Four Hundred and Four

This is my 400th post and this blog is 4 years and 1 month old. After achieving 100 in 1 year, 200 in 2 years and 300 in 3 years, I did not really expect to do 400 in 4 years but I came close.

Well, I am 400 and am not out. Thats mimicking Brian Lara. Except that this is simpler :-)

500, here I come...

C & I

... Story Continued

April 17th 2010

Bangalore Vs Bombay. IPL 3. First time in stadium with wife. There was Sachin in Mumbai team and pride of Bangalore in home team. Also, both teams had more or less qualified to semis. And, Bangalore team was very much in form, so much so that it had beaten Mumbai (the top team) in Mumbai earlier in the tournament. If Sachin scored, people were happy. If Bangalore won, people were happy. So, more or less, this was a win-win for spectators.

Alas, neither did Sachin score nor did Bangalore win. Whats more, there were couple of low-intensity blasts and more bombs diffused in and around the stadium, although we weren't much too concerned. And Bangalore lost so badly that there was a threat of not even being in the top four for qualifying into semis. Till date I haven't gone home real happy from Chinnaswamy and the sad saga continues but I ain't dissuaded :-)

After all, one wave from Sachin to the stands to acknowledge the crowd - after the crowd chants, "Sachin, Sachin, Sachin" vociferously over and over again - is more than sufficient to make one's day. As one banner said "Heard that God is in town. Have come to seek his blessings." As I stood there watching this tiny little man on the ground, I wondered how one single man can make over 45,000 people - young and old alike - give him a standing ovation every time he comes into bat, even though he is in the opposition team. To be a part of that standing ovation, is simple priceless.

30

2008 - Sahib Sindh Sultan

2009 - Ivory Tower

2010 - Pier 39

Expressway Vs Highway

We try to save money now

To spend good quality time with family later.

When we finally end up with saved money later,

Either there is no more a family

Or we ourselves are no more in the family!

Given a choice between the toll expressway and the free highway, which road should man choose? The expressway is costly but its faster. The highway is free but its slower. Faster means more quality time with family. Free means more money in the kitty, because money saved is money earned.

Twist in the tale: Going slowly on a traffic-ridden free highway consumes more gasoline and also leads to more wear and tear of the vehicle in the long run than going smoothly on the toll expressway. So, is money really saved while going on the free highway?!

The Vicious Circle

Higher pay packet entails a desire for better life;

Better life leads to liabilities exceeding assets;

Then, sustenance depends on higher pay packet.

:-(

Bloopers

I am making too many mistakes these days.

Sometimes unwillingly; sometimes willingly.

Each of them is costly.

:-(

"First time" of the day...

..Sat under a fan that actually worked in the BMTC bus!

..Toogire Rayara was not sung in the Mutt on a Thursday after all the preliminary religious activities.
:-(
Incidentally, it is only after one year of marriage that I came to know that my wife liked this song very much and my wife came to know that I liked this song very much! [Same with Indu Enage]

..Saw a lady crying in the Mutt in front of the Lord, with total devotion, as if there was no one else around her...

Experiencing the music!

Cool showers after a long, long time in Bangalore...

I have always liked this song, but today I felt the joyousness that is shown so well in the choreography...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpTCnl36gZI

Alas, the rain-bearing clouds can be compared to actual rain today. The rain vanished - like the rain-bearing clouds in the song - as soon as it came...

:-(

Peer Pressure

Scene (and seen!) in a female boutique shop in US (sometime in Nov 2009):

Three teenage girls checking out the innumerous dresses spread across the different shelves.

The quest for the ‘Right Dress’ made the three friends wander across the shop.

One girl picked up a jazzy top and her jaw literally dropped as if she found gold.

She grabbed it with both hands and made way to the friend nearest to her.

She said to her, with her eyes rolling: “Isn’t this cool? I mean isn’t this is so damn good?!”

The friend looked at the dress, just shrugged and said “Its okay” and continued her own search.

Not convinced if the top was just “okay”, the first girl then took that ‘piece-of-gold(!)’ to the third friend.

She asked her the same question but this time with less enthusiasm.

The third girl frankly said “Naw...” and she too got busy with her own search.

The first girl gave one last look at the jazzy top, gave a shrug and kept it back on the shelf.

Just goes to show how much one value other’s opinion…

Good Deed for the day

I was hungry when I left my office cubicle. By the time, I ran to the bus and got a seat, I was starving. I had a box of rusk with me which I opened and started munching. Etiquette told me that I should offer it to my (unknown) colleague sitting right beside me. But something within me was stopping me. I was not sure if I was embarrassed or if the person listening to iPod was stopping me but I sure wanted to. A part of me was stopping me from even starting the conversation with the unknown person while another part was urging me to the good deed.

Just a few days ago, when I was sitting in the same bus with another (unknown) colleague, I found it so easy to ask if Sachin had got to his momentous 200, but now, when I wanted to do a good deed, it was such a humongous task. Simple words – “Would you like to have some…?” But the words just wouldn’t come, even though I knew the other person would politely refuse! I tried and tried, I mentally spoke but physically it just wouldn’t come out! I finally felt so guilty eating all by myself, that I took the direct approach: I stopped thinking and blurted out the question. As expected, the person politely refused. Phew! What a relief to just ask and be rid of the guilty conscience!

Why is it so difficult to do a good deed? Why do we feel embarrassed?

Then I remembered Trevor McKinney in Pay It Forward. A simple story of doing 3 good deeds, and how the world gets transformed…

Quotes on Life

"It is a disturbing thought that we suffer in this world just as much by being prudent and taking precautions as we do by being rash and impulsive and acting as the spirit moves us."

"Freddie, resplendent in evening dress, bustled in, patting his tie with solicitous fingers. It had been right when he had looked in the glass in his bedroom, but you never know about ties. Sometimes they stay right, sometimes they wiggle up sideways. Life is full of these anxieties."

"Life was like one of those shots at squash which seem so simple till you go to knock the cover off the ball, when the ball sort of edges away from you and you miss it. Life was apt to have a nasty back-spin on it."

"Mankind is divided into two classes, those who do sitting-up exercises before breakfast and those who know they ought to but don't."

By P G Wodehouse in The Little Warrior

Ambitious?

Everybody in the family is happy and excited. But I am a little concerned. I have my reasons. And I have my questions.

Am I being too ambitious? Is this the way I want to lead my life?

Its funny how Life takes you even when you have no clear cut goals and you just flow with the river. And boy, its not boring.

The 3 shoes on the T-shirt

The other day, I saw a girl wearing a black T-shirt
That just had 3 shoes lined up vertically in the middle.

This made me wonder.
What in Heaven’s name was that design supposed to mean?

What could have inspired the designer to imagine such a T-shirt?
What could have inspired the girl to buy and wear such a T-shirt?

Just goes to show, to borrow a Wodehouse phrase,
“It takes all kinds to make this world!”

But hey, wait a minute.
Because the shirt had such a unique design, I noticed it and so would have many others.

Perhaps this was the inspiration behind the designer’s design!
To create a design that does not make any sense but catches the attention of passers-by!

Perhaps this was the inspiration behind the girl’s sense of attire!
To wear a shirt that stands out and makes people look at it!

And me, like many others, fell for it in a flat.
Now, include me when I say “it takes all kinds to make this world!”

Sun set

These days I am taking the 6 pm bus back home from office. The bus comes over the celebrated elevated NH7 for about 14 kms. Almost every day, now being on top of this elevated expressway, I get to see the sun setting, and boy, it is so wonderful. A red hot ball thats dipping, dipping amidst an excellent easel of choicest colors that no man can ever dream of painting...

AC

These days AC has become very common in India. A decade ago, only the privileged few (like business men, actors, etc) flaunted it but with the economic development and fat pay packet jobs, AC has become affordable for the middle class. Sleeper 3-Tier folks will now opt for AC 3-Tier, the AC room is now better than the normal noisy dining hall in restaurants, windows of the AC car are now shut out to the noisy traffic and the heat outside, BMTC Vajra buses are “standing” full, etc, etc.

While AC indeed provides comfort and luxury, I feel it is somehow a temporary solution to a growing problem and not just that, it is something that’s adding fuel to the growing problem, the growing problem of increasing global temperature. If my understanding is correct, AC blows out more heat outside to keep the inside cold (You only have to stand beside an AC vehicle at a traffic light to feel the heat). So, when there are lots of such air conditioners blowing out heat outside, wouldn’t the global temperature increase? It might be an insignificant amount, but then when a complete country starts affording AC, and at the same time cuts a hell lot of trees to make way to wider roads thanks to economic development, that would be a lot of hot air added to the global temperature.

So, this is what we have: There is bearable heat both inside and outside; but people use AC; AC blows more heat outside to make the inside cold; so, outside heat increased; so more people opt for ACs; more ACs blow out more heat outside; so outside heat increases even more, and becomes unbearable, and hence we end up with this vicious cycle that’s actually tightening the noose over our own neck, and we are not even realizing.

If, like the decade ago, we had continued to stay without the amount of ACs that we currently have, who knows, perhaps we would not have had to sweat out as much as we are currently when not under an AC. ACs make more sense in ultra-cold and extremely-high temperature countries like US, Russia, Europe, etc but India is a country that could have lived without ACs in the first place.

PS:

1. If my understanding is wrong and ACs do not blow out hot air due to enhanced technology, then this post can be ignored! Suffice it to say that I am in bliss (read ignorance)!

2. For the uninitiated, increase of global temperature is not a problem just because people have to sweat more but it has another serious issue of melting of ice in the Polar Regions which has a two-fold problem:
a. More water in the oceans which will merge coastline cities
b. Currently the ice in the Polar Regions is reflecting much of Sun’s rays out of the atmosphere. But when all the ice melts, the complete set of Sun’s rays gets stayed within the earth’s atmosphere and this leads to a number of skin diseases (and many more as yet unknown diseases deeper than just skin) due to the Sun’s Ultra Violet radiations.

Indian Roads

Although parts of India are now connected by great national highways that are comparable to any foreign expressways, the Bangalore to Chennai NH4 is not yet up there, what with a number of sudden potholes and double-lane-system-without-median and what not. On this highway, I saw a hoarding (similar to the ones which we usually see like ‘Speed Thrills But Kills’, etc) which got me confused:

“Roads are our culture.”

I failed to see if we were “boasting about the richness” or “showcasing the poorness” of our culture…!

3 words that bring joy

Today I was given a task that seemed daunting but I was told 3 words by the client (who gave me the task) which gave me utmost joy and almost deflated the mountain of work that was already on my head:

"Take your time."

I ended up finishing the task with ease in lesser time and realized that it was not a mountain after all! Come to think of it, if I was given a deadline of, say, 2 or 3 hours, I would have done a sloppy work and would not have enjoyed either, what with the deadline hanging like a guillotine.

Just shows how words can affect a person and his task.

Electricity

Methinks electricity has to be first people’s priority. The government has to ensure full electric power to its country’s residents, in urban and rural areas, 24 hrs a day 365 days a year before allowing private organizations to buy electricity for advertising on hoardings and malls to flaunt jazzy lights in and around their buildings and sports events to be held under thousands of watts at the expense of what rightly could have been electricity for millions of rural poor who spend hot summer nights without light and fan. Its like having load shedding in the whole city of Nevada but flaunting all those lights in Las Vegas Casinos.

Thought for the day

At times you will have to come to a lower gear to propel your vehicle to overtake - or ‘pass’ - as they say in US. I sometimes wonder if it is the same with one’s career. Does one have to come to a lower-paying job to enhance the career growth?

Sita on Fire

If someone were to ask me what is the only thing that you hate in Ramayana, I would say Rama making Sita go on fire (agni pariksha) to prove her chastity. [Later, he abandons her in spite of the fact that she comes out clean in the agni pariksha, just to satisfy the rumour spread amongst his people] However much Rama is praised on being the 'Ideal Gentleman' (Maryada Purush as he was called), I am of the opinion that his action of testing Sita/abandoning her was not the right thing to do. If Vishnupuran had continued till the tenth avatar, perhaps I would have known something that I do not know about this particular episode to change my opinion...