Two Lives

Sitting alone everyday, I have this growing concern that we are so much into ourselves, our lives, our neighbors that we tend to really forget what's happening outside us, outside our homes, our states, our countries.

I really wonder, what a girl in Afghanistan would be doing at this point in time, when I am busy ranting this thought process of mine. How different are the people of my age outside my orbit? What is it that they like to do, how is it that they like to spend their time on earth? I am thinking of starting this little project, Project 2 Lives, where I'll search for people of my age and look around what really concerns them. I believe females are more vocal and expressive about their personal lives than men, so I'll track species of my gender. This is something I really wanted to do, and with the advent of blogs and twitter, I know the task won't be impossible.

Let's see, wish me luck !!

PS: The image that you see here was the first one I got, when I typed in Two lives on Google Images. ;P
The image is courtesy : Flickr  

Confessions of a dangerous mind

It's such a fluke I know,
You love me and I love you,
there are better things to do,
money and velocity,
admiration and jealousy,
issues of heart and soul,
better left to the poets and philosophers,
I would never be able to bridge that chasm.

Age of innocence

Age of innocence,
like gaudy colored candies, dancing in the eyes of skimpily clad cousins,
hysterically jumping at the drop of rain on their noses,
carols and hymns getting lugged up with the school notebooks, like the dried roses,
age in evanescence


Pencils so priceless, rubber bands so precious,
all gone like a whiff of smoke
a window of black clouds, looming large over my tiny treasure,

Urban purdah

In ways more than one, a woman's life is interesting to the core. Sprawled across the green, the vast expanse of a sky whose length and breadth is governed by someone else, they chart their life journey.

The moods and spirits taking cues from the whimsicals of their men. The earth beneath at the mercy of the gods. A beautiful picture of contradictions. Locked inside the prisons of their own volition, they have to demonstrate a ballet of pseudo freedom and emancipation. Give someone, the full rights to sell your soul to his twisted desire and tell the world that you are liberated.

Laugh at her, because, she doesn’t stop at this. The entire episode of portraying herself as the free bird, which she isn’t pushed her into a pit of make believe emotions. Power becomes ample use of your beauty, ignorance can pass away as pristine innocence, and lack of authority can be replaced by your pseudo satisfaction of bowing to your love.

Ayn rand says, “Existence is identity, consciousness is identification.”

Absence of the identification that you are worshipping nothing but street smartness. Your god isn’t the all knowing, omnipotent vehicle of your emancipation. The absence of this consciousness will lead to ugly games of forged power .

You know the result?

You are the winner and you are the loser. You win spasmodic joy and lose bits of what was deemed to be your perpetual partner, your own self.

Who asked you to give away the power and the authority to own yourself to people who least deserve it? And it’s not about deserving, no one, except you, deserve every atom of your identity. Don’t conceal your weakness in garbs of love and respect. It’s time to burn the urban purdah. 

Image courtesy : 

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/enlarge/ojibwa-woman_pod_image.html

WebOword - Visual Vocabulary

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WebOword - Visual Vocabulary

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Day 1: The entrepreneurial dilemma

China's ewaste solutions

Time magazine's photoessay shows the Chinese industry taking the toll on itself, it's country, it's environment in liu of doing what most dump.

Division in Diversity

I'm involved with a startup, named Pictualize and I'm blessed to work with great people as team members. One of the consequences when you start working on your own idea, is the fact that you see business everywhere. Business, more in terms of the management lessons than ideas to mint money ;)
It's not been much of a time being associated with my company, so every lesson I get, I try and accumulate it in my nerves. I've been reading this book called " India Unbound" by Gurcharan Das, and I'm onto deriving some managerial lessons from it. It's hugely surprising how academicians divide the course of a nation piecemeal and give explanations for the behavior of it's people.
It is this behavior which is shocking, disturbing and enlightning.
A part of the book says " Poor teamwork is pervasive in India. Take any institution, scratch it's surface, and one finds factionalism. Whether it's a company, a university, a hospital, a village panchayat, or a municipal board, it is beset with dissension, and it affects national competitiveness."
And there is an explanation given as well, for which I'll recommend you to read the book, but the important part is the presence of a void which is still present. If I talk of a corporate environment, I don't know why, not many Indian corporates look beyond the achievement of their easy and often narrow goals. There aren't many partnerships in existence which go beyond the scale of local businesses. More so, because, scaling up often involves a huge amount of trust between the founding members. Businesses in India are still vey family oriented, is it because of the fact that the profits should remain all in the family ? Family businesses are also not immune to the usual feudal wars for power. Tatas, Birlas, Ambani's all have had or are having their share of sibling rivalry when they should have concentrated more on competing globally. Even the theory of game theory and competitive behavior lays emphasis on being honest for a long term sustenance and productivity.You fight today, lose money, power, image and then fight again to reclaim the lost glory. I wonder have we ever tried to alter the feudal tendency of medieval India.
I have a company today, and are a closely knit group today. I shudder to the thought of facing such a fiasco ever. I will do everything to keep everything working as smoothly as possible, and when it concerns inflated egos, better do something about it soon.

Will read more on competitive behavior and try to establish why it hurts to cheat. Keep you posted as well.
Peace.