we indians use water for everything - right from cooking our food to washing our butts and even until recently fighting... recently there was a fwd of a presentation that said something as unbelievable as world wars being fought over water and armed personnel guarding small water reservoirs... at that time it seemed unbelievable and too imaginative... but today it seemed quite real and scary...
everybody knows what the verdict is going to be - release some xx% of water to TN and keep (100-xx)% of water for KN. people are so imaginative that they wait till the verdict to start the protests. and yes coming to the imagination and the ignorance that drives it, i can't believe what i was reading on the posts on the different discussion boards... some were inspired from Mary Antoinette of the french revolution - "let them buy bisleri"... some said Cauvery originates in KN and hence all the water belongs to KN... why should we even share even a bit of that water... if this is going to cause further trouble to kannadigas, we will form our own country out of our state...
ok, i might actually be writing only anti KN comments here, but i never said i am being fair... i am not hearing both sides because the tamils have nothing to say other than "please give us water" in a more authoritative tone as if it is their birthright... well come to think of it, how many birthrights have we already neglected and desecrated to consider this on a seperate plane?
the tamilnadu government to my knowledge is a game of tennis played between the 2 prominent political parties or rather their leaders... there is always the habit of throwing the blame-ball into the other's court... never have they focussed on anything of use to the people of TN, but only on bashing each other when they have the upper hand. this water issue has also been handled in the same way - the focus of the governemnt over the years has been only on cauvery... TN pleads everytime, KN refuses, the tribunal forces KN to release water, the people of KN are agitated by the sympathy created by the KN government, TN people are happy over the victory achieved by the TN government and all the attention focussed away from the apathy every year on and on and on and on... the water problem surprisingly is a comment that i remember being mentioned in a 1952 tamil movie...
a few months or even years back there were talks of distilling the water from the sea, rainwater harvesting, closing out the borewells, and many more schemes aimed at saving water in TN. but all have been just a drain for the money siphoned out by the government. nothing usful has come out of it. a simple request like RWH which is to be ensure the colective well being of the people when implemented well, does not bring any cooperation from anyone. the people dont want to invest that 500 rupees into this simple procedure, the authorities don't care if it done properly or whether it is just a pipe leading nowhere, the neighbours and other people of the state support the intelligence of the owner and copy his ingenuity... there are other rivers in tamilnadu that have either been polluted beyond use or exploited for their sands and rocks during the dry seasons when they should be could be cleaned and deepened, cachement areas created or expanded in such a way so as to minimise losses and use the water that gets drained to the seas during the monsoons as sewage... the bores have touched depths as much as 500 feet and to think that earlier wells were hardly 10-15 feet deep, not even 15 years ago, because i myself have seen such wells and i wont hesitate to say it in a court of law... and on a thought, maybe this water table erosion was the reason that farmers are not getting enough water and cauvery is taking the whole blame...
a google result yielded some more distressing news: there were 4-5 other rivers too facing similar charges... a sad state for the country... considering that the northern lands have a perennial supply of water, even they are not spared of the water problem. the shocker was when i read that cherapunji. one of the wettest places receiving very heavy rainfall is facing water shortages... brahmaputra sends huge quantities of water into the ocean every year, and this amount is aprroximately 3 times the maximum requirement of the 4 southern states... the plan to connect the major rivers of india has suffered the usual lethargy in understanding the importance... it might come up soon, but when the context is so expensive to even think about...
this water issue has been nothing short of been exploited at the cost of all the citizens by the politicians of india to maintain their places. scores of demonstrations and fasts, proposals, meetings all achieving no purpose but to give the right amount of media exposure to the politicians who never have the necessity for river water when they can get the mineral water free-for-life as bribes... the media too has been having a field day passing judgements; winner: TN, first runner up: Kerala, losers: KN and pondicherry... this is going to fuel the ego between the states and result in more violence... and this is crazy as i cannot even have a friendly jibe fearing diplomacy and racial harassment...
however though, not everything is lost... this time the goverments have also learnt some lessons. they have been shrewd enough in anticipating a probability of violence (which is almost as high as the probability of the sun rising in the east) and have posted police force to the tune of about 16000 personnel in bangalore alone... this could be because bangalore being the most IT savvy city of KN has people glued to their computer screens and so once the verdict is out they can immediately post remarks on the net and order weapons on e-bay and rush out of office to burn buses... so all the terrorist IT folks have been sent home before they can cause harm, and the other workers have been sent home too lest they demand overtime for working on a national holiday. yeah i forgot to mention, they removed the expensive volvos out of the roads first.
i am not in a position to suggest anything new to the people or their servants - the government and the political parties. however, it is time something long term was arrived at considering that india is made of indians and that we are taught to be proud of the unity in diversity since the time of our school textbooks... however it is not as easy as blocking the wind by closing the door... whatever is done needs to be done at a higher big picture level... as for example in the cauvery issue, it is not enough if the water is released now... the states have to arrive at better policies and regulations to manage the water and other natural resources effectively instead of having a team of consultants or a tribunal advising them to start using toilet paper.
for this, the people of india need to stop dreaming and wake up... and also think on their own, not just for their own.
Da(m)n Brown
I have no personal vendetta against him, nor am I prejudiced. I am just a kid who grew up reading “The Hardy Boys” and “The Three Investigators” kind of novels. The kind of fascination and awe I had for those novels are not the same as those that I have for the 4 Dan Brown novels… might be because I was a school kid teenager then and now I am a mature adult… but then Dan Brown’s books were meant for adults right?
But let us get into the fundamental question… is he really the great author that everyone portrays him as? Unputtdownable !!! awesome plots !!! stupendous narration !!! fast paced thriller !!! "I love Dan Brown" !!!
Is it so?
Let me tell you how to become a Dan Brown…
Watch a lot of movies… English action ones preferably those on the lines of extreme action
Also watch a lot National Geographic and Discovery. Here you will get a lot of information on the most pressing issues of the world right from the historical paintings in
Next, cook up a plot, does not matter if it is half cooked, but it should be really bizarre and location should be even more bizarrely exotic… like the polar ice-caps or the internal storage vault of NSA’s information system or the most religious area of the
And mix all of them together to form a khichdi of events from movies, “substantiated” with factual jargons from technology and pull in nature’s help from national geographic and discovery and just follow the plot as the central backbone – and VOILA… you are Dan Brown… oops sorry… not yet, the central character should be a man, and of course he should have a initially fragile lady who changes into a fighting tigress over the course of the story…
If you are still not pissed off and if you still want to read about what I think of each of his 4 books read on. This torture would have been spared if I had had the patience to finish all the 4 books of his in one go unlike now, where I actually found time to finish the last of it after I learnt blogging. I sincerely apologise. (I am also trying to get over my addiction to tea, these outbursts can also be called withdrawal symptoms when I try to do something else to get my mind out of thinking about tea.)
The Da Vinci Code – the book that shot him to fame is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. His other books were not as controversial as this one attacking the celibacy of the world’s most celebrated bachelor. The silly puzzles of anagrams and crazy killings are an insight into the author’s level of imagination – a worthy Hardy Boys plot or some other teenager book. Put in a lot of adult characters and a mention of a sexual orgy, it becomes a novel worthy of the mature adult mind. Thank god, it was not based on Islam, otherwise it would have been war instead of demonstrations.
Angels and Demons – a really forgettable book, though the plot appeared better than da Vinci code… the imagination is bizarre where a man of god can actually murder the pope for the sake of religion… amazing imagination. And the man of god is well versed with flying army choppers and parachuting, which is quite common these days.
Digital Fortress – an amazing tale of software security, but told at the wrong time. In today’s world which is practically running on the assumption that everyone understands IT, the author himself does not; the naiveté of the author to trust the world on non-piracy oriented software sharing…
Deception Point – amazing how simply assumptions are made with respect to tasks… a 8 ton massive rock is just very easily insert up a huge glacial ice land in the arctic… and how a small software bug can actually cost the president his political strength… the icing in the cake… the fish that are so central to the book’s story… absolutely comical end. If you ever read it, don’t miss the epilogue.
15 minutes of fame
He was tired and hungry… or hungry and tired… or maybe tired because he was hungry… the 4 cups of thin cutting-chai he had at various roadside shops didn’t help. He had not had a single passenger since morning. And he was not lazing around. He had woken up at 5am and left the house, if he could call it that, at 5:30. He lived in Gandhinagar, which is what is normally called the outskirts of the city, but at least it had a good sounding name. The house was a small brick enclosure, actually very cheap brick just held together by plain cement and white paint and a tin roof. It cost him 1000 rupees per month just for rent. Apart from that the landlord would take 200 rupees for things like water and electricity that were supposed to be available at the turn of a tap and the flick of a switch; things that happened only in the landlord’s words.
He thought about the golden days when he as a kid lived in the now congested area in the center of the city. His father was not a great businessman and did not earn a handsome income. But he was at least not in poverty, getting a decent earning by selling vegetables on the handcart in the nearby residential areas. They had rented a good house, unlike the one in which he lived now. It even had the red cement flooring. And once in 3-4 years they did whitewash the house. It was in his early 20s when he could no longer find a job for his eighth-class-school-dropout qualification, that he decided to take up driving the auto rickshaw. He had used up all his homes savings to give the deposit to the rickshaw owner, and he had not gotten it without a fight. Luckily he had no sisters.
Then he got married and the wife seemed lucky. Business started booming for him as there were more and more passengers in the city of
And then it happened. The landlord hiked up his rents. What was once a house for 300-400 rupees was now hot property going at 3000-4000 rupees per month in rent. And his dad was no longer healthy enough to work harder to satisfy the gap, and anyways it was too big a gap. And slowly they moved into the outskirts, and as the city started gobbling up the outskirts, they were pushed farther and farther away. Finally it now took him at least 10km of travel to get to his earlier business area. And that distance was hell in the peak hour traffic.
Jolted back to reality at the sound of a blaring horn, he slowed down. He wanted money that day, if not for anything else at least to feed himself a decent meal. And it was late in the night, and he wanted to get home. It was at the beginning of airport road that he saw him waving down an autorickshaw ahead in vain. He was well dressed and wore a tie, carried a leather like black bag which contained a thin computer; technology had improved so much. In the slow pace that he reached he studied the guy’s face as it showed a temporary relief on seeing another autorickshaw. As he neared him, he heard “Marthahalli”… and he did not stop… he was not keen on it. Marthahalli was just 4-5 kms from that place and would hardly fetch him 20-30 bucks… hardly enough for the trouble he had been through the entire morning. Why do people want to travel just short distances? Don’t they realize that he has to travel from very far away to come to the business area? Moreover he had to travel further on after dropping him off to his home… what is the guarantee he would get another passenger at the place he drops of this guy? He felt it was not value for the effort, even though the guy wanted to get off en-route to where he was actually headed… How many people did he have to say no to for short distances? The government should pass a rule that short distance travelers should not hail autorickshaws and waste time and pay a fine if they did. This money should then be shared amongst the auto drivers in the city.
But he stopped hardly 5 meters away from the executive for a small drink of tea. At least something to satiate his growling stomach. The executive thought he had stopped for him… naïve guy… a sarcastic smile spread across his unshaven face. He shook his head vigorously at the harried executive and made his way towards the petty shop. He shook his head again as the executive pleaded with him arguing that he wanted to travel in the same direction as he was headed and he would even pay some 10 bucks above the metered amount. Hmmph… what did these guys think? Just because they earn a lot they can buy off anyone? Of course, there are some extra charges that are charged by rickshaw drivers, but justified by the hardships faced by the drivers depending on the time of the day and the area they had to travel to…
He cribbed to the chaiwala about the condition of
He saw the executive pull out his mobile phone and flip it open with an irate expression on his face. Another display of opulence; where else can these guys spend their wealth? Why can’t they take a simple reliance phone like him? They don’t need that much money. The government should actually tax these people more and give the excess funds to the needy like himself. He heard him chatter away something on the phone in English. The executive must have been a call center guy for he could speak English so well. He himself could have been a call center guy, employed and being ordered around. Instead he had chosen like many of his heroes to drop out of school and be an entrepreneur. He was his own master, and a proud one at that. So what if he were hungry for some time; he had his pride.
The chai was almost over and he thought, he would give the executive a slow hint that he would not mind dropping him off for a fare that is nominal at this time of the night, around three times the metered fare. Then he would watch him hungrily lap up the offer, though it might hit his budget. But then these executives are paid in thousands; so why don’t they pay money which is luxury for them anyways. And he would enjoy the discomfort of his passenger as he would reluctantly agree to his savior, even if he proves to be a bit costly. At that point he would be like god to the executive, who would realize that money cannot buy everything, and the auto-driver, a poorer man, wields the actual power.
He dropped the cup near the card board box provided for it and turned around loudly cursing the guy who had placed the box at the wrong distance. A bike screeched to a halt in front of the executive and another similarly dressed guy takes off the helmet. They exchanged pleasantries and spoke a language that he did not know and hence could not hear them cursing him. Then the two of them looked at their watches and the waiting executive gets on the back of the bike and before zooming away makes a close fisted hand and shakes it at him. He realized it was not actually close fisted and there was one long finger pointing upwards.
The government should fine people for making rude signs at innocent people, he thought.
perils of education
I was reading an article today about supply chain management and I came across a statement that was actually very meaningful… it said “the number of people that aspire to be truck drivers or warehouse workers is shrinking. Our children are better educated than previous generations and want to pursue other kinds of careers”…
Now we are generally made to believe throughout our upbringing that education is the single biggest wealth that cannot be taken away from us… now is that causing problems? A long time back I remember my dad telling me, people used to take up jobs after many days and even months of searching… I have also seen movies related to those eras to prove the general mindset of the people in those times… in these days of campus placements that seems funny and illogical. But really, is it? My brain is still echoing with the words of the student from some remote village who had said “education is the only escape from my poverty”.
Another article in a leading business magazine had two pictures – one a smartly dressed sparkling young man, maybe his late 20s or early 30s and the other a poor looking not-so-well dressed (even to the point of dirty/grimy clothes) with a sad expression on his face, the age unfathomable because he looked tired and old, but at the same time he did not seem to be too old. It said something like are there enough jobs in
But then what I felt at that time was there are a lot of people like the tired man… he was not as educated (in terms of the level) as the other guy who was probably a software guy… the poor guy might be having the qualification suiting that of a line worker – more requirements from a physical labor than an intellectually straining job. What was stopping him from investing in a good education and moving above the poverty line…? I personally know of a few people who were initially in the physical labor category and moved on to become software engineers thanks to the boom that happened… sometimes bugs are good, especially the y2k ones…
The question here is the investment… but then today there are a lot of options available to fund education… also the education investment is like a sure shot return category where the centers of knowledge tend to arrange for getting you a job. So what is stopping them…?
But is education going to cause problems to progress…? This is an angle that we had never thought of. What if everyone aspires to become software engineers or management consultants? All the elite jobs are the only aspirations… people don’t even want to consider joining some jobs that would under-employ their education/capabilities? So let us focus the discussion on truck driving (as in as an example… people are not to assume that this is the only profession).
So would a truck driving job sound lucrative to a guy who has say done his MBA and is looking at the Mckinseys and BCGs… now I am not going to reiterate on the skills that an MBA can teach you, but what are the skills a truck driver would want apart from truck driving? Look at the various possibilities that the MBA jargon can throw at you – supply chain management, logistics, taxation, warehouse management, resource management, negotiation skills, hard selling, bargaining, economies of scale, strategic cost management, activity based costing, impact of the crude oil prices on the inflation of the Indian economy, the cascading effect on the interest rates, the stock price of your company, the market capitalisation of the companies you are the logistics partner of, their effect on the indexes, long term market share, share of the customer’s mindspace, 3Ps, 4Cs, porter’s framework for competitor analysis, SWOT analysis, portfolio management, new services offering, services management, sustaining customer value, entry barriers, exit barriers, telecom and IT in truck driving management… and so on… the list is endless…
And let us look at the job description… the role would involve extensive traveling and opportunity to work with the customers, a more functional kind of outlook and the opportunity to gain domain expertise. Networking skills and communication skills are tremendously important when you meet the authorities at the different borders. And then the perks… for a complete auto junkie, you cannot ask for more – absolute power at arms length… what can those SUVs or good looking sports cars compete where it really matters. For travel junkies you get to travel throughout the country, the roads are yours… you visit different cities from
So what is stopping people from taking it up? Well the pay could be one such issue… that is a sadly neglected area in the Indian industry. Compensation has to be in commensurate with the economy and companies should benchmark themselves with the competition. However the competition in this case is not the other truck companies, but any other company. What will happen if all the truck drivers decide to do a course in J2EE… they would be the most sought after guys for the ever booming software sector. Well J2EE is not tough you know, any truck driver with enough money can learn it.
So what is the gain for companies? They can look at hiring part-time employees like McDonalds… students during their vacations… the visibility it will give them amongst their logistics partners… the truck companies will also have to do some hard selling… maybe even come to campus… provide lucrative working conditions, global standards in truck designs and cabin facilities… world recognition in terms of quality trucks leading to future export markets…
What a butterfly effect it can produce with just one small decision to become a truck driver…
guru @ times of indiapoised . now
There are 2 kinds of movies that give you a cramped feeling and want to yawn and stretch out at the end of it. The first one is the kind where u tend to fall asleep in the limited space available in the “rocking” chair and unable to actually stretch the legs and snooze off comfortably. The other ones that actually make u sit up cramped and take no notice of comfort, where you want to hang on to every single word that is being said, every single muscle that acts and every single character that comes by on the screen…
Guru falls into the second category. Mani Ratnam has done a splendid job of abhishek bachan, changing his persona from a dumb cop/husband roles to one of real essence that actually makes the blood tingle in the veins whenever you see his “expressionless” face. When the simple villager seems to be pushed back by everyone who is conservative and has no faith in the future, in their own son, you are reminded of big B’s rendition of the
“ There are 2
Starting with his dad who does not believe that he can do well in his endeavor so on up to the government and the press who are bent on slandering him just because he is successful through the normal ways of the system – bribery and corruption, the movie showcases hypocrites who are generally scared of big things in life. They are happy leading their mundane useless existence, but would not want to change for the better; which is absolutely fine, but then why pull down somebody who wants to break out of the mold. Like where was the government when gurubhai was building up the tax evasions little by little? They were the ones who were accepting the fact and the money and turning a blind eye to it all. (I have people who vouch for those practices being sanctioned by the government itself for tax “benefits” as they are called in this case even today.) But the individual is indispensable to the government and can be called into an inquiry and bullied into bankruptcy and anonymity...
And the best part is when the public “awareness” builds up and they realize that bachan is actually screwing them by resorting to unlawful means of cost reduction and business building. A guy who has made people wealthy by making them shareholders of his empire in return for a measly sum of money from them, that has given them many times the returns, certainly deserves something more than the accusations of the masses. That is why the really intelligent people don’t do anything for the masses… what is the point? Screw them…
There is no obvious fault in the movie except for a few redundant songs and there could have been somebody who could act for the role of sujatha, abhishek bachan’s wife… probably mallika sherawat could have been used throughout the movie.
The dialogues are very strong and supporting the delivery were the background scores… especially when in the split second the mood changes and bachan transitions from hero to villain within the same scene and for the same household. The whole combo just makes you feel kinda proud of the guy on the screen. The movie could not be better timed especially when the
the law of averages
School was ordinarily a blissful state of mind until of course the report cards were send home. My dad would ask me “who is the topper in that subject?”, “and this one?”, “and this…?”, “ why can’t u even score 90% while the topper can score 95…”… I don’t know what happened to that poor guy (let us call him X to preserve anonymity) who was at the bottom of the class… what would his dad have told him?
He normally used to be around the 50-70 range (when normally the topper would be in the 90-100 range). It would have been difficult for him to have that quantum leap to catch up with the topper, unless he did some Business Process Reengineering… (but I guess he was too young for that kind of complex and abstract thoughts). So our X plods on through school barely managing to scrape into the next level, having developed a rhino hide from his dad’s charades rendering him impervious to the empty threats of his school teachers… while let us say I manage to put in that little extra effort (also called sacrifice) by squeezing time from my leisure activities into that bottomless pit called study time and somehow manage to close in on the topper by the time I finish school…
Now that hardwork really seemed to have paid off because I finished my engineering and am now a zombie software engineer earning enough money to give back to the government through the other routes of paying tax (after exhausting my income tax limit), with movie halls, restaurants, bike shops, music systems, cablewallas, booze and so on… the guy called X on the other hand, went to study in some college that not many had heard of and into a course that even fewer had heard of… he comes out and starts a creative agency, handling advertising and media planning for big corporates… intellectually challenged everyday as he has to have a plan to earn everyday, he is not a zombie, has better ways of staying energized and motivated than by just paying tax… and his paycheck is normally proportional to the amount of work he does. Now, there are a few zombies that are not completely zombified and so they tend to look at people like X and have mixed feelings – ranging from raving jealousy to unconditional sympathy depending if you are in the early stages of zombiehood or really advanced into it.
It is not just the money I am cribbing about here… it is something more. Let us say that there are people who enjoy what they are doing and people who don’t. It is not just about the money making part… it is something that they feel good that they are doing what they want to do, just because they want to do it.
It is a general observation that everyone is born with some sort of differentiating factor that is slightly more intangible than the finger-print-pattern or the dna. For a lack of better word let us call it “talent”… most people have the privilege of discovering it during their short lifetime, but a vast majority in this category tend to ignore it or play-down these urges to exhibit their natural skills… (now skills is a different meaning in which it can be acquired through years of practice, hence the word natural here). The tendency normally arises from what is normally the peer pressure or even sheer pressure… blame it on parents, teachers, society, friends, media, money, Gandhi, Hitler, tobacco, alcohol, GOD, destiny, Disney… wotever… the fact remains that playing it down has helped it become a vestigial organ like the appendix, which when can take it no longer causes the greatest pain when leaving you…
Sometime back I saw an ad with the caption “the doctor who killed the photographer”… just because the guy went on to become a doc by giving up on his passion for photography, it does not mean that he is a bad doc or a quack. He is a good one, but he probably lacks the zeal in his work… maybe he comes home irritated at having to do something that he does not want to do… or maybe he feels that he is not able to do something that he wants to do… or maybe just a little nagging thought that he keeps feeling that he would have been happier as a photographer…
There are a lot of success stories that I have seen among my friends… almost all that have come about with a great deal of sacrifice, with just a handful that took the path shown by their heart… there was this passionate cricket captain who could score centuries and bowl faster than anyone with deadly aim with dreams of making it to the Indian team… but he had to give it all up for a traditional parents wished engineering and MS abroad… then there is this athlete who wanted to make it to the Olympics, but was made to sit in the same year twice because his teacher felt he was not ready to move yet unless he focused on his studies too… then there was this guitar player who would call himself a rock-star… now everyone else calls him a doctor… then this singer, who is now a highly paid banker, just because her dad was one… then there was this guy amazing at dramatics, but who cares… he now sells soap and the only dramatics he can ever practice is to tell the ugly housewife, how much she would glow like aishwarya rai with a straight and honest face… not even the son of the engineering college director was spared of the software bug – he who could actually make ARR awe at the ability with which he could reproduce his magical music… and I can just go on… most of them in the software business as that is the booming sector for the Indian economy right now… maybe they are all true Indians, putting the nation before the self…
Maybe I should have worked myself in the opposite direction to catch up with the guy at the bottom of the class… maybe I should have ignored my parent’s ambitions for me… maybe I should have stubbornly refused the amazing salary offered to me upon my graduation… but maybe I am not in a bad situation after all… the world probably needs my skills more than my talent… maybe my skills would give me a better standard of living that my talent can only give in my dreams… maybe my brain is right and my heart is being stupid…
The generalization here is not that mediocre performers normally end up being the greatest achievers… statistics do tend to prove that, and more and more such kind of misfits are proving the society wrong…if it hadn’t been for them we would not be having stuff from windows to relativity theories… there are some high achievers who do make it big… the point here is how many of these high achievers tend to fall prey to social pressures to do what others expect them to do or just follow the herd… they should realize that it pays to unbelong and these mavericks are the actual change makers…
To all who have missed the train of opportunity and are lost in the own quagmire of disappointment at what they have become… there maybe justifiable reasons to what has happened and probably have no regrets… maybe just that small itch that we can scratch away… or hire some one to scratch it away…
the sixth day
When I began my odyssey 6 days back, people told me I had lost it… “me of all the peoples wants to go on this regime??? that was crazy!!!”… I was asked not to take an emotional decision and urged to use my sense of reasoning – commonly called the sixth sense which is a USP of the humans… (it is because of this that we are so intellectually superior to animals… much ahead of our closest competitors with dolphins and chimps at positions 2 and 3. Have you ever seen a dolphin play NFS underground with even half the dexterity I display?)
And frankly after the first session I really did feel that way… never guessed I would survive to see this day. But I am alive and taking each day at the pre-dawn time.
Ok, to break the great suspense… I am off into a self generated fitness plan to build up my stamina… so am jogging early in the morning (thanks for the applause and I am deaf to sneers)… for this I have entered into strategic partnerships to make this plan a success. I have found a couple of guys who are more dedicated to the cause than I am, and would passionately wake up at 6 am everyday and go for it; so passionate that despite my early morning reluctance to leave my bed, they would still come back the next day… that is the secret of successful partnerships.
The coaxing out of bed was the toughest to start with. My heart with its stupid conscience telling me “you promised” and my evil mind talking me out of it “it is just verbal”… finally I did make the move and man was it cold. You cannot expect much warmth from the pre-dawn haze just on the horizon (never seen it for a long time, in fact I don’t remember seeing it). On the first day it was a modest beginning – just 3 rounds, almost breathless at the end, just about to drop dead. But pure grit brought me back to my room.
My body initially didn’t take it seriously (as most others). It probably assumed that I was trying to spend some excess steam or maybe just a one day misadventure. The next day when I managed to land at the jogging track again, the truth hit it bad and it didn’t take it well. My body used to being pampered with a diet that is filthy rich in cholesterol and the luxury of just lazing around at any time of the day without having to expend too much of the energy just could not accept this change of plan. Rebellion was in the air and in my calf muscles – I could not walk for the entire day without using my facial muscles every time a shockwave went up. But I managed to pull on and the next day I was back… though this time I really needed to be kicked out. I could hear my partners contemplating a cold water shower right above my head… and that sounded an alarm in my head to open my eyes.
Day 4 and day 5 went on just as the others, and things were settling into the normal routine – my jogging partner would come to my room and wake me up, I would reluctantly trudge along to the track, do about 5 rounds and be back in the room in 20 mins.
Day 6, was when I realized the pact that my body and mind had signed up for the betterment of both. I was up at 630 and realized that my partners in crime had not yet come. So I waited and decided to spring a surprise on them and got into my running shoes and waited… and it was a long wait…
For about 15 minutes I kept my excitement contained and waited… but still no sign of the others. So I trotted upstairs, half expecting that they have gone off earlier and I had not been able to hear their threats of cold water too… the dreadful thought seemed proved rite when I opened the door of their room and found only one bed occupied… I decided to sprint to the track, just to keep the routine unbroken… the sun was already spraying its hue on the horizon and I was getting paranoid and I felt heartbroken that it is already over… then I realized I was in the wrong room…
D:2
dhoom2
starring suzuki GSK-R1000K6, GSX-R600K6 and GSR600K6, great locales, great babes, putting-latest-bond-to-shame gadgetry, stupid police, muscular men, and of course abhishek, ash, bips, hrithik and that chopra dude whose dad made the movie...
movie tkt - 180 bucks
auto - 30 bucks
coffee - 36 bucks
bunking class and bird watching before and during the movie - priceless...
yup i am excited... it is that way when u expect something and the movie actually lives upto your expectations, however low they might be. this movie is probably the return of the adulthood for hrithik... he really looks as good as a sexy hunk should... damn sexy and smart... ash (if u watch closely) actually drools for him in a couple of scenes (it might be mistaken for wet look lipstick). he is that smart sophisticated intelligent muscular athletic thief who steals for the challenge of it and not for the money... yeah yeah so wot is different from D1's John Abraham... well nothing actually hrithik has great abs too... but then i don't like the john abraham... and hrithik dances well too...
abhishek bacchan is his usual grumpy exterior soft interior self... and his nagging wife is comfortably pregnant at home so that he can romance bips... even if it means only for half the movie... adn in the second half he tries to bash ash, but hrithik does not allow it coming to the defense of his girl... wait i am day-dreaming... sorry...
the chopra guy is his usual funny stuff... but this time he has a pistol in his hand... man that is dangerous... there was once a joke about what is dangerous and swings from tree to tree... it was a chimp with a machine gun... this guy handling pistols is not safe... he was shooting aimlessly... now bips was shooting too... and that is what i call a touch-a-woman-can-only-give kind... she shoots a design into the practice bullseye...that is sharpshooting...
coming to the girls, they both like dolls and think like it too... bips is reduced from a sexy looking police officer with a special talent for shooting great designs in dummies, to a bikini totting beach babe who falls for the chimp, oops sorry the chopra dude... and ash plays the negative role, where she doublecrosses and triplecrosses hrithik and finally succumbs in the end to love...
now the music score is awesome too... the screeeeeeeeeeeeeeamm of the bikes and the banging of the drums (seems like they copied from southie gana-song) is just too good... what with hrithik and ash and bips and the chimp dancing away - truly their hips don't lie... and man can hrithik dance - his solo parts are truly mind blowing...
some of the bloopers i wish to turn a blind eye to are the silly looking stunts that are attempted hollywood style, but remain bollywood isshhtyil... and the absurd stupidity of the policemen... those are like really irritating... i do agree hrithik's disguises were too good, but his gadgets are there for everyone to see... and people don't even notice that whatever they were guarding is missing... the star studded cast had to have that many songs and they are all there complete with all the disco music adnd lights and dancing girls in shorty shorts and guys with sparkling hairgels... in fact the whole movie gave an impression of a 2 and half hour item number.
this is only a personal prejudiced opinion. for the true picture, i advice you watch the movie. i do recommend the red lounge. my friend complains of a stiff neck in the economy class because of the uncomfortable position in which he slept.
DHOOM MACHALE (once again, if possible at a cheaper rate)
irrational opulence
Recently I had been to Tiruppur – the knitting capital of India. It would be heartening and disheartening to note that the cloth and often the garment itself for major brands like reebok, nike, adidas and many many more have their origins here for a fraction of the price at which it is bought off the shelves. This town (yeah it is still a town), and its surrounding towns and villages have a predominant occupation as either the textile industry or farming.
I could not digest the information I gathered on this town, based on a lot of hearsay and eye-seens. The people here are hard core business men… the business is flourishing as this was an outsourced business long before the word outsourcing became a common household utterance in our country… some of the finest cotton yarn is produced here and the worldwide brands pay a premium for these yarns and the cloth manufactured… actually the only contribution from these brands is the brand name… so truly a brand is a brand is a brand…
The people make huge profits and own big houses whenever there is a windfall of profits, but in case there is a bad luck and one consignment of the company results in a loss then the very same guys are reduced to poverty – but without loss in spirit. Earlier he might have been traveling in a merc E-class and now maybe a tvs-50 (yeah these mopeds are still sold here alongside the 100 color option scooty peps…) but he still travels…
On the flip side, the city is totally polluted and the ground water is colored from all the dyes. Traffic is bad on these roads with smoking trucks and buses plying these roads with overloaded cargoes of those expensive brands. The basic necessities are either expensive for those who can afford it or carcinogenic for those who cannot.
It is funny that such a rich town is so undeveloped in terms of attitude. This town has had a favorable economy for decades as Indian cotton and yarn is supposed to be of the best quality. At this kind of money exchanged, the town should have become a huge financial capital of Tamilnadu eating up Chennai in fame… really what is there in Chennai except for the government? This is maybe one of the richest zones of Tamilnadu but the people here have not come out of their cocoons…
The city still has open drains and many houses still manure their farms directly… they use tractors and heavy farm equipment, but still spend very little for their own travel convenience. The transports used mostly are 30-40 year old breaking down trucks and buses spewing smoke all over the roads… sometimes it makes me wonder if the black roads are actually due to the tar or the smoke settled over the ages… I really could not believe my ears when people said that the premium and pure petrol actually screwed up the engines and reduced the life of the vehicles.
The people who drive the vehicles are excited to own the steering wheel for the moment… in spite of the reality that they don’t have a valid license to drive, let alone kill, they own the roads and consider it a sin to adhere to the speed limits, or even twice that. One-way signs if at all they still exist are ignored and the roads are just barely wide enough to support traffic on opposite directions to cross each other and most often the outside of the vehicle is out of the asphalt… many of them don’t even have the asphalt and use the swampy mud that soaks up the rain water and moves deeper into the earth… the roads are often neglected and there are potholes at blindspots on the long but unnecessarily winding stretches…but still these are the roads that has produced the heritage of the Narain Karthikeyan… not the straight broad stretch called the “Mount road of Chennai”.
The kind of facilities that are normally accepted with even half this kind of wealth is conspicuously missing… I cannot find any coffee-days or shopping malls, the theaters are the old weather beaten moth eaten proud 70MMs… the food in the restaurants are good, though the hygiene factor is nowhere to be seen. If anybody has been following the personal hygiene rules taught in primary school, they would give out twice of whatever they have eaten. The romantic-time-spending-under-soft-lights fancy restaurants are missing… however the normal restaurants pamper you with whatever food they have… the reason usually being the importance attached to food rather than the customer-is-king concept.
Even though these extravagances are missing, the extravagance is not totally missing. People own mercs, lexuses and land cruisers. To quote my close friend from a nearby town – there were only 3 mercs at the time of their introduction in India – one owned by some business tycoon in the north (probably the ambanis, I don’t remember) and 2 in his town!!! Similarly after the major metros, the famous international standards icici bank opened a branch in this area even before visiting many major cities. People do get those jazzy bikes and cars and trucks… but you can still find that this has affected only a very small part of the population. The majority still relies on the bullet for the mirazdars and the tvs-50s and the bajaj m80s for the middle class transport.
Gold is something that the people here are usually decked in after their dazzling silk and polyester saris and dhotis. Of course the fact that Indians still revere gold above their husbands may be one of the principle reasons for their spending in gold. But the opulence is displayed only in the metal and the material and not in the quality. I doubt that anil ambani or azim premji would invite any of these business families to their dinner parties even if these businesses were richer than them – actually it could be true, the richer than the popular business houses part, that is.
Despite so many popular engineering colleges around the towns, they still lack the basic primary education infrastructure… and some industries do proudly sport the board “No Child Labor” (yeah right it is only some). The broadbands and the internet is still beyond the reach of even those who can afford and appreciate them… oops did I jump the gun, before talking about the black and green screen boxes also known as computers… some houses use perfect lan-cords with brand new connectors to hang clothes to dry… communication still usually happens through the government post offices and at the other end of the spectrum the all pervading cellular networks. No, no GPRS and stuff… just plain voice mail…
I am not cribbing about the lack of infrastructure at this place. Nor am I saying that the bigger cities that have adopted the western culture are better off just because they satisfy some of the above requirements. What surprises me is the attitude of the people here. They are earners and not spenders. Whatever they spend on is usually not the priority number 1 of the city dwelling people of similar income levels.
This town is a classic case of money can’t buy everything. For everything else they still don’t accept mastercard.
I could not digest the information I gathered on this town, based on a lot of hearsay and eye-seens. The people here are hard core business men… the business is flourishing as this was an outsourced business long before the word outsourcing became a common household utterance in our country… some of the finest cotton yarn is produced here and the worldwide brands pay a premium for these yarns and the cloth manufactured… actually the only contribution from these brands is the brand name… so truly a brand is a brand is a brand…
The people make huge profits and own big houses whenever there is a windfall of profits, but in case there is a bad luck and one consignment of the company results in a loss then the very same guys are reduced to poverty – but without loss in spirit. Earlier he might have been traveling in a merc E-class and now maybe a tvs-50 (yeah these mopeds are still sold here alongside the 100 color option scooty peps…) but he still travels…
On the flip side, the city is totally polluted and the ground water is colored from all the dyes. Traffic is bad on these roads with smoking trucks and buses plying these roads with overloaded cargoes of those expensive brands. The basic necessities are either expensive for those who can afford it or carcinogenic for those who cannot.
It is funny that such a rich town is so undeveloped in terms of attitude. This town has had a favorable economy for decades as Indian cotton and yarn is supposed to be of the best quality. At this kind of money exchanged, the town should have become a huge financial capital of Tamilnadu eating up Chennai in fame… really what is there in Chennai except for the government? This is maybe one of the richest zones of Tamilnadu but the people here have not come out of their cocoons…
The city still has open drains and many houses still manure their farms directly… they use tractors and heavy farm equipment, but still spend very little for their own travel convenience. The transports used mostly are 30-40 year old breaking down trucks and buses spewing smoke all over the roads… sometimes it makes me wonder if the black roads are actually due to the tar or the smoke settled over the ages… I really could not believe my ears when people said that the premium and pure petrol actually screwed up the engines and reduced the life of the vehicles.
The people who drive the vehicles are excited to own the steering wheel for the moment… in spite of the reality that they don’t have a valid license to drive, let alone kill, they own the roads and consider it a sin to adhere to the speed limits, or even twice that. One-way signs if at all they still exist are ignored and the roads are just barely wide enough to support traffic on opposite directions to cross each other and most often the outside of the vehicle is out of the asphalt… many of them don’t even have the asphalt and use the swampy mud that soaks up the rain water and moves deeper into the earth… the roads are often neglected and there are potholes at blindspots on the long but unnecessarily winding stretches…but still these are the roads that has produced the heritage of the Narain Karthikeyan… not the straight broad stretch called the “Mount road of Chennai”.
The kind of facilities that are normally accepted with even half this kind of wealth is conspicuously missing… I cannot find any coffee-days or shopping malls, the theaters are the old weather beaten moth eaten proud 70MMs… the food in the restaurants are good, though the hygiene factor is nowhere to be seen. If anybody has been following the personal hygiene rules taught in primary school, they would give out twice of whatever they have eaten. The romantic-time-spending-under-soft-lights fancy restaurants are missing… however the normal restaurants pamper you with whatever food they have… the reason usually being the importance attached to food rather than the customer-is-king concept.
Even though these extravagances are missing, the extravagance is not totally missing. People own mercs, lexuses and land cruisers. To quote my close friend from a nearby town – there were only 3 mercs at the time of their introduction in India – one owned by some business tycoon in the north (probably the ambanis, I don’t remember) and 2 in his town!!! Similarly after the major metros, the famous international standards icici bank opened a branch in this area even before visiting many major cities. People do get those jazzy bikes and cars and trucks… but you can still find that this has affected only a very small part of the population. The majority still relies on the bullet for the mirazdars and the tvs-50s and the bajaj m80s for the middle class transport.
Gold is something that the people here are usually decked in after their dazzling silk and polyester saris and dhotis. Of course the fact that Indians still revere gold above their husbands may be one of the principle reasons for their spending in gold. But the opulence is displayed only in the metal and the material and not in the quality. I doubt that anil ambani or azim premji would invite any of these business families to their dinner parties even if these businesses were richer than them – actually it could be true, the richer than the popular business houses part, that is.
Despite so many popular engineering colleges around the towns, they still lack the basic primary education infrastructure… and some industries do proudly sport the board “No Child Labor” (yeah right it is only some). The broadbands and the internet is still beyond the reach of even those who can afford and appreciate them… oops did I jump the gun, before talking about the black and green screen boxes also known as computers… some houses use perfect lan-cords with brand new connectors to hang clothes to dry… communication still usually happens through the government post offices and at the other end of the spectrum the all pervading cellular networks. No, no GPRS and stuff… just plain voice mail…
I am not cribbing about the lack of infrastructure at this place. Nor am I saying that the bigger cities that have adopted the western culture are better off just because they satisfy some of the above requirements. What surprises me is the attitude of the people here. They are earners and not spenders. Whatever they spend on is usually not the priority number 1 of the city dwelling people of similar income levels.
This town is a classic case of money can’t buy everything. For everything else they still don’t accept mastercard.
Finding the right call
Get up at 530 am… not that we had slept well the night before… the time was mainly spent cramming some facts… and mostly studying the fin theory… it is time to move now… the huge waiting room is calling… it is a mad rush to beat the crowd at the common bathrooms… shaving hurriedly and finishing off the other chores… dressing up in the best possible clothes… deos, perfumes, moisturizers and hair gels and what not…
Reach the venue at 630 well a little later actually but in time to wait… we find that some of the comfy corners are already gone… taken by early risers and enterprising people who had the foresight to see what was coming… small sacrifice to beat the long waiting times… good thinking…
Somehow I find a place near a friend who does not normally say no and shamelessly sit in the chair next to him and plug into the network and power sockets… and begin the endless wait for my name to be called… it is not an unknown waiting time wait… I know that my turn will not come for some time… but it is agony waiting like this…
One by one my friends move out of the room when their name is called and come back smiling… they also have finished the race even before it even began for me… frustrating… I look at the watch… oh man it can’t be… just half an hour… I have been waiting for only half an hour… and already I find a battalion moving out of the race… so what if they are people who are not in the same league as you… so what if you knew that your turn will anyways come only later… but the subconscious frustration starts getting on your nerves… another 1 hour later the watch has only moved another 15 minutes…
Then one by one, your group’s turn comes… but still there is a guy called Murphy blocking your way… you are probably the last one… the queue moves painfully slow… this time you actually wait a real 2 hours before the name is called… and you meet your nemesis…
The formidable force meets the unprepared fear… the duel lasts for a torturous time… you don’t know whether you are at an advantage or not… no clear strategy no game plan… and nowhere to run and nowhere to hide… you just parry the blows as and when they are showered upon you… you make an occasional feeble attack but then mostly it is a defensive… then you are returned, an exhausted and tired warrior, breathlessly recounting the nightmarish experience to the next gladiator about to enter the circus…
Now the wait is even more agonizing… I don’t know whether there is another fight scheduled or when I would meet my doom… you don’t know how much longer… I just wait… a couple of more fights and I let caution to the winds… I don’t care what happens or how I fight, my only aim is to get out of the fight alive… no strategy seems to be working and I am just glad to walk out alive…
Then there is the long period of lull… you cannot move out of the race… and there are other warriors to give you company… but then you grow impatient at being unoccupied… there is still another half day to pass… and you know that you have signed up for no more encounters unlike many who just about are participating in all the jousts… but still you find the wait irritating… you cannot quit the race yet, unless the results are declared officially after the dope tests etc… but that is actually the work of Mr. Murphy again… he is holding up the declaration of independence for some silly reason like proof reading…
Finally, I can hear my name being called as the winner of some tournament… I cannot recall the events, so don’t ask me for the strategy I adopted… I don’t have any… and I am in the full mood to quit the race then and there… but then I want that one fight that would actually give me glory… you may call that committing suicide, but I would say that I am human too and want to have my shot at fame…
PS. But somehow better sense and Murphy prevailed and I did not waste my energy fighting another losing battle. I quit early the second day.
PPS. For those who did not understand what the above post means, I am sorry you have missed one of the greatest b-school life's experiences.
Reach the venue at 630 well a little later actually but in time to wait… we find that some of the comfy corners are already gone… taken by early risers and enterprising people who had the foresight to see what was coming… small sacrifice to beat the long waiting times… good thinking…
Somehow I find a place near a friend who does not normally say no and shamelessly sit in the chair next to him and plug into the network and power sockets… and begin the endless wait for my name to be called… it is not an unknown waiting time wait… I know that my turn will not come for some time… but it is agony waiting like this…
One by one my friends move out of the room when their name is called and come back smiling… they also have finished the race even before it even began for me… frustrating… I look at the watch… oh man it can’t be… just half an hour… I have been waiting for only half an hour… and already I find a battalion moving out of the race… so what if they are people who are not in the same league as you… so what if you knew that your turn will anyways come only later… but the subconscious frustration starts getting on your nerves… another 1 hour later the watch has only moved another 15 minutes…
Then one by one, your group’s turn comes… but still there is a guy called Murphy blocking your way… you are probably the last one… the queue moves painfully slow… this time you actually wait a real 2 hours before the name is called… and you meet your nemesis…
The formidable force meets the unprepared fear… the duel lasts for a torturous time… you don’t know whether you are at an advantage or not… no clear strategy no game plan… and nowhere to run and nowhere to hide… you just parry the blows as and when they are showered upon you… you make an occasional feeble attack but then mostly it is a defensive… then you are returned, an exhausted and tired warrior, breathlessly recounting the nightmarish experience to the next gladiator about to enter the circus…
Now the wait is even more agonizing… I don’t know whether there is another fight scheduled or when I would meet my doom… you don’t know how much longer… I just wait… a couple of more fights and I let caution to the winds… I don’t care what happens or how I fight, my only aim is to get out of the fight alive… no strategy seems to be working and I am just glad to walk out alive…
Then there is the long period of lull… you cannot move out of the race… and there are other warriors to give you company… but then you grow impatient at being unoccupied… there is still another half day to pass… and you know that you have signed up for no more encounters unlike many who just about are participating in all the jousts… but still you find the wait irritating… you cannot quit the race yet, unless the results are declared officially after the dope tests etc… but that is actually the work of Mr. Murphy again… he is holding up the declaration of independence for some silly reason like proof reading…
Finally, I can hear my name being called as the winner of some tournament… I cannot recall the events, so don’t ask me for the strategy I adopted… I don’t have any… and I am in the full mood to quit the race then and there… but then I want that one fight that would actually give me glory… you may call that committing suicide, but I would say that I am human too and want to have my shot at fame…
PS. But somehow better sense and Murphy prevailed and I did not waste my energy fighting another losing battle. I quit early the second day.
PPS. For those who did not understand what the above post means, I am sorry you have missed one of the greatest b-school life's experiences.
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