New Year

Two Thousand Sikhs

Yup, Happy should be in there too!!

until next time, next post, next year :)

Quite Contrary

Jo was thinking of the day he had left his small town.. He hadnt been a happy man then .. his trade wasnt giving him the kind of money that would enable him to lead a comfortable life, it wasnt even giving him enough to survive.. and to top that he had recently gotten himself engaged to a beautiful woman. Not that it was bad in itself, but the shameless young men in his town had made it a habit to ogle at her, and the frequent fights he was having with them had put off several potential customers...he wasnt suspicious of his wife to be, but it was just that it wasnt in her nature not to smile back at anyone who smiled at her, and several guys took this as very suggestive...And he so desperately wanted to wed her, but he felt he wasnt financially secure enough to do so.. and so, one day, when she told him that she was pregnant, he didnt quite know how to react.. for all his friends knew how, inspite of his intense desire, he had been keeping himself in check... and no one would believe that there was a divine intervention in his becoming a father..

And that was how he had left the town. now several months later, here he was, in the small town of Jerusalem, looking at Mary, who would deliver the child any moment.. Here he could claim the child as his own, and celebrate its birthday every year in peace...He felt bad that she was going to give birth to the child in a stable, but he was a confident that things would take a turn for the better soon. Yes, Jo was a happy man now..

until next time, hope it was a merry christmas :)
PS: last year....

Marginal Utility

I can see all those with a fair knowledge of economics arch their eyebrows upward :).. to confess,i dont know it in depth... all i remember is the 'orange' example... and so (for the benefit of those who dont know the theorem) here goes, the satisfaction you gain by eating oranges decreases with each orange that you eat... and orange was only an example (for those who dont like oranges, and those who dont eat more than an orange at a time, i dont think you were considered while formulating the theory)... well, now since everyone is on the same page, the reason for the reference is to do with happiness... does the law of diminishing marginal utility apply to happiness..

i faintly remember the prof saying that it was only applicable to (thats when i slept off..)....and so, i will humor my thought... even though happiness can come through different sources -listening to good music, an appreciative comment, good food, pay hike, doing a good deed, landing a good job, a good spouse and so on and so forth, could it be that our chances of deriving happiness out of something- anything, could be decreasing.. if not chances, at least the amount of happiness that we derive...

if we keeping getting all the things that make us happy, maybe we start failing to appreciate them, which is perhaps what is happening to us right now... with so much of currency floating around, EMIs and credit card swipes may have changed the way we look at happiness, and made 'happiness' more easy, to the extent that even happiness is commoditised... maybe thats exactly whats wrong...
until next time, laws are meant to be broken...

Stop or my Mom will shoot....

Isnt there a movie by that name? But nope, nothing to do with the movie, but felt that the title is somehow appropriate to what this post says....

Its every Mom's dream that her children grow up to be the best possible... and she will give them proper guidance and try to inculcate the right values.. she will make sure that the paths that they choose are the correct ones, and will not affect them, or the ones around them adversely.. if she has more than one child, she will shower on each, love in equal measures and make sure they are happy...

Sometimes, she will give a good spanking, when needed.. if they dont learn, maybe she will make them go without food for sometime... she will tell them examples of children gone bad, and how they had to suffer for it...maybe she will make sure that some of the stuff they take for granted disappear, so that they realise that they are doing something wrong...

she will be patient for a long long time, but if driven to it, she will be willing to take away the life she herself created... all the tsunamis, all the hurricanes, all the earthquakes, all the extra hot summers, and the extra cold winters, all the horrible showers, wonder if the children are learning...

until next time, hope we dont get shot...

Breaking news....

Its not exactly breaking news that the media industry is looking at a phenomenal boom in the next few months.. and thats across the verticals - print, radio, television and so on..which raises the question of how much 'news' acually happens in the world on a daily basis.. is it so much that the existing entities are not enough to make sure that all of it reaches the world, and if not, then what justifies the mushrooming of more of their kind? which is, i guess, when we get into creation of news, sting operations and overall sensationalising of trivia.. when a malayala manorama in kerala would carry the 'news' that your neighbour's cow broke its tether and damaged your fence, and NDTV would get its video footage and classify it as 'Breaking news'.. you would be happy, so would your neighbour, since any publicity is good publicity.. but will i, sitting hundreds of kilometers away and not having any specific interest in bovine revolutionary tactics, be interested in the news? i guess not..

the argument would be that 'you dont like it, dont watch it', but what if all the channels/publications think its worthy news, what option does that leave? nothing, and sadly we have only ourselves to blame, because we are less interested in reading/seeing Chidambaram's fiscal policy than Nigar Khan's physical policies...

but what prompted me to think about this entire trip was manorama's week long front page coverage of the death of a malayali in afghanistan.. isnt that exactly what the terrorist group would want? extensive media coverage and a sublimal building of fear in the citizens? on a parallel note, a murderer would get much more prominence in coverage than a guy who might have saved a life..

by creating sensations out of every possible trivia that happens in every remote corner, isn't the media encouraging a whole lot of wrong things? there is a thin line between right to information and right information, and it takes a lot of maturity to walk the line...and so it aint so strange after all that lives full of trivia would slowly but surely get converted into trivial lives, for who wouldnt want their 15 secondsof fame?

until next time, what news??

Turning 35...

No, you evil people, not me.... its still a decade away, okay, 8 years away... i was referring to sachin's record breaking 35th century..During the initial years of his career, i had always been a skeptical 'okay, how long before he burns out' observer.. a bit later, when his schoolmate joined him in the team, i was supporting him - vinod ganpat kambli.. i have this default thingie of supporting the underdog...ironically, it was kambli who burnt out, and never played to his potential..well, almost never ever.. and then the match fixing controversies made me less of a keen observer of the game...

but while all that was happening, my admiration of the little master was growing, grudging at first, but growing nevertheless.. i even remember a friend during my post grad days, who was a die hard fan, whom i used to chide whenever sachin failed to score.. times had begun to change when i used to counter his high scoring with the point that he never clicked when we needed him most to applauding his efforts.. i still remember the two matches against australia in sharjah (?),centuries in consecutive matches - match winners...but wait, before i digress and throw off the non cricket aficionados, this isnt about the game, its about the man...

i think what makes him great IMHO, is that he remains untouched by his greatness.. on the contrary, it has made him better... it takes great character to resist the temptation of letting yourself talk instead of your bat, especially when there are jibes and barbs hurled at you by people far inferior to yourself... and so, when the man finally silenced yet another group of question marks after a year (between #34 and #35) its defintely an occasion for a post...

and i couldnt help but notice the contrast between the two men occupying the crease...sachin tendulkar - an all time great who has just scaled another height, and yet the epitome of humility... and sourav ganguly - who has fallen from heights, and who is perhaps just realising that in the path to greatness, humility is indeed a great asset...
until next time, bowled over.....

Sikandar

Its one of the names i have a fascination for... from the Indian version of Alexander's name to Anil Kapoor in Trimurti, it conveys (to me) someone who can conquer all, someone who is on a plane above normal humans... the reason why the name is the topic of discussion is because i happened to dine in a restaurant by that name sometime back..

while i dont consider myself competent enough to put together a food review, i can safely say that it lived up to its name..of course, i could have been extremely biased because it offered me the opportunity to indulge in another of my fascinations.. sitting at a height and watching humanity move along on the roads below... walking, driving, just moving on, into the night...

i bet thats one of God's favourite views..wonder what freud would have made out of this... a desire to be above current levels in life? a need to be objective all the time? at a subconscious level, perhaps these could be factors, but at the conscious level, to me, it is a humbling experience, like looking at a starlit sky and us humans below, because it is moments like these that seem to tell me that i am a small part of a huge canvas, an experience that i have no idea about...
until next time, 'We are all made of stars'......

Seasons...

Its chilly in Bangalore... not the bone numbing chilly, but the kind of chilly that gets taken care of by a jacket, the kind thats pleasant, the kind that i associate with a hot tea, a good book, snuggling under the blanket.. and reflecting about the seasons...yes, we are talking about the weather :).. because the pleasantness of it makes it interesting... well, okay, maybe i didnt have anything else to write about... :)

but theres definitely something about it that inspires a post.. its one of the times when time makes us objective, step outside ourselves, and reflect on the things that have been happening,things that we have been doing unconsciously in the daily rigmarole of living, and get reminded of when we actually start thinking about it...

the last three months of the year.... in some places - winter.. in chennai - the time when it takes exactly 3 more seconds for an ice cream to melt (pleo, was it, who wrote that), in kerala - the time when the one and a half hour non stop bus journey to the engineering college early in the morning became all the more unbearabale, and your beacon is the hostel loo, at the end of the journey, a time long long ago... the time spent in writing mock tests to land up in a good management institute, the rush to beat the three hour clock, a time long long ago....in goa - amidst all the sun and sand and scary tests and assignments, counting days to the christmas vacation when you could go home, a time long ago.... back to kerala - balancing sales targets, and a desire to be in bangalore with the wife to be, sometime ago :)...

and finally bangalore - listening to 'Walk of Life' and smiling away at the post that just got written...yes, seasons, i guess it is just nature's clock ticking away, reminding us of the good and not so good times that have been happening to us, and around us.... long long ago, long ago and now..

until next time, nice clock, no cause for alarm....:)

Storytellers

Its partytime for the worms in Bangalore, the book kind that is.... all thanks to the Strand Book Festival.. one of the few things that rock our home's otherwise carefully managed financial boat..:)

and last weekend was no exception, as Sherlock Holmes, Calvin, Asimov, Mughals and assorted other stars came into our living room, and a slightly different kind of printed paper went out.. and like always, theres not even an iota of guilt..hehe

And since D preferred to do eyebrows while I browsed through rows and rows of storytellers, it gave me time to send a little note of thanks heavenwards, to the first storyteller i ever knew, and the best...To my grandmother, who used to tell me a story every night before i slept, who used to make sure i got my 'Poompatta' every month, and insisted that my dad bought me 'Amar Chitra Katha' regularly.. the storyteller whose stories were only for me, whose characters always seemed to be my age, or the kind that i liked... whose stories were imaginative, inspiring, heartwarming and everything else that stories should be.. who made sure that i would love stories for the rest of my life...

and since i know i can never be that good a storyteller, the books i buy are perhaps my way of passing on my favourite stories to those who come after me, for i understand that only the very fortunate ones end up getting a great storyteller as a granny...

until next time, live happily ever after...

Calls...........

Nature sends messages.
If you dont respond, she calls...
There is no such thing as a missed call.....

until next time, dont get pissed off...

Fix you...

Once again, so what exactly is it that we would love to do.. while it is an interesting debate whether we would stop loving things if we began to get paid for it, are there still things that fall outside that set, and which we would love doing irrespective of anything else...

I, for one, would love to sing for a living, not at concerts, but more of a wandering bard...would love to write a book, and be happy if 5 people read it, loved it and felt it had made a difference in their lives.. would love to have my own chat shows and crack the kind of PJs that would help create homicidal maniacs..:).. some of the above are stuff which i might be able to pull off, and some i might realise that i wasnt quite cut out for...maybe thats what living a full life is all about... doing all these and being able to say that i tried everything.. maybe thats what makes happiness...

or maybe its about knowing exactly what is it that you can do and want to do.. and then setting about achieving it whatever be the odds...which is perhaps what makes alonso world champion at 24, or sachin a treat to watch after more than decade of watching him... or an amitabh bachchan a star twice over.. maybe thats what makes happiness....

maybe its about finding love, and keeping it, and knowing that whatever else happens, that person will always be by your side.. maybe thats what makes happiness...

and meanwhile we walk the paths, some common, some uncommon and hope that God is singing to us(instead of Coldplay)

Lights will guide you home..

and ignite your bones...

and i will try and fix you...

until next time, are we in a fix??

Private eye

A few weeks back, a lil spat reminded me of the fact that we really dont know each other at all.. we are connected only by thoughts and words, and while it could be that our personality is reflected in blogs, the reverse could also hold true.. that we are competely different from our blogs..

And its not just blogs, our entire persona thats on display all the time, may only be a part of what we are.. and there may be parts of us which we even hide from ourselves.. a secret that we keep even from ourselves, thoughts and emotions which, if expressed might end up hurting ourselves and others, and could be totally against the social norms that we follow...

and while we judge people on a regular basis, unwittingly, we also end up judging ourselves..judging ourselves with a private eye, that reveals itself rarely, and lets us know that perhaps even we dont know ourselves well enough.. maybe i should try and discover more about myself .... and get in touch with the private I...
until next time, maybe we should also respect privacy....

G MS Y?

While all the wars were being fought in recent times over virtual space, one player was conspicuous by its absence - but some announcements in the last few days got the gates backwide open...

the good part is, i am not geek enough to analyse the services of the three major players in virtual space... the bad news is, that doesnt stop me from writing about it...:)

Good Ol' Bill is an icon, theres no denying it... but unfortunately he has never been able to translate that into a favourable opinion about his enterprise... while there are a lot of us who display 'Get firefox' icons, havent seen any 'I use E' (yup, bad one acknowledged) buttons... also, theres no denying the fact to a lot of us, Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc are still THE applications and they have indeed made lives a lot easier (hmm, not powerpoint,on second thoughts..hehe), and when you add MSN chat and Hotmail into the mix, MS automatically becomes an integral part of our automated life.. normally that gives a load of ammunition forworship, but surprisingly all that doesnt make us say 'I Love MS'...

Is it that we love the underdog? or is it that we hate the way MS has been getting too many dollar bills? if it is the latter, is there too much of a harm in a guy making money out ofhis ideas and work? isnt that supposed to be the mantra of knowledge working and the basis of copyrights? why should we be having a problem with the money being made? why should it be open source??

i wonder if the 'no love' is because it has changed the way we work... or is it something like school?.. none of us liked it when we had to go to school, but down the line there is also a realisation that perhaps it did do some good for us, or more importantly, it made a difference in the direction of our lives...perhaps, Bill, you have to wait some more for the idolising...

until next time, yahoo!!! Gmail is moving towards 3 GB....:)

Twins

After putting aside concepts like love and money, perhaps the two most important things in life would be the marriage and the career... and if you put a lil bit of thought to it, there are some striking similarities..

Both are things that you get to hear about early in life, but get to experience only at a relatively later stage.. and you get to hear about it from anyone who's remotely elder to you.. there are so many versions... and when its happening to you, everyone has an interest in it and an advice to give on it... and anything 'different' from the norm is usually met with a frown...

in both cases, there are roughly two paths you can take - one that you want to do due to your desire and aspiration, and the other thats financially and socially seen as 'safe'..in both the cases,the exceptions are also similar... you might want to be a doctor/engineer etc and you get to do exactly that.. and you happen to love a girl/guy who meets all the conditions and succeeds in all the parameters that are set out by those who are supposed to decide your fate - parents, relatives etc, and can therefore marry him/her without a problem.. whether the path has been by choice or forced on one, both perhaps require a certain amount of compromise.. you might end up liking the career you had no specific interest initially, and you might end up liking your arranged spouse..in both the cases, you might realise after a point of time, that it is no longer what you want, and there's something or someone else that you really want to spend your time and energy on..and yes, getting fired in both cases, is a pain....

you want to maintain that correct balance between both, and yes, most importantly, you expect both to be some kind of anchor in your life, and to derive some joy out of the experiences..and like everything else, you know that both have to end, at some point of time..

until next time, identical or non identical??

ITs a Dog's life....?

From the recently concluded IT.com in Bangalore (Image courtesy: The Hindu)

ITs gone to the dogs, you think??