Non Stop Goli

The day when I grew up

2010-09-06T14:11:00.003+05:30

It was the 8th class vacation I think. Every vacation we used to go to my mom's native place and stay there for about a month. Lot of my uncles used to stay there and it was like a big colony, where there were about 30 kids and amazing fun. But it was a strange time, because all of sudden you felt too old to play games like Dabba Gul, pakadam Padki, and you were not get good enough to play cricket and ended up being made the 12th man, or being laughed at. But this vacation we found something nice to do.

One of my uncles had a cloth shop, and this vacation one of my cousins and myself, thought that it was time for us to leave all these boyhood things and go to the shop and learn something. The shop generally used to open at 9:30, and it became a craze for us to go to the shop at 9 in the morning, and open the shop ourselves. We had about five salesmen in shop and they used to arrive and greet us warmly and kindly and happily. In morning any ways there were no customers, so it was ok. It made us feel very important, we felt that we were giving uncle luxury of coming to the shop a little later. For that half an hour we were the kings, and we managed the entire shop, though it was hardly ever that any customer walked in to the shop at that time, and any ways the salesmen used to take care of them. But we sat behind the counter, and looked over the street feeling very important, ordering some tea and something to eat from the nearby shop, and discussing all kinds of imaginary scenarios of how we would deal with customers and make a good deal. This continued till uncle arrived, at 9:30, and then customers would start coming. By 10:30 the shop would become over crowded and then we used to just sit in one corner and observe everything, so that we can become good enough to be part of the action.
At noon we used to have lunch in the shop itself, there was some thrill in eating lunch under the counter in the cramped place, and eating it fast along with uncle so that we can get to see the customers again very soon.
We used to go home at about four in the evening, with the feel of having accomplished something. Also during the dinner time, other uncles and aunties would praise us saying how good and disciplined boys we were growing up to be.

This went on for few days, until came the Sunday. Well it did make the life very difficult, because one thing which I thoroughly enjoyed was Jungle book on Doordarshan. And going to the shop at nine meant that I would need to miss that. That was too much the sacrifice to pay for growing up. . I loved Jungle book, and I had never missed a single episode of it, except when there were catastrophes like power failure or such things, which also resulted in me being in bad mood for a long time afterwards. I talked to my cousin about it, but he said that it will not look appropriate to tell everyone that we did not want to go to the shop because we wanted to watch the Jungle book. So we had to decide, we could not also fall sick because, both of us cant be sick at the same time, and we wanted to be together in either of decisions. So we went to the shop, and hoped that in some adjacent shop there might be some TV, but it was not there. After sometime I dropped the entire thought of seeing Jungle book, and started taking keen interest in the proceedings inside the shop.

I wanted to be tough, and in my mind I had started believing that I had grown up. I decided that this was the end of Jungle book, and all such stuff, and it was time to do more grown up things and make your presence felt among people.

It became 10am and uncle still did not arrive at the shop, we had an extended time at the counter. The shop sales were managed by the salesman. Uncle did not come until, about 11in the morning.
"What happened, why so late?" I asked him
"Oh I was watching Jungle book" he said .

Little Gesture

2010-06-26T12:06:00.002+05:30

Few of the days I go to office by bus. BMTC recently has done a amazing job of introducing new buses and bus routes and the public transport is not bad at all in Bangalore.

In Bangalore if take a bus at about 8-9AM in morning, school and college going kids form the major part of commuters. So yesterday when I was travelling I saw this two boys standing near the door, not that the bus was full, but I know these boys always stand at the door. In late teens, who look very light hearted and enjoying the fresh breeze, and probably the freedom that they might have got by entering the college from the tight regiment of school. They were full of life and totally careless.

Somehow I have never carried a great impressions of people standing next to door, I felt they always seemed to do it to check out girls and show off. But this impressions carried only till the next bus stand. As soon as bus stand came they would got out of the bus, and stood at each side of the door. As soon as Children would come to the last step to disembark the bus they would pick them up and make them jump, helping them with their bags and lunch bags and water bags. Kids would smile and they would love it. I can imagine, because I remember when I was young, I would hate the last step in bus, which would generally be significantly at bigger height, and if the bus moved slightly there was a fear of falling.

This activity was repeated at every bus stand that came, and they seemed to do it as if it was part of their job. They were converting a morning heavy polluted traffic bus ride of Bangalore in to a light, wonderful, full of smiles bus ride.

That made my day.

Where there are no locks

2010-06-17T14:18:00.002+05:30

I have been out of blog for quite sometime, even I had stopped reading blogs for quite sometime, somehow the days have just been going away and going on but there are so many things to say and write about.

I have been travelling and reading a lot, I read yet another book from William Darlymple called, nine lives, in search of the sacred in modern India, another of his book which I really enjoyed reading, do grab a copy of it if you get a chance. I am getting to know so many things about India from his books, which I never got to know growing up.

So here is one of my travel story as well,
It is about last year when i was travelling to Adilabad. From the map of India Adilabad, falls in that part of map, where news channels normally mark as a Naxalite area. We were little sceptical, but we had heard from lot of our other friends who had been in such areas that individuals seldom have problems in Naxalite areas, generally there is always fighting between the government and Naxalite (the recent news is the new development).

The train journey to Adilabad itself was quite interesting, met few people who told us interesting stories. We were very sceptical and very careful about our luggage and were putting locks and chains, and so on when this discussion about locking and theft started. The guy sitting next to us told us the story about this village Shani Singanapore, where there are no locks. Apparently people believe that if you steal from here then you will not be able to get out of the village, something bad will happen to you, like a snake bite or something. I have heard such stories before, and this one particularly, and as it always happens I thought that it might be true at some point in the past and now things would have change drastically.

Well this episode ended, and we reached adilabad, next day morning, ofcourse not before I had had this another interesting conversation with Naga Sadhu.
Adilabad is a super small town, clean, hot, quiet, suvar rickshaws, slow and peaceful. We were supposed to stay with this one very amazing person called Guruji Ravinder Sharma, (will write about him some other day). Temporarily we were asked to put our bags in a small art room kind of place, which was beautiful but no doors, and little did I know that it was going to be where we were going to stay for few days. Every day all our samaan used to lie scattered, camcorder, phone getting charged, and everything. Further the house was next to the road and Guruji never locked the compound gate as well.

"Yahan se chori karke kaun kahan jayega" Guruji said.

The case of a smelling shoe

2010-03-22T10:53:00.002+05:30

Something was stinking, the other day when I had just come to office. It was bad, I ignored it for sometime, but then every now and then, my senses reminded me that it was stinking. Something from down, was it the shoe? What else could stink in office. There were three people in the office, the other two were sitting together and working on some problem, am sure they were also feeling the same, but guess it was too embarrassing to point to someone that the shoe was stinking so everyone was quiet.

My shoes don't ever stink, at least that is what I always thought. But was it the other two people, I did not know.
I remember the last time I had been faced with such a smell was way back in hostel. Somehow from somewhere an insurance agent had come and his shoes were terribly terribly stinking. Today the smell was not that strong, but still it was bad, specially in the corporate office.

I wanted to ensure that my shoe was not smelling, so making it look very natural I just dropped my pen and bent down and ooopss... the right leg was stinking. It was bad. The more embarrassing thought was that I had been running around at couple of customer locations in the morning giving some marketing presentations and all that with this stinking shoes, But I had not realised that in morning, probably because I was fully absorbed. Probably someone would have tried to suggest me, but I would not have never paid any attention.

Well I don't know what you do in this kind of situations, I thought for possible solution, did not want to be caught washing the shoe in the loo. Finally decided that it was enough and I should call it a day, and should leave office, before giving a chance to anyone to tell me that my shoes were stinking. Thought would reach home early, get rid of the shoes and then send them off for washing or whatever treatment they required.

When I reached home rather early at four, and I removed my shoes to examine it, I noticed a big chunk of Cow Dung, that was smeared on the bottom of my right shoe.

When they built the dam.....

2010-01-23T21:56:00.002+05:30

This is the story about this young man, name I do not know. He was not the kinds that would form the characters of the books or the kinds that were portrayed in the movies. He was a simple man, and he lived in a small village near the Narmada valley, almost at the border of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. Life consisted mainly of going to forest and tending to small farm, the needs were not many, everything was got locally, and apparently till some years back the only thing that used to come from the city was salt.

He owned a small piece of land, which he spent most of his time tending to. His life appeared to be set, he was just stepping in to manhood and he already had found a girl for himself. Girl happened from the adjacent village which was about 15km away, walk was the only way to go. He had fallen in love with her, at the small stream which flowed near their village, and merged in to Narmada. Love marriages were not very unknown in the community and infact they were encouraged. So he was looking forward to the beautiful life to come, not aware of the huge calamity that was to fall on his head.

So as it happened, he realized that his village was one of the three villages identified in Gujarat which was to be submerged into the Narmada dam which was going to be built. He did not know much about the Dam and he did not understand much, other than the fact that it would produce Bijli, something that always filled him with wonder and amazement, something which he had seen in cities when he had traveled and something which he yearned for. He was supposed to get some money, there was confusion, so much of money looked attractive, but he could not fully figure out why was he asked to be moved from a place where he had stayed for ages. In the confusion he had also realized that the girls father had rejected his proposal for marriage. Girls father could not marry his daughter to someone whose future was uncertain. He was too confused to fight back, too uncertain to make any claims. Things were changing rapidly, and he was not able to keep pace with the change.

One year down the line, nothing remained same for him. He found himself in completely different world. He lost his land for some money. Money some of which was left, some he had spent lavishly and some he had lost. He had got land somewhere but it did not seem the same. The girl was already married somewhere, and he had stopped thinking about it because it bought pain and memories of lost world. He was doing odd jobs, he felt that he had lost his identity. But someone had told him, what the newspapers said, Dam was going to be considered as one of India's greatest pride but papers did not mention anything about him or his village

PS: Most of the story is true, heard about it in Mozda, a small tribal village in Gujarat. I also went and saw Sardar Sarovar, which is massive, and which has bought water to places where water was a struggle. But someone has had to pay the price for it.

Books books... those which created stories..

2009-12-19T15:52:00.008+05:30

Since long time I thought that I would write about the books that I have read, some books that have inspired me, books which after reading them created some stories in my life..

Treasure Island:

This was probably one of the first books that I read, as a twelve year old I think. Before that only comics, chandamama and champak. At that time I found this book really fascinating, on the ship in search of treasures, the pirates and lot of adventure. I played numerous games based on this books with friends, searching for imaginary treasure and what not. I used to imagine and hope that someday in our school picnic we all should get lost and land up in isolated island. I had even made a map of that island, and I had written small notes as to how it would all happen, and how should I emerge as a hero in discovering the way back, and ofcourse in the isolated place we would find the treasure. I had even thought that I wouldl make the tele-serial out of it, because I felt that I had to tell this story to whole lot of people.

Treasure Island is like a fairy tale, with lot of adventure, and imagination. I think every one should read this book.

Gone with the Wind:

Just before I had entered college, I had this urge to watch English movies, because I felt without watching these I would be ill-equipped to face other students who would have watched hundreds of them. One of the movies that I happened to see was "Gone with the Wind". I could not see it fully, but it looked grand. When I went to hostel and saw the book by this name, I knew that I had to read it. I liked the character of "scarlet". I loved the never say die spirit, and that little sentence which said, "I would think about it tomorrow, after all tomorrow is a new day". This lines still continue to inspire me. Also I loved the title "Gone with the Wind" and I think in our fast changing lives that we should enjoy the things when they are, because you dont know when things will change, and old ways would dissappear.

Guide:

I rate this as one of the best books that I have ever read. It is just so wonderful and amazing story. I love the transformation from the guide to the saint, and it seems to happen so effortlessly, nothing looks artificial or fake. I love RK Narayan style of writing, he writes so simply and so well. I have read most of his books by now, but nothing can beat Guide. In many ways this book inspired me to write. Also inspired me to read books from Indian authors, because there are so many things that you can connect to so easily when you read this books.

Daddy Long Legs:

Chotu book. Am not sure if many have heard about this book, but it is a collection of letters written by one small orphan girl to a friend who sponsers her education. Letters are full of innocense and the experience of a girl in a school who earlier was inside the for walls of orphanage. I like the drawings and again the simplicity. I want to write more after reading that book, write in the sense, write more letters, write with hand instead of type writer.

Read it if you can, you can finish this book in about one hour.

The age of Kali:

Another addition to my books about India. The book inspires me to travel and write more. Love the way in which William, explores the history of each place and also the small anecdotes from each place and people. I learned so many things about India after reading that book, things which I did not know. I also feel that history books should be written in this way, which connect you to people rather than just the facts.
In this books I specially loved the essays on the Sati system and also on Lucknow

If you are reading this, and if you have a blog, do also post something about your favourite books, this is the best way to know and discover new books.

Meeting up with Naga Sadhu

2009-12-13T19:50:00.003+05:30

That was the first day of the trip, and we were traveling from Mumbai to Adilabad. On the morning when brushing my teeth in the train I noticed this guy, sitting on the window seat. I was wondering if I should talk to him or not, because sadhus always invoke a feeling of fear and disconnect. But I decided to talk to him and he turned out quite friendly.

His name was Vinod, and he was from Amarkantak, where he stayed in the aashram. Aparently he was given as a “Gurudaan” to this ashram and now as a part of ashram he had done various tapas and yogas and now was a naga sadhu. He was a bal brahmachari and intended to remain so for the rest of his life. His knowledge about plants was amazing, he was looking out of the window, and pointing me to various plants and things and was telling me about the medicinal properties about them. Dont know if they were true or not, but he was telling with so much of confidence.

He told me lot of things about this educational system about this life, about what he does during the day and I dont think I can pen down everything here. He even showed me the photo album of his sadhu friends and mostly which had pictures of Gods and naked sadhus. He knew sanskrit and hindi, but was uneducated if we considered with todays terms of educaiton. He had never given any board examinations and that did not matter. But am sure with the knowledge he had, he could easily make a living and was more capable to finding his way around and surviving as compared to most of us who are highly educated.

His language was so pure hindi. He told me lot of stories about God specially shiva and Bashmeshwar. He was so surprised at my lack of knowledge about his guru and about any of the stuff that he knew of. I just felt as if we were seperated out in time, and also totally seperated out in the way we live as well. Hopefully I shall go to amarkanthak and meet him again sometime.

After coming back to Bangalore I read up little bit about the aashram he belonged to. And I found this story about "Tapasvi Baba" who had started this aashram. He left home at age of 12 and wandered and became a Naga Sadhu. He walked and walked around India for so many years before founding this aashram in Amarkantak. I also found his story amazing.

I always knew and heard about these Sadhus, but I always thought they were kind of fake, but meeting Vinod I did feel that there is so much these people know, the knowledge that has come from generation and most of us just disregard.

Taking a Stand

2009-12-10T09:20:00.004+05:30

Hi,
I am back after a long holiday and back to blogging. It was a hectic travel and net access was difficult and even you did not feel like sitting in front of the computer. Lots of travel blogs to write but before that just wanted to write this small story which I read somewhere. Am sure you are gonna like it.
"
Once upon a time, during the time of Mahabharata, there was this great warrior who wanted to be part of war between Kauravas and Pandavas. So he set out to Kurukshetra battlefield. On his way he met Krishna.
"I want to participate in great Mahabharata" he told Krishna.
"What can you do?" Krishna asked him
"With one arrow I can kill all Pandavas, with another arrow I can kill all Kauravas, and with one arrow I can kill Krishna" he said (he did not know that the man he met was Krishna)
"Prove yourself?" Krishna said.
"Ok, look at that tree, with one arrow I can pierce all the leaves of this tree"
Krisha asked him to do it, secretly plucking five leaves of the tree and putting under the five fingers of his feet.
The warrior shot the arrow and it after piercing each and every leaf, it came and pierced each of Krishna fingers one by one.
Krishna was very impressed and he realized that the warrior was of the highest class.
"On which side would you like to fight the war?" He asked,
"I always fight on the side of losers" the warrior said.

This really bothered Krishna, because he knew this would create a loop. The warrior would first fight on Pandavas side, and when they would be about to win, he would join Kauravas, and so on. The fight would never end. So he decided to end the warrior
Krishna asked the warrior, "Would you help me to fight against a a person who is destroying the dharma that I am trying to establish on Earth?"
Warrior said, "yes I will cut his head" he said
Krishna showed him the mirror. Warrior immediately realized that Krishna wanted him to be killed, but true to his word he offered his head to Krishna.

Pleased with him, Krishna asked him for the boon, and the warrior asked to be allowed to see the battle even when he was dead. So Krishna placed his head on the tree, where in spite of being dead he could watch the battle.
"

Well the story ends here and I have picked it up from Professor Devdutt's site. So Devdutt says that this story teaches us to take a stand because if you don’t take a stand then you end up being nowhere and don’t allow others to reach anywhere.

He says that in our day to day corporate meetings, we see people who are so brilliant that they can see things from both sides. When someone proposes a plan, they argue in favor of it, but as soon as everyone is about to agree to the plan, they argue about the misgivings of the plan. At the end of it, everyone is confused and you don’t take any decision. Hence the meetings just remain as mere intellectual discussions without any outcome.

So many of my meetings in my company have been like this. We just talk and talk and talk and talk very intelligently without making any decisions what so ever.

Even in my personal life, for lots of things I find balance arguments in favor and against doing something. And most times in these cases I don’t decide and keep thinking it over and over again. Guess it is best to decide something and move ahead and review the decisions at some point of time later.

Also reading Devdutt site makes me believe that there is so much in our mythology stories. If you try to interpret them, there are so many things. These stories are not just some imaginations, but have deep rooted meaning. Wonder why don’t we have more of these in our textbooks rather than decoding half French poems by William Wordsworth and "thou thy" language of Shakespeare.

On the mission to become veterinary doctor

2009-10-10T13:55:00.002+05:30

I met Saif when I was traveling in a bus, going to a small village of Kesalaguda from Adilabad. (Adilabad is a small town located almost at mahashtra AP boarder, in central India. )

As it turned out he was going to Karimnagar to get admissions in diploma in veterinary science. He was carrying a file along with him, which he showed it to me. The file had all his certificates. It did seem little strange to me, because I thought that it was not one of the fashionable things to do for a 20 year old guy,

“Are you interested in being an animal doctor?” I asked

“No, I have to do something to get settled na. If you get settled in life then it is so good. I will get a job in government in Adilabad if I do this course, then life is so peaceful you can really enjoy life”

"So you want to do a government job?" I asked

"Yes, government job is so peaceful, you can travel you can do everything, you get fixed income, I would get settled so early in life"

"But why do you want to get settled?"
"No it is good to get settled"

All throughout our conversation which lasted for close to one hour he just kept on insisting the importance of getting settled. He was a youngest in the family of 5 brothers and four sisters. All his elder brothers were “settled” as the way he called them, one of them an auto rickshaw guy, another one a Hawalder and so on. One of them had even got separated as he had got married. So there was no guarantee how life was going to be so it was important for him to get settled.

“Is farming not a very good option?

“No generally people give their farms for rent to private companies; private companies pay about 50 thousand a year for ten acres of farm. So that is good, If you take a government job then it is so simple, you can just go for vacations no tension”

“What are your friends doing?” I asked

“Most of my friends are trying for jobs, some are continuing their father business, some have found jobs?”

"Is there someone whom you really look up to and admire"
"I had a friend, who took up a job in private goods company and he then he started taking and in less that two years he had earned about 4-5 lakhs."

"But do you want to make money like that?"
"No", he said, "I want to live a simple life"

Do you smoke and drink?

“Sometimes I smoke, when some of my friends do, I just need thirty rupees everyday for my personal expense, most is petrol, that would make me happy. If I can spare that much I would be very happy. ”

Do you vote?

Yes I vote and I vote for congress, because congress gives reservations and then I will get the job.

Do you want to do everything for the country?

“First I want to do something, for my parents, and give them a peaceful life. Then I will think of doing something for the country. That is why I want to be settled first”

:D

Three months trip around India

2009-09-26T09:51:00.002+05:30

Since last twenty days I am on a three months trip around India. :). I have kind of taken a break from work and have been traveling. The primary focus of the trip is to meet NGOs/organizations/people who have been doing great work in social sector.

We have a tour blog which is can be found here.

I have to post lot of stuff here, people I have met and the places I have seen. Over last twenty days I have learned so much about things, met amazing people (the best among them were one Naga Sadhu and one guy who has done PhD on the brain of honeybees).

I will write individual posts soon on various people and places I see.

Cheers.

A Kilikili Film

2009-09-01T06:28:00.003+05:30

I guess if you are familiar with this blog, you might already be knowing about Kilikili.

Kilikili is kannada for giggles or the laughter. This initiative was started to make public spaces esp. parks more accessible to special children. Kilikili has adopted 3 parks in Bangalore with help of the local government. An amazing concept that you can easily replicate in your neighborhood.
You can read more about Kilikili here.

So one thing that has kept us busy over last few times was this film. We shot this footage almost one year back and since that time have been trying to edit it :). This is the alpha version of the film and I am putting it here, do watch it and give any kind of constructive feedback if you have any.
The final version of the film with improved sounds and crisp editing is in the pipeline.

Related Posts
Kilikili time
Change begins with me, I can be the change.
Story of Stuff (A must watch if you have not already watched it)

Back from the Slumber

2009-08-24T17:47:00.002+05:30

I have kind of disappeared from the blogger, now that I did not have things to write, but then somehow never really got to writing anything in last one month, not for the blog, not for NGOPost and not for anything else. But there have been so many things happening, so here is what I have been up to in recent times....

1. I went to kerala to see the boat race, someday I should write a full blog on this but it is something that you should go specially if you are staying in Bangalore. The boats are so long that they enter one frame of the photo, , as many as 100 people (that was what I counted in one boat) and the atmostphere and everything about boat race is amazing. Boat race happens once a year, and there are two three that happen, and I went to one called Nehru cup.

2. These days am making a website for NGOPost, NGOPost is turning two on 1st september and we would release the website then. :), when you can see it.

3. Went to CharMinar and the in to the lanes around it, I have been to hyderabad number of times but never really to Charminar, in all these days. People said that it is just a four minars so what is so great to see there, but then the bazaar around that is good. Not that I have not seen that kind of bazaars, but I did not know it was such a big bazaar of bangles, bangles and bangles and bangles everywhere. There were also lot of "scent" shops, though I did not get a chance to take a look at them.

Will write more later soon, lot of things to write and say.

Change begins with me, I can make a difference

2009-07-13T15:13:00.004+05:30

Below is experience of one guy (Shabbir) with Bangalore traffic police about how you can make a difference.

Really worth reading and inspiring.

Note: This is not a spam, have emailed shabbir and he replied back also.

"
It was Friday 5th June, at about 3 pm I drove my Ford Ikon car into 80 feet road at Indira Nagar in Bangalore, wanting to reach on time for my 3.30 pm meeting with a client.

As I entered the wide road I saw a posse of traffic constables who stopped my car on the side and asked me to produce my car documents to the Traffic Sub Inspector (SI) who was standing on the footpath. I walked upto the SI and displayed my Driving Licence. He told me to bring my Car Insurance certificate and also my Emission Certificate for the car.

I walked back to my car and realised that I had not carried either of the documents in my car and was cursing myself for such a slip. I came back to the SI and told him that I did not have my document and what was to be done. The SI had a half smile & told me that the fine for not carrying both these documents was Rs 600/- however I could pay him Rs 300/-.

I removed my wallet and told the SI that I would pay the amount and wanted a receipt. He suddenly got stern and told me that in that case the fine was Rs 1,100. I paid the fine of Rs 1,100 and took the receipt, wondering why the fine had suddenly escalated just because I wanted a receipt instead of paying the Rs 300 bribe which the SI had asked.

After my client meeting as I was driving back, I was annoyed at myself for not carrying the documents and I was angry that at an officer at an SI level was blatantly seeking a bribe. I decided that I should do something about it and as soon as I reached my Home Office, I logged on to the net and found out that the Traffic Police of Bangalore has a website, which gives details of the fines chargeable, it also provides for logging complaints and gave the email ids of the Asst Commissioner of Police (ACP) for the traffic division.

At about 7 pm that evening I wrote an email to the email id of the ACP, narrating the incident of the afternoon and lodging a formal complaint in the email. I also found out the website of Lok Ayukta of Karnataka and marked a cc of the same email to the email id's given on the Lok Ayukta's website.

By about 7.30pm I had done the needful, and I was happy with myself that what I preach in my Leadership Workshops wrt Values, I had practised to a large extent (Paying the fine instead of paying the bribe and reporting the bribe demand to the best of my ability). I thought the chapter ended there, little realising that I would be having an indeed amazing and pleasant experience in the hours and days to come.

On Saturday 7th June (the next day) at about 2 pm, I logged into my Home Office and checked my email and lo behold, I had three emails sent to me by the ACP to who I had written the complaint email the previous day. The first one, informed me that I had done the right thing by paying the fine and not the bribe, the second email asked to give my complaint in writing and fax it to the ACP, so that action can be taken on the SI and the 3rd email asked me to give the ACP a call on his office no or his cell no, so that he could accelerate the action to be taken on the erring SI.

I promptly put my complaint in a letter and sent a scanned copy through the email to the ACP.

On Sunday, 8th June in the morning I checked my email and I had an email from the ACP stating that the erring SI had been suspended from service and that I must give the ACP a call to work out the next formalities. I called the ACP (till now I did not know the name of this ACP) who answered my call on the Sunday.

During my phone conversation he introduced himself as ACP Pravin Sood, and thanked me for doing what I did wrt not paying the bribe and also escalating the matter in writing, he explained that many Bangalore citizens escalate such cases to him but then back down when asked to give the complaint in writing. He apologised to me (yes - he said "I am sorry for what you faced with this SI who harassed you, because he did not have any business stopping your to check your documents if you had not done any traffic violation") and he invited me over to rea to his office at a time convenient to me.

After I kept the phone down, I could not believe that here was a case where within 48 hours of an incident of seeking bribe, the erring office was suspended.

I decided that I must meet in person ACP Pravin Sood, speaking with who for 10 minutes had changed a few paradigms in my mind about Public Service Officers. Since I was travelling the next few days, I sought time with him on 15th June at 4.30 pm at his office. I reached ACP Sood's office a little early (at 4.10 pm) and was pleasantly surprised when I was ushered into his office at 4..15 pm, he asked me to sit as he was completing a meeting with another delegation.

At sharp 4.30 pm he ended his previous meeting and turned to me and spent the next 20 minutes discussing with me several aspects of Traffic Policing in Bangalore and offered me a cup of tea (many corporate clients I visit, do not see me on time and do not offer me a cup of tea, so what ACP Sood was doing was indeed better than many corporate folks I have met!).

Right through the conversation, he was courteous, frank and completely articulate on his thoughts and ideas. He reiterated that there would be no repercussions on me for giving the complaint in writing, and that I may have to make one appearance in person when the internal enquiry is done, he also offered that instead of me having to come to the Police headquarters to give the statement, he could send one of his officers to my residence to take my statement if I so wish.

When I was leaving ACP Sood's office, I told him "Over the years many of my friends and cousins have urged me to migrate and settle in one of the western countries, but I have consciously chosen to stay back in India by my choice -- when I have interactions like the one I had with you ACP Sood, I am happy that I made the choice to stay back in India". It was an impromptu comment, straight from my heart to which ACP Sood just smiled and shook my hand.

When I was walking out of ACP Sood's office, I felt reassured that if we have officers like ACP Pravin Sood in our country, there is a Glimmer of Hope against corruption, provided we as citizens have the courage to say NO to bribes and have the inclination to report cases of bribe (I am no major RTI or social activist, yet I found all the info I needed on the web, sitting in my Home Office).

Change begins with me, I can make a difference!
"

I have had similar experiences but I have never gone that far to meet ACP and all, but I guess we should start doing that, at least start questioning and try to find answers.

Similar stories:
Did you see Rang De Basanti?

Look at the Horizon

2009-07-02T13:38:00.002+05:30

"Look at the Horizon",
that is what one of the characters in one of the Paulo Coelho's book keeps telling (I dont remember which book, neither do I remember the name of the character).

He says that most of us limit our vision just to the things within two feet of our vicinity, we keep getting tensed about them, worrying about them, getting caught in them, and overlooking everything else which is beyond that boundary line. But then we so easily forget to look beyond, there are so many things in life other than the current problem at hand, so many possibilities, so many people who love us, so many opportunities which still exists.

Lot of times when I am getting late for meeting I just get caught and lost thinking about those only. I stop looking at trees, people walking on foot path, the sky, the rain, children and everything, and all the energies are spent in figuring out if I will reach five minutes late or ten, and if I have enough reasons for either of the case. But then when you think about it two days later, how stupidly inconsequential it all seems.

So I keep telling myself, "Look at the Horizon", because there are endless possibilities, opportunities and people who are waiting for you to become friends.

PS: Have been away from blogs and also on commenting on blogs, but would be back soon.

Another 10K in Bangalore

2009-06-01T09:29:00.006+05:30

Marathon, Marathon, Marathon (Actually it was not a marathon, it was just a 10K run, but I guess marathon for most of us) another one got over in Bangalore. While running yesterday I was getting bugged about this thought about the history of marathon and here I found it on google.

According to which,

The modern Athens Marathon commemorates the run of the soldier Pheidippides from a battlefield at the site of the town of Marathon, Greece, to Athens in 490 B.C. Legend has it that Pheidippides delivered the momentous message "Niki!" ("victory"), then collapsed and died.

I was just talking about marathon to my friend in office today morning and he said,

"Why would you want to run marathon? It blocks the roads and create chaos. Have you ever thought what happens to the ambulances during the marathon time?"

He had a valid point but then I guess such kind of events are very important for the city, because it kind of gives you a break from normal work, day to day life and just sometime to think. I specially loved all the people who had come down on streets to cheer the runners. Also it is so nice to see so many old people running, and so many people running for some cause that they support.

But then the ambulance points was very valid, and I tried calling some hospitals to see if there has been any problem yesterday because of marathon, but then I did not get any response, and I also thought it was not a good idea to ask because, they were more bothered to handle any emergency cases if any rather than answering some queries, which would be used to write the blog, probably some of the doctors reading the blog can comment on this.

So I guess instead of stopping these events we just have to take up steps to improve and organize these events with least amount of discomfort to other people.

Like last time around there were lot of bottles thrown everywhere,

this time an organization called Saahas made lot of effort to try different alternatives to plastic bottles and also

to put the bins at different places so that bottles are not thrown every where. Well the alternative part did not go well, but this time around they managed to put the bins, which did result in much cleaner roads. Really appreciate their effort and am sure next run we would do better to try some alternatives to plastic bottles as well.

Do run a marathon when it happens next, it is really fun, it will make you exercise your limit and you get so high when you just cross the finish line. As someone had rightly put the banner,

"Pain is temporary but the pride is permanent"

The Snake and a holy man

2009-05-25T10:13:00.002+05:30

There was a certain village, where one snake used to live. Now this snake used to keep biting people and all the people in the village were very scared of him. So the people of the village never used to venture out of the house much because of the snake, even children did not used to play outside their houses.

One day one holy man was passing through the village and he was surprised to see the village so quiet, and on enquiring he got to know about the snake. So this holy man went to talk to the snake, in general you cannot talk to snakes, but holy men have special powers and they can talk to them.

Holy man gave all the gyan to snake, and explained him that it was not a good idea to be biting people around and harassing other living beings. It was against the scriptures and he might suffer in his next birth. The snake was very impressed with the holy man and he promised that he is going to change himself and become a really good good snake.

Now fast forward, one year ahead.

The holy man is again passing through the same village, and he sees the village full of activity. He feels very proud of himself. As he goes forward he sees a group of children crowded around something, jumping and playing. When he went near he saw that these children had surrounded the same snake, and they were hitting him with stones and catching its tail and the snake looked completely tortured. Snake was looking very sorry looking and meek.

The holy man drives all the kids away, and feels very sorry for the snake. He asks the snake, what happened. Snake says that as people started realizing that snake had stopped biting, they started making fun of him, and harassing him.

Then the holy man tells the snake, “I had only asked you to stop biting, but not to stop hissing, you have to be nice but still stand up your ground.”

“Be nice to people, but don’t get walked over”, I guess this is the moral of the story.

Guess this is little stupid story, but I really found it very relevant and really liked it.

You may also like to read the following:

How umbrella and slippers came in to existence

A small story

A blog after a long time

2009-05-20T07:48:00.002+05:30

I have been off blogger for a long time, not that I did not want to write and also not that I have been lazy, but somehow it has been slipping lower and lower in my priority list with so many things struggling to find place in my To-Do list.

here are some of the recent things that I have been up to..

1. Just came back from a week long US trip, I really love this short trips because they kind of rewind you up and you come back with so much of enthusiasm and new ideas. I saw Stanford campus for the first time, and I really liked it. Sometimes feels that I should go back to school again.

2. Mayank and I have been busy making a short film for Kilikili, it is almost done and we are going to put this up on youtube shortly.

3. Am reading this book called "Blue Sweater" from Jacqueline Novagratz. The author is a founder of Acumen Fund, a non profit venture that invests in various sustainable social enterprises around the world. It is a nice book about experiences of author, as a 25 year old trying to setup micro finance institutes in Africa (Rwanda). Apparently Jacqueline had a blue sweater when she was young which she donated, and when she went to Africa (Rwanda) she found one guy wearing her sweater. Her sweater had traveled all the way from US to Africa and probably had gone from hand to hand before finally landing up with this guy. :)

4. Finished reading "Age of Kali" by William Dalrymple and I would suggest you can read it, I really love his books.

5. Went to attend this talk on environment, where the guy opened his lecture with this joke, which I liked,

Year 1995, two seven year olds are having conversation,

First guy: Hey I saw a condom in the verandah?

Second guy: What is a condom?

Go Forward, Year 2009, two seven year olds are having conversation

First guy: Hey I saw a condom in verandah?

Second guy: What is a verandah?

I guess am going to be more regular to the blog now, I like to pen my thoughts down once in a while and there are so many things to write about.

Soil-less Garden...

2009-04-13T11:52:00.008+05:30

On saturday, Parul and I set off. It was a long weekend and we wanted to do something and go and visit some place, or go and talk to someone. After looking for some alternatives and not being able to decide on anything, in morning we decided that we are going to go and take a look at "hydroponics" garden that has been recently setup.

So "Hydroponics" is soil less cultivation. Under this system you grow plants, in small plastic containers or wooden frames, and use water and nutrients and NO soil. These apparently are very easy to cultivate, and since they don’t require soil, you could put this tubs on your terrace, balcony and everywhere. Since it is more controlled environment they don’t need pesticides and give better yields (as claimed) and many people think this could be solution to world hunger.

Wooden frames made to cultivate vegetables.

(Note the above picture is from pet bharo website, not from the school we visited)

We had got to know about hydroponics through one story on NGOPost, which was about "Pet Bharo" initiative, run by Indian institute of simplified hydroponics in Bangalore. So when we called them Saturday morning they asked us to visit this school, Sandra Rickett public school on Hennur road, which hae successfully implemented this technique and they were using the vegetables grown from there for the school consumption.

And when we reached there the garden did look very impressive. There were plants and plants every where, in plastic tubs, small plastic buckets, wooden frames and everywhere except in soil. Tomatoes, brinjals, cauliflower, chillies, Bhindis and everything. Tomatoes were specially thriving, with so many of them. The lady was running the school said that she did this training course on hydroponics. So in simplified terms, the way it works is that, you put some fiber (coconut outer) along with Perlite (which you get in market, and is kind of volcanic rock), and then you grow plants in them. Use the same seeds that are used for soil. You use nutrient (which again you get in market) dissolved water to water these plants. And then plants would grow.

Tomatoes and tomatoes thriving in these small wooden frames.

(The above picture is from school we visited, did not have camera and it is from my Nokia Phone)

It all looked good, but to me it kind of gave me a feeling of concentration camp for plants. Just like chicken farm, here there were plants and plants all put it small space, they had even put some plastic bags hanging from the wall, in which they had this perlite and fiber and plants coming out of it. Did not give such comfortable feeling, and kind of felt sorry for the plants.

Also I was wondering if there are any health hazards of consuming such vegetables. So then went to google, but then did not find any people who were complaining about the health hazards. People believe that these vegetables are much better than the ones grown with pesticides. There were one or two articles which said, that there was some concern about the long term effects on immunity system, as plants growing in soil, do absorb some fungi and other nutrients which do increase our immune system, but still no detail study reports that I could locate as of now for any issues related to health.

Probably over the coming days, would try to figure out if are there any regulations from Indian government for the same.

As of now I will try to do this course when this happens in Bangalore next, May they had said, and then at least would start of growing flowers and small vegetables on my terrace.

Have a great week ahead.. :)

Related write ups..
Pet Bharo on NGOPost. Solving poverty and Hunger in India.

You may also like to read.
Changing the mindset.
Cola Life: Using coca cola distribution network to distribute medicines.

Remembering my first election...

2009-03-27T09:50:00.006+05:30

That was long time back. But I do still remember it very clearly. Everyday we used to go to school in a bus, not a school bus but the public transport. Me and my sister, I was in third class I think. Things were very different at that time, small town, good busses, less crowded, and we used to have almost the same crowd going in that bus everyday, and most people kind of knew each other, not personally but as a fellow bus mates.

It was election time then, and there was this guy who used to travel with us, much older, he was in college at that time. And just like that he asked me,

"Whom would you vote for if you have been given a chance to vote?"

"Congress", I said, without sligthest hesitation

"Why would you want to vote for Congress?"

"I will vote for congress because Sarojni Naidu was from Congress", I said,

We had just done one lesson in English about Sarojni Naidu and I was very impressed with her and she was from congress, some first minister or something and I don’t even remember now and that seemed logical enough to vote for Congress because she worked for congress.

But then this guy burst out laughing, and he even told one fellow old passenger who was absorbed in reading the newspaper, that we would vote for congress because Sarojni naidu was from congress. I did not quite realize then that why would he want to laugh at us for this.

"No you should vote for BJP, because they are building temples" he said,

Till then probably I had never heard of BJP, or probably had never paid any attention to it, but this was first time. And at that time all of sudden this awe of BJP was generated, because of course building temples at that time did seem a very noble deed. As kids we used to love going to temples. Whenever we used to go for cycle rides or just play, if we ever passed any temple we would make it a point to go, and try to remember and do all kinds of things in temple that we had seen mom and elders do when they went to temple, and ofcourse taking "prasad" back home. It was also a great thrill for us to discover new temples, small small ones, and then come back and report to mom, as if discovered gold.

Anyways, but this thing about, BJP as a party who were noble and build temples stayed with me for a long long time, until much later when I grew up and started realizing that how bad and ugly these temple building business is. And I just feel sad for that college guy in the bus and for others who vote just because some party seems to be doing some outwardly noble deed like this.

My First Job.

First day at School.

The Age of Kali

2009-03-24T06:44:00.003+05:30

These days I am reading this book called "The age of Kali" from William Dalrymple. I have always loved his books, because there is so many things about history that I am not even aware of. I also like the way he intervenes personal stories with historical facts making it very interesting read.

There are so many things that we lost due to partition of India, and we hardly know anything except that there were roits and thousands of people were killed. But also so much of culture and so many cities were lost and overnight were turned in to refugee camps. He writes about this particular story about this guy from Lucknow, who owns a haveli in Lucknow, which is right now in ruins and his story in his words goes as follows,

"We belonged to one of the rich families in Lucknow and at that time it was a very prosperous city. It was full of havelis and magnificent buildings, markets smelled of "scents" and delicious kababs. It was a city of poets, art and even poor people spoke such good urdu. Lucknow'is were known for their etiquettes and manners. But overnight during the partition everything changed, havelis were burnt down, known faces disappeared, refugees appeared. Nothing remained same as before.

As far as my personal life goes, it also changed a lot. My father was a close friend, helper and subordinate of people working in Muslim league. But he never visualized what partition could bring about. And after partition he could never forgive himself, and he went off and stayed in London, he did not have the heart of returning to either place because he thought that in some ways he was responsible for bringing suffering in so many people lives. My mother stayed here in lucknow in this haveli, but then during 1965, this haveli was seized by government, because my father no longer being an Indian citizen this haveli was seen as enemy property. This was occupied by various government offices and they plundered and looted it. My mother did not give up, and stayed here outside in the veranda for two years. Finally the haveli was handed over to her in the ruined state and that is how it is right now"

Now when I went to Lucknow during the Jagriti yatra, I could see it as full of cycle rickshaws and dirty and in middle of all this old buildings that perhaps some day were beautiful.

I wonder why wont they put such stories in school books, they give such a nice picture of what happened and probably it would make everyone realize that all this narrow minded ness about religion, languages can take us nowhere and we would end up losing so much. Sometimes I wonder with all this ram sena and shiv sena and all kinds of mujahideens, if we are going forward or going back wards.

PS: Read the book if you can get hold of it.

Of Tree walk and Battle of Plassey

2009-03-09T09:48:00.005+05:30

Yesterday I went to this Tree walk which was organized by Bangalore walks, they do it every weekend. So me, lekha and raghu landed up there 7 am in the morning on a sunday.

Vijay was going to be our tour guide, you can find his entire series of articles on the Banglaore walks website. And I was expecting more of botanical kind of walk, where he would give information about each and every tree, but then it was much more than that. What was very impressive was that he told us lot of stories about each and every tree, stories related to its origin or how it came about being in lalbaug abd his individual experiences and observations with the trees.

For example he was explaining us this tree called Palash, I have seen this tree before but never paid much attention to it. It has a tree which has bright orange flowers, and it is also called the flame of the forest. Traditionally Gulal was made from the flowers of this tree (until all the synthetic gulal came into being), and it was used as dye for clothes.

But well one of another interesting things that he told was that, apparently, battle of Plassey was fought in Palash groove and hence the name battle of Plassey. I googled little bit and found this in one of the NCERT text books. (I don’t remember studying this, but isnt this good way to teach associated trees with history, it would be so easy to remember)

From NCERT ,

"Did you know how Plassey got its name? Plassey is an anglicised pronunciation of Palashi and the place derived its name from the palash tree known for its beautiful red flowers that yield gulal, the powder used in the festival of Holi."

Photos of Palash tree,

Flowers of Palash tree

Palash tree in bloom

Like these there were other numerous stories which Vijay told, and it was fun.

One another thing which I found particularly interesting was about Bamboo flowering.

It seems that Bamboo trees flower once in about 40-50 years, and during that they produce large quantities of seeds. After this bamboo dies and regenerates from these seeds. But this is not the end of story, apparently this large quantities of seeds result in substantial increase in rodent population in that year since rodents thrive on the seeds. And after consuming the seeds rodents move to fields and granaries and which results in large amount of crops getting destroyed. Apparently most of famines of Mizoram (which has substantial Bamboo forests) have been a result of this Bamboo flowering. Hence Bamboo is also called "Flower of Famine".

From India Today,

The flowering of Bamboo sends Mizoram into terrifying spiral crop devastation and food shortages. The last time bamboo bloomed 48 years ago, it led to famine and two decades of violent insurgency.

Sunscreen..

2009-03-02T09:27:00.004+05:30

Recently one of my friends, anupreet introduced me to this song, Sunscreen,

It does not have a catch tune, or great music in background, but I really love the lyrics of this song,

The song is called Sunscreen, by Baz Luhrmann, YouTube link. Do listen to it if you have not...

Sicne the time I have got this new phone, I listen to music when I am on way to office, and it is a great way to being the day, I love biking and with some of the best music on, it really sets up the day for me.

"Start your day with best music" they say, and it really helps.

Below is the sunscreen lyrics..

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '99
Wear sunscreen
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be
it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by
scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable
than my own meandering
experience…I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not
understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and
recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before
you and how fabulous you really looked….You're not as fat as you
imagine.

Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as
effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing
bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that
never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm
on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you

Sing

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with
people who are reckless with yours.

Floss

Don't waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you're ahead, sometimes
you're behind…the race is long, and in the end, it's only with
yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you
succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your
life…the most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they
wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year
olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium.

Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have children,maybe
you won't, maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky
chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don't
congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your
choices are half chance, so are everybody else's. Enjoy your body,
use it every way you can…don't be afraid of it, or what other people
think of it, it's the greatest instrument you'll ever
own..

Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

(Brother and sister together we'll make it through
Someday your spirit will take you and guide you there
I know you've been hurting, and I know I've been waiting to be there
for you. And I'll be there, just tell me now, whenever I can.
Everybody's free.)

Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for
good.

Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the
people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you
should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and
lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you
knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live
in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will
philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize
that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were
noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund,
maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one
might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will
look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who
supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the
ugly parts and recycling it for more than
it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen…

(Brother and sister together we'll make it through
Someday your spirit will take you and guide you there
I know you've been hurting, and I know I've been waiting to be there
for you. And I'll be there, just tell me now, whenever I can.
Everybody's free.)

First impressions of China..

2009-02-17T07:38:00.002+05:30

Yesterday I traveled by all forms of transportation that could possibly be, except the ship. Went till Hong Kong in flight, then from there in bus till, china Border, then a small taxi till one central place, then metro train to finally reach my hotel.

If you are traveling in China, one thing you shold keep in mind, here people dont know English. It is so different as soon as you cross border, in HongKong where most poeple speak English and in China no one does. Even almost all the boards are in Chinese. Thankfully we had the hotel name written in Chinese, and we were showing that around to people to ask the way.

Ofcourse everyone told me this other thing that in China even for non vegetarian people food is a problem, and trust me it is. Here yesterday we were trying to glance though the McDonalds menu, and the only thing that seemed veg there was this item which was marked Cheese Burger. Because every where it was, ham burger, fish fillet burger, chicken burger, but this was the only one which which seemed vegetarian. But then it was beef, I just realized that when anything is not written it means it has meat... so the only thing was remaining was potato fries and corn.

But then we found this great thing in China, you get amazing fruits. Water melon, guavas and strawberries. You get loads of them and quite cheap and they are much better than what we get in India.

So far it has been fun... kind of adventure. Plan to go to some street market here today, lets see how it goes.

Plan to post some pictures soon.

Ad for Kick boxing..

2009-02-13T20:29:00.003+05:30

Saw this "kinky" Ad for kick boxing.

Interview with Taxi Driver..

2009-02-13T19:47:00.004+05:30

Heavy traffic to airport and I thought why not get to know the taxi driver better. So the coversation that we had.

(Intially I thought I will note it down while he speaks, but then I have seen that people get scared as soon as I get out my diary, so now I have just come to aiport and typing this in before I forget. )

Where are you from?

Not from Bangalore Sir, you know Udipi, yes I am from village close to that.

How did you get in to this taxi business?

Earlier I was in ICICI prudential as agent, then since this new airport have taken the taxi. Something you have to do na to get money.

How much do you earn?

About 10 thousand sir, and I end up spending about 3-4 thousand.

Is there no employment in your village, why you coming to Bangalore?

No Sir, all good facilities in village, just come to see, see the big city

What your future plans, do you want to continue taxi?

we have chicken farm in village, and "supari" farm, it runs good, so I go back to village after two years.

Are you married?

No Sir,

Will you get married here in Bangalore?

Marriage elders sir, city girl, chicken farm does not adjust, girl from my community.

Are all the facilities good in your village, school, medical and so on?

Facilities all good sir, good school, earlier no teachers now lot of teachers.

Do you have water problem in your place?

No water problem sir, lot of water, near the sea , so lot of water in borewell.

Do you have any ambition in life?

Yes sir, I want to go in to politics, My father also in gram panchayat, I was leader in college. So I want to go ahead in there, but not now, after marriage after two three years.

Do you use pesticides in your farm?

(He did not understand pesticides)

Do you use some "dawa" for the "kidas" in the farm?

DDT sir, yes sir, DDT everyone use. If we dont use DDT then lot of "kidas"

Do you stay alone in Bangalore?

No sir, with four people from my village.

Are all of them taxi drivers?

No some in restaurant, some private company, like that.

Do lot of poeple come out of village and dont go back there?

No sir, after marriage, difficult to live in bangalore, minimum expense 8 thousand, not possible sir, good job stay in Bangalore, Most go back village for marriage and stay there only.

There is a pause and then he himself starts saying,

"Three of my classmates in Army sir, two in Kashmir, one in Gujarat. Army means lot of value sir, some problem is there, but lot of value."

How did they go in army?

Got seleted from colege sir, they will come to take.

You did not get selected?

I also, but parents did not allow, only son sir, so difficulty. I wanted to go then, but then I came to Bangalore

Do you learn English at school?

Yes sir, for five years, can read and understand little bit. But in village no Hindi only for three years. that is bad, because hindi you need sir, specially if you go to north India, very few in village know hindi.

By the time I am done with this many questions, airport has come. And then he asks me,

Where are you from?

"Baroda", I say, (I thought he would not know where baroda is)

"Irfan Pathan, Yusuf Pathan, sir... that place.."

"Yes" I say

"Cricket lot of interst sir, Dhoni very lucky captain" he says...

And then we depart,

Cricket truly unites India I think.. :)

Will they tell your story?

2009-02-12T09:30:00.005+05:30

Great marketers of the future will not be measured by how well they tell stories to their audience, but rather by how well their audience tells stories about them

I got this line from this blog, and isnt it so true?

Forget about marketing, similar concept also applies to real life. It is never about how many people you know or how many friends you make, but always about how many friends who can vouch and talk ernestly about you and how many of them can stand for you. Most times I feel that "Good Will" is the greatest force that you can possess.

Envelope Story

Taking the first step

Lessons of 2008

2009-02-08T06:59:00.004+05:30

This post should have come earlier, but in many ways my new year has started in Feb and I am still in process of wishing people happy new year.

These are some of the things which I learnt or I should say realized in last year... not like rocket science or anything but still felt like penning them down.

Take Decisions: Lot of times in last year I spent time delaying making decisions, worrying and wondering what if I make the in correct decisions, how it is going to affect and all, but then when you in the constant state of going hence and forth and it drains so much of your energy. So I realized it is always good to take decisions, instead of dilly-dallying it, you may take a wrong decisions but it is ok. At least you would be clear in your mind and would be able to concentrate on other things.

Giving 100%: It is such a simple thing right, but most times I have realized is that I dont do it. Most times in job or otherwise I just sit almost like waiting for something to happen, and then would start working. But then these days now I just keep telling myself give 100% or just get out and take a break and do something else. Even though I dont believe that there is anything like 100% because every time I give in my best effort I always realize that I could have done better, and also I keep realizing that I could do more, and am beginning to believe that we have infinite energy to make and do things if we ever want to do it.

Don’t think : "Thinking" not in the terms of thinking of solution to problems, but thinking as in terms of "what if". I spend so much time doing it, that it is not funny. Someone sent me in the email the other day, "Jo pata nahi hai, uske bare me sochne ka koi matlab nahi hai, aur jo pata hai, uske baare me sochne ka koi faida nahi hai."(What you dont know there is no point in thinking about it and what you know, there is no advantage in thinking about it). And it is so true, I guess you have to constantly tell yourself to be in present and not keep dwelling in either past or future.

Of course it is not that all these things are new to me, I have probably known them ever since, but then it is still just that I don’t apply these that much and now that am going to put little more effort in putting all these in place. :)

Traveling Endlessly

2009-02-04T00:28:00.002+05:30

This year for me has kind of started with a bang, I dont think there was ever a time when I had traveled so much. Since start of this year, I have traveled to 10 different cities, I remember that I was in Banglaore on 31st night spending new year at platform (were a part of the Tata Jagriti yatra then) and even after coming from the yatra, had been for one marketing trip and then for a friends wedding at coimbatore.

The entire month was filled up with waking early in mornings, waking up late at nights, traveled by flight, train and bus, an average of only about 5 hours of sleep everyday, almost running all the time, not having time to eat, hence eating at odd times and odd places, not having time to check, reply to emails.

When you look back at the month, so many memories/images come back, the month passed by in a jiffy, but it kind of memories make you feel as if it was worth a lifetime. Now that feb looks little free, I plan to blog in detail. Already some of the more serious blogs are in pipeline and would be posted soon.

Page3 Stuff

2009-01-26T21:55:00.003+05:30

The other day one of my journalist friends wanted me to go and cover one of the page3 parties on behalf of her. She was supposed to go and write about that, but then she had some personal emergency, and she asked me if I could go and just check out.

I went there in my normal jeans and kurta, but then when I went there the place looked kind of out of world. I have never been to such parties before, and everyone was like so polished and artificial. There was hardly any man who was not in suit, and if at all there was any guy with the jeans, then he was like majorly hep-shep, with long hair and atleast couple of pierceing somewhere on the face. Everything looked so clean from outside, and I did not even talk to anyone, did not even shake hands, wondering if dust from my hands might spoil those nice suits. And ofcourse all women were also very expensively dressed. There was this wiping of hands with tissue with each and every bite of food that you take, the size of starters were like very small, and waiters running left and right trying to ensure that everyone had atleast something to eat or drink.

The feeling was weird, but it was fun observing people. But then twenty minutes or so I got bored, because things seemed kind of repetitive. I just left wondering if I ever go this rich will I be attending these kind of Page3?

Taking the first step

2009-01-19T13:53:00.003+05:30

The other day I was reading Seth Godin, and one thing that he said really struck me.

He said, look at your outbox and see how many mails that you sent out were the replies to incoming mails and how many were self initiatied emails. This could give you an indications of how time do you send in "reaction" as to "action".

Ofcourse this does not apply to everyone, but still i found this simple analysis very powerful.

So many times we just end up in life just waiting for something to happen and reacting and not acting. How many times we wait for some other person to start conversation, go over to adjacent cube to start talking instead of letting time go, in a gathering waiting to be forced to come forward to share the experience rather than volunteering, waiting for life to happen instead of making it happen.

Now whenever I reply to email, I have become little concious, wondering if I could have initiated that or should I start some similar conversation with some other person.

Cheers.

Happy Monday.

Tata Jagriti Yatra comes to an end..

2009-01-17T11:36:00.002+05:30

11Jan, 8am, as soon as the train landed up in to the Mumbai central the yatra had ended. The journey across India for 18 days, through humidit of trivendrum to chilling cold from Lucknow to Delhi came to the end.

Initially I had thought that I would blog about each and every day of the yatra, but then after the first days things got so hectic that there was no time to blog, and I did not even realize where the 19 days disappeared.

I am going to blog about the yatra in coming days, about the things I had seen and people whom I met, things that struck me and so on.

Now as I settle down in to my original life style, I cant seem to forget the train. Train had started looking like home, and somehow I never wanted that thing to end. Telling good bye to everyone that day on mumbai central seemed so difficult, I just felt as if I had know these people for ages, even though 3 weeks back we were strangers. (I just knew 2 people of the 400 people who where there on train)

I learnt so many subtle things during the trip, things which I would not even realize. For one I remember first few days, everyone had their own set of things, tooth pastes, slippers, and so on, and as days went by people started sharing things like tooth pastes, soaps, lunch and dinner plates, chappels, sometimes even towels.

I learned to sleep on the platform, well there is nothing much to learn there, but then, now I know that i can survive on the platform and use the railway waiting rooms for taking bath. I have never been fussy in life about luxurious but this trip even took things little further.

Also more than anything, it is just a new refreshing look at life. We just get caught in office/work/gym/class kind environment and sometimes we can never get the chance to look at ourselves properly, and we just fail to appreciate certain things, and there is always a hand to hold,when I meet different people from marketing, people do tend to treat me in certain way, and expect certain things and behavior from me because they know I am a tech marketing corporate world.

But in train it was completely different. People from different backgrounds and it is good to talk to people and then try to figure out what kind of person different perceive you as. Like how much better you can speak Hindi and not Hinglish. And then you discover so many things about youself, things that you never noticed or seen before. There are so many things that different people can teach and things and small things that touch you and give you a entirely different perspective to things.

I have come back all energetic and refreshed, with number of things that I want to do in my life. More importantly I have made great friends some of them I am sure will remain for a long time to come.

Now that I am typing this from my marketing conferences, strange kind of hangover is there, it seems like a very plesant dream. It was like someone picked me up from your comfortable home/office setting and placed me in carnival with 350 different people, totally different way of life, and then dropped me back all of sudden back to my orginal life with loads of distinct memories, smells, sounds even though now they seem so distant. But then constant scraps in facebook remind me that it was not a dream.

Goli

Dabawallahas...

2008-12-25T09:51:00.001+05:30

In the evening in a small inauguration ceremony we had a small lecture on dabbawallahs..
Everyone I guess knows about the dabbawallahs or has at least heard about this system. But many few of us know the finer details.
Dabbawallah system started way back in 1890 during the British time. It so happened, that one of the Parsi banker did not want to eat outside food for his lunch because of two reasons, one that his bank balance was rapidly going down and next his doctor fees was rapidly going up. So he hired a personal servant who would go to his home in afternoon and bring his lunch cooked by his wife.
Now Avaji bacchi (I have to verify this name as I could not hear it properly and net connection is too slow to verify) saw this and thought that it was a good market need and that there should be loads of people like the Parsi Banker. So he started the Dabba service and one of the most initial dabbawallas were farmers who practically did not have any work for half the year.
Today that humble beginning has grown tremendously and has survived for about 118 years and one the most primary reasons for it surviving is according to Manish is that all the Dabbawallas are stake holders. Manish high lights some of the key achievements of this system.

1. There are about 450 dabbawallahs in Mumbai
2. Their yearly revenue is about 10Million.
3. And most importantly in all 118 years this institution has not gone for a strike even once :) :).

Manish Tripathi then says that, "Over the years working with this system I have learnt one important lesson, I am going to share the secret of this success with you. And my secret about this is that it is very difficult to manage the educated people"

He explaines, "If I have Karsanbhai dabbawalla and an IIM graduate with me and I ask them to deliver one dabba from Andheri to Dadar. By the time I tell Dadar Karsanbhai would already be running to deliver the box while IIM graduate would be asking hundreds of question as to the best method of doing it and reason for doing it and so on"He then says that 85% of dabbawallas are thumps up i.e they cannot read and write. Then he puts this all important lesson, "I am not saying that you should hire uneducated people. All I am saying is that you should hire suitably educated people. If you need graduate and you hire post graduate then all he/she would do is to go to naukri.com and look for a better job”

Manish finished his talk by giving the important lesson that most important thing in entrepreneurship is to solve the problems. And if you are committed to solving the problem money and everything will automatically follow.
Manish did not use any great poems or great lines to give his talk and it was not pre-prepared talk. It was straight from the heart and what he had learnt over the years, very simple and straightforward, I guess very much reflecting the culture of Dabbawallahs.

Lijjat Papad : Working from home

2008-12-25T09:49:00.000+05:30

I guess everyone would remember the ad of Lijjat Papads that used to come on Door Darshan, I remember that it had this tagline of “Khai Jao, Khilae Jao Lijjat Papad”.
Over years Lijjat papad has remained the symbol of women strength. Started way back in 1959 by seven women with the capital of 80 rupees, today it has grown to about 40 branches engaging about 42 thousand ladies.
The organization structure is very simple. Each department is independent, and manages its own profit and loss. The quality is maintained by a central trust. All the raw materials are procured by the central trust and Aata is mixed in each center. Every morning women come and collect their “Aata mixture” and go home, make and dry papads and return them next day morning to get new “Aata mixture”. They get paid fixed amount per kg, which is about 20 rupees a kg of work. There is not restriction to joining, any women can go and start making papads straightaway after signing and promising to abide by the pledge which states that “work is worship and they would not cheat”. All the decisions are taken by the women internally. There are no men involved in this organization.
And the best thing about this organization is that women get to work from home, that ways they can take care of their family and kids and also contribute economically to the family. This is the best part about this organization. Four ladies of Lijjat Papad had come, and one of them being Jyoti Naik. They did not use any MBA words, neither did talk like revenue targets or how they want to grow. They were very simple. From them it just seemed that one simple mantra of Lijjat Papad is “Papad”, that is what they focus on, nothing more. These women don’t care about the competition, about market ups and downs, they just believe that if they make good tasty papads, at whatever small scale that they can, they would be able to sell them.
Of course you may argue that 42 branches in about 40 years is not such a speedy progress, but then for what they stand for and the system that they have created is really amazing. The idea being to empower women, and now they do lot of other side activities, like teaching women, training them to make other stuff such as pickles etc. I guess it is a great example of how women can come together and create something as big as this.

Tata Jagriti Yatra

2008-12-25T09:46:00.000+05:30

For the next 18 days, I am going on the journey of India. I am part of this travel called Tata Jagriti Yatra and I would be traveling through 18 different places in next 18 days to go and visit various social entrepreneurs who have made it big in social sector and initiating a change. We would visit places like Aravind eye hospital, Barefoot college, Anand and many more. We start from Mumbai, then to trivendrum, kanyakumari, Chennai, pondicheery, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Bubneshwar, Jamshedpur, Lucknow, Delhi, Ajmer, Anand and then back to Mumbai.

I am really looking forward to this trip and I always wanted to visit places like Aravind eye hospital and bare foot college. Also we are going to be about 300 people in a train, a special train, staying on train for next 18 days, so everything looks exciting.

The format of trip is mostly to travel at night and visit one of the places during the day time. The purpose of visit is to understand their business model and figure out how each of these have made it big in their own fields. Idea is to learn, and I guess there is no better way to learn than traveling.

The complete list of places that we visit is available here www.jagritiyatra.com,

So I guess my blog coming days is going to be filled with details about this trip, assuming I get a change to blog on train. Most of the blogs will not have pictures as it is simply not possible to upload pictures when you are traveling, so guess would do that when I get to Bangalore

Getting the "wrong books"

2008-12-22T08:33:00.003+05:30

Yesterday I had been to crossword to redeem one gift voucher that I had got long time back. I bought couple of books and then then as always I wrote my name on the book along with the date.

For some reason yesterday, this simple activity made me travel 15 years back, when I was in school, and it used to be such a great thrill every year at the start of the school term to sit and write the names on new books that we used to get and what a thrill it used to be. That was the time to discard the old torn books (I have never been that organized kind of guy and my books by the end of the year were most often or not in atleast two parts), and fashion the new ones.

I remember one such incident, I think I was in class five or something. And as every year we used to get the list of the books to buy, along with our report card for the next year. This time around, I had decided take money from parents and go and buy the books for myself, instead of waiting for parents to take off the time of their busy schedule to get them. Parents generally never hurried to get the books early, mostly they went just about a day before the school was supposed to be reopened.

So this time around, I struggled hard and got money from parents and got the books for myself very much earlier then the school was supposed to start. And I spent rest of the vacation writing my name on the books slowly, after painfully selecting the pen that I wanted to use, and then trying to look for interesting pictured newspapers which I could use to cover the books, and so on. Finally the day came when my school started, and to my surprise I found that the some of the books that I had got were incorrect. To my horror I had got the books which were not supposed to be of my syllabus, of some different grade. In the evening when I told this to my parents, they were upset, and we immediately went to the bookshop, but since I had put my name on the books with all kinds of pens, shopkeeper would not exchange it for the new books. My father had to buy another set of books for me, and he requested the shopkeeper to keep the "wrong books" and try to sell them even at half price to get some money back.

I dont remember my parents being very angry with me or something neither do I remember getting any punishment, just the instruction that from here on we were supposed to write names on our books with pencil and not with pens. I dont even remember if my father got any money for those "wrong books", but I am sure that he made have made endless trips to the shop to check if the books were sold.

I even remember that every year we used to get this number of notebooks that we need for the year. Starting for english classwork, to english homework, to english composition to english grammar, different notebooks for different things. We used to need about 20 such notebooks, and then father used to sit and analyze and ask me to use the same notebook for composition and grammar and do the partition in middle and so on. In our school they used to allow partition in the middle of notebook, if the subject belonged to same teacher. So parents used to patiently sit and look at teachers and subjects and try to optimize the number of notebooks and reduce them to 15 or something, which I was never keen on, but convicing me with various kinds of reasons.

When I think about it right now, I understand how much struggle it was for parents to save money for the start of year, for our books, notebooks, uniforms etc. Probably that was the most difficult times. And sometimes as kids, we were so adamant to make life difficult for them. But they just went through all that, never making us realize the struggle they had to go through day in and day out.

I owe so much to my parents for what and where I am today.

Waynad Trip

2008-12-18T18:18:00.005+05:30

Last weekend we went for a trip to Waynad as a part of my company offsite. This was my first time to Kerala, and really Kerala has the flavour of its own.

We did not do much of the "tourist activity", one of our office collegues had found his nice home stay, and we ended up spending lot of time there. This guy who owned this home stay, had like this huge plantation to himself, which had a small pond of its own and lots and lots of coffee plantation. here are some of the pictures of that trip.

One of the best thing that I remember about this trip was doing pranayam, I just picked up the spot amid the plantation, and air was so fresh, and it was morning and lot of mist. I know it sounds like a very boring thing to do, but I really liked the feeling of just closing down the eyes and breathing deeply, it just felt very blissful.

Here are the pics.

On the way to home stay.... plantations

The below pictures are of the place we stayed.

Below is the morning photograph of rose, with lot of mist it was lovely.

Coffee beans...

Fine balance....

2008-12-12T22:24:00.002+05:30

I just finished reading this book from "Rohinton Mistry" called Fine Balance.

Very few books have touched me so much as this book. This book is a story about four individuals, bought together by fate, trying to wriggle out of the endless circle of poverty, uncertainty of life, during the time of Emergency (1975)

After RK Narayan, and out of my limited reading habit, this is the best of fiction that I have read till now.

More than that I learnt so many things about Indian history and about the time of emergency that I never read in history books.

Highly recommended read.

The concept of Getting "Out"

2008-12-08T23:26:00.002+05:30

Most of the games that we played as kid, had this concept of getting "out". Remember the time when I used to dread during hide and seek, and never wanted to get out. Getting "out" meant you are not good enough, it meant kind of punishment. Also in many cases "out" meant staying outside for rest of the game while others played. I used to hate the games period in my school because most guys would play cricket, and me not being that good always ended up sitting half the time on the bench. And I hardly know of any of my friends/siblings who did not hate getting out. Infact just to prove that we were "notout" fights used to spring between the best of buddies.

But you have ever wondered why this concept is there. Is it to make us competitive? Is it to prepare everyone for the race that children would face as they grow up?

This was the question that was asked in one of the Games workshop organized by Dream a Dream. And I really found it interesting, because all the games we learnt in the workshop did not have the concept of getting "out". They were just fun games.

Let me describe one game, The name of game is "Simon Says"

In this game everyone stands. There is one conductor of the game. So if the conductor says, "Simon says dance", then everyone has to dance, if conductor says "Simon says run" everyone has to run. But if the conductor just says "run" you dont have to run, because simon did not say to run. In short you have to follow anything what 'Simon says' and nothing else.

If you are caught doing the wrong thing, you then you have to come out in the center and conduct the game.

Not you may aruge that this game also have a concept of getting "out". But I just found that there was suble different. In this game "out" did not mean punishment, it only meant that it was more fun. Because even I wanted to be a conductor and make people do weird things. Say like, "Simon says, pick your nose".. :).

So when I played the game I could see that most participants did not want to get "out" because they did not want to be seen as "dumb", but at the same time, most of them did not mind getting "out", because they were having loads of fun conducting the game.

The idea of workshop was to play games with children and yet not to make some children feel left out. All the games were woven around this idea. And I really liked the workshop not only because I had fun, but also because I really found this entire idea very thought provoking.

Dream a Dream has a document which describes all such kind of games that you can play with children, you can read it here.

Email Forwards and 49-O

2008-12-05T09:19:00.003+05:30

It has become a fashion since the Mumbai attacks to keep sending forwards, especially provocative forwards. And I don’t know what the rationale behind it is; probably it is perceived that if you are on internet and you don’t take part in any of these useless forwards then you don’t care enough.

I don’t have anything against forward, but I am against forwards which are not authentic and provocative, without any rationale whatsoever.

One of the most irritating forwards that I have received is regarding article 49-O,

The email goes like this, and funnily I have these emails about two times every day and it goes like this.

Did you know that there is a system in our constitution, as per the

1969 act, in section

"49-O" that a person can go to the polling booth, confirm his

identity, get his finger

marked and convey the presiding election officer that he doesn't want

to vote anyone!

Yes such a feature is available, but obviously these seemingly

notorious leaders have

never disclosed it. This is called "49-O".

Why should you go and say "I VOTE NOBODY"... because, in a ward, if a

candidate wins,

say by 123 votes, and that particular ward has received "49-O" votes

more than 123, then

that polling will be cancelled and will have to be re-polled. Not only

that, but the

candidature of the contestants will be removed and they cannot contest

the re-polling,

since people had already expressed their decision on them. This would

bring fear into

parties and hence look for genuine candidates for their parties for

election. This would

change the way, of our whole political system... it is seemingly

surprising why the

election commission has not revealed such a feature to the public....

this is a wonderful weapon against corrupt parties in India... show

your power,

expressing your desire not to vote for anybody, is even more powerful

than voting... so

don't miss your chance. So either vote, or vote not to vote (vote

49-O)."

What irritates me is that people dont even care to verify the contents before forwarding.

Did quite a bit of research to find that there is something called 49-o, which says that you may choose not to vote and inform your decision to electoral office. But that’s about it. Nothing like what is there in forwards. I found a very useful thread on this here,

http://www.indianofficer.com/forums/indian-polity/1220-article-49-o-right-say-no.html

Also a nice write up came up in DNA as well

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1211098

Another very useful and informative blog.

http://www.upperstall.com/blogs/punjab-da-puttar/49-o-not-the-answer/

So I was wondering what is the use of the 49-O clause? And from what I understand it is in a way only to pressurize political parties to field better candidates.

So request to all to not to forward this email or for the matter of fact any email, without verifying the contents. Because you might end up spreading wrong information.

Cheers.

Be Born Everyday

2008-11-25T18:09:00.003+05:30

Read this lines on Pritesh's blog, and I absolutely loved them, hence reposting here. (He saw it on TV, did not know such useful stuff comes on TV :) )

“Be born everyday
Aaj rockstar kal pilot
And who knows what the day after
Kabhi kisi anjan station par utar ke dekho
Kabhi kisi gumnam shahar ka ticket katao
Dusri ki galtiyo se kya seekhna, make your own mistakes yaar
Never resemble your passport photo for more than three months
Har subah shock your reflection
Explore
Bachpan ke kya kuch nahi banana chahte the
Why not today?
Be born everyday”

So what will you be today?

The Envelop Story

2008-11-19T13:54:00.006+05:30

Well, in one of the marketing conference, and one of the speakers told this interesting story which i really liked, Ofcourse it is related to marketing, but probably you can apply this to real life.

There was a certain airline company say HiFly airlines, which used to consume about 1 million of envelops every year. They used envelops to communicate to customers their tickets, offers, new flight informations, frequent flyer programs and so on etc. At start of each year they used to float a tender, asking for proposals (pricing) from envelop companies for that years quantities, and then as it happens the contract goes to lowest bidder.

So this was just a pure price game, there was not much of options for the envelop companies other than to put the best possible deal they could afford and hope for the best.

But one envelop company tried to do it differently. They approached the HiFly airlines and said that they would like to do research on the envelop usage in their company. They wanted to find out, for what purposes the envelop were used, how many people respond back, sizes of envelops used and so on. Envelop company told HiFly that it was just some extra work that they were willing to do purely from research point of view. The airline people did not find any problem in this, and they allowed the research to be done.

In course of research the Envelop company found the following,

1. Most of the envelops that went out were for frequent flyer program, and offers for free flights.

2. About 80% of the people never opened those envelops.

Considering this observations the Envelop company suggest to airlines that for frequent flyer they should be designed differently. They should be windowed envelops, and top of envelop should be printed like this,

You are

[3] (Through the window)

Flights away from getting a free flight (something as in below picture)

Apart from this the envelop company gave quite a few other suggestions as to how to make envelops more attractive, and more tempting for people to see it.

Airline company really liked these suggestions and on trial run, they really found out that it substantially increased their responses to their otherwise mostly unread envelops.

After this Airline company got rid of the tender process. They joined hands with the this particular envelop company, to provide them with envelops and to also do frequent analysis on their usage and suggest changes.

I really liked this story, because most times, we dont take initiatives or do more work, not because we dont want it, but most times because uncertainity clouds us. But sometimes I guess we have to do stuff, with genuine interest, and without bothering about rewards,

rewards come, maybe little later but they do.

Do you want a Barren Bangalore?

2008-11-10T23:20:00.007+05:30

Sunday, I went for this rally organized by Hasiru Usiru, protesting against the Bangalore authorities cutting trees and trees and more trees in bangalore for road widening and for Bangalore railway metro. It was really great to see so many people who came out on Sunday morning for the protest.

Ofcourse this is a debatable topic and many do feel that there is no other solution to Bangalore traffic, other than widening the roads and reducing the green cover. Lot of people even have been skeptical if the protest is worth it. And if enough research has been done on the alternate solutions.

But being in Hasiru Usiru mailing list for quite some time, and knowing some of the people who are behind it, I have no doubt about their competency. Hasiru Usiru has done numerous studies and have made varioius reports, both of the ineffectiveness of widening of roads in long run and also on alternative solutions. You can read lot of stuff about this on their website. I wonder though how things are in other cities, if they are facing the same issues.

One another thing great about this protest was that, they ensured that there was no litter. There were no banners which were thrown here and there and also ensured that the regular traffic does not get disturbed.

Anyways, for now, I will just put down some pictures and really good posters that people came up with on that day.

This guy carried the kid all throughout the walk which was for more than one hour

This sign board is so apt, when you sit to think about it.

Finally when everyone gathered at the Town Hall

It was great to see quite a number of children join in for the walk

Very cute...

One of hte most innovative banners that I saw.. :)

Another good one

And then finally this really cute kid who was there all throughout shouting and carrying the banner all along her neck, and in the end of protest decided to take little rest. Really cute...

Marketing lessons: Go and find the hook

2008-11-08T17:30:00.003+05:30

The other day one of my collegues in office, (we are both in marketing), was talking to one of the customers who was hardcore north indian in English. Somehow it looked so artificial, so dry, felt as if nothing was coming out of inside, it all seemed painted from outside. My collegue himself is very fluent in Hindi and I kept telling him that the best way when talking to customers is to talk in the language that they understand best. If you dont know the language, try to use atleast some phrases that you might have picked up from somewhere, or atleast learn some of the phrases in different languages. Or if that does not work possible, you could always talk about the festivals, that you might thing that person might be celebrating, it could be Pongal, Ed or deepawali. It would be tourist places near the customers destination, or could be food or anything.

I remember sometime back, I had a conference call with some guys in New Zealand, it was the time when some interesting cricket match going on between India and Australia. And I was asking them about what they thought, and it sparked out with a small snippet of conversation, and this guy was remarking how it always pleased him if Tendulkar made century against Australia. And it did make rest of the conversation little lighter. Atleast it always ensures that the customer will not shout at you. Somehow it lightens up the whole thing.

Nothing works better than trying to find some hook, with which you can connect and relate to the customer. I really think it goes a long way in building relationships. Most importantly it makes the conversation more interesting.

I dont know how it works for other relationships, but trust me it definately works for marketing.

So go and find the hook... :)

Disturbing piece of news

2008-10-30T09:25:00.004+05:30

Read this very heart wrenching story about the aftermath of Bihar floods. Do read it, atleast it will for a moment make us feel that we are so blessed to be living comfortably.

Also I read this funny piece of news in morning papers today. This Kannada director Krishne Gowde wanted to name his film as "12 December" and it seems that Karnataka Film chambers does not allow it, Apparently the movie titles cannot be in English and they have to be in Kannada, hence they suggested that his movie title should be "Dashambara 12". So the director has decided to junk this project, because he feels that any other title may not have the same impact.

I can understand, bus boards, road signs, being in Kannada, for benefit for most of the poeple, I can understand requesting people to learn kannada, but isn't this too much?

Getting Lifted...

2008-10-25T18:17:00.002+05:30

These days I have discovered this new and convenient way of getting around in bangalore, and that is taking lifts :). It works if you are ok to bear the embarrassment of making those hand signals and everyone rushing past you without giving a look. But then you have to realize that we think more about what other people are thinking about us, than other people, specially unknown people, who actually dont give a damn of what you do on streets.

Of course this method may not work for girls, but for guys I guess they can safely go about using this. More often or not these days I end up finding a lift. Lot of days I take multiple lifts too.

Today was one such day, I was all loaded witih laptop bag in one hand and guitar in another and asking lift at the signal. Actually guitar always helps because people always have this fascination kind of things for people who carry around guitars with them, and it makes taking lift that much easier. Out of all the guys who had stopped at the signal, I saw this guy who had this small choti that was struggling to hang out from his helmet, and from my experience "choti" guys are always very sportive kinds and most likely of people to give lifts and so it happened, I asked him and he readily agreed. No sooner did the light go green, he started asking me about my guitar exploits, and the songs that I could play on guitar. I did nto have anything much to share, and then he told his story about how he had a music band kind of thing in college, and he could play drums, keyboard and guitar, the songs they used to play at that time, and little bit of hindi that he learnt because of playing those hindi songs. Now the job has practically killed all that, and he does not get any time at all. As it usually happened we exchanged bit of history of our lives, our hometowns, and so on. He also told me some of the easy songs that I should rather play and try playing.

When finally I had to get down, and our roads had to part, he gave me his phone number and all, and asked to be in touch. But then as it happens, as I got down, hundreds of things started running in my head, to take auto for remaining distance or to walk or to take another lift and about all the implications that each of this option might have on the plans that I had set up for the day. I got completely lost in my world and this guy slipped out quietly , and now when I am sitting to write this post, I realize that his number has also been lost somewhere in my call list.

Stand up and take action

2008-10-16T09:34:00.000+05:30

Loved this video

Mahishasura

2008-10-10T09:36:00.004+05:30

I have been to Mysore couple of times and also to Chamundi hills but I never really carefully looked at the statue of Mahishasura. It rang little bell inside my head.

Until till yesterday, when i was reading this book from RK Narayana, about Gods, Demons and legends of India, that I read the full story of Mahishasura, and was able to connect Durga Pooja, Mahishasura and everything.

Mahisha means a "Buffalo", and asura ofcourse means Rakshasha (Demon). Apparently it seems that Mahishasura father who was a great Asura, married a she-buffalo, hence their son was called Buffalo-asura. Metaphorically it is supposed to mean that Mahishasura was physically all powerful but maybe not that blessed on the mental front.

As the legend goes, Mahishasura performed rigourous penance for years and Brahma, being pleased, appeared before him. Mahishasure asked the boon that neither any man or God should be able to conquer him, only a woman could conquer him. This way he thought he would remain undefeated since it was highly inconceivable that any woman would dare to challenge him for a battle.

So as it happened, he waged battle with Indra and swarga loka, and none of the gods were able to defeat him. He conquered the Swarga Loka and Gods went in to hiding. In the hiding, all Gods combined all thier powers and created a devi called Durga, who was unmatched in beauty and power. Durga challenged Mahishasura and after 10 days of fierce battle killed him.

Sometimes it amazes me that there are so many stories, legends in Indian mythology, and the way they have survived through the ages. When I had been to Uttrakhand, (if you have never gone, do go, it is heaven) there were so many temples, stones, shrines, lakes all along the way, and each of them had a story associated with it, each had a significance of its own, some stories that I had heard, some were completely unknown. I have to blog about it as well :).

Anyways, a happy Dashera :)

Of Navaratri and Dandia...

2008-10-07T08:57:00.003+05:30

Growing up in my home town, the two festivals that I absolutely used to love is Navratri and Makar sakranthi. Because in these festivals there were no ceremonies to be performed, (well not to be disrespectful of anything, as a teenager I always used to find all the ceremonies very boring).

Navratri specially was very eventful because the festival went on for nine nights. And also during that time we were given permissions to go out at the night with friends. We used to dress up in our best, and gather at one central location. We used to cycle around the town, from one place to another, trying to check out which was the place which had the best music and the best people and then we also sparingly use the money that we used to get on samosas and tea. Seeing all the older guys who used to get their girls on the scooter (bikes were a rarity scooter was the most common), I so much wanted to grow up fast and get to earning something as soon as possible. Generally in those days, garba used to go on till 4am in the morning, and then we used to cycle back home, and sleepily attend the school next day or bunk. Even teachers did not used to say anything during those nine days, and as such I hardly remember a instance when I had test during that time.

What is very unique about Navaratri and garba kind of dance is that unlike other forms of dance, which are performed, by individuals or a small group of people, garba/dandia is like performed by thousands at the same time. And still there is not much of chaos, because the beats are fairly simple and as long as you clap at the right time, and move about in the circle you are fine. I remember that there used to two or three such big grounds where there used to be 10-20 such concentric circles, and if you were to lose your friends, somewhere, it was nearly impossible to find. So we used to keep a pre-defined place, that if we were to miss each other we would go back and wait at that place.

The last time when I attended such a grand Navratri festival was when i was in 12th. Also during that Navaratri I had a heart break. There used to be this girl in my class whom I had a huge crush on. And during that Navaratri, I spoted her with one guy. Well till earlier years of navrathri she used to come with her girl friends, and it was a thrill to go and talk to her for sometime or even get a chance to dance with her. But this time around she had come with this guy, I did not know anything about the guy, except for the thing that he possessed a scooter.

After that year, I went to college and after that have never got the chance to attend this festival in my hometown, so sometime I very much wish to do that again. But as I hear from friends, things have changed now, hometown is not like a small town any more, Most of open spaces have given places to malls and other buildings, instead of free entry now there are passes, there are more strict rules now and all the celebrations have to end by midnight, Cycles have disappeared, and most of the teenagers are so burdened with exams that they cant think of staying awake late at night for Navatri.

Sometimes I keep wondering, if all the community festivals are disappearing, and giving way to more private and restricted celebration. But then day before yesterday I went to this quiet little gujarati assocation, where they had organized a small garba. There were about 200 odd people there, aunties, uncles, girls, guys, kids. After a long time I danced and danced, talking with unknown people, exploring new dance steps and trying to recollect all the old dance variations that we used to try, hearing to all those old gujarati tunes, till 3 am in the morning. Well ofcourse it was not as grand, but something that I would remember for a long time to come.

If you have never been to any garba/dandia celebration, do try it out. It is unique as compared to any other dance form, and you dont need to know dance and all, it is fairly simple and once you are inside the circle you would move automatically.

Cola Life

2008-09-17T21:15:00.005+05:30

This month at Sattva we were doing a bit of research on how different companies were operating their CSR (Community Social Responsibility). Most companies do this same thing of either donating to some school, or doing something for health and rural NGOs.

But there were few companies which figured out interesting ways to CSR. One of the interesting examples that I came across was Coca Cola.

Well Coca Cola is little controversial, atleast in India I know there have been various issues with their factory in Kerala. Lots of cases and lots of different view points.

But there is this one initiatve called Cola Life which I found very impressive. This compaign was an idea about a guy called Simon Berry. He observed that in remotest part of Africa, where poeple sturggled to get medicines and other basic necessities of Life, Coca Cola was easily available. So his idea was that why not Coca Cola use their distribution channel (which apparently is very amazing) to distribute medicine and essential necessity of life. May be dedicating one compartment in every ten crates as "life saving crate".

I find this idea as very powerful. Even when this time around, when I went to himalayas, in villages 3000 meters above sea level, which are not even connected properly by roads, I could see that Maggie noodles and Chips were readily available (I dont think cold drinks have much of market in Himalayas). Probably since these companies have lot of margin on these product, they can continue to supply at remotest possible region. And if some of this companies could dedicate 1% of their distribution chaneel to transport life essential products it would be a great help to people living in these villages.

The Cola Life campaign is at very initial stage and you can get the updates on their website. But I really like this idea. I think it is really a powerful one. Simon Berry has been making efforts and asking Coca Cola to launch this properly all around the world. And I think it would be great idea of Coca Cola or other similar FMCG companies would follow this and make it part of their CSR.

Kili Kili time..

2008-09-15T09:31:00.004+05:30

KiliKili means laughter in Kannada, but this KiliKili time is for one small little NGO called KiliKili.

KiliKili works for making parks accessible for children who are physically challenged. I had heard about them from a long time, but then some time back I just went to one of their events at Coles Park in frazer town. With the help of BBMP, they have installed play equipment which is friendly to kids who are physically challenged. Below are some of the pictures from that event.

Also wrote one article about them in Citizen Matters, which you can read it here. Also my first article for citizen matters :D

Interview with Autowallah

2008-09-10T22:14:00.003+05:30

Probably if you have been regular reader to blog, you would think that this is a repeat post, but it is not. Last time I had put, "Interview with Traffic Policemen" and "Autowallah love story". but now it is interview time of auto guy

"Since how long have you been driving auto?"

"Eight Years, but there is no money in this, today morning I started at six but by 12 could do busiess of only 50 rupees, then I went home, now since evening 5 I have done seventy rupees"

"So what were you doing earlier to this"

"I did a job, did not like it, I tried my own business but then failed, so now I am at auto"

"How much money do you make from this?"

"Not much sir, see for each day I have to pay 150 rupees to the owner of the auto, then I have to pay for gas, and then whatever remain I will keep it to myself. I am just managing to live sir"

"Do you have children?"

"Two sir, one girl and one boy, both going to government school. Girl is very bright sir, but son is not studying"

"Has the airport shifting affected your business?"

"A lot sir. Earlier everyday atleast one savari I used to get for airport. And airport road was evergreen road, anytime you go you will atleast get someone. But now that is not the case. Shifting of airport has had a great impact on our business"

"Do you work at night also?"

"No sir, night working is lot of problem, lot of drunk people are getting in to auto. Then lot of quarrel happens. Only yesterday I picked up this guy, and after ten minutes he slept off. I tried to wake him up but he did not. So I took the auto to police station and dropped him there. There is no other option sir. I cant leave him on streets"

I was just thinking, after this talk, when aiport was getting shifted there was so much hue and cry over the traffic and amount of time it takes to travel. I wonder if someone actually thought about all this auto guys. In all probability for this guy shifting of airport would have meant shifting his kids from private school to government school. And if i look at it from this angle, then this impact seems to far greater as compared to all the time it takes to travel to new airport.

Story time..

2008-09-09T09:42:00.005+05:30

Last time I went to Blossoms, I picked up this stories from Premchand. (Premchand was one of the greatest writers in Hindi, at the start of this century. He was written lots of novels, and short stories and some of his movies have been made in to successful films)

I read one of his stories and I really liked it. So I am putting the gist of that story here.

So as it happens, the story starts with marriage. This newly wedded girl comes from a staunch brahmin familiy, and is very religions. She does not eat anything before taking bath in the morning, and does not eat in places where non-vegetarian is consumed. The guy on the other hand, is also a brahmin, but he has learnt to accept things. He has lot of friends who are muslims and christians. He does not eat non-vegetarian, but he goes and dines at their places. The girl finds this extremely hard to accept. She thinks it is an attack to the purity of her existence.

The guy, is not able to understand this wife. He thinks that this is because of blind following of values, which have resulted in unacceptance and superiority kind of feeling in his wife. One day, he sits and gives a big discourse to his wife, he says, "God resides in each one of us. Be it the maid, or my friends or animals and birds. It is the same God. Just like sun gives light to everyone, irrespective of everything, we should not discrimate between people based on caste, religion and anything. All are equal"

This speech has a big effect on the girl. She realizes that she is making the mistake. All of sudden she developes a huge respect for her husband, she starts thinking of him as God like figure. She becomes very considerate to the maids, servants in their house. Once the maid, complains of severe headache. While earlier she would have just given some medicine and sent her off, now she massages her head for ten minutes. She feels bliss after doing this. Earlier there was different food cooked in house for the family and for servants. Family was served basmati rice and meals included sweets, while the servant were served normal rice with just some dal. The girl thinks that this is inequality and God will get offended with this, and hence she ensures that all including family and servants get the same meal.

The guy, initially was happy to see the change in his wife, now does not like it. One day, there is big function in their house and the guy gets special sweets made. But on the morning of function, his wife spots, some poor people outside her house and she feeds them all the special sweets. The guy gets infuriated at this. He tries to explain her that God created inequality, because some people deserve more and some people deserve less, because of their activities in previous birth, and sometimes you should let this inequalities be. But the girl does not understand, she begins to think that her husband is hypocrite, bending the rules for his convenience. Her godlike respect for him slowly starts diminishing.

Be a Writer@NGOPost

2008-09-03T16:14:00.002+05:30

Are you tired with the current state of media reporting? Do you want to share stories about social change on a global platform?

NGOpost is a web based community for sharing news and ideas about various social welfare initiatives. In loose terms you can refer to it as "orkut" for people who are interested in making a difference.

NGOpost is actively seeking writers, who are keen on creating something which would have far reaching benefits.

Some simple questions answered.

Do I need to have writing experience?
Not necessary. As long as you know English and can form meaningful sentences it should fine.

What do I have to write on?
Write about the social change you see happening around you. Or write about the change that is needed. It could be interviewing someone who is silently doing great work, and whose work would be an inspiration for others, or it could be an organization doing great job in its respective field. There could also be generic articles like Open education tools available for schools or benefits of organ donation. Otherwise we have list of unending topics which we want people to write on, you can choose from them.

What is the benefit for me in writing for NGOPost?

* NGOpost has readership in 150 countries around the world and it has been increasing. Your article will reach hundreds of people every day!
* Each month we send out our newsletter, which goes to about ~5k people. Your name will featured there along with the link to your profile. Personally if you are a blogger, that would give your blog a lot of visibility.
* More than all this it is the satisfaction of writing about something, which would be of use to hundreds of people. We keep getting feedback how reading some articles on NGOpost helped them solve their own problems and helped them connect with relevant people.
* Going ahead we are working on the partnering with print magazines/newspapers wherein selected articles from NGOpost will get published there. Hence there is a possibility that your article might go in print :).

So Join the band wagon of people who are keen to make a positive difference. If you are interested or have further queries write to us at parul at ngopost.org or goli at ngopost.org. Or drop in a comment below.

White washed Rainbows

2008-09-03T14:57:00.007+05:30

Guest Article: White washed Rainbows

By: Sucharita Roy

(This is written by one of my doctor friends called Sucharita. This article has always inspired me, and continues to inspire me. This is little long but trust me worth the read)

Something happened last year during my outdoor duty at the Department Of Ophthalmology that I must mention.A hastily gathered group of 20 odd students collect everyday around 9 30 am to see patients that would help them in knowing the subject better and in a more restricted sense of the term, help them sail through the 3^rd professional exams.We have been caught up in this frenzied state of being ever since clinicals have started where we learn to see patients to get a proper hold on our subject. And may be caught up with th speed of learning up hundreds of diseases and their associated clinical conditions,differential diagnoses(other conditions that can masquerade under a different disease by mimicking its clinical presentation)….the number of explanations can be put up ad infinitum.Whatever the case,that morning 26 of us gathered in the outdoor department of the Department of Ophthalmology eager to learn and see some new cases.

The teacher we were allotted that day was Dr Madan Mohapatra,a very efficient doctor and a really nice person .And that morning he was his usual incisive yet gentle self, teaching us the nuances of ophthalmology that we could handle at that stage. The crowd was beginning to warm up as the day progressed and we were shuffling about in the small room all craning our necks together at the same time tryin to look into th pupil of a patient who just had a new lens fitted or to see the pattern of injury caused by an iron foreign body.Perched as I was,at the side of sir with the plan of seeing the cases better than most others because I was right next to the patients most of the time so even the tiniest pathology wouldn’t escape my notice, I was having fun in my own little way. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, or so it seemed.

The next patient was a young boy, no more than 7 years at the most. He came holding this father’s hands and sat on the stool and was wearing a yellow T-shirt and black pants and had on a pair of black glasses the kind of which you get in hospitals or the ones immortalized by the Bollywood Surdas Rajendra Kumar.My mind started whirring at 3000rpm trying to spot the diagnosis as I did some mental maths.

Appearance-Healthy

Attitude-Cheerful (grinning to be exact)

Gait- Normal, no deformities

Skin and Hair condition- Healthy, no evidence of malnutrition.

Injuries-None observed except the eye area which will be revealed after he will open the glasses.

Most probable diagnosis-Childhood cataract operated and patient has come for a routine check up after lens implantation.

As my mind was doing this the boy was running his hand across the edge of the table. He was turning his head from where he supposed his father must be to the other side probably trying to find him out. Nothing about him to suggest he could not have been a boy straight from the fair, who had made his father buy him the goggles from a vendor. All he lacked was perhaps a red balloon; and I could half imagine him clutching one in his left hand. Or was there a lack that dint meet the eye? Only time would tell that,and in a few seconds it did.

I smiled at him when he turned his head towards me, and was about to make a face at him when unexpected words came floating upon my self-indulgent ears that makes me turn on music in a crowded hall oblivious to the surroundings..”A very unfortunate case..” , Madan Sir was saying. I was confused, `Did the cataract operation not go well? ‘. Things were not making sense. I wanted to know what had happened. But my playful indulgence had already cut off the reason Sir had given to justify his statement. I waited for him to take the child’s glasses off half wishing to do it myself but afraid lest I irritate his eyes. Madan Sir turned towards the boy who was now smiling at him stretching his hands possibly with the hope of shaking it. “And now there is nothing that can be done”, he said and took his glasses off. There was a single collective gasp.I was by the side of the boy so I bent forward to see wondering what could have moved even the stiffest students to flinch. And my jaw dropped at what I saw.

There was a fleshy crater in place of where his left eye should have been. At least 2 fingers deep and as wide and extending right to the back of the orbit where the bare remains of what should have been the optic nerve stood out like a stubbed cigarette butt. Across the back of the orbit were the stitches that had tagged the sclera into the roof. The black silk stitches were put there to prevent infection from spreading intracranially. The right eye was there but it was possibly worse than the other. The cornea (the transparent thing in front of the colored part of the eyeball which is what is actually donated when people donate their eyes) looked like a glob of pudding had fallen on his eyes there.

We call that clinical condition Keratomalacia. A blinding disease caused by the dietary deficiency of Vitamin A, which causes blindness and makes the skin flaky.In layman's terms it simply melts the eyes.But its not something people need not buy expensive capsules to treat or prevent; it is found in abundance in all green leafy vegetables and if one even ate the papaya that grows in abundance in our state one will never get that condition. However what was shocking was that someone who looked so healthy and had no other manifestations of a deficiencyshould suffer from it;weird to explain but at imes more frequent than sometimes a disease silently creeps up stealthily from behind even though there is no outward manifastaion of a lack thereof or something happening. His skin looked pretty healthy and it was hard to imagine what amount of depravation he must have faced before this happened to his eyes. And I wondered what his parents were doing till then instead of getting him to a hospital sooner. And the only thought I could possibly have that time was which was worse to have- a hole on the left with the lids sinking into it or a non-functioning eye on the right that the lids could not close.

The right eye was beyond repair was what we heard from sir, and so the inevitable reoperation a few weeks after to take his right eye out to prevent him from dying because once the cornea on the right melted and dislodged, the right eye would become a nidus of infection that would gnaw into his brains and kill him within a week. I was feeling suffocated, and i wanted an explanationfor the fact that such injustice be done to someone so young and what were we doing at all if we could not save vision even in one of his eyes with all our unbridled pride for saving people's lives.. I wondered what sort of life we were sending him back to. Sooner or later he will be relegated to begging on the streets and cursing the doctors who took his eyes out to give him a life he hated with all his might. And then if we were claiming to make so many advances in medicine why we could not do something that was so widespread in a country like ours where 10% of the children born suffer from avoidable blindness so if we have a 10% of a billion odd population it makes 10 crores of children under the age of 5 out of which at least 10 percent lose their sight in any eventuality..which amounts to 10000000 blind kids in the country and growing every second. I was confused and embittered about what I felt to be the handiwork of poverty that can stifle so many lives and take the light out of any meaningfulness in it.

“But surely sir there must be some way, at least a cornea transplant; couldn’t that be done?”, I had blurted out just as he was about to resign this patient because the wound on his left was healing appropriately. All heads turned at me, known as I am for my abruptness and near disrespect for behaving like a subdued student who thinks every word spoken by the teacher is the rule. Madan Sir looked at me and I began to wonder if I had blurted out something stupid.My classmates looked as blank as the whitewashed walls.I wished hospitals were painted any other colour.yellow,green or even black or red..would be something instead of blankness.At times a white can be a dark as a black.Only we can see it..we see it everyday.And i hope it remains to us.

“Good question”, he said. “But do you think we can consider that possibility here?”, he asked me.

“May be sir”, I struggled with the ineffectual abilities of an amateur at the science. “His entire cornea is sloughed so there will be no rim to place it “,I was thinking inside.

“Maybe sir if we could find a big cornea from a donater”, I blurted feeling incredibly stupid because I knew there being no supportive tissur in the boy’s eyes to support it, it would be just a matter of days before the graft would slough off.On the outside I waited for him to chide me for speaking like a “civilian” ( excuse me for this but its essential for us to maintain this language code. You have no idea how difficult it is for me to write about it in proper English. Its just that I want to put the thought across and I hope you will sympathise with me in my ineffectual efforts to do so).

For a moment Sir regarded my suggestion. I still don’t know if it had a truth value in its import. But whatever there was he started to say “Even if we consider a transplant we will at least have to see if it will be effectual even if its grafted into it”. “And for that “, he said and looked around hopin to receive an answer which at that instant was not forthcoming from anyone including me, “We need to see if he has any PR and PL because otherwise we do such a huge surgery and find his eye melts right after 2 weeks,and its just not worth it”.

(PR and PL are medical acronyms for Perception Of Light and Projection Of Rays ,which measures the basal function of the retina which ,once gone, can never be regenerated. Projection of Rays is the last function to go in blindness.Its the pixel of vision if you might call it in clinical terms.)

Madan Sir took a torch and put directly into his eye and asked him if he felt anthing.He didn’t.“No PL”, “Bad sign.Lets hope at least th PR remains”, he said and took the torch to all the 4 quadrants askin the boy if he ever felt something coming from somewhere he should say from which side he felt it was coming from. Notice he used the terms "something", and "feeling" instead of "light" and "looking" because the boy had no idea what light is all about.He had the condition ever since he was a kid until his eyes ginally gave way like wax which made him seek hospital attention.The boy immediately took a fancy for what he thought was a game. As sir showed the torch from all sides he giggled and tried to catch the torch each time.For 15 seconds the room was filled with 20 nauseated students, an expressionless father, a doctor assessing a patient if he could do something more other than taking his eyes out, and the blissfully innocent giggles of a kid who had possibly no idea what vision is all about so something in place of the nothing he saw or rather felt to be exact made him think life was beautiful.

And he played a good game.PR was lost in 1 quadrant. So in short there was some hope of a graft working in theory. Sir told had circumstances been a little more beneficial they would have even risked the benefit of doubt to a graft and see how the body responded. Sometimes the human body responds in ways no one can explain and miracles can happen. So who knew. But in this case “Where is the money to go on about it?”, Sir said as he looked at me.“The father had to be convinced the first time if we didn’t operate his son would be dead within a week. The hospital is going to do the second enucleation for free” . There was my half nodding and 25% of a half lipped smile as I understood what he was saying through his eyes. This is the language people of a profession share when they talk about the impotence of a situation that cannot be helped. This is the language a doctor buries in his heart and his lowered head when his family members disconnect the lines and take away their patient because they cannot afford the healthcare costs and if they put the patient in the hospital they will be dead before long because they haven’t eaten for last 4 days

Something started to sting my eyes.And mostly it was guilt.Guilt at having an intact life ;having resources to sustain and indeed enjoy that intactness at times even abusing it; and guilt at the injustice I was doing to the vastness of possibilities in my existence weighed against my own protestations of the injustices I felt were done to me for every mundanely unimportant thing that had upset me.Gulit at the privilege; and guilt at what I was doing about the responsibilities bestowed with the endowments.And disgust mostly at myself for my procrastination of happiness because of my own weird reasons that at this time seemed corrupt with selfishness.

And disgust.A lot more of disgust actually.Disgust that someone like me could make myself so miserable about things that seemed nothing in comparison to this blind boy in front of me who has never seen a ray of light in his life and whats worse, he has no idea what he is stepping into.And disgust at him for being happy in a situation like that.His smiles burnt my beliefs and faiths and smothered my self indulgences. I cant say I liked him.Its weird to explain. I hated him because he was missing something he didn’t know.I hated him for what was going to happen to him.And I hated him for not questioning for his being the way he was.For being happy with his losses.I was despising his happiness.

What struck me much later for his appearance that belied hs codition is a fact that most patients in our state think going to a hospital is a special occasion, much akin to going to the house of a relation, so its not unusual to see ladies bedecked in jewellery and pata sarees even if its only to open the petticoat and lie down crumpling all those folds for a pelvic examination.So in all possibilities he was probably dressed ina fresh pair of clothes borrowed from someone and thoroughly oiled and groomed by his mother for his hospital visit.

Whatever it was, he was bade away.I wanted to rush to him and hold hime in a tight embrace and I dont know why i wanted to do that. He would have most probably run awaythinking I was a mad woman. A part of me chided myself for transfering which is a term used when doctors feel more than they should for a patient.Its what brought Seth Lazarus a brilliant surgeon in Erich Segal’s DOCTORS to commit multiple acts of euthanasia on experimental dogs at first and then terminally ill patients.Sometimes I put myself in that position and think what I would have done..And there is not a definite “Yes” , but at the same time there is also not a definite “No to that.Because transference really affects a doctor’s ability because out of compassion he might just be the reason for the patient's death for not thinking logically and clearly.

I cant lay more expression to what I was feeling for my ability to express falls way short of my feelings at that time. And I most certainly didn’t want to look up and see what my friends were growing through.Summarily the case was dismissed as the next patient came to have his 5 minutes of fame with our audience.And the Boy from the Fair was forgotten for the time being.

But what I remember most at this time after 2 years is not my angst and frustration or revolt against things way beyond my powers to modify.In some weird way that cant be explained I only preserve within the confines of my memory the realization that day of a human’s capacity for happiness.In the little we have from life its just that it takes just us and only us to make us feel the way we want to.And for that, I feel proud I met that boy who showed me that one should not waste life in misery thinking about what the morrow will bring because anyways a person has no idea about that..and to waste time thinking about the darkest of possibilities and in turn being sad for something one has no idea of, life is too short to indulge in this way.

The world of nothingness from which the boy came that day and into which he disappeared was in ways way more colourful than all our starched white formalin sprayed existences.And way more white.If anything his shirt and my imaginary balloon made up for yellow and red..and his smiles and possibly the sighs and the silent tears of the rest in the room that day made up for the rest of the colours of the rainbow that bloomed in OPD2; and still blooms in my mind when I think of him after so long.Against a whitewashed silent blackness, its a rainbow hued smile that inspires you to rise up and to try to be better at what i am doing..Because people like him need things from this world.And people like us need to do it for the world.

And that completes a circle.

God bless him wherever he might be.

P:S:-WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREATER RESPONSIBILITY. (Spiderman)

AIDS awareness rally up to Big Banyan Tree

2008-08-24T18:29:00.006+05:30

Sunday morning, instead of lazying around, Mayank literally dragged me in to joining this cycle rally all the way up to The Big Banyan tree organized by Jagruthi. I anyways wanted to go there once, having heard about it so much.

This place was about 25kms from ISCKON. The route was pretty simple, go on chord road all the way till the end where it meets Magadi road, Then go on Magadi road, towards magadi. On that road after about 13kms there is diversion to the left. There is no signboard there, but then most people know about the place, so I guess you would not have trouble locating the which left. The diversion to the left, is a very small beautiful nice lane kind of road.

The place, itself was not that great. There is a park kind of stuff, and inside the park there is this banyan tree. Apparently the original big tree has died and fallen down, and right now there are 5-6, big banyan trees which apparently were the part of the big tree earlier.

For me the fun part of this trip was going on the cycle. Overall it was 50kms, I have never done 50km cycle before on one day. But it was little taxing, especially because the roads were up and down. But forget the tiredness and everything else, the worst thing about this cycles is that your bum pains a lot, so if you ever plan to cycle, get a good cushion seat.

We all were supposed to carry the placard, when we cycle. And it was fun, to see people reading the banner and smiling. My placard was related to safe sex and prevention of AIDS, and most people would read it and giggle. It was fun. There were couple of people who stopped me, to ask me about Jagruthi and that was good to see. But most funny thing was this guy stopping me and asking me if I was distributing free condoms !!

Below is one of the pic which I took with some of the kids who were really fascinated with the cycle. The second pic has the placard that I was carrying all along the way on my cycle.

PS1: Jagruthi is a NGO which works for AIDS awareness. In their Bangalore home they house about 80 children, some of them HIV+, some who have been sexually abused, etc. Jagruthi tries to educate this kids, and also provide them some vocational training.

PS2: Apparently according to the survey of 2007 by National AIDS control Organization there are about 2.5M people living with AIDS in India, which is about 0.36% of total population. Karnataka accounts for about 11.2% of the AIDS cases in India, which is third in list after Maharashtra and Andra Pradesh. It is also very interesting to note that, Mahashtra, AP, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu account for about 60% of the AIDS cases. I was surprised at this stats, because I thought that AIDS was more prevalent in North India, but apparently this does not seem to be true.

PS3: Some of the pictures of Big Banyan Tree place,

One of the trees

All the tree trunks have all kind of graffiti

Another view of the same tree.

India... The land of spiritually

2008-08-23T16:22:00.004+05:30

I hate it when I get the middle seat, when traveling on an airplane. Window seat is best, for I still have this child like enthusiasm of looking outside the window, specially during take off and landing, and when spotting any familiar landmark on the ground from the high up gives such a nice feeling. But I hate the middle seat. But middle seat, that was in store for me as I was taking up this flight to Delhi for the start of my trekking trip to Valley of Flowers.

Well, I was almost the last to enter the plane, and as I was grudgingly walking to my seat, 23B, and WoW, WoW, WoW, I could not believe it !! There were two beautiful ladies on A and C. Could I have asked for any better start of my trek holiday.

The Aisle side girl, was a about early twenties aged, she looked fairly cosmopolitan, and could not figure out her origins (north, south, east, west??), she was reading sudha murthy, "Wise and Otherwise". Good for me, that was some subject, which I could talk to no end, about sudha murthy and her NGO stories and so on. As soon as things settled, and air hostess was through with that regulatory speech on safety, I started my attempt to start the conversation. But this girl turned out to be very snorty, I dont know sometimes some people act as if they are carrying the entire burden of universe on their shoulders, and consider it a crime to smile and chat for couple of minutes.

I decided better to leave her alone and turned my attention to this other lady. She was glued to looking outside the window as a five year old, climbing the plane for first time. She was not Indian, was very red in her cheeks and guess she was from Europe,

"Hi", I said,
"Hi",
"Where you from?" I asked,
"Am from Ukraine, earlier part of USSR", she said
"Traveling",
"I come to India searching for spirituality",

WoW, that was great, I had always read on web, people traveling to India for spirituality, but had never personally met one. And then she went on and on and on and on. Telling me about India and how it fascinated her, and how this place was so beautiful and how spirituality was still, a part of everyday life of each Indian. She told me things which I am ashamed to say that I did not know about India. She took out her camera and took me through the photo tour, of her journey, from Manali, to ladakh, to Hampi of temples and monestaries, telling me stories about them.

Listening to her, I was wondering how much do I actually care to know and understand the rich culture that we have. Most of the times, we just discard the stories from Ramayana and Mahabharata as just the work of fiction. Also probably the way they show on TV, with so many arrows disappearing, and more than life figures that really makes it look far from reality. But the entire conversation made me feel very happy, and wanting to learn more.

Conversation also reminded me of reading this research done by some firang (or some website was it, dont remember, Alzheimer I guess ), and his inference was that Ganga is not a natural river. He had done some analysis of the base of lot of rivers and came to conclusion that Ganga is actually a man made river. I guess if you are aware of the story of how God was pleased with Bagirath's penance and he send Ganga down. And in all probability guess Bagirath was a great Engineer and he crafted way of all small streams coming for Himalayas, in to one big man made canal, which we now call Ganga.

Anyways, because of all this interesting conversation flight journey ended in no time, and by the end this snorty girl seemed to be interested in talking, but then it was already midnight and I was lost in thoughts of Ganga, and spirituality guess I was already half way up to my trek. Could there be any better start to trek to himalayas?

PS: Was away on Trekking, and hence the blog was silent.

Making teaching simpler

2008-07-30T10:55:00.007+05:30

"Suppose for each 2 idlis (form of Indian bread) that you eat you will get one chocolate, so how many idlis you will have to eat to get five chocolates" asks Uddhav Sir.
Immediately I see kids counting on fingers, and most of them come up with the correct answer 10.

Now the problem is tweaked in many ways, for three choclates how many idlis? and so on, and they start enjoying it.

then finally, at the end of class, almost as after thought, Uddhav sir introduces the notation :
He also introduces the word Ratio.
"

The above was one of the Maths class that I attended in the school called Ananya. This is the school for the street children and I have mentioned it lot of times in my blog. It is not a formal school. All students are divided in to groups, based on their capability, and they just learn. There is no fixed curriculum, when students are perceived as eligible they give the exam through NIOS.

"For teaching multiplication we had done this project, wherein I asked student to measure the distance between our school gate to the shop that is outside from where they get chocolates. They had to measure the distance and paint the sign board on the shop for our school. So they counted the distance in the unit of their footsteps, then they measured their foot steps. And with little help they automatically figured out multiplication. Got a card board, and nicely painted it, with the number." says Shashi Aunty, who runs this full place, "This small project turned a normally boring multiplication class in to something very interesting which involved drawing, painting, and most importantly understanding what is multiplication"

When you think about it there are so many simple ways to teach everyday things to kids. Little more time consuming, but these techniques are more effective in sustaining the interest of students in subject and they appreciate the concept better.

"Most of the conventional schools don't do this kind of education because they don't have time, since they have to finish the curriculum . Here in Ananya there is no curriculum. It is full of fun and project based." adds Uddhav Sir.

On similar lines, long time back I had read this wonderful article called Lockhart's Lament. This article is more related to Maths and here the author laments against the boring form of classroom teaching. There is a very simple example in his essay related to how to calculate aread of triangle, which I really liked. I will quote from there

To calculate area first imagine a triangle inside a rectangular box:

I wonder how much of the box does the triangle takes up? Two-thirds maybe?
I do see something simple and pretty:

If I chop the rectangle into two pieces like this, I can see that each piece is cut diagonally in
half by the sides of the triangle. So there is just as much space inside the triangle as outside.
That means that the triangle must take up exactly half the box!
Hence the area is that of half the rectangle.

That makes it so simple right, area of triangle is equal to half of base and height. It is such an interesting way to teach rather than to mug the formula. The school in which I studied in never taught like this, it was always learning formulas.

The above ideas look so simple, but I am not sure how many schools adopt this. At least the school I studied never taught like this. Though the above ideas look simple, I guess it is difficult to come up with such ideas. Simple in expensive ideas that can teach science, maths etc. I also wonder if there is any resource available on web which have accumulation of such tricks/methods to teach. I have not been very successful at this search, all I have landed upon are some kits for science experiments which are way to expensive to be adopted by most of this NGO schools.

Actually Uddhav Sir, has asked me if I could come up with some ideas specially related to Maths. He has also given me some NIOS textbooks which are equivalent to conventional third and forth grade. But so far I am blank. Let me try and see what I can come up with. Ideas are welcome say for example, to teach division??

Related Articles,
About NIOS : Cant attend regular School, Try Open School
Another blogpost on Ananya: Different Perspective

Thought for the day..

2008-07-19T16:06:00.004+05:30

"Some of the greatest feat in this world were accomplished by people who were not smart enough to figure out that they were impossible"

(Remembered this when conversing with a friend, had read this long time back in Readers digest)

Nice Sign boards

2008-07-17T09:30:00.006+05:30

Sometime back I had visited Butterfly Park in Penang, Malaysia. It was awesome park with lot of butterflies and all kinds of insects, but what impressed me most were the sign boards.

Presence of Mind..

2008-07-16T18:37:00.004+05:30

The other day I was going on a bike (as a pillion) on inner ring road, and an speeding red maruti overtaked me and banged in to the Tempo traveler right in front of me, which resulted in tempo traveller overturning and falling in to the ditch next to the road. Further a biker in front of me flew off from his bike and again fell in to the same ditch. All this happened in a just about couple of seconds.

Surprisingly nothing happened to the people in the maruti, except that the front of the car got damaged, but the car was still in driving condition.

After the shock of some ten seconds, I just got off to try to help the biker guy who suffered the biggest injury in this full incident, but by the time there were already lot of people who had started helping. And I realized that I was not doing much of value add there, other than to add more commotion, so I left.

In this confusion the maruti guy vanished, and then I was wondering why did not have the presence of mind to note the number of the speeding maruti. I was someone who had the best view of the full incident. Forget about pen and paper, I could have just taken the photo of the number plate with my camera enabled mobile. But it never occurred to me.

I was wondering if this presence of mind is the inbuilt talent some people have or this is gained by experience? Some people around me are amazingly good at that to do the right things at the right time, wasting no additional time. And seemingly things don't occur to me that fast.

I just hope that the biker guy is safe and surviving.

Article 377 and Alternate sexuality

2008-07-09T11:59:00.009+05:30

Recently there was a Gay Parade in Bangalore, Delhi and Calcutta. This reminded me that sometime back we had done a whole issue on Alternate Sexuality in Sattva in October.

I read somewhere some BJP leader commenting that it was against the tradition and blah and all. I really dont understand, why people have to bring religion/tradition in to this. My only point is that most people know so little. I remember when young, I would have asked this question 2-3 times, I never got any answers or got very unconvincing answers. It was always an hush-hush topic. Most of us just put 2 and 2 together and come up with out own conclusions, at least I did not know lot of things when we did that issues.

So here I am going to put one FAQ that I had prepared for that Issue. It is related to article 377 of Indian Constitution the act against which this parade was there.

Here is the article,

Note:
This article was written by me and originally published in the Oct 2007 issue of Sattva, an ITIHAS initiative. Sattva, is an ITIHAS initiative: an e-magazine focusing on the social sector.
Related Sattva Issue .. Oct 2007, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité – Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood

"
FAQ on Section 377,
Section 377 is one of the most frequently contested and controversial legal sections in ‘The Indian Penal Code’. And here are some reasons why

What is section 377?
Section 377 of Indian penal code was drafted as early as 1860. and it reads as follows.

"Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine."

How is this section used?
Today this section is mostly used to harass people. Police use this section to blackmail and extract bribe from various gay communities.

Is there a petition filed to repeal this act?
The petition to repeal this act was drafted by Lawyers Collective HIV AIDS unit on behalf of NAZ foundation in December 2002. This petition was rejected by Delhi High Court in Sept 2004. In April 2005, this case came up in Supreme court before a bench headed by Justice Sabharwal. They saw reason to remand the case back to the Delhi High Court, that is where it stands today.

What events led to this petition?
On 7 July 2001, police raided a park in Lucknow that was frequented by the MSM (men who have sex with men) community. The raid led to the arrest of an outreach worker of the Bharosa Trust, a NGO working with the MSM community in the area of HIV/AIDS prevention. The police also raided the offices of Bharosa and Naz Foundation and seized materials from there, arresting nine people in all. The media sensationalised the arrests, describing the police action as the busting of a sex racket. The arrested persons were remanded to judicial custody on 8 July 2001; and were charged with section 377 they were allegedly beaten up and their offices sealed.

What are the main arguments to repeal this act?

It violation of the right to life as a result of HIV/AIDS prevention work being impeded, and the MSM (Gay) community going underground, i.e., refusing to publicly avail of HIV-prevention options such as condoms, out of fear of being arrested
this law's proscription of "non-procreative sexual activity" violates the right to life because a person's sexual preferences are an inalienable component of this right.
It enables and perpetuates social stigma and police abuse

What is Governments argument not to repeal this act?

Section 377 has been applied to cases of assault where bodily harm is intended and deletion of the said section can well open the floodgates of delinquent behaviour and be misconstrued as providing unbridled license for the same
Section 377 reveal that it has been basically used in India to punish sexual abuse of children and to complement lacunae in the rape laws

Does similar section exists in England?
Interestingly no, this section was introduced by British in India in 1860s, but this act has been repealed in England quite long time back.

Which organizations are working towards repealing this act?
Naz Foundation, Delhi, is working with Lawyers collective in spearheading this petition. There is a forum of NGOs, called "Voices against 377" who are actively supporting this petition. In addition this petition gained a wide scale publicity and support, with the open letter written by Vikram Seth to repeal this act. This letter was supported by people like Amartya Sen, Pooja Bedi, Shyam Benegal.
"

Related Reads... The Queer Case of 377 by Siddharth Narrain

PS: Sattva is looking for writers, people who want to write about various social issues/solutions, Do drop in a comment if someone is interested.

How to get driving license in Bangalore ?

2008-06-28T11:58:00.006+05:30

Lot of people keep asking me how to go about getting driving license in Bangalore, hence I thought of making a full post of this. So here is the procedure for getting DL in Bangalore without giving BRIBES. And trust me it is not all that difficult. (Though this is relevant to Bangalore, guess should apply to rest of the country as well.)

Step1 -> Filling the Learner License Form,

You have to fill the following form. Along with the form you would need the following.
1. Age Proof (Passport, School Certificate, 10-12th Class certificate)
2. Address Proof (House rent agreement, Ration Card)
3. Three Photographs,

Step2 -> Giving the Learner License Test.

After you have filled the form you will have to go to your nearest RTO office, and give the written test. You can find your nearest office here. Ideally you should go sometime at around 10am.

Do the following,
1. Pay the fees at cash counter (30 rupees)
2. Get your documents verified
3. Give the written test.

Nothing is confusing there, once you go there you will be able to figure out.
Written test is itself very simple, there would be 15 multiple choice questions, and passing marks are 10. I guess anyone who has reasonable head on his shoulders should be able to clear it. But in anycase before you go you should take a look at this.

Once you clear the test you should be able to collect your learning license same day after 4:30

I went at 10am, and was able to finish everything by one. I think I went and collected my license later in the day.
Official website for learner's license is this.

Step3 -> Chill out for 30 days.

Step4 -> Getting the permanent License, filling the form and documents.

Well now you will have to fill the following form.

And whatever vehicle that you are carrying, take the following documents,
1. Vehicle Registration certificate
2. Insurance
3. PUC certificate

Step5 -> The D day, before the test,
1. Reach your nearest RTO office by 11
2. Buy a sticker with a big L, "indicating that you are learner" and put it on your vehicle, put on front and back to be safe. Dont forget this else you will not pass the test. You will easily get this sticker at some shop near RTO for 5-10 rupees.
3. Get your documents verified. There is a queue but it gets over very fast. Take the above mentioned documents you should not have any problem.

Step6 -> Giving the driving test.
1. Once you do above step, you will have to give driving test, there would be inspector down, and you will have to queue along with your vehicle. The traffic inspector will brief you about the rules, like giving indicators, and hand signals. And he will ask you to drive. ( a small circle or something)
Caution: He would not fail you until you drive real bad. But please ensure that you give all the right hand signals, very important, signals for left turn, right turn, for stopping and so on. Especially for the left turn, lot of people tend to ignore it.
Also do note that signal for left turn is not showing left hand, it is showing right hand by rotating the right hand by the wrist. This is the most common mistake that people make :)

Once done he will sign your documents saying PASS/FAIL

Step7 -> If you fail :( : (
Dont worry, sometimes it happens, I also failed the first time. My fame to fail was that I did not give hand signal while taking the right turn. Does not matter come next week to give the test, and you will PASS. But it is very unlikely that people fail, out of 4 of us who had gone for the license, I was the only idiot who failed, and it was fully my mistake :)

Step8 -> Yipeeeeeee :)
You can collect your license on the next day. Relief for twenty years.

Important Notes:
1. Second saturday and forth saturday are holidays for RTO so keep that in mind.
2. Never land up in RTO at 12PM types, because then you would get struck waiting in lunch time, and dont blame RTO employees for having lunch, they need to have lunch as much as we do and they dont have the luxury of having biscuits, coffee at will/ or even AC as we all do in our IT companies.
3. Take a book, it always helps.
4. Patience is the key, Smile works, tone of voice matters a lot. People working there are same as our next door neighbors, nice and good.
5. All the time you would be pestered by people who would claim to give you license if you pay them 1000 bucks, but DONT do that.
6. Carrying a pen, gum, stapler etc helps.

Surya Namaskar

2008-06-25T22:03:00.004+05:30

Since last one month or so I have been religious doing Surya Namaskar. Got introduced to it in the Art of Living course that I did. And I love it, I think it is on of the best things that you can do in the morning. One round of surya namaskar hardly takes about 30 seconds, in five minutes you can do ten of those.

I wonder why did they never teach this in my school, and it was not only in my school, I asked couple of colleagues in my office and they also did not learn it in their schools. My school taught all kinds of fancy stuff like Karate and all, but nothing about this.

I know many people consider yoga boring and to some extent even I do. But this is so different, five minutes of surya namaskar, and you would feel so flexible and nice.

Am putting this nice video that I found on You Tube, in this video the lady does it more than once :). Actually surya namaskar has only 12 steps and you may find this useful.

Different prespective

2008-06-15T20:15:00.004+05:30

"Before I joined Ananya in 1998, I was just wasting my time. I was in a children's remand home in Bombay, and then in a hostel in Hubli. I ran away and got into smoking and drugs, until one of my friends introduced me to this school. I started studying here. I have stayed here for eight years, I have given my 10th class exam, and now I am working in CAPS IT solutions. I work as an office administrator. I want to thank Ananya, and all the teachers, because whatever I am today is due to them. I want to encourage my other friends who are in Ananya to study", he says

"Dont you want to study more?" I ask him

"No, now I want to work for some more time, I want to get my younger sister married, after that I will study more, I want to learn software uncle, (he calls me uncle, even though I dont like being called uncle)"

"Do you not want to get married?"

"No uncle, I read in paper daily, husband wife fighting, so
I dont want to get married, first I want to study"

This was my excerpt of talking with one of the Ananya students on one of my visits there, I wanted to post this for a long time but never managed to do it.

PS: Ananya is a school for the underprivileged children in Bangalore. It is one of the most wonderful NGO schools that I have seen.

How much do we own?

2008-06-07T10:26:00.003+05:30

"
As Alexander wandered around north-west India around the fourth-century BC, he queried a group of Jain monks on why they were not paying him much attention. He got the following reply:

King Alexander, every man can possess only so much of the earth's surface as this we are standing on. You are but human like the rest of us, save that you are always busy and up to no good, travelling so many miles from your home, a nuisance to yourself and to others!... You will soon be dead, and you will own just as much of the earth as will suffice to bury you.

"
I had read this in Prasanna blog long time ago, but this thing has struck on me. This kind of keeps giving me a warning bell, whenever I get angry at someone or I hold a grudge against someone. Because just things in life come and go, people come and go, relationships keep changing, cities keep changing, and what would just remain finally is some photographs, some mails, some gifts, some moments struck in memory. And most always or not, in retrospect, when I think of the above quote, I regret all the grudges/quarrels that I have had, all the times my self esteem has prevented me from telling sorry or making up, and all the times when I just did not care.

How Bangalore came in to existence..

2008-06-02T09:10:00.003+05:30

This month for the issue of Sattva, I had to do a brief writeup on History of Bangalore. And it was very good, and interesting, doing the research. Considering that I have stayed over five years in Bangalore I hardly know anything about Bangalore history, and interestingly enough most of the people whom I asked in my office, who have been in Bangalore from quite some time did not know much.

Bangalore dates back its history to over thousand years, but it was a small village, as compared to Hampi and Srirangapatnam, which during their glory days were apparently great cities. I also read at various places that there is a folk lore that Bangalore owes its name to one of the Hoysala Kings, (which was as early as 11th century), who on his hunting expedition, lost its way somewhere here. Tired and hungry he came across a poor woman who fed him boiled beans, and the king named the place “benda kaal-ooru” (which in Kannada means town of boiled Beans), which was eventually colloquialised to “Bengalûru”.

Later Kempagowda who was one of the ministers of Vijaynagar formely found Bangalore, by building a small mud fort, and four watch towers in four corners of city, (they still exists, there is one in Lalbaug in the right picture)

But apparently Bangalore still remained a small settlement, until till about early 19th Century. When British defeated Tipu Sultan and got hold of Srirangapatnam, they set up their settlement there. But apparently it seems that the place was infested with lot of mosquitoes, and after ten years of many malarial deaths, British shifted their settlement to Bangalore, and start developing which we present day call cantonment area.

So Bangalore developed as two distinct settlements, one consisting mainly of British near Cantonment and the other one consisting of local population near the city area (what we call chipeth). Hence all this names of Infantry road, Brigade road, Residency road etc.

In course of doing all this research I also read this interesting book on Bangalore from Peter Colaco. Next time you get jobless in crossword take a look at this book.

I think that in schools you should have a simple chapter on regional history, which I guess is very important. It was not there in my syllabus in my schooldays. I grew up only learning about History in bigger perspective of India as whole.

It is funny now that Bangalore all of sudden has become a all new city to me. Each of the road and building I pass has a different story and meaning for me. Some day when I become more free I will try to pen down other things about Bangalore.

Running the Marathon..

2008-05-20T09:32:00.005+05:30

It all started with Alice mail to participate in Marathon, he literally forced me to register for this. I had the option of 10K run and 5.7K run, and always as ambitious as I am, I chose 10K run.

Later some people told us that you could raise money for some NGO running for the marathon and then started this mad rush to run for NGO post. It was good hectic last week, to get NGOpost registered, to set up payment gateway and then to get the Tshirts designed and printed. It reminded of the time we used to do nightouts in college preparing for those cultural festivals.

Finally came the Sunday, I was able to run 10 kms in about 1 hour and 13 minutes, it was not bad. Though later in the evening legs had become very soar. I have never run so much before, but cheering and people running around you can made a lot of difference. There were so many people, army people, old ladies, some families standing outside their apartments cheering and urging you to go. It is funny that for something as physical dumb as running should be controlled by your mind and how the surroundings can make you feel.

So it was good fun and the event was wonderfully organized, but the only thing that bothered me was the picture on the right. There was loads of plastic litter'ed everywhere. Though it is true that they cleared most of roads of this, because I did not find any traces of them when I was driving later in the day. But I still wonder if all this can be recycled. Why use plastic when we can avoid it.

I also contributed three bottles to this, could not help it, it was so hot. But next time I think I am going to carry my own bottle.

(Picture: courtesy Murali)

Being Environment concious..

2008-05-04T22:00:00.003+05:30

These days I have become majorly environment conscious. Whenever I see little bit of plastic, I keep asking myself, "Is there anyway i can avoid using this".

The other day, I had gone to Cisco. As soon as you enter Cisco and go around, you see various posters pasted which keep stating how eco-friendly Cisco is. It is good to see a big company as Cisco being environment conscious. But what saddens me everytime I go Cisco is the way they use bottled water. Unlike most other companies which have normal water bottle for each employee, which keeps getting refilled from water dispenser, Cisco has loads of half liter packaged water bottles. So most of the employees who keep coming to cafetaria pick up 1-2 of these bottles. Imagine about 1000 employees and the number of water bottles getting used per day. And how much waste that will be generated. Maybe they recycle it, but still why do all that when you avoid the situation all together. And what amazes me is that this is same campus which is filled with all posters of environment friendly quotes.

Then I go to meet a friend of mine in oracle the other day and I went in to their meeting room and they had this normal water bottles which had to be refilled from water dispenser. This made me really happy "Your company is truly environment conscious", I told my friend.

And we were generally discussing this, and then there was this friend from a top MBA school and he was saying that these days, lot of students before considering a company for placement also try to figure out how environment friendly the company is and how much does it score on its CSR. Maybe this is still a far fetched thought, and personally till now I never thought of such things before taking a job. But it does seem a good idea, and I shall keep this in mind next time I think of hopping job, and then Cisco probably has lost some points already.

Satsungs

2008-04-13T15:42:00.003+05:30

The earliest Satsung that I remember attending was when I did not use to go to school. And the only thing I remember is that me and my sister were playing "Ichuk Michuk" (Some game you play with hands, cant explain it here). And all the people surrounding us were asking us to be quiet.

Today I went to "Radha Soami Satsang", it was held somewhere near Tumkur road. And I was surprised to see so many people there. It is organized by this organization (I like their tagline, Science of Soul).

With due respects, I really appreciate the efforts of the organization to do all the great work that it is doing, but I sometimes wonder if it is really worth it.

When people go there they break traffic lane disciplines to ensure that they reach first, without bothering about the traffic jams they cause, they would park the vehicle the way it is more convenient to them without bothering a bit about others, try to sneak in the line just to ensure that they get the best seat. It just seems to me that the ultimate purpose of these people is to attend to this function, and everything else does not matter. I find it so amusing because I guess the primary purpose of attending all this satsangs and temples is to cleanse yourself and think of others. The same thing I find with Tirupati as well, the atmosphere is anything but spiritual.

I remember once when I had gone to Art of Living, and then Guru Sri Ravi Shankar had come. And at the end of Satsung, he called for all the people who were having birthdays that day on stage, and there was this friend of mine next to me, who just went off. It was not his birthday. When I confronted him later outside, he said he did not care because he got a chance to see guruji closely it seems. To me that beats the whole purpose of coming to Satsung.

Not saying that you should not attend the satsungs, but most times I do feel that it is like getting a tick mark on their life's resume.

What if all these people instead of travelling all the way from their homes, and spending so much time, could just go to one of the NGOs in their respective town and donate some time/money. What could be a better satsang then making a positive difference in someone life.

Freegans :

2008-04-09T09:19:00.002+05:30

Quite sometime back I had read about this girl (in US), who would search in garbage bins for food and use it. Not that she was poor but that she was a part of community called Freegans. I had lost the link for it, but then today again it popped up in one of the feeds. Freegans are community where people believe in using the minimum resources required for living and conserving and reusing stuff.

More here

http://freegan.info/

An excerpt here

"It's not a few bad products or a few egregious companies responsible for the social and ecological abuses in our world but rather the entire system we are working in, we begin to realize that, as workers, we are cogs in a machine of violence, death, exploitation, and destruction."

This is so similar to Story of Stuff.

Sometimes I also wonder, being a hardware engineer about all the hi-fi tech stuff we keep making. Increasing speeds from Kbps, to Mbps to Gbps and so on. If all this is worth it?

Random thoughts..

2008-04-03T10:25:00.003+05:30

My blog had kind of gone in hibernating mode, and these are just some random thoughts.

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Actually these days I have been spending lot of time writing for this one magazine called Sattva. You can take a peek at this, it is not a masala magazine, it is a NGO magazine. It is a monthly magazine and every month we do a focus on different topics, like education, health, alternate sexuality and so on. March edition was on Human rights.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yesterday I was having an argument with my friend regarding buying a house in Bangalore. I am totally against it. My argument being, "Why to pay EMI for next 25 years of life, for something that I am not going to carry along with me. I mean think about it, all those small, no sunlight entering, kind of houses in one of the massive residential apartments, (they always give me identity crisis), and when you die you cant take it along with you anyways. It may sound selfish, because my parents spend greater part of life trying to build a house, but it was different in those times. And getting a beautiful house in the place you belong is different from buying this lunch box kind of houses in Bangalore. Home town houses are something nice and they are something that maybe people in future will cherish. Hence I find this mad rush for securing this ever expensive houses in bangalore not very meaningful. Sometimes I just feel that we get caught in all this web of buying a house, buying a car and before we know life has already gone by."

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My cousin in hyderabad is in ninth now, so this year that school finish their ninth class syllabus in feb and have started giving them rigorous tenth class education. I really find it so absurd that such big schools would think in this way, and put so much pressure on this poor kids as if tenth class is one massive exam and their entire life depends on this one thing. I think they did not see Taare Zameen Par, or even if they saw it, they just wept during the movie and came back and forgot all about it. Wonder if movies make any difference?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The other day I was talking to one of the Maths teacher, in Ananya. Ananya is the school for underprivileged kids, and the school gives them basic education to prepare them for Open Schooling tenth class Exam. And he was explaining me that most of children there struggle with Maths, not with basic maths, but things like trigonometry and algebra. Not being from any regular school they find it very difficult to grasp these subjects. This could also be because they dont find much relevance of this in their daily lives. And then we were arguing if kids really needed to understand all these, and then if you think about it you hardly use it in day to day life. Further most of this kids dont plan to become engineer or doctors, they just want to get some basic education (like Home Science) and get some decent job and support their families.

Also read this beautiful article called "A mathematician's Lament" related to above. Swarna forwarded this to me and I absolutely loved it.

Story of Stuff,

2008-03-04T14:05:00.002+05:30

One of my friends forwarded me this video and I really liked it. It is awesome. Do take a look. After watching this video , I have become very conscious, about the waste that I generate everyday.

Do take a look and Njoy.

Getting the driving license in Bangalore

2008-02-28T08:59:00.003+05:30

IS EASY. You dont have to pay bribe, you dont have to stay in long queues, it is simple and straight forward. I had got my DL that way some three years back. Of course you will have to give driving test and get all your vehicle documents verified. So it would take about 3-4 hours, but the system works.

This post was prompted because couple of days back, I saw this skit, which was supposed to be humor. It was about how in India government system does not work, making fun and submitting to the fact that nothing can be done about it.

So I dont know about other government offices, but I do know that Karnataka RTO works fine.

Anyways I got the below in the mail from iVolunteer,

http://pgportal.gov.in/

"
Government of India has an online Grievance forum at http://darpg-grievance.nic.in/

The government wants people to use this tool to highlight the problems they faced while dealing with Government officials or departments like Passport Office, Electricity board, BSNL/MTNL, Railways etc etc. So use this grievance forum and educate others who don't know about this facility. This way we can at least raise our concerns instead of just talking about the ' System' in India.

It really works, I myself lodged a complain against one Bank around 6 months back. Bank took an action immediately on that and after two months, I got a confirmation (by letter) from the following department that my complain has been requested.

Similar experiences has been reported by couple of my colleagues too.

The response from the department is bit slow at present but I have seen that it is active, which is good sign for future.
"

I dont have any personal experience with this, but will try it for sure next time.

So I guess government has lot of initiatives, just that we have to start using them.

Cheers.

PS: I have added a full post on how to get the driving license in Bangalore here.

About Me

2008-02-21T09:29:00.001+05:30

My name is actually Rajesh, but since college people have been calling me Goli and hence so is my name now, and my blog name.

Professionally am an hardware turned marketing engineer now, but as most others I do feel that such jobs suck and I should get out of it and do something else in life, but dont have the courage to leave this job and leave all the corporate luxuries :D.

Apart from work, have tried my hand, at guitar, salsa, film making, writing, aerobics(ing), with moderate and no success at some.

Apart from this blog I do write for a monthly e-magazine called Sattva. Along with some friends am also involved in running the website called NGOPost.

If so thy wish, you can get in touch with me at togoli-at-gmail-dot-com

--
Goli

A small story...

2008-02-15T16:06:00.000+05:30

He was half-awake, still on the bed, when Mr. Reddy called. "Please can you be at Indian coffee house at 8:30 morning", he could hear Reddy say. "Ok," he said and cut the phone. But he was in no mood to get up, he generally liked to lie in bed early in the morning, listening to the birds and thinking about his girl friends, atleast those who he thought of as girlfriends. He didn't want to spoil his sleep for some Reddy, and he got some satisfaction in making Reddy wait for spoiling his dreams.

He was wondering how people could be so selfish, seven in morning was not the time to bug people, especially when you did not know them and further still when you had to get some work out of them. But he did not say anything on phone, because Mr. Reddy was after all niranjan's father. He had worked with Niranjan on one project during college time and they had had a good time.

He delayed as much as he could getting up from bed, but then finally woke up and got ready to meet Reddy. Early morning MG road is deserted, and he quite liked to drive on empty roads, even parking is so easily available, and standing outside the coffee house was this middle age man, a typical shop-keeper-uncle type, with a big tummy, and sure enough he was Mr. Reddy.

"Mahesh"
he nodded,
"I waiting, 7:30 AM"? Mr. Reddy added,

"But I said 8:30 uncle", he blurted in a louder voice, He was in no mood to be guilt-tripped by some Reddy who was standing for one hour on a relatively cold Bangalore morning.

"Language problem, you fast English, less understand" he said

They went inside.

"15 minutes only, then you go office", Mr Reddy said

He was relieved, he had a important review meeting in office at 10 and he did not wanna get late for that. Not much that it mattered, but he still wanted to use this as an excuse to escape from him, and return to comfortable work desk with google talk and orkut.

"Lawyer from Guntur, you witness, give same, what you give in court, copy is there" Mr. Reddy said and handed him the copy.

He looked at the copy, and memories flooded of that afternoon in court, all those cross examination questions, "Did you see the truck coming", "Was it a cold night", "Was it a foggy night", all those things which he hardly remembered. He was actually sleeping when it happened, and he did not even realize it until much later, when he had woken up to lots of commotion, people shouting, in languages he did not understand, and he was sandwiched between two seats. He did not remember exactly when the realization had hit him that it was an accident. He only remembered wriggling out through the window, someone helping him out, and for some strange reason he was the only one out there wearing shoes, every one else in their bus was barefoot. His next memory was taking one of his colleagues to the closest hospital, in a police jeep. He was in a kind of semi conscious state in disbelief, probably in shock, but somehow the hospital, and then police station and everywhere else, seemed to be a dream. Only when he was at police station someone said Niranjan had died on spot.

Niranjan was his classmate and after that they had landed up in a job in the same company. Niranjan had planned the whole trip. He did not even remember the last thing Niranjan had said or his last expression. probably at the tea shop on the highway, after which Niranjan had choose to sit on the first seat and he for some reason was sitting on the third.

He did not even see Niranjan's body, he did not have the courage to see it. Days later he was still looking at the empty cube and half expecting Niranjan to appear suddenly. They said he had died on impact.

Then he remembered the court case, he had already given witness once. That was for Shivkumar. Shivkumar was sitting next to Niranjan and had met the same fate. He had not given entirely correct witness then either, he had said that he was awake when it happened. He had said that it was not a foggy night, though he did not remember anything of that sort, he had also said that the other vehicle was speeding. In reality he had no idea how and what happened, he was sleeping blissfully. But he had done that because he felt sorry for Shivkumar's father. The insurance lawyers were very smart, and probably had he said the truth Shivkumar's father would probably not have got a single rupee, which did not seem right. Poor father, he was old, fighting a lone battle against those tricky viley lawyers. And he had not entirely distorted everything, had he been awake, probably he would have witnessed same thing. Surely Shivkumar's father could not be punished for his sleepiness. He had felt happy then that he could help the distressed father who had grown really old travelling in crowded BMTC buses for three months, trying to get some insurance claim.

But right now sitting in front of Mr. Reddy, he was wondering and questioning to himself if he had to repeat the same things again. Why did these fathers want so much money from insurance? And Mr. Reddy did not look that old - he could surely take care of himself. Why making him do the same things and repeat the same things. But he was afraid that if he altered the statement this time around, it would be difficult reconciling to the court what he had said earlier and what he would say now. He was getting himself in to trouble trying to help people and the questions inside him were becoming more probing.

He had decided within himself that he would try to get things done in the right way especially in government offices. He had done that for his driving license, he had got it without paying a single rupee as bribe because he was adamant that that has to be done this way. Then why not fight insurance lawyers in right way, but then how many things he could possibly take up inlife. And after all Niranjan was his good friend. Further still the the idea scared him that had it not been for two seats, probably his father would have been here with Niranjan. That was scary and disturbing thought.

So he slowly and carefully read his previous witness and kind of memorized it. And then off he went to court to give witness. And it did not take long, but it required patience, same old questions, same cross examinations, same senseless things, like "did you see the other vehicle coming", "how far was it when you spotted it", "what is your religion". He wondered why would religion matter, he had half the mind to say that he was an Indian and he did not believe in religion, but then he did not want to create a scene, and unnecessary complicate matters. It is not a great feeling to see things getting repeated all over again, and then it made me wonder, how difficult it might be for rape victims, every hearing to go over it again and again, and then all of sudden he was feeling happy that he was better off. Comparatively this was nothing.

All was done, and he was free again. Mr Reddy thanked him and said, "I get 80 Lakhs",

80 lakhs!!! his mouth dropped, all of sudden he felt that all his lying was only to satisfy Mr. Reddy's greediness. What was he going to do with so much money, especially after Niranjan was no more. It was little disgusting that all this fight and all this business was just for money. Everyone wanted money, insurance lawyers wanted to save money of insurance, probably because they get commision on what they save, this Mr. Reddy, wanted more money for this son. All of sudden he felt things very oppressive, as he was going down the lift of court building. He was wondering what was he doing here, probably and the realization that he also had the hand in all this shameful business. It was very bad feeling.

And amidst these thoughs when he was stopping an auto to run way from that shameful place, he heard some final good bye from Reddy, and he did not care to return the good bye. He was glad that he was out of all this shit.
But as auto started, he caught this words," Will call, when settlement done, Niranjan, said you work NGOs, with money, want start Niranjan trust which scholarships poor children for them studying "

Changing the mindset..

2008-01-30T12:06:00.000+05:30

By,

Guest Writer - G Krishnan
gk(at)fireprosystems.com,

"

There is a small tea shop near my office and when we go for a chai, I always noticed that the used tea cups (plastics) are thrown into the gutter nearby. I have told the owner of the shop to keep a small carton box (trash box) and tell the people to drop the used cups into the box. But he was reluctant and it is understandable. But I did not leave it. I showed him the drain near by and there were >1000 used cups.
I told him that it is his responsibility too to educate people saying, when it rains all these plastic cups will clog the drain and we complain about municipality that they are not cleaning the drain. Drain is only for water to flow thru and not for any hard materials.
Tomorrow if it rains heavily and your shop gets submerged/damaged due to clogging of drain, it is because of you and not because of the Govt. Ever since he started keeping a trash box near his tea stall and I can say atleast the no. of cups thrown into the drain is reduced.
Also I take this opportunity to tell all that it is all of us who can make or break. If we decide to spread this simple message across, we can save the deaths of people esp children (since the poor children play in these areas), cattle etc. during floods/heavy rains.
Also since these plastics are not bio-degradable, it must be trashed in a proper way for recycling.
When ever I visit a road side stalls, I ensure that I spread this message.
To conclude I must say that I changed the "mindset" of the tea stall owner to "set mind". Let all of us set mind in changing this bad practice/menace.

Thanks for giving me an opportunity to voice out my story. Hope it benefits the entire society.

"

Have we become hollow?

2008-01-29T14:06:00.000+05:30

There is a small church next to my house, a very small church. Most of the evenings when I reach home there are always car parked right in front of my gate because of which I cant park my bike inside. Worst still are days when i have to go out urgently and there are always car right in front of gate. I have to go in the church and ask whose car is it and get them to move it.

I have had frequent conversations with this people and I try explaining them, how much difficulty they are causing for me and other people. They dont even listen, sometimes even accusing look because I end up spoiling their prayer time. To me it goes out of mind, why would someone want to pray when you dont care a bit about fellow people. Worst still it is not that the church does not have parking, but it is in the side lane, and it means little more time and little more time in taking out. But yups no one wants to do that.

Even when I went to Tirupati, I got the same feeling, people were pushing, fighting, shouting. No one cares if there is a old person or sick person and lets give him/her right of way first. Everyone just wants to get that one certificate of "darshan" which apparently supposedly would do whatever to your life. Makes me feel that we are just blinded by outward things, and dont even stop to think or introspect.

Recently I met this girl, she was from srilanka. Had come down to do a project for three months. She just leaving this week for once and all, with the determination that she is not going to come back to India again. She says because people are rude, people dont follow lane discipline, people dont care. Maybe she got a raw deal here, but in many ways she is right, and I did not have any answers to give her.

From Beggars to Entrepreneur

2008-01-05T21:56:00.000+05:30

Maddy pointed me out to this Video of Mohammad Yousuf which was posted on ngopost. This is really inspiring and here is the little excerpt from it.

"
I always insist that all human beings are entrepreneurs, without exception. it is part of human being, you cannot take it out, it is built in to him/her. Simply we could not build the society where we could unleash that potential, it remains dormant, because society never gave that idea, we do not talk about that in class room, in education system. Educations system encourages you to get good grades, and we say that if you get good grades you get good job. And it does not encourage entrepreneurship.

So this time we wanted to demonstrate that all of us are entrepreneurs, so the idea we came up with was that, lets have special program for beggars, our idea was you cannot be poorer than beggars,because that is last stage of survival, so if you can make entrepreneur out of beggar then there is nothing like it.

So we went to beggars and started talking to them, and we wanted to know at what point in time in life they started begging, what pushed them to beg and why they continues. Always the story was that I never thought that I will continue, when I started I could not find any other alternative, I thought next month I will stop but I did not have any solution and so I continued to be beggar.

So we suggested them as you go from house to house for begging, would you like to carry some merchandiser with you such as biscuits, cookies, candies, toys. etc, So that you can give a choice to the family, if they want to give you charity or they want to buy something from you, or they want to do both. So you are giving them choices. And you are going from house to house anyway, this is something you can add to your activity. And they liked it, and our thought was that we will have couple of thousand beggars in that the program and see how it goes and learn lot from them. It became such a popular program, today there are more than 100 thousand beggars in the program and more than 10 thousand of them have stopped begging completely, they are sales person, door to door sales person"

This and lots more, I have become a fan of this guy.

Santa's day out at Annanya

2007-12-29T08:25:00.000+05:30

Had a small adventure at Annanya, just before Christmas. Dressed up Chander as Santa Claus, and with the help of iVolunteer and borrowed Toys from Toy bank to give it to kids at Annanya.
Pictures will tell rest of the story.

Impatience

2007-12-28T18:01:00.000+05:30

The other day I was sitting at Hong Kong airport with one of my friends and as soon as the boarding announcement was made, he was practially running to get in to the plane, as if they are going to close of the gates or if he was not going to get the place to sit. I asked him, "Hey, chill what is the hurry?" He said, "No I wont get place to keep my baggage in the overhead compartment"

All my life I have done so many of flight trips, and I have not encountered a situation where the people asked you to throw out the baggage, because there was no space, there is always been space. Worst case might be that there is no space above your seat and then air hostess would come running to your aid and I would say that it is a plesant situation rather than an unpleasant one.

Sometimes I wonder why are we so engrossed with fear of losing something and hence rushing, rushing. Tensing ourselves to reach office early because else might lose the favourite parking spot, getting up as soon as the plane comes to halt and rushing to exit first just to save couple of minutes, getting up before the end titles of movies so that you are first to get out of cinema parking, getting impatient at the auto in front because of which missed the green signal by couple of feet and many more.

Why are we always running to secure the future, study hard to get in to good college then take a job, after two years of job, start looking to buy the house, find and buy one, which would would take half of salary practially till retirement, buy a car, scooter, or whatever, and then when you are left with 10% of your salary that save for education for the kids.

Please dont use that grashopper kind of story on me, and tell me what happened to grashopper who did not think of winter, but I do think that we are all to obsessed with securing and double securing future.

Earlier whenever i used to drive down to office I used to keep thinking about the mails that I will have to reply, the things that I will do in office and so on.. and day never used to turn out like that. Now I have conciously stopped doing that, I want to notice and see things, and I realized that the world is not going to come to end if I dont reach couple of minutes ealier to office.

Happy new year.
--
Goli

Stories from Hong Kong...Origin of word Good...

2007-12-07T09:26:00.000+05:30

First day in Hong Kong, and I was sitting in the bus reading the newspaper, and I found a section there called, some origin of words and learn chinese kind of thing,

So found the following entry which was talking about the origin of hte word good.

Good is written as,
好 and pronounced as (Hau)

and here is how it is formed,

The first character in the above word

女
means woman, girl etc. (Pronounced Nu).

And the second character
子
means a boy (zu)

And you combine this together to get
好

which means good (Hau)
So a girl and boy together means good.

Isn't this interesting.

Stories from HK..... Food

2007-12-07T09:08:00.000+05:30

Hi,

Now about five days in Hong Kong, and I have realized two things..

I used to boast in Bangalore that I can eat everything, but after coming here i have changed my mind, there are some things which need lot of courage to eat. Went out for dinner with all my collegues, (most of them are chinese or taiwanese), and we went to some thai restaurant, I tried almost each and everything until she got a full plate of crabs, and then my courage failed me, and I simply could not get myself to eating that.. But trust me apart from the scary look that most of the food had it tasted great. It is so different from anything else that I have eaten in my life
I also realized that all the chinese restaurants in India are completely non chinese. That has got no relations to the food that you get here. Fried rice that I keep seeing in all Indian chinese restaurants, I could not find it here in any of the menus, it is another story that most of the menus were in chinese and I could not read them.

But over all my dining experience has been great. Here you can get any kind of sea food. Food that I have never seen before. It is exotic and colourful and whatever I have tried I have easily managed to gobble up everything.

A sample picture of lunch. It is one of the most colourful lunch that I have seen. This is called Japenese Sushi.

You can read more about sushi on the web, Have not seen any restaurant in India which gives sushi.

More later, these last few days have been terribly terribly busy. lots of more stories to say but may be little later.

Fraudy Rai University ??

2007-11-26T09:34:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I was just listening to CNN IBN citizen journalist, and this piece of story caught my eye. A story about how fraud Rai University is. This story has been done by couple of students, of the Rai University campus which was closed down after one year of education, because supreme court canceling its affiliation.

I was shocked because, I always thought that Rai University was one of the better private colleges in India, and at one point of time was even looking at it for my cousin. But this video has a separate story to tell.

I also googled and found that, a old story (2005) also about similar stuff happening in Rai University Ahmedabad.

Maybe some of the campuses of Rai University are good, or maybe this is one off case, but do be careful when next time you try to choose a university.

Look at the video below, click on the extreme right side.

Did you see RDB?

2007-11-11T10:43:00.000+05:30

The below is one of the mails that I had written to a friend, and then had ended up forwarding to loads of friends, but posting it on blog.
"

On one of the jobless sundays, I had gone to cancel a railway ticket of one of my friends. It was a tatkal ticket, and he had not travelled, because it was waitlist...(dont bother about the technicalities that much, it was actually quite complicated).

First I went and stood in the railways reservation queue.... it was quite a long queue, and I was there with a book in my hand..remembering the good old hostel days, when we used to stand in queues to get those concessions. I reached the counter after quite sometime, but Oopss... he said for some reason this cannot be cancelled at the counter, the software did not have any such option, I would have to go to the station master. I could not blame the operator.

Well I went all the way back to platform, went to station master, and he casually asked me to go and meet some railway inspector, again in the reservation building. I nimbled back to the reservation building, this fellow was not there, I had to sit there in his office, my book giving me company. He came after some good half an hour, I was little irritated now, asked him. He asked me to go to Accounts section in main railway administrative building.

I dont know what made me go all the way to the main adminsitrative building, (if you familiar with Bangy, you would know it is about 500 meters from the reservation buidling), I guess the good mood of the morning, or may be wonderful weather prompted me to go there. Reached and there was not a person to be seen. Ofcourse it was closed, it was Sunday.

I was laughing at my folly, all my good mood was turing in to equivalent irritation against that railway inspector, against the station master and against everyone working in railways. Everyone just wanted to sit in the chair and take a nap and skip work.

But as I was leaving, somewhere down those empty desks I found this lone guy working. I was so happy to find him, this was the target to vent out all my frustration of last three hours or running around here and there. And I melted down everything on that poor guy. But that fellow to my surprise turned out to be quite nice. He explained me the relevant rules, he even showed me the website of railways, which explained the rules of various corner cases of reservation and cancellation, and said the final authority was that railway inspector, and I had to go to him.

Yups another direction... I was in no mood to go there again...I wanted to go home and finish rest of the book, I could let go 200 rupees...after all it just means one pizza or two DBCs, I already had wasted so much time. But I guess he read what was on my mind.

He asked "Did you see RDB?", (RDB is Rang De Basanti ofcourse)

I was surprised at this question, I said "Yes!"

He said.. "Either you complain about this, or go home grumbling"

It struck like a sting. I could almost read him, almost hear him say "this IT poeple of AC offices, cribbing all the time, making comments on how a railway inspector should behave, commenting on his lack of manners, on his ethics and so on". He had that look in his eyes.

He was a relatively young guy, someone who had perhaps recently got married, and I could feel that in a way he was telling me, "help me change the system" kind of stuff.

But he had hit me, I could not go back now, I was determined to complain. But I did not have any proof, so what do I do.... So I again decided to go back to the reservation office and back to the reservation inspector, this time around he was there.

This time, I said "Please write it and give me". As it turned out, he finally looked carefully at my case, and got my work done, he mumbled something that rules have changed recently and he did not quite understand last time what I wanted to say and so on. I got my 200 rupees.

It is little hard to describe, but that day, that fellows words "did you see RDB?", did hit me, I did not even take his name, and I dont even remember in which of those infinite corridors of that administrative building that I found him. But I think will remember him for a long time to come. And from that day onwards I have been using this technique of "please write and give me" shamelessly.

I would strongly suggest that you too use it..
"

Cheers and have a great weekend.

Cant find time...

2007-11-08T17:12:00.000+05:30

I was trying to talk to this friend of mine recently, and for a long time I had been trying to meet him. And he was always like, I cant leave office before seven or eight there is loads of work. This has been going on for a month now.

Not that I blame him, probably he is one of the most reliable employee of his company, and also I am not dying to meet him so I care less. But it keep wondering how we get so engrossed in our job that we start neglecting everything. We all want to go out and meet friends, we all appreciate people who have got time to do all kinds of other activities, and we wish that there was less work. But when some call comes,"Lets do this stuff", we always have, "nahin yaar bahut kaam hai",

I still remember once when I was talking to one friend, (not the same friend of first paragraph) and there was something every important, but I had so much work. And she only told me "Goli, tum nahin rahoge office mein to tumhara office bandh to nahin hoga na", and I still remember that, because this is so true. Working in MNCs and all, I know practically I hardly any value to the company, if I am sick, they will find hundred other alternatives to work, if I cease to exists, I am sure company will exist. But I guess for my family I mean much more, friends mean much more, bdays and marriage anniversaries (recently this has been added,since more and more friends getting married) mean more.

These days I just have a easy attitude to work, I know it is going to happen, I know that next day i am going to put little more effort and finish the work, and over time I have realized that it has nothing to do with your work and how your boss is or which kind of job you are, I think it is just the mindset.

I hope my boss is not reading this.. :)

have a great Deepawali.. :)

Minister Jam

2007-10-26T21:43:00.000+05:30

There have been so many times, where I have been caught stranded in the middle of the road in the traffic jam, waiting for some ministers to cross. I kind of call them "minister Jams".

But I was wondering if there is any rule which says that ministers should be given the first preferences on the road or it is just power that they use for their comfort. I do understand that ministers time is more important than my time so in a way giving some preference to him might be justified, but I always wonder the fate of those ambulances which get caught in this so called Minister Jam.

I distinctly remember that sometime back when I had done the interview of traffic policeman, he had pointed out the pain and the tension they have to undergo when ministers come. Not only they have to hear all the grumblings of people, but a single mistake is like great sin.

So thinking if there are any such rules, of clearing roads for politicians, or whatever? Tried to Google, but I dont know right terms to search for this, it gives all kinds of hits. Does anyone have any idea?

Cant think of any title

2007-10-09T00:11:00.000+05:30

When I was about to leave for US, my boss told me that if you want to meet anyone in the US office you will have to set up a meeting with them, else they are not going to meet you. I find it very odd, and I also find it very time wasting effort of syncing up time zones and playing around with outlook calender and trying to set up meetings and then rescheduling and more rescheduling.

I keep wondering that are people in US so impolite that they would not want to chat up with someone who has come from so far off for brief fifteen minutes, what kind of work makes you so busy that you cannot even spare time for fifteen minutes, What kind of planning is that, which does not allow you to share a joke with someone. yups you can be in one of those days, but that does not happen everyday. Contrast this with the case when these people come to India, most of us are like take out time to make sure that he/she is comfortable, and I was wondering why would US folks not do the same. Did they not care?

I wonder why should we when we come from India should start behaving differently when we are in US office, why should we try to dress up, and talk like the way other people do here. I think it is ok if I dont know that freeways means roads where there are no signal, it is ok not to be able to distinguish between different coins. Not to know that coffee generally here means no milk inside, and that most people here call milk the cream, and brinjal the egg plant, and the closest thing to rotis is burritos, and that I have to press the button when I want to cross the road.

But since the time I have come here, things have been very different from what people in India told me. People are as eager to chat without calenders, people are keen to accompany you for lunch, and even sponser it for you most of the times, eager to spot you that difference between octopus, and chicken, (that day the guy told me that the stuff I eat was octopus, I did not believe him though), order the taxi for you or to drop you to the place you want to go.

The other day, I went to this mexican dance festival, it was over air amphitheater, and it was dance based on themes, and the guy was speaking everything in Spanish, but thankfully the lady next to me was Mexican (And I guess most mexicans speak Spanish) and I kept bugging her, and she kept translating each and everything from Spanish to English. I even sang her "La Bamba" for her, with which she was very impressed :).

I actually dont remember why I started writing this post, but I get irritated when people try to be what they are not and expect me to do the same, because I am what and how I am, and I cant be otherwise, else I will cease to be me.

About this Blog

2007-10-04T12:31:00.002+05:30

If you land up on this blog for first time, then you are going to get confused for sure. This blog has no specific pattern, and I do not write about anything specific area as such. Hence you will find that this blog has everything from "small stories", to "travel Logs", to "Startups" to "Profiling of some NGOs".

Well my intention of maintaining this blogs is just to share things/events/places/thoughts that I find interesting and I guess others might like to know. And since my interests are so varied there are loads of mix masala on this blog.

Many times I thought that I should split this blog in to multiple blogs, but then I am having so much trouble maintaining this blog. Will do that sometime in future, when I have more time. But soon I will implement "tags", that would make it little easier to browse.

If you have not and if you have not, you can spend some time on "Recommended reads" and on NGOpost.

One advice for potential bloggers,
For potential bloggers, do not start a blog on blogger, changing anything is so very difficult.

Cheers.
--
Goli (Edited last in Aug 08)

Things dont change much..

2007-10-03T06:39:00.000+05:30

"Do you want to come to the bar/disc?" asked my friend

It was 9:30PM, and I had just reached US couple of hours back, and I was supposed to be to be jet Lagged... and my eyes were already closing.

"Abey chal yaar, will show you US" he added.

And you know, I have never learnt to say No to anything..

Ten minutes later we were driving, to go to some place called Santana Square. And we entered the place called Rosie, after the big guy at the door made sure by looking at my driving license if I was above 21.

This place reminded me very much of Spin in Bangalore, crowded with all kinds of people, Music was pulling me in to plunge inside and just dance, but I was little skeptical, to venture in to that sea of people, I thought it was a bad idea to come there, wanted to go and sleep. I was standing in corner, absently looking at people, clothes, shoes, and then nothing in particular.

And out of nowhere appeared this two girls, I would not say girls, or ok maybe girls, some 30'ish types, (one of them had a great smile), and they came and were like "hi how are you?", and thats it. And next thirty minutes turned out to be my best time in US till now. I started dancing, then dancing and kept on going. And had probably Don Williams seen me he would have been happy, because as he says in one of his songs..."Dance like nobody is watching" It was Hip hop... so trying all those, ya, yo kind of dance, with all kinds of stupid gestures, and smiling and laughing all the way to glory.

It is not a great thing, and you might think what this stupid gibberish is all about. But when I was just driving back home in the car, I somehow felt very good about the whole thing, I felt very happy. Images of dim lit dance floor, couple of girls, whom probably am never going to meet again in my life, I shouting them in the ears about India, and they shouting back in my ears about their stuff about US, talking and smiling about various things, doing a big cheers with glasses in hand. These images I am going to carry back home.

More than that I started realizing that poeple are more or less same everywhere, a little smile and little bit of Ye Ye... gets things started. I thought that I had become very pessimistic about US, and started hating this place out of pre conceived notions. But I guess it has got more to do with your attitude then with the place. I can make it bleak, or I can make it happening. There are always people waiting to be touched and waiting to be talked to.

And I honestly that enthu and smiles of those two girls I have been carrying since, to my sales conference and to the first two days. Probably I could not have had a better first day at US :).

Lots more to write, about this trip, about divorces, tequilas, starbucks coffee, Karoke night, and hotel receptionist... but will do. Now to sleep.

The US dream...

2007-10-01T04:43:00.000+05:30

As soon as I enter IIT, my dream was to head out of this country and go to US. All the fourth year students were doing the same, desperately trying to get to write SOPs, talking all the time about US. The mess tables were filled with stories about adventures and mis(s)-adventures of all desi babus in the US. Everything you heard looked great, US was great, India looked backward.

But I dont know somewhere down the line, as I finally reached my final year that urge completely died down, I did not want to go to US, and I think it was mostly because I did not want to stay away from my family, and I wanted to try myself at job first. But then bangy life since day one has been so happening that never really thought of going off to US.

But anyways, this new marketing job and I was all set to go to US for couple of weeks. So all this thoughts crossed my mind again, and yups I was set and excited to see this new country.

Nothing to write about flight and all, it was as normal and mundane as it is always, with the fake smiles of air hostesses (I really think that thier job is difficult), and small small packets of jam, sugar, and pepper really amuse me. They are much like used to have when we used to play Ghar Ghar as kids, just that they were not as elaborately packed as this ones.

Reach San Jose and there was this friend of mine who picked me up from Airport. And I was so impressed with the roads and all. And trust me he has such a lovely house, ample parking space, and a park and a golf course. I went inside and it had all the facilities, kitchen, hot water and everything. And it was so peaceful, I could sit there and read a book, could just go and heat something in micro wave and eat. All the technolgy for everything, life is as comfortable as it can ever get. I was wondering why dont I think of spending some part of my life in US. this place was fantastic...

But half and hour there, and I started missing something, I did not feel good about it, I was missing noise, and I was missing people on streets, and I was looking for some face to talk to, and it was not there. There was this whole feeling of loniliness that was creeping inside me. Nothing was looking interesting anymore. I did not want to call because I was on international roaming and further was sure most of the India was sleeping. So then I did what I could do best, open the lappy, connected to net, and was on Google Talk, and as always there were always couple of people to talk to :)

More later...
Laptop discharging and no power adapter and eyes full of sleep..

Once more Muziboo time...

2007-09-23T10:42:00.000+05:30

The more I surf this website the more I love this, maybe basically because I love music, especially guitar, today since morning I have been sitting here, on my chair and just listening to the music posted, So I thought that I am going to put some of my favourites and you will surely like some of them..

Starting with the best song that I have seen on Muziboo... this is composed/sung by this girl called mimi... I dont know her but really loved it...

Then with this vocal from Prasanna....

Aadat... almost looks like real song..

Amazing vocals.. of a Rafi song

and Finally this "Dooba Dooba" on guitar... this song has always sounded great on Guitar..

Have a great weekend ahead..
:)

Delhi police website...

2007-09-05T08:18:00.000+05:30

Recently I have found this story about Delhi Police lifting the complete website from Singapore, floating in Blogosphere.

So the story is that the Delhi Police website... which is called...
http://www.delhipolice.nic.in/

NDTV claims that the full website has been lifted up from the Singapore police website.

And early in morning I get a mail like this....

Subject: Dark side of Delhi police (Part of the mail below)
"
In 21st century, when Nations are using Internet as boom, Delhi Police cant
even get a simple website

Some of the “HOT” quotes from Delhi Police website. (followed by some mistakes on the website, which I find no necessity of putting them down here)

Read the complete striptease of website (and link pointing to NDTV article)

"

First I really dont understand what is the big deal if they copied website from Singapore police website. How does it matter? I guess everyone would agree that making websites is not the core competency of Delhi Police, they just want a place holder and fastest way to make things work. So they did the easiest thing to do. I think it is smart thing to do.

I am sure that there will be mistakes and they are going to sort them out. But I really appreciate Delhi Police initiative.

But more importantly than all this, I really don't understand why people take so much fun in criticizing and tearing apart things. I mean some of the comments on the NDTV article and the tone of the above mail for example are so bad.

It is like finding mistakes and letting someone down. I am not saying that you should not criticize, but I guess there is something like constructive criticism, "I think you it is really good, but I guess if you improve on this you will really make it brilliant ". And I really believe that even in most shabbiest of the efforts you will always find, something good to cheer, if you try to look with that attitude.

There are things that can make you feel good and there are things which can completely demoralize you. And I guess we all should make this choice carefully.

The mail early morning really put me off, and I really hate getting those kind of mockery filled, letting down emails.

PS: Actually I did look at the website and I think it is cool.... and should serve its purpose. And am also sure they are going to set all the small things all right.

Music Time..... Muziboo time...

2007-08-26T09:00:00.000+05:30

Not very long ago, I was having this after dinner fatta session with Prateek and Nithya, and they were telling me about having a website where amateur music lovers could upload their music. And here goes six weeks, which I spent blissfully hanging about here and there, but these guys got the site up. And they call it Muziboo (I dont know why Muziboo, perhaps prateek will be able to comment on this).

Lemme explain what this site is in this way...

As Flickr is for Photography
As Blogger is for writing lovers

So is
Muziboo is for budding guitarists, drummers and any kind of music players...

So on Muziboo, you can upload your music, and it is visible to whole lot of people and many times you get quite useful comments, good/bad/praise/junk/crap and so on... similar to blogger and flickr. But for me the biggest thing about these kind of websites is that, (that is true for blogger as well), I really get to meet and talk with like minded people. Meet people with whom i can discuss music and probably even meet up for jamming.

I am not going to write what the website has and what not it does not have, this is not the review of website, you can take a look, it is easy to use, and has everything that any such website should have.

Hold hold before you go off... and if you have headphones... I uploaded some of my stupid music as well...

So if you are music lover, i guess you are gonna like this website... so take a peek. If you have any feedbacks on the website you can mail it to contact@muziboo.com

PS: This is not a paid marketing... :( . But as a last note, i wanted to write about this, because I guess lot of us keep talking, about doing this and doing that... but this guy talked about it, put fight and has almost bought this to completion... and he is a motivation for him... and he is Nike kind of guy for me... "Just do it" types...So way to go guys keep it up.

In the mess...

2007-07-30T11:55:00.000+05:30

It happened again.... that sunday afternoon, I was again sitting in between the mess... yups the mess of my room... I had decided to clean it. And as everytime the same thing happened, I was sitting in middle of the room, with things scattered all around me, pencils, guitar notes, music sheets, hand written notes, shells, colours, cards, letters, marbles, pearls, coffee mugs .....

Everytime I invariably open up everything... and then it is like another journey down memory lane...

There is this badge that I have, which states, Class Representative, that was way back in 8th class and that badge was made by my heart throb then, and I had preserved it, because that is the only material thing that I have of her, and that was the time I had recently read treasure Island and it was my fantasy that I should go with her to some unknown place and stay there for rest of the life.

Then I have these guitar notes, scribbled sitting at 7:30 am class with our guitar teacher. This guitar sir, had a notebook, where he had written all the songs, and he used to ask us to copy, and his hand writing was no better than doctor's prescription, that was the ritual for first ten minutes of the class, and this one fine day we were doing "Hero" song by Enrique( at that time I had no knowledge enrique, and I used to think it was Henry K), and I could not believe that the song lyrics has the following line..

"Would you mind if I touched your hips??"

It was only later that I realized that it was suppossed to be "lips"...

I have this collection of shells, that I have gathered it from various beaches... I had this photo of miss xyz and me, really cute one on one of my first trips to goa...

This crayon picture that I drew of vani Vilas dam, which I visited while driving from Pune to Bangy, and the place was so beautiful, with dam, sorrounded by mountains, which had wind mills, and I did not have camera, and I had reached home and immediately drawn it, but later to realized that I suck at drawing and it was a great mistake that I used to ask my mom to finish my drawing books..

Letters of just when i entered college, (did not have any mail id then) stating that I was so impressed with the food in hostel, sambhar and idlis... :)

There was this piece of bandage, which someone had tied on my leg, when once in the middle of the wroking day, when I was stupidly running around in the parking, and I fell full flat face down, and dragged myself along the ground for couple of feet, like the way they fall in movies, and I badly hurt my knee, and tore my jeans as well...

Dairies, colours, lots of bits and pieces written on paper, love letters, hate letters, time pass letters, letters which never found that way to post office... and so on...

And by the time I am looking at all this, it is already late, and it is raining outside, and I feel like sleeping. So as always I just put all this in the box, or rather boxes, and doze off.

The boxes have only been increasing in number as I am have going all collecting and attaching the immense sentimental value to all this..
:D

Goli

PS: Have been off blogger for a while, but am going to be back with quite a few of posts soon..

when old meets young...

2007-06-27T16:11:00.000+05:30

Hey,

Well it all started with my and Yshesha visit to old age home (Anandaashram)... and then Reema's idea that why dont we have some sort of combined thing between orphanges and old age homes... and then pritesh on his bday introduced us to this wonderful school for street children called Annanya.... and the final thing when Shashi aunty (who runs Annanya, will write about her sometime really an inspiring story) was all enthu about it.

So we set on mission to get old people and kids together. After running around here and there to get the necessary permissions, last saturday we were finally all ready to go.

There are about 26 inmates of Anand Aashram. Most of them above 70, they have been living there for varied of reasons. (Am not going to write their stories here, some of them are really depressing, and further to do any justice to that there has to be one full blog post on that.) So at 10 in morning we reached there with the army of nine kids. And we were not sure what we going to do there. We did not organize any games, any music nothing. Just went there and then asked the kids that they have to go and talk to atleast one inmate for one hour and then come back. And thats it kids were on the job, some in chairs in corridor, some in dining hall, some in their quarters, talking, interacting, smiling. I dont want to write more about this, I think the following picture tells the story better. (Picture Courtesy Alice)

At the end we asked the kids if they would want to come back to this place and the answer was YES in unison. And as to why they wanted to come here, they have variety of ideas...

"We want to take them out for a walk"
"We want to sit and do drawing together"
"We want to come and study"

So I hope the enthusiasm does not end here... Finally we want to make it a weekly affair, every saturday we want kids to go to Anandaashram and spend time there. We also thinking that once kids get more used to the people there and develop some kind of rapport, we would try to do specific activities like teaching, drawing and so on. Well things are not this flowery flowery also, some of the people there are really depressed, and I guess it would take quite a task to get them out of their shell. So I guess still there are lots of things to do and lot to learn.

But we do think that this kind of interaction would be beneficial for both kids and the inmates of the old age home. Atleast last saturday we felt like that. So will see how it goes...

Thanks to all who made it happen, starting from Shashi Aunty, Pritesh, Alice, Maddy, Manish, Ananwita, Dhruv and to everyone else whose names I could not mention here.

I do hope that the enthu does not die...

This is just the beginning....
--
Goli

PS: We have asked all the kids to write an essay on what they saw and what they perceived. So will post that.
PS: somehow I managed to delete this post and I dont know how.. and am reposting it again... and I lost the comments... :(

GK Vale... Customer Service SUCKS

2007-06-22T14:44:00.000+05:30

"A time when Maharajas and Viceroys ruled over us.
A time when hand-painted portraits were still the norm.
A time when photography was still in its infancy. "

Sounds familiar?? Yes this are the marketing lines of the famous GK Vale, the photo studio in Bangy. They also have this one other line "We were here before MK Gandhi became Mahatma Gandhi".

So one of this days, I also had the privilege of walking in to this great great store, as I wanted the photograph for my new ID card. And I needed the photo urgently. After all the shooting-footing of my photo done, I told him that I am in hurry, and it would be great if he could give me soft copy of the photo, I did not want the CD and all that jazz. And he refused point blank.

He was standing there jobless, he had digi cam with usb interface , he had a usb cable, I had a laptop, all that was required was to connect it. But No. In spite of all the arguments and requests he did not budge.

Maybe it is one of the written rules that they should not give soft copies to customers, though I dont understand the logic of this rule. But it was complete indifference that bothered me. It was like I don't care a shit about you. He almost said "If you want come after two hours and take your photographs, else F*&% Off"

Am not going to walk in to that store again. (Ofcourse I had to walk in one last time to collect my photographs, on top of that I dont like that photograph as well. )

I wanted to write this because one I got very irritated and second I wanted everyone to know about it. I do also hope that some kin of GK Vale should also read about this and he should wake up and do something about customer service.

I think next time am going to take a video on my mobile and post it on YouTube.. :D

--
Goli

Once upon a Time...

2007-06-05T08:17:00.000+05:30

"
Once upon a time, there lived a great great sage, in the middle of the forest with all the lovely trees around him. He was a great archer. He had a beautiful wife. His wife was a great athlete... pre PT Usha types.

So as it used to happen this sage used to shoot an arrow, and then his wife used to run and get it back. That is why sage had only one arrow, because he did not need another one. He used to shoot and his wife used to run and get it back.

Now as it happened, one day his wife went after the arrow but did not come back for long. Sage was getting very worried and angry. His wife was very beautiful so he was getting suspicious. Finally very late in the evening she arrived. Sage asked her very angrily "Where have you been, it is almost night?", she said "Dont get angry at me, get angry at the sun, because it was so hot that my feet burnt, my face burnt and I got tired and fell down. Only after the sun went down I could do my work".

Not this sage got very angry. He knew that right in the middle of the day sun stopped for a second. And he said "I am going to teach a lesson to Sun, tomorrow at afternoon am going to shoot the sun down."

Having heard of this all the gods got very disturbed, because the sage was the greatest of archers and he was quite capable to shooting the sun down. So they began to worry. Next day sage took bath did his morning pooja and got ready to shoot the sun.

Gods came and requested him not to do this, because that would destroy the earth, but he was very angry "Sun has troubled my wife and am going to teach him a lesson"

That is when one of the Gods came and gave him an umbrella and a pair of slippers and he told the great sage "Instead of shooting down the sun, why dont you gift these to your wife"

That is how umbrella and slippers came in to existence.
"

I happened to attend one of the seminars of guy called Devdutt Pattaniak . This story was narrated then. Devdutt is a medical doctor by education, marketing manager by presentation and a mythologist by passion (that is what his website says). What I know about this guy is that he is a fantastic story teller. He made a two hour presentation, explaning the relevance of Mythology in todays corporate scenario. I liked the way he put the analogy, it was very new and innovative some of the things were far fetched, but it was full of all this kinds of story, that made it very pleasurable to sit up and listen to him, that too right after heavy lunch.

For example the above story says, "Instead of changing the world change yourself, or rather Adapt to changing world"

Anyways, his website has some nice interesting stories, take a peek. And keep his name in mind, next time he has a presentation somewhere please attend it.