Dynamics of Life

Another year

2011-07-15T20:01:00.003+01:00

Every year around this time I write a blog. However much I have been away from blogging recently, I did not want to break this tradition. The previous blogs around my birthdays have been mixed with happiness for things I achieved in that last year, some dissatisfaction with slow progresses on some other things, apprehensions for what lies ahead and the urgency to do something magical in life. This birthday is slightly different. Even though I feel a sense of dissatisfaction, there is a sense of contentment that things will happen on their own time. Even though there are apprehensions, I get some confidence thinking they may be unnecessary. Even though there is urgency to do something magical, there is also the knowledge when things happen on their own time, they happen in the best possible way.

The last one year has been a very significant year as I changed relationship status from single to married, changed jobs and changed apartments. It is this dynamics of life that keeps me going every year, year on year. All that I want to be stable is the constant desire of doing something for the people of my country, something that can help them change their lives for the better.

I have written about it earlier, but would like to mention it again. Friends of Salaam Baalak Trust is the UK chapter of the established charity Salaam Baalak Trust which has been tirelessly working towards the rehabilitation of street children in Delhi since many years. I still can’t forget the experience I gained during the Indian summer of 2007 when I was teaching the students from 2 extreme spectrums of the society – the elite and talented undergraduates at India’s best St. Stephen’s college on one hand, and the extremely bright, but with latent talent school final kids of Salaam Baalak Trust at a not-very-posh shelter home in Paharganj. While I realised it was very easy to teach students who are talented and they know they are smart and inquisitive and there are all comforts available to teach and learn, it was a challenging experience to teach students who doubted each sentence they learnt - whether they would be able to remember it, whether it will help them earn for food, whether it will help them go mainstream ever. I have seen the brilliance in them, and they need us to help them bring that out to the world. Please donate as much as you can or forward it to people who would like to donate or just help in whatever way you would like (may be organising fund raising events in UK, US or India).

http://www.friendsofsbt.org/how-can-you-help

Coming back to my birthday, I want something magical to happen so that all of these children get all that they want. Something magical happens so that all the terrorists in the world stop killing as the last thing I wanted to hear was about another bomb blasts in Mumbai. Something magical so that all the health problems vanish and we feel hale and hearty always. Something magical so that we have love, appreciation, respect for each other in the world so that living becomes more fun and celebrating birthday truly becomes a celebration of life.

The Biggest Cricket Mania

2011-03-31T17:50:00.003+01:00

As most of you would have expected after reading my last post, I was super-excited about the India Pakistan match. So much so that I actually felt butterflies in my stomach the night before and could barely get a good sleep. The morning of the match was better - there was some sort of strange smile on my face bordering to depicting confidence that I felt for the Indian cricket team. As usual I had the colleague at work to banter with about the match. I went to work and she said that she would like India to win the toss and bat second because of the strong Indian batting line up. However I did not agree, I said if India wins the toss they should bat first precisely because of the strong batting line up. India chasing can be a little dicy because of a very good Pakistani bowling attack. Thankfully Dhoni saw the same argument and India decided to bat first.

As usual this gave me a lot of time to finish off some critical work on my plate and have a lighter second half. I trusted that Sachin will bat fearlessly and with élan and he has never disappointed me. The catches being dropped one after another played the role of a cameo in the middle of a horror film (so called because of the huge amount of tension on the field). 280 on the board would have helped, but with 260 I felt India needed my attention. I started concentrating on the strategies of the game and the performance of the players on field. I started concentrating on the available statistics. I started building a model in my mind, a forecasting model.

It was time to test my model. When I saw 3 dot balls to Younis Khan from Yuvraj Singh, I told my colleague that the next bowl will be out. Bang on target! My next prediction was the next time Harbhajan Singh comes to bowl, he will take a wicket. He came after a few overs as Yuvraj Singh and Munaf Patel were taking turns at that point, and giving away lots of runs, and just as per prediction when Bhajji came, a wicket fell down. And similarly I kept on making predictions to her, and wickets kept on falling, however after a couple of more predictions, I started putting a confidence interval around them. I know most of you would not believe me, but what I experienced yesterday was divine. The colleague of mine to whom I was communicating them was aghast in disbelief, but had no option but to believe at the same time.

Word spread around and everybody started trying to understand how I was actually doing it. Questions like if I have to bet my own money on my next prediction, how much I would be willing to put came up, as this would help get an ordinal measure of the confidence I have on my predictions. Even though I had convinced everybody that I have built a sophisticated model in my mind which was using all the statistical measures on the screen in front of me to analyse and come up with a prediction, the truth of the matter is that I believe it was simply something divine. I wanted India to win so badly, that just with my mental strength of wanting a wicket to fall down; I was actually making it happen. Can anybody justify how Sachin could get so many life lines in yesterday’s match? Probably not! The only answer could be that so many Indians around the world wanted India to win, implying Sachin to continue batting, that divinity had no option but to surrender again and again and again.

I want all the divine powers to come together stronger than before and make India win the World Cup. What a treat that would be to all of us who have worked as hard mentally as the cricketers on the field to help them move forward every step!

The Cricket Mania

2011-03-26T19:30:00.002Z

It is that time in years when everybody is talking about cricket and rightly so. We got Zee TV subscription on our TV just for 2 months so that we can see live cricket. This actually works well for me as the package includes Zee Cinema as well meaning some old Bollywood classics!

The crucial Thursday match of India vs Australia was a very interesting experience to watch, first of its kind for me, given I was at work. In the morning, I reached office but my mind was left behind with Zee Café on my home TV as I knew it will be showing that important match just in sometime. I tried finding out if any place in my office building is broadcasting the match, alas no. Just one café some distance outside the office premises is supposedly having it on, which I found a little unfair because had it been football world cups, all the cafés would have it on with special meals so as to attract the crowd. Cricket does not drive that much of attention in England, really strange for a country which invented the game at the first place, but rightly so now as the team is performing poorly, as also seen from today’s match against Srilanka.

Coming backing to my restlessness of what to do, I fell upon the usual option that people away from the luxury of television use – crickinfo! The best thing about this website is that in its minimised form, it keeps on updating the score which you can see. Given Australia was batting first, and I knew it is going to be close chase for India, I decided to only look at the minimised scores once in a while, maximising it only when any wicket would fall down. I decided to complete most of the work in the first half of the day, trying to make sure as much as possible that my second half is light, and I can focus on the match when India is chasing.

Things moved as per plan. I wanted Aussies not to make any more than 250, but 265 was still acceptable. I had been successful in getting over with most of the critical work on my plate. The second half began. India was batting, Sachin was batting. What a delight. The live commentary was getting updated on the computer screen within split seconds. Sometimes I really thank humankind for making the advancement in science, while in other times events like the Japan tsumani make me doubt it.

The experience became more delightful in the company of a colleague – a big Indian cricket team fan and a very superstitious person (she was minding whoever said that India is a good team and will win today – she thought they all have evil eyes and do not really mean so) and another colleague – an Australian with a lot of admiration for Indian cricket. After Sachin went out, one commentator said how he had just opened his one shoe just when Sachin got out. His colleagues in the commentary box have forbidden him to open another shoe and he is roaming around like that. Wickets after wickets that fell after Sachin’s dismissal disappointed my superstitious colleague who could not follow it anymore and went out for a stroll. While she was away, Yuvraj took charge of the game quite nicely, and so when she came back to her seat, I did not let her see the match. And very surprising to me, she agreed stating that as long as India wins, she does not mind not seeing the match. I wanted to go to the loo just then, and she did not let me get up from the seat, saying if India has now been performing well, I should just stay statue until the match gets over. And again, very surprising to myself, I agreed to her. We both said this is our sacrifice to the country! The Australian colleague noticed all this, and he could not stop himself from laughing his heart out. Obviously, because only Indians can do such things! He was very certain since the beginning of the match that India will win, so he was taking more interest in understanding the psyche of Indian fans, a country where cricket is more important than politics, Bollywood or anything else. Every sentence he spoke began/ended or used words like fountain, spring, river, water etc to remind me of the emergency I was in. And strangely that did make things worse for me. But I remembered Bhagat Singh at that moment, and his sacrifice for India, and decided not to give up to any temptations.

I know all this sounds so much over the moon, really exaggerated. I never thought I would be so superstitious. But whatever it was, I enjoyed my day a lot. The big boss who is himself a big cricket fan, later on shared a presentation he had given last year where he showed how a lot can be borrowed from cricket into our modelling world. Senior managers always have a way around of connecting work to everything they do. India won, won because of our sacrifice :-) Overall a memorable experience! Looking forward to an even bigger match on Wednesday!

Moving House

2011-03-19T09:44:00.002Z

Over the past 3 and a half years I have been away from home (my home country India), I have been trying to create a home in the UK. This will be my 7th moving-home endeavour here in such a short span of time which makes my average time spent in one house just 6 months. The crucial point is that in this country, moving house every 6 months is not only exorbitant, but also comes with a lot of stress. The main stress is to find out a decent house which also fits in the budget. Some logistic specifications that we have, which makes the choice more difficult than usual, are as follows –

1. It should not be an open plan kitchen because in Indian cooking the smoke can bother the guests sitting in the living room

2. The cooker should preferably be gas instead of electric because it is difficult to make chapattis on an electric cooker

3. It should be a 2 double bed house with the second room being fairly good size and not a study (so that when our parents come over from India, they have a decent night sleep)

4. As per Vaastu the direction in which the front gate opens and where the kitchen and bathrooms are in the house, all play important roles

5. Just the feel that I get when I enter the house should be positive and welcoming (actually I have rejected quite a few because of not meeting this criteria)

Now you can imagine, with such specific requirements (some of which we are scared of even mentioning to the English agents around), finding the right place becomes a nightmare. And even if such places exist, making sure they fall in our budget makes it a rarity. Then the stress does not just get over yet, even by luck if you do manage to find the ideal house to move out, the whole process of shifting is a nightmare. I am a person who likes spending a lot of time planning and organising a smooth shifting. I like making sure that the D-day of moving out is not over packed with –

a) lots of packing to do,
b) loading all the stuff into the van,
c) unloading them from the van,
d) unpacking all the stuff in the new house and
e) designing the new house

Therefore, to make this transition smooth, I start the process of moving out one month in advance, with every weekend being like baking only one slice of a big cake. This weekend is about packing books while in the process identifying those to be marked for charity. We have already achieved this target, so I moved the target forward to include also identifying clothes to be marked for charity so that we could go and do all the charity submissions in one go instead of having to go twice. I have just given myself a break to write down this blogpost, but seems like we will achieve this target very soon as well. So I need to quickly think of another stretch target – hopefully I will not end up packing the whole house one month in advance of the actual day! This only remains to be seen. But you can sense the hard work we do during this process and moving almost every 6 months is not something I fancy anymore.

Women's Day & Bankers

2011-03-09T21:50:00.002Z

Yesterday we all celebrated the International Woman’s Day. What makes it more special is that this year was the centenary year. At my work place there was a gathering to celebrate the accomplishment in which I took part. However, now when I sit back in my chair and think of what I gained from attending the event or by celebrating the Woman’s Day – not much really. My life has not changed since yesterday, I am doing the same job, living the same life and have got no additional knowledge of making it any better since yesterday.

However, when I think deep and question myself hard as to whether attending the event along with hundreds more women from around the globe for 3 hours (there were video conferencing facilities connecting all the offices around the globe) was really a complete waste, the ‘yes’ takes longer than earlier to come out as an answer. I guess what I achieved yesterday was some confidence. I can’t say that I met ladies from all walks of life who have done really well, because all the ladies in the room were bankers. However, what I can definitely say is that there were ladies from all around the globe who have done really well in a traditionally male dominated working environment of banking.

The Bankers Magazine in 1915 quoted ‘whether ladies will ever be considered eligible for the higher posts is, for the time being, a question too revolutionary for present consideration’, one of the ladies mentioned in her speeches. 1953 quote was ‘Nobody has yet had the courage to face the possibility of a woman bank manager’. And today in 2011, I looked around and found the room and all the rooms in the videos from all over the globe, full of woman bankers beaming with confidence. 2011 is quite different from 1915.

However, is it good enough? Are we comfortable that we can count such women in numbers? Did I learn anything from yesterday’s event that can give me the confidence that 10 years down the line, we would have reached a point where it would not be possible to count such women as it is today. Is it the responsibility of the society to ensure that we walk closer to this goal or does the onus lie on each one of us? What is my responsibility as an individual – to make sure I become one of those successful women, or also in some way try to assist others in becoming one? I would think the ideal answer would be to do both. Let's see how 2011 unfolds...

Movie Corner Buzz

2011-03-04T14:52:00.001Z

On my onward and return flights to and from Mexico, almost 12 hours each way, I was on a movie spree, watched a number of them – and I must stress all GOOD movies. Here I will give you my take on each one of them, and I must add that you should watch all of them if possible.

The Social Network

This was the first movie I saw on my flight to Mexico and thoroughly enjoyed it. The movie talks about the life of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of facebook. What I liked about this movie was the pace with which it goes through, crispy yet detailed. The movie reminds you that there is a spark of entrepreneurship in each one of us; we only have to recognise it. It talks about the challenges to face and the pitfalls to avoid while kicking off a business venture. Watch this movie to take out the messages that you want to extract out of it.

Ratatouille

This is a very cute movie, it’s a story of a rat who aspires to be a famous chef. For him doing something as mundane as eating the left over food of human beings is not acceptable. He finds his passion in cooking and explains to his brother and mates the concept of taste and sumptuousness. The movie then becomes a lot of fun to see how he actually manages to become the head chef in one of the best restaurants in Paris, for human beings of course! Please do watch this; the kid in you will really enjoy this rather refreshing and imaginative movie.

127 Hours

Wow, what a beautiful movie. The movie gives you enough time to contemplate on all the things you do or habits that you have which may ever lead you to be in any problem. You promise yourself while the movie is going on that as you soon as it gets over, you will mend all your ways. I loved each and every moment of this movie. The detailed level of thinking the director has shown by capturing all the fragmented thoughts that go in your mind when you are in a helpless situation is mind blowing. Please do watch it if you can, this is not to be missed.

Gandhi

I watched this one just because of the inspiration I got when I saw one of the streets in Mexico city named as Gandhi Road, along with having a statue of the Mahatma. This made me think that however varied our opinions may be about Gandhi’s greatness, but clearly he has touched a lot of souls, not just in India but in far off countries where you wouldn’t expect so. I feel the remark from Albert Einstein that “future generations will find hard to believe that such a man walked the earth in flesh and blood” may well become true. The movie has a very nice and close to reality, description of all the events that took place in making Gandhi – from Mohandas to Mahatma. I felt very inspired and proud of our history, a part of whose present I am living today.

The Kings Speech

I dint watch this movie on the small screen of my in-flight entertainment, I watched it in a multiplex within a shopping centre called Reforma 222 in Mexico city. The conversation to figure out the ticket price and whether the movie is in English or at least with English subtitles with the cinema receptionist was purely based on sign language. I was not too sure of her answers, and took the risk of wasting the money if I ended up seeing a Spanish dubbed version. Well, thankfully that was not the case; movie was in English with Spanish subtitles. With only 4 people in the hall who were outside my normal range of vision, I felt like being given a royal treatment of watching a movie about the Royal families alone in a comfortable seat with a big screen while masticating an onion and mushroom pizza. What an excellent piece of art! I was thrilled and bowled over by the concept of the movie, and the honest and surreal depiction of that concept. Another brilliant recommendation for this weekend!

Lots of movies to keep you busy for this weekend! Have a good time, and get back to me with your thoughts here.

Back from Mexico

2011-02-24T21:08:00.007Z

I have just been back from a business trip to Mexico city - in 3 words I would describe the city as 'warm people', 'beautiful city outskirts' but 'polluted city centre'. The pollution in the heart of Mexico City really bothered me for the initial few days - red eyes and struggling nose. Air pollution is generally such a predicament, nothing is visible (as in you do not see a layer of black smoke or anything similar around) but the sensitive eyes and nose find it difficult to cope with change of atmospheric cleanliness.

Mexico carries with it a beautiful history, a history of the Aztec warriors who were invaded and conquered by the Spaniards. Over the weekend, on Saturday, I went for a trip to the beautiful pyramids of Teotihuacan. It was a spell-binding experience.

It is a day trip from Mexico city and I took a guided tour from the hotel. Given taxi drivers do not know any English and only speak Spanish (very strange for a city with such a proximity to the US), as a lone female traveller I could only trust my hotel booked tours. The day was well spent in the company of some other tourists mainly from South America and a knowledgable guide who portrayed the city's history as somebody who has lived there since ages and seen it all himself. The fluctuations in his voice added that extra thrill in every story he told about his great country.

I also drank the water from a Cactus plant called agabe, which after fermentation results in the famous Mexican drink Tequilla.

On Sunday I went to a small town of Cuernavaca to see a very ancient and famous cathedral followed by a trip to the Silver City Taxco. Taxco is a sweet little town with lots of silver jewellery on sale. With Mexico claiming to be largest producer of silver, you would expect the prices of silver in this silver city to be lower than anywhere else in the world, but actually that is not the case. On asked why so, 'we have to buy silver from the Government and this way they stabilise the prices and maintain its market price globally', a Silver jewellery manufacturer informed me. The city is on a hill, but the superior quality of mountain roads impressed me a lot.

Overall it was a good experience to visit Mexico. Next time I visit the place again, I will not forget to carry a pollution mask and with me a small vocabulary of Spanish words to communicate with the taxi drivers. Do share with me if you have been to Mexico and shared any similar experiences as mine or anything else that you may want to share! Gracias!

Back with house cleaning

2011-02-12T21:14:00.003Z

I am back, back with a bang! I know every few months I rise like a phoenix only to get buried again by time constraints. Apologies, but I have been immensely busy with things. However, I suppose never will have enough time or thoughts to blog everyday. I can only say hats off to Amitabh Bachchan who always manages to find time and thoughts to blog even though his schedule is 10 times busier than mine. I will try to follow his foot steps. Just as in my previous resurrections, I have made a few changes to the look and feel of the blog including managing to get approval for the AdSense advertisement feature.

Apart from work which is defined as a job which keeps me quantitatively sound, something more closer to heart and interesting that I have been busy with is my charity work. A blogpost is due where I would like to update you on how 2010 was for the charity along with the recent developments of 2011.

2010 also saw some memorable trips around Europe, to be continued in 2011. The more I see different places in the world, the more convinced I feel that India is a miniature version of the world. It is the most fascinating country which contains the flavour of every possible geographical contour you can find around the world. If you disagree, then please forgive me as I am still in the process of validating the statement by visiting more places. The only thing that we need to work on to really make it a world class place for everybody is cleaning. Cleaning of not only the physical dirt, but also of the convoluted minds! I see the Adarsh Nagar scam on News channels and feel disgusted on the way in which the so called ‘rich’ people do whatever possible to snatch away from those who rightfully deserve things. This is unacceptable. Honesty and integrity in any profession is not too much to expect from anybody, therefore it is high time that we all clean ourselves up.

One thing that scares me when I am travelling in India, which is totally in contrast to travelling in European countries, is the quest of finding clean toilets. Can those who are in public services and reading this blog ensure that there are clean public toilets in your area? There was a point when I really wanted to take UPSC and become an Indian civil servant just so that I can ensure that there are cleaner public toilets than what are available. That dint materialise, but with growing economy in the country, I don’t think this is going to a major investment exercise for the government provided all the money is used for the cause instead of making its ways into the deep pockets.

Some food for thought for you here and some motivation so that you can kick off a cleaning drive in your area; may be the governments should keep awards for nominations of the cleanest state or the cleanest city in the country. Let’s not only have a Green India, but also a Clean India!

The Indian Growth Story

2010-10-20T18:25:00.002+01:00

Every time I fly back home, India amazes me in a positive way. This time I am coming down India within less than four months, and the development brings a smile to my face - the kind of smile I have while coming out of a job interview knowing that I have hit the bulls eye with my answers, a quiet sense of delight. A pleasure I don’t share with anyone until the final glorious outcome. I feel the same right now while seated besides a gentleman coming from a very modest background. His cap is dirty and wet with sweat, his clothes showing off the hard labour he is putting in to save enough to fly back to his home town. I feel this is an achievement. In the past I have really longed that some day I would sit beside an Indian farmer in domestic flights, and it seems like I am getting closer to that dream becoming a reality. The sense of quite pleasure is because I would like to wait until all the poor Indian farmers can make this as their lifestyle choice.

Contrary to this, on my international flight from London to Delhi I met a young Indian entrepreneur. He is only 23 years old and he is heading the technical team in his father’s company. I had a long conversation about the work he is doing so as to assure myself that the position is not a gift of silver spoon but something he has earned. And the young chap did manage to impress me with his knowledge in the sector he is working on. However, like most Indians, he doesn’t appreciate everything that is Indian. Purdue university graduate he feels life is much better in the West and that India has no future. This irked me and what started off thereafter was a long conversation where I broke all his myths about western life style from my experience of living the past three years in London. When the system works there, all is fine, the moment things break down; they take painfully long in rectification.

India is growing and it will be a success story. If only all of us can be a little honest to ourselves and our nation. Commonwealth Games 2010 has exposed corruption to the extent one could not even believe, and I would like to see all those guilty accused.

The Origin of Agarwals

2010-10-01T11:15:00.003+01:00

Once upon a time there used to live a king called Maharaja Agrasen in an ancient state of India called Agroha. He appeased a beautiful princess called Madhavi in a swayambar her father King Nagaraj organised for her. Swayambar was a practice in ancient Hindu culture where the father would organise massive social gatherings by inviting many agile and able prospective suitors to win the heart of his daughter. In that gathering she is expected to put a garland on one of the men as an indication of her choice and marry him during that event. She chose King Agrasen over all the other able and equally competitive prospective suitors. It is believed that the Agarwal clans originated from King Agrasen and the 18 children he had with Queen Madhavi gave the names to the 18 gotras in the Agarwal clan. I am a Mittal gotra married into a Garg gotra family. In Agarwals, marriage within the same gotra is prohibited as they are considered as siblings. However marriage of Agarwal with another Agarwal is allowed and preferred as long as the two belong to different gotras out of the 18 gotras.

King Agrasen with his dedicated meditation pleased Goddess Mahalakshmi (the Goddess of wealth and prosperity in Hindu religion). She blessed him and asked him to give up knighthood (the Kshatriya tradition) and become a Vaishya (i.e. follow the tradition of business) for the sake of prosperity of his people. She asked him to establish a new kingdom and promised that she would bless his descendants with prosperity and wealth.

The reason I started digging into the history of my origin is precisely here. Sometimes when I feel lost in this fast paced world, I ask myself the questions of who I am and what I am. More often than not, I have found answers to such questions burried in history. Being a descendant of Maharaja Agrasen, I hail from a family who has never known what working for somebody means. From my knowledge of my great grandfather to my father, all have been businessmen. They have traded goods, employed people and created wealth for themselves and the society. During my growing up days, I have assisted the family in doing so. My generation across most of the Agarwal families, if I may say so, is trying to break this family tradition and do something different on their own. They are trying to create a mark in the service sector instead of taking up business. To challenge yourself by doing something which is not a proven path can mystify you at times.

My digging the history also comes timely when the big verdict on Ayodhya has just been declared by the High Court in India. I have heard the youth in India saying that there are bigger problems to take care of, let’s keep history behind and move on. Does it really matter whether there was a temple or a mosque or does it really matter if there now should be a temple or a mosque in that place? I agree that this does not matter. But what matters is that this problem exists in the society and just like any other problem it needs to be taken care of. Ignoring a problem cannot be a solution to it.

I have been so irregular with my blogging in the recent times that I can imagine to have lost the regulars. However, for those who still have been checking my blogs once in a while, hope you have liked the new look.

Source: Wikipedia for information on the origin of Agarwals.

A letter to myself

2010-08-18T14:51:00.003+01:00

You know dear, there used to be a time in my life where I would just not care about earning money. I did not want to earn money as I used to think that it is not money which brings happiness but love. A lady in a stock trading training presentation said that people are shy about earning money; they feel that it is evil to earn a lot of money – it actually was true for me. I actually was somebody who used to feel that earning lot of money changes people and they become unsocial. Their perspective towards life change, therefore their priorities. That was the reason I joined the NGO for street kids as a teacher because I thought earning money and giving them money is not going to help – rather teaching them and interacting with them is going to.

Those days while I was teaching them, I was also lecturing at St. Stephen’s. I would wear very simple clothes when I would go to teach – a cotton kurti with churidaar, a pair of chappals and a little hand bag, that’s it. No ostentation. I was getting Government scholarship for PhD and some money from Stephen’s teaching, and that was more than enough for me to live an adequate life.

Dear, I believed that teaching is the best job to do as you are enlightening people with your knowledge. It’s a noble job. While I was teaching the SBT kids, I realised that I was helping them dream. Can you imagine such a big responsibility that is? It can hurt them so much if I showed them dreams they will not be able to achieve, so I had to be very careful in everything I said. They shared with me how they ran away from their families. I felt like crying. They were so talented but with no resources to do anything with their talent. It was summers when I was teaching them, and the room where I would teach them hardly had one fan. It used to be hot. I used to enjoy eating a lot of mangoes during summers and one day I felt like buying lots of mangoes for everybody at SBT. That was the first time when I realised that I was not earning enough to be able to do so freely. I had to think twice before I could do something like this on my own.

This is the point where the enlightenment came to me that if I have the opportunities and the talent to earn money, I should do that. Not everybody gets such opportunities just like those kids. And this way I will be able to help them achieve their dreams and not just give them some knowledge about some examination subject. That day I told myself that earning money is not a bad thing. Those who are earning money are creating wealth in the economy which in turn helps everybody.

Today when I look back, I feel I have come a long way. The person I am today, I was not so a few years back. I don’t know if this transition is for my own good or bad, but I can definitely see that it will help me achieve the goal of helping those kids better this way than merely teaching Mathematics to five Class-X students at the shelter home in a big hot room with one fan. My charity here acts as Friends of SBT and helps raise funds and awareness for various projects that SBT undertakes to facilitate the kids in getting closer to their dreams in whatever way possible.

Every little that we do really helps.

My sports diary

2010-04-08T18:02:00.004+01:00

I have never been a sportsperson in my life- the only times I remember playing sports formally was in seventh grade in school annual sports day (I won second prize in some event I can't remember) and the last time as a post-graduate student (I won a second prize again, in shot-put). Unofficially I used to play terrace-cricket with my younger brother as a kid and he would invariably bowl me out on the first ball to my utter diaappointment.

Nevertheless, I have always thoroughly enjoyed watching sports. Sitting in my relaxed couch watching people sweat it out probably gave me a lot of pleasure-more than actually going and doing it myself.

Probably like any other Indian kid and specially any other Bengali kid, I grew up watching lots of cricket. Be it exams or the earth quake, nothing could me from watching it (exception being the amazing 2002 world cup where I promised myself to study harder than ever. It paid off well as I got the best marks, but it was the toughest sacrifice given than India reached so close to the dream). I wrote in my earlier post the overwhelming experience I had the day I visited Oval (and Lords thereafter) for the 2020 world cup cricket matchs.

The sporting experience in the UK is not complete without some tryst with football and this encouraged me to go for an Arsenal match(I was living at a five minutes walk from the stadium, so can call it my 'home team'). It was the most exciting match I had experienced, so much of energy - both on field and on the stands. I then also got an opportunity to see another England's football match with a guest appearance play from David Beckam (that's what he does in matches - comes and goes, wonder how he affords to be so stylish with such performances).

One other thing that I have grown up watching has been lawn tennis. Childhood was spent in the era of Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras and my youth is enjoying the thrills of watching Roger Federrer and Rafael Nadal. I am excited that I have managed to secure the live match tickets of the ATP world tour final match which I am hoping would be between the two of them!

That's it! This is all that I have done in my sports life yet. A small blogpost is all that is required to cover it. Some dog racing and horse racing here and there to add some bit of spice. I am however anticipating some marathons, treks or hiking this year or the following years. My relaxed life on the couch or on the stadium stands will now get replaced by running around the shops to buy running shoes / trekking shoes. Am I excited? Sure I am.

All about Hinduism

2010-03-30T22:28:00.005+01:00

Four years ago, I was flying from JFK NY Airport to SFO to attend a meeting at Monterey , CA. An American girl was sitting on the right side, near window seat. It indeed was a long journey - it would take nearly seven hours. I was surprised to see the young girl reading a Bible unusual of young Americans. After some time she smiled and we had few acquaintances talk. I told her that I am from India

Then suddenly the girl asked: 'What's your faith?' 'What?' I didn't understand the question.

'I mean, what's your religion? Are you a Christian? Or a Muslim?'

'No!' I replied, 'I am neither Christian nor Muslim'. Apparently she appeared shocked to listen to that. 'Then who are you?' 'I am Hindu’, I said. She looked at me as if she was seeing a caged animal. She could not understand what I was talking about. A common man in Europe or US knows about Christianity and Islam, as they are the leading religions of the world today.

But a Hindu, what?

I explained to her - I am born to a Hindu father and Hindu mother. Therefore, I am a Hindu by birth.

'Who is your prophet?' she asked.

'We don't have a prophet,' I replied.

What's your Holy Book? 'We don't have a single Holy Book, but we have hundreds and thousands of philosophical and sacred scriptures,' I replied.

Oh, come on at least tell me who is your God?

What do you mean by that?

Like we have Jesus and Muslims have Allah - don't you have a God?

I thought for a moment. Muslims and Christians believe one God (Male God) who created the world and takes an interest in the humans who inhabit it. Her mind is conditioned with that kind of belief.

According to her (or anybody who doesn't know about Hinduism), a religion needs to have one Prophet, one Holy book and one God. The mind is so conditioned and rigidly narrowed down to such a notion that anything else is not acceptable. I understood her perception and concept about faith.

You can't compare Hinduism with any of the present leading religions where you have to believe in one concept of god.

I tried to explain to her: 'You can believe in one god and he can be a Hindu. You may believe in multiple deities and still you can be a Hindu. What's more - you may not believe in god at all, still you can be a Hindu. An atheist can also be a Hindu.'

This sounded very crazy to her. She couldn't imagine a religion so unorganized, still surviving for thousands of years, even after onslaught from foreign forces.

I don't understand but it seems very interesting. Are you religious?
What can I tell to this American girl? I said: 'I do not go to temple regularly. I do not make any regular rituals. I have learned some of the rituals in my younger days. I still enjoy doing it sometimes...

Enjoy? Are you not afraid of God?
God is a friend. No- I am not afraid of God. Nobody has made any compulsions on me to perform these rituals regularly.

She thought for a while and then asked: 'Have you ever thought of converting to any other religion?

Why should I?. Even if I challenge some of the rituals and faith in Hinduism, nobody can convert me from Hinduism. Because, being a Hindu allows me to think independently and objectively, without conditioning. I remain as a Hindu never by force, but choice. I told her that Hinduism is not a religion, but a set of beliefs and practices. It is not a religion like Christianity or Islam because it is not founded by any one person or does not have an organized controlling body like the Church or the Order, I added. There is no institution or authority.

So, you don't believe in God?' she wanted everything in black and white.
I didn't say that. I do not discard the divine reality. Our scripture, or Sruthis or Smrithis - Vedas and Upanishads or the Gita - say God might be there or he might not be there. But we pray to that supreme abstract authority (Para Brahma) that is the creator of this universe.

Why can't you believe in one personal God?

We have a concept - abstract - not a personal god. The concept or notion of a personal God, hiding behind the clouds of secrecy, telling us irrational stories through few men whom he sends as messengers, demanding us to worship him or punish us, does not make sense. I don't think that God is as silly as an autocratic emperor who wants others to respect him or fear him.

I told her that such notions are just fancies of less educated human imagination and fallacies, adding that generally ethnic religious practitioners in Hinduism believe in personal gods. The entry level Hinduism has over-whelming superstitions too. The philosophical side of Hinduism negates all superstitions.

Good that you agree God might exist. You told that you pray. What is your prayer then? she asked.

Loka Samastha Suk ino Bhavantu. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti,

'Funny,' she laughed, 'What does it mean?'
May all the beings in all the worlds be happy. Om Peace, Peace, Peace.

Hmm... very interesting.. I want to learn more about this religion. It is so democratic, broa.d-minded and free' she exclaimed.

The fact is Hinduism is a religion of the individual, for the individual and by the individual with its roots in the Vedas and the Bhagavad-Gita. It is all about an individual approaching a personal God in an individual way according to his temperament and inner evolution - it is as simple as that.

How does anybody convert to Hinduism?

Nobody can convert you to Hinduism, because it is not a religion, but a set of beliefs, practices and a way of life and culture. Everything is acceptable in Hinduism because there is no single authority or organization either to accept it or to reject it or to oppose it on behalf of Hinduism.

For a real seeker, I told her, the Bible itself gives guidelines when it says Kingdom of God is within you. I reminded her of Christ's teaching about the love that we have for each other. That is where you can find the meaning of life.

Loving each and every creation of the God is absolute and real. Isavasyam idam sarvam Isam - (the God) is present (inhabits) here everywhere – nothing exists separate from the God, because God is present everywhere. Respect every living being and non-living things as God. That's what Hinduism teaches you.

Hinduism is referred to as Sanathana Dharma, the eternal faith. It is based on the practice of Dharma, the code of life. The most important aspect of Hinduism is being truthful to oneself. Hinduism has no monopoly on ideas - It is open to all. Hindus believe in one God (not a personal one) expressed in different forms. For them, God is timeless and formless entity.

Ancestors of today's Hindus believe in eternal truths and cosmic laws and these truths are opened to anyone who seeks them. But there is a section of Hindus who are either superstitious or turned fanatic to make this an organized religion like others. The British coin the word 'Hindu' and considered it as a religion.

I said: 'Religions have become an MLM (multi-level-marketing) industry that has been trying to expand the market share by conversion. The biggest business in today's world is Spirituality. Hinduism is no exception'.

I am a Hindu primarily because it professes Non-violence - 'Ahimsa Paramo Dharma' - Non violence is the highest duty. I am a Hindu because it doesn't condition my mind with any faith system.

A man/ woman who change's his/her birth religion to another religion is a fake and does not value his/her morals, culture and values in life. Hinduism was the first religion originated. Be proud of your religion and be proud of who you are.
Om Namo shivaya, Om Namo Narayanaya Namaha.

**Courtesy - a forwarded email

Reflections

2010-03-07T16:54:00.002Z

Whenever I get time, I tend to stop, sit back and think about life. And again and again one thought keeps coming back to me – the uncertainty of life. Everything that we do is uncertain. Think of a stochastic programming problem in optimisation with multiple objectives and numerous constraints – phew! Unsolvable – nobody has got around finding a closed form solution to it. Similar is life, and there exists no closed solution.

Take this mundane example – by chance for the first time you found the cheapest coach ticket online that you have ever seen. You are ecstatic. You have been using the website for 2 years now and never have you got any such offer. This time while you are booking the ticket, you think that finally your loyalty is being paid off. You tell people around while you are booking about the special offer and if they also might want to try. You make the payment and finalise the plans of what you will do with the money that you have just saved in that ticket. And lo! The website throws an error message – “It has taken unusually longer to process the transaction and hence it has been aborted. Please close the page and start afresh. No payment has been taken and no tickets booked”. Dejected you start the process all over again only to find that the website does not show the same prices anymore.

The morale of the story is – never take anything for granted. Anything – be it health, beauty, relationship, love, work, studies, knowledge, wisdom. There is nothing that you can really boast of is yours. Life is a learning experience which is as uncertain as the shape of an amoeba. It can change anytime. Therefore, do not boast of what you have and do not feel bad for what you don’t have. It is all a matter of chance, a matter of time and a matter of the dynamics of life!

All that we have is a sham, and all that we don’t have is an illusion. Hinduism says that the only thing that is true in this universe is soul. Everything else is an overlay and is subject to variability. Love the reality and not the plasticity. Love the soul.

Watching the movie Dhan Dana Dhan Goal, it’s about an Indian player waiting to get into an English football club. I have just seen 15 minutes or so, and the movie makes no sense to me. The more I watch it, the more I dislike it. Absolutely mindless. Can’t stand it any more, I am going to switch it off, what a mockery!

Happy Women’s Day to all the women who are walking in their lives with their heads held high. Those who are still struggling just remember one thing, you are the best thing that God could have created, and those who do not have respect for you, does not have respect for God and hence no respect for their own self. So somebody who does not respect oneself, cannot respect you, so simply ignore and move on. Open your arms, embrace the life and keep a smile!

Risk & the Financial Crisis

2010-02-17T21:54:00.005Z

As promised, I have been dwelling over the idea to come up with a post on the financial crisis which has gripped us all - the effects still noticeable like the cracks in the castles which are always visible and incur huge monies in repairs.

I conducted this small poll to test how much people know about it - statistically insignificant dataset to infer any meaningful conclusions from the results. Distribution skewed to the left by which I mean 'somewhat' knowledgeable population. Just an idea for you - while conducting polls never give odd number of options for responses as in such cases most of the responses would tend to be the median value. Try to give even number of options to choose from as it then forces the responder to choose one direction, thereby resulting into a decisive mandate.

Well, I just drifted away a bit. Coming back, what has this financial crisis done to people – everybody knows. But what has it done to the bankers – nobody wants to know. In one of the informal discussions at work, I heard a colleague of mine complaining – “I have stopped telling people when asked what I do, that I am a banker. I just say I am a modeller”. Leave it to them to understand what that means, because if you make it easy for them to understand, you get the reaction.

I am not going to bore you with what caused the crisis (as most of us already know that - courtesy my polls). To be honest, I did not get any time to draft a detailed post to write down the whole story. Just Google for words like financial crisis / credit crunch / subprime crisis and you get loads of websites talking about them. So I am not going to bore you with any more of techy information. What it definitely has resulted in is an increased attention to risk management in banks.

Before the crisis dawned upon us, I was somebody who could have become an investment banker but landed up becoming a risk modeller. I was not sure that time if I wanted to remain in the same profile for long, but now I am so sure. Risk management in banks have picked up momentum. It is a field where you can show your flair - not much done in the field and hence you constantly research and improvise. Risk systems are getting more capital allocations and risk reports are now coffee table discussions. With Obama overhauling the regulatory systems in the US and the world following suit, the day is not far off when CEOs of banks would be people with extensive experience in risk.

I think it is very important to be risk conscious. That does not mean that I suggest going to an extent of becoming risk averse (no risk means no return), but do not become irresponsible that you forget what the stakes are. Exactly knowing your risk appetite is the way forward!

YO! Weekends

2010-01-31T19:42:00.007Z

I hope I will not be charged for copyright infringement by YO! Shushi. The reason I took the name is not because I had a Japanese dinner this weekend, but because I have started getting the YO! feeling for weekends. You know, there used to be a time when I would find it hard to understand why people crave for weekends so much. In fact to an extent, it used to be the other way round where I would feel like HUH! Weekends.

You may want to pop up and conclude that this clearly means a) I used to enjoy my weekdays i.e., work then much more than I do now, or b) I enjoy my weekends now much more than I used to then. No, don't jump guns, it's neither - because I enjoy my work now and I enjoyed my weekends then. Then, what is it??

It's an anticipation. Anticipation of a fun-filled weekend. A weekend that will make me forget who I am or who you are. Somewhere in an unexplored island with nothing. The anticipation of experiencing a complete vacuum or may be an emotional over-fill; of experiencing the extreme. Does it sound vague? If you understand it, please help me understand.

On another topic, I feel a blog post on the financial crisis is long over due. I have been thinking of writing my opinions / take on it, but before that thought of conducting this poll to gauze the level at which I should project the content. Please leave your views.

Am back

2010-01-16T15:11:00.004Z

The last few months that I have been away have been very eventful with some good and some not-so-good experiences.

Anyways, this blogpost is not going to be about me, it's going to be about you. You as in you who read it, you as in for whom I write it. I know by now, you must have blown away like the wind that keeps tapping at the window hoping that one would open it after getting annoyed by the disturbance, but alas! You must have waited and waited - may be on Diwali - nothing! then may be about London's Christmas celebration - nothing yet again, oh may be on the New Year for sure. Hmmm... nothing again. No posts, no news, no updates... You say - I waited and waited and then I looked away.

But hey, look I am back now. Please don't look away as I am back. I am back with my small posts on what I see, observe, feel and think. I have changed the template of my blog! I have changed the tempo of my blog - now I will talk directly to you in my posts. You and I - first and second person, no third person allowed! What I will not change is that I welcome change. Read On!

Swayambar

2009-09-22T20:04:00.001+01:00

Swayambar is a Sanskrit word, Swayam in Sanskrit means Self and Vara means choosing or wanting. It is a practice in which a girl of marriageable age chooses a life partner amongst a list of suitors. In an epic like Ramayana in Hinduism, princess Sita chose her life partner Lord Rama out of hundreds of other eligible bachelors (prince or kings from other kingdoms) by subjecting them to take a tough test.

Recently the reality show by an item-girl (weird nomenclature, means an actress who dances on cheesy songs in movies) Rakhi Sawant brought back memories of the hundreds of years old tradition. She confidently hosted the show – subjected each of her suitors to tests, and finally chose one of them to spend her life with. I was impressed to see the audacity of a relatively new actor to sell an idea like this which has been long forgotten. She impressed me in her honesty and integrity in reasoning to reject many and then finally select one.

I do not deny that the show was a bit dramatic at times – but surely not as dramatic as some other Indian soaps are (i.e., the K series). I do not deny that she might have used this serial to improve her image from an item-girl to a girl dipped in Indian values – but what is wrong in that. I do not deny that nobody used to consider her seriously until this happened and this too people brushed off as a publicity gimmick – but what is wrong if she showed us that we can come up with hit serials on indigenous ideas instead of always copying what exists.

She impressed me by bringing forward something we had not thought of. You may agree or may not agree, but you simply cannot ignore.

Just now I saw a news clipping on Rahul Mahajan, the son of the late Pramod Mahajan, a well respected politician going to kick off a similar concept. I know I was impressed with Rakhi, but somehow Rahul embarrasses me. I foresee that we will now start making movies / serials / shows on this same concept until the concept rots and begs to be forsaken. People out there will keep showcasing dummies to exploit this idea as much as they can until somebody like Rakhi breaks the chain and brings something new to the platter. However, I will be keen to change my views on this.

What's in a definition?

2009-09-06T12:53:00.002+01:00

I just managed to stumble upon this in my email - an article I had written 4 years ago. Sounded interesting and relevant so thought of posting it here.

Somebody asked me, "What is Mathematics?" And queer enough but true that I did not have a prompt readymade definiton framed in a few words for mathematics as you have for the other subjects. Being in the 'elite' company of mathematics for nearly five years now I still do not have a concrete idea as to how mathematics can be actually defined. I say 'elite' because people tend to look at mathematicians as esoteric and absent-minded geeks totally lost in their world full of theorems and their proofs. Either they carry an image of a mathematician as Prof. Calculus of the Tintin comics or mistakenly believe that calculating prodigies like Shakuntala Devi are mathematicians. Okay so let me try to define it here.

Greatest mathematician Carl Freidrich Gauss once said, "Mathematics is the queen of all sciences." True to every word indeed. Well mathematics is the science behind every imagination, the spark for every thought and the logic behind everything bizzare. But does it sufffice to call it a science? The morning tea you make, the yoga postures, the bus to work you take, the phone calls you attend, gardening in the evening or switching off the lights before going to bed all use mathematics in some form or the other.

Mathematics these days has its presence in a wide range of human activities. Theory of chance and probability are extensively used in predicting which team will win a cricket match or what will be Anand's next move in chess! Optimization theory has found wide applications in industrial production and marketting scene. Advanced mathematics is used in fields as wide as astrophysics. Invention of calculus aided the study of motion of planets or the well-known theories of Relativity or Gravitation have their base on mathematics. From stock trading to running an economy mathematics is everywhere. Be it natural sciences or earth sciences or social sciences or no science at all mathematics can be traced. Theory of warfare has got excessive importance these days and is a product of mathematics. From counting of election votes to calculating dates of historical monuments or fossils or predicting the next Tsunami, mathematics reigns. Can I actually stop somewhere. No. The list goes endless. Very correct is a saying in Sanskrit whose English translation goes like,

"Like the crest of the peacock and the jewel of the serpent,
Mathematics stands at the head of all sciences."

But wait the examples I cited surely must have made you accept that mathematics is not just a science but an art too. From music notes to drum beats mathematical theory finds a role. We say that giving examples does not mean definition in mathematics though. So I still have not got an answer to that somebody's question.

So let me try again, "Mathematics is a science...or rather its an art...or a vocation...(still confused).......ladies and gentlemen so this mathematics and it can confuse anybody anytime and hence keeps you engaged all the time.

Dated - 5th Sept 2005

My 3D Experience

2009-08-29T21:43:00.002+01:00

If you have not seen a 3D movie, like me, start with 'Final Destination'. It is out in the cinemas. They will charge you £10 instead of the usual £8, rates varying based on which cinema you choose, but it is worth those extra quids.

The movie stays with you long after you have finished watching. After the movie while you are coming down the escalators, you check if you are shoe laces are tied or not. While you wait for your friends to come outside the theatre, you think what is the probability of the lamp post falling on you. As you walk up the car park, you look around to ensure everything is as it should be. Everything from the movie stays with you unless you consciously decide to wipe it out of memory.

I enjoyed the thrill. I enjoyed the realisation that there is a non-zero probability of the world crashing like a deck of cards - may be due to a sudden earthquake, a strong hurricane or cyclone or any other man-made reasons. So why not live the life that we have to the fullest until it all comes to an end? Why not endeavour to make living meaningful, so that death finds a meaning on its own too?

In short, I highly recommended you to watch it if you have guts as I did get freaked out once in a while. Be a part of the freaky imagination of the director which gets freakier by the addition of the dimension. Watch it and enjoy the adrenaline rush throughout the time of the movie.

Love Nowadays & Life Partner

2009-08-22T23:30:00.003+01:00

For those of you who have a big grin on your faces – sorry but I am not going to write about my take on love or marriage here! I am talking about the two Bollywood movies recently released – ‘Love Aajkal’ and ‘Life Partner’.

I enjoyed watching both the movies because they are those feel good romantic comedies (rom-coms) which Bollywood invariably churns out. Recipe of success I realise is to have no extravaganza, a couple of stars, some nice locations, good script with sensible comic. It’s said that Hindi cinema thrives on fooling the audience with its overdose of emotions – gone are Suraj Barjatiya days. Now Hindi cinema thrives on giving the audience with the right dose of comedy.

After a long day at work, who does not enjoy comedy, especially if comic is milked out of topics traditionally considered sensitive and emotional like love or marriage? And is it not true that there is no point in taking life too seriously, at the end of the day life is as complicated as you make it and as simple as you think it is. There is nothing better than trying to find a little humour in everything if this can lighten my brain which is heavier than the laptop I am currently typing on.

On a separate note, while trying to access an old airline’s miles account, I happened to open my yahoo email after years of seldom-use. Wonder why they still decided to keep me alive there. Lots of emails from various weird networking sites that I had registered during internet’s heydays had filled up my inbox. ‘Forgotten password’ for each of them and then ‘Delete account’. Some of them were – Wayn, Who-remembers-me, Names Database, Tagged, Yaari, Skoost, hi5 and some I can’t even recall while I am typing this post.

As Paulo Cohelo remarks in his book ‘The Zahir’ – ‘It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.’ And definitely days of stupid and senseless use of internet are long over for me...

But why?! Why do we have this tendency of getting serious in life all the time?

A Tequila Shot

2009-08-13T18:52:00.005+01:00

1. Slice a regularly sized lemon or lime into small pieces.
2. Fill a shot glass with tequila.
3. Sprinkle a small pinch of salt onto the skin between your thumb and forefinger.
4. Using the same hand that contains the salt, you must hold one slice of the lemon (or lime) with your thumb and index finger.
5. Quickly lick the salt, down the tequila, and bite the lemon (or lime).

She did all of the above last night. This was after a long day at office, to celebrate a piece of work that got signed off. A busy day at office and she did not get time to eat anything after lunch, she was skeptical before downing the tequila. She surprised herself by behaving better than she had thought after the shot.

She ordered Rosé wine and sat down on the sofa comfortably thinking of dragging the wine till the end of the party. Her drinking appetite is a maximum of two glasses of alcohol. She did manage quite well sipping through small sips of wine once in a while, turning down any offer of refills that came after that. It was quite late into the party and her wine glass had only the last layer of liquid left, that she was offered Sangria.

The Sangria did not do any good. The composure she showed after the tequila shot was diminishing. She could feel her head getting heavier and her smiles getting broader, she looked happy and she was enjoying it all, in short she was drunk.

She told me all this today in the morning, apologising for her erratic behaviour last night. Few pointers that I gathered after listening to her experience – i) don’t drink Tequila empty stomach, or for that matter any drink empty stomach, ii) drink lots of water in between your drinks to nullify the effect of alcohol in your blood, iii) it is better to be drunk with your colleagues than with your boy/girl friend as the worst you will do when you have lost it is make stupid jokes with your co-workers, iv) a plate of Nachos along with the drinks is not enough, order more food as you go along, v) have your trip to go back home sorted before you decide to get drunk and most importantly vi) don’t forget you will have to meet those in the party early next morning for a meeting!!!

A trip to Nairobi, Kenya

2009-08-03T22:20:00.006+01:00

I was away last week on a business trip to Kenya. Whilst I did enjoy the business class flight and the stay at one of Africa’s best hotels and facilities which come with a business trip, the real icing on the cake for me was meeting the Kenyans.

8.15pm flight lands at Kenyan International airport and you see Karibu written as you make your way through the airport (Karibu means Welcome in Sohali, the Kenyan language). I walk towards the immigration check officer who after greeting me, remarks with a stone face – ‘Your visa has expired’. For a moment, the world stopped for me, I got my visa done specially for this trip and it has already expired. Just when I was about to say something (even though that moment I dint know what), he replied – ‘I am joking, welcome to Nairobi’. Phew! That was scary. I thanked him for his joke and walked towards the baggage claim rewinding the incident all over in my mind. Back home, I was warned about BA’s record of loosing bags and hence having to go to office in the same pair of clothes next day. It was a relief to find my suitcase taking rounds. I move towards the exit keeping a close watch on the swarm of people holding white pages with names hand-written. I had only started to think that my taxi from hotel is not there probably that just then I spot a big guy waiting with a big placard embossed with N Agarwal. As I jump into the taxi, he remarks to tie the seat-belts as he is going to drive real fast, which sounded strange but I still try to oblige him, only to be told that it was a joke. Gosh! People have a different sense of humour here, nice one I said to myself. And by the way, he drove slower than brisk walking, honestly!

After saying ‘Asanti Sana’ to the driver (meaning thank you very much) and jumbo to the hotel receptionist (jumbo means hello), I went to my hotel room to prepare for a tough next day. The next few days were the busiest days of my life yet. I have never worked so much in any of the 18 years of my academic life that I worked during this trip. The only bit of Nairobi I saw was from my office to the hotel which is 5 minutes walk. Strange is, even if it is such a short walk, but people from office in the evening would come down to book a taxi back to the hotel. It is very unsafe in Nairobi I hear. Having said that, I have met the best people, so professional and yet with such a personal touch. I loved the food at the hotel. My recommendation to those going to Nairobi for a vacation is Hotel Serena. Try it, I loved their hospitality.

What else?! Oh yes the most amazing part – after this arduous week I did treat myself with a Cellutox body massage at Serena. An amazing and relaxed one hour! The flight back home was more comfortable than the onward journey as BA was now aware of my ‘special food requirements’ which in short means vegetarian food. Apart from bringing home with myself the love and hospitality of the Kenyans, I have got some Kenyan tea; I am still to open the box so comments on that will follow later.

A brilliant couple

2009-07-26T15:03:00.006+01:00

I am sure most of you who stay away from home have experienced this - your father or mother calling you up to ask you to call some so-and-so who stays in the same city as you, arguing that it is good to be in touch with known people when you are so far from home. You may not have the slightest of hint who that person may be, but just because your parents want you to be in touch with the person, you oblige them by dialling the given number as reluctantly as possible.

The other time, my father called up to say that one of his fellow distributor friends, a very respected blind ex-army official's daughter is married in London and that I must get in touch with her. 'But Papa, what will I talk to her? She must be quite old and I have only talked to Uncle a couple of times and that too when I was a kid'. He replied - 'She is a very nice girl (though I know he has never met her) and you know what - she has married an ex-army official who is blind arguing that since she has grown up helping her blind father, she has no reason to make a different choice'. I was flabbergasted – I dint know what to say and jotted down the number without uttering a word. How many of us would do so?

I gave her a call two weeks after this conversation, after having fought with myself many times over. I din't know in which language to greet her - so a fumbled me said a Bengali Namaskar, followed by a Hindi Namaste followed by an English how are you, all in one breath. She replied hi adding she was expecting my call as her father had briefed her about me. To break the ice she said what was going on in my mind - 'I know you must be feeling a little awkward making this call as our fathers want us to talk to absolute strangers giving us only small references. It happens with me a lot'. I could not agree with her more. We talked about 2020 cricket, Wimbledon and she invited me and my brother on one of the weekends.

Yesterday we visited their place for dinner, a house in a nice location close to Oval cricket stadium. It was a pleasure to meet the couple. I had the most fulfilling conversations with them. The husband Mr. G, was a Major in Indian army, had lost his eyes towards the end of Kargil war in 2000 during an anti-terrorist operation in Kupwara. For the first time I met somebody who had fought the Kargil war and had suffered injuries because of it. I could not stop a few tears, invisible to him and unheard to his wife. He was in various hospitals for the next two years and had met her in one of the hospitals. He was a delight to talk to. Given his life-changing experience, he talked very highly about the Indian army.

The lady of the house, our host Mrs. M, had cooked amazing Bengali food which we both loved. We stayed there for 4 long hours, dint stop talking even for a second. Mr. G currently works in an NGO for people with disability and Mrs. M works for an NGO against the recruitment of child soldiers across the globe. I told them about my initiation to help street children in India and they were very appreciative & supportive.

Meeting such great minds in life is so enriching. I called up my father to thank him. I will now meet everybody he asks me to meet without questioning.

Expecting 25

2009-07-01T22:44:00.004+01:00

Every year during this time, I write a blogpost expressing my disdain over turning a year older. While I was turning 23, I felt myself inadequate to make my own decisions and pledged to take charge of my life. While turning 24, I realised that I had an enjoyable 23 and did not want to let it go.

Now while I am turning 25, I have mixed feelings. I am matured enough to understand that however much I wish, I cannot buy time and wish it to stop. I have to go with the flow. There is a plan in the pipeline to register a charity in the UK, a charity which will cater to the needs of the street children in India. A separate blogpost detailing this effort will follow in the days to come. I solicit the cooperation and the best wishes of you all in making this effort not only beneficial to the thousands of kids who deserve the same livelihood as ours but also enriching enough to keep us motivated and focussed throughout.

Some other aspects of turning 25 are – I am now allowed to open a pension fund of my own, essentially as I turn 25, I can start planning for my retirement. I will move to a higher age-group, from my current 18-24 age-group (the young person’s age-group in the UK) to 25 and above age-group. This means that I cannot avail any more discounts (eg. rail/bus) based on age anymore. Thoughts of marriage pop up here and there. Marriage is fun, only if you get to marry somebody you fall/rise in love. I am trying to gain knowledge and expertise in the responsibilities that come with a married life post 25.

Unlike all the years when I have strongly resisted turning older and pleaded time to stop ticking, this year is a bit different however. I do not want to resist it, as I understand that it will still happen (probably this is the maturity that I have gained in years 23 and 24), I rather want to pray that 25 turns out to be the best year yet of my life. I am looking forward to you 25, rock on!!

Sobbing Lloyds, sombre Lords

2009-06-23T22:27:00.000+01:00

I have been meaning to write since a while now. Last week I started a new job in another bank. One year of work at Lloyds (where I saw the transition from Lloyds TSB to Lloyds Banking Group and was a part of it), came to an end. I felt sad not only about the fact that I will be leaving a nice bunch of people, but also about leaving my manager/boss/teacher. Being my first boss, he has been instrumental in shaping the professional that I have become from being a lecturer back in India. He helped my transition from academia to industry – two very different schools of thoughts.

The last few days at Lloyds were emotionally charging for me. Be it the ‘leaving lunch’ or the ‘last treat of cake’ – I struggled to talk and found myself on the verge of tears at the mention of a farewell. The farewell I got can not be described in words; I was very touched to say the least.

Having worked at Lloyds in the ‘City’ (London), I am now working in Canary Wharf. They say that the experience of working in Canary Wharf is quite different from working in the City and it indeed is. City was professional, but not mechanical, while Canary Wharf is professional and to an extent mechanical. May be my opinion changes as I move on to become a part of it!

That Friday, 12th June will get engraved as an important chapter in my memoir - when I left my first company and went to see a 2020 Cricket match at Lords. The grandeur of the place took some time to sink in – an emotional me at LORDS. It helped me look back at my life; it helped me find solace amidst the hustle-bustle of the thousands of cricketing fans around!

An experience to remember

2009-06-04T12:25:00.002+01:00

5.30 in the evening it starts. Since morning my eyes are fixed at the tiny digital clock at the right-most bottom of my mega computer screen. I try to concentrate on the two big monitors in front of me with numbers, codes, and everything uninteresting that I can think of at that moment. I am supposed to be modelling (I do not mean modelling as in modelling, I mean financial modelling). My model has to go live next week and release documentation and bit of testing remains. But then it starts at 5.30 today, I have been dreaming about it since I was a child. I cannot model today I tell myself.

Gosh this tiny stupid clock, takes ages to tick. I think my computer is slower than usual today, am I running too many processes which make it think so much that it has stopped ticking the clock? I open Start->Control Panel->Date and Time and then stop. I think I am going bonkers. Go out and get some fresh air I order myself.

I come back to my desk thinking I will now do some work. Documentation is the last thing I want to do when I am so restless (yeah I need a lot of patience in commercial documentation, as one needs to ensure that everybody, however naïve he/she might be, surely understands it). So I decide to finish the testing bit. Concentrate I tell myself and get on with it.

Wow lunch time! Cannot help but tell my boss that I plan to leave by 4 today and so I will have a quick lunch on my desk (not that I have very elaborate lunches on other days, still!). Those couple of hours till it gets to 4 were the hardest – time has never been so painstakingly slow.

Huge traffic, lots and lots of people on my way! I manage to reach my destination at 4.45. My pilgrimage! My brother is already there waiting for me, I say a quick hi. And I fall into a trance. I let it all sink. I see Bhajji, Yuvi, Dhoni, Raina, Pathan in blood and flesh. I see Afridi, Younus Khan, Akmal all in front of me. I am at The Oval to see the India-Pakistan 2020 match.

Immediately those childhood days of watching cricket on TV being played at Lords and Oval flash in front of me. I remember how my brother and I would dream of becoming capable so as to be able to visit the Mecca of cricket. I feel overwhelmed.

I hear and sing along ‘Jeetega bhai jeetega – India jeetega’, ‘You hit a four, or you hit a six, you are still the famous Yuvraaj Singh’, ‘India zindabaad’ and lots more that you pick up with the crowd and then forget later.

The crowd around me is mixed, Indian and Pakistani fans. Some untoward incidents do happen (with men dipped in beer to the brim, I did expect so), but mostly people appreciate each other and their affiliations which I feel glad to see. Any verbal fight I see around, I immediately hear the crowd singing the famous song to pacify the heat – ‘Ye dosti hum nahi chorenge, todenge dum magar, tera saath naa chorenge’.

India won the match. I absolutely loved the experience. I felt accomplished. My next match tickets are for THE LORDS!!!

Gandhi and Elections

2009-05-29T11:58:00.000+01:00

I was surprised by the election results – surprised more because this is the first time that I had not been following the day to day update on Indian politics during the run-up to the elections. I had formed opinions and judgements from the quick-bites I got from Indian newspapers during my lunch time (on-the-desk-lunches).

Now on introspection I would like to believe that I am pleasantly surprised. India badly needed a ‘stable government’ more than the need of a ‘good government’ as I do not think any party seemed to have promised good governance. I knew the markets would react more strongly not to the news of which party wins the elections, but to the news of how decisive would the win be. And I am happy that it is a clear and decisive mandate which resulted in strong stock exchange performance.

Everybody seems to be giving credit to this decisive win of Congress in India to Mr. Rahul Gandhi and his campaign. I do not doubt that he has been instrumental in the election campaigning, all I am trying to question is – does he really have the merits or the suffix ‘Gandhi’ in his name gives him an advantage?

I know most of you would go for the answer – both. And guess that is the best answer to this question. You cannot take away the edge he gets for being a Gandhi clan, and at the same time he could get the maximum mileage out of this advantage because he is clever and knows how to exploit it.

I feel happy whenever I see a youth getting into politics, at least somebody is bold enough to dirty their hands and clear up the mess instead of being a spectator who only passes comments on the anomalies. I am glad that they will bring in new ideas on board; they will pave the way to a new India. But a question still lingers in my mind – is it only a bubble of over-enthusiasm that will burst just like the current economic situation, or is it a sustained willingness to make a change and contribute which will see them face challenges with strong heads on their shoulders?

Panacea

2009-05-14T13:15:00.002+01:00

I have been thinking about the concept of Panacea, so thought of writing it down. As per wikipedia, Panacea is named after the Greek Goddess of Healing and is used to call medicines which can cure all diseases.

But does something like this actually exist? If I ask for a single solution to solve all my problems, can somebody provide me a Panacea?

Such questions come up sometimes when I am thinking very hard about my life and the direction it is moving in. The questions may seem reasonable or unreasonable, but I still continue to ask them.

I am reading a book called ‘The Zahir’ by Paulo Coelho. Part of the reason for this introspection is driven by this book. It is a book which drives you into soul-searching, asks to you stop for some time and look at life from a distance like a painter. Some personal and professional experiences tell me that I need to stop. I need to sit back and think about my life and the lives I, intentionally or non-intentionally, affect. And I am enjoying the process. I am convinced that at the end of this search lies my elixir for life. I am determined to find my Zahir.

A quickie

2009-05-03T19:34:00.002+01:00

I know I have not been writing since some time, and I apologise that this is not going to be a long one either. The turn of weather in London, from winters to spring has meant that I am spending my free time in appreciating the beauty around and the sunshine which I used to earlier spend on blogging.

Today a friend from college said that she has started learning Guitar. I think Guitar is one of the toughest instruments, guess all string instruments are tough. So on asking how is coping up with it, she replied that she is struggling but feels ecstatic just by the thought of possessing a guitar. I encouraged her to continue and added - 'you have crossed the line of those who do not know to those who try to know and then eventually (hopefully) to those who know'. She felt motivated and good. Thought of sharing this with you.

I have been watching some good movies. Watched Julia Roberts and Clive Owen's Duplicity yesterday - a good and intelligent movie. I also liked the most recent Bollywood sci-fi 'Aa Dekhen Zara' starring Neil Nitin Mukesh - recommended to all those who want to see the sci-fi genre in Bollywood having matured by this movie.

Lots more later!

The Protests & the G20 Summit

2009-04-03T21:50:00.000+01:00

“Storm the Banks”, “Hang the Bankers”, “Claim the city back”… I hear these slogans being shouted while on my way to work. As a banker who works in the city (London), I had a potential threat to my life for the past two days – a threat of not just booed while walking down the streets, but a threat of a violent attack by the angry mob.

The world has not seen anything positive in the recent past. People have lost jobs, companies have fallen like deck of cards, poor have become poorer and rich have lost their wealth, the backbone of any financial system – the banks have collapsed, Governments are busy in bail-outs as a result increasing inflation and deteriorating the value of their currency. The economy which was thriving on a bubble suddenly decided to burst. We wonder why it happened and when it would end.

As a student who transitioned into an employee in this critical phase with lots of other class fellows, the diving economy has hit me hard. I felt the heat of the downturn as a job-seeker and I continue to feel the heat as an employee thriving to retain it. In the past six months, I have seen some very bright international students go back to their home countries after giving up the fight to secure themselves a job in the city. They could have been assets to this economy, but in the long run I must say. I can understand that, in the short run, this government has to create jobs for its own people, has to ensure that it can provide jobs to the 2 millions rendered jobless as a result of this crisis.

The G-20 Summit held in London on 1st and 2nd April was a platform for thousands like me to show their anguish to people who can make a difference by their collective effort. The 20 biggest economies of the world came down to a negotiating table, keeping aside their personal animosity, to discuss a collective plan which can help save the system from any further damage. The idea was clear - we all are in a mess so let’s all dirty our hands and clean it up.

How successful the summit has been, only time will tell. But yes, I can confidently say that it is a significant step in the right direction. We need more such collaborative action plans. We have globalised ourselves so much that no more is a problem at one corner of the world not going to have some impact on other parts. For example, since decades India has been crying to have a collaborative action on terrorism but nobody paid any heed until they themselves faced it. Now the world is united in its effort to curb terrorism.

We need such combined action plans for every other problem we see in any other country which could have even slightest of impact globally. The poverty in Africa should be a matter of concern to the entire world, coz if we can address it then we only end up increasing markets for our goods, we end up boosting our own economy. I am in favour of having a motive even in social work. At least it gives some people some reason to do some good to the society.

Introducing Beatboxing

2009-03-30T18:28:00.003+01:00

I render my apologies for being away for so long without any communication. I had actually not planned that I will not write. It's just that sometimes you don’t do much in life which is worth writing. But surely this weekend I experienced something which is as much worth writing as it is worth knowing. Here I introduce beatboxing to the uninitiated.

As defined by the World Beatboxing Community, beatboxing is the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue, voice, nasal passage and throat. As per me, I think it is the coolest form of music one can hear. Without using any musical instruments a beatboxer creates different musical sounds. Enthralling - isn’t it?

The concert that I saw at Queen Elizabeth Hall of Southbank Centre, London was called “Music Through Unconventional Means”. The world-renowned beatboxer Shlomo collaborated with Gauri Sharma Tripathi, an exponent in Indian classical dance form of Kathak. Having learnt Kathak as a kid, I always wondered if the way I was taught Kathak is the only way Kathak can be. But seeing this performance of Gauri Sharma changed my opinion. She concentrated on sounds more than bols (or words); she concentrated more on the rhythms in the movements than choreography. I realised one can experiment with everything as long as one is honest in the experimentation.

I quite liked the idea of merging beatboxing with Kathak. Both forms of producing music are based on rhythms.

The collaboration did not end here. Shlomo brought on-stage an acclaimed British Tamil musician Susheela Raman. Even though she sang in Tamil, of which I understood not a single word, but who needs words when the whole ambience is taken over by the might of music. The sounds were reaching the ears with emotions that meant so much; one was free to interpret it the way one wanted. Music is a language in its own right.

I experienced enchanting music full of creative imagination. Attending such concerts gives an opportunity to listen to very good music, to experience the magic created due to synergies of different music forms, to appreciate the extent of man’s creative imagination and to wonder about the capabilities of human faculties.

I am a woman

2009-03-12T22:49:00.002Z

Let me raise my head with pride,
For I have worked hard to reach here –
Let me walk straight and unveiled,
For I have lots to show and share.

Why should I be mocked at?
For my lips are coloured –
Why should I be taken lightly?
For my skirt is flared.

I can do all the work that you do,
But I can do much more –
Should you not be embarrassed?
For being such a reckless bore.

I am a creation of a woman I admire,
You too had to be created,
What then is the attitude for?
When you too had to be initiated!!

P.S Dedicated to a woman I know...

Emergency service exercise

2009-03-05T20:24:00.002Z

I was watching BBC the other day and found out about the concept of emergency service exercise. The report talked about a simulation of a hypothetical scenario in which multiple locations in the United Kingdom face a terrorist attack. The exercise was to develop and practice ways and processes to be used to come out of such a situation. The report said that it took 2 days for the officials to simulate such a scenario and now it would take another 24 hours for the on-field officials to finish off the operation successfully.

The report left me a little bewildered and happy at the same. Bewildered to imagine that a simulated act can in anyway match the gravity of a real occurrence and happy to see that atleast we are not sitting hand in hand doing nothing in order to prepare ourselves for such a dastardly act.

Recently the terrorists attacks in Pakistan on the Sri Lankan Cricket team deserves the worst of condemnation. Having grown up watching Sri Lankan cricketers like Sanath Jayasuriya and Chaminda Vaas, I felt very sorry to hear the news. I fail to understand what is the message that these terrorists are trying to convey? I fail to understand how can youngsters like me (most of whom are intelligent, smart and opinionated) get disoriented and lost by people who clearly are spreading violence, panic, terror, anxiety and distrust all in the name of God?

The ongoing economic turmoil should be enough for us to understand that we have already created a lot of mess around in the world, let's now start the process of resurrection. Let's get together to remove the insecurity we have created in our lives - insecurity of whether I will have a job tomorrow, whether I will be able to pay for my house tomorrow, whether I will have my life tomorrow!

Bollywood Award Functions

2009-02-26T19:06:00.006Z

Since a child I have always had a fascination for Hindi Cinema. Due to time constraints, educational priorities and the fact that we had no cable connection in our house (which in India means having access to only Government regulated channel called Doordarshan) I got to watch very few of them. But now that I am at a point in life when watching a movie relaxes me the most, I am fulfilling my childhood wish of watching lots of Hindi movies.

Just as watching a movie is crucial for me, so is commenting on it which may be either a criticism or a compliment. I find a nice way to tally the comments I made throughout the year with the distinguished minds in Hindi Cinema is by watching the Award functions (another reason being to check out the actors, their hairstyles/costumes/makeup).

Yesterday night when I was watching the Star Screen Awards for year 2008 held in early 2009, I was so put off since the start with the presentation of the ceremony. None of the actors (male/female) were dressed up to the occasion (except for a handful). Probably because the Academy Awards held in Hollywood (Oscars) have set my standards a bit too high. Or may be coz I know that Indian actors can look so handsome/beautiful if they want to but I wonder why they come to award functions so casually dressed. Either they do not care or there are too many award functions to care. People may not have watched their movies, but they do take a note of them in the award functions.

Do I also need to add to it that the show host was absolutely distasteful? To make people laugh, he stooped down to levels one can only imagine (or probably not). He made me wonder throughout as to why I dint find any of his poor jokes funny (as audiences seemingly were enjoying them). I was in doubt since the start thinking that probably I have lost my sense of humour. Sajid Khan and sister Farah Khan were the hosts. Together with the distasteful jokes (about effiminate males and gayism), they were also passing comments on the speeches made by the recipients. For a short speech I heard comments like “For a writer like you it's surprising that you do not have way with words” and for longer speeches I heard “Your speech was just a bit shorter than your movie”. Wonder if we can use the pretext of entertaining audiences by hurting those who work hard throughout the year to achieve these awards so that they can thank those who made it possible for them?

Towards the end director Ashutosh Gowarikar (whose movie “Jodha Akbar” won many accolades including best director) had the courage to voice against it. Sajid Khan replied saying that “It is a TV show [and so we got to make fun so that audiences laugh and TRP rises]”. I disagree. It’s is not a TV show. Why does not Sajid Khan host a TV show in which he pulls people’s legs and makes distasteful jokes so that the TRPs tick northwards? This is an award function, something seen by people all over the world, something which represents Indian cinema, something which gives a chance to the fans to see their actors dancing without cuts, something for which film makers (cast and crew) work hard throughout the year to be recognised at the end. I am sorry but Sajid and Farah this is totally unacceptable!

Tagged

2009-02-24T19:48:00.003Z

Thank you Renu for tagging me to write on the above picture.

The picture above is a similar picture (in essence) that I came across last year (of my friend with her boyfriend walking hand in hand in Russia). I was so moved by the picture that I requested her to give me a copy of it on which I always wanted to write a blogpost (I have her permission to publish it on my blog). Thanks to the tag now, it will now be finally written after almost a year.

I wonder what did I find so fascinating about this picture that I so badly wanted to keep it with me and to write on it? I feel that the pictures above can be looked at for hours giving rise to myriad thoughts.

I find shaking hands very special. I know it might sound American/English style of greeting somebody, and I do think ‘Namaste’ (Indian style of greeting with folded palms in front of the chest) has its own charm, but definitely a handshake is a little more personal (while a kiss on the cheek gets far more intimate and I tend to shun it). Holding hands while walking makes so much of sense. It constantly ensures that you are aware of the presence of the person walking beside you and don't have wandering thoughts about anybody/anything else.

Holding hand means a promise, a promise not to leave it again, a promise to hold in sickness and health, a promise to be a shield in times of trouble. Walking hand in hand means walking together the tumultuous journey of life; it means a pledge to understand and undertake the ups and downs of life together.

I might have exaggerated it a bit, but then I am sure these pictures do remind us of somebody. Somebody with whom either we have walked hand in hand or would have wanted to walk hand in hand. In both the scenarios I think we have been a winner as we have proved to ourselves the level of commitment that we are willing to take, the promises that we are willing to keep. In both the scenarios we prove to ourselves that we are lucky to have come across somebody worthy of that. And if not, then we rather need to go on a search of the self!

My Raiganj Trip

2009-02-11T22:01:00.002Z

I had a genuine reason to be away from blogging for a while now. I was in Raiganj for a two week holiday. It has been the best holiday I have had in times I can remember. Let me try to give words to the overwhelming experience I went through in one of the busiest, most exciting and memorable holidays of my life.

Onward Journey:

I chose Air India to fly down to India from London (and return) over numerous European flights – reason being simple – food. And I did not feel let down as the food was indeed amazing (so much so that I told my mother not to bother herself about packing food for the return flight). The flight was very comfortable unlike what my friends had alarmed me about. Most of the time I read the book “The Shadow of the Wind” that I was carrying and rest of the time watched the movie “Naseeb” starring Amitabh Bachchan (Din’t have any good English movie option, and I din’t mind it either).

On reaching Delhi, a very close friend of mine from undergrad days was waiting at the airport. I must have caused her a lot of pain because of the wait and confusion of domestic/international terminal, but I was glad she undertook it without complaining. We are friends since 8 years now, I have never felt so touched by a gesture of a friend that I felt this time. I gave her a bag (apt for weekend travel) I bought for her in London as a wedding gift which she seemed to have liked.

In that little time that we had, as I had to catch a connecting flight to Kolkata, she showed me the largest shopping mall in India (I think in Asia as well, not sure) called Ambience in Gurgaon. We had a nice lunch and nicer conversations. For a 5 O’clock flight I managed to reach the airport at 4.15pm only to be told that my flight is closed and departing as it has been re-scheduled for 4.30pm. Phew! After not much argument, they decided to send me on a later flight with no extra charges. I was bowled over by the hospitability. Delhi airport came across as clean and not very different from London Heathrow airport in terms of management and facilities.

I reached Kolkata quite late in the night which meant that the train booked for Raiganj had already left. With no alternative we (my father and my younger brother who had come to receive me) agreed to go by bus. Father’s network helped and we got three reserved tickets on a bus. The journey from Kolkata to Raiganj was really miserable. An over-night journey with no proper seats to relax, pathetic roads, and to top it all I felt the need to go to the toilet. The bus stopped in the middle of the night for dinner. I rushed to the ladies toilet of the road-side hotel (called “line hotel”) after ordering some dinner for the three of us. My younger brother warned me about the hygiene of the food, but I decided to eat it anyway. The food served on unclean plates was very tasty - simple chapattis with tarka daal (black curry made with pulses). However the toilet completely put me off. I was on the verge of vomiting. And it is something that I felt concerned about throughout my holiday. Sanitation in India is a huge matter of concern.

Raiganj:

Raiganj was as warm as it has always been. Nothing had changed in the town (apart from the renovation my mother is getting done in our showroom). My mother had planned out lots of visits to family and friends which I thoroughly enjoyed. I found warmth in them. I found an eagerness to embrace shedding apprehensions of all sorts. I felt genuineness in their love, respect, kindness and hospitability. I felt touched. More than once did I have tears in my eyes when I bid adieu to them.

My School:

I went to my alma mater with a joy of seeing the teachers who have made me what I am today, without whom I would not have understood the importance of consistent hard work, the importance of not just reaching the top but also maintaining the position.

I was overwhelmed by the warmth my teachers exuded. They invited me for a talk so that I inspire the current students to aspire and motivate them to work towards achieving the aspirations. I took no time to accept the invitation. On a later scheduled date I spoke to the current students and got an overwhelming response from them. My school celebrates its 100th birthday in 2011 for which I have promised to try my best to gather all the alumni spread across the world on one platform. I reckon to make the celebration worth remembering for times to come.

Cinema:

One thing that I love since childhood is to go to cinema followed by a nice family dinner in a restaurant. “Luck By Chance” was on Asha Talkies and I could not resist my temptation. I coaxed my younger brother and two other kids in our locality to come along with me. My parents could not manage time to go with us for the movie on one of the three cinema halls in Raiganj (the third one generally plays adult or B-grade bollywood movies). All the hype about this movie seemed unwarranted as very soon I found my younger brother, on my left, going off to sleep. The two kids, on my right, were not able to understand what was happening in the film so I started explaining them the scenes. A group of loafer guys were making so much of noise that I myself was not able to understand half of the movie. Thankfully the storyline was the most unpredictable and boring one so it was very easy to fill up the gaps. The gang of guys would start clapping very loudly sometimes when the heroine hugs the hero or gives a sly smile or just like that with no reason which in a way helped my brother to ward off his sleep to an extent. I enjoyed every bit of my time watching Luck By Chance in Asha Talkies.

Return Journey:

It was time to go back. It was time to leave all the warmth, love, and camaraderie back and return to work. I felt weak. I cried in my bathroom or in the room which has temple in it facing God asking Him to take care of my parents and to keep them away from any worry. Coming back from holidays has always been tough for me, but this time it seemed tougher. Life gives and takes so much. Even with so much of maths that I have done, I am yet to understand and formulate the equation of life.

The Derren Brown Show

2009-01-15T22:00:00.004Z

What could be more scintillating than knowing that the person standing in front of you can read your mind, that whatever crap is going in your mind can be accurately read and understood by the person in front of you? No, I am not talking philosophical here, I am not talking about soul mates here who know what their better half is upto. I am talking about a professional, a sheer professional who claims that he does not have any psychic powers; all he does is capture the energies that our brains radiate. Each one of us has energies around us, and our thoughts attract those energies. He claims to be aware of those energies and thereby tell what is playing in our minds.

I got totally freaked out when I became aware of this concept. I got freaked out only by his TV show, wonder how would I react when he is actually in front of me. Derren Brown was on the business since the start of the show. There was a huge audience in the large auditorium and he involved as many as he possibly could have in the given time. There were various acts of mastery on display. He asked the audience to write their questions on a sheet of paper and fold it into an opaque envelope with their initials and desk number on the top. Just by reading the initial and desk number, Derren went on to say how old the person who has asked the question is, the sex, the name (!!) and also the question. And phew! He was spot on. Audiences like you and me were aghast; they were more freaked out than I was sitting outside the TV set.

There was another trick in which he asked some people to come on stage and by calling some dead spirits he would make the table move which the people called upon on stage are only touching to ensure that it is actual motion and not a delusion. I initially discarded it saying that probably a magnet has been attached inside the table’s legs and somebody below the stage is driving it (though I am not sure if magnet fitted inside wood is able to create a magnetic field). While all this argument was playing on in my mind and I was about to discard the trick as a nonsense, he commanded the table to rise up. Seeing it rise up for a good 30-40 cm above the ground, my argument failed. I submitted myself.

He dint stop there. After playing lots of similar unbelievable tricks, he threw his masterpiece in which he proved that he could read the minds of hundreds of people gathered in the show at the same time. He was too good there. With his eyes closed, he picked up a 30-35 year old guy sitting far behind in the rows, heard him say a yes, and went on to say that he is not English but of foreign origin, probably Ugandian or/and Indian (!), his name is Sachin (!!) and he recently went for a holiday to Iceland. Sachin was dumbstruck. He admitted each of it being true and that he is totally freaked out.

I was particularly freaked out to see that Derren could guess the names of people (accurate most of the times). Do our names really have so much of importance? Do the energies we radiate have names associated with them? Why did Shakespeare then say “What’s in a name?”?

The show left me restless. Now two days down the line and I am still pondering how all this can be done. How is it possible? The answer is not going to be easy but it will surely be no less than a revelation to go out on a hunt.

A pending tribute to Raiganj

2009-01-07T20:31:00.001Z

I am born and brought up in Raiganj, a small town in the district of North Dinajpur in West Bengal. I remember as a kid my perpetual quest used to be to spot Raiganj in whichever atlas or geography book I came across. And never being able to spot it used to disappoint me and at the same time also give me a reason to discard that book claiming that it din’t contain enough information. Probably a part reason to why I could never fare very well in Geography. Very recently, to my pleasant surprise I found a small wikipedia entry for Raiganj. The wiki says that as per the 2001 census Raiganj has a total population of just 165,222 with 75% literacy (which is notches above the national average of 59.5%).

Since my mother foresaw a bright future for me, she was very adamant that I do not go to any Bengali medium school and English be my medium of instruction. Being a small town in West Bengal, Raiganj had some renowned Bengali medium schools, but no good English medium school. Hence, as a kid the schools I went to had leaking roofs, no fans and no tube lights. On a rainy day the roofs would leak to fill in the buckets kept under them and on a sunny day the tinned roofs would get as hot as possible and with no fans overhead only added to the torture. My mother had to donate some fans to the school, which followed suit amongst other parents thereby enabling some infrastructural development. However none of the English medium schools had managed to get an affiliation from the central board to conduct the tenth standard examination, so for two years I had to go out to a neighbouring place called Balurghat. I felt Balurghat was only bigger in size and population but much less developed than Raiganj, though that can be argued by some. Those days I missed Raiganj so much that I was ready to pay any price to go back.

So for the final two years of schooling called the twelfth boards, my mother put me into a renowned Bengali medium school with the exception that I would be allowed to take my examinations in English. This meant that all the lectures would be delivered in chaste Bengali. Bengali is my third language but the great deal of fascination for the language helped me manage to understand most of the theory lessons. I, however, found the Mathematics classes very difficult to follow. Knowing a particular language does not guarantee that one can also know Mathematics in that language. I used to struggle to ask questions to the Maths teacher as neither did he understand the equivalent English terms for some of the mathematical concepts. My classmates would make fun of me by calling me a ‘firangi’ meaning a foreigner. And very surprisingly I actually used to love hearing so from them. I never saw it as a mockery; rather I took it as their admiration. I guess I was good at selective hearing and also in extracting the essence that I wanted to hear from a remark/comment. My teachers loved me and appreciated the extra efforts I was putting in to understand all the subjects in a third language. It was a nice challenge to me, and I had a heavy incentive to win as I knew if I dint fare well in exams, then this challenge would only get extended meaning having to do university in third language as well.

I scored the highest marks in not only Raiganj but also in the entire state of West Bengal to which Raiganj belongs. I was on the newspapers and the local TV. I chose to give my interview in English which was commended by the Union Minister on an award function to felicitate my achievement. Raiganj Coronation High School would celebrate its centenary year in 2010 and I feel very proud to be associated with it. Those two years preparing for the twelfth boards were the last years that I spent in Raiganj and the most memorable times of life. Raiganj gave me the recognition for my hard work, and the recognition gave me the confidence that I can do something in life.

This piece of writing is an acknowledgement of my indebtedness to Raiganj and a reminder to my self to work towards my childhood dream of gifting Raiganj with a good English medium school. May God guide me!

A new year gift to you!

2009-01-03T21:54:00.006Z

Found an old manuscript containing some of my poems I had given to special friends at different points of time in the past. Before nostalgia takes over, let me publish here one of them as a special new year gift to all of you! Let us start this year with a spirit which this poetry conveys!

Jeevan hamesha khushiyan to nahi lata,

Insaan hamesha sab kuchh nahi pata,

Sookh aur dookh samay ke chakra ki tarah hai,

Shanti aur ashanti dono hi har jagah hai.

Kabhi utaar to kabhi chadao-

Kabhi sahaj to kabhi uljhan bhare padao,

Jaise din aur raat, jeena aur marna.

Virah ke dard ke baad milan ki hai bela,

Kabhi hai log saath to kabhi chalna pade akela.

Pehle hai jhagra phir dher saara pyar,

Kabhi hai jeet to kabhi hai haar-

To bhai phir kis baat ka malhaar,

Jiyo zindagi chak do gam yaar.

Pata nahi kal ho na ho,

Pareshaniya to hai par phir bhi tum hanso.

Mana ki tumhara gam kuchh nahi hai kam-

Par lakho logo se phir bhi behtar hai hum,

Unke liye to har ek subah aasha ki nayi kiran hai

Aane wala woh din hi unka jeevan hai.

Shaam hote hi anischittayen gher leti hai unhe,

Agle din ki chintaayen woh jaaker kahe kinhe.

Prem aur vishwaas ki rah se tum na dagmagao,

Ishwar ke prati sachchi bhakti tum mann mein jagao.

Dhyan rakhna ki tum kabhi aham mein na doob jao,

Sahridayta aur vinamrata tum apne mein lao.

Apne aap par rakkho tum poori aashtha,

Sweang hi dikh jayega tumhe woh jagmagata hua raasta!!

Happy Christmas and New Year 2009

2008-12-25T14:11:00.003Z

Time flies faster than we think we can keep a track of...

Here's wishing all a very happy Christmas and New Year 2009!

May the world witness peace this year and may the financial crisis end bringing high quality of life and prosperity.

Love and regards,
Niedhie

The Young Revolution

2008-12-20T23:17:00.005Z

I have been following the debate that has followed the Mumbai blasts in the country. A lot has been said about the inefficiency of the government which has failed miserably not only to stop such terror attacks but also to address the sentiments of the Indian public after the aftermath. I am overwhelmed to see the Indian youth revolting and putting efforts to make themselves heard. There is a visible determination to even take up politics, take charge and root out the problem themselves.

But my concern is not only terrorism anymore. I want to capitalise on the new uprising that India is witnessing, the new awareness that Indian youth is seeing, this new wave of revolution. Why not raise all the other issues that India should be concerned about currently and in the days to come? Why not capitalise on the momentum? Why not dirty our hands well till the elbow when we have already dirtied our palms by taking charge of the current situation in the country?

One global forecast says that the global economic downturn would considerably affect the emerging economies like India and China. The World Bank projects China’s growth to slow from 11.9% in 2007 to 7.5% in 2009 and India’s from 9% to 5.8%. Does not this concern you? The new India that we are so proud of will see a shrinking consumerism, a shrinking money spending and thereby a fall in the standard of living. It has been only sometime that we had started understanding the benefits of an economic development and working towards it, that our concentration has now been diverted. It had only been sometime that I was feeling relieved that we had understood that all our problems would be taken care of if we could simply concentrate on economic and infrastructure development, and now we have so many problems to take care of.

Social under-development in some of the states in India remains a consistent problem. Some states just seem to have made it a point not to develop. They seem to be vying with each other in the parameter of under-development. It hurts to me to say West Bengal tops my list. I have spent well of my growing up days in West Bengal and have grown up hearing stories about its glory and the famous line that ‘what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow’. Where has all that glory gone? West Bengal seems to have stopped thinking ages ago. I do not have anything against the communist party, in fact to an extent I have respect for the ideologies they stand for. But I have issues with those ideologies if they put my state into stagnation or under-development. I have not seen a single significant project, a single change for good that I can list here. The Tata-Nano project in Singur is also gone now. I wonder what good has it done to the hopes of workers expecting to derive livelihood out of it. Orissa, Bihar, Assam and Uttar Pradesh are some other causes of worries.

Isn't it now time to understand our strengths and use them for our benefits? Our strength is democracy, where each one of us are accountable to every other member of society. Our strength is our good heartedness. Even after our lives got shaken by the 26/11 carnage, we din't go out on a rampage and din't believe in the footsteps of US after 9/11. We showed our strength of understanding and thoughtfulness at a time of distress. Our strength is the huge population. When so many voices speak out, it is enough to create a roar and shake up the whole world, let alone those who disturbed our sleeps. Let's understand this and let's act together! Jai Hind!

Personal Inflation Calculator

2008-12-12T20:46:00.004Z

We are in an era of computing. 80% of my time in office goes into computing and 20% into thinking. The 80% I spend into computing I am generally not thinking much. The computer these days is so sophisticated; it does everything on a click of a button. I don’t remember the last time I multiplied two small numbers in my head and two big numbers on paper.

Interesting feature of this age are calculators. You name it and you have calculators for it. An old concept but I came to know of it a few weeks back – the Biorythms calculator. It bewares you of your mood on any day in future, it tells you how intellectually active you would feel on any date, and also highlights physical fitness. I tried using it for a few days and then realised that I was getting affected by it. If it said that on a Monday I would be physically unfit, then however much physically healthy I might be, I would still crave my bed on that Monday. There is a science behind it I am told, but then I guess I would like to keep the future uncertain and live life the way it comes.

I came across the personal inflation calculator. This calculator asks you various figures. Monthly expenditure on food, meals out, alcohol, phone, internet, clothing and footwear, heating and lighting, chemist, house rent, travelling (including foreign) etc. It din’t take long for me to plug in the values. I have been paying bills myself, making budgets from my salary and planning holidays myself, so was aware of all the questions being asked to the best precision. The outcome was interesting. When I was back in India I would crib in my conversations with the rickshaw pullers and the bus conductors about the inability of the government to prevent inflation which was around 9%. I would mercilessly say that we are incompetent enough to control the ‘badhti mehangai’ (increasing inflation) and I would go to the extent of informing them that in developed countries like the UK the inflation is just near 2% and so probably they do not get so affected by it also.

The personal inflation calculator shows me that my cost of living in London goes up by 5.4% a year compared to an overall national inflation rate of 4.5% per year (November RPI figure). I guess that indicates that my expenditure is also some notch higher that the average in this country, which sounds exciting to me, as I am yet to live a lavish lifestyle here. I wonder where my personal inflation would be then! This means if my annual expenditure is £25000 this year, then other things remaining unchanged I would expect an expenditure of £26350 the next year merely due to inflation. It means for no fault of mine, I would have to work harder to earn that extra bit of money I lost. That means for no fault of mine, it would take longer for me to get into a lavish lifestyle that I aspire for.

My lavish lifestyle is a lifestyle where I don’t have any reason to think twice before doing charity. I don’t need to hold back. I have enough to give. I feel for a cause and I endorse it both financially and manually. There is so much that anything is too less to be given away. How wonderful that will be!

Mumbai - I feel for you

2008-12-05T18:19:00.004Z

I can't think anything other than the Mumbai blasts. Each time I sit down to write, I think of the huge mockery on Indian resilience that we just witnessed, I think of the incompetent bunch of politicians we have who only care about filling up their own pockets and securing votes, I think of those innocent lives lost, I think of the terrorists who look so human and civilised yet committing the most inhuman and uncivilised act of horrendously killing anybody and everybody without any thought.

Yesterday I watched the least celebrated bollywood movie "Ramchand Pakistani". I cried like a baby towards the end. Had I been watching it alone, I would have probably been wailing. I just could not contain myself. I had been feeling very emotionally charged since the 26/11 event in Mumbai. This movie let it all come out in the form of big tears. I am not liking my helplessness. I really wished that I was just not an ordinary citizen of India, but a celebrity at a position to influence minds through writings and interviews. But why are those whom we have made celebrities in India quiet? Why don't I hear any strong words condemning the event, any solace for the sorrow I feel sitting here seas away from Mumbai? Why don't I see anything changing even though this tragedy changed our lives?

Jaago

2008-12-03T17:38:00.000Z

Utho Bharat, jaago dosto,
Kis baat ka intezaar hai –
Yudh ki bigul bazi dekho,
Hamari vinamrata par kara prahar hai.

Sahanshilta ki seema tuti,
Bhaichare ka bana bhari majaak,
Bekusuro ki jaane gayi,
Shaan hui jal kar raakh.

Ab agar humne saha,
To sahanshilta ka dhong hai,
Jurm karna jis tarah galat hai,
Jurm sehna bhi ek bhayanak rog hai.

Aur phir kyun sahe hum kisi ka aatank,
Kya humme kuchh kami hai,
Prashn yahan ab aman ka nahi,
Un aankhon ka hai jinme nami hai.

Chalo sab milkar kadam badhayein-
Yudh na sahi to satarki to dikhaye,
Hans rahe hai woh hamari nakami par,
Aao swabhimaan kya hai hum unhe bataye!

Parinaam kya?

2008-11-28T16:35:00.002Z

Ro raha hai dil,
Ankhen nam hai,
Kya sthiti hai duniya ki,
Aatank mein fase hum hai.

Ek jut hona hoga hume,
Yeh ek kathin yuddh hai,
Shatru mansik bimaar hai,
Saari chaal atah bekar hai.

Masoom log kyun nishane par?
Jo apne balidan ki vajah se anjaan hai,
Unhe maarkar kya milega,
Jo tumhare maksad se nadaan hai?

Ladai to barabar walo mein hoti hai,
Nihatte par to kayar vaar karte hai,
Udeshya aur parinaam kya hai is khoon ka,
Yeh jaanne ka haq har ek shahid rakhte hai.

Kya chahte ho tum, kyun yeh hahakar hai?
Chahe building urao, underground jalao,
Bandi banao, goli chalao,
Sab bekar hai agar maksad naa batao.

Aatank machana, darr paida karna,
Videshiyon ko maarna, dharm ko kalankit karna,
Aur ant mein apni jaan bhi gawana,
Kis kaaran ke mol hai, yeh to batana?

Kyun naa is pagalpan se upar uthkar,
Kabiliyat ke dam par duniya mein jiyo,
Saaf aur sachche mann se dekhoge,
To har manav mein ishwar nazar aayenge…
Aur tab kya tum goli chala paoge?

Sleepy, yet no sleep

2008-11-26T15:37:00.000Z

I have always given a lot of importance to sleep in my life. In my dreams I have figured out proofs of some theorems, mugged up rules of accountancy or principles of business organisation, dreamt about being running for presidency and planned my future. Having been an academic topper with some other scholarships to my credit, some people have found it difficult to believe that if I have the liberty and any form of couch at my disposal, I have never missed any opportunity to put a bookmark on the book/notes/workbook and go off to sleep. I remember how amazed my mother would get to see me sleeping all cuddled up with a heap of books/notes surrounding me. I remember how friends at college would mock me and challenge me to stay awake late in the night as in hostel studying late night was considered fashionable. I remember how my housemate would get worried seeing me taking small breaks of sleep during the day before exams when I am supposed to have lost sleep.

So in a nutshell I have always fancied sleeping, the greater is the pressure – the more I have slept, the nearer the exams – the more is the sleep. I guess it has been my way to tackle pressure. Some people get into smoking, some start drinking, I believe in sleeping. But you must be wondering how can one fall asleep when one is worried or tensed? That comes with practice. Some of you who might have watched the bollywood movie “Munnabhai MBBS” would have noticed how Dr. Asthana forces himself to laugh when he is angry so that he can control his increased blood pressure and he is successful to a lot extent. Similarly if you can force yourself to sleep (in fact you don’t need to put in too much efforts as your brain is anyways tired of thinking and worrying and would love some rest in any case), you would be in a better position to tackle the worry. And then when you get up, you are bound to feel better as you have just ‘slept over’ your problem.

I have finished my yummy lunch of fried rice and I have two pivot tables containing thousands of data to compare and make a report on the discrepancy if any. There is supposed to be not much discrepancy while I cannot see a single value match. I wonder what report I am going to produce! And to top it all I am feeling so sleepy. No couch around and with no contractual liberty to sleep at work, I wonder if this is why working people crave for weekends!

The new face* of woman

2008-11-24T17:57:00.002Z

*Dedicated to the unknown face I saw yesterday in London Underground

Like any other thousands of commuters on London tube on a weekend, I was no different. Wearing a red tank top on black jumpers and a pair of black Levis jeans, I was on my way to attend a drink party to bid farewell to a friend who is moving to Melbourne, Australia. This 15 minute journey gave me thoughts which I feel I will continue to think over for some days to come.

Casually, not thinking anything in particular and just noticing human behaviour as an onlooker, my eyes caught a strange face. A very beautiful yet strange face! It was beautiful as it looked very well chiselled out with a perfect countenance and it was strange as it took me a couple of seconds to understand whether it was masculine or feminine.

The train was moving and so were people inside my coach. I saw that face turn sides and roll eyes, probably in response to somebody (may be me) staring at it. And that puzzled me more. I was thoughtless/speechless/motionless for moments that followed. I had figured out something. The face belonged to a young lady who had designed her hair in such a manner that one half of it was a boy-cut revealing her neck (half of the neck), while the other half was a girlish layered cut with hair falling below the shoulders. On further thoughts, I guessed that she must have been or will be a part of a play wherein she is playing both male and female characters in a particular scene. May be she was to perform a one-act play or may be playing multiple characters in a play. The next moments were of respect towards her commitment (to put the character she would play above her own self) and brevity (to travel in a public transport with a hair style so uniquely designed). Just when I was so occupied with these thoughts playing in my mind, I saw her getting down. Had she stayed with me for one more station, I would have probably got a chance to talk to her and confirm my guess.

She disembarked, but I kept pondering. The next thoughts were of the new face of woman I had just witnessed - somebody who is bold and smart, does not shy away from taking up challenges, is committed and goal-oriented, manages personal and professional life with confidence and does not care about the world if it obstructs the way for any of the above.

Darr

2008-11-21T17:25:00.003Z

Aaj baithe baithe yunhi,
aankhen bhar aayi -
pata nahi kis khayal se,
dharkan tham gayi.

Kal raat dekha jo sapna,
kahi woh sach na ho jaye -
pata nahi khushi hogi ya dukh,
jab jeevan ki dhara badal jaye.

Kabhi kabhi sochti hun,
ki meri manzil kya hai -
achchhi - buri maine har ek,
chot ko saha hai.

Aur kitne kante hai raah par,
jin par mujhe chalna hai -
kyun dekha maine sapna,
jab haar se darr lag raha hai.

Microsoft - Not Responding

2008-11-21T13:12:00.003Z

I had an unveiling experience. I was working on getting a piece of code working since morning. It was evening and I had just cracked the code (written in VBA embedded in Excel 2003). The joy and excitement was extreme. There was a point when I had completely given up and thought that probably I will have to do it in some other way (which I deemed less efficient). So when it finally got cracked and I saw my code working, I was literally in the seventh heaven. I think, when we feel so happy with ourselves, we do end up doing something stupid the next moment. I was no different. I became a little too ambitious and made some other changes only to realise that my Excel was ‘not responding’. Phew! For heaven’s sake tell me that this is a bad nightmare; that after a couple of minutes of mental agony, this ‘not responding’ ghost on my Excel will go away; that I would be able to retrieve my code I had painstakingly worked on since morning. Someone please tell me this.

In the next couple of minutes I frantically googled starting from “how to save a ‘not responding’ file” or “how to retrieve a document” to the extent of “help on using Excel 2003”. There was some Microsoft help which directed me to go to

Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Office Tools -> Microsoft Office Application Recovery

But as guessed by most of you, I did not have this feature in my machine. I asked the colleague beside me to search (thinking probably insanity had taken over me that I can’t even find Microsoft Office tools), but it was not there in his machine either. Helpless! Demotivated! The grief of having wasted the whole day was worse than having to reproduce the gory code.

I tried looking for ways in which I can contact Microsoft to get some help on this. A Google for ‘contact Microsoft’ led to a Support Microsoft page. I then ticked options for the next few pages to specify with which product (Excel 2003) I had a problem. I was calming down a little during this process, felt some ray of hope. Only to be led to a page wherein I was asked £46 (including VAT) for an e-mail request or a phone support. Gosh! I heard myself screaming! I could not believe it.

A simple google of ‘Contact Google’ leads to so many phone numbers/email-ids/address using which one can contact them. While I found no way in which I could contact Microsoft (for free). I have never fancied their “Was this information helpful?” question with every help they provide, and after this no-way-to-contact-Microsoft-experience, I can only see myself fancying it lesser.

After this long struggle, I finally gave up. I vowed to click on ‘save’ after every significant code line that I would write in future. Dejected I pressed, Ctrl-Alt-Del. The task manager popped up. An ‘End Now’ to the ‘Not Responding’ Excel. Couple of seconds and the irritating message box “You chose to end the nonresponsive program, Microsoft Office Excel." Don’t Send. Everything was over! Sigh!!

While I was opening the Excel sheet again, I prayed that I have not forgotten the important bits of the code which I will need to write again; told myself what a wasteful day I had, and what a torture it would be to write the code all over again. Excel opened. I opened the module to start writing the code again, only to find it already there. I must have clicked the ‘save’ button at some point before I ran the code and before it decided ‘not to respond’. My day was just saved!

The voice - do we really need it?

2008-11-14T14:00:00.010Z

I have been thinking since some time that I have to write about the whole Raj Thakerey drama that has recently started. Just today when I read the news article which says that Raj cuts his birthday cake with a sword which has “Bhaiya” written on it, I felt amusement and some sense of malignity. Not that I do not want to accept the argument that the news clip may be a little over the top with an unnecessary implication of cutting the "Bhaiya" on the cake with a sword meaning that he wants to cut all the north Indians with a sword, but I just want to say he is on my nerves now.

I recently heard Shobhaa De speaking to Karan Thapar about the whole episode, and albeit the fact that I really look up to her for the woman she stands for, I was let down this time. She did not take any stand, she played safe, she answered diplomatically, that’s not the Shobhaa De I have known and hence the let down. She seemed to be insisting that she is surprised that not a single Maharastrian has got up to speak out against the Raj Thakerey episode. I wonder that if a personality like Shobhaa De could not muster the courage to do so, whom is she expecting to come out to speak? How can we think that the reticence of Maharastrians may perhaps mean that this is what they want?

There is no doubt in the argument that each state should have their quota so that advantage is given to the applicants of those states. And to the best of my knowledge, India is a hugely quota-regulated country. Each state does have their own share of quota, examples can be the state level UPSC exams or the state level lecturership exams (called SLET), or the state level railway exams, all of which give preference to applicants of their own state to some specific percentage. I have personally also taken some of these exams and that is the view I am aware of as an applicant. Then what is the argument for beating up the north Indian applicants on a Railway exam? S/he will only get selected in the category of outsider applicants. And if you think that this is not being done correctly, then sue the government for corruption. I do not see any justification in beating up a student like me absolutely unaware of what’s going on.

I hereby do not just say that the approach used to get the voice heard is absolutely unacceptable and rubbish, but also add that the voice that is being raised is irresponsible and carries no grounds.

The development of any place depends a lot on the immigrants to that place. The natives take their home towns mostly for granted and do not aspire to add much value to it. I wish the number of immigrants that Mumbai has, Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal may also have some day. Least the Mumbaikars should do is to feel proud that their state is good enough to attract the crowd of the nearby states. Believe me nobody is happy at the first place to leave their own state; it hurts a lot to migrate to somewhere you have not being born and brought up. I am an immigrant too, and not even a single night has passed when I have not thought of my birth place.

The other argument I hear is that if Raj Thakerey does not do this then there is no way that the other states would do anything to improve their infrastructure. “Jab ghee seedhi ungli se nahi nikalta to ungli tedhi karni padti hai”. Huh!! Do you think killing Biharis in Maharastra is going to make the Bihari government do anything about its infrastructure and development? Our politicians hardly think this way. The first thing they would do is topple the Maharastra government or call for president’s rule in the state claiming law and order failure. And all that we are gaining with this “tedhi ungli” is the harassment and loss of some of the brilliant Bihari minds.

At the end I feel totally at a loss of words in which I can express my disagreement to the voice. Least that I would request the government is to put the man behind bars for claiming himself to be above the law of the land.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are completely personal and no malice is intended. The views have been formed based on newspaper articles, TV interviews and personal judgement.

The life we call - the work life

2008-10-29T18:55:00.005Z

As somebody who has recently treaded on from the student life to the work life, as somebody who never really wanted to enter the so-defined 9-6 work life, as somebody who never wanted to be one of those who can be bossed around, as somebody who never knew she could still be one of the above ever, I am surely in a very exciting phase of my life.

As a kid the house that I have grown up in also housed one of India’s biggest public sector banks. I have been talking to bankers since an early age – sometimes work related and sometimes personally. I have found their job as bankers of India’s one of the biggest banks at a small place like my hometown, a pretty relaxing 9-6 job one could think of. My knowledge about banking was limited to accepting deposits and giving away loans. Other than that - drafts, cheque books, ATMs are some of the other facilities that a bank provides to lure customers. The more customers the bank has it means more deposits and more loans meaning more business. It was even difficult to imagine that there could be any interesting role in banking wherein the banker does not get to meet the customer.

Now I am working as a banker in country’s one of the biggest banks, no more in my small home town but now in London. I am a banker with no on-the-road customer. My customer so as to speak is now an authority which needs some watchdog in each bank so that they can keep an eye on how the banks are doing their business, they can regulate them, they can stop any unprecedented events from occurring and in today’s scenarios they can stop banks from falling down. My customer is the Financial Services Authority of the UK.

How interesting do you think is this job when you are developing products which do not serve the need of any person but for an organisation? A major reason why I have enjoyed teaching so much is the “thank you” a student says when s/he gets up from a lesson I have delivered. I find it very rewarding. So what is the reward I get by making sure that my fellow bankers are in line with the guidelines laid out by the FSA? A salary / a job / a 9 – 6 brain storming everyday / a nice work atmosphere. I am currently getting all of these, but still something stops me from saying it is rewarding based on the reasons I have cited above.

What in fact makes it rewarding for me is the feeling that somewhere I am helping my bank and my fellow bankers realise that they should not take enough risk to go over the board, to be in a position where they can endanger the savings of those customers I have had acquaintance since childhood, to threaten the chance of a potential customer who is looking for a loan to buy a house, to cause a disturbance in the whole system. I may also say that I feel I am doing a noble duty, a duty towards the society by ensuring that my bank is not one of those who can suddenly go bankrupt leaving the whole world in a state of shock. I feel there should be more bankers like me in each and every bank as we do not have any right to cause the unrest in the world that we have just done. Indeed my work is pretty exciting.

Credit crunch jokes*

2008-10-18T19:04:00.002+01:00

What's the definition of optimism?
A banker who irons five shirts on a Sunday.

City trader: "It's worse than a divorce. I've lost half of my net worth and I still have a wife."

Why din't the little boy get any money?
Because his mum has gone to Iceland.

A masked man holding a bank cashier up with a gun says: "I don't want any money - I just want you to start lending to each other..."

What's the difference between an investment banker and a pigeon?
A pigeon can leave a deposit on a Ferrari.

How many commodities traders does it take to change a light bulb?
None. They don't change bulbs, but the trading price of darkness plummets due to oversupply.

*Courtesy: The Londonpaper

Whose skin are you in?

2008-09-26T20:09:00.004+01:00

Dear all,

This is a very special message to all of you, a cause which I care about.

I am a proud vegetarian and feel very happy about the fact that I am not the cause of an unexpected death of any living organism. "Plants, aren't they living?", I hear you immediately complaining, but then that is a matter of huge debate which we should probably avoid here.

I just want to make a simple request here, that we please stop wearing fur and leather as they are produced from animal skin which is extracted inflicting horrible amount of cruelty on them before they are finally killed. In case you are wondering, I do not have any leather jacket, used to have a fur coat which I disposed off last year and have vowed not to buy one again and I do not feel that it has made me any less fashionable. Fashion is defined by you and not by your leather or fur jacket which has been made from the skin of a speechless and uncomplaining animal.

I hope that the video and I have made you at least think about it.

Niedhie

Witnessing history

2008-09-17T14:34:00.007+01:00

The events of the past few days convince me that we are witnessing history. The demise of Lehman Brothers, Wall Street’s fourth largest investment bank, would surely find its place in history.

I remember the day in March when I heard that Bear Stearns, Wall Street’s fifth largest investment bank, is heading towards bankruptcy. As an aspiring quant in investment banking I had applied for an entry level quantitative analyst role a month ago and was waiting to hear from them about my application. It was taking unusually long for a bank with a proper recruitment procedure in place to respond on my application. I was patient, waiting for a response was much better than hearing a rejection so I did not complain. Least did I know that I would straight get to hear the news of the bank struggling to survive and so being bailed out by the Fed and thereafter bought by JP Morgan Chase at the price of peanuts! Little did I know that the application which I worked on for hours and the cover letter which I got checked from my career counsellor at university and at least two other people were destined to go into the dustbin! Little did I know that those who would recruit me are busy saving their own jobs!

The memories of the crisis at Northern Rock, UK’s fifth largest mortgage lender, and how it had to be nationalised to protect the monies of the hundred’s of pensioners and savers had not even faded, that I was in for this jolt of a prospective employer who was taken over so as to avoid its demise. Things were going to be tough, I realised.

Having completed the course with the submission of dissertation, since the last couple of weeks I had been planning my strategy to go for the application spree again. I chalked out the banks I would target as a single application takes at least 5 hours of thorough research of the organisation. This research made me go through the current financial situations at each bank and I realised that Lehman Brothers was in a bad financial state. I was hopeful that like Bear Stearns, probably Lehman would also get a helping hand from the Fed so that even if my hopes of working for the bank are bleak, at least those working still have hopes of not losing their jobs. On Monday I was in for the second biggest shock, Lehman was not bailed out and so had to file for bankruptcy. 5000 employees in the UK were rendered jobless.

Merrill Lynch, Wall Street’s third largest investment bank, was also having its balance sheet in red, only to be saved by the proposed take over by the Bank of America. My housemate works for Merrill and though he has not been made redundant, since his contract gets over with the bank in a couple of weeks and there is no chance under these circumstances it would be renewed so he is looking for another job. But as he said, there are so many redundancies made by Lehman that getting a job at this point seems next to impossible.

The financial system is in shambles. Today’s BBC business news headline reads “US government rescues insurer AIG”. Mind you, AIG is the US’ largest insurance company and had the Fed not rescued it, it would have to file for bankruptcy. And then the whole system would have collapsed, we would have been experiencing the Great Depression of 1929. However I am not sure if the visible signs are any good to ensure that we are not heading towards it.

Blasts again

2008-09-14T10:52:00.004+01:00

Can I please move on from writing blogposts about blasts? I had been really caught up with so many things in life, and just when I decided to sit down to update my blog, all that I can think of are the blasts in Delhi yesterday. But it was too much for me to take this time, I could not stop my tears rolling over my cheek when I heard the news. I could not take it anymore.

Central Park in Cannaught Place has so many memories associated with my University of Delhi days. I remember going there long before it had formally opened and chatting with its gateman. He informed me when it would open and who would inaugurate it. I so badly wished that day for it to open so that I can come down there and hang around with friends. Thereafter, when it opened I came down hundreds of times, mostly Saturday evenings to just chill followed by my favorite pastry session at Wengers. I used to love it. So yesterday when I saw the Central Park being bombed on a Saturday evening, I thought it could well have been me amongst the 20 dead and more than 100 injured in those blasts.

So the pertinent question I want to ask today is, what is my crime? Why am I targetted? Why does somebody want to kill me? Why do I have a threat on my life? How does killing me help somebody sitting across some border? To be very honest to those who do these henious crime, let me tell you something, even if you kill me, nothing will happen which you want to happen, the governments will remain unchanged about their stance, people will forget it the next moment and move on with their daily bread earning routine, life will become the same for all except that it will bring unsurmountable amount of pain to those who love me. So killing me does not help you achieve anything. And remember very well and for sure, that someday that me will be your daughter or sister and that day all that will change is your own life and nobody elses.

Blasts, Inflation, N-deal

2008-07-29T08:48:00.006+01:00

The title suggests the way I would sum up the current social, economic and political situation in India. Notable political developments being- the political drama on the way the government proved its majority in the house, the dignified members of the solemn house behaved, Somnath Chatterjee expelled from his party (for me he and CPM were inseparable), the famous 'Sashikala' speech by the junior Gandhi, the upward movement in the stature of Mayawati as the potential prime-ministerial candidate of the 'third front'.

The news channels do not feel tired mentioning in headlines that inflation has dropped, I eagerly waited for the whole news to come up, inflation dropped from 11.91% to 11.8%. Phew! Is that good enough?! News flowing in that RBI is going to hike the Repo and CRR rates to contain inflation. At least somebody is doing something, the government does not seem to have any time to even think working towards containing inflation. First it was busy sorting out the chances of its existence, and now reacting to the 'demonic' problem of terrorism.

There has been a spat of bomb blasts in the country, the major cities like Bangalore and Ahmedabad under the scanner this time. The development that we so much boast of about India, has been becoming a cause of worry. Any city which is on an upsurge, should also get equipped to fight terrorist blasts, randomly occuring in any part without any notice.

But India, and these cities in particular, have shown commendable resilience. We have shown nothing can dampen the new spirit that India is shining with. We have vowed to reach the peak before we start looking down to see how far we have reached.

I wish my dreams and dream my wishes

2008-07-23T11:56:00.001+01:00

Will miss 23

2008-07-06T11:29:00.005+01:00

I don't want time to pass by anymore. Can somebody please stop the time for me? I am 23 and I will be 24 in a few days. But I do not want to be 24. I am contended being 23 and want to remain 23 forever.

I had a wonderful time as 23. Coming out to the UK, living a life that I had aspired to live since a long time, doing a wonderful course, achieving some sense of fulfilment as regards to career, meeting international people and making them good friends, enjoying my daily new crushes, going out for cinema with friends followed by drinks and dance, sitting in my room and studying for hours without any disturbance, working on various coding projects and then dreaming about those computing codes, eating nice food cooked by me :-) , failed endeavour of making it to the gym and the swimming pool, roaming around London with elder brother, missing home and talking to them for hours over the phone, and lots more. I will miss 23.

Last year when I was about to be 23, I wrote this post: Take charge at 23 and that reflected how dissatisfied and unhappy I was about going on to become a 23 year old girl without the knowledge and maturity of taking her own decisions. But this year I realise, it is not only that to be able to take decisions is important, but more important is to have the right attitude to be able to follow and concretise the decision that you have taken. Decisions may be right or wrong, good or bad, but important is the way you attempt to stand by them and derive your life out of them. I don't claim to have taken the right decisions always, but I will not say that I have taken wrong decisions either. I will not judge them as right or wrong anymore. I would just say that I have taken some decisions on my own and I will see how they go.

Other reason for not letting go with the age of 23 is that there are lots of things that I want to do before growing old, lots of changes that I plan to bring about in my life and in others lives in my own way. I am moving towards it, but then it is taking more time than I had imagined in the first draft of dreaming about it. The dreaming drafts are getting more complex, and hence they demand more time. Either I need to be young to be able to do all that, or I get somebody to spend a life with who understands me. Not sure of how the second option will turn out to be, so I want to remain young, I want to remain 23.

Zindagi

2008-06-28T21:33:00.003+01:00

Zinda rehne ke wajah kai hai,
kuchh zaroori hai aur kuchh ajeeb hai.
pyar ko pyar mile to kismat hai -
zindagi uske alawa bhi haseen hai!!

The 4 songs I know

2008-04-26T12:08:00.003+01:00

I have been lucky enough to try lots of things in life. Painting, sketching, kathak, harmonium, writing (poetry, story, blogs), swimming, tailoring (stitching, knitting), trekking, cycling, public speaking (debating, paper reading), lecturing, social work (volunteering, counseling), sports (kabaddi, skipping, high jump, badminton), leading (organizing, managing), etc. I have been successful in some, reasonably okay in some. There is one thing in which though I have failed miserably, or let's say performed unsatisfactorily and which makes me feel bad quite often. It is singing - an essential part of which is remembering the lyrics.

I do not want to curse my memory, I was teaching an engineering student a few days back here, and I amazed myself by finding out that I remembered all the trigonometric formulae I never touched after my high school exams. So I don't want to think that it is to do with lack of memory. Rather I feel it has more to do with selective memory. I can't remember definitions, my Economics teacher in school always wanted me to quote economists for definitions, but I could hardly do that. So I possibly can't memorize statements verbatim. I am not sure where in is the exact problem.

Anyways, this post is about the few songs which I remember verbatim (which means I remember more than or equal to four lines of that song).

As a kid I would sing this song with my younger brother. I would make him don the role of Kajol in the song, and would play Shahrukh myself, and we would both enact the song.

Jaati hun main, jaldi hai kya,
dhar ke jiya, woh kyun bhala....
Khud se main darne lagi hun, main pyar karne lagi hun...
Khud se jo itna darogi, tum pyar kaise karogi...
Jaati hun main, jaldi hai kya!!

The next song I know is also due to my younger brother. He loved the movie Guru, "Gurubhai Gurubhai awechhe", he would say for days after he watched the movie. His favorite dialogues: "Jab koi tumhare baare mein baatein karne lage to samajh lo ki tarakki kar rahe ho", and "naam tha nahi, hai, aur rahega , Gurukant Desai... " He would speak them so many times, that I could not help but remember them. His favorite song:

Jaage hai der tak, kuchh der sone do,
thodi si raat aur hai, subah to hone do,
aadhe adhure khwab jo, pure na ho sake,
ek baar phir se neend mein, woh khwab bone do.

Then when during masters in Delhi, I asked a friend of mine in the hostel (an amazing singer she is), to teach me a song. I chose the one written below. I remember we sat down at 9 after dinner in the night, and the session continued till 12 as she got tired and wanted to retire. I still practiced some more after she went away. All I learnt after that hard practice session were these lines:

Kaise bhoolungi, tu yaad hamesha aayega,
tere jaane se, jeena mushkil ho jayega,
din badle, duniya badle, waqt badlata nahi,
dil tere bin kahin lagta nahi, waqt guzarta nahi,
kya yahi pyar hai... kya yahi pyar hai...

(I am sure she will feel proud when she reads this, her mehnat has not gone into paani after all)

And the last song, which I learnt myself, must have sung these lines a hundred times by now:

O, palanhare, nirgun aondeya re,
tumre bin hamra kauno nahi,
hamri uljhan, suljhao bhagwan,
tumre bin hamra kauno nahi...
tumhe humka ho sambhale,
tumhe humre rakhwale,
tumre bin hamra kauno nahi...

Radha was married

2008-04-15T11:58:00.003+01:00

Oh! What a discovery I made... Just generally thinking about how mean Krishna was, who loved Radha so dearly but still did not have the courage to make her his life partner, I started thinking if Radha ever married at all. After a few googling results I stumbled onto this spectacular discovery that Radha was a married woman, it was an extra-marital affair that she had with Krishna. I am amazed with this discovery, hard to digest, but makes logical sense so can be accepted. I knew that some of the gopis who would romance with Krishna were married, but to find out that Radha was married too and we still celebrate their romance with so much of élan was a great discovery for me.

I will not be writing for a few weeks, have exams coming up and look at the thoughts I get during exam times. Conjectures, epics I feel like doing these things more than plainly sitting down to study course stuff probably. May God save me!

Conjecture 21

2008-04-08T10:25:00.003+01:00

Sometime in the past I had read or heard that it takes 21 days for a person to get rid of any of his habits. Just now I was thinking about it and was trying to figure out why was 21 chosen. What was wrong with any other number, was 21 just an arbitrary choice or some scientifically calculated estimate. I still do not have an answer to this question, but while thinking about this I have arrived at a nice discovery though.

Conjecture: 21, 42 and 84 and their reverses of the digits i.e 12, 24 and 48 are the only two digit numbers (so that both digits are non-zero and exclude the multiples of 9) which are divisible by what their digits sum up to.

Proof: Let us try to prove this conjecture. I say it as a conjecture as I am still to get a complete and adequate proof to it. But logic and intuition makes me say that it is provable.

The only reason to exclude 1 to 9 is that they trivially hold as the sum of digits in this case is just the number which is surely divisible by itself. Also the numbers with multiples of 10 add up to the non-zero digit which would surely divide the number. Also the multiples of 9 have this property that they sum up to 9 and hence would surely be divisible by 9. So let's concentrate on this more interesting case of 2 digit numbers i.e., from 11 to 99.

Certainly the first thought would be to exclude all the prime numbers in this range as they can never be divided by their sum.

Next we can exclude even numbers with an odd in the first digit, as they would certainly add up to an odd number which can never divide the number which is even. So this excludes all the even numbers in those columns with first digit as odd e.g columns of 10s, 30s etc.

Also exclude numbers with both digits odd as they would sum to even which can not divide the odd number.

Next the numbers with repeated digits on being divided by their sum would always give 11/2 which means they are not divisible. So exclude them.

The numbers ending with 5 can only be divided by 5 or 0 and any non zero digit added to 5 can never give 5, so exclude all numbers ending with 5.

The rest can be excluded by hit and trial.

This is surely not the greatest way to solve this, the best way would be to make an algorithm and program this rather than solving it so inefficiently as I suggested. Now since I have already typed it by putting in so much of efforts I would surely post it and welcome any suggestion on this problem also, but you are equally free to simply ignore this post.

The English weather

2008-04-06T14:49:00.004+01:00

I have spent an Autumn and a Winter, am ongoing a Spring and am anticipating a Summer in England. For a person like me who is driven by weather, be it about efficiency at any engaging work or plain mood, a post on the English weather was certain, only took some time to understand it in entirety. A step outside the house in the morning on way to school, and the first human I would meet on the road would greet me with "Good morning! Lovely day, isn't it?"- that is in cases when the sun is glowing, in cases when it is dull and gloomy I also get to hear "Good morning! Wonder if the weather forecasts are of any good, they have been forecasting the sun since quite a while now without any success." Being from a tropical country to crave for the sun is natural for me, but then actually, everybody likes the sun. However centrally heated you house or your car may be, nothing can replace what sun does for you.

When I came here, it was almost like summers going to end and I witnessed trees shedding off their clothes. Dint like much seeing them naked, and probably neither did they like it much, so saw winters descend only to cover them with snow. That was perhaps good for the trees to get the gift of a white gown, dressed like angels, but was cruelty to me. I was cold. Not that I was subject to atrocities by having no coats or hats, but the craving for a warm sun (yes, there is another kind of sun also, the fake sun, which may be full and glaring but with no warmth) would make me cold. I remember having enjoyed the first rain here, only to be commented by a friend that I would soon pray for it to never rain again. And actually I did pray so. It rained relentlessly for ages, those fake rains which don't wet you enough to claim that your bath for the day is done, but only irritate you with their continuity and lack of vigor, may be reminding you of a sluggish life which sometimes seems just too much stretched.

It never got any less cold though. I started feeling numb, my mood was getting sick of the monotonicity of similar kind of feeling everyday. The weather did all it could to do to make me reach the point of exasperation. World looked black and white to me, black nights and white mornings. Probably the trees also started getting bored of their white dresses. The dynamics of life is not linear but non-linear, it is not in black and white but in colours. And so spring dawned. I welcomed it with a huge hug, the days got warmer, the trees got their leaves back, they look merrier in green.

It has been quite warm since a few days now, the sun is no more fake, trying to remain as true and just to its work as possible. So today in the morning when I got up by the sun rays peeping into my room from the little apart curtains at the corner, I smiled, smiled at the prospect of having a warm day ahead. I got up and drew apart my curtains with full rigor as an acknowledgment to the grace of the sun. And lo! The cars parked on the roads, the tall trees and the short shrubs, the grasses on the front yards of the houses, the street lamp-posts and the bus-stop stands, everything that I could see- covered by a white blanket of snow. Fake sun, I must say!

Tit- bits

2008-03-31T14:08:00.003+01:00

This weekend I watched an amazing movie - RACE! Yes I say it is amazing, I am sure, many would not agree to this and might just write off my sense in movies. I do not care. I have grown up with my younger brother on weekly doses of Tehkikat by Shyam D'Silva and Gopi Chand on Doordarshan. The detective serial was something we would not miss for anything. My mom was also convinced that we both cannot live without it, and so even during exams she would permit us to watch that serial. So now liking Race may seem justified. I always look forward to any suspense thriller that gets released, and Race gets an ace amongst them. Not even once did the movie turn out to be predictable to me, the comedy quotient was good enough to keep my jaws occupied with the brain trying to decipher the mystery. There might be a few bollywoodish gibberishes here and there, but that can be overlooked, otherwise justified by the class that Abaas Mustan, the director duo has put up in the movie.

Apart from the movie watching, this weekend I pondered about the fact that I am sure over this period of time I have surely made a few regular readers of my blog, who do not want to comment on my posts, but surely want to read them to derive whatever set of emotions they have been deriving out of my posts. Just like listening to music or dancing or partying or blogging, reading others blogs may also be some way of recreation. So how justified is it if I deprive them of this recreation. To try and put up one post at a regularly defined time intervals seems quintessential.

And then it does not need to make sense always. I don't stop watching movies ever, so why stop blogging ever. Cheers!

Accidental love

2008-03-23T19:43:00.006Z

I recently watched the new release "The Accidental Husband". There is something which remained with me after I completed watching the movie, I am still not able to think any less about it. There is Dr. Emma, the female lead who is a famous love doctor aka love guru and there is Mr. Patrick who is the male lead, an ordinary fireman. Mr. Patrick is the accidental husband of Dr. Emma. From what started as a revenge, they both eventually fell in love with each other. Emma did not fall in love with Patrick just after knowing him, but it was a gradual process. The time she spent with his family, his friends, with him in his social gatherings- everything added to make her fall in love with him.

So there can be two situations of falling in love with somebody- one can be when one does not know anything more than what the person is, like no knowledge about his family, his social lineages, his friends and his kind of gatherings; or the other can be to fall in love with the person after having encountered everything, after having spent time with his family and friends, having attended social functions with him, having known him quite well in and out.

I don't know which of the two is right. May be there is not much difference between them after all. May be there is not much to even think about in them. I am not sure.

A crude confession

2008-03-18T08:59:00.003Z

Well, I have a confession to make. A confession that might leave me in a bad light in front of many, but does not stop me from making it.

I love my parents, more than Karan Johar claims in his Its-all-about-loving-your-parents movies, and every time I am surprised to find out that what I think of them is not true in entirety. When I stepped into adolescence and it was time for me to find a partner for myself, without having heard this from them I had assumed that they would want to marry me off only in the same caste i.e with an Agarwal. So subconsciously I prepared myself that even I want to marry only a maru. You know when you put yourself into conditions, it is hardly that you allow any free flow of emotions. You channelize every action of yours towards fulfilling that condition.

Last weekend my mother called up to tell me that they want to start looking for a suitor for me. And she added that they do not want to only look for a maru as more than that what she is looking for in my match is a nice smart boy who is strong enough to take care of her daughter through everything that life has to offer and has a respectable position in the society. I was stunned, took me sometime to recollect myself. To confirm what I just heard I asked, "You mean you are okay with inter-caste?" Pat came the reply- "Why not? What made you ever think that after educating you so much, letting you live life the way you want to, sending you abroad for studies that I will have this constraint of caste in mind!" I was amazed, amazed to know how foolish I have been. Amazed to find out how little I knew my mother. Proud to have a mother like her, and ashamed to be myself.

Two thoughts sprang my mind soon after this incident. I am thinking about them since that day, trying to undo a few things I did in the past. First being talking to my best friend from college. We are best friends since the last 6 years now, she is also an Agarwal. Two years back she told me that she had committed herself to a Mallu guy knowing that her family would not approve of the relation. I was not excited to know it. North Indian- South Indian, I felt there was no match. And surely her family would disapprove. I never encouraged her, thinking that it was my duty as her best friend to express my honest opinion. But after this talk with my mom, I immediately contacted her. I begged pardon from her, for having not understood her when she most needed me. Found about how the guy was doing and told her to fearlessly go ahead with it, and that I am with her. Told her that even she may be just assuming like I did that her family may not approve of the relation. It all might turn out to be absolutely fine. "It was more important to marry somebody who perfectly understands you than to bother yourself about his caste"- we both agreed on it.

This post will not deal with the second thought that sprang my mind immediately after the conversation with mom. I am still trying to undo that, but then it is probably rightly said that there are no retakes in real life. I wish I had a reel life as well!

Thoughts or no thoughts?!

2008-03-16T22:24:00.004Z

I feel like writing something, not knowing what to write. I feel like thinking about someone, not knowing who he is. I feel like talking about something, not knowing exactly what. I feel like writing about it all, not knowing where to start and what to write. Meanwhile I am glad that I have at least finished writing all my projects now and thankfully there I knew exactly what.

A breather

2008-03-13T23:28:00.004Z

The last few weeks have been maddening, I got a little too carried away. I was dreaming, breathing, thinking, feeling, eating and even walking only one thing. Nothing else occupied me. There were no thoughts for blogging, no desire to watch my once-in-a-week-bollywood-dose that I use to pamper myself.

I have allowed a breather. I decided to be a little kind to my thought process just before it was time to collapse with the guilt of excessive torture to the brain. The thrills of fantasizing about it had to be given a break. So I decided to keep my commitment of the once-in-a-week-bollywood-dose and started deciding on watching some movie. I don't what made me select Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (may be the Abhishek Bachchan factor). Huh, it is the worst movie I have watched in my dose routines . So one can imagine it dint help me much to drive my crazy thinking process away for anytime. There was nothing in the movie that could make me feel good. I would surely be more prudent next time. But rather honestly I have not left too many good choices anymore :-) From Saawariya to Taare Zameen Par I have watched them all in one of my dose routines. My search for an English movie is generally filtered by lots of criteria, so there too I am not left with too many options.

So finally I decided to blog, and to be very honest this is the best way to force myself to think of something other than what I have been putting myself to think about for weeks. Well since weeks, what occupied me was my C++ numerical project which I submitted today and from tomorrow I would be working on a statistical project. Oh my sweet little brain, I confess that I love you and I will be more kind to you very soon. Please cooperate!

Being positive

2008-02-24T10:41:00.004Z

I read two articles in today's Hindustan Times- one is called "The Bhaiyya Effect" by Vir Sanghvi and the other "Bonds that won't break" by Karan Thapar.

Vir Sanghvi says that even if Bihar and UP lie in the bottom in the per capita domestic product and are governed by regional caste based politics, India and in particular the other prosperous states cannot ignore the contributions that Bihar and UP have made to their development. What I particularly liked was the positive tone in the article, the smartness with which all the problems in these two states were focussed, going as far as "For many Indians, the two states have become an embarrassment", but at the end the hope that the way "eventually India shed its old image and went from being perceived as an underdeveloped wasteland to becoming an emerging superpower", these two "laggard" states would also do something similar. Many of us may not believe in the statement in entirety, given the mess they are in, but isn't everything about confidence and positive belief at the end. I have written this earlier also that BJP government might not have come to power because of the "feel good" factor, but nevertheless their "India Shining" campaign did a lot of good to us, gave us the confidence that we can shine... Similarly, instead of involving ourselves in stupid campaigns of driving away north Indians(Biharis and UPites in this case) from Maharastra I think it is time for us to appreciate their contribution. They would be shining soon and leading India in terms of economic development. I am sure a change of mentality would help a lot. A very close Bihari friend of mine once told me, "The problem is the lack of confidence amongst us in Bihar and that is why we migrate to other states, if only we decide that we have to stay here and work towards change, then there is no reason for Bihar to have bad politics or bad administration." My friend, I have changed my attitude long back, I know these two states are the heart of Indian culture and ethos. May the Biharis and UPites realize this soon and bring about a revolution.

Karan Thapar says that there is nothing dissimilar in Pakistan and India. "To begin with, fanaticism and fundamentalism is as alien to Pakistani people as it is to the Indian." I know a few smirks already at that, how many of us really believe in something like that. But the bottom line is that if only we both could start believing in it and work towards creating harmony, the scene is going to be much better. Let us accept it completely that fighting with each other is not going to do any good to any of us, so why not appreciate each other, love each other and grow together. I totally endorse when Thapar says "I'd say we are like siblings- or better still, like half- brothers- who can be easily provoked to quarrel but are locked in a relationship neither can break... So even though we always disagree, we always understand. And ultimately, the more we differ, the more we remain the same."

So the idea is, if media can now play a constructive role like this, by germinating positive thoughts in the minds of the people, a lot of good is being done. The first step in making anything successful is to believe that it is possible. These articles lay the seed for us to believe that Bihar and UP would be riding the ladder of development very soon, and India and Pakistan would soon be marching together to the peak of success. Thumbs up to Sanghvi and Thapar! Thumbs up to positivity!

Detachments

2008-02-18T10:12:00.002Z

If I were a carpenter, probably then the process of attachment and detachment would be without any emotional strings and more as a matter of daily job. But alas! I am not so...

I was helping my house-mate build a study table. Those ready made packed tables where one only needs to fix the screws and attach parts correctly to get the table in shape. It took us quite some time and I realized the analogy to building relationships. The strings of attachments need to be tied together to build a long lasting relationship. Different screws are different moments together spent which make the relation special and become memories. The hammering of the screws may be seen as the expression of love to each other and a commitment of staying together.

And when we were near completion, the thought that the table might be detached when she changes the house. Similar goes the analogy when we detach ourselves from an ongoing relationship. There may be various reasons for us to do so. It is a careful process of detaching all the strings that were tied to build the relationship.

The table would need to be opened some day, but then it would again need to be attached in a new house. So it may be better to keep the hope of another upcoming relationship during the process of detachment as it would hurt less then.

Weird thought, out of nowhere.... just thought of writing it! For me the process of detachment is on since long.... Some screws seem to have got jammed due to long time and so it is taking more effort than usual... hurting more as well... Cheers! :-)

The Indian curry

2008-02-16T21:59:00.005Z

It is an enlightening experience for me to find out what Westerners and other Asians think about the Indian curry. For the uninitiated, Indian curry is just anything that an Indian (me in this case) eats in her meal- which may be even fried rice/ pulao! For some who know a little more, know that curry is liquid in form. And those who know a little further, know that it is yellow in colour.

So everyday during lunch when I take out my lunch box, the first question that is thrown to me with immense excitement is: "Is that curry?" with all the hopes of the guess being correct. To be honest, now I am myself not sure of what Indian curry actually is. I describe it as something liquid that looks yellow because of a particular spice called "turmeric" and is made of curd/yoghurt. This is the basic version and it can be made more intricate by adding other stuff like dumplines (pakore)/ potatoes/ onions/ beans/ pulses/ vegetables. I know this definition can be refuted by Indians also as different cultures in India have different ways of cooking curry.

But whatever it is, they all love seeing, talking and eating Indian curry- depending on whatever they define it to be!!!

To keep writing

2008-02-12T20:19:00.000Z

It gets a little tough to be able to update my blog space regularly, not that I am some ultra busy person who does not have spare moments to herself to jot down a few words here and there, but may be because I am not that happening a person who encounter significant events in life worth writing down. So I have decided not to judge anything as significant or not worth writing when I sit down to writing. Discard it if you feel it is insignificant and read on and let it stay with you if you feel something significant got conveyed.

Just came to know from a friend that her two Gmail accounts got hacked. This is disturbing both because of the enormous loss of contact details and all other important informations that she had been storing, but also because she was an avid Google fan and feels deceived on the occurrence of such an incident.

I am also disturbed on thinking that I cooked one huge cauliflower on Saturday and since the past four days I am trying to finish it. But like "Water of India" magic of famous magician P.C.Sorkar which I saw with my father when I was a kid, wherein by his magic the water in the jug would never end even when in full public glare he would pour the jug down into the bucket- my cooked cauliflower does not even seem to be near to getting over.

I am happy about the Indian win on Australians in cricket. Such incidents provide a kick to the ego and probably thats what make us happy about them.

Oh it is time for dinner. Here I come, my darling veg-in-the-fridge-since-four-days :-)

Revive BJP

2008-02-02T10:47:00.000Z

I am not a political commentator, so I claim of no expertise in political analysis. I have not cast my vote in any of the elections and don't see any such opportunity coming up also. This post is about my personal views which I have formed on seeing India and in particular the BJP from a distance now.

I have respect for the diversity India carries, the multi-party democracy that it has been able to sustain over a long period of time. But now, I think it is time for us to realize that our democracy has come off age and it is time for us to make the country politically more stable so that we can solely concentrate more on its economic development. I understand the need of regional parties as that is the best way through which the regional issues can be best addressed. But at the same time I realize at the national level there should be more political stability, and the big political parties should grow bigger to get full majority in the house so that they are not under constant threat of appeasing allies. And to win this full majority in the house it is important that the parties keep growing in stature by winning the respect of the people.

BJP is a party which is in doldrums at the moment. Though personally I feel there is a lot of potential that I see in this party. The way they led the dynasty-favoring country for nearly full term under Vajpayee was when I took notice of the party. The "India Shining" slogan may not have helped them win votes and come back to power, but it did a lot of good to Indians. It gave all of us the confidence that we have the ability to shine, we can do what we have not done till now and the feel good factor that it left us with helped us to actually work hard and do good in our own capacity. After all everything boils down to confidence at the end.

But recently the news item of Lal Krishna Advani being chosen to spear head the BJP campaign for the next assembly polls bothered me. At this time when the party needs to reinvent itself, it was important for them to choose a candidate who can be revered by everybody. They should have been bold to make a choice as critical as this.

If not Advani then who? I might look completely wrong to some when I state my choice of the BJP prime ministerial candidate. But I am convinced about her abilities and so my choice would be Sushma Swaraj. To me she is able, smart, confident, stylish, responsible and young. All these factors go in her favor and she is the only one who I think can put up a tough competition to the incumbent government. This will help BJP to be seen out of its stereotypes which people do not want it to be associated with. She represents Indianness and competent to be the face of a new emerging India.

Above views are completely personal. No malice intended.

LIC- zindagi ke sath bhi, zindagi ke baad bhi

2008-01-20T22:53:00.001Z

In my private conversations with God I have always wondered as to why does He give uncertainties in life, why can't we know what would happen to us the next moment, why does life need to be so complicated that we need to solve a puzzle everyday about how life would be the next day. I know some would argue that it depends on the way you look at it. It depends how complicated you make it, it just might be too simple but if you choose to ignore the obvious then it is bound to get complicated. So my brother (from the Paulo Cohelo's book) advised me that whenever I feel life is too complicated and tough, I should write it down and while writing I would find miracles happening. And to be honest just moments back I found myself in a true state of confusion and utter uncertainty, while now thinking about what exactly these thoughts were, I find them so mundane- unworthy of serious thoughts. There are a few things about which I cannot do anything, it has to happen naturally and things about which I can do something are not uncertain.

Isn't it really great to tell somebody who is most special to you that "I am like a LIC policy for you- zindagi ke sath bhi, zindagi ke baad bhi" ... then where is the uncertainty ??!!??

For Nawab

2008-01-16T20:49:00.000Z

I just completed watching "Taare Zameen Par"(TZP). Ishaan is a dyslexic kid who is not good in studies but is an amazing painter... His brush strokes convey what words fail to convey, the use of bold colors and the confident strokes, all tell a story on the canvas. He is not an achiever in studies and so is discarded by his parents and teachers only to be discovered by Amir Khan who tells his parents and teachers about his problem and works hard with the kid to reach a respectable level in studies and an amazing level in painting.

I cried so much while I watched the movie. There was a pang of guilt in me, guilt that I even scolded Nawab once for not performing well in Mathematics. At Salaam Baalak Trust (an NGO for street children) as a Mathematics teacher I tried my best to teach Mathematics to Nawab, Sharafat, Tabrej and Satinder. Sharafat and Satinder were really good, Tabrej was good too but was not consistent while Nawab was the one who felt himself out of place amongst this group. He was not quick at picking up concepts though never showed that he was struggling to understand. He would portray himself to be a bad boy not willing to study than confess that he is not able to understand. I scolded him once for he would not do any of the homeworks I would ask him to do and he never showed up after that. Today while watching the movie, I cried, cried really hard, cried for not having understood Nawab.

I remember once while teaching him, I said "Nawab, if you don't like doing mathematics then tell me honestly, I am here to help you, we can do something else. You like literature, so we can do that instead." And he was so elated at that only to see his friends reject the idea as they wanted to do maths. I now wish I had more time to have sat with him after the class to discuss literature. The day I scolded him was because he was not doing anything that I asked him to, I gave him simpler problems than the others but he still would not do them.

I did try to explain him enough though. I explained him that it was not essential for him to top in this race where everybody is running after something or the other, I always encouraged him to do what he was good at and enjoyed the best, but then also explained him the need to just do a little bit so that he manages to be there where he wants to be. He did understand that but I could not devote enough time to help him with it. I wish I could help him find out the meaning in his life. I wish he himself finds out the meaning in his life. He is a bright kid, only needs some guidance and the confidence that he can do what he believes in. Aah! I just remembered, he asked me one day what it needs to be a Radio Jockey... I said no Maths for sure :-) good speaking ability and a great sense of humor and you have both... but yes you would need some educational qualification and so you see it's important that you manage to pass these tenth boards.

His tenth board exams are coming now. Its mid Jan and they start in March, not much time left and I am not there to see his progress. Nawab, this post is for you. To tell you that YOU CAN DO IT. Just do the chapters from your maths book which you feel you are comfortable with, do them well. Attempt all the questions that come from your done chapters, solve a few practice papers and see if you score pass marks by attempting those questions. Ask Rajan sir and Maths sir to take some maths tests for you before real exams. And don't panic, you wont need maths in Radio Jockeying :-)

Sharafat and Satinder, revise well all the chapters. Revising means working out problems and not reading them like you read literature. Work out more and more back year question papers as that will give you a lot of practice and confidence. Tabrej same goes for you, but with extra caution of staying calm so that you don't go blank and make mistakes.

My best wishes are with you guys! May you rock always. May God bless you.

Happy marriage!

2008-01-14T20:31:00.000Z

Just got an email marriage invitation from a very special friend of mine. This friend is special for many reasons. First, the way we had our first meeting and second, the way we had our second meeting.

He was my classmate in my school in class-X. That is all that I have known him for, one year as a classmate. And to top it we never talked, not even a single hello did we ever exchange. The only conversation I remember having with him was on the day when we had our last exams and he asked me "Erpor ki korbi? Aager ki plans?" , which in English means what would you do next? what are you plans? and we had a small two liner chat where I replied that I am not sure what I would do next as a lot depends on the result of these exams and he said that he would go to Kolkata.

With such little conversation, you would be wondering why he is still so special. He is, coz he would make me feel special everyday while I was in his class for that one year. Everyday as I would come out of my hostel which was inside the school campus to go to the building where our classes would be, I would feel two eyes following my each step. I used to get conscious earlier, but then got used to the idea of him watching me. The whole day in the class, he in spite of sitting on the front bench and me on the third bench, he would have his head turned around to stare at me. I would always wonder if I look so funny that he can't take away his eyes off me, but whatever it was, I felt special indeed. I remember how my girl-friend would keep a book in front of my face on getting irritated by this as she had a crush on him.

So yes he was very special, the whole class would tease him, would pester him to go and express himself, but something would always stop him from coming and even talking to me. Oh! probably I guess I looked scary and not funny that he could never muster courage to talk to me.

But he remained special, and we left the school and I had no touch with him thereafter.

Our second meeting was after 8 years i.e last year when he tracked me down through an Orkut community (for those who don't know about orkut, it is a social networking site by Google on the lines of Facebook). I had not thought even in my wildest of dreams that I would ever get to talk with him, though he was somebody I could never really wipe out of my memory. We started chatting on gtalk (Google's chat service). He was not the shy guy anymore or probably it was easy for him to talk to me as he was not seeing me anymore and writing is always easier than speaking. But apart from all these, our lives had changed a lot. He was in a relationship for the last four years with a girl he met in college (I guess) at Kolkata . Our discussions were more centered around career and current affairs. I never asked him about his behavior in school but he did make a passing remark regarding that when he confessed that he had "tons of crush" on me though he could never tell me then. I did not pester him to tell any more on that.

I have again lost touch with him since the last five - six months now and it would be interesting to see how our third meeting is like. Nevertheless I just got a marriage invitation from his new email id, and my joy knows no bounds. This friend would remain special for all the weirdness this friendship carries, and I wish him a very happy and blessed married life.

The religion that Hinduism is

2008-01-12T11:23:00.001Z

I am no prophet, I am no expert in religion, I am a normal Hindu who believes in what she has understood in all these years. Whatever I am going to write in this article are my personal feelings and might not be pleasing to everyone's sentiments because that is not what I intend to do through this. I only intend to vent my long suppressed feelings about what I have been seeing happening around me in the name of religion. Apologies if these thoughts hurt anyone.

Being born and brought up in a 'liberated' Hindu family, ('liberated' because I was never forced to practice my religion but left on my own to understand it and accept it and practice it the way I want to) with each passing day I am appreciating Hinduism more. My present surroundings, living with Christians in a Christianity dominated country makes me rather unwillingly compare my religion with theirs every day. Religion is something I wish to talk about the least, as I feel they are very personal feelings and are meant to be enlightening to oneself the way they believe in it, while here it is more of convincing others to feel enlightened the way they have felt it. How can you make somebody go through the experience you have gone through? I don't doubt the intentions behind such a deed, they believe that anybody who is not a Christian has probably not gone through such an experience, not "born again" as they say, and so think that if persuasion can change my life, make me feel God and help me get born again then what's wrong in that.

But what I don't understand is that why do they need to persuade somebody to feel this. Can persuasion ever generate feelings, enlightenment cannot happen by somebody coaxing you everyday, it has to come from within- on its own. In a class a teacher teaches the same things to everybody, but everybody grasps the material differently through their unique ways. Then what's the need of persuasion, instead why not ask our Gods to be that powerful that they can communicate without the need of anybody to persuade. Hinduism does not need persuasion to be followed. Nobody asked me to be a Hindu, I picked it up because I appreciated its open-mindedness. It is subtle and yet so profound to me. I don't bother myself if people around me are enlightened about Hinduism or not, it's not my job to persuade them about my God and ask them to go through what I have felt, my God says that it is His job and He takes care of that. I want to believe in what I believe without having to wonder why others don't believe the way I do.

I was recently reading an article in which the Christian missionaries in Orissa were attacked, my immediate reaction was of disgust, then on further probing I found that they were attacked because they were alleged to persuade Hindus to convert themselves into Christians. This made me think for a while. Myself experiencing the extent to which this persuasion goes, telling those poor villagers that all your miseries would be taken care of by God if you become a Christian is not something I would disbelieve. So the anger seems justified to me, though under no circumstance do I justify the way it was vented. Then how does one vent these thoughts, by writing a blog which only a couple of people read, or by giving a speech which only tens of people hear. I am still to find an answer to this.

I have come to accept that people need religion, or rather I would say that they need a faith to hold on. In times of distress and failures in life, this faith helps one from breaking apart, and so it is to some extent essential to make everybody aware of the existence of this faith. But one needs to decide to what extent do we want to persuade somebody in accepting that faith, when should we let that person decide on his own about what to do next. There can not be any Government censorship on this, only moral censorship can work. Tolerance to accept whatever the person chose for himself is needed.

Season's greetings

2007-12-19T21:00:00.000Z

Here's wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year...

May this new year bring in happiness and prosperity in your life...

May this year be an year of accomplishment and fulfillment for you...

May you get love and lots of love this year...

May you find a meaning in life and your search for the unknown ends...

May you find joy in every breath you take and feel thankful for your existence...

Have a glorious new year!!!

Join PETA! Turn vegetarian :-)

2007-11-25T22:38:00.000Z

The most recent and the most satisfactory thing that I have done is to Join PETA. I share my house with a Nigerian, a Russian and a Mexican and all of them "eat just anything". I am the only vegetarian in the house and I always astonish my house-mates by still "surviving". I have a Greek friend and the day I told him I don't eat anything that is to do with flesh, he said either I am taking him for a ride or I have lost senses to be saying so. Another friend said that I am surely short of proteins and I must be too prone to falling sick due to low immune system. Huh! How ignorant they are, they don't know that I get all the required proteins in my vegetarian diet, I get all the vitamins for strong immunity through milk and citrus fruits and I feel healthy and fit.

I have grown up in a neighborhood which would celebrate every little function from a baby's birthday to a marriage reception by butchering tens of chickens or couple of goats at least. I never really consciously thought of campaigning against the merciless killing of these innocent animals for the culinary pleasure of mean human beings. But now I want to make a conscious effort in spreading awareness about the benefits of turning vegetarian and letting the animals live life the way they choose it to be unlike us forcing death on them.

I have joined PETA as my first step towards this direction. Now I look forward to do more towards this goal. Join PETA. Animals have as much right to live life as you and I have.

'Salaam' Life!

2007-10-14T15:32:00.000+01:00

I have not been writing since a long time. Had been a little busy with resettling my house, packaging and shifting to a new platform. The last month had been a month of test of endurance, spirit and courage. Above all the last month had been a test of my emotional strength. I have not failed miserably, but I have not passed as well. Life is a game, a zero-sum game, in which to get something you have to lose something. I have chosen to travel an unknown road.

I worked for an NGO called Salaam Baalak Trust for almost four months. This NGO shetlers, rehabilitates and educates street children. It was sheer desire to do something like this that I landed up there and decided to lend my services as a volunteer. I played with them, laughed with them, told them cooked up mathematical stories to make the subject interesting to them, discussed with them the Human anatomy (with all the little I know about human biology), counselled them for a career ahead and most importantly inspired them to dream.

Salaam Baalak is a great place to volunteer and thereby contribute our bit to the society. The staff is so motivated that it always left me wondering as to what it is that drives them so much. They work selflessly towards the betterment of the lives of the children who left their homes, or had to run away due to some reasons and were spending their lives on the streets. I was specially fascinated towards Nawab, Tabrej, Sharafat and Satinder- the four children whom I used to teach Mathematics. I miss them sometimes, as what they taught me possibly nobody could have ever taught me. They taught me to be positive towards life, no matter what I am going through. I know all of us must have heard this a numerous times before this, and there is nothing awe-inspiring about it, but trust me, just follow it once in your lives. When you feel that things have gone utterly wrong and undesirable, be positive at that point, and see how things would strangely change thereafter. It works. Your life is governed by your mind. So it's important to think healthy.

Lets all make this world a great place to stay in, a place where all of us radiate positive energies, speak soft words and wish good for each other. Let's all kill the devils in ourselves. Let's pray that no child is ever made to live on the streets. Let's pray and work towards making this world a great place to live in for every life that is born. Let's all welcome life and say 'Salaam' to it with a radiance we never saw before.

An awakening

2007-08-31T05:23:00.001+01:00

I have been following the US market crashdown. A close friend of mine informed me a few days back that her brother is now jobless due to this crashdown in the American market. He was working for an American MNC in India. This perturbed me and left me thinking. Yesterday, I found a friend of mine Umang who is working in Wipro, Bangalore online. I could not stop myself from having this conversation with him. I am copy-pasting the conversation in almost the same form.

Me: This subprime mortage market crash in US has made so many jobless in India. Global economy you see...
He: Yeah. We are always US dependent. You know dollar value has come down sharply. This has created a huge impact on all the company profiles.

Me: Yeah the dollar has depreciated....infact that makes me feel good, that rupee is appreciating.
He: Rupee will rise because our economy is improving, but again IT indutry is so much dependent on US that it will affect the profit and billing rate of the IT companies here.

Me: Yeah I know... but thats what is strange to me, all the IT experts in the big US companies are Indians but still we do not have anything like Microsoft or Apple. Why we Indians don't have the global entrepreneurship skills in us is what amazes me!

He: A very good question...let me clarify this, first thing is that all the Indian companies are service based companies. There is no Indian company which has their own product and market globally. We only provide service to the client.
Me: Yeah, that is my point! Why not have a product based company something like say owning Wipro operating system. If we can build products for somebody else then why not for ourselves?
He: See in India we do have manpower but not that efficient and skilled one to go to that extent. And most of the work here is either related to support or testing.
Me: Oh comm'on, I don't agree that we don't have skilled manpower. We have the largest chunk of intelligentia.

He: Yes we have, but not in masses.
Me: I think the only thing where we lag behind is the dare devil thought process. We have colonialism so much in our mindsets that we don't believe that we can rule the world. We somehow like it being ruled by others. We somehow have just accepted that all that we are best at is to provide service to others and not make others provide service to us. Do you understand my point?
He: Ya very much!
Me: And see regarding skill sets, nothing comes without training.

He: Yeah you have raised a very valid question.
Me: If we train our youths with this notion, we would have a huge chunk of entrepreneurs. Tell me how many IIM graduates take on to opening their own ventures? They all get into working for some big MNC thereby adding to their knowledge pool. India gets nothing from them. How great it would have been had they rather gathered to form a product based company of their own taking services from some US companies. The idea itself is so enticing to me.

He: Ya! Then again it requires courage and risk which no Indian company is willing to take at this moment.
Me: Thats the point precisely. We lack courage and risk taking abilties. We always try to play safe.
He: Ya!
Me: And that is not gonna lead us anywhere. No risks, no rewards!! Very soon the India Inc. should realise that it's time to take on the world, we should not have this mindset of serving the world all the time. LET US NOW RULE!!
He: Hmmm...right! Oh you have put down some very good points. But then that's how Indian companies are operating, asking work from the US and then getting billed for the work done.
Me: Things have to change, and for a change at the bigger platform it's important that each one of us start thinking differently. Grassroot level change has to be there.
He: Ya!
Me: If one Umang and one Nidhi thinks differently today, someday some Premji would get to hear it.

He: Ya that's true!

Me: Or why not that this Nidhi or this Umang themselves turn this dream to be a reality without any Premji's help. We must have the courage to dream big!

He: Ya but then most of us are scared and afraid. And let me tell you one thing which you have to appreciate, that today because of IT only lots of people are getting employment opportunities which was tough 12 years back.

Me: But does that help, are we making our lives any better by being scared of taking risks. Yes I appreciate your point, but how does that kill my point? Even if we turn into a product based market we still generate employment.

He: And our standard of living and percapita income has increased.
Me: Let's not bask in the glory of what little we have achieved... let us decide not to pat ourselves till our ultimate goal of being world rulers is achieved. Let the youth not take this as a victory, let this just be a political agenda for the politicians to take advantage before elections.
He: Hmmmm! You are right. I appreciate the way you think.

Me: I want that even if we oursleves may not be in a position to do something towards this end, but then speaking about these issues would help us propagate this to our countrymen in some way or the other, thereby making somebody finally to work towards this. Though I would personally very much love to do myself something about it. I feel stuck up in life at present, but surely would love to have a company of my own some day catering to an international client base.

He: Hmmm! Great, I appreciate that!

Me: Thanks!

Though probably I won't be able to materialize all that I said in this conversation, but it left me surprised to see that I have started thinking this way and I feel happy about it!

Impressions

2007-08-29T10:47:00.008+01:00

Just a few minutes back the thought that not updating my blog is such a let down for my friends who make it a point to keep themselves connected with me by knowing about the happenings of my life through my posts, occurred to me. And in no time do I find myself writing this. After my last post on the sorry state of research I received some mails from my close friends saying that all would be fine in no time, research is known for sucking out the juice of sham thereby leaving the residue of concrete knowledge which cannot be faked ever. I have let this sink in me all these days when I was away from blogosphere.

What also brings me back after so long is a chance meeting with a friend's friend Prajakta who had been reading all my posts without my knowledge and admiring my thoughts. She did not feel her ego hammered even an inch to accept that she is my "secret admirer". We three met over lunch and I found out that she is a college going student. I wanted to tell her what all I do, but then found that she knew more than I would have told her over first lunch (thanks to all my posts that she has read religiously and connected to create a picture of my life in her mind). As human beings we all crave for recognition, and to find recognition from unknown people is the best kick one can look for. Thank you, Prajakta!!

Another kick to revert back to writing has been the new book that I have been reading, or let me say imbibing. It's called "Who would cry when you die" by world-renowned motivational speaker Robin Sharma. I have also read his best-seller "The monk who sold his Ferrari". I am the kind of person who does not take time to slip into phases of solitude, and such books help me stay connected. My elder brother gifted the book to me with a note "Your brother, when your brother is not around". I found the book to be full of life and soul and it does not fail in making an impression on me. Catch a copy of it if you can, I am sure all of us have something to borrow from it. Thank you Bhaiya and I love you!!

P.S Decided to change the look of the blog, had got a little bored with the earlier one. I would be happy to know your views on it. You may drop in your comments or mail me.

Research, does it still pull?

2007-07-06T06:40:00.003+01:00

I am a research scholar in Mathematics and thought of writing a piece on the decline that research in India is facing. To my sadist pleasure when I went for a google search with words like "declining research in India" I found a list of articles narrating the sorry state of affairs in research. The above sited link specifically talks about the decline in the Mathematics research in India specially in institutes of repute like the IITs, IISc, HRI (Allahabad) and MatSci (Chennai).

Research in India is facing a few basic problems. I would share here the problems I have faced as one of the members of the fraternity and heard my friends experiencing as a researcher.

The first and the most disturbing being the total disrespect to the sancitity that research and researchers command. The society who is naive about research sees a researcher in high esteem but it's the people who are a part of the system who make a researcher look like nothing more than a person whon has lost out on other options in life. I am a Mathematics Olympiad certificate holder, a CBSE merit-cum-scholarship awardee, an NBHM, Department of Atomic Energy Scholarship holder, a CSIR-UGC fellowship holder, but all these laurels seem to be of no particular value when I see the attitude the department and supervisors have towards researchers in general. They make you believe indebted to them for allowing you to do research each and every moment. I have been asked by a well-wisher in the department not to revolt against the system as that is not going to help, rather to get things done feeling subdued and submissive.

I have only one thing to question, despite getting offers of lucrative courses like MBA I listened to my calling and went for research, then why am I made to feel everyday that it was the garvest mistake I committed in life? Why during the peak years of our creativity, youth, energy and rigor we are asked to remain subdued so that our work gets done?

This is not the only problem, during research one grows old enough and is expected to maintain the family. A scholarship of Rs. 8000 per month hardly suffices in today's market. Though there is little hope in this respect as recently the government has got alarmed by the seriousness of the issue and has thereby increased the expenditure on research and so things can be hoped to improve.

But still there remains the problem of the lack of a job security even if a 'subdued' you somehow manages to complete research with that meagre Rs. 10000 per month when you know that had you put even half that amount of labour in some other field you would have been touching the skies.

The only pull factor that research carries now is when people courageously decide to hear their calling and take up research despite being aware of the odds. If this continues and nothing is done urgently, the motivation of listening to one's calling would burn off in no time.

The need of the hour is to give each and every researcher their due respect and every possible help to complete the streneous journey of five years of aimless wandering at the peak of their youths. The need of the hour is a little cooperation and motivation from the stalwarts and the policy-makers of the field. The need of the hour is to realise that research is declining and so it's important to motivate the prospective researchers and provide an inspriring working environment so that they don't go hunting for greener pastures.

Take charge at 23

2007-07-01T14:38:00.002+01:00

I would be 23 in a few days, and I don’t feel myself adequate as yet to carry the mantle of that age. I don’t feel I am matured enough to be called a 23 year old girl. I don’t know how to take decisions as yet, decisions here do not mean whether to have a pizza for lunch or a plate of rajma pulao, but they mean the big ones. I have always looked for somebody to counsel me and guide me, to help me take up major decisions. You would instantly say but there nothing wrong in asking for help. There is, if the help is persistent, if in the course of asking help you forget that you have a mind of your own, if you keep relying on other people for help all the time, if you are too impressionable to change decisions on even slightest influences, if you stop taking your own life and situations into consideration and let yourself being framed into the setting of the other person who tries to help you by giving his own examples. So now I am sure you would agree on why I feel myself inadequate.

If I retrospect I see that I have always eaten with the spoon that was brought to my mouth, never really taking my hands out to choose a spoon. Even if after being persistently asked to choose my own spoon I have insisted hard on telling me the pros and cons of each spoon, and then finally taken pride (a sham pride) in choosing my own spoon. So literally and figuratively I have been spoon fed much to the unwillingness of my feeders.

By now I am sure many of you are too convinced that I am absolutely inadequate to be 23, as a 23 year old would never speak like this. And I would not spare myself even a bit by not substantiating the point I started off with.

I have gone to the foolish extent of making chits of the options I have in hand and then taking the decision as the one written on the chit that I have drawn. I have gone to extent of asking God to take decisions for me by trying to find out answers in Ramcharitmanas or the Geeta. I have gone to extent of leaving the decisions to be taken to time. Except for the first one I am sure you would be thinking that sometimes there is no way but to surrender to these methods so what’s wrong in them. But it’s wrong if you ask God for answers without knowing your questions well, ask him to answer from the options you think might be best suited for the distorted question you somehow manage to pose while the answer may be something completely unconsidered by you. And it’s wrong when you ask time to take decisions for you instead of accepting that you have been a failure in deciding on it yourself. Now I think I have convinced you that the methods are wrong when given the circumstances in which they have been assorted to.

Hence I don’t feel I am eligible to share a place amidst people of 23 who have been always proud of taking their own decisions and standing by them even if they turned out to be wrong later on. I don’t feel I have the guts required to do that.

Ahh! Just heard somebody saying, it’s never too late to start. Thank God we have such adages to ease the process of decision making for people like me. Yes I have decided to follow it, totally convinced that if I start now only then I can make myself eligible for the club of 25 two years down the line. So I am going to “take charge at 23”.

I am desi... or am I really?

2007-06-27T08:47:00.002+01:00

Last night while chatting with an old school friend I ran into the risk of a debate with him. It has left me thoughtful and so I thought of sharing it with all.

Just while something was going on I begged to differ with him saying I am a little 'desi' kinds. It was enough to infuriate him. The conversation that took place between us goes as below:

He: Don't be a snob. You and desi? Huh!

Me: Why do you say so? I am desi and am proud to claim myself a desi. What do you percieve when I say I am desi?

He: I think we're gonna have a rough time ahead...b'coz i'll blurt out...desi-there's no harm in being that, but are we really that? Tell me what brand of jeans do u prefer? I'm sure it must be Levi's and not New port!

Me: I am as comfortable in my Lee Cooper as I am in that 100 Rupee kurta I bought from the street side. No dear I think you have got me all wrong all these while. I am very comfortable with those street children I work with in the NGO. I don't sport my expensive gogs or my Tissot watch when I go there.

He: That's ok.. I don't doubt ur intentions... I'm not finished..

Me: Please go ahead...

He: But ma'am we prefer Mc' Donalds over some road side tea stall...

Me: No not...again i crave for the bhelpuris on the road side as much as I crave for pizza hut, I am not brand specific frankly... no exxageration.

He: I knew it but just rechecked that that Lee cooper is from UK...

Me: Desi does not mean that I wont wear western clothes... It means not wearing only western clothes.

He: i somehow don't buy that...u may b an exception--then this is uncalled for..

Me: No it's not being exceptional, i find most of the people in my company like that who dont have preset notions about things. I told you earlier also that I come from a very small place and I have not forgotten my roots, I enjoy the chaat papri in a shady chandni chowk shop as much as I enjoy blue- berry mousse in Wengers... It's all about the way one looks at things...

He: People will go for Himesh monkey's show, but when it comes to an Indian rock band, they'll say it's evil western...

Me: That is a justified grudge... I don't endorse that. Thats being against westernisation... and I am not so. I want to flaunt my indianness with pride.

He: See boss, let me be straight, my experience is that most of the people (THAT INCLUDES ME AS WELL) have been so much adapted to the western influences that I hardly find a sense in that word

Me: Indianness is about attitude, it's the outlook.

He: Lemme ask u , what is ur idea of a perfect career these days--- answer honestly...

Me: I will be honest... Its like working somewhere which pays well and gives enough time to pursue something that gives meaning to your life

He: That brings u a multinational, right? You're a mathematician--why don't plan to join ISRO and contribute to a space mission?

Me: I dont mind multinationals, but there are big Indian companies also these days doing well like the Tatas, Ambanis, Mallyas etc. And when did i say indianness means being against globalisation?

He: I have seen u're a fan of L.N. Mittal? But does Mittal pay even the income tax to the govt of India?

Me: I know I am...I like the guts of the man it's not because he is a UK citizen but its because he is a gutsy person. He is paying the taxes for the revenues he is collecting from India and why should he pay otherwise as he is not using the Indian infrastructure...

He: Yeah yeah... He won't have it cheaper anywhere else...

Me: See my dear, there are always two sets of people, one who wants to make profit and one who wants to serve and the society has the resilience to accomodate both the sets.

He: This poor country, our Govt spends approx 10 lakhs to make me an engineer, nd I'm going to serve the american corporate... our greatest desi actor is a farmer, our desi netas are involved in trafficing ??

Me: I just said that there are both sets of people, if you serve for an American company, there are people who serve for DRDO and ISRO as well.

He: Sadly not dear... And I dont mind L.N.Mittal making profits and all, but why do we Indians ( I'm afraid to call me one) always die over him? What has he done for this country?

Me: What has Kalpana Chawla done for the country or Sunita Williams or Salman Rushdie or Swaraj Paul or I can name many done for this country? Virtually nothing you may safely say... But still they have done lots, they have shown the world that Indian people can do wonders if given the right opportunities.

He: I beg to differ...

Me: There is something called Brand India... They have endorsed the idea...

He: Hahaha, I don't believe you trust all this. What's Brand India? We don't stand anywhere in the world except for, may be, the largest market of the western world... they overproduce and we buy... and thank ourselves for the god-sent worn out wrangler that lights up our closets... conveniently forgetting that we've payed the same as any American would have paid in Dollars. Ma'am the wicket is too sticky here...

Me: See I am not one of those kinds who dont see hopes in things and hence stop working towards betterment... I never said India is the best country to live in... But everybody's house is in a mess, we ourselves need to set it right, we need to take charge now. We keep saying the system is rotten and stuff than doing anything ourselves... i was on the auto the other day and the auto relentlessly went on saying about the decline the country was seeing... i kept hearing him for long and then asked a simple question.. how many kids do you have? He made a sorry face... said three... I told him see, what did you do to end the woes of country? You added to the problems the country is facing and cribbing about the sorry state of affiars and blaming the govt... Further asked him if he earns enough to educate his children and he drove the rest of the journey in silence. So my point is that when we ourselves are not doing anything for the betterment of the ocuntry who gives us the authority to criticize it...

He: Yeah why shud he? Or for that matter we instead let us bask in the glory-- the eternal feel good factor...

Me: Ha ha ha... Dont be sarcastic, I dint mean that.... I dont say that you go around carrying the sense that everything is alright... Everthing is not alright I know that well, but it also does not mean that while chatting we only see at the gloomy side of things... I am an eternal optimist...phew!

He: I'm a branded pessimist...

Me: So probably thats the reason we fought so much over it, the half filled glass...

He: Hahaha... It's the emptiness...

Me: No my dear, it's the filled part.

And thats how our conversation ended. Readers are welcome to share their side of the debate.

Art, the new picture

2007-05-27T05:55:00.001+01:00

I have been going to an Art school since the age of six years. It used to be every Sunday that my drawing teacher used to come to our house until my younger brother grew old enough so that we could go together to the Art school. We have grown up with only Doordarshan at home, so Sunday evenings used to be really special as there used to be a movie telecast on the channel out of the meager two movies per week. We both used to hate the intersection and so most of the time either he used to have a stomach pain or me, and if one does not go how can the other, that was a deal. But in spite of all the love for the Sunday movie we also used to love drawing, but only our way. As I grew I realized that painting is the most wonderful form of art as it is very powerful. I realized how we can convey so much by just drawing a few meaningful lines. I started realizing its beauty and gradually became more inclined towards attending regular classes. My younger brother still would have his stomach pain, but I would be off with my pastels and water colors to draw my world colorful. I used to find it initially a little painful to see my teacher’s extra concern for the measurements to be correct always. He was very specific that body parts were very carefully drawn and ample care should be taken that the legs, hands and the body were all in the proper ratio unless I was drawing a rickety child or a deformed man! He was also very particular about the eyes drawn well and should convey what I wanted the portrait to convey. Whenever I used to make a mistake in these things, with a sheepish grin I used to plea saying “Modern art, Sir.” He would take my canvas and within minutes make an exotic beautiful lady or an old farmer or a muscular blacksmith full of life and vigor. He would make his final comment “It’s very important in Art to observe carefully, perception is very important.” I stopped going to formal art school at the age of 16. Now I would be 23 soon and I still draw portraits and what I have carried along with me all these years are observant eyes and a clear perspective about things.

Undoubtedly art is about conveying what you feel, but then I wonder if my teacher was just mad to put so much of stress on accuracy as well. Does not a figure with hands, legs and face of a proper dimension convey anything? Or is it that the moment you deform them you can convey more? There seems to be an obsession for nudity in art. It used to be only women who earlier used to face this brunt, but now even Gods and Goddesses are not spared. And why not, don’t all our temples and architectural sites all have nude deities dancing or in different inviting postures. But a little disturbing it gets when nudity is accompanied with obscenity. I have been twice to very famous art exhibitions, once with my father and once with a male-friend and in both the times we decided to see the exhibition separately as walking together down the galleries was really embarrassing. Women body was deformed to the extent of vulgarity on the pretext of conveying a meaning. Yes we all are free individuals with our right to say and paint whatever way we feel like, but then are we not members of a civilized society that should be guided be a little of responsibility also? You may argue that I should not have visited those places when I knew such paintings would be on display, I would say why should not I? I have a lot of respect for this modern art form but I only don’t like when too much of liberty is taken and sentiments get hurt.

Art to me is not to hurt, but only to convey a meaning which you may not agree with but would still like to respect.

Recently I got an email showing all the paintings of M. F. Hussain which roused so much of protest. As an art lover I totally denounce such actions which cringe in the liberty of the artist. But on the flip side of it, the paintings definitely play with the religious sentiments of a few sects. I know it is the age of tolerance and it is stupid that we fight over meaningless issues instead of working towards creating a developed country, but then isn’t religion only about faith and nothing else, so if our faith is tampered with should we not make a little noise? Yes the way is wrong; I have the right to express my disagreement but keeping in mind the norms of a civilized society. So the bottom-line is that the means to be followed should be democratic and not outrageous. As Meera Devidayal, an artist in Mumbai (Frontline, June 1, 2007) puts it, “Art is sometimes created to provoke, to stimulate debate and for people to interpret in different ways. Most artists would not mind people objecting to their work, but it should be done in the right manner. There are peaceful platforms for debate and those could be used.” Period!

Disclaimer: The views are completely personal and do not intend to hurt anybody. Any peaceful debate is welcome.

Women's day

2007-03-10T08:11:00.001Z

In this post I want to share what I have heard or over-heard during a casual walk on the road, or a chat with friends around Women's day.

"Hi! How have you been? Happy women's day!", one of the guys of my class wishing a girl.

"Yeh dekh na kaisa lag raha hai, ya phir yeh", two girls talking at a roadside ear-rings and sundry seller.

"Bhaiya thoda to kam karo, itni mehanga kyun de rahe ho", an aunty telling the vegetable vendor.

"Yaar yeh maal to dekh, kya cheez hai",a loafer guy on the roadside leching at a decent scared girl waiting at the bus stop.

"Pa, got a job, joining as soon I complete this semester", a friend of mine on phone to her father.

Just like that

2007-02-01T17:39:00.005Z

One thing that one must not stop doing is writing! If you have a flair for writing and you stop writing either due to lack of time or of lack of matter, you keep feeling restless till a piece is written down. I had not been writing due to both the reasons, have opened up this page several times before, jotted down a few lines and then lost patience to carry on with the thought process. So today thought to defeat my restlessness and impatience by just writing down anything.

I have been regularly watching the new KBC since it's inception, though my parents do say that they used to like Bachchan doing it more than the flambouyant Khan, still they seem to adore him, as everyday quite a chunk of our discussion over the phone is on Khan. So I tend to believe that they enjoy seeing him. Moreover why won't they, he has been at his witty-best, humble-best, and smiley-best when at the show. Innocence seems to be with him all the time. Today the contestant (a strict lady school teacher from Jind, Haryana) refused to hug Khan when she wanted to quit the show, he was caught speechless for a moment, but his sharp presence of mind made him tell the lady "if you don't mind, can I give the cheque to your mother there as I am sure she would definitely want to hug me", and the crowd burst into a huge applause. I am sure most of us are bowled over by the witty and humourous Khan who has definitely added a new dimension to KBC.

And definitely my parents will keep watching it and keep comparing it with the Bachchan show until one day the old KBC gets faded by the funny memories of the new one!

The kid in me

2007-01-04T11:58:00.002Z

2007 started. Another year passed by silently, have grown older by an year, childhood seems to be slipping by. I want to stick to my childhood, don't want to grow old, don't want to face the complications that age brings with itself. A friend of mine couriered me a few CD's I had asked for, and to my pleasant surprise I found a few Eclairs in the envelope. This triggered back my childhood memories. I was not keeping well emotionally since a few days so those were to lift me up. The Eclairs reminded me of a childhood experience. When I was a school going kid, every evening when my father used to come back from work, he used to ask me to find out a coin (of any denomination). I used to keep it on his palm and he used to read some magic mantras upon which that coin used to turn into an Eclair. I used to be ecstatic at the magic played by papa and used to wait anxiously everyday for him to play it again. And one day I grew up, I grew up to realise that it was no magic, just a plain haath-ki-safai.

That day I was feeling happy on having grown up and to realise that papa was fooling me all throughout, but now I don't feel happy about it any longer. I wish I could have been a naive not to realise it ever. Papa would bring me chocolates forever and I would eat them with the same excitement everyday.

But probably now my father loves it this way. He would want that I get chocolates for him, it's time for him to enjoy and me to bring joys for him. He can't be the giver always, I too need to understand my responsibilties and take command of my life.

And that's how I have started my new year with- to make myself capable of taking charge of things. However much we may hate, but we need to accept it. And yes if only we don't forget the little girl in us eagerly waiting for a chocolate magic, life will remain joyful as every little thing would be sweet enough to make us happy.

So welcome 2007 with an open mind and don't ever let the kid in you die.

Greetings

2006-12-24T11:26:00.002Z

Wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year...

May God bless you with all that you ask for in the new year and remember if He does not then He has something better planned for you, so there is all the reason to celebrate life whatever be the situation!

So my message for the new year is "Just Live Life and Stay Happy"!!

"Sad Movie"

2006-12-02T08:12:00.003Z

Last night I saw a Japanese (or may be Korean) movie named "Sad movie". I know the name sounds a little strange and instead of invoking sadness the first reactions were that of laughter at what the movie would possibly contain. But then as the movie carried itself, I too got carried away, started relating myself to one of the characters in the movie.

The movie started by introducing four different sets of characters and their lives. All the characters were neatly drawn and each had a message to give. One was about See and Young (names almost similar),deeply in love with each other but never been able to confess it. See works for a TV channel and she reads out news in the sign language that she has learnt from her sister who is dumb. Young works for a fire-station and perils his life everyday to save numerous lives from fire. They never propose each other, but still the love is palpable in every scene, it's intense yet unsaid! They see each other whenever possible and immensely care for each other. Before setting out of home, everyday See prays for the rains, as rains mean no fire and Young would be safe. Every time when See reads out a news of a fire somewhere, her heart sinks. The innocent and pure love they have for each other strikes an immediate chord with the viewer. You start wishing to see them settled, but some incidents do not let Young propose her. There are other characters too in the movie, but I was very influenced by this part of the story. Finally Young manages to get hold of a ring to propose her and decides to meet her that evening, but as destiny would have it, Young dies in the fire he goes to extinguish that day! Their love remained unspoken... And I cried in buckets at the last scene.

I know it is a very ordinary story, just tells us to confess our love before it gets too late. But isn't this very simple message ignored by most of us most often? Life is too short to wait for the right time to do things, if you love somebody tell her/him right away 'coz when you think would be the right time might just be too late!

Written after long!

2006-11-28T05:36:00.003Z

I don't know why i just all of a sudden stopped writing, stopped it completely, so much so that I had also forgotten my blog entry password for a while... I was just not feeling like writing at all, just used to read other's blogs to update myself with the events of the blogosphere.

But now I again feel like writing, for I feel writing is the only way I can best relieve my tension, believe me with all these months of not writing anything there was no way I could vent my thoughts and imaginations, felt constricted and choked, but dint realize the reason for the same. But now I have, for an introvert like me writing is a weapon to make myself heard, and so without this I feel disillusioned.

Lots of things happened in all these days of keeping me away. A low- profiled person like me was pulled out of her den, and was requested repeatedly to lead a bastion! Pretty difficult and interesting I found the idea to be, but accepted it as a challenge. I am now the President of the Hostel Union. The higher authorities in the hostel felt that I am the only suited person for the post, a decision supported by the residents unanimously, and I for the first time realized that a shelled person like me too can be popular. I took charge and made my own team of people to work under me. Given the pressure of my research work, I chose my team immaculately, criterion being-people I am comfortable at a personal level and are ready to take up responsibilities!

The first event I was to organize was SPIC MACAY performance by Shri Margi Madhu, a famous Koodiyattam dancer. The arrangements were so good that even the artists could not believe that all that was for them, and kept on confirming it again and again, to our utter embarrassment.

It is good to lead, but I am always scared of being left "lonely at the top", so never wanted to take such a thing up. But then if posed with a challenge I have not learnt to retreat, so I am to prove that I can do this! And I will keep writing, about my success and failures, about my confusions and achievements...

A day I will remember

2006-08-26T09:18:00.002+01:00

I have two walkman (now I don't know if I should write 'walkmen'!), in one of them there is both FM and audio casette player (but only the FM radio thing works) and so I keep the other one for listening to casettes and incidentally that doesnot have an FM so actually I need both of them.

I got my room painted today, the white wash was done a few days back and today the doors and the windows were painted. The guy who painted them is a 17 year old kid. I was just generally with chatting him and so asked him if he has been to a school ever. He proudly chuckled to say 'higher secondary fail'... he had got burnt on that Diwali before exams and his whole face was damaged for which he could not study well. And then when I asked him if he continued studying after he recovered, he said no, he got married. I was aghast! He got married when he was just 11, that means he is married for the past 6 years. His wife is 16 years old now. I scolded him for marrying so early, he said had he not eloped with her she would have been married to somebody else. I was taken aback and shouted '10 saal ki umra mein'. "Haan didji hamare wahan bahut chhoti umra mein shaadi ho jati hain". I started cribbing about our social system, though din't speak anything aloud. India shining but is it really?

After little bit of coaxing and making him comfortable to speak out more, he told me that he loves her like anything and can do anything for her. When he found out that she was being married to someone else, he decided to elope and never to return to his family as they had refused to accept her and so were her parents. He belongs to a village near Lucknow and has not gone back to his house there since marriage. I asked him if he had never contacted them since then and if he misses his parents. He replied in a melancholy tone that once his wife got too sick, he called up his parents to come to Delhi and look after her while he is out to work. But they just refused to talk to him properly, and he got no help from them. He told me "didiji, main us samay lagatar 10 din tak bhookha tha". He admitted her to the hospital and to earn for the expenses he used to work day in and day out and saved all that he could save for her. He din't sleep or eat so that he can get her cured. He admitted that it was a bit of his fault and bit hers that they din't take care proper care of their health and so she fell ill.

I liked the responsiblty he feels towards her. He earns 100 per day as a daily wage earner through painting, so that roughly makes it 3000 in a month if he gets work on all days in the month, he spends 1500 for ration, 500 for miscellaneous including entertainment and saves 1000 so that they can have a kid. They do not have any issue as yet (thankfully I thought).

I was touched by his story, his love for her seems so pure. He is not careless, at this small age of 17 he is more responsible and sensible than I am probably.

He was rueing that he has been looking for a music system for her, he had got one also in 200 bucks but it conked out too early. He asked me if I can get something for him till he is here in the hostel with this contrat, he said he will pay me for it. "Didiji aaplog jayenge to achcha maal dega jo jaldi kharab nahi hoga". I bursted out laughing. He had finished off painting my doors and windows and was about to leave.

I gave me the walkman I had with the audio casette player and said that I generally only listen to FM and so I don't need it that much and he can keep it. He asked me how much should he pay me for it. I smiled and told him "Nothing, it's for her from me! May God bless you!"

A new chapter in my life

2006-08-22T06:29:00.002+01:00

A new chapter has just opened in my life... I have become a research scholar in Mathematics at the University of Delhi, Delhi. There may be a few yawns at the very idea of becoming just another researcher amidst hundred others aimless ones and a few smirks at joining DU without going for the branded IITs, but the words in bold hold a special significance for me. I have been dreaming research since the time I started eating on my own, it was the faith of my favorite English teacher in High school who expired last year that I will become a scholar, the subject that has been closest to my heart since my childhood is Mathematics and a lot of it is due to my teacher and guru since class eight, Delhi University is the place which can provide one the maximum exposure one can dream of in every respect (which IITs won't be able to in my case at least) and Delhi is the place where my friend C is. With the above explanation I justify my being here for research in Mathematics, though I honestly add that these explanations are something I have just formed, it was more due to destiny that I am here when I had all the plans to go somewhere else for my higher studies. So the case is dropped from further interrogation.

I had my ups and downs in life, with sometimes success and sometimes failures. I am the kind of person who has a very short term memory and so I tend to forget the pains I go through due to failures and even the happiness I enjoy as a result of success. I believe in taking each day as a new challenge and the world a stage where you have to constantly prove yourself. When a great batting genius like Sachin Tendulkar can be booed for a bad performance then what significance do I hold in others lives that they will keep a note of my past achievements if my present puts forward a gloomy picture of failures? In this journey through years of proving myself, given that I am staying away from my family, I have learnt to take failures in my stride; they are indispensable and inevitable for the forth coming success, so it's important to remain unfazed by them.

The strong support system that I have got from my family and friends is something worth mentioning. My parents are the world's greatest parents who have understood all my sentiments without me giving them words. I have been given the freedom to have independent thoughts and entrusted for my actions. My brothers V and A are my strengths. Friends V, P, G, S, S and D are those who are just there anytime in my life even without my putting in special efforts to stay in touch. A, A, A and R are my career and love counselors. It feels really special to have them around and more so when I acknowledge their presence once in a while!

I know I still have lots of things to do in life; life has just started unfolding itself though it is still not making much sense to me. I need to keep working hard and give something really nice to my parents who have been sacrificing so much for me. The support system I rely on is a special gift of God to me and I pray that God remains kind to me forever. May God bless you all!!!

Heads high

2006-08-16T03:59:00.003+01:00

It's really fun to be in a hostel for the past five years... away from home the family that you form in the hostel is worth maintaining always. My best of friends are gals from my earlier hostel, I am still very much in touch with them and without telling them events that happen to me I feel absolutely irritable and restless. It's only when they know about what's up in my life and vice versa that we feel nice. And to add to the emotional support that I get from these friends any time in my life, the fun and frolic that we had is also worth mentioning. In this hostel too I have a small group of four (we call it our family of four) and the amount of fun we have together is amazing. May it be going to watch a movie to the nearby shady threatre , or just sitting back in the hostel and burning the CDs which any of us must have got as a gesture of love from our college mates, or messaging oil into each others head, or cooking something together, or pulling each other with some cool guy we met, or going out on a shopping spree together, it has been great fun throughout. Just yesterday we cooked maggi with vegetables, given the limited resources of utensils and masala and the frequent powercuts here (we have electric hotplates), it was an ordeal to make it upto the mark. But we managed and defied the long believed theory of 'too many cooks spoil the broth'. Today on Janamasthmi we plan to make 'halwa' with most of the responsibilty adhered to me (being a baniya, the expertise of making halwa is supposed to be in my genes), let's see!!

And then since all of us are now going to embark the 'grihastha' phase of our lives, so the educative sessions on sex, life-after-marriage, how-to-keep-husband-happy and how-to-balance-career-with-family are very much on the daily agenda of chit-chats in the after-dinner talks. We have our own shares of fights too, one surely will arise after we watch every movie together, as our personal reviews of it differ most of the time. Though it's true that our tastes are almost similar but then English language distinguishes similar from equal, so fight is inevitable! And yes we fight too when we discuss world-politics as well, we see Mr. Bush differently, we see Natwar Singh differently, we see Sonia Gandhi differently, and we see L.K.Advani differently, the difference being mostly subtle as broadly we tend to agree, or may be agree to disagree!

I have evolved as a human being staying in the hostel. Being a Cancerian, I have always felt too inclined to my family with my dependence on them for every little thing. And so had it not been for my hostel life I would not have been the person I am today, independent and ready to take on the world. Staying in a girls hostel does tend to instill a sense of feminism in you, but I have kept a watch that I do not get too driven away by it. I believe in equality but not chauvinism of any form, and so there is not much space for feminism in my ideology. I do not endorse exploitation or dominance either by a man on a woman or vice versa as well.

Overall it has been fun to be in a company of girls from small corners of the country who just had dreams to get them this far in life. They may have had to fight for being allowed to be sent back for further studies every time they go back home to spend a vacation, or they may have been fighting with the financial crunch as their father has three more daughters to take care of, or they may have been fighting the constant nag of their parents to get married, or they may be fighting the simple disinterest in letting them study, these are the girls who are determined to make a difference and do not let their tension show on their faces. With heads held high, and eyes dreaming of success, they form the backbone of our society!

Smaller the Sweeter

2006-08-03T10:00:00.000+01:00

I have never understood my fascination for small things... the list about the craze for small may go on endlessly. I do not like dogs but I like puppies, I do not like cats but I like kittens and so much so I do not want grown up kids of my own, I just like them till they are infants! I have tried so many times to make my font size in this blog atleast the normal one but helplessly I again reduce it to small... Somehow I like things small and concise, I do not like people who write too long answers and try to use long complicated words to prove their point. The beauty of life seems to be in small things!

An innocuous though avoided blink

2006-07-24T10:54:00.002+01:00

She gets up anxious suddenly by something, something makes her restless, she is no more able to concentrate, she has been studying since morning and is no more able to hang on. It's five in the evening and the weather outside is just too romantic, cool breeze just makes her feel so restless . She gets up from her chair unable to concentrate anymore. She does not want to decieve her studies and think about something else. She gets up totally unknown about what is she going to do now. With her mind thinking so many options she finally makes it to her cupboard, tries many clothes, unable to decide what to wear, she finally opts for the well-starched kurta and to make the selection easy she decides upon her favourite jeans. She admires herself for a while in the mirror, she does that quite often, that unknowingly is reassuring for her of everything being fine. She puts an evenly distributed kayer of kohl on her eyes, and touches a dash of gel on her lips, and makes a few sturdy- quick strokes of comb across her hair. Wearing her most prized possesion of a pair of Kohlapuri jootis she sets out of her room totally oblivious as to where she is heading to. She will decide that later on.

She stops at the juice corner for a mango shake, and then gets her favourite cup of mishti doi from the Mother Dairy outlet. She loves walking alone on such cool evenings. Completely decked up she is stared at by the onlookers but she is totally lost in her world, something that is keeping her away from the outside world. She is busy pumping out the dahi from the cup with the little spoon she had to negotiate for. She walks and walks, aimlessly for quite a while now. Feeling tired after wandering for a while she decides to sit on the bench at the park. She stares into the oblivion.

She sits there paying no heed to the numerous children running across on the park, or the loafers trying to make noises to distract her attention towards them. She is unintimidated. She keeps staring and flashes of the lovely moments of her life fill her. She recalls how he had brought for her her favourite pastries on the new year eve, and how he was so excited to tell her that a girl in his class told her that he is the most handsome hunk around, how he used to laugh at her for her not being able to decide the push or pull of a restaurant gate, or how he would wonder on her using her eyes for most of the talking, or how he would get worried for her if she just said that she is out in the rain without any protection. She remembered all the lovely moments that she spent thinking about him, how she would blush even at the mention of his name by her friends and how she would do anything to take his worries away from him, how she would make gestures through her eyes to make him understand her love for him which he failed to understand most of the time, and how she would willingly make push-pull mistakes to have a hearty laugh with him!

She does not want to blink as she knows that a blink will bring him close to her, a blink will want her to be with him and a blink will remind her of the moments that she had dreamt she would like to spend with him.

She keeps staring into the oblivion, unreachable by the mortal world...

Birthday

2006-07-14T07:10:00.001+01:00

Another birthday, another year gone by, another interesting year to come up, another set of resolution making, another kick to the pocket, another day of getting to talk to long lost friends, another opportunity to aspire for a better life, another time to introspect my past, another chance to get to know my admirers, another opportuinity to feel great about the wishes I accumulate and another day to just feel cheerful.

I am on a high :-)

Smile please :)

2006-07-03T09:22:00.001+01:00

Most of us think that smile brings happiness but it's actually true the other way as well, i.e if you are sad and you still smile, you become happy.

Errr... Sushant rightly pointed out that the above should rather mean "happiness brings smile but if you are unhappy and you still manage to smile then you become happy" :)

Smiling indicates good mood and it has proven to lower heart rate.

Researches have proved that if your facial expressions depict happiness then however angry or low you might be at that moment still you tend to be happy and forget your anger or sorrow.

So just keep smiling no matter what!

For all those who have forgotten to smile I found out the way to smile through a web search:

Here's how.

1: A smile begins with the eyes. Notice a twinkle, a feeling of amusement in your eyes.

2: Notice how they move naturally as it becomes a smile with the eyes.

3: You should resist smiling with your mouth. It will only grimace, so keep it fixed.

4: When you smile with your eyes, it will spread and your mouth will move naturally and easily into a genuine smile. Let the smile with your mouth come naturally when it is ready.

5: Beam with your eyes, and keep the rest of your face motionless until it breaks into a warm, friendly smile!

Practice in the mirror. See for yourself how this technique always works and makes you much more acceptable to others. Become a magnet of beauty! Smile with your eyes!

Now few other benefits may be listed as under:

1: A smiling face always finds quick takers, so that just goes to prove that you might get marrried earlier than the rest!!

2: People who smile more are optimistic in life and hence they have a strong immune sysytem and are able to fight illnes in a better way than the pessimists.

3: A research found out that peope who smile more tend to live longer than whose who have a frowning face all the time.

And there are many more, just a google search and you find lots of benefits to smiling.

But the best point is that there is no tax on smiling. You buy happiness and joy for yourself and for others abslolutely free.

And as per Kabir 'kal kare so aj kar, aj kare so abhi', so do not hesitate,

Go ahead and Smile :) :) :)