

Memories galore, I will miss each and every one of the class of 2010-11. 

Time to hit back the corporate world. And hopefully, hit hard!

Reality Show For The Brainy! - Unleash the CEO

Disclaimer: - This is a competition where I am associated as an organizer. I have a vested interest to promote it :)

Unleash the CEO is a multi city 3 staged competition to find the best CEO potential candidate. You can call it a reality show with a difference. You won't have to face a deluge of abuses (We have no raghu and the likes).

You would be put into simulated environment where you would face challenges that a CEO faces in his job.

It's a 3 staged competition. The first stage is an Online test for 30 mins that would be open to participants in next two days.

Eminent CEOs from the industry would judge the final participants in an exciting and thrilling round on 3rd of April at Hyaat Regency, Pune.  Ganesh Natrajan, CEO - Zensar Technologies would be one of the esteemed panelists to judge the last round participants.

Winner takes home Rs 500,000 and runner ups Rs 200,000.

Give it a shot fellow bloggers.  Join http://www.facebook.com/UnleashTheCEO for registration, rules,event schedule and constant updates and mini contests.

Ashamed to be an Indian

I woke up today morning and glanced at the newspaper and the headlines shocked me. I was deeply disturbed and agitated upon reading it. I am in Pune, so not sure if this made headlines in other parts of the country.

An IAS officer (deputy collector) was burnt alive by some goons from oil mafia in broad daylight. He was on duty and was inspecting the oil adulteration allegations against some stockists in the Nashik District of Maharashtra.

I am horrified, scared and worried. I have the usual hatred for the system, politicians, the bureaucracy, the inefficient policing, the rampant corruption et al.  But there is something more which has made me cold towards this country.

Just reflect upon the gruesome incident that occurred today.  Greed to make more money which gives arise to illegal practices, cooking up numbers in balance sheets, bending laws is still tolerable. But how do you explain this. How can someone kill another person (and that too burning alive) to make some extra bucks.  And this is not an isolated case.

Some son of a bitch kills someone on not being served drinks.

Sometime back an IIM guy working in Indian oil in UP was killed for the same reasons.

An MLA rapes a Dalit woman (Banda rape case)

Some Railway Protection Force personal throw a passenger from a moving train.

Sometime back an elderly person driving a car was killed by a biker and his fellow friends in broad day light in the national capital in a road rage incident. He was hit by rods and hockey sticks on his skull by these bikers.  The most disturbing part is that these bikers were not seasoned criminals.

I can still bear the 2G scams and the likes. But incidents like these leave me restless.

We as a society are transcending boundaries which separate the civilized and the uncivilized.  It’s like a moral degradation. I am not sure what’s wrong or how do things become normal.

Where are we heading. It’s a rotten system we are living in and living precariously. We may not realize it but most of our lives may appear all hunky dory. But mind you, its just an illusion. As long as you mind your path and be oblivious to things around it will be all OK. Moment you take notice of the rotten part of the system, or come across “their” path, you would be wiped out. That may sound like straight out of the movies and very disillusioned but that is how i feel now.

Perhaps Gandhi ji had figured it out. See no evil, say no evil, and hear no evil. Perhaps he was giving out a clue on how to live in this country.

RIP Yashwant Sonawane.

What are they selling?

As students of marketing (I am doing an year long MBA, that is one reason of long hiatus at the blog) we were required to study a product in the retail outlets in the city.

I was blown away with the kind of communication these products had on their packaging.

Here are some of the things mentioned on the packaging of this product. Let me see if you could guess what is the product.

i) Aloe Vera

ii)Milk Protein

iii)Moisturizer

iv)Neem

v)Tulsi

The product I am talking about is Mosquito Repellents. Yes that is how the sticky,smelly old Odomos is being sold now. With fancy packaging of Gel, Cream (packaging looks like facewash and smells great too) and even Lotions.

Dear marketers, thats some smart innovation and lot of lies to sell something so poisonous!

Are you in charge of your destiny ?

Hello to the handful people who read this. I so wanted to write in the past many weeks, but my writer's block seems to be growing as big as our politicians' appetite for corruption. There may not be light at the end of the tunnel on the corruption end, but I figured out something for my dear blog.

We often deliberate about what determines what happens to ourselves in life, how our life shapes up, what are the outcomes of our efforts, etc. Some of us strongly believe in destiny, fate whereas some strongly believe that there life is determined by what they do.

What is your orientation on this? Take this test and see what your belief is. In technical jargons its called Locus of Control.

While taking the test answer the questions as honestly as possible. Do not think a lot and be spontaneous on your answers.

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_90.htm

Facebook is a stupid idiot!!

Deep down inside I too know that Facebook is a stupid idiot but I still love it.

The irony of the matter is that the only way people are telling each other that Facebook is a stupid idiot is through Facebook!!

Do watch the complete song.

The Reason behind Why USA is the most advanced country found out!

I think I have cracked the real reason behind why America is the most advanced country in the world.

What is the common binding factor among HP (Hewlett Packard), Apple, Google, Ebay, Facebook, Youtube, Linkedin, Digg ?

Yes they all got started in America. But there is something more. All of these companies started in a Garage.

Don’t you get it? It is the presence of Garage in the Real Estate in USA that inadvertently caused creation of these companies. Any creation requires innovation and innovation generally happens when you have your own peaceful den, where you are a free soul and can do what you want to do without the hustle bustle of household chores and distractions. That’s what garages provide you. It is mind’s fertile playground which gives rise to imagination and idea creation. Almost all American homes have garages whereas almost none of the Indian homes or Chinese homes have garages like the ones I am talking about.

So now we know what has to be done to achieve the growth goals of India. Make garages and let the teenagers and youngsters recline and unwind in there.

Why Road Accidents Happen

I think now I know why road accidents happen. No, its not bad roads,poor infrastructure, the unexpected dog or a cow appearing in front of you or an idiot overtaking you from the left.
You know what's the absolute root cause behind an accident? It's the belief that "It cannot happen to me". That's what my driver believed in. We were driving in zero visibility fog around 8 in the morning from Agra to Delhi yesterday. The driver was doing atleast 50-60 Kmph, way too fast for a zero visibility fog. He simply thought that he could never be one of the car debris you see along the highways. And that's almost what happened. There was a truck standing still right in the middle of the road, just out of thin air. We rammed into it. May be 6 inches from death. Completely jolted and numb. And when we realized that we are still alive, a bus rammed into us from behind. We came out unhurt, the kind of miracles we read in the papers.

Lessons Learnt:

i)There is no heroism in driving fast. No achievement in reaching your destination 15 minutes earlier. I believed in that, I hope that driver, couple of my friends and everybody else does so.
ii)Cars should not even start if the seat belts are not put on.
iii) The broken glass and the dented metal you see in the accidents could very well been your teeth and bones. I think its good to be paranoid while driving. Like constructive criticism there is something called positive or constructive paranoia. When anything could appear out of nowhere, a pothole,an open manhole,a tractor jumping over the divider, why not be prepared for it?

I think I have started beleiving in God!

Sales fundas they wont teach you at the IIMs

Now thats a cliche post title, but fits in best here.

Like most of the cubicle dwellers, we too hate our office canteen. In fact there is not much available in our office canteen. So almost everybody in my office visits a friendly neighborhood ubiquitous 'Chai ki dukan'. This shop/stall is run by a middle aged couple, who now know us very well now. They cater to a strong 8-10 office crowd in a half kilometer radius. Their menu includes tea,samosa,bread pakoda, and various chips and snacks like kurkure, lays etc (not to forget the gold flakes and the milds!)

We love going there in winters. A hot tea, warm sunshine, a small lawn in the front with lush grass and flowers all around gives us a well deserved break from the hard work we do in the office ;)

Now coming to the point, the tea served here is too sweet. We keep pointing to the guy who makes it and he comes up with lame excuses that its not easy to keep tab of the exact ingredients while making 50 cups of tea together. And come to think of it, sugar being the most costly ingredient,it should have been used sparingly. I think we annoyed him a lot by our relentless prodding and he finally told us why his tea has more sugar than the sugarcane juice.

He says that since the tea is too sweet, more often than not people end up buying namkeen, chips and various snacks to compensate the extra sweetness. Moreover he keeps those chips packets just at an arms length on the counter so that you dont have to ask for it and simply pick one on your own.
Also, he added that he has done his calculations for the past months and the rise in earnings due to this is far more than the drop because of customers doing away with the extra sweet tea.
I took a moment to recall our buying pattern over the last month. And yes, we did buy those kurkure packets a lot with the tea.

Wow,we were impressed!

You have started growing old when ...

As soon as you are done with your haircut, the nai (there are some words which should be adopted in the english dictionary. there is no way I could call nai a barber or hairdresser!!) asks, "Sir, anything else, HAIRCOLOR ?"

I never had a stronger urge to hit back somebody!

I realized that moment that nothing could hit hard. This is it. I am growing old!

Or wait a minute. lets change that to feel better. Some of my hair strands are growing old.

My cool new friend

I don’t usually write anything related to me or what’s happening in my life but I couldn’t resist writing about a cool friend I have made in the last one year. Now this guy epitomizes coolness, ‘I don’t give a dam about the world’ and fearlessness. I totally love his company and lately we have been hanging together a lot. Though he is much smarter and wittier than me and never misses a chance to mock me or make me sound like an idiot but anything for good times with him. Let’s call him Mr S. Though he wouldn’t even know if I write his name here as he does not use internet a lot and totally not into Blogs.
Now S really loves automobiles. Be it a cycle, motorbike or car. Now his interest in is not of the type where people lust for dream machines with cool Ferrari wallpapers on their desktop for the sake of coolness quotient associated with these sexy cars. He is in love with cars. He gets up every morning, inspects his car (ok, his dad’s car, he still hasn’t started earning, still studying) for any scratches, inspects the tyre for air pressure. And god forbid if any visible scratch is found on the body, he brings the whole house down asking who has done it . Then he diligently washes the car, followed by a bike wash. He takes painstaking detail in washing the bike, making sure that every spike of the bike’s tyre gets cleaned. Heck he does not mind cleaning even his neighbor’s car if it’s dirty. He loves going on drives and has pestered every car owner in our street for a drive. Needless to say I have done it almost every week since months now.
Once it so happened that my dad who lives in a different city, left his car with me for a month. Now S was elated to see another car in my possession. And asked me for a drive. I explained him that this is dad’s car and I would only take it out once a week to keep the battery alive and he is welcome for a drive then. But the lazy person I am, I did not drive the car for 3 weeks and when finally I decided to take the car out, S was with me, all gung ho for a ride in a different car. But the car refused to start. I feared the battery must have gone weak. Now S loves cars, not just his car, any car. Like some people believe in humanity, he believes in Carity! He was horrified to find that the car was not in a good condition and blamed me that I did not take proper care of my car. This is how the conversation went then (though the language was hindi, I am translating it for non-hindi speakers,if any)

S: You are responsible for this. This is not good. Your dad should be told about it.
Me: dude, give me a break, this is just a small trouble, cars take time in winters to crank up, specially a bit older ones.
S: I don’t know anything, you were told to do something and you did not, give me your mobile , I am goanna talk to aunty about this (my mom)
Me: Are you kidding me, forget it.
S: Give me the phone.
Me: You are nuts.

I dialed my mom’s number and let him talk. He complained like a primary school student would to his teacher. Aah, so much for the love of a car.

Last week we got our home painted, it took about a month and when it was done, we re-did the furniture and other arrangement in the guest rooms, shifting the wall hangings and TV and almost everything. Now S is a super observant guy. He came to visit me yesterday and once again found everything on the wall re-arranged in a different order. He instantly remarked on watching it- “Don’t you have anything else to do? The watch was this wall the other day, now it is on this wall, what is happening, enough of it and do something else” . I didn’t mind much, simply ignored him.
And as a custom, he pestered me for a drive. I decided to take dad’s car. While driving, I just drove little too sloppily, swaying to the left and then suddenly right and tried some more antics, just to show off my driving skills. I thought S would love it.

Me: - See, I too can drive like they do in the television.
S: - dude you never did it in your car, I know you are doing this because it is your dad’s car. I get it dude.
Me: - where on earth did you get that idea from, you are nuts!!

There are many more wonderful incidents with this young lad, he just fills the room with spark with his presence and energy levels and the enthusiasm for life and everybody loves him. Lately, he is getting quite jealous of his neighbor’s have brought as his dad just has a modest and humble santro. He is now pestering his dad to buy a new one, any car will do, but it should be bigger than the corolla, features and comfort do not matter to him!

And he believes that my brother who has gone to America for higher studies is more intelligent than me, since I am still working and he chose to study and often taunts me as being ‘Dimag se paidal’ 
Oh and did I mention that Mr S is just four and a half years old!

Of Sun rise and late rise!

This is what happens when you haven't gotten up early since months. I am a chronic late riser(thats post 10 for me) and get to see sun rise about once a quarter! So today when I had to get up early morning, I sleep walked out to the balcony and the moment I looked at the hazy sun, my mind whispered to me: "aah, what a beautiful sunset"!! Errr ... it took me about 5 seconds to register the fact that its a sunrise and not a sunset. I guess thats why they say to stick to the ways of nature and its not healthy to sleep late and get up late and blah blah!!

Road

It doesn’t matter
It doesn’t matter what road you take
The road may be lonely
There could be obstacles
It doesn’t matter
The road could lead to a wonderland
The companions may be intriguing
It doesn’t matter
You may stop in the middle
It doesn’t matter
What matters is when you decide to stop; you should have a story to tell, YOUR story.

Things I hope Science could do

I) Invent something to copy text from my PC monitor and paste in my writing pad or mobile.
II) A Ctrl F in books and a Ctrl F to locate glasses, purse and stuff like that in home.
III) Read people’s intentions to help you classify them instantly into “Will be great friend” or “Will backstab, keep away” or to classify boss’ sermon into “Truly means it” or “Sugar coated shit, do not pay attention”.
IV) Hunger dousing pills for occasions when you have no time at all or are too bogged down and depressed to even move a finger to arrange food!
V) Selective target honking – A lot of times while in traffic I want to honk away to glory for an idiot doing antics on road in front of me, but do not want to bother a nice guy adjacent to the idiot. There should be something to address this. Something like “Beep beep idiot UP 16 9305”!
VI) A mechanism to find songs on internet by tunes. Often it happens that you hear a short or a distant catchy tune and so desperately want to find the song, but cant. Google gods listening?
VII) A way to test out a kid and decide what would be the best career for him, wherein as they say “Love what you do and you won’t have to work for a day”. People spend lifetime and realizing what they love and what they want to do (professionally, career wise). If only there was a way out right at the beginning. Just suck out 10ml of blood, send the sample for test and tell the kid (I think class 10th is the right time) what career works best for him/her.
VIII) Cure pain for once and all, ALL Sort of, EVERY Sort of. Finger, legs, knees, head, heart!

If Ramayana was on Facebook :)

I normally resist putting content from forward mails as blog posts, but this was hilarious.
Disclaimer: Not my creation. A Hi5 to the creator!
Please click on the image and it would display clearly. I dont know why it does not in the post. Tried all settings.

Why bother waking up Sid

Wake Up Sid is not a bad movie. But that is the only compliment I can give to it. With an interesting star cast of Ranbir Kapoor, Konkana Sen and 15 funkiest Tees you would have ever seen on the bollywood big screen, you are left wanting more.
The movie does not entertain, does not blow you away, does not bring a smile or a tear, in fact it does not invoke much emotions. You don’t empathize with the character of Sid at all, which is absolutely necessary for the genre of movie Wake Up Sid intends to be.

Every scene ends up being predictable. There is one scene when the camera pans through a office cabin’s door, with the name of the person (who happens to be Konkana Sen’s boss) written on the entrance. At this point its already let known to the viewer that they are about to see Konkana’s boss. Before this scene, Konkana talks a bit about her boss. Before we get to see the boss, I thought to myself, this sounds like Rahul Khanna (the kind of role he did in love aaj kal, intellectual, good looking, charming, talented and witty boss). And I hadn’t heard even once before watching the movie,that he has a role in it, and there he was standing with his characteristic half-smile (his brother can even manage a quarter-smile!) I mean how cliché can you get, the same kind of boss we have seen in many movies. She is in awe of her initially, he asks her out, she denies, he still remains the charming lovely boss. Give me a break, we have seen this boss too many times in recent past, and that too the same actor doing it!!

And lets move on to Mr Sid. He is living life in the lap of luxury. He has this servant called chotu, who looks more ambitious and intelligent than him. Now I have no problem with spoilt brats living life to the hilt on daddy’s money. But if the movie wants us to show his growing up into a man who realizes that there has to be a direction in life, it ought to dug deep in a character, how he feels about life, his dilemmas, why he feels so, his struggle with life, I mean something on the lines of lakshya’s hrithik roshan…

All Sid does is learn to cook an egg and roam around an apartment clicking random snaps with an expensive looking camera, which again is nothing but a rich guy’s toy bought on dad’s money!

The only saving grace is extremely good looking Ranbir Kapoor and refreshing music. Sometimes I wonder why bollywood makes movies. Can’t they just release songs and promos?

In the end, I would like to pay tribute to the guy who invented the popcorn, without which I wouldn’t have been able to continue sitting in the second half of many bollywood movies.

Webster's definition of WTF!

This one is gonna be a short and crisp post.

There has been this rumor making rounds that webster dictionary is updating its definition for WTF.

The latest definition of WTF would be a picture of Obama holding his Nobel Peace Prize.

PS: - Well that is presumably floating around as a joke, but can there be a better explanation of WTF!

Cats in the cradle and the Silver spoon

Someone forwarded me these beautiful lines. Its a song by Harry Chapin.
With lyrics like this, no matter who sings it, how he or she sings it, howz the tune, I am a fan!


My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away
And he was talkin' 'fore I knew it, and as he grew
He'd say "I'm gonna be like you dad
You know I'm gonna be like you"

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home dad?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then son
You know we'll have a good time then

My son turned ten just the other day
He said, "Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let's play
Can you teach me to throw", I said "Not today
I got a lot to do", he said, "That's ok"
And he walked away but his smile never dimmed
And said, "I'm gonna be like him, yeah
You know I'm gonna be like him"

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home son?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then son
You know we'll have a good time then

Well, he came home from college just the other day
So much like a man I just had to say
"Son, I'm proud of you, can you sit for a while?"
He shook his head and said with a smile
"What I'd really like, Dad, is to borrow the car keys
See you later, can I have them please?"

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home son?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then son
You know we'll have a good time then

I've long since retired, my son's moved away
I called him up just the other day
I said, "I'd like to see you if you don't mind"
He said, "I'd love to, Dad, if I can find the time
You see my new job's a hassle and kids have the flu
But it's sure nice talking to you, Dad
It's been sure nice talking to you"

And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me
My boy was just like me

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home son?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then son
You know we'll have a good time then

PS:-

Here is a lovely version of this by Ugly kid joe (dont go by his name,he sings beautifully!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3bht7S-3vI