THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

It’s been three days that I finally decided to break the monotony of my unsocial existence and go out in the evenings to have a stroll in the neighborhood park. My five year old cousin tags along rather I tag along with her and there is a picture perfect scene or a picture perfect movie going on in the park. Pretty housewives belonging to business families and top notch executives who get tired by all the maid bashing, noon soaps and the kitty parties are a regular visitor to these parks. They do not come alone, because along with them comes a whole parade of accessories like a pram for kids who can very well run , a pair of maids, one for the baby and one for the momma and other brick-a-bracs. The attire of these lovely homemakers is also worth mentioning. Draped in the very latest Indian ethnic wear and adidas sneakers, they are worth a look as they trot up and down in order to relieve themselves of the extra flab that has been accumulated due to their HECTIC lifestyles. The story doesn’t end here because it’s after the half and hour of gossips and mom-in-laws discussion and of course exercising too, they decide to call it a day and move back to their abodes. The scene outside the park is completely revamped as if someone painted a different picture by some magic wand. There are slums nearby and women gather from these slums to sell roasted corns and men as ice-cream vendors. Now, it was yesterday that I decided to have that corn delight and went to the lady seller. She looked young but her facial expressions defied all signs of young age. A very-typical young mother, cool and hip was also there, haggling with the lady seller over the prices of the corns and was asking her to reduce the price. This lady had just won the battle and managed to get five corns for rupees 15 instead of rupees 20 and was sporting a smile as if she had just presided over the merger of Google and Microsoft when her cell rang. Very smartly she took out the chic N 95 (( I bet my life she didn’t know how to operate that little luxury , and was aware of receiving and dialing numbers)) from the little handbag which her maid was carrying and son started to chat incessantly about the prospective locations to host their next kitty. I looked at the seller, she was no older than this chic but her stature told a different story. Sunken eyes, sun burnt hands and a frail figure, her face looked as if she hadn’t smiled for ages. A small child rolled in mud was sitting on a rag nearby, disheveled hair and snotty nose was crying nearby and an older girl was trying to console him and was looking at the child in pram playing with some expensive toy and sprouting a brand, but the most horrifying part was the look of her eyes, blank as ever, as if she had not given a chance to words like hope, miracles or equality. Anyhow, the time came for shelling out the Rs 15; the lady pulled out two 500 buck notes and grunted. After much searching and rummaging her handbag, she managed to get Rs 50 out. She looked at me and asked if I had some change, paid the money and went way. The lady seller took out a broken tin container, shoved the money inside. During this entire episode all I was thinking, did that lady gained anything by paying 5 bucks less to that needy woman?? Or rather was she loosing anything by paying? Unfortunately this scenario is neither unique nor uncommon. This is our reaction to the people who are not so blessed , and is happening in every metro, town and city of the world and India. And if you think corporate India is spared. Then you are mistaken. Wait for the second part to see how??

CEO BLOGGERS

Seems even the CEO’s aren’t spared by the blogging fever. The trend is fast catching in India and is a boon to wannabe entrepreneurs and to-be managers to have a peep into the daily lives of the people they idolize. If my opinion is to be counted for, then I would say it’s a lesson in time management straight from the horses’ mouth. We all know how hectic their lives are, and if they manage this , they need a thumbs up from my side.
Some of my choice:
1. Sanjeev Bikhchandani’s blog
CEO of portals like naukri.com , JeevanSathi.com, 99acres.com, recently started blogging . Titled “Wisdom in Hindsight” . Good read.
click here to read his blog:
Wisdom In Hindsight

2. Basab Pradhan
His blog deals with developments in technology across the world while he deals with Grindstone Research . Titled “ 6 AM Pacific” .
click here to read his blog:
6 AM Pacific

EGO

I read “Anthem” by Ayn rand, and I am incompetent to write something worthy unless I read it again. Here are a few excerpts which lured me into the great wisdom she had to offer:

“What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean can reach into it? What is my wisdom if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom if all the creatures, even the botched and the impotent are my masters?? What is my life, if I am to bow to agree and to obey? “


“I am .I think .I will.
My hands……my spirit ………my sky…….my forest………this earth of mine..

What must I say besides?? These are the words. This is the answer.
I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body, my spirit, is the end of quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.
It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grant beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and the judgment of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. It is my will which chooses and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect.

Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me; the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me.
Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars.
I am a man. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use and mine to kneel before!! “

“And here over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die, should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory.
The sacred word is
EGO “

Mind Wide Open

Lately I was toying around with a very strange feeling and as I tried to test it on my friends, the complexity grew day by day. It’s not that I possess some supernatural power or practicing some ancient dark art, but the fact that I can sense, rather can predict someone’s real nature quite comfortably drives me to think harder in this direction. Now I know this is a vague comment to be made, but the sheer accuracy is sometimes baffling. I know everybody thinks they know their spouse, friend, boyfriend ….and everybody in their immediate contact but its not the case every time, our brain is something greater than all this. A person can fool around with all the people all the time hiding his/her true intentions, desires, fantasies and thoughts, although there are subtle actions that give it all away. I am also reading an intriguing book, Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson, and I came across this paragraph….interesting enough to quote and give a fair idea that our brain has evolved to be something incomprehensible by us. I don’t know how correct I am because there is no absolute scale to judge my correctness, may be they are just ramifications of a bored soul…ha ha..Who cares??? But Paras and Aditya , I want you people to comment if I am wrong with the judgments…

” say it’s an office holiday party—and you run into a coworker with whom you have an unspoken rivalry. It’s one of those relationships that is chummy on the surface, but right beneath there’s a competitive energy that neither side acknowledges. When you first encounter your colleague, there’s the usual pleasant banter, but before long he’s confessed to you that something has gone wrong with his career trajectory: either he’s lost a big account at work or the fellowship didn’t come through or the last batch of short stories got rejected. Whatever it is, it’s bad news. It’s the sort of news that a friend should perhaps greet with a concerned, doleful expression, which is exactly the expression that you deliberately contort your face into as he delivers the news.
The trouble is, you’re only a friend on the surface. Below the surface, you’re a rival, and a rival wants to grin at this news, wants to relish the schadenfreude. And so for a split second, as you’re hearing the fateful syllables roll off his tongue, his tone foreshadowing his disappointment before the sentence is even complete, you let out the slightest hint of a grin.
And then an intricate dance begins. As your face wraps itself up in dutiful concern, you detect a flash of something in his face, a momentary startle that says, “Were you just smiling right there?” Perhaps his eyes suddenly lock on to your pupils, or he pauses in midsentence as though something has distracted him. In your mind, an interior closed-captioning emerges: “Did he see that grin?” As you offer your condolences, you can’t help wondering if your words sound cruel rather than comforting. “Is he thinking that I’m faking all this sympathy? Maybe I should tone it down a notch just in case.”
SEE, it's all too evident, so the best way to live your life is to be as natural as possible....pretension won't take you anywhere..

adventures in college part 2

okay ppl, seems like i can never get out my haggling over my college, but there are a zillion things to ponder over.....the first post on the adventures in college had a mention about our librarian , the all- knowing saint who has been given the weighty responsibility of being the caretaker of the books and the literature students read ( umm try to read!!) in our college.
there are so many incidents related to this chap, that i have to blog lest i forget about the wonderful rather full-of-wonder days in this college. i would not take time and jump directly to the untold miseries ....we face everyday..
SO, before starting off with another story telling session, i would like to create a backdrop rather a platform on which the story resides...

SCENE 1: There is a herd of students assembled near the notice board, chattering away mindlessly, some had the expressions as if they were about to start a revolution, and some were plain indifferent as if defiance was flowing in their blood..but one could easily make out, there was some spicy news on the noticeboard...
i rushed along my friend to catch the latest on the block ..it was something like this:

"Following the harmful effects of mobile phones on the lives and careers of students, the university has decided to ban mobile phones on campus. Anybody found with a mobile phone would have to pay a fine of rupees 500."

wow...now this called for some real action. We were engineering students, i mean atleast in theory, and we were being groomed for developing some of the best technology for mobiles, computers, laptops..u know ..all that matrix feel ...an here ,we had just lost the right to stay connected and how sweetly.....I was all smiles, the smile that i usually sport when i am angry to the core . People around me were waiting for my sincere comments , but i shook my head and went away.

SCENE 2:It was a new day, and apparently people had turned a deaf ear rather a blind eye to the notice.
your's sincerely was in the library once again with an unfortunate friend, unfortunate bacause the poor girl did not know destiny had something in store for her in that library..we were trying to copy an assignment that was to be submitted in the next lecture, there were around 20% of my classmates there hard at work..u see..copy paste isnt that easy...u have to beg for assignments ...beg for blank sheets..and if that wasnt enough..beg for a writing instrument ...people call them pens..
So here we were ...furiously copying the original assignment along with the usual editing going parallely...and tearing the silence of the library..went a sound..beep beep beep. Everybody turned their faces along the direction of the sound , instantly trying to detect who was the culprit..as if contending for a temp job with sherlock holmes.....and all eyes came to our table, my friend turned scarlet ...pulled her mobile from her pocket ..and a nanosecond , our librarian was standing looking down on her mobile..yess he had snatched it from her the moment she took it out....everything happened so swiftly...she didnt realise anything ...the librarian got wings and flew away...along with her mobile.

SCENE 3:
"Sorry sir, please sir....we wnt carry it again sir, sir please sir..sir please" "sir pleasee sir..give back the mobile sir, sir i didnt read the notice sir, sir , i wasnt well, i had jaundice , i came to college after a week sir, ( people can go to any length to save their mobiles, and my friend was no exception)
ONE HOUR LATER:
"sir????"
our sir: "what happened??? what do u think?? you'll say please please ..and i'll give your mobile??? this mobile will go to the director sir, the registrar, the vice chancellor, the prime minister and bla bla bla"

my friend: "sir please sir, last time sir"

the girl was nearly crying, chanting sorry sorry incessantly. She was next to tears when i could take no more and interrupted.

me: " Sir , please sir, we are standing here for one hour now, she is saying she didnt read the notice , please sir, show some consideration"

SIRRRR: "OKAY...so now u will tell me what to do??? do'nt u know mobiles have been banned ??" followed by a lecture on the harmful effects of mobile phones on people, right from moral issues to heart problems and cardiac arrests...an what not..thank god ..he didnt mention genetic mutation...
HALF AND HOUR OF MORE HAGGLING...AN CAME THE FINAL BLOW

ME: "sir, do u know, engineering colleges are going wi-fi, and here we can't even carry our mobile phones??? "

MY SIR REPLIED : "HUMEN NAHEE HONAA HI-FI....HUM TO AISE HI ACHCHE HAIN....HI-FI LOG THEEK NAHEE HOTE"

I was staring at him..staring hard....i said meekly "Sir hi-fi nahee, wi-fi, umm it means we can access the intenet from anywhere in the campus"

SIRR: "So what, that you can do now too..just take a pc anywhere in the campus, take some wires, join them to the lab and access internet....U girl, dont try to fool me .i know everything"

We were still in a state of trance, and it looked like we'll have to part with 500 bucks, then again..a sound ......beep beep beep .....beep beep beep....my friend shook her head ..silently cursing whosoever was sending her messages at this unholy hour...she looked at her cell lying on the table but it was silent...when the beeps didnt fall silent , our librarian, very casually slided his hand in his pocket, pulled out a phone and without looking at us, started talking . We were standing there with folded hands , and i was rehersing some lines for him , then suddenly , he took my friend's phone in hand, gave it to her, and said, " go now, i've excused you this time, be careful the next time"
WE DIDN'T THANK HIM OBVIOUSLY .....AND LEFT THE LIBRARY WITH OUR HEADS HELD HIGH..
YOU SEE, not all adventures are disasterous !!!

adventures in college part 1

Its been quite a long time I wrote anything about my college…the place where I get to spend close to 12 hours of my usual day…now for the ignorant reader, I belong to the breed of those unfortunate engineers-in-the-making who trying to engineer their lives more than cars or machines or gizmos for that matter..i am unfortunate more so because I am pursuing this respected course from a college no one except the students of my college know about..gettin me??? Its been innumerable times that I’ve tried telling my college name to my new friends I meet while chatting and the only response I get is…..” errr” so lately I’ve stopped naming the damn place altogether and just specify its location… an they are usually satisfied by that. I won’t grunt about my college now but I would like to share some of the incidents that make this hell a living inferno.
So the story begins..
Once upon a time , I had my semesters fast approaching, and like all the times we had to get the no-dues certificate signed from respective labs, library and (hold your breath) CANTEEN…so here I was …standing in a long queue in the library. The librarian could not handle all the attention that was being bestowed on him so he was throwing some of his weight around. Now dis man, whom we call our librarian, is so knowledgeable that he can put any IIT professor to shame.. ( I will reveal his fits of knowledge later)..so as I was saying, our librarian who is baptized as “dosa” ( yes the idli-dosa combo) by the students was sitting on the pc checking every one’s library cards and making it sure that no culprit leaves without a fine !!And I guess my worthy readers must have guessed by now, that yours sincerely was one of the culprits!! My offence...my lord was that I had forgotten to return a book which was three months late and moreover I was carrying two more cards with me ( my friends). Now some salt and pepper was added to the story by the fact that my college is 40 kms from my place and I commute by the college bus daily. Unfortunately that day the college buses weren’t plying and I begged my father to take me to college to fetch my roll card. So this was how I reached my college on that eventful day. I did the usual shoving, pushing and cursing under the breath and reached the front of the line whilst my dad was waiting for me in the college canteen which boasts of a world class ambience without switching on the fans even in 50 degrees….( there is another fable attached to this no-switching –on-the-fan which I’ll disclose later) ..I reached the front to face THE MAN
SCENE 1
:…again. I handed over the cards to him, he typed something on his rusty typewriter-like keyboard, made a very funny face.. and asked me “ yeh manika kaun hai??” to which I replied she’s my friend…he said “ iski do books hain”.i said “ I know sir”..then this procedure repeated for two more times ….now I must tell you this guy is so funny that one can’t help but laugh at his face , its not that he’s blessed with some super natural sense of humor, but his face …aah..Amalgam of mithun chakraborty and some south Indian hero…so u can imagine my plight!! I gave out a giggle and asked him. whether I can return the books later …”NO” the only word he says in English with confidence was thrown at me. Now its not that I was totally innocent, I had the books in my bag, but I knew that he’ll charge a hefty amount if I return them now , as the whole college was there, so no room for bargaining the fine.. I went away quietly and got the books.

SCENE 2:AGAIN … I got to the front of the line with as much as six books in my hands. I stood there on the shelf begging him to let me know of the fine... Acting as a government official, he said “come after 2:30” now, I had my first sem exam after three days, and it was just 10 by then..I pleaded him with the argument that my dad was waiting for me . He shook his head and said it’s not his headache. Still, I stood there, with some of my self-respect holding onto the books, hoping that he will grant some favors on me , and tell me the fine I was expected to pay..minutes turned to hours and it was 12:30…now in the mean time , he was complaining that none of the students should move near his dear pc, coz the very act of touching his pc, would cause anger to his pc god and it would shut itself..again…I said “ sir yeh aapka pc bhi naa” and was thrown a look as if I had commented on his wife’s figure…I thought it best to keep my mouth shut…I kept waiting but he didn’t bulge . now I was angry..real angry…again I did the usual round of cursing under the breath and went away to catch some breath…by 1’o clock, I was really anxious about the exam three days later ( you can guess the level of preparation). Fortunately my English sir, is quite fond of me ( believe me, I did nothing to do that, its just that I give away some novels to that bored soul to while away his time)…and he happens to be the most senior faculty member , I went upto him and gave my books to him , citing the reasons why I couldn’t do that myself, I returned empty handed, without the roll card and begged my friend who lives nearby to fetch my rollcard from him the other day.
SCENE 3:
My friend went to him the other day , and to her horror discovered that although the two rollcards were given away, but I had another book to my name…she called me promptly, and asked if I had it ….my memory had lost all its power…and I failed to remember, the poor child went to the dragon again to get the book’s title issued on my name, he barked “ English ki book hai, kitni irresponsible hai who ladki, pahle nahee pataa tha use?? Jao bulaa kar lao use….”Ha ha…he was summoning me while I was biting my nails in anticipation of her call…finally he gave away the name of the book , and I started looking for it in the portals of my bookself…I got it ..but again the problem was standing as it is..how could I give the book???? I spent my 100 rupee talk time begging my friend to beg him instead , that I will return the book the first day I turn up in college and that he should shower some of his mercy on me and sign the no-dues certificate…..HE DID NOT DO THAT…AND MY FRIEND CAME EMPTY HANDED…(.well not exactly empty handed..she had to bear the wrath of the dosa sir, as he gave her a long speech about how I was not serious at all and was giggling away ..so I don’t deserve to write the exams anyway..an moreover he asked the reason for my friend’s philanthropy..an told her to get back home and study …and don’t be bothered about people like me..)

SCENE 4:
THE fine was for 300 bucks, and with two days left for the exam, there was absolutely no way I could waste another day on commutation, otherwise I would have nothing to write on the answer sheet even if I possessed the rollcard . I decided to send the money through another friend who had to appear for an exam just a day before my exam, I handed out the moolah and the book ofcourse , and its then after three days of tension and sleepless nights, I got to hold my rollcard..
The story doesn’t end here…the evening my card came in my hands, my first exam got postponed …..
Murphy rules in my life..aint it???

devil wears prada

In my journey of discovering the written word and the joy of snuggling up with a book in one corner, I have discovered few authors who can transform you into the characters they are portraying in their works. Lauren weisberger does it beautifully.
Sometimes you think you are the boss...the Miranda priestly who is living in nothing short of heaven on earth and sometimes you are fooled into sharing the miseries of Andréa Sachs, the very talented girl who lands up in a fashion magazine by pure chance and luck and has to do the mind numbing tasks of fetching hot coffee for her boss or giving her clothes for laundry. The book is an excellent portrayal of the dilemma faced by anyone who works in the fashion industry….the limelight, the brands , the constant partying and their demands of seeing a new beautiful you every time you turn up .And in the end you do realize that the Cinderella-like existence which seems so lucrative and tempting from the outside takes its own toll too, and that no Gucci, Prada or Jimmy Choo can provide you with the inner satisfaction and happiness that comes from enjoying whatever vocation you choose for yourself. This realization is easier said than done.
All the hype surrounding frustrated bosses and their workers, the highly paid executives who are in a constant fight to go to the top without realizing the void they are creating in themselves, the high attrition rates point very easily to the problem of not loving what they are doing. Although we tend to give varied reasons for our compulsion in carrying along the unwanted jobs, but I sincerely feel there is no such need for anyone to continue doing what they don’t feel like doing or what they don’t really enjoy. I can cite a thousand examples of people who don’t like their professions and are merely dragging their feet to office everyday and sometimes even I do that …but as I said .I have taken a leaf out of this book. An I’ll try my best not to fall into this booby trap…
In the mean time …if u want to have this e-book, just give your email adds…I’ll do the favor …