More is less..

Most of us remember that we ran out of toothpaste only when we wake up in the morning and go to brush. This is one of the many woes I face, staying alone. But the very first one that hits me early in the morning at least for five days before I go buy a toothpaste. So after snoozing three reminders and squeezing the old toothpaste to its maximum elastic limit, I went ahead to buy a toothpaste.

Now that Hyderabad is a metropolitan city, we have these super-stores on every corner and I found a nearby one for my toothpaste shopping. Now the sad part is I am not good at remembering the minute details of the toothpaste I use and only know the brand. But here in this super-store there was one big stack with toothpastes of different varieties belonging to the same brand. One said it would give white, shining teeth. One said it made the teeth stronger. One had salt in it, one had iodine, one had sodium, magnesium all the elements that we studied in Class X Chemistry. So which one do I pick? Like any basic customer of a product like toothpaste, I would want a good one which serves the basic purpose and in addition is a bit tasty. I wouldn't want to taste something bitter early in the morning, would I. So how do I pick one that caters to my needs without having enough technical knowledge about such a simple daily use product.

So, should I go to a dentist first and find out my dental health status and its requirements and then go shopping? I didn't know. I picked the one which was the brightest in color and came back thinking.

Obviously this post is not to tell my toothpaste woes but the whole incident got me thinking. When in the business of selling a product, is diversifying the product a good thing? By diversifying a product we are essentially customizing our product to different user-bases. But doesn't it affect the sales of the product if the user-base is not really aware of what specificity they are looking for in a product. Wouldn't everybody want bright, shining teeth which are strong and have enough sodium and magnesium in them - the all in one variety? Again something an MBA might be able to answer I guess. May be there are some products which are better off diversified than some which offer a simple straight solution applicable to all the users.

Remember how many kinds of salt packets were there 10 years back? And now? Salt is more about other elements like Na, Mg, Al, Si than just NaCl now.

Do(n't) Kiss The World !

So I read these two books and that's when I started to pen down this one. The first being Chetan Bhagat's "The Three Mistakes of My Life" and the other being Subroto Bagchi's "Go Kiss The World". It is very ironic that I read these two books one after the other. One being the story of a loser in life who introspects as to what went wrong in his life and the other book about a winner who gives us success-mantras taking an example of his own life.

I found it very odd, to read about how a person succeeded and the reasons behind his success and how another person lost and what were the reasons for his failure, both in a very short period of time. One books keeps inspiring and the other shows what can happen if things don't go the way planned. The result? I found there is no formula for success in life. Everything depends on whether you "can" transform your circumstances into opportunities to do something big or just treat them as they are and live with it.

After reading "The Three Mistakes of My Life", the immediate question one would ask oneself is "What were the big mistakes that I did in life?" I did ask myself too. But at 24 years of age, with no big failures to worry about, do I think I have made any mistakes at all? No. But how do we even know we did a mistake? Don't we only know it when we planned something and failed to implement it? What if we haven't planned anything? Then we wouldn't do any mistakes, would we? When you do not plan anything in life and just follow destiny to where it takes you, the result is, you neither repent for anything you did nor you have anything to boast about.

So, do successful people follow destiny or have a dream and work hard to realize it? Did Gandhi or Nehru or Sachin have such a dream OR were they in the right place at the right time (meaning luck) with the right talent?

What did I take back from the books?

From the first, I sure did learn one thing - "what not to do".

But from the second? I am not really sure. Reading a success story is very inspiring. But all I can take back from any such book is "Work hard and hope for the best". Because no two persons end up at the same destination though they take the same path. That is the beauty of life. You take the example of a highly successful person and follow the same route, you might end up as something else. It is impossible to tell someone "What to do". It changes from person to person and from situation to situation.

So do we go and kiss the world or just wait for the world to kiss us :-) ??

On a different note, Abhinav Bindra made India proud by winning the first gold medal. Congratulations to him!! This reminds me of my post back in 2004 during the Athens Olympics. I have been writing for over four years now. Good or bad.

Dis-appointed ...

What happened at the recent confidence vote in the Indian parliament was really a shattering blow to the belief of the people who still think "democracy and independence" are the best things that happened to India in the last century. It is a shame that corruption has reached such high proportions in the country.

Some great person said "Democracy means a government of the people, for the people and by the people." A great definition, I agree Mr. Lincoln, but sorry, that definition does not hold true now. I would rather put it as "Democracy means a government of the money, for the money and by the money". After all, it is democracy. People (or is it money?) have the right to change the "definition" as well. Isn't it? And so they did.

And WE are completely responsible for letting such a thing happen, for electing such people and for letting corruption creep in to every level of the government. God save us!

July 31, 2008 - the last day for filing Income tax returns for the year 2007. And like every responsible tax paying citizen of the country, I filed my returns too. But for what purpose? After witnessing the incident in the parliament a few days earlier, I would have little doubt that the tax I paid would end up as "bribe" to some person rather than being used to light a bulb in some remote village or to build a dam saving lives of dying farmers. Not much of a use for the country, is it?

So, what do we do? I wouldn't wait for a Gandhi to come and fight against our current ruler - "corruption". Even if a Gandhi came, I don't think today's people have enough time to go with him and march for the country. The least we could do is spend some time to find the right person to represent us and vote for a better leader who believes in the welfare of the country in the true sense.

I know, I had asked everybody "to vote" in an earlier post of mine, but this time I am asking to vote "responsibly" lest we should mis-appoint our leaders and be disappointed at the end.

Lets Hope..

Guess this is the worst year for the blog with just three posts so far and it is already past half the year. Whatever is happening to all the unwritten words...

Dear readers, I haven't yet given up :-) This is just a bad year for the blog and I hope it wouldn't stay that way. We all know that the world is a place for the optimists. Hope drives the world. If not for hope, we would not be doing what we are now doing. A thin ray of hope that things will get better. A hope that more and more posts will be written. A hope, that more and more readers will throng the blog. A hope that all the hopes come true. That hope is still alive and I will keep writing.

But.. what if.. what if it doesn't get any better? In fact, what if it gets worse? What if, like the rising inflation, like the unending political drama, like the soaring petrol prices, things just get worse and worse? Would you still believe in "hope"? If all you go through is a rough fate, a forte of problems and a never-getting-better future, will you start believing that it is better not to hope or to hope no better?

Well, that is not my state, thankfully. That is the precise outline of the latest book I read, "A thousand splendid suns", my second book of Khaled Hosseini. Impressed by the first book, I picked up this one and liked the way the author showed what 'endurance' actually meant, taking us through the life of a woman in Afghanistan.

Yeh taara, woh taara..

Posts with questions have become rare and the blog has become dull. Readers have deserted the blog and blogger.com is complaining.. (well, not really). But as we all know one cannot force oneself to write. It just has to happen. A topic should click and thoughts should flow in words. I may have free online space but I may not write every week. Just like.. you can pay the Deccan chargers, but you can't guarantee they will win. No offence for or against. More on IPL later..

After watching Taar Zameen Par and the little kid having extra ordinary talent and all that, I guess all of us would have spent a day or two, going back to childhood days, thinking what we were really good at, but once into the realm of competitive exams, forgot our true passions and have now ended up before 20 inch LCD monitors, coding in Java and giving (only) the carpals some exercise.

Guys, my suggestion is - don't think too much about "that talent you had". My personal experience says there wasn't one really. Because if there was one, we would already be pursuing that, rather than doing what all the million students in your batch are now doing. The truth is, yes, there were taare on zameen, but there were pedh, paththar and not to forget, phool also on zameen.. The movie was just about taare, and let’s wait for movies about the rest (of us) :)

But there are exceptions, I agree. Some of those talents you had, were not in demand back then and you ended up in the rat race. Like that old friend of yours, who used to hit every ball outside the park and later couldn't make it to the cricket team because he did not have a 'strong defensive shot'. Kya kare, the requirements were lot different back then. But I am sure, you would have found him already in one of the IPL teams - he has become a King or a super king or an Indian or a knight rider now.. I am sure. And is now a taara.

Well, who knows, we might as well get a chance some day when 'that' talent we had becomes the need of the hour, courtesy innovative ideas like the IPL. IPL ... Everyone talks about it these days, about the players, the money, the owners(or what do you call the SRK likes). I am a fan too. I like the cricket, the energy, the tense games. But who do I support? There is nothing Deccan about the chargers and neither is anything Indianish about the Indians. In games I understood little about, I would always support the stronger one (like Federer or Tiger Woods) and feel happy that the one I supported has won. But this one, it is getting too fuzzy. I guess it’s because of the nature of the game and the way things can turn upside down any moment.

Whatever it is, we get to see great matches, and the love of the game has increased like ever as every match passes by. Thanks to IPL.

And there is a thing or two to learn from the IPL matches. About how players from otherwise rival teams come together crossing geographical, lingual and racial borders and fight for one common goal - to win. I really appreciate the passion these players have for the game, and for victory. It just supersedes everything else...the love for the game.

So..coming back to our original topic.. what was I good at as a kid :-? ??????!!! Let me think, find some answers and go find out if there is any search going on now for those kinds of 'talent's ..

A Bounce and a Boomerang

After a leap, it was a bounce and a boomerang and I am back in Hyderabad after a second trip to pardes, making it a sequel.. pardes - 2.

pardes-2 was definitely not going to be all skyscrapers and roadside bagels and donuts. I wanted it to be different so I dont get bored seeing the same old tall buildings, Central park and the times square. A good thing was that this time I got a chance to wander away from New York regularly, and see most of New Jersey, thanks to two good friends. I could see open skies in the night, sometimes with stars and sometimes with brighter stars flying (from the Newark airport), which was a rarity in Manhattan with all the buildings obstructing the view.

Princeton - the place of the great Albert Einstein, Bridgewater - temples always happen to visit me more in the US :-), Cape May - a beach, a military war tanker and a trail in the deserted wild life park (wrong season to go there I should say) were all covered.

But the best part of the stay was a trip away from the Northeast of US to the west, to Las Vegas and to the Grand Canyon. Definitely two places that are a "must see" for everyone in the US and two places that would go right on top to my list of favorite places after Taj Mahal.

Las Vegas - keeping aside its fame for gambling, winning and losing money and other things, it is one incredible man-made wonder. The casinos, the themes, the lights, the fountains, the shows, the grandeur of the huge chandeliers, the Roman sculptures, the artificial skies and rivers they created, all make us think about one thing. How creative is the human brain? I was pretty amazed at the way the casinos were built with unique themes and the implementation was so close to real that we would actually wonder if we were really in Paris, New York, Venice or in Rio. Hats off. One great place to see what man can do. The city is wonderland. Its a world in itself,
an artificial one though.

Grand Canyon - While Las Vegas was an artificial wonder which shows man's dominance and his ability to re-create anything, Grand Canyon is the exact opposite. One of the top most natural wonders in the world, this one is so huge, one would not able to even think of capturing its beauty in a mere photograph. One's own eyes will fall short to see this Grand Canyon in a single glance, the name "Grand" not being an exaggeration of any order. Completely natural, unaffected by the commercial world, this place was a real beauty. Nature is more powerful than we can ever imagine. One would definitely feel inferior at the sight of this masterpiece created by
Nature herself. And the IMAX show said the Canyon never needed humans but we humans needed it for shelter, vegetation and the like.

How true. Nature is so independent, and powerful. On the other hand, we are dependent on nature for everything. Will there be a day when we become really independent? Or are we already independent because we are part of the nature, one of its many creations? Too complicated.

Remarkable experience. One day in the middle of an artificial world created for human entertainment called Vegas and the next day in the middle of a magnum opus created by Mother Nature with no human involvement whatsoever.

So, the boomerang went from Hyderabad, around New York, Las Vegas, and is back to Hyderabad making the farthest point visited away from home 36°10′30″N 115°08′11″W. Lets see if it comes full circle around the globe one day.

And as the habit goes... In remembrance of the day great people were born, here's wishing you a happy birthday.

A Leap

..once in four years and that day becomes a special day, in a special month.

12 X 2 = 24. That’s how the equation goes this time. It was 12/2 all this while and suddenly the / became a X this year and the writer turned 24 years old and yeah, the two great people turned 199 :)

And what was it like this year? Yes, every year its special. Every year its in a new place with new people, at least since the past 3 years and the saga continued this time too, with me back in the BigApple and the city welcoming the day with snow, much to my delight.

I know its been really long since a post came out on the blog. Well, this post is not going to be all about me, so lets get back.

If you pass the Times Square everyday on your way to office, you are bound to see a lot of interesting things happening. This one day I witnessed a big group of people with a flag in their hand, cheering a parade. I took a couple of snaps not knowing what it was and when I checked to see what it was, I got to know that it was about a country becoming independent. Well, that’s how I got to witness a historical event :) and in February.

And the month also marked my second trip to the Lady Liberty.

February, definitely, is an interesting month. It has fewer days than all other months and once in four year it gets this special treatment. In this fast-paced life, everybody wants an extra minute, an extra hour, an extra day in life and so, for all these people, February gives this extra day every four years to people who always felt.. "if only I had an extra day in life, I would ... blog" (yeah, that’s me) but honestly, it could be THE extra day that people need to do what they wanted if only they had one more day. Wouldn't it be easier if this day was declared a holiday? What would you do with that extra day?

And the month brought me back my reading habits somehow. I figured I would make a log the books I read, on my blog and I would have a count of the books I read and can use it to check and make sure I don’t read the same book twice ;)

So, here's a good one-liner from the book "The Kiterunner" by Khaled Hosseini.
"Zendagi migzara" translating to "Life goes on...".

February or March, birthday or not.. "Life goes on...." Very true.