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.