Disjointed Verses

The Great Argument

2012-02-11T02:43:00.002+05:30

PS- This is an entry for a creative writing contest at a premier institute's festival. 1.5 hours , 1000 words flat. Every thing here is imaginary and any resemblances are purely coincidental. Unless of course, you know better.

Enjoyed penning the story . Maybe I should do more of storytelling.

“It’s over !“ she shouted over the phone.

Taken aback by the fury , I could only mutter, “What , why? Everything was fine in the morning.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know anything. I know from your posts on facebook. Its over.”

And then before I could reply back I heard the sound of the call being cut. Pleading with a terminated line was not high on my list of hobbies, so I gave her a call back. And then once more and then more after that but she had switched off her phone. She was suddenly unreachable in every meaning of the word and I had to step back to analyze it all.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

The first call was of course to Varun, my alter ego.

As his phone rang 1200 km away for a moment I wished he was closer. Then my thoughts got pushed out as his voice rang out loud over the phone.

“Hellos,dude can I call you back. Kind of stuck in a conference call”.

“Dost, it’s an emergency. She broke off.”

“Whaaat!! She did what. thought you two were made for each other and never fought. Wait, guess I will have to cut short my other call. Hold on”

As he turned his attention to the client call trying to terminate it, I had a few moments to myself over the broken conversations I was hearing from Varun’s side. It seemed a little sudden. I had been introduced to her around six months back and even as I was shaking her hand , I knew I was falling for her. The wooing began almost immediately. I smiled through stuff, tried to be a little less me and a little more her and it seemed she was doing perfect job of pretending I did not exist. Varun and I would be forever exchanging notes, two bumbling fools trying to walk a path they both were utterly incapable of.

In the end , desperate times needed desperate measures. It all appeared to be going nowhere and one day I called Varun and said ,it’s time. I was gonna ask her to dinner.

“Are you sure. I think you will get your heart broken.”, he gently suggested.

“I gotta know man. Can’t be hurt more. If she says no, you know me what I will be doing”

“Jumping off a roof?”

“Bast!@#, I will be writing sad sad poetry. And fools who know nothing will appreciate it for the talent never knowing it was her not me who gets credit for the poetry.”

“You know Saleem Sinai, the reason we are good friends is coz you never fail to find something to laugh about. And what if she says yes ”

“I don’t really want to imagine stuff but I guess it will be the start of a story of the stuff that fairy tales are made of.”

“Ahh you ,the eternal romantic at heart” came his mocking reply.

“That’s me.”

I took three days to gather the courage to call her. It was funny how I, who could effortlessly chat with strangers was mortified with fear at the prospect of calling her. Once I thought I had the courage, I called. My heart was pounding as the phone rang. All for nothing as I later mused for the call rang out before disconnecting.

But the dice was cast and now I needed to persevere. I waited and the next time the phone was out of network coverage area.

The third time was almost mechanical. There was no adrenalin rush or a pounding heart. And then I heard her voice- “Hi”. All the gathered courage vanished like the dew before the midday sun. I was suddenly all alone and terrified. But I whimpered something out and just got ‘Dinner with me?’ out to her somehow.

There was that pause and I was already imagining the polite refusal. If there was ever a chance of her saying yes, my riveting performance on the phone had killed it definitely.

But instead of the no ,”Yup, when” came over the phone. I wanted to shout in joy but I meekly gave her a location and time. The time for the shouts would be later.

With that dinner began a new adventure. From that dinner , we kind of slid into dating without ever loudly acknowledging it. There were dinners, adventure trips, concerts and hours hanging out. The formality vanished and it had been perfect. Then why…

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

But the thoughts were interrupted as Varun came back on the phone and said,”Saale ,what did you do?”

“Nothing. But she said something about facebook.”, I replied back.

“Idiot, facebook today morning on her wall. I had asked you to stop messing on facebook.”

“But it was all harmless!!”

“Go back and see how she took it.”

And then started the painful journey of going back to a day of rambling on facebook. It had just been me and Varun commenting on her status. I was reading bottom down.

“Single is independence. Freedom and free will” , was my last comment on her status. Suddenly the harmless joke seemed pretty sour.

“Doubles is over rated and over hyped”, Varun had posted.

“Doubles is a flavor of its own. Gotta try it once” , was me earlier.

“How do you like your pizzas and friends- singles or doubles”, Varun again.

“I like winning for the trophies”, I had joked

“I have a hot date and I hate the whole setup”, was Varun alluding to his life

“Truth only ok.”, I had asked Varun

“I really like you and all your ‘special’ friends man. You are all so awesome”, Varun had intoned.

“I just want a pizza and world peace”, was my first piece.

So this was the whole argument. I had tapped into her insecurities and somehow tripped on a landmine.

Then I just looked at her status that started it all.

‘ i ’.One character in small was all she had posted.

The Great Argument.

The Answer-Vignette by Ashraf

2012-01-23T10:38:00.002+05:30

PS Too much of poetry, non fiction and broken prose. Presenting my first short story. It's a small cog of something bigger

In old age the demons would return to haunt her. When the vigour and strength was gone and she was alone in her room at night she would start believing in all that was not there.

Her first daughter gone for seven years now would play on her mind. She had married her love and knowing there would never be societal acceptance of her marriage had left India for Spain. The mother bound by societal norms and a slave in her own way to others could never accept her son-in-law and disowned her daughter. She could have gained a son but she lost a daughter in the end. The daughter had cried, cajoled and did everything to get her mother to give her blessings as she was her only parent. In the end she had softly screamed, “I never cared about your society but if you won’t bless us, I will accept that job in Spain”. In the first year after her marriage and subsequent migration to Spain there had been calls and conciliatory letters but with the cold response they all stopped. For five and a half years now there had been no contact. The daughter was as good as dead.

But the conscience of the mother was troubling her and now at night when she could not even garner the strength to get up and relieve herself, she would call out to her the daughter long gone. When there would be no answer anger would well up in her heart and then suddenly she would remember her deeds. But then she could not remember her second daughter’s name and she would lie there guessing all possible names failing to remember the name she had choosen for her younger daughter , a score plus years back. Hours later she would remember the name and call the second daughter who would immediately come and help her.

This happened not one night but was a scene that would play out night after night in the same sequence until the mother was convinced a Djinn was in the house. But one night when she called her daughter’s name there was a reply and she in retrospect realized it had been her daughter who had answered her call. Next day she would announce the death of her daughter. But the daughter had done her duty by warning her mother. There was a prophecy fulfilled when the mother answered but the prophecy is another story. That story is about me. This is about the mother.

The Answer

I have not described what happened on the night of Shabraat. The night when Islamic traditions state that the souls of the dead come back to this world to look at what they left behind. That's also when the call of the ill mother was answered. That night when the old mother had called her daughter for the 40th or 50th time there came a reply ,’Yes, mother you called.’ Still believing her daughter was there she replied, ‘Huma , I want to go to the toilet-help me get up’. And in the room would walk in her daughter all in white. Believing her eyesight was fooling her in the dark she said –‘O daughter look what old age has done to me. Now I can’t even see you clearly.’ You are all white and faint to me. But now the apparition seemingly stood there and in a voice that seemed to emnate from every corner of the house said, ‘Mother , leave get far far away from here.’ ‘This and much of the city is going to burn in the fire of human hatred in time to come.

Warn only the first person you meet on the street and get out of here.’

And then perhaps like a mirage it all vanished and the old lady blinked her eyes to find there was nothing in the room and it was all normal. It could perhaps be nothing more than a dream except for one small thing- when she opened her eyes she was sitting on the chair near her bed. For the past few months at night she could not get up without help. How had she moved to the chair?

Next day she resigned from the job where she had long become inept, packed everything possible in a short time and moved with her immediate family to a sister’s house in Bombay because of the warning. She did not doubt for the night the daughter answered, her ailment had also vanished and she was again an old but fit lady.

Months later enquiry in Spain would reveal he daughter and son-in law had died five years back in a road accident. The information got lost because the daughter had put her husband as next of kin and he himself had no family.

Oh and if I didn’t mention, the mother met me on the street next day.

I am not fascinated

2011-11-12T10:35:00.001+05:30

I am not fascinated
by big names and lofty titles and
long runs after things that are illusionary.
But to fascinate me
tell me your heart’s desires
and where do you yourself want to be .

I am not fascinated
by yatches, watches , gadgets and
all the one thousand one glittery things around.
But to fascinate me
tell me how you looked inside
and realized that not every jewel you desire .

I am not fascinated
by drunk nights, hungover mornings and
the new names for the ancient drinks.
But to fascinate me
tell me about deep thoughts in high moments
and what you still remembered the morning after .

I am not fascinated
by beauty , fashion, and
all other things that will be gone tomorrow.
But to fascinate me
tell me did the beauty also have a heart
and were the depths of her intellect really deep.

I am not fascinated
by shamans , mystics and
the one hundred one teachers for hire.
But to fascinate me
tell me was the mystic's jounrney just for himself
and all guidance to others a freely given gift .

I am not fascinated
by your conquest of weaker souls and
all the rest that is external to you.
But to fascinate me
tell me did you conquer you own soul
and finally leave your ego by the roadside .

I am not fascinated
by who did you love and
who did you betray.
But to fascinate me
tell me of the pain when the beloved left
and silence that you heard in the beloved’s absence .

I am not fascinated
by tales of crushes, fantasies and
a dozen shades of lust.
But to fascinate me
tell me did you really love the beloved
and was that love pure enough to be called love.

Syed Ashraf Husain ' दाग़ ' ' ڈاگ '

P.S. Sometimes I cant write poetry for days and sometimes I finish a whole poem in 30 minutes flat. Its always how heavy the heart is.

Reading List 3rd-7th Nov

2011-11-07T15:55:00.001+05:30

First of all Eid Mubarak everyone. I hope you have a great time. Am at Delhi away from it all but theek hai. Parents are on Hajj and mashaallah it is going on well.
So my reading list for the last couple of days
(a) MUST READ- an article exploring both the assembly line and the issues at Maruti’s Manesar plant which has been rocked by violence and unrest. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2601780.ece?homepage=true#.TrX_9FaaRsk.facebook . I am reminded of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times by this paragraph in the article. For a worker, line acceleration can be a harrowing experience. “When I first began working for Maruti, assembly lines used to run right through my dreams,” said a worker with a laugh, “These days I suppose I'm so tired that I don't get dreams anymore.”
(b) For a change just view these pics http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/10/text_copy_block_goes_here.html Some of the pics are so moving. The wasted childhood of the innocent refugees from Afghanistan.(1st, 7th, 17th) The mud caked bodies of the child labourers in the brick facility in Pakistan (5th) . The Syrian children playing is joyous and the 10th pic from Libya is ambiguous . I cannot be sure if the lady is sad or happy. Her eyes seem so deep and moist. Then the 29th pic is totally exhilirating for it’s the vulnerable kids doing maths( can read the sums). And I realize why I must search for the sublime in life as the obvious can never hold my attention for long.
(c) Good read- In this moving article one of the three American hikers captured by Iran explains why solitary confinement is also torture. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/opinion/sunday/in-an-iranian-prison-tortured-by-solitude.html?_r=1
(d) Mildly Interesting http://mashable.com/2011/11/06/justin-bieber-infographic/ Justin Bieber success analyzed
(e) Against all Odds. Story of a woman Egyptian entrepreneur http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/egyptian-entrepreneur-shares-lessons-from-her-playbook/
(f) A pretty good blog with translations of Urdu poetry http://siyaah.blogspot.com/ Must read for poetry fans
(g) Just loved this qawwali sung by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The lyrics are so beautiful and I identify with them. Lyrics here http://nusratqawalies.blogspot.com/2011/01/barsoon-kay-intizar-ka-waiting-for.html and the qawwali on youtube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JPb_Dw-N3E. Two of my fav lines from the Qawwali are
1) “Allah, zindagi say kahan tak nibhaoon main,
Kis bewafa kay saath mera naam likh diya”
Allah, how long do I remain faithful to life,
That(life) faithless person whom you have tied to my name
2) “Bikhri padee thee toot kay kaliyaan zameen par,
Tarteeb day kay maine tera naam likh diya”
Tarteeb=give form, organize
"Flower buds were scattered around on the ground,
I gave them shape and wrote your name"

Reading List Nov 1st-2nd

2011-11-02T19:11:00.001+05:30

So my reading list series of posts stumbles but continues-
(A) MUST Read- An analysis of the new Middle East. Its important as the world has changed. Mubarak is gone and so is Gaddafi. What will be the new governments be like. In Tunisia a religious leaning but democracy supporting party has come to power. It may scare people especially in the west that the Islamists are coming to power but it may instead be the best thing that ever happened. The Middle East countries have few bogey men and these governments will be judged on their own merits. Crescent Moon, Waning West( The Economist) http://www.economist.com/node/21534782

(B) The income in equality debate at NYTimes where collumnist David Brooks insists there is a top 1% inequality and then a college vs non college educated inequality. The original article is here http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/opinion/brooks-the-wrong-inequality.html?pagewanted=all . A retort in The Economist is here http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/11/inequalities and Paul Krugmans analysis is here http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/graduates-versus-oligarchs/
(C) Interesting read on Chaebol in South Korea. Also contrasted to Japan (Olympus’s 36% fee for MnA led me here) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol
(D) Toyota Unveils machines to help the sick and old moon( If you have been following the upcoming greying of Japan you would understand) http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/toyota-unveils-machines-to-help-sick-elderly-move/articleshow/10565048.cms
(E) Some amazing CV for designers http://inspirationfeed.com/inspiration/30-amazingly-creative-examples-of-designer-resumes/
(F) Gaddafi’s legacy at the New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/07/111107fa_fact_anderson
(G) Ad agencies face talent crunch for online advertising http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/business/media/ad-companies-face-a-widening-talent-gap.html?src=me&ref=general
(H) Airlines cutting boarding time or at least trying to (Classic operations case) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/business/airlines-are-trying-to-cut-boarding-times-on-planes.html?hp

Daily Reading List

2011-10-31T23:54:00.001+05:30

Some time back in a workshop the instructor asked me how did I know so much in depth about a topic. I replied with the truth-“I read”. Of course everyone had a laugh and I also smiled but I was stating the truth. I am not super bright or super intelligent. I just read a bit more than the average Joe.

Anyways sometimes I share the best of what I read, through status’s on facebook but I don’t want to cloud my updates with a stream of articles each and everyday.
So I am going to chronicle my best daily reads in a post everyday. Anyone who is interested can look it up but more importantly I can reference it at my ease too. Bookmarking is just not efficient enough I browse hundreds of pages everyday. I will only list what is worth sharing. I hope you enjoy it too.

(a) Anyways the must read article of the day is this eulogy of Steve Jobs delivered by his sister. It’s a wonderfully wriiten artcile and I just find this line so tragically true. “
‎"We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories."
” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html?pagewanted=all&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB.

(b) As the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq nears , I have to think a lot. Afterall 10 years ago I was a teenager and in a way I have been a child of the great war years. I felt the pain of 9-11. I cheered the Afghanistan invasion, pretty happy to see the Taliban whom I anyway hated go and in a way thought there was need for dismantling the terrorist infrastructure. And one and a half years later I opposed the Iraq war tooth and nail being convinced there was no cause for war. Wrote essays And when no WMDs came and people expressed surprise , I could not help but say told you say. Infact I still remember watching Rumsfields testimony in the UN live on BBC as he scared everyone with a vial in his hand.’This amount he stated is enough to kill anyone’. I had to judge if the evidence was convincing and I thought it was all one side of the story.
However my biggest concern today is the women in Afghanistan. One of the reasons I supported the US war in Afghanistan because the Taliban with their repression of women simply angered me no end. That is not Islam or even basic human decency. What will happen to those gains as the US leaves? Will Afghanistan face another decade of degradation. And the guilty party is the cold war.
Have over the years followed RWA(Revolutionary Women of Afghanistan) organization whose volunteers have risked everything to educate girls.

(Must read about how cynically the women of Afghanistan have been exploited) http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/10/06/pawns-of-war-and-peace-what-does-the-future-hold-for-afghan-women/

(Good read- USAID and women in Afghanistan) http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/03/22/dear-usaid-afghan-women-arent-pet-rocks/

(Good read- interview with an Afghani woman heading NGO) http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/10/25/peace-unveiled-an-interview-with-afghan-womens-rights-activist-hasina-safi/

(c) Poetry and politics a nice perspective http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/2011fall/2011fall_browning.php

(d) Quotes of Arundhati Roy ( admire her courage, not necessarily share her viewpoints)
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6134.Arundhati_Roy
A good one of the bunch“D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

(e) Another urdu poetry site. Very regularly updated. http://faysalspoetry.blogspot.com/

(f) The story of a reformed neo-nazi or a skinhead. Its very intense and personal. Recommended read. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/31/reformed-skinhead-removes_n_1067431.html?ref=impact&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

Time to Reinvent Myself

2011-10-27T12:40:00.001+05:30

My blog has always been a lot about self introspection and while I have not blogged enough recently for various factors, I feel the time is coming soon. As an update some stuff happened recently that has made me think deep and hard.

Firstly the first semester of MBA is nearly over, and MBA right now seems the most overrated thing I have ever done. The trouble is I feel I haven't learnt enough that I could and this hurts as the importance of MBA for me lies in its learning opportunities. Its like being stuck in a marsh while solid ground seems just across the water. So I have been indulging in all sorts of trivial things without heading in the right direction.

Indeed I laughed the other day wondering loudly to this statement ,'And I used to think engineering was the biggest mistake of my life'. Of course I plan to change this next sem but still.

Secondly I went through the summer placement process where some of the companies I wanted to be at did not even shortlist my resume. Funnily enough in the end I got to a company which is part of a media group that I was really curious about . Its a finance profile and I get to explore how deep my interests lie in the media world. I find it funny how I ended up in a place my heart wanted but would not have waited for and part of me now believes in fate.

Thirdly , an event happened in my life that makes my heart skip a beat and I walk with a jump in each step. The event was inspiring enough to demolish the writers block I was suffering from and I now write prose and poetry again. But its all very fluid and I have to wonder if I am hallucianting for I go low when the day seems blue. And its just a gaze that can make or mar my day. While i believe in fate and 'The Secret' now( more later), the question is am I ready for things not working out? I wont even consider the possibility at times. And in the end I dont think I can ever be prepared but I must think about this.

Summing it up, I need to think of my MBA, the summer placement, the analysis of failure and what goes in my life. In short now is a wonderful opportunity to reinvent myself. And that is what I am going to do. Below is a picture of me nearly four years ago. Its a different me I realize and I want to again reinvent myself over the next 3-4 months. So that I again look in the mirror and see a stranger.

Also let me acknowledge publicly and also confess that I used to think of myself as a genius and very smart and intelligent. However I have come to realize, I am an idiot of the first order and very naive. I have mishandled enough situations over the last 4 months to be given an Ignoble award or a Darwin prize.

Just the way you are

2011-10-16T16:24:00.004+05:30

So this song is my latest muse. Simply love the lyrics where the song goes like I love everything about coz she is perfect

"Her eyes, her eyes
make the stars look like they're not shining
Her hair, her hair
falls perfectly without her trying
She's so beautiful
And I tell her everyday (yeahh)

I know, I know
When I compliment her she won't believe me
And it's so, it's so
Sad to think that she don't see what I see
But everytime she asks me "Do I look okay?"
I say

When I see your face
There's not a thing that I would change
'Cause you're amazing
Just the way you are
And when you smile
The whole world stops and stares for a while
'Cause girl you're amazing
Just the way you are

Her lips, her lips
I could kiss them all day if she'd let me
Her laugh, her laugh
she hates but I think it's so sexy
She's so beautiful
And I tell her everyday
Oh you know, you know, you know
I'd never ask you to change
If perfect's what you're searching for
Then just stay the same
So don't even bother asking if you look okay
'Cause you know I'll say
When I see your face
There's not a thing that I would change
'Cause you're amazing
Just the way you are
And when you smile
The whole world stops and stares for a while
'Cause girl you're amazing
Just the way you are
The way you are
The way you are
Girl you're amazing
Just the way you are

When I see your face
There's not a thing that I would change
Cause you're amazing
Just the way you are
And when you smile
The whole world stops and stares for awhile
Cause girl you're amazing
Just the way you are "

http://youtu.be/LjhCEhWiKXk

What crosses my mind

2011-10-16T16:12:00.001+05:30

For the last 1.5 years or so I have blogged very litte but rather preferred to note down my thoughts on a file. I earlier had that file on myhard disc but it has now moved to google docs. The file is named 'The time is running out.doc'. Behind this strange sounding name is a very simple reason. I created a new file during my second year of engineering and after I wrote some sentences ,on saving it Microsoft word automatically save the file with the first sentence. Hence, 'the time is running out.doc'.

I am talking about this file for a reason. Its linked to my need to express and by extension to my ebbing and rising desires to tell a story to the world. When I want to express I use the blog but the story is being written in bits and pieces on the file. So as I wanted to formalize my blog to a custom domain, I wrote more on the file and planned to buy a custom domain. Infact down the line I bought a domain but I suddenly wanted to write a bit more. And so the domain remains untouched while I muse on.

However there has been great progress on the file front. After having been very inactive for a long long time, I gathered great speed and have finished ten thousand words. Now if you were to take into consideration that these are basically disjointed points and paragraphs to be used as the mould for larger enterprises, you end up with 50k words . And that is half a novel or so.

Of course there is a reason why I write again, why poetry flows from my pen err keyboard so regularly and why my heart at times a bit faster at times. That however is another story

The Edge

2011-10-01T10:44:00.001+05:30

I shall walk to the edge of the cliff,
Muse and stare deep into the chasm,
And maybe for the first time I will shout out loud,
In the darkness that rises from the abyss,
Your name and the songs of your beauty.

The pilgrim cannot walk forever through the desert,
The wanderer will sometimes come back to a familiar place,
Sounds of glee ripple in deserted buildings too,
And as the same story repeats through all of history,
The ill in love sometimes shout the beloveds name.

As I travel through a city of strangers,
Of closed doors and windows with dark shades,
In the silence and desolation of the abyss,
I will shout out your name in the wilderness,
Again and again like a madman incarnate,
And maybe the sounds will drag away with them,
All my emotions and the intoxication of your name.

For all of humanity it’s the curse of Adam and Eve,
For as they were banished from the gardens of heaven,
It seemed God also sent along his wrath till the end of time,
A hundred emotions of joy but a thousand flavours of misery,
And even today when a man wakes up drowning in the blues,
Its the curse of Adam and Eve coursing through his every breath

As I stare into the abyss of dark emotions,
And as the abyss stares back at me,
Maybe for once I could see eye to eye ,
With twisted fate and the paradox of desire’s,
And the poet in me could just laugh and laugh,
At the vagaries of time.

By Ace
PS- I wrote this poetry sometime back inspired by the darkness of a dark dark day. I experimented with an alternating style where stanza's alternate between a macro and micro picture. Example the first stanza is about me but the next one talks in general of philosophy

Something about her

2011-09-17T10:01:00.001+05:30

Another Haiku :P

"Its something about her,
Magical, mysterious, beautiful, elegant and heavenly,
That Every time I see her , I fall for her again."

Postscript- Its the tragedy of our lives being unable to see the woods for the trees. Of feeling lonely in a crowd. But thats us!!

The only way to defeat brute force is to overpower it with a stronger one.

2011-08-09T16:47:00.000+05:30

The only way to defeat brute force is to overpower it with a stronger one.

So there was this Debate competition where I had to submit a write up for both ends of the argument. This is my submission. I did not get shortlisted but I still think I submitted a great entry.

A) FOR THE TOPIC

“I do not believe in a supernatural basis for evil. Human beings have the capacity to commit the most depraved of acts on fellow human beings”. The quote summarizes the evil in the world around us. In our cocoons, we shut ourselves away from the fact that there are evil people around us and mistakenly believe the world is all civil and nice to each other.

But once in a while, evil becomes a force united by an army of hundreds that can roll through nations brutally destroying everything they comes across.

The armies of Nazi Germany were such a force, so was the regime of Pol Pot and in the same league were the murderous Japanese forces who brutalized every nation they conquered in World War 2.

So what does one do when confronted by such a great evil. An evil that will listen to no reason and will show no mercy.

The answer is simple- “Reply back with a greater force!”

History shows us that only defeats in the battle fields turn back conquering armies. When met with a greater force , even evil will ask for mercy and turn back. To wait for the empires of evil to collapse on their own, is to let the world be as it is and let innocents suffer. The regime of Khmer Rouge was finally defeated by an invasion by a neighbouring country. But that was too late for more than one and a half million people who had by then been shot and just left to rot in the killing fields of Cambodia. Those fields still stand today as a testament to the evil of humans. In the time that it took for the Nazi empire to be defeated by the Allied powers, over 5 million people were butchered in gas chambers and concentration camps.

Imagine if these empires had survived or flourished? The world would have been a very ugly place today.

Of course war is never a good act. The replying force is also as brutal as the evil they seek to vanquish. The Allies indiscriminately bombed the German civilian population , bombing entire cities to dust. And once they won the war, the Germans were placed in a blockade where the average nutrition per German citizen was restricted to near starvation levels. Imagine starving the entire population of a country just because the earlier dictator of the country chooses to go to war. The Allies never stopped at that of course- Germany was divided among two countries, entire industries were dismantled and the equipment shipped to America and Germans were told that they would be paying an annual compensation for the war for the next 20 years.

In the end it is the victor who writes the history but we must believe there is something called a ‘just war’. Barack Obama , the president of the United States of America focused on this in his Noble Peace Prize acceptance speech to justify the contradiction between peace and the war in Afghanistan.

B) AGAINST THE TOPIC

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” Voltaire in this quote states what we all know- there is no just war and there are no benevolent liberators. The soldiers of war are just glorified murderers.

There are multiple justifications for war. No nation goes to war as the aggressor rather they paint themselves as the victims forced to act in their self defense. The other nation is always portrayed as evil, dysfunctional or just simply a mortal enemy. Violence is always masked by myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was.

However the truth is that there are no just wars. Each war is as brutal as the other. Innocents die even when a population is bombed by predator drones using laser guided bombs or carpet bombed by B-52 fortress bombers. Battle weary soldiers see no difference between civilians and enemies. In all wars the local population has also been massacared.

So what do you do when faced with a brutal force? Do you give in and accept humiliation in the hope of surviving.

No, I believe every evil force in the world must be resisted. It has to be resisted with non-violence in the great traditions of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. There can be no violence. To fight fire with fire is to just create a larger fire which will destroy everything around. Martin Luther King said that the trouble with violence is that it’s a cycle that destroys the creator himself. We can see the example of the same in India itself where Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister encouraged Bhindrawale’s violent extremism to gain political mileage in Punjab. Later when Bhindrawale went out of her control and violence ravaged Punjab, the army was sent into the Golden Temple and Bhindrawale was killed. Indira Gandhi herself was killed by her Sikh bodyguards who were enraged by the perceived desecration of the Golden Temple. The cycle of violence was complete.

India’s freedom struggle is the greatest example of a brutal force defeated by peaceful means. The British empire was no less brutal or no less powerful than any evil that humans have known. Protestors were beaten, imprisoned, exiled and sentenced to death if they could be. An Indian was considered inferior to a white person. It did not matter how many Indians were killed, the British Empire was to reign supreme. Yet it was just one man who was derided once as a naked fakir(beggar) who brought this force to the negotiating table. Mahatma Gandhi won our freedom and our eternal gratitude without the mass bloodshed that has characterized freedom struggles the world over.

Nelson Mandela succeeded in ending apartheid in South Africa only when he agreed to non violence and sat down to negotiate with the evil force.

And just last week Sudan, peacefully partitioned into two nations just on the basis on negotiations that many said needed a NATO war to stop the genocide in Darfur.

If it could work with a dictator like Bashir, a brutal empire like the British and the philosophy of white supremacism , I believe non violence in various forms can defeat any brutal force in the world.

Haiku

2011-07-29T02:10:00.001+05:30

Her long tresses like beautiful thunder clouds,
Frequently tied back yet when free
Cascade around her shimmering like visions of paradise.

PS This is a line I have been trying to pen for three days. Still haven't perfected but Haiku makes you choose what to say. As of now I could write an epic on the dark tresses.

poetry

2011-07-21T15:45:00.004+05:30

As you stare right through me.

Love is an illusion, a myth,

Its all compromises I shouted,

I have had my chances with love,

This heart ain't falling for anyone again,

Love is an illusion, a myth.

Its easy to break hearts,

Hearts of stone or hearts of broken glass,

The poet nurses all his wounds in silence,

But poetry flows out unabated,

The emotions need a release after all

I shout in the silence of the times,

The emptiness of dark nights,

Railing against the travesty of life,

That yet again I fall for someone,

A someone who stares right through me

I immortalize you through poetry,

Yet broken verses reveal no names,

And as you smile at the world,

I just keep gazing at you,

As I can't see anyone prettier around.

If you could be mine,

I would walk along till the end of time,

Make you the heroine of epic tales,

Partner in stories of legendary fun,

Lazy days, busy days, rainy days ,sunny days

But you are also the heart breaker,

Pretending not to see the obvious,

When I hang onto every word you say,

For the most painful thing is seeing you,

Oblivious as you stare right through me,
Like I am a ghost who isn't even there..

Employees first, customers second

2011-07-17T12:06:00.000+05:30

Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down
It is assumed I might think about the above lines during my MBA. The funny thing is I have been
thinking of the above for much of the last three years. I worked in the IT sector all this time in a
company where customer is king. Of course I entered the IT sector at a time when my company was
rapidly maturing. The growth that was possible earlier was gone earlier such as moving to onsite
within 18 months was gone.

And in the midst of the recession employees were vulnerable. The recession at one time in my
company turned what would earlier be an earlier apology letter incident into a firing reason incident.
At one moment when large number of employees were on bench project managers started patrolling
the bench area cubicles to ensure no one was surfing the internet, playing games or watching videos.
Employees stopped sending forwards to each other.

This was perhaps the biggest disillusionment with the company I worked with. There is a quote I love
to say that reminds me of the same “Company kisi ki nahin hoti(A company never gets attached to
anyone)”. Employees who get too attached to their companies, too proud of where they are ultimately
very likely to be left broken hearted.

In the IT sector especially an employee is just a resource and in case of a 100,000 plus employees
company all employees in a band are equal. I had great learnings in my former company but we ended
up in a divorce because of mutually irreconcilable differences. I wanted positions of leadership
opportunities and personal growth in a short time and the company wanted me to work for 10 years or
so before I would reach a position of satisfaction for me.

All this long I have had great discussion with managers and coworkers on such issues which rankle
everyone. The only conclusion I have come to is that a job is only satisfying when there is both the
companies and the employees growth and satisfaction. When either fails, the employee must look for
options or else not grumble about the situation.

So , I view HCL’s employee first credo with great interest. After all how can it be about the employee?
Is not it about sales growth, profit margins and customer satisfaction? Having spoken to multiple
people both connected and not connected to HCL about the same. Pardon me for the cynicism but I
believe unless it can be independently validated HCLs tagline is a great public relations exercise and
nothing more. I just don’t see the results. HCL is not showing lower attrition or greater employee
satisfaction in the social networking sphere.

Of course , employee satisfaction is a very difficult task. Especially the IT sector as we all think we are
God’s blessing to heaven as there are so many recruiters. You just say Java with no resume on
Naukri.com and 4 companies are setting up interviews. I still get spammed but recruiting consulatants.
What is needed is a balance between money, quality of work and the work environment. Lack of any
can cause issues. To end I quote a Harvard Business School article, “Improved recognition cannot
replace better pay, money cannot substitute for taking pride in a job well done, and pride alone will not
pay the mortgage”.

References http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5289.html

Jung Test Results

2011-07-17T12:03:00.000+05:30

So I analyzed my jung test results

Jung Test Results
Extroverted (E) 62.16% Introverted (I) 37.84%
Intuitive (N) 67.57% Sensing (S) 32.43%
Thinking (T) 54.55% Feeling (F) 45.45%
Perceiving (P) 68.57% Judging (J) 31.43%

Your type is: ENTP

ENTP - "Inventor". Enthusiastic interest in everything and always sensitive to possibilities. Nonconformist
and innovative. 3.2% of the total population.

SELF ANALYSIS
To analyze the results, I will pull up two of the most analytical paragraphs I wrote about myself about 4 months back.
The first paragraph is,“A poet at heart yet a writer of prose by choice; an introvert who broke his shackles and now loves debates, discussions, etc.; a technology enthusiast who wanted to do an M.Tech. but realized the tug of an MBA was stronger. Yes, these and many other contradictions summarize me as an individual.”
You see I am all these seemingly contradictory things and and much more. I say seemingly contradictory for a reason. Someone may look at these things and say this guy is totally random and
these are disconnected things. But I am a whole individual with all these differences smoothened over.

I love to be involved in things. I have been involved with the Magazine board in my school and college. By the end of engineering , I was a strong communicator but once I started working I have been involved with and am a member of Toastmasters International which is a public speaking and leadership club. I believe if I am good at anything I should be better at it. I initially wrote poems in English but I have learnt only when we stretch ourselves do we realize where our strength lies. So I
have written Ghazals in Urdu, dabbled with Haiku and basically tried my hand at whatever I wanted to do. I learnt to cook, failed at learning classical music when my teacher after six months pronounced me untrainable and look forward to trying to draw- a skill I have never been good at.

The second paragraph is , “My career goals are linked to my passions and interests as I want to be passionate about whatever I do. For the next 5-10 years,I would like to work in the corporate world handling challenging tasks, preferably in the risk management and strategic planning domain.

Alongside I want to never stop writing and also work towards becoming a professional motivational speaker. I also want to contribute positively to the society by working with children from
disadvantaged backgrounds.”

I like to be passionate about what I do and all my life I want to be passionate about things around me whether it be work or pleasure. My project manager in a feedback said that I have a childlike
enthusiasm for things which I must guard.

In fact the lines that scare me is a couplet from Urdu poetry,
‘Gham ho ya khushi dono, pal do pal ke saathi hain,
Phir rasta hee rasta hai, na hasna hai na rona hai’
Translated as ‘Grief and joy both are just companion for a short moment in life,
After that there is only the never ending travel with no emotions anywhere’
I don’t want to wake up and realize I am doing a job just to pay off the mortgage or pay for the kids education. I want to have shades of all the hues in the world around me.

Two events that have shaped me

2011-07-12T02:24:00.001+05:30

P.S.- This is part of a self evaluation exercise that I had to attempt. I blog my attempt here as I think I wrote some great prose here.

Two things majorly make me who I am

1) Bibliomaniac:- I started reading seriously as a child of eight or so. First I loved comics and then after I had read and reread all the Archies, Tintin, Asterix in the local library, I moved to Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Famous Five and similar stuff. By class 7 even these had been read so I moved to more serious authors and I was now an official bibliophile. I read during school time, after school, during the vacation and despite a rather severe reprimand on being caught even during exams.

The reading hobby has lasted forever and even now I read pretty much anything I get my hands onto.

However more than a strong vocabulary or a good command of English, reading has moulded me also in another way. Reading has made me much more sensitive to the world around me telling me there is seldom black and white in any argument or incidence but rather multiple shades of grey abound everywhere. And reading made me step into poetry and it was this fascination for the written word that I aspired to write and was a member of the magazine board in my school in class 11th.

2) The AIT story:- The story of my life starts in college. Everything else before that time is inconsequential like a misty morning vanquished by the rising afternoon sun. When I headed to AIT, I
was the bookworm who wanted to pursue his M.S. and PhD. in engineering and was both stage shy and an introvert. I also carried a disappointment from being forced to reject NIT Warrangal but that’s another story

AIT changed it all. Everyone was pushed onto stage. I was a member of English debates, Hindi debates ,Musical dramas and was also the only first year student to write the script for the street play.
After all the rule was if you were in the first year and were not on stage ,you had to be in the audience cheering. And it made more sense to be involved and be cheered rather than being a dumb
cheerleader(pun intended).

At AIT I was also for 3 years a part of a wonderful group called the Mag Board which did all sorts of stuff such as treasure hunts, betting rings, V day dress codes, fun notice boards , etc. Oh, there was also a magazine somewhere. When I attended the first meeting I was flabbergasted. I thought I was in the wrong place for I was surrounded by these awesomely glib talkers. And I was shy. But it was a challenge that I took up and I survived. The highest moment came in my third year of engineering when I became the Mag Board Secretary of my batch. It was a culmination of hard-work and
creativity.

And after my engineering I have worked for three years where I have been recognized as a great employee. But my confidence and creativity still spills from the time when I was young and unafraid.

Mental block

2011-07-12T02:19:00.000+05:30

So I havent blogged for a long time right no.

The reason is that I have been in a great tumult trying to decide what to write and how.

And then just plain laziness . However I am back now.

Its a new academic year, the MBA has finally started

Sweet memories

2011-02-07T15:08:00.001+05:30

To the Indians Who Died in Africa

by T. S. Eliot

A man's destination is his own village,
His own fire, and his wife's cooking;
To sit in front of his own door at sunset
And see his grandson, and his neighbour's grandson
Playing in the dust together.

Scarred but secure, he has many memories
Which return at the hour of conversation,
(The warm or the cool hour, according to the climate)
Of foreign men, who fought in foreign places,
Foreign to each other.

A man's destination is not his destiny,
Every country is home to one man
And exile to another. Where a man dies bravely
At one with his destiny, that soil is his.
Let his village remember.

This was not your land, or ours: but a village in the Midlands,
And one in the Five Rivers, may have the same graveyard.
Let those who go home tell the same story of you:
Of action with a common purpose, action
None the less fruitful if neither you nor we
Know, until the judgement after death,
What is the fruit of action.

Eliot, T. S. "To the Indians Who Died in Africa." Collected Poems 1909-1962.

Psst:- This is a poem that I recited during the annual elocution contest in my school days.

Every second year a new English teacher used to think that because I had excellent spoken , I would naturally excel on stage and thus would nominate me  for the elocution. And I would do it in style-forget my lines, mumble on staged, be booed off stage, be clapped off early and so on and so forth. And this happened year after year at contest after contest.

Of course it helped and my stage fright actually vanished when I entered college. Leaving behind many embarrassing memories littered on the shores of my mind.

Thats the reason when my batch mates sometimes compliment for my good communication skills( If I may say so), I cant help but smile over the past.

Anyway this is a poem I recited in class 8th or 7th and blew up spectacularly. However some disjointed verse remained fixed in my mind and since I had forgotten the title I could do little to find the whole poem. Was delighted when I managed to google it some time back and I now share it.

Enjoy the lines.

I find the third para very moving and deep.

Updates

2011-01-26T21:26:00.004+05:30

So the wait is over but the harder part remains.

In the MBA season of 2010-11 , I got what I desired. It started when I got a call from FMS where of the 65000 people only 500 general category students are finally given an interview chance. FMS was in my list of to 6 MBA colleges.

Then came CAT 2010 and I got an overall percentile score of 99.80. This ensured that I got calls from some of the IIMs that I so desire. The surprise factor was that I got rejected from a few IIMs because of m engineering acads but thats life.

And then the season ended with the results of XAT. To even my surprise, I score 99.98 percentile in an exam which was seen as the toughest of the season. And I have a call from XLRI BM program which I applied for.

I havent blogged in a long long time. The reasons have been many

I have been busy. Lame excuse
Procrastination-better.
The actual reason is I have been thinking a lot what I want to blog upon. I want to restart the book that I have been working on so there has been some musings there. Then more importantly, I want to discuss politics and more controversial topics. The trouble is politics, sex and religion are not supposed to discussed for exactly one reason. People get agitated. And this blog is too personal. So , I have brought some domain space and shall also be blogging there.

The IIM interviews lie ahead. Please wish me luck.

Love-IS IT WORTH IT ALL!!

2011-01-21T00:48:00.003+05:30

I have in my writings and poems long debated about the existence of love; at times doubted it, some other times accepted it, at moments slandered its power but have most of the time been simply awed and dazed by an emotion so strong;humbled by the strength it endows a person.

Indeed perhaps one of the best kept secrets in modern day H.R. texts is that there is no stronger motivation than love or its antithesis -hate. Love has the strength to drive us further than we believed possible. In the name of love generations before us and generations after us will continue to make unbelievably altruistic sacrifices. So the company that can create love within its employees for itself, has gained a band of loyal followers that will stick behind it like a rock. But to create that love is supremely difficult and that is why strategies such as this are not thought for employees. Maximum HRs could hope for a sense of belonging and loyalty.

The anti thesis hate is a dark emotion that can equally stir up deep feelings. Indeed if love is an emotion that can make us do good, hate can make us do the biggest wrong. But enough. This post is about love and hate shall be added to the list of potential future topics.

Anyway the paradox is this most cultures value love but in many cultures love can often be forbidden and a sin in some forms. As a person who broke his heart and from the broken pieces found poetry flowing, love is a central theme. Also as an Indian where love is celebrated and cheered by the societies in the movies but when a guy goes around with a girl in real life, it is frowned upon. Indeed India is a land where arranged marriages are seen by parents as a duty to their wards and love marriages are a immoral, corrupting force destroying society.

But we are humans and our emotions are not in control. As a poet put it
" Aag ka kya hai pal do pal mein lagti hai,
Bujhte bujhte ek zamaana lagta hain."
(love is like a fire which can flare up in a moments but to die out or extinguish it takes a hole era)

Anyway my question is this does magical love exists. In fact have a look at "Walk The Line", a biopic movie about the singers Johnny Cash and June Cash. They were married to others when they met, johnny won her over after a lot of efforts and they were happily married for 35 years raising kids, playing music and died withing three months of each other. Is not that love that can be envied.

So does love matter and does true love exists

The Paradox of our lives

2010-12-28T10:37:00.000+05:30

"
Duniya jise kehate hain jaadu ka khilona,
Mil jaaye to mitti hai, kho jaaye to sona hai
"
Roughly translated as "Life and world are said to be a magical toy. If one gets it all, its worth nothing. If we loose something what we loose seems like loosing gold"

I just thought how true it is. We pursue material gains as if they are all that matters. But we never know when the story could end.

Something similar
"
Zindagi ka muqaddar , safar dar safar,
Aakhiri saans tak beqaraar aadmi
"

Another year wanders by

2010-10-25T00:26:00.006+05:30

Another year wanders by,

The dust swirls in the wind,

Confused rain moistens random evenings,

I see the familiar all around,

And yet I can't recognize the streets.

The world's going round and round,

And round and round and round,

And suddenly I see the familiarity,

For in a hazy flash I realize,

I have been here before.

The darkness claws at the light,

I can see the shadows at the back of my mind,

I want to close my eyes,

Hear the sounds, feel the shackles,

But I wonder what if the darkness waits,

Only for a moment like that.

To those who have closed their eyes,

Its all gone,

Now just follow the crowd,

But I could never shut my mind,

Questioning, wondering, musing, imagining

Its easy to sit back,

To watch life culminate at its pace,

But I must hope, fight persevere and believe,

For I want the shadows, the dazzles,

The sugars, the limes,

The almonds, the raisins,

The dates, the apples,

All those flavours, the wines,

Even from the grapes of wrath.

Do Muslims need that mosque?

2010-09-30T18:47:00.012+05:30

I wanted to post this as a status message on facebook but the small word limit and the fear of being unable to be clear ensured I am now posting a blog entry.

First of all the disclaimer. This is totally my personal opinion. I do not mean to offend. Also I find it funny that on the internet on an issue concerning only Indian Muslims there are so many Muslims from other countries shouting at forums and indulging in a who can abuse more match with others.

So the Ayodhya verdict is out. The verdict is surprising and that is good. If any community had won we would have had victory processions by the extreme wing of one and protest marches by the same wing of the other community. Both would be equally provocative. There judgment had and still has a great potential of engulfing India in violence.

As of now all is peaceful. Most probably all the troublemakers and hired goons are still scratching their heads wondering if they have won or lost. Thats the beauty of the judgement. Its a win some ,loose a little formula.

The judgment runs into thousands of pages with all 3 judges giving seperate opinions.

The court ruled that Hindus and Muslims have shared joint custody of the land for the last 200 years at least and so it shall remain. There is no clear looser. Please read the judgment available online at this link before forming opinions. The judiciary has not favored one community or being pro-temple as being said by some parties. Indeed I have seen the BJP and the RSS blowing trumpets of victory but that is maliciously misleading on their part.

By a majority judgement the land is to be divided into three parts. I thought a 50-50 division would have been more equal but the judgement is still acceptable.

On nearly every important issue the judges were divided and hence we have a majority opinion as the assenting opinion. The court did not as a majority agree that the Area was the the birthplace of Lord Ram. What the court said was that its the place where for the last 200 years many Hindus have believed that Lord Ram was born and the court will accept it.

The verdict is acceptable but it is likely to go to the Supreme Court. No one has won completely and a judgment of this magnitude has to be contentious. Maybe the SC could expedite it.

Now that the Sunni Board has 1/3rd of the land , it should ask whether Muslims really need that mosque. The verdict is a setback to right wing Hindu groups claiming the entire land. The verdict says Muslim Wakf board has equal rights to the land as the other parties. Indeed if we look at the reasoning of the majority opinion in the judgment, the fact is the rights for the Hindu community come from the special case that this mosque was a common worship place since the British. The Hindus had the use of the outer area. This of course is a precedent that may not be applicable elsewhere but may lead to unrest at other places of conflict as who can guarantee there will not be another Babri Masjid incident elsewhere(the political gains for the BJP were enormous ). This is disquieting. Indeed I hope the Supreme Court while reaffirming this decision should lay out very clearly that never again can a similar thing happen.

After this judgement however ,now that the legal rights of the Muslim have been reaffirmed, the Sunni Muslim Wakf board should take a step back and think.

The mosque at Ayodhya is not special, its just a mosque. This is not Mecca ,Medina or even the Ajmer dargah.There will be no Muslims going on a pilgrimage to Ayodhya to pray at the mosque. To me it seems sacrilegious that a mosque will be built there. Just for that area so many Muslims and Hindus have died. A mosque with a foundation of human skulls and the moans of people mercilessly murdered during riots cannnot be a place of where I can offer namaz.

Instead let there be a memorial there dedicated to innocent victims of violence which aims to further understanding and peaceful existence in India. Let there be photogrpahs that may remind people of the terrible cost of religious strife. And let it be dedicated to the nation.

The Babri Masjid demolition represents the very worst of humanity. But that Masjid is gone. Broken down stone by stone and the pre and the post riots ensured hundreds died. It did not happen suddenly but was the result of a steady raising of tensions. Why should people forget the actual cost of strife and even more importantly the terrible cost of hate? Indeed each citizen of India should realize that only hate has the power to tear this nation apart.

Indian Muslims also should have other priorities as a community correct. We are the most economically and educationally backward of all communities. We need a vibrant leadership. Indeed our leaders have let us down the most. Let us fight for education , justice(the criminal case over the demolition somebody?),equality and that Sachar committee report recommendations be implemented.

So Sunni Wakf board people if you ever read this, take the initiative and be magnanimous. Dedicate the memorial to the nation and to fighting hate and discrimination.

Whatever be the verdict, India is the victim

2010-09-22T19:09:00.004+05:30

So we have the Babri masjid title suit verdict coming this friday.

Let us not confuse things. This is not related to the demolition of the mosque. The demolition is a criminal case and has been around for just 20 years. Of course now there are hardly any accused left. No conspiracy, just 11 or 12 accused and it seems that a 400 year old mosque simply collapsed all by itself despite all efforts to protect it.

What we have on friday is the verdict of the nearly 60 year old suit asking who holds the title of the land. The Muslim community by virtue of a mosque being there or the Hindu community as a temple existed there earlier. The title suit is also linked to the Babri Masjid demolition by virtue of events of the last 20 years. Just to give some background info, Babri masjid was a bone of contention since pretty long but this suit is linked to 1949 when miscreants broke into the mosque and installed idols in the center(the alternative version is that the idols magically appeared). The mosque was sealed and the case went to court. In 1988, Rajiv Gandhi ordered the mosque opened and worship allowed in the temple now formed in what many say as a measure to please the majority committee after the government had bent against pressure from orthodox Muslim clerics and invalidated the Shah Bano ruling with a new law.

The pandoras box had been opened. A party called the BJP, a successor of the Hindu Mahasabha took up the issue. Over a period of the next 3-4 years the mass public mobilizations culminated in the destruction of the mosque. Prior to this event and especially after the demolition, riots would break out in many parts of India. The Bombay riots among them were especially destructive. Hundred and maybe thousands died. But the greater damage was to the fabric of India.

So who owns the land. That is the vexing question? Because there are a lot of principles of law at stake here. Assuming a temple existed there, can an act however reprehensible be undone 350 years old. I am really not sure. By the same standard, the American Indians could claim back large tracts of America and so could indigenous people in many parts of the world.

However since I really have no memories of 1992 , I will involve other people who knew.

One incident I know is a person who said the issue has been used for political mileage. He went to Ayodhya with a group in early 1980's. They went to nealry 12 temples and out of them half claimed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram. The BJP needed an event to propel it to the national stage and Ayodhya was it. There were nearly 20000 temples in Ayodhya and only 5 mosques. Now there are only 3.

Another relative, a very learned scholar mused recently that Muslim community lost a great oppurtunity. The mosque had not been used since 1949. Many muslims also beleive also that it ceased to be a mosque once idols were installed. So if the Muslim community as a whole had gone to the negotiating table and offered to shift the mosque to another plot they could have probably benefited greatly. Among the conditions he mused should have been proportional representation in the goverenment especially the police and constabulary. Another thing would be a new amendment in the constitution declaring 1990 as the status quo date and a law that no further mosque can be demolished for any reason whatsoever. However it did not happen and now we can only wonder how it would have sounded.

Now we have the verdict on the title suit. I don't know what the court will say. There is communal tension in the air because of the verdict. This is especially true for UP because of the political potential. If Muslims win , some fools will take out celebratory processions and if we loose idiots will take out a protest march. I am very much sure the same will stand true for some Hindus in either case. While there have been enough calls for peace and requests for no response of any kind to the verdict, there will always be fools and cynical manipulative leaders somewhere. A riot guarantees a vote bank.

If I could wish I would wish for a neutral verdict. Let that land be declared neutral area. I don't want a mosque which stands on so much of bloodshed of both communities.

I have always said the idea of a nation is weakened when we are so divided that we cant live together. Or stand each other. A nation held together only by force is one step away from imploding. India is a nation of many hues and shades. Unity in diversity. That we must never forget

Whoever wins, the final looser will be India..... Only India.

So I have been procrastinating

2010-09-19T01:33:00.003+05:30

I haven't blogged in a long long time and there are some rather lame reasons for it

a) There was no stable net connection at home. Now I have it. In the absence of net I procrastinated. Not very nice but that is the truth.

b) I have been thinking of moving to a custom domain. That added to the delay.

c) In between I moved locations. Its tough shifting.

d) My poor scores in the mock cats became excuses why not to blog(lazy ones as usual.)

Anyway a lot to muse about. The world changes every day and I have missed months.

But moving to CAT. I have choosen 22nd Nov as my CAT date. Right now frankly I am imploding in all the mock cats. Getting scores that I never got earlier. And the time is running out . Lets see if I can pull my boots up or loose the game and become laughing stock which is very likely right now.

As usual I can remember a sher, one of my favourites.

"Muzamahil ho gaye quvaa Ghaalib,

Woh anasir mein aitadal kahaan"

Your powers have become weak O ghalib,

There is no moderation in the elements

Coming Soon

2010-07-05T22:27:00.002+05:30

Plans are being made. I will be back.

Btw relocated to Pune.

Think about it

2010-05-29T20:27:00.001+05:30

“Naturally the common people don’t want war… That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
HERMANN WILHELM GOERING, Nazi Party leader

How true do these words still sound.

The idea of hate

2010-05-27T23:19:00.002+05:30

I live in a world which is filled with hate. You dont need to go looking for it. In the morning newspaper there will be the report of a terrorist attack. Then I will see subtle hate in some of the pages. And if I just decide to browse news on the web there is Times Of India, rediff and so many sites with unmoderated comments with the the most vile comments possible.

The idea of hate is this only. When you want an explaination for the Holocaust, the 9/11 attacks, the suicide bombers, thr riots which kill hundreds or so many acts of evil around us, think of hate. Hate drove the crimes against African Americans in the Jim Crow south during the civil rights movement. The blacks were afterall the other.

However it appears humanity has not learnt its lessons. Hate is thriving today. Skin head gangs are back in vogue. The right wing in europe feeds of the right in middle east. The Islamic extremist and the Islamophobic's trip over each other to show the crimes off the other and showing themselves as victims. In the message is hate present.

I am tired of hate. Hate directed against me and others also. The hate on some of the muslim forums is as hateful as the hate on some of the christian forums I have chanced upon and both of them rival hate on the hindu forums.

Those who hide behind the freedom of speech should stop whining when their view are outed as what they are -racist, bigoted and hateful. Indeed the freedom of speech does not encompass the right to offend or the right to spread hatred.

I say no to hate today. I think its time to start a movement where hate is shown as unacceptable.

I dont beleive in a supernatural basis of evil. Man is capable of the mst evil acts possible with full choice. Indeed more than naxals hate is the biggest threat to India. If we cannot live together, see each other for what we are-humans , indians and citizens of a common world then the world's future is dark indeed.

Something Deep

2010-04-17T16:58:00.003+05:30

So I read this poem that really got me thinking. Its not touching but it is contemplative. What are our identities? The poetess is a migrant to UK(incidentally she is Ayesha Tharkers mother).And she asks the questions. I will quote only 3 paragraphs. Love the last para. In an oblique way. Search for the complete poem if u are interested. I love the last para.

THEY’LL SAY: ‘SHE MUST BE FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY’

When I can’t comprehend
why they’re burning books
or slashing paintings,
when they can’t bear to look
at god’s own nakedness,
when they ban the film
and gut the seats to stop the play
and I ask why
they just smile and say,
‘She must be
from another country.’

When I speak on the phone
and the vowel sounds are off
when the consonants are hard
and they should be soft,
they’ll catch on at once
they’ll pin it down
they’ll explain it right away
to their own satisfaction,
they’ll cluck their tongues
and say,
‘She must be
from another country.’

When my mouth goes up
instead of down,
when I wear a tablecloth
to go to town,
when they suspect I’m black
or hear I’m gay
they won’t be surprised,
they’ll purse their lips
and say,
‘She must be
from another country.’

But from where we are
it doesn’t look like a country,
it’s more like the cracks
that grow between borders
behind their backs.
That’s where I live.
And I’ll be happy to say,
‘I never learned your customs.
I don’t remember your language
or know your ways.
I must be
from another country.’

Imtiaz Dharker

I would simply never have walked

2010-04-16T20:22:00.001+05:30

It’s a phase of solitude,

A season of setting suns,

Drenching rains ,

Cold mornings,

Sweaty afternoons,

Reminding me each moment of the futility,

Of things, people, actions and rewards

The emptiness around me that haunts me,

While I miss you in ways small and big,

And as my loneliness caresses me in a crowd,

I feel a void inside that seems to be endless.

It’s funny how long I have survived,

In this desert without water,

Like a swimmer who lost sight of land,

With water the nourisher being the final,

Destroyer.

Now,

In this season of forced smiles and artificial grace,

That I look back and wonder,

How long I have survived.

When I started on the long trudge,

Had I known the then unwritten play,

My journey would be so lonely,

And I would hope of love,

Yet never close to drowning the emptiness,

Or filling up the yawning hole,

I would simply never have walked.

Articles

2010-04-15T22:15:00.001+05:30

These are two articles which I wrote for a magazine that the toastmaster club in my company is going to publish. Read them if u have time. Enjoy maadi. :)

My journey with MyInfy

I remember the first time I heard about toastmasters. It was during my induction session when I joined Infosys. They talked about toastmasters as a venue for people with weak communication skills. Toastmasters seemed to be the last thing I would join. I immediately forgot everything about the MyInfy toastmasters. It appeared there was just too little time.

But there was a curiosity about toastmasters that I could not hide for long. Those tempting posts on the bulletin-board created a desire to attend a meeting but something or the another kept cropping up at exactly the wrong times.

So finally I went to a toastmasters meet and I simply had no doubts that toastmasters offered something special. To those who struggle with speaking skills toastmasters offered a chance to improve. To those who were already conversant toastmaster offered the chance to be better.

So putting my money where my mouth was, I joined toastmasters. And it’s been a great journey. The toastmaster projects allow me through their goals to each time focus on one aspect of public speaking. From words, structure of speech body language to voice modulation it appears toastmasters encapsulates everything. I have slowly seen my speeches and my communication skills get better. I was never a weak speaker as such but toastmasters has helped me polish my skills.

Also a big advantage of toastmaster is its visibility in b-schools and other companies. We all want to say that we have great communication skills. In that b-school interview toastmasters credentials as a CC or even an aspiring CC can vouch that you are a skilled orator.

The tablet topics section in the Toastmasters meeting helps sharpen on the feet thinking skills. So often do we feel after an interaction that we could have done it better. The table-topics ensure that such regrets come less regularly as the speaking on the feet skills rub off everything.

Toastmasters till now has been a wonderful journey.

It’s been a journey of self discovery and continuous improvement.

I hope you also get to walk the same trail and have as much fun as I have if you decide to take the Toastmasters journey.

My Area B1 Contest Experience

“We improve ourselves by victories over ourselves. There must be a contest, and we must win.Or at least aspire to win because we all think the best man has won.”

Toastmasters International endeavours to improve the speaking and leadership skills of its members. While projects help people sharpen individual facets of their skills, only a contest can test the mettle of people. Toastmasters International organizes fours contests over a year which are organized in groups of two every six months. So while during the first six months of the year we have the “International Speech” and the “Table-topics” contest, “Humorous speech” and “Evaluation” contest follow in the next six months.

As a toastmaster I have been involved in representing my club in the various contests for the last one year. I have been a participant in all the four different contest at different times. Unfortunately I haven’t won any of the contests even one time. Infact I can proudly say, I haven’t been even close. No special mention or even third or fourth runners up for consolation.

However while people and even I see failure at times as an indication that it’s time to give up, I am still as enthusiastic about contests as the time I first tried my luck. Maybe the fact is that contests have given me so much new to learn that I am still pining my chance. Here are my major learnings-

Sh** Happens- I normally consider myself as pretty good at table-topics. However the first contest I went to had a topic like-“My parents are in the iron and steal business. My fathers steals and my mother irons it.” The announcer announced the topic and I started speaking. Unfortunately maybe I was too scared or something as its only when I sat down after the speech that I realized the hidden pun. There was no reason why it had not clicked to me earlier except the random factor called luck.

Competition Helps-At times I have realized that my ego tends to get the better of me. After a good speech when people congratulate , I start to feel happy about myself and think I am very very good. Competition tells me there are better people. It allows me to set higher goals.

Practice helps- This international speech contest I saw someone steal away the top prize as he just had prepared too well. The speech of nearly each contestant was very good but this guy comes as if in a movie and simply blows us away with his body language, gestures , voice modulation. Practice allows even an average speech to touch greatness.

Never Give Up- I have seen giants(in terms of their earlier track record) ousted by people who were just members for a few weeks or those who had no prior record. Basically in the David versus Goliath battle the underdog wins. And that tells me why I should keep at it.

There is no limit to perfection- It is important to set high goals. You may be good but there is no reason why you cant be better.

Very few win by a wide margin- The margin of win and defeat is mostly very slim. Maybe better practice could have made the difference or a better modeled speech. Or maybe it just was not your day. Defeat is perfectly natural. You went and tried and that itself speaks a lot. Never forget there is always another contest six months down the line.

Why I havent blogged?

2010-04-15T08:57:00.002+05:30

So I havent in some time now.

I feel guilty for it and will be back.

Its just that I am going through a phase where its all so confusing. Despite getting a 99.45 percentile I dont have the IIM calls that I desire. So I will probably return to fight another day.

Beyond that there are a lot of issues I am musing about. However I still dont see the bigger picture and from that stems an inability to put it in words.

Will be back soon

Article SRIJNA 2010

2010-04-04T13:31:00.003+05:30

So this is my article for this years college magazine. I have been out of college two years now but I am still contributing. Now its been six straight years of Srijna articles. Unfortunately maybe there is nothing left to write now. I had an idea of this article in my mind since the last two years. And even last years one. So goodbye Srijna

IT career for dummies

So this is an article which could very well be titled ,’procrastination’. Despite having promised the Magazine board members nearly 2 months back that I would write an article on my experiences in the IT sector, I never got down to writing it down. The first deadline, got changed to the actual deadline which then was replace by the actual printer’s final deadline and in the end I had to grapple with the final-final hard deadline set by the Magazine Board secretary.

So with tonight as the deadline I have finally sat down to write down the article. But before I move on to the topic and talk about careers in the IT sector, I must introduce myself. I am Syed Ashraf Husain, proud to have been a part of the AIT comp batch of 2008 and presently working for a major IT company out of Mysore. I was also the Mag Sec of my time. I would like to talk more about my time at AIT, but I sadly realize that my time at AIT is long over. The memoir would be out of place now because nearly half the college would not even know who I am.

Thus this is about the IT industry and the last two years of my life. In the first week when a FE joins college, he hears the dreaded ‘I’ word- ‘Industry’. Or its variant-‘company’. And the 'I' WORD keeps coming back. This is what happens in Industry. This is how stuff works in industry. And it goes on and on. The grass is always greener on the other side but the industry is at times more intimidating than alluring.

This article is meant for anyone who has ever thought of working in the IT sector for even a sliver of a moment. If you don’t fit the bill, then you just saved the next five minutes of your life that everyone else will spent in reading what follows-

What companies’ need- Opportunities always exist especially for people with experience. However as a fresher, you should have at least one or even better all of the following things- dazzling marks ,great communication skills or rock hard technical skills. The recruiter needs a reason to hire you. Give him many such reasons. And the importance of communication skills can never be sufficiently stressed upon. The majority of Indian IT workers have very poor to average communication skills. Your skills can make you stand out.

Big versus Small companies- While small companies may provide better technical experience a great name at the beginning can do wonders especially for an MBA aspirant. The big companies can however be a bit random. They don’t really care if you want coding or if you have a language choice. You will do what they need. I consider myself lucky to have worked in core coding projects in all the time I have worked in my company. Please note the word ‘lucky’. I consider myself skilled and an exceptional performer but I have seen many equally talented people from my batch get stuck for years in hopeless projects. In the end you will only know once the cards are dealt out. It is very well possible for the most best of decisions to go awry.So the lesson is if a company offers you a specific work profile that is a better bet than relying on fate. As a side note as a mechie or an entc graduate shifting to core IT sector, large companies (Infosys especially) are a better bet as they invest a lot in training. Comp and IT folks smile- training difficulty is the most overrated thing I have come across.

Java or .net- I personally am biased towards Java but frankly the whole war of the languages is a mockery. There is no difference between the technologies. In any case you may be switching technologies frequently. And there is no dearth of opportunities in most sectors. Plus there are so many of technologies beyond these two with amazing scope.e.g SAP, Business Intelligence, driver programming, testing automation etc.

Development or testing- There is a lot of work beyond these two types of projects. As an example for analysis, Infosys has only 17% of its revenues coming from developments and even in the annual report they list 5-6 types of work. So this is the risk of big companies as usual. If you are fixated over a technology or a type of work, you may not necessarily get it. Live with the risk or know your escape routes. On the other hand maybe being flexible is not that bad. In the short time I have been around, I have worked on a testing project , two core development project and now a migration project.

Service sector versus product companies- The IT sector consist of the out sourcing and service sector companies like Infosys, Wipro or product based companies like Adobe or Microsoft. Given a choice unless you get a better profile, go for the better payer (product companies). Money is a big satisfying force. Also the benefits in service sector companies are petering out because of margin pressures.

IT sector versus other sectors-This is a purely personal choice. See what your heart wants. And have a flexible plan in place. There are so many people I know tired of the IT sector but then I also know people who miss the IT sector times. Every job has its share of positive and negative points(repeat this again and again. The grass unfortunately always looks greener on the other side). Choose well.

MBA versus MS (or M.Tech)-Again a personal choice. For the MBA aspirant I would from my opinion suggest some years of work experience. To see an actual business meeting, to see great incompetence and huge employee dissatisfaction is a great learning as well as a change of perspective. It becomes so real. Employees cannot be kept happy as easy as many people suggest. For the MS person, work experience is not a prerequisite. In fact for those planning on getting some work experience before MS or M.Tech I would suggest that you try to get development experience. For the MBA guy it does not matter but for the MS it could make a difference in your university application.

In the end I would suggest everyone to be brave try out changes and new things each day of your life. And remember you need to have a rough idea how your today fits in with your tomorrow. This will help you keep a straight perspective and objectivity. Don’t stop your education once you get a job. Plan for a higher education degree. And enjoy your days in college as they fly away. You will feel nostalgic about them someday.

S.A. Husain,
AIT Comp class of 08

The FeelingSeason of blues

2010-03-04T22:31:00.002+05:30

Its the season of blues,
I heard the wind say,
As it swirled up the dust,
And tugged at the drying leaves,
End of stay on the branch,
As now is the season of gloom,
The coming of the end,
Of all we see around

There will be new dawns,
New seasons,
Spring and autumns,
But people forget ,
Those will be another year,
Another time,
But the present would have long,
Been vanquished to dust.

In the lonely season of blues,
Everyone survives in isolation,
Loneliness in a crowd,
Maladies with no cures,
There is a numbing within,
A disconnect with the world,
Feelings,
Bottled up emotions

Feelings that are not felt,
Emotions seemingly absent,
Near yet so far,
There is no grief,
No tears, no cries,
In this season of the Blues,
Yet a weight hangs,
All around,
Everywhere

Toastmasters Project 6

2010-02-28T00:15:00.000+05:30

HELLO

Good evening

//NOTE-First call comes on mobile ,fumble//

Oh sorry

Good evening Mr. Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters and welcome guest. As I was saying.

//Phone rings again . Body language to depict surprise, fumbling with phone//

This might be important . I think I will just take it.

Hello

//5 seconds pause

Hi, I cant really hear you and I am in a bit of hurry. So let me assure you I don’t need to buy any insurance or a subscribe to hello tunes. If however, you have a credit card then I am interested.

Mom!! Whose number is this? Anway I will call you in some time. Bye.

Oh sorry folks. This is how life is. Now we are just simply never unreachable. All thanks to technology and the mobile phone. (wave the mobile phone)

Today of course mobile phones are everywhere. I went out with some friends to dinner some time back at a place in Pune. Since we were all sitting on low diwans, we all kept our mobiles on a side tables. I was amazed. There were eight people and eleven mobile phones. Two friends had two mobiles each and one of these two cool folks had a borrowed cell to talk reliance to reliance free.

There was a time when mobile phones were not that widespread. I remember in 96-97 when erickson and usha cellular first started offering mobile phones. Out going rates were 24 rupees per minutes and incoming was 18 rupees a minute. Those were the times folks. One sms was 8 rupees a minutes. I used to joke that dialing wrong numbers on mobile phones should be a criminal offence. At eighteen rupees a minute for an incoming call, a wrong number was like being punished by God.

My first cell was a grey screen cellphone and I was so happy. I did not think of another cell for years. Last month , I was gifted a touchscreen phone and I am already thinking about the next. I am not sure what I want in a new mobile phone that my present one does not have but I know new cells come into our lives as certainly as the income tax returns every year.

And then thanks to the mobile phone we have the 160 characters which mean everything in life nowadays. Yes, the 160 characters is nothing more than the length of a short messaging service message or as we all say SMS.

The S.M.S. service has spawned its own language where words are shortened acronmyms. Tomorrow as 2-m-r-w and good morning as g-m. Is this as many say a vice?

I do not know because most of the times I simply don’t get the language.

Like “tc”. For a long time in my first year of engineering I thought tc meant turbo C. For those who have forgotten, turbo c was this great compiler for c language. When this friend of mine started to sign off her messages as tc, I thought “oh! she must really like C language.”

It was only much later that I realised Tc meant take care, but the joke stayed.

Anyway there is a reason why I talked about mobile phones. With great power comes great responsibility. A recent international survey said Indians were among the nationalities with the lowest levels of telephone etiquette. And we need to change that.

I was sitting in the mutiplex sometime back ,watching a movie. Suddenly a mobile phone rang somewhere around. I thought, I would hear a sorry and the sound of the call being cancelled.

Instead , I heard someone say,"Hello ruchi, Hows you?" And instead of hanging up, the talk just went on and on. After about 5 minutes I tapped the girl on the shoulder from behind and said,"Mam, I know the movie is pathetic but still there might be people who would want to watch it. " I think she got the hint.

And so many times, phones ring in meetings,conferrences ,hospitals, and in so many other places where they should never sound.

It reflects badly on us. So I ask all of us to say that my mobile phone is silent or switched off in all places where it is not supposed to ring. And even if no one asked us to do the same.

And there is a simple reason why…

Once upon a time ,there was a boy who was gifted a mobile phone by his parents. He was very happy. Next day his cell phone rang. It was his mother . He was amazed. He asked his mother-"how did you know I was in the principals office"

The mobile phone does not know where we are. We should tell it so by keeping it silent.

Over to you Mr. Toastmaster

Something hollow inside

2010-02-27T20:14:00.000+05:30

I havent blogged recently because I have just procrastinated.

So the last few days have been pretty bad.

A dark cloud hangs over me. Everything seems tasteless. I bite into a pastry, a mousse, a fruit and I cant feel a thing. Life suddenly is all grey.

I dont know why it happens, what it portends.

I dont hate the blues, but there is nothing to cheer me up this dry season of yellowing leaves.

So I walk a lonely road. I have started to realize that something does not sum up in my world.

It like a bug which I cannot find. A program that does not run.

2010-02-07T23:41:00.000+05:30

Read this on a blog. Like the line.

"
The easiest way to propagate war, intolerance, etc. against a people is to convince others that they aren’t actually people after all. We would be wise to not only look to history, but learn from it.
"

Thinking

2010-02-07T22:38:00.002+05:30

So I havent blogged in a long long time. Its not that I have been very busy or something like that but I have been preoccupied in the mind.

This is just to say I exist.

Will be back with something meaningful soon.

Toastmasters Project 5 speech

2010-01-16T23:48:00.003+05:30

Again a speech with roots the past.

this is a speech as Project 5 in my aim to reach a competent communicator status(5 more to go)

A lot had to be added to make it worth it.

“Scrapped Unfortunately”

Scrap... There was a time when a scrap automatically brought visions of waste. But then occurred a revolution and they called it 'Orkut'. After that a 'scrap', it seemed had a whole new meaning for the masses.

Good evening Mr Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters and welcome guests.

Yes I am talking about the website Orkut. There seem to be various descriptions for it and its bethrehen include a networking site, a community website, a social site, etc. However I will not clinically analyze 'Orkut' today, but rather reminisce about the good old times, when things were still simple

My first introduction to Orkut were the unsure steps I took when a good friend of mine sent me an invitaion and literally forced me to register nearly five years ago. Of course back then Orkut was totally unknown and I was confident that I would never go back to check on the site again.

Time it seems has proved me wrong.

First came Internet in the college hostel where I was studying, then came 'Orkut mania'. The first signs were long hours on Orkut waiting in desperation for new scraps. As one of the first victims, I remember checking for scraps every hour and getting gloomy if I did not find new ones.

Of course suddenly the number of scraps became linked to popularity on Orkut and it seemed no number was big enough and no means mean enough. One afternoon, I remember this conversation between two seniors using scraps.

Gujral- “Oye Akshat, How come you have become so rare these days. I never see you around”
Akshat- “Hi Gujral! Have been pretty busy with life. Wassup with you”
.
.
some 20 smaller scraps...
.
.
Gujral- “So from where are you accessing the net? I am using Minocha’s comp.”
Akshat- “Yaar, I am sitting on Ashraf’s comp.”

Of course they conveniently forgot to mention Ashraf and Minocha were room-mates. The two were basically sitting back to back and chatting using orkut. I heard that one afternoon Akshat sirs rating jumped by 20 percent.

Beyond the addiction there are many benefits of Orkut. Somehow, I personally have never seen any. For example what is discussed in my engg class community on Orkut? Everything except academics. There are games like, will u kiss or marry the person above, whether the person above is sexy or hot(byt the way, I was hot and heavy) , etc. Somehow all games seemed to have something to do with the person above you. Or else there is someone trying to make me rich by working from home or even worse, advertising another equally boring community.

So after some time Orkut started to become boring. I wondered, is it over? Is the colour in life gone? Will I now have to watch a balck and white movie. However I should not have despaired!! To rescue me came a knight called Sir Facebook. Suddenly everyone was in love those funny apps , that ability to poke into other people’s conversations using comments. Of course Orkut in its later avatar would suddenly sprout exactly the same features but there is a charm with the original.

These days people folks automatically assumed that everyone and anyone else is on Orkut and Facebook. And when someone states that he does not access any of these sites, people automatically assume that something must be wrong with him. Afterall since everyone else is on orkut and everyone else cannot be weird, the person not on orkut must be weird.

Of course these days so many social websites have mushroomed up that its hard to decide on an essential list of social sites. I am drowning in spam. Someone want to meet me on Hi5, a bot by the name of Shruti invites me to apna adda, someone else has sent me a private message which will expire soon unless I accept an invitation to Jhoomla.com. The list just goes on. I suddenly miss the old days when even gmail did not exist. Forget facebook or Orkut.

Recently my parents became my friends on facebook. Initially I felt proud,” My parents are so tech savvy that they are on facebook.” I felt like writing a poem about it.

Five minutes later the panic set in. “My parents are on Facebook. They can see all my pics , the flirts with girls, the sarcastic comments in my friend-circle”. Ten minutes later , my facebook account was cleansed. Everything funny, interesting and even mildly suggestive deleted. Now of course I have been joined by the entire gaggle of relatives , cousins and even family friends.

Now I think twice before clicking publish always wondering who all can read it and what potential scandal can occur .The good days when liberty reigned are long gone never to return.

I am now beyond Orkut having left the temptation behind. But you like this speech please ,please let me know by scrapping me. My Orkut ratings are still at 80 percent. The scraps may just help.

Over to you Mr Toastmaster

Extracts from the speech

2009-12-10T22:21:00.005+05:30

The best lines from Obama's noble prize acceptance speech. Obama has slipped down on my fan list but there is a beauty in strong prose. Obama said a lot of things and he left some unsaid. He mentioned Gulf war 1 and Afghanistan invasion but not the Iraq war. The context tells us a lot

Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.

In today's wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed and children scarred.

To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

The soldiers courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.

And yet, given the dizzying pace of globalization, and the cultural leveling of modernity, it should come as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish about their particular identities — their race, their tribe and, perhaps most powerfully, their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict.

At times, it even feels like we are moving backwards. We see it in the Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden.

Most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint — no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of one's own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but the purpose of faith — for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago: "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."

We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that — for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.

BEING IN TWENTIES - SOMETHING

2009-12-09T20:42:00.001+05:30

Its an old forward that I had saved long time back. Read it after a long long time and it felt so true

BEING IN TWENTIES - SOMETHING

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don't recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren't really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job... and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you.

Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure.

You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you're doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person. One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that every one reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out. Send this to your twenty-something friends... maybe it will help someone feel like they aren't alone in their state of confusion...

We call it the "Quarter-life Crisis."

FATE DETERMINES WHO COMES INTO OUR LIVES.....HEART DETERMINES WHO STAYS

cat tomorrow

2009-12-05T19:34:00.002+05:30

I am playing the most slow placed game in history. There is a dart-board and I have darts. However, there are two quirky rules- I can throw only one dart a year and I will settle only for the bulls-eye.

3rd attempt and counting.

I know what I want and I will fight the hardest to get it.

Time to kill the CAT.

Signing off for tonight

From tha archives-nahin,ek ghazal

2009-11-24T23:33:00.005+05:30

Beyond my poetry and prose in English, I have also occasionally dabbled in writing poetry in Hindi, or o be more specific ghazals(Hindi and Urdu for a large part of history was the same language written in different scripts). This ghazal(the first one I ever completed) does not really adhere to traditional rhyme and meter. Thats why I call my blog disjointed verses.

By the way, I use the takhallus,(poetic pseudonym) Daag . Urdu poetry has this tradition that the poet in the last sher(stanza refers back to himself in the third person).

There is a story behind this ghazal and indeed there is a theme that connects all the ghazals I have written till now(I have written so less that its possible). But that story of solitude and loneliness is another blog post. This ghazal was part of my second year of engineering magazine(around three and a half years old.) Time flows.

Nahin, ek ghazal

Usne mujhe aashiq kahke taal diya,magar
Baat mein uski ek jaadu tha jo main rootha bhee nahin.

Kehti hai khel hain sab,magar mujhe bataaye woh aaj
Aag agar idhar hai to kya dhuan udhar nahin.

Ye khumar nahin suroor hai tera kya bataaon tumhe,
main tere ishq mein yun dooba ki jaaga hi nahin.

Main uske do isharon mein hee sab samajh jaata hoon,
Woh teen lafzon mein bhee kyun haal bata paati nahin.

Wahi meri munsif hai, wahi meri qaatil bhee,
Mere ishq ke haq mein phaisla degi ya nahin.

'Daag', jal rahee hai ek ghazal seene mein,
Arz karta hoon baar-baar, phir bhee kyun bujhtee nahin.

Syed Ashraf Husain 'Daag'

नहीं, एक ग़ज़ल

उसने मुझे आशिक कहके ताल दिया,मगर
बात में उसकी एक जादू था जो मैं रूठा भी नहीं |

कहती है खेल हैं सब,मगर मुझे बताये वोह आज
आग अगर इधर है तो क्या धुआं उधर नहीं |

ये खुमार नहीं सुरूर है तेरा क्या बताओं तुम्हे,
मैं तेरे इश्क में यूँ डूबा की जागा ही नहीं |

मैं उसके दो इशारों में ही सब समझ जाता हूँ,
वोह तीन लफ़्ज़ों में भी क्यूँ हाल बता पाती नहीं |

वही मेरी मुंसिफ है, वही मेरी कातिल भी,
मेरे इश्क के हक में फैसला देगी या नहीं |

'दाग़', जल रही है एक ग़ज़ल सीने में,
अर्ज़ करता हूँ बार-बारफ़, फिर भी क्यूँ बुझती नहीं .|

स्येद अशरफ हुसैन 'दाग़ '

And then once in a while

2009-11-16T23:03:00.003+05:30

I must confess, I am an obsessive web-surfer. I can surf bbcnews, nytimes.com ,wikipedia etc for hours. I enjoy reading the stuff in news and the mundane stuff which is not.

And then once in while ,I read some thing that breaks my heart. So while surfing bbcnews, I read this article about a woman who had gone drinking leaving her kids at home and it left me disturbed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lancashire/8362815.stm

I am not a big emotional wreck who cries at each and every moment. However the description of the kids situation was pretty saddening. There are some folks who don't deserve to be sad. Kids are one of them.

Anyway from the article:-

The eldest daughter was leaning out of the lounge window, was rain-soaked and had been crying, he said.
Stevenson's one-year-old son was "hysterical" in his cot upstairs.
The youngster was soaked in urine as was the three-month-old boy who was also covered in sick in his cot.
The four-year-old girl had tried to feed the baby by using chairs to climb up to a kitchen cupboard and reach a tin of milk powder.

I think it was the description of the four year old girl trying to feed her brother that set the rage and the outrage off. There is a feeling of helplessness there, a desperation that transcends boundaries and cultures.

I hope the kids are happy now and I hope the mother realizes, there is no injustice and cruelty greater than cruelty to the weak, innocent and the helpless.

I would be too judgemental but I do wish the mother one day may feel genuine regret and remorse.

There is no bigger and sharper prick than that of the conscience.

Am I confused?

2009-11-15T16:49:00.004+05:30

Oh yes I am.

I was reading this guys article recently who could not decide whether to pursue a MBA or stay on with his company who were sending him to US. He said ,"I am a very confused person".

I read it , thought for a while and realized if he is in the kingdom of the confused, I am the realm's emperor.

So as a record for posterity, I will list down the choices that I have faced:-

a) Let me put it simply. If I could, I would have split into nine and followed nine different professions. And this is at the minimum.

b) I actually wanted to be a lawyer but told myself there are already too many lawyers out there.

c) One of the most gut-wrenching decisions has been the army. Being an army brat, I gave it serious thought but later decided I could not live out my life preparing for a war that never happens. Also to explain the disconnect I have reached the conclusion that there is a greater possibility of me contributing positively to the community in other roles.

d) I wanted to my BA honours in English and go into journalism. firstly my parents thought pretty low of journalist. Secondly, when I met the ex-head of Allahabad University's English department(he incidentally had taught my mother), he told me that the English curriculum is not challenging and a bright student like me will find it dry. Yes, there was a time when I was considered bright.

e) I wanted to be a doctor and this was also a pretty serious fling. It was only once I had sat for the medical entrance exams and qualified for dental that I suddenly realized, medicine as a career was a full time commitment and I really could not wait till 30 to be financially independent. (5.5 years MBBS, 3 years MD, 2 years D.Ch. Add a few years here and there and you have life starting at 31-32. Not moi.)

f) I had looked at the physics in class 11th and immediately swapped hindi for maths. So engineering was my option. I thought I could be more creative in engineering(Ah ,the days of innocence). I gave IIT a good attempt and joined computers engineering at AIT(when NIT Warrangal plans got torpedoed by the dammed naxals. Its another story),coz everyone convinced me I had an obession about computers.

g) I had also wanted to be a gelologist,a marine archaelogist, a marine engineer(gave it up when a relative in the merchant navy,told me put it after the last last option.) and also a historian. None were to be.

Now these were options that I have pretty much closed. Lets come to the options that unfortunately are not.

h) I wanted to do my PhD in computers. Now I am thinking about management. However a doctorate will push me into teaching and academic roles. I am not sure if I want that

i) I want to do my MBA and this is what I hope to soon pursue. However even here I am unsure if I want a long term plan or a short term plan. I like the short term idea. Work for six years and explore other options

j) I think somewhere in the future I want to set up my NGO to help others. However I am surprised how easily money can fill up the need of job-satisfaction.

k) I am still thinking of an IAS attempt as a viable career move. However I am unsure whether I want to commit.

l) I am also writing a book which is stuck at 15% mark. I also desire to be a motivational speaker and tour the world.

So dont talk to me aout how confused you are. I am way ahead of everybody.

And I think I missed out a few options

33rd verse. Wisdom of the TAO

2009-11-15T11:12:00.003+05:30

I am replacing my desire for power
over others with my efforts
to understand and master myself
in any and all situations.

The things I love....
I have to learn to leave alone.

Simply adore the last line. Even the idea about knowing oneself is powerful.

Feelings

2009-11-08T10:14:00.004+05:30

Feelings always seem,
a mirage.
A rainbow sandwich ,
with layers,
unknown,unseen and
untasted.

I bite, I munch, I savor,
I introspect,
And I still dont know,
what I feel for you,
how your memories bring up the tastes,
they do.

Doubt is my enemy,
I know.
There were the sparks,
But I thought it was just a phase,
You and me had nothing in common,
I thought and I told myself.

Now the cycle of doubt completes,
You hang over me and all around,
Like a smog on a wintery morning,
And on a happy day or sad day,
I replay in head again and again,
Your laugh,
Your smiles and the waving of compliments,
Your random new accent.

In times like these,
Where I am myself unsure of the truth,
How do I tell it to you,
For when you will read this here,
You will smell a scent from the past,
And wonder if it's you,
This narcissistic refers to.

Realization !

2009-10-04T11:20:00.001+05:30

Just read this poem . Liked it. Thought I would share it.

What is within you is better than
What is behind you and ahead of you
We should live like a Lotus leaf
It is surrounded by water but dry
Not a drop of water settles on it
It is detached attachment or nishkama karma
Do your duty and leave the rest to GOD
We have free-will and choice as
we have reason but there is a subtle
distinction between GOD’s will and pleasure
He wills both vice and virtue but
what pleases Him is virtue.
Destiny is real as birth and death
Many are called, but few are Chosen
Self-pity is defeating but hubris is a delusion
we surrender not because we have to but
as we are United in Spirit, the spirit that was
never born and shall never perish !

Late night regrets

2009-09-27T01:38:00.003+05:30

A dark cloud muffles the stars,
Its now late at night,
Loneliness creeps upto me in the darkness,
And I am there looking at your number.

I want to call,
Feel a frayed connection,
Imaginary or real,
And simply talk my heart out.

I look at the past,
And wonder ifff,
Just if,
I should have taken the risk,
And created magic myself when I could ,
Rather than hope for it to rise from nothing,
For I wonder if just maybe,
Just Maybe,
There could be a story between us

The connection though frayed,
Still exists.
Maybe time has not all,
Run out,
For I still remember you,
Pretty as the flowers,
With the flowers,
But now time has taken you,
So far far away

I ramble,
Delusional,
Hallucinating on a dark night,
Its late and lonely,
And I look at your number.

Again as always,
I wonder if I should call,
For you shall never call,
But I must maintain facades,
And today I feel overcome by regret,
So I shall call when I can again,
Fake the laugh.
And the attitude.

Eid Mubarak

2009-09-22T22:04:00.003+05:30

This is a belated Eid Mubarak to everyone around.

This Eid has been the loneliest Eid's ever for me. In the entire mosque there was no one I know. Even in the years I have been away from home, and even last year I always had company. Classmates like nayab,tosif etc. Now they are all elsewhere. After the Eid namaz , I wished Eid Mubarak to the imam with the traditional hug and then some random people. I like the way how you can wish a totally random person Eid Mubarak and he will immediately wish you back.

So passed my Eid namaz. I came home and spent hours calling up relatives. then I gave myself a treat and prepared a multi layered custard as desert for dinner. All I can tell you there were five distinct layers .

Anyway so this Ramzan taught me a ot of things. The early morning five to evening six-thirty fasts were a bit hectic. I would feel very sleepy around 3 and my PM for lack of a socket was sitting next to me. The yawns were devastating. I also learnt I am very weak. However alhamdolillah the month passed. At the beginning it seemed a big task. Now I just dont know where the days flew.

Anyway Ramzan is the month where we forsake food and water.But more than that its the month of self-control. And I realized I was weak in many aspects.

Ramzan is a month to retrospect. I did not really get the time to do it often but still I carry forward valuable lessons.

Untile next year. 320 days left. :)

Eid Mubarak everybody.

Beautiful prose

2009-09-03T09:04:00.002+05:30

I am now planning to chronicle pieces of prose that I love and I come across. There is a grace when writers use their pen as a brush.

1)

Invisible Immigrants, Old and Left With ‘Nobody to Talk To’ Moving article on the plight of lonely parents.

2) Mr. Kennedy took a break to offer his views on the scrutinizing of the private lives of public officials, something with which he clearly was quite familiar. Mr. Kennedy said he had no quarrel with such inquiries.

“But do I think it tells the whole story of character? No I truly do not,” he wrote. Men and women, he said, are more complicated than that. “Some people make mistakes and try to learn from them and do better. Our sins don’t define the whole picture of who we are.”

What was that?

2009-08-25T19:50:00.004+05:30

I was upto my nose in work related to the new project when an aquaintance who works in the same building comes to look me and Dharam up as we have shifted to the building ,she works in.

I take a break from work to say hello and chat for 2-3 minutes.

Somparna- Chalo yaar ciao. Have fun.

Me-Oye wait for 2 more min

Somparna-Why ( puzzled)?

Me- We are just about to start a gilli danda match. Have fun after-all.

Me continuing-Its one in the day. How the hell do we have fun at work.

Somparna-Aaargh.Nooo

Stop a moment

2009-08-25T09:35:00.002+05:30

"Take a deep breath, and let yourself imagine, just for a second, that the arc of history does, in fact, bend toward justice."

I just read this line in an article on NYTimes. Beautiful line.

Have a nice day.

The pages of a closed book ruffle again

2009-08-24T23:06:00.004+05:30

"Phir usi bewafa pe marte hai,
Phir wohi zindagi hamaari hai"

The pages of a closed book rustle again,
Someone calls, who I had long ago forgotten,
A wind that had long ago died awakens,
My heart suddenly skips a beat.

Its her again,my heart moans,
Cruel crusher of love,
Heartless destroyer of a poet's heart,
And a brazen pretender as if nothing happened.

I spent years forgetting her,
Telling myself each day its all over,
Till I myself grew blind to the realities,
But someone returns from the past,
Destroying the calm,still the same heartbreaker as ever,
And I suddenly despair on realizing,
Love even if one-sided,never dies,
And she will haunt me forever

Toastmasters Project 4

2009-08-23T20:11:00.004+05:30

This is my toastmaster's project 4 speech. Having realized previously the importance of humour, I wanted a totally humorous speech, so that the audiences attention is fully captured. Also with a club level humorous speech contest coming up next week, I wanted a trial run of the speech.

It went well. The audience was literally in splits.

Dial M for

Dial M for Murder. Ooops sorry, I got carried away.. M mean something else not murder definitely. But for now I will keep u guessing.

Let’s say we Indians have a special affinity for the M word. Which M word ? That M word. The one that everyone wants to experience. Yet most of the people who experience think they were better off, without it.

Folk its M for marriage

As western culture is fixated with love, Indian culture has an obsession with marriage. Since ancient times marriage is part of our psychology. And its firmly grounded there. Marriage seems to be the start of a settled life. For parent’s it seems till the times their children are not married, their duties are still not done. So the moment the child becomes eligible for marriage he/she is prodded into thinking about marriage. Don’t smile people. I know since the day you got your married each of you have at least one mused about marriage

Now talking about marriage let me put it this way. I am an unwilling iconoclast.

I firmly believe marriage is not a small thing. Its not even a word. Marriage is a complete sentence… A life sentence….

I can see a few people smiling. We all know when a newly married guy smiles but when he smiles after 10 years of marriage is when everyone is flummoxed.

There are lines from Salman Rushdie’s novel Shame that I love “I don’t believe in arranged marriages. There are some things you should not be able to blame your poor parents for”. Tragically the day I recited these lines to my parents, they developed a deep animosity for the author. How can someone say this ? It is our duty?

Everytime I hear words like marriage and duty, I remember the idea of firing a gun held someone else’s shoulder. Mine unfortunately.

Indian parents suddenly develop this attachment to rituals and culture which can be a bit to the kids disadvantage.

My dad said the other day,”Son I left the decision of marriage to my sisters and relatives and it has been a very good journey . You should also do the same.” It was a family function. I looked around and I could see the past when I was ten years old or so. As the only male kid with nearly 10 sisters as first cousins in my age group, I grew up indeed in a disadvantaged position. Relatives would come visiting and my sister would team up with her other cousin sisters. The attack would be sudden. “Charge” is all I would hear and next moment I would be getting beaten to a pulp in a fight I had already lost. “Resistance is futile” could very have been their theme.

So as I remembered those moments, fear took hold of me again and I literally begged my parents to promise that if a time came that I was desperate enough to allow them to choose a match, the task shall not be out sourced to any sisters. If they could have beaten me to pulp as a child, imagine the havoc they could create now.

Of course my dad refuses to believe I even have a choice. "Son ,you don’t have the right to choose your own match. That is with me". With most of the western world world already weary about marriages , we could be the only nation where marriage is a joyful occasion. At family functions these days all those old-old aunts now have nothing else to chat with me about except my marriage. Even when I would insist even the idea is far away they would not stop. So I started to chat with them about funerals.

Instant silence.

All you unmarried people out here ,remember the tip. May help you.

In western civilization if you cant date or fraternize with the opposite sex, YOU WILL die alone and lonely. In India, “ Bapu to dhoond hee denge”. Parent will find a match. The parents finding a bride/groom is a great back-up option. We ,Indians can actually be single and happy. Because parents are there.

Of course arranged marriages are not all that bad. There was this white kid who was asking his father, “Dad I have heard in India, a man does not know his wife till he marries her. Is it true? ”It happens everywhere, son. Everywhere.

Of course with section 377 of Indian Penal Code being struck down suddenly society has had to comprehend a new reality which most do not acknowledge.

"What is the use of the law ?",asked a relative of mine."There are no gays in India".

Sure , I mused. Then who were all those people in the gay pride parade in the metros.

Society may still does not accept gay or lesbian couples but it will change. I have a close friend who recently came out of the closet You can imagine the havoc that happened when the only son told his parents he was gay. His parents went ballistic. But we must give parents the credit that they deserve. Their love for their child remained undiminished, but they did voice their opposition to his choice.

We were talking the other day and somehow the topic veered to marriage. He goes like, ”The problem with choosing my own bride is that my parents wont be happy if the bride does not have the same social status. ” I thought for a moment and said, ”Dude, you are gay. Your parents would be distribute sweets if you ever get a girl home”.

He looks at me and says,”Oh shucks, I forgot I have told them”

I think just to satisfy society, we could have inter-orientation marriages. Imagine an advertisement like “Committed well settled handsome gay couple look for professionally qualified lesbian couple to satisfy parents demand for marriage. Caste no bar. Please send both your horoscopes immediately at desperate-to-satisfy-parents@gmail.com. ”

Now these days at functions etc people are asking my mom,” What sort of a girl do you want?” When my mother told me this , I was like,”a) I am not getting married and b) even if I am, Why are they asking you. They should be asking me. Its not as if you will be the one marrying.

This again did not go down well with my parents. The world just does not appreciate humour.

I will just give you all one tip about successful marriages that you may not have heard anywhere.

The secret to a successful marriage after so much of research still remains a secret.!!!

Toastmasters Project 3 speech text

2009-08-17T19:34:00.005+05:30

This is the text of my project 3 speech. You can all see the video in my earlier speech. The basis of this speech is an old college magazine article that I wrote.

However it was totally redone for the speech. /* xyz*/ denote speech instruction

One turn too fast

One error of judgment, one stroke of misfortune, a momentarily loss of control, one turn too fast. And it’s all over!/*Pause 3 sec*/

Mr. Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters and welcome guests,

Yes it just takes one moment on the road to change everything. Just one turn too fast and it could just as well be the last.

80,000 people die in road accidents in India each year. What does it mean?

……Someone has just now lost a life in a road accident, and before I finish my speech, there would be another death on the road.

Still the horror never hits us. The day we hear about an acquaintance or a close friend being killed or injured in a road accident I am sure most of us slow down a bit. I know because I vividly remember the day in 12th class when a classmate was crushed by a bus while on his scooter. I never knew the guy even remotely but I can assure you that day I just pushed my scooter a little less hard and so did the rest of us.

You could wonder why the moral lecture? What has another death forgotten in the sands of time got to do with you? I say, everything! Because YOU would probably be driving, today or tomorrow. And when you get behind the wheel you ought to know the mortal danger you are in.

‘I rode at 100 km/hr’ /*Pull your collar up while doing it*/said my friend. That’s 28 m/sec! Measure it and try to imagine covering the distance in a second on foot. It’s impossible. And yet we seldom think twice before using the accelerator while driving.

Maybe some of that callousness would disappear if you were to see the results of rash driving first-hand. Because no description can fully describe the horror of being there. The sound of metal twisting, the wails of the wounded , the moans of the barely conscious, the horror of the onlookers and pain that is unimaginable. Of course there are people who can boast about walking away unhurt from the wreckage of vehicles. But they were just lucky. Death was just enjoying being irrational.

Let’s imagine an accident. Someone is driving, and suddenly he collides with another vehicle at high speeds. Maybe it was not his fault. Maybe the other driver was rash and drunk. But maybe he could have gone a little slower.

And now suppose that person is you. /*Very slow */

After that one moment you wake up to find your leg bent at an impossible angle. But you are too confused to realize it’s broken. Maybe your lungs are filling up with blood because of broken ribs. You are literally drowning in your own blood and there is nothing you can do. I wonder if anyone would like a similar scenario,' to wake up from an accident only to realize you are dying'. There are injuries for which doctors can do nothing more than just move on to the next patient who could probably be saved. Also in India, where you would probably be bundled by bystanders in a rickshaw and sent to a hospital which will probably refuse to accept you for the fear of a police case.

Or you could be like my friend who was hit by a truck in the wee hours on a national highway. No one stopped to help and she lay there in a ditch, for over two hours, dying just 200 meters from the comfort of her home on a chilly morning. It turned out to be a beautiful December day. It was just not so bright for her.

Of course initially, because of shock you will not feel any pain. You can stare at your mangled hands with indifference. But then if you can just survive for some time, then the shock will wear out and you will start feeling pain that you never knew was possible. God forbid, if you had been driving recklessly before the accident then at that moment you are lying there hating yourself. You would probably do anything to go back and set it right. But this is life my friend! What’s done can never be undone.

And if you are counting on surviving the accident, don’t forget it could involve anything -from long lonely months of recuperation in a hospital, the guilt of having caused the death of innocents or even leading a crippled life.

Friends, drive safe. There are only two self -evident truths which I know of and they are that mixing drinking with driving kills and helmets save lives. Only a fool can deny these. So drive knowing the risks. Because the problem is not driving but bad driving.

There is a simple reason why I spoke about accidents the way I did. Why I talked about death as if it was just around the corner. Because if you can imagine the pain after a crash or even better see yourself lying unattended on a stretcher still,/*2 sec pause slow*/ very still; ,/*3 sec pause even slower*/ then maybe you will just be a little easy on the accelerator next time.

Over to you Mr. Toastmaster

Sweet revenge, Toastmasters project 3

2009-08-12T21:19:00.003+05:30

So two weeks back, I had lost to another guy in the toastmasters club in the prepared speech section.

My revenge came on Wednesday when I defeated him with my latest speech.

I wanted some more detailed feedback on myself ,so I used my cellphone to record the speech.

The sound is muffled , the video is poor but I think its better think its bett er than nothing.

I come in after about 30 seconds in the video. The speech lasts 5 minutes.

Anyway from the video I realized my pauses are very poor. Also my voice is still not reflecting emotions well. I think the body language and gestures were decent.

the speech is titled 'One turn too fast'

CAT Update

2009-08-08T17:45:00.005+05:30

"Muzamahil ho gaye quvaa 'Ghalib',
Woh anaasir mein aitadaal kahaan"

muzamahil=lethargic, quvaa=powers, anaasiir=elements, aitadaal=moderation

Ghaalib,your powers have become lethargic,
There is no moderation in the elements.

The above is one of my favourite ghaalib sher's. It expresses so eloquently the frustration of a person who is realizing that the powers that he was proud of are vanishing.

I would wonder about my powers as a poet and a writer wondering at times if my best phas was over.

Now recently I have a new angst. I am being openly devastated in the mock-CAts. The last two papers have been the worst. And I managed a score that I had never ever got. Meaning even less than my zero attempt CAT(initial no prep).

So I am wondering now if my powers have eclipsed. Its funny how two bad performances can so thoroughly shake up the confidence.

Anyway this is my hall of shame, my repository of mock cat scores

While I do feel frustrated, I shall still try and hold onto hope. Because I have made a stand here. And I will clear the CAT and join the college I desire to, not what I manage to get. ABCL, I am still coming.

Adios

Be the change you want to be in the world

2009-08-02T14:49:00.004+05:30

I have been wondering these last couple of days, what is my contribution to the community and society at large? The answer I have realized is nil and it pricks me.

Be the change you want to see in the world. Thats what resounds in my mind. There are things around that rankle me. Problems with the nation and the community. Its a good idea to lay out the solution and say its easy. The tough part is implementing the idea. Walk the talk they say.

And I know, my conscience will not let me sleep. I will hedge my risks but when the time is right I will put them into action. Of course my parents and relatives take me for a loony. "You have been so brilliant and now you will waste it all for social service. It doesn't pay". This was the response I got from home. But I am stupidly stubborn.
"Sab ke baatein sun leta hoon main chup chaap magar ,
Apne dil ki karte jaana meri aadat hai."

So my aspirations always cloudy become a little more clear. I want to walk a lot of paths. I know one that I will definitely walk.

A year of enslavement :)

2009-07-29T08:25:00.001+05:30

So finally a year has passed since I started working. Its been a mixed year. I expected more, got less; I hoped to learn a lot, learnt nothing; I hoped to remain unchanged, I now dont recognize myself in the mirror;I thought I knew myself, now I know the journey of self exporation has just began.

Last year , around this time, I was rich. I was using my parents accounts. Now I am broke. Coz now I burn up my own money.

Anyway now I know the meaning of things I never knew before. I now know I cant really be happy while being employed by someone else. For a short duration I could survive provided I am being paid obscenely high, which again I am not.

Jab agle saal yahi waqt aaa raha hoga,
Kaun jaanta hai kaun kis jagah hoga

Adios

The autopsy of a speech

2009-07-20T20:04:00.002+05:30

So I gave a speech last wednesday. This was my project two of the Toastmasters club.As I had procrastinated for nearly five months since my lst project, I had hoped to write a good speech. And I did before the speech think I had managed a pretty decent speech.

The text of the speech is two posts down.

Anyway then my 5 month duration speech was challenged by a guy who had at night written a speech.

I am not a bad orator. I know my strengths. In tostmasters meet , I m regularly the best speaker in the on the spot sessions and was also the best speaker when I gave my speech last time.

When I finished, I listened to the ovation and I thought I had done a pretty good job. Then in the table-topics I was good as usual. And then I could hear the silence within me when the results came in. I lost in both sections. This was something totally unexpected. Of all the meeting I have attended since Jan,this was the first time I had won nothing.

Let me confess,I am a sore loser. If I play a game to win, I hate it when its otherwise. Thats why I dont enjoy ludo. Its too much of luck.

So I tried to be magnaminous in defeat, congratulating the winner but inside there was all turmoil.

There are reasons to bitch about. The winner is choosen by an audience vote and because there was no way to write the names of people I think I lost a few votes in confusion.

But why did I loose in the prepared speech contest? The speech was good, but I didn't make the audience laugh. That ws my fault. The speech was just too serious. However the oppositions speech was also not that great. It was just one long story and some speech.

So I shall come back with a vegenance. I am planning to give project 3 in the next speech to reclaim my honour.

Shall keep you posted.

The way of the TAO

2009-07-19T23:34:00.004+05:30

'I choose to enjoy living the great mystery. The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.'

So I have brought this extremely thin book on the 88 verses of Tao. I was just browsing in the campus book-store and I come across this gem of a book. I had free discount coupons at home but I decided not to risk the edition being snatched before I could come back. So I bought it.

And now I am intoxicated after having drunk deep poetry.

'My work when it is done ,is forgotten. That is why it lasts forever.'

The Secret-Toastmasters international project two

2009-07-18T08:03:00.004+05:30

Good Evening Toastmaster ,fellow toast masters and honored guests.

It is written in the toastmaster manual that in case of a prepared speech, one must begin by doing something to arouse the curiosity of the audience or they may get bored and not really listen. But I disagree. I would not mind if some of you were to wander off in my speech. Because I am going to tell you a secret. One that all of us know but never acknowledge. And this secret can change your life.

I begin this tale with a story. In early 1940s a daughter was prematurely born as the 20^th of 22 children to a black couple in Tennyssee, USA. Despite the complications, because the couple were black, the local white hospital refused to treat the child. And because the couple were very poor, they could not afford to spend money going to the doctor in the neighboring county. But the child was a born fighter and she survived. However tragedy struck soon when their daughter was diagnosed with polio. “She will never be able to walk”, was what the doctors told her parent. But the mother hoped against hope and took the child for weekly therapy sessions. By the age of ten the child could walk with leg braces. Pretty much like the young Forest Gump in that immortal movie. Then one day the mother returned home to find Wilma playing basketball without the leg braces. Some called it a miracle. I think human will had triumphed.

Why some may ask is this story relevant. It is important as I look around and I find so many people miserable with where they are, unhappy with who they are. They stand convinced that there is something lacking in them and they deserve all the misery. I wonder if they are right?

Let us all look inside. Are there things that make us unhappy, are there things we want to change? And are these the very things that we believe we cannot change ourselves.

Yes, my friends, there are things that we want to do but never get around to doing it because we think its just too big a task for us. We are intimidated by the odds even before we start.

But there is a truth is that we all forget. The secret that we never say out loud. And that truth is that our happiness is in our own hands. Do you believe this? Even if you do not say to yourself, My happiness is in my hands.

What do I mean by happiness is in our own hands. Does it mean we should accept whatever happens to us. Does it mean that even after a particularly bad day in office you don’t have the right to be unhappy. Maybe your code just refused to work. Or you think your efforts are not being appreciated and you got unwarranted criticism. Am I telling you to still be happy?

No, while you have the right to be miserable, I insist that you realize that your happiness is within you. No one else controls your happiness. We have within us to end up where-ever we want to be.

Human will has always had the upper hand. We as humans wonder –“Can I do it?” and frequently fail to convince even ourselves that we can achieve it. I ask all of you, why don’t we ask “Why can’t I do it”. Because I can assure the day we do, we will ourselves realize that all our limits are made by ourselves only. We believe in our limitations and so they exist.

Helen Keller was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She did it because she did not believe in her limitations.

There is a band that I listen to on the web sometimes. The funny thing is that the band consists of only one person who is the singer, the lead guitarist, the sound technician as well as the drummer. Only one person in the band. I think you could all imagine how bad it would sound.

The band is deafboyone and the only member of the band is deaf. Imagine being a musician and not being able to hear. Yet Deafboy one makes wonderful music. The lyrics of one song are “I am standing across the crowded bar. I can see what she wants, But you. You have to shout!”. The deaf singer instead of being unhappy pokes fun at all of us who cannot understand sign language. Because he does not need to hear. He can simply see and understand.That is the power of human will and belief in our innate abilities.

Who are you all after-all? What is your inheritance ,your identity? You all are humans bestowed with free will and intelligence far above animals.

They say man is an ape. But are apes human? All of you must know that chimpanzees our closest relatives can be taught language and how to communicate. But do you know, psychologists have realized that even when a chimpanzee has been taught how to ask for a fruit through signs, he just wont do it. They just don’t get the utility of a language.

And that’s why I say while man may have evolved from monkeys, we are no apes. As humans you are not bound to follow the herd. And those who do ,please, please quit the herd mentality. Stop monkeying around

So how do you go about claiming your happiness. Firstly tell , yourself that only you are responsible for your happiness. They say we let others be responsible for our unhappiness by giving them that power.

Take it back and hold your happiness within yourself.

Secondly believe in your abilities and your strength. You are not another human. You are A HUMAN, capable of splitting the atom and conquering the deepest oceans.

Thirdly think how you can achieve your dreams. Plan and if you think its possible take that step towards achieving them. Not all who set about trying to achieve their dreams succeed, but I assure you all of those who try feel satisfied.

I started with a tale about Wilma, the polio affected black girl in Jim Crow South. Wilma was actually a real person. After having taught herself to walk, Wilma became the local school basketball star.

But her achievements and fame do not stop there. In 1960 Wilma Rudolph became the first American lady to win three gold medals in the Olympics’ track and field events. The girl who was not supposed to walk set a world record and became the fastest runner on this planet.

Over to you MOC Kartick

Justice for Marwa Al Sherbini??

2009-07-06T23:59:00.006+05:30

So I learnt about this horrible and tragic incident, about a woman who was murdered in court in front of her three year old son, by a man who she had successfully sued for racially insulting her. Where did this incident happen?? Did it happen in some corner of Saudi-Arabia or Iraq? No , it happened in a court in Dresden in Germany.

And did we hear about it? No, we did not. Of the only western media link that I could find about the story was in BBC news.At this moment I must genuinely doubt the media's fairness. When a rabid mullah makes some silly fatwah about the Hijab or some ither thing they will splash it all around. It is implied Muslims must apologize. Its afterall in our name. Who cares if we never gave the permissions?

I dont really support or encourage the Hijab. But I beleive the choice must exist. The woman who chooses to wear the hijaab is not inferior to the one who walks in mini's.

I can assure you this story will send a chill up your spine? Marwa Sherbini, 31, was stabbed 18 times by Axel W, who is now under arrest in Dresden for suspected murder.

Marwa Sherbini, a 32-year-old Egyptian national was suing her attacker after he insulted her for wearing the Islamic headscarf.

Sherbini stood in court to give evidence against court appeal before German man took out a knife and stabbed her 18 times.

Marwa took her 3-year old son Mostapha to play in a Dresden park. A German man, identified only as Axel W, insulted her because of wearing headscarf and called her a "terrorist". She filed a case against him in German courts after the incident.

When she won the case and the court fined him the €780 for having abused her. But German man appealed against the verdict, German media said.

Also, her husband and her son were present in the court room. When the assailant attacked Marwa her husband ran to rescue her. But the assailant stabbed him 3 times. Meanwhile, a German security officer in court shot the husband in the leg too.

The husband Elwy Okaz lapsed into a coma and was taken to hospital suffering from serious injuries to the stomach and liver.

Marwa Sherbini was a star pupil at her Alexandria School, El Nasr Girls' College (EGC), one of the oldest and most prestigious educational establishments for girls in Alexandria. Her personality and academic achievements led to her selection as Head Girl of the school before she joined the Faculty of Pharmacy at Alexandria University, graduating in 2000 with flying colors. After she got married to Elwy Okaz, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute, she moved with him to Germany.

HATE-CRIME IGNORED:-
German officials did not acknowleged about bloody event which is taken in front of the 3 year old son's eyes during 24 hours and did not informed Marva's family or Egyptian embassy..

A German official described the incidence as individual and that it was driven out of the so called "feelings of extreme xenophobia." So, now when a German guy stabs a pregnant Egyptian woman eighteen times, he is called "sick," but if an Arab or Muslim does the same with a European or American person, he will be called 'terrorist.'

Also, the media reported that German officials put the son of Sherbinis, Mostafa in an orphanage, rejecting to hand him over Egyptian embassy for send him to family members.

According to father of MArwa who spoked to an Egyptian TV, they learned the killing from a family friend after on a phone conversation after 24 hours.

"My daughter was pregnant in her third month," the heartbroken mother told Egypt's Al-Masri Al-Youm daily on Sunday, July 5.

"I never imagined she would be a victim of terrorism and we would see her pictures in the media."

MY MUSINGS:-

I wonder first of all, why is there not a commotion in the media. How is this incident so underreported. Why no New York Times or a Washington Post article. After all this lady was fighting for her rights peacefully.

Secondly, why is there no enquiry how this happened. How the hell did the murderer stab 18 times a pregnant woman in court and no one intervened.

And why the hell was her husband shot by the police officer.

This incident is not a one off incident. Its an example of increasing Islamophobia in the world. Many people see a media bias. I refuse to beleive. But this incident makes me question. Obama's new dog got a 1000 times more coverage than the death of this lady. May her soul rest in peace. And I hope someone fights her fight.

The season started-- Last sunday

2009-07-02T22:49:00.005+05:30

CAT 2009, I am coming. So beware all you competitors, for from the ashes rises a phoenix.

:) So my CAT prep starts. nearly five months. Enough time, I think.

Anyway I gave my first mock cat after nearly 8 months and as expected got bashed to a pulp. In the free AIMCAT got 13 marks in DI, 71 in verbal and 15 in quant. Did not clear two cut-offs. The good part was verbal. My blade is still not broken. According to time coaching out of the the 34053 people all India who took the test my rank was 40th. :) I am inconsistently consistent .

The same was 13000 and 15000 in the other two.

Its a long way to the top. But I have tasted blood and I am coming

The future is still unwritten

2009-06-01T00:08:00.000+05:30

The future is still unwritten and I am writing it now.

The last couple of days I have been thinking a lot about my future, where I want to be, what I want to be. The choices are flummoxing but I have to evaluate each and every one of them. The way I see it,the time for procrastination and inaction is drawing to a close. The era of dragons is dawning.Mysore has been a decent place. But its time to move on.

After having worked in the IT sector for 10 months, I know what I had seen was a mirage. I dont see a long term career for myself here. Its just not satisfying wasting entire weeks worrying over pieces of inconsequential code. My code failure will not kill.It might have a financial cost to client but that is it. So I have decided to resign somewhere in Jan-March 2010. By that time I would have had 16 months or so of work ex and I think that would be enough in a lot of places. This decision is nearly 99% confirmed but there is always that chance for doubt.

I always wanted to be CEO but now when I look deeper that was just a facade for positions of leadership. A lot of money could stifle that urge but I think less money yet making a difference will not be all that bad.

In my college I wondered where I would like to work,now I wonder what I can do for the rest of my life.

I had choosen MBA over MS long time back and I still stick with it. But I wonder now how different will the work profile be after the degree. I look around and I see many managers with the same degree from the same colleges I aspire and I just have that teeny-weeny doubt.

Since childhood, I had that dream to fly across the oceans and settle in a foreign country. The dream still remains but I wonder if it is wise. Will not it be like the ultimate betrayal. Escaping to better pastors only because you have the option to do so. I have this feeling that I will never be quite at peace if I do not give something back to the community. In the easiest of words, it would simply be selfish. Maybe I lack the capitalist attitude.

So what shall I do when I finally decide to quit? There are multiple options that I have yet to choose from:-
a) Work for an NGO for some time and pursue my MBA. I am exploring the idea. It enthuses me a lot because it would give me a feel of social work. Its good to talk about giving back to society and caring for the poor in eloquent words, its quite another thing to actually walk along those words.

b) Become an entrepreneur . Again there are certain ideas cooking up right now . One idea has infact developed quite a lot but that involves me teaching physics to 12th level students. The plan is good and the cash flow could fund future ventures but I am not sure if that is what I want to be. This idea does not merge too well with my long term career plans. Of course now that I am questioning everything its a good time to ask whether even those goals are based on anything solid or as everything else they are merely wisps of smoke that the next wind shall scatter and merge with the surroundings.

c) Give the Indian civil services a solid try. This is an idea fraught with risks. However there is life little gain without risks. To even start I need to quit everything and study 12 plus hours a day for seven months plus. The civil services or IAS as it is called is the toughest exams in the country with nearly 4.5 lakh applicants in contention for less than 300 seats.
This is as I said earlier fraught with dangers. It could be nearly a year before I realize where exactly I stand but if I can clear this exam the rewards are multi-fold. There is the actual possibility of doing something good for others, the possibility of being agents of change.

d) Fourth option. Keep working at the company I am working presently and quietly head off to the MBA when the chance comes. The only issue is that the work at my company is seldom ever intellectually satisfying. So its more like doing donkey work. It makes no sense to keep working here when I cant see the IT sector as a long term career for myself.

So the future is unwritten and I am writing it now. The trick is to plan.

Musings

2009-05-29T08:20:00.002+05:30

Lonely mornings, a cup of tea,
I think of the world as it whizzes by.

Away from home have I have wandered,
Searching for things I saw far away,
Mirages, illusions and hallucinations it seems,
Far away from home indeed.

And now as I sit about and wonder,
About all my wanderings,
I ask if we have a choice,
A choice to stay rooted.

To the wanderer's I ask?,
Why do we wander so much,
Was it worth it all?

Update

2009-05-24T00:21:00.002+05:30

So, I have been inactive for nearly a month now and was sporadically active before that so even that does not count much.

However now I am back.

Will blog regularly coz I need to clear my mind. Have decisions to make and some cannot wait

As they tear your hopes apart

2009-04-19T20:44:00.003+05:30

To watch clicke here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

So I saw this incredible video today of Susan Boyle a participant in Britains Got Talent show. As a 48 year old lady , she comes on stage and is mocked by the audience for saying she wants to be a professional singer and also that there is something sexy to her beyond her age. She confesses she has never been kissed. The audience sneers. Judges mock her and it appears that she is just another side show to amuse the audience so that they can make fun of her dreams. And then she sings," I dream a dream." And no one laughs. Because her voice resounds loud and clear over all those sneers. And even the judges know they were wrong to dismiss her just because she was not that hot babe in a micro-skirt. The song is as beautiful as its lyrics are deep.

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high,
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid
When dreams were made and used,
And wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung,
No wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hopes apart
As they turn your dreams to shame.

And still I dream he'll come to me
And we will live our lives together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms
We cannot weather...

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seems
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.

I just love the song. She sung it so well that I actually shed tears, though mainly because her voice had that deep quality that stirs something deep within eachof us. No one cries for anyone else, we all cry for ourselves. :)

Enjoy the song and please watch the vi

NOT IN MY BLOODY NAME

2009-04-04T00:13:00.002+05:30

I was about sleep when I saw this video which absoutely made my blood boil. Its the video of this teenage girl being flogged by the Taliban in the province where Sharia is now being implemented in Pakistan. While many people think Islam to be this atavistic homogeneous entity I have long argued to the contrary.

So this is a video where a girl is being flogged for having come out of the house with a male person who was neither her father or husband. So basically haraam according to a very narrow reading of the Shariah. The video is disturbing to put it mildly. Watch it if you dare at the end of the day only.

Anyway the video has been filmed by a mobile and distributed widely to act as a warning. I find it low and a debasing act.

Because its in my bloody name, I insist on taking the right away as a muslim .I never gave them the right but still I must lodge my protest.The taliban are as misguided fools as Dante.

Its funny how big demons we become when we think our repressions are justified. Islam is not harsh. It's gentle and merciful.

See the video here

Looking Inwards

2009-03-16T22:04:00.002+05:30

Latest pics with my brand new camera.

First pic is the minaret of an ancient mosque in Sriranagapatnam.

Second is pic that I title splendid desolation.

Third is me in the moment

Everything Explained in three lines.

2009-03-12T21:50:00.003+05:30

I have this urge to seek simple explainations for everything. Like a string theory joining all forces , a line that would be forever green. But its a little hard to find that one deep line.

So my room-mate and me have this habit of using 3 lines to explain everything in life. These are the lines that I originally used but now many people who have heard me use the same. To those who wander here, I warn you- The lines that follow are seductive. Turn away now or you may inadvertently muttering these lines at meetings, moments of desolation and who knows where.

When that happens see a shrink but please come back and let me know. So without further ado,I share my wisdom.

(a) Har dil mein armaan hote to hai, bas koi samjhe zara- from the song Tinka-tinka.(Each and every heart has desires within. May the right person understand them)- This is the explaination for the paradox of love and so many other things. This equates the hot gal, the plain jane and the outright scary gal. This is also true for guys. We all have big desires-opposite sex, fame and so many other small and big things. This line explains that the desires will forever exist. Its naturalfor who can tell the heart to stop dreaming of people we will never even come close to.

(b) Humko maloom hai jannat ki haqeeqat lekin, Dil ko kush rakne ke liye Ghaalib yeh khyaal achcha hai-.A line of poetry from the famous Urdu poet Ghaalib translated as I know the truth about paradise (its a fable and all is a lie) but I will still beleive in it because its a great idea to keep my heart glad. I mostly state only the second line "Dil ko kush rakne ke liye Ghaalib yeh khyaal achcha hai" as an musing when I simply shift my stance. Its the line that I am reminded of when I give failure the label of destiny or fate. Its a line about all the times that we change the timelines of our dreams or even modify the vision itself.

(c) Kisi ko duniya mein mukammal jahaan naheen milta, Kaheen zameen nahin milti, to kahin aasmaan nahin milta. (Another poetry line sayin no one in on this earth finds a perfect world or a state. Somewhere there is not enough land while at other places there is a dearth of sky)- This line explains why the simplest of satisfaction is so hard and elusive to get. We are never satisfied. I ,for one never sleep satisfied at night despite being blessed with so many things. And the tragedy is I do not know what will satisfy me. And there is valid fear that nothing may satisfy me ever.

There are other seconday theories also but their validity is quite limited. Someof them are-
(a) The only reward of hard work is the oppurtunity to do more
(b) Agar zigar mein ho himmat to duniya se bagawat kar lo, Warna jahaan maa-baap kahen wahin shaadi kar lo

So now u go forward and find explaination for the things in life using the above lines. Enjoy the inne perspective about things that these lines bestow.

Cooking for two, alas three

2009-03-09T19:40:00.000+05:30

I take Mysore as the golden period in my life where I must do everything I have ever desired in life because I am unlikely to get the oppurtunity to be in such a small and crappy city again. The city sleeps at nine-thirty. Mysore is small and I spent a miniscule amount of time commuting. This gives me time for a lot of other things. Also I am likely to be on bench for a long long time right now. This may be depressing for many but I adore the idea. I get time for myself and there is no overtime pressure.

So among the things that I always wanted to do was to learn to cook. Now I could always cook a bit but that was very scarce.

Out here in Mysore in the south part of India, the taste of food is rather unsatisfactory. Initially when I was being trained, I could adjust as I thought it was temporal but later when I got posted here I knew it could not continue. So what do three engineers do in front of an intractable problem about taste?

They start to cook dinner.

So while breakfast and lunch during the weekdays is at the work place we mostly cook the dinner. Tragically its still limited to vegetarian fare. But we can cook the entire Indian meal- daal,subzi, chaawal and roti. Along with stuff like raita, desserts like sevain,halwa etc also frequent.

How much have I progressed. I am not very good with the subzi but I can cook the dal and chaawal independently along with some types of vegetables. I am also the weekend breakfast specialist which ranges from dalia, upma to chanae as well as varieties of halwa.

But the most difficult skill I havemastered is rotis. Ladies and gentlemen, kneading the dough or aata is one simple looking skill which is hard as a nut to master. Getting that right consistency is tough and adding water is an art. So many times I ended up with a wet slurry that had to be then added to an equal amount of dry atta. I would be bad mouthing rotis trying to remove all the atta from my hand while my patient flatmate would be improving my disaster. Poor dharam, he really had a lot of patience. He was the only guy who had prior cooking skills worth mentioning.

Now of course I tend to get the consistency of the dough right and my chapattis are large, thin and round. This is a thing which many girls cannot boast of. And I say so because so many girls I know go like "Wow, your chappatis are round.(envy there)". Ladies, the rotis take effort.

And this is an appreciation for all the ladies who cook for thei families. Kudos to you all. Its a hard task. And from my mom to so many women around also work. I would want praise every-day if I was to cook.

A measure of my progress came when some days back we prepared wonderful chole bhatoore, a punjabi dish. It was superb. I said to myself we have crossed a level.

Anyway I have to go now. There is dinner to be cooked. Planning for matar-paneer , daal and rotis. Maybe rice also

PJ- packet series

2009-03-08T21:55:00.004+05:30

An empty mind is a devils workshop. So these days I have been musing about packets with a bias to http packets. Used these jokes to win a geeky contest.

Here are some packet PJs.

Q). What did one packet say tothe other?

Ans-Life is short

Q).What did one virtual circuit or the VOIP packet say to the other?

Ans. Follow me.

Q). What did one packet say to the other while entering the undersea fibre optic cable.

Ans. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Q). What did the other packet reply?

Ans.) Idiot,analyze the dispersion. Its a laser

Q). What did the packet ask the router?

Ans. Are you a higher being

Q.) What did the two UDP packets whisper about the http packet?

Ans. He is so fat

Darkness at the fringes

2009-03-04T20:16:00.003+05:30

So today was a dark dark day.

Things kept adding on till finally I felt like running away from it all.

And now as I sit in my flat I feel the storm in my emotions.Its like sailing through a sea where each wave is larger than the last and finally at the back of the mind comes a thought as to when it ends.

The day paradoxically begins on a pleasant note. There was nothing odd. But it became one of those days where things kept going a bit wrong. Late to work, even late to swipe in, the struts code seeming so alien. And it all added to a dark dark mood.

Then the moment I got home ended up in a war of the words with our house-owner. I dont shirk away from conflicts but that just wasn't the time.

So I wonder how do we know we are in the right place,the right job. Its a tough thought but we must have a job that we forever enjoy.

And the day you just feel like running away from it all, what do you do?I used flexible timings choice to return in six hours instead of 9.25 hours but what if it was not there.

Books ,books and books

2009-02-26T23:53:00.004+05:30

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Copy into a new note Put an X next to the ones you've read. Include the number you have read in the headline and tag your friends!

X 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
x 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
x 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
X 6 The Bible
x7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
x10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
x14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
x18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
x21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
X24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
x25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
x29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
x30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
x31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
x32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
x33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
x34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
x40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
x42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
x43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
x51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - never got past ch1
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
x54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
x55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
x57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
x59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
x60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
x65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
x68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
x69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
x70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
x71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
x72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
x81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
x89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
x90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
x97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
x98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
x99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Salsa with the devil

2009-02-25T08:18:00.002+05:30

You reap what you sow. The demons that one creates for others will one day come back and haunt you too.

So Pakistan has made peace with elements of the Taliban in SWAT valley in exchange of enforcing Shariah law. As a neighbouring country whose existence appears rooted many times in anti-India rheoteric and also a country which has the nuclear bomb, this signals a dengerous development. Is Pakistan a failing state?

The shariah law in SWAT is atavistic in many aspects. Women testimony will not be equivalent to men, no more girl eductaion(over 500 girl schools have been destroyed by the Taliban in the region),compulsory purdah and a general repression of freedom.

There were about 3000 taliban fighters in SWAT. Why is it the Pakistani army could not defeat them. Or was it just that the generals dont want to.

I end with this quote of Winston Chuchill,"If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

It would be well if the Pakistani establishment was to remember this. Because one can't win in a negotiation with the devil. Pakistan created the Afghanistan Taliban and all the offshoots of the same in their country com from there only.

"
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety--Benjamin Franklin
"
The above quote remains as true today as anyday in the past.

LOVE

2009-02-17T14:32:00.001+05:30

Love

Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feelings lived:

Happiness, Sadness, Knowledge, and all of the others including Love.

once day it was announced to the feelings that the island would sink, so all repaired their boats and left.

Love wanted to persevere until the last possible moment.

when the island was almost sinking, Love decided to ask for help.

Sichness was passing by Love in a grand boat. Love said "Sichness, can you take me with you?"

Sichness answered, "no, I can't. there is a lot of gold and silver in my boat. there is no place here for you."

Love decided to ask Vanity who was also passing by in a beautiful vessel, "Vanity, please help me!"

"I can't help you Love. you are all wet and might damage my boat." Vanity answered.

Sadness was close by so Love asked for help, "Sadness, let me go with you."

"oh...Love, I am so sad that I need to be by myself!"

Happiness passed by Love too, but she was so happy that she did not even hear when Love called her!

Suddenly, there was a voice, "come Love, I will take you." it was an elder.

Love felt so blessed and overjoyed that he even forgot to ask the elder his name.

when they arrived at dry land, the elder went his own way.

Love realized how much he owed the elder and asked Knowledge, another elder, "who helped me?"

"it was Time," Knowledge answered. "Time?" asked Love. "but why did Time help me?"

Knowledge smiled with deep wisdom and answered,

"because, only Time is capable of understanding how great Love is."

Musings from beyond the pale

2009-02-17T14:09:00.001+05:30

Its been five straight years since I have been writing for "Srijna". Five years!! Some may wonder as to how this is possible. Was I forced to repeat a year or something similar? Naa, but if I was to give a hint, it would be to tell you that I cannot call myself a student of AIT anymore. I am now an alumnus.

Nearly eight months back I bid goodbye to AIT. And this article is about the journey since. I have now been working with Infosys for nearly seven months and am presently working out of Mysore. It's been a strange shift from a student to a working professional. At times it now appears nothing has changed, at other times I wonder if even something of the past survives.

I have learnt that we will loose touch with a lot of friend once a person starts working. Its not about contact numbers and e-mail ids. I am online every night and I see so many batchmates online. The tragedy is I seldom have the time or the will to say hello. And neither do they. Only a few friendships survive and even those time keeps corroding, like an animal gnawing at the edges. The best of friends however stay in touch because they miss each other.

Of course now I get paid at the end of every month but that changes few things. The kind of fun I had in college seems impossible now and feels like a distant hallucination. Its only when one start working that one realizes the importance of a weekend. I savour it, dwell in it ,mourn its passing and then wait for another return. In life and career, a lot also depends on luck. Fate as someone said is a seductive idea. However while its critical to have fun in college, I suggest that one must always put in the minimum amount of hardwork. Play it safe.

Also presently we are going through the worst economic crises in a long long time. Recession scares everybody. Should we really panic? I agree that recession has affected the IT industry. Clients are short of cash and projects are tough to retain. Many companies are firing people-left, right and center. It does appear to be a bad time.

While this may be the first recession of us as adults, we would be fools to forget that this is not the first recession. This is also not the last. The business phases come in regular cycles.There will always be recessions every couple years. These are the risks of working in the corporate sector. The rewards are also manifold.

Even in a recession opportunities exist. Its up to us if we have the will to search for them. Many of my friends have got job offers even in this recession. Fear is good when it makes us aware of the surroundings and work harder. On the other hand fear which cripples us and does not allow us to do a thing is bad.

So enjoy your time at AIT because these days will never return. Work hard and party harder still. Adios.

Syed Ashraf Husain

Proud part of the AIT Comp batch of 08

This is my article for the latest issue of my college magazine. I did not intend to write but the present secretary requested and I just could not say no. Maybe I have a hard time letting go.

Battlestar Gallactica-Review

2009-02-15T01:12:00.002+05:30

When I was in my final year of engineer a classmates brother who was also on my friend list had a status message that read like "Battlestar Gallactica rocks". It kind of stayed with me, and so about a month back when I decided to download a new series the choice was a bit easy.

I did a bit of research and found Battlestar Gallactica has won a lot of awards. So I started watching the series with a lot of expectations. However the first lot of episodes soundly disappointed me and I wondered if I should download more. However I decided to persevere and it paid off.

It became interesting and I was hooked. Battlestar Gallactica is a science fiction series about a scenario where human population living on a planet system of twelve colonies(planets) including Caprica get attacked and nearly annhilated by cylons. Cylons were machines that humans had created who when they had rebelled had been banished to another planetary system. In 40 years the robots designed better models who perfectly even in physiology resembled humans.

A single battleship and some civilian transport escaped and made a run for it. However they kept getting pursued by cylons. Also cylons had sleeper agents within the humans.

On this canvas the story unfolds. The beauty about battlestar gallactica is its a sort of deep introspection into human behaviour. Humans and cylons becomes us versus them. It shows the cruelty of those who praise piety because its the 'other.'

The science fiction stuff and special effects are not that great. Indeed effort on such things is minimal. So much of the things used and habits are identical to present day. I would say in a 100 years humanity wont recognize itself much less a 1000. It seems as if authors dont want to distract us from the deeper stuff.

BSG is a great series to watch because it makes us think. I would say download the torrents and watch it.

Toastmasters Club: Project 1 , The icebreaker

2009-02-06T11:56:00.002+05:30

"Strengthen your strengths and weaken your weaknesses." I know I can speak very well and people shower me with praises for being confident and great at speaking. However I am also aware that I am at times a little too rough at the edges. The possibility of a devastating blowup on stage always remains. Probablity could be my big enemy with each successful meeting that chance of that big embarrassing performance on stage.

So I joined this club called “The Toastmasters International ” at my company. I get to give 10 speeches over a period of time with various themes and aims. My intention is to firm up a strength. If I am a good speaker there is no reason why I can’t be better.

The first speech is an ice-breaker. I am supposed to introduce myself on stage and try to identify with the audience. I gave it on this Wednesday. It was a decent effort though I think people praised me more than I deserved. I did not memeorize the whole speech and it caused some issues. Also a major fact was that my eye contact with the audience was poor.

Anyway here is my speech.Its titled 'hope'.

“Good Evening Toastmaster ,fellow toast masters and honored guests. Today on my first meeting as a toastmaster, I have the pleasure of welcoming among us a writer, poet, debater, blogger as well as a budding singer.

Would any of you like to guess who he is ?Don’t look around. That person is occupying the stage right now.

Let me tell you a little secret about my name,”My middle name is actually my first name.” And I can assure you it causes innumerable problems. In school and college where people only normally knew me by my name middle name, the presence of Syed used to cause a lot of confusion . I would get a lot of comments like “ where did this Syed suddenly come from?” As if people change their names everyday.

In Infosys on the other hand the display name is so widely used that, people generally ask “If you are Ashraf, who the hell is Syed? “

But enough of the banter. Let me tell you something about myself. I come from Allahabad, the land of Sangam and the Kumbh mela. My father is an army officer and my mother is a lecturer in English. I have been brought up in a lot of places. In fact in my first school, we used to have snow days. Rain the joke went , we could handle any day.

Anyway after a certain time my dad decided changing schools too frequently would harm me academically. So he asked for a posting to our hometown where I joined to Boys High School. Our most famous alumnus is someone who has choosen acting as his profession. We know him as the Big B or Amitabh Bacchan.

Later while dad would get posted to literally the other end of India, I would stay put in Allahabad.

I have always read quite indiscriminately since childhood and my favourite book is Midnights Children. I am also a big fan of Urdu poetry. There is a line in Urdu poetry which translates something like “Sufficient heartache will make even a person with a heart of stone pen poetry”. After class tenth, I started writing poetry. What I can tell you is that there were girls and heartache. Neither in limited quantities.

In that period I also was part of my school magazine board and also worked with the Times of India as a freelance writer. I was the youngest freelance writer by a very big margin.

I say that where I am is the result of a series of accidents and conscious decisions. I was quite enthusiastic about being a until I realized in class 12^th that being a doctor required too long a commitment.

So I switched to engineering. Having just missed the cut for IIT, I decided to join NIT Warrangal through AIEEE. However man proposes God disposes. My parents had never heard of Warrangal. The day after I was allotted NIT warrangal, Naxals killed 6 policeman in the district. That was nearly 4.5 years ago when Naxalite violence was rare. My mom thought I was going to Somalia for engineering and would never return. Nit Warrangal was over.

So dejected I joined computer science engineering at Army Institute of Technology , Pune. But I would later be surprised because AIT turned out to be a great experience.

AIT is a fully residential college & hostel life turned out to be a great eye-opener. Only those who have been in a hostel can appreciate the experience. There were people willing to borrow anything and everything. And of course later forget to return the stuff.

With no mom and dad around ,everyone had to stand up for himself /herself(I will be politically correct). There is an incident I remember vividly. Earlier I used to pride myself over the fact that I did not get into conflicts. No one had told me what a big fool I was. I had a roommate in SE who had a habit of suddenly screaming at you in your face for no reason. First time he did it, I waited two days to tell him, that Varun my parents don’t shout at me and neither can you. But within a month he repeated it again. This time I waited two hours to express my disapproval. Then before another month had passed he repeated it again. This time even as he started shouting, I took one more step in his face and screamed back even louder. He never shouted again.

In my first year of college I was accepted into the Magazine Board at AIT. With one written test and three exhaustive and gruellling rounds of interview, the joke goes went that it is easier to crack a job interview than get into the magazine board. Publishing the magazine was just one of our tasks. We arranged treasure hunts, notice boards, started juicy rumours, set college dress codes for Valentines day and even had a betting organized on results of certain events. The Mag Board and AIT gave me opportunities to hone my talents.

From someone who wanted to do his M.Tech and be in research and development roles, I realized I absolutely relished leadership roles. So I became an MBA aspirant. I have written CAT two times but my performance has still not got me that dream call I desire.

Infosys is another step in the journey called life. While I had another offer ,I choose Infosys because of the tremendous learning possibility. I had hoped to be posted to Pune but man proposes, and Infosys disposes.

Mysore while tragically not being the hip and cool city like Pune allows me time to pursue my passions. I read on a regular basis every night. I have learnt how to cook. My French classes started yesterday and I now learn hindustaani classical musical every weekend.

From life I have learnt the lesson that not everything works out the way we want it to. Even after a month, my Saa (the music tone) is still not firm. But I and my teacher see progress. And I find hope.

Over to you Mr. Toastmaster.

”

Tales from Mysore

2009-02-03T07:58:00.003+05:30

What do three IT engineers trapped in a city that sleeps at nine with only the fact that they are just two minutes from their office for consolation, do?

They cook their dinner!!

More details later. Its a grand story.

Getting late for work. Have my first french class today. :)

Adios

3 years, 148 posts and counting

2009-01-30T22:46:00.002+05:30

So as the month of January draws to a close, I celebrate the third anniversary of my blog. Its been 36 months of intermittent blogging.

In all I have exact 148 published posts which comes down to just under one post a week. Not bad at all.

I had very few readers back then and I still have very few readers now. Some people stumble onto the block now and then.

Anyway I also had to honour a few readers. Actually just one to be precise. Heena (not sure of a surname. Goes by Life of Pi also), runs away with the awards for the best reader, most consistent commenter and also the yearly achievement award for hanging onto the blog despite the fact I take regular arbitrarily long breaks from blogs. So many others have come but they mostly wander off. Sakhee shows some promise but that only time will tell. We give her the best newcomer award.

Anyway I will again state what I have already written so many times earlier " that writing is an escape". This blog has allowed me the escape from the mundane, been a vent for so many of the frustrations , a blank paper where I imagine my dreams ,shape my hopes and ambitions but most of all has been a place where I have at times shared stuff that few people I know. I feel my secrets are safe because the person who labours and reads the post deserves the occasional secrets he/she comes across.

To the rare person who will come across this post randomly or otherwise, thanks for being here.

Come back some time again and you just might enjoy a bit.

toodles

The Chauvinism of Culture

2009-01-27T20:55:00.005+05:30

So we had the most shameful incident happening on India's republic eve when members of a right wing Hindu group called the 'Shri Ram Sena' brutally attacking and molesting girls in a pub in the city of Mangalore. Because the attack got filmed by the media a huge outrage has occurred with most people condemming it. However members of the Ram Sena especially the president of the organization remain unapologetic calling themselves "custodians of the Indian culture".

As someone who sees himself as a male feminist(actually) I am outraged that such a thing could happen, as an Indian I am ashamed that organization like these even exist and we allow them to rule our cities.

If one read tuesday’s newspapers the chief of the organization responsible for attacks openly owes responsibility saying “women should not enter pubs and mix with youths as its against our culture”. There are no regrets.

What this attack will do is terrorize people especially women from going to pubs. The images of women running away in terror and being mishandled will scar so many women. They will be afraid not knowing when they can be attacked. Men can enjoy. For them our Indian culture allows them to drink whether in a bar or in a pub.

On the other hand while the media has played a very negative role in the entire affair, we should not shoot the messenger. The video of the attack ensured that there is such a huge outrage against the attack.

The sad thing is this is just another of a series of incidents showing how intolerant sociey and how willing people in power are to justify violence. We had the sacking of the Bhandarkar Oriental institute, the violence in protests against Taslima Nasreen by an unknown Muslim group, the attacks on North Indians by MNS, the MF Hussain controversy which has ensured India's most famous painter will spend his last days in exile, numerous riots, a painter being jailed in Gujrat(Vadodra) for painting nudes, the protest by the Shiv Sena against Valentines day. The list just goes on. In India its a fashion to get ur will done through violence.

I think we as a nation must stand up and say the mob mentality and vigilantism of any form must not be accepted.

The constitution allows us a right to freedom of expression. The freedom of expression does not allow us to indulge in hate speech or violence of any kind. If the so called ‘moral police’ were so upright they could have peacefully protested outside the pub. The Delhi high court has upheld the right of women to work as bartenders so what is the big deal with women in a pub.

As for the attackers in Mangalore , I suggest hang the basta*** and make an example out of them. On a more serious note, sentence all to minimum ten years of jail and give no bail. There wont be another attack on defenceless girls having their lunch and a drink in a pub.

Else it will continue.

Update-the embedded videos from indiatimes have been removed. Find them if you want to.

Obama is the president

2009-01-20T23:15:00.002+05:30

So I ended up watching the inaugration on internet live. Lovely speech though I liked his pre inaugral speech of a day before better.

Barack Obama is looking at the bigger picture and his call to be united to instill a spirit of service was just that. Here are the best lines from his speech according to me.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned.
As for our common defence, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

Hurray!! Bush will be gone today and we will have Obama

2009-01-20T09:32:00.005+05:30

I feel so releived Bush is gone and we have Obama coming in.

In place of the neo-cons we have a leader elected by overwhelming majority who ran on a broadly liberal agenda, whose message was always of understanding.

Its a powerful message of what humans can achieve. That even in the darkest of times we can hope to overcome hate and blind ignorance.

I can't help but be optimistic about Barack Hussein Obama. I will reserve doubt for another time. Today is just not the day.

He brings hope.

Cheers!! Hic

Warner Brothers ki aisi taisi

2009-01-19T08:07:00.002+05:30

So I saw a movie that set a new benchmark for hindi movies. The tragedy is its not new heights but new lows.

So I saw Chandni Chowk to China yesterday. And I can definitely say its one of the worst ER saw. It was a movie where when we finally had the break, people actually wished it was the ending and felt pity for themselves that there was another hour plus of the movie left.

The story is quite senseless. It withers, walllows and meanders.

The biggest issue is the movie director could not figure out which genre he was creating.
Its like a senseless comedy and a major tragedy all combined and rapid changes between the two formats. It appears to be a film for kids, yet a kid sitting in the row front literally begged his mom to take him back home. The so called Hollywood special effects are quite pathetic excuses for stunts. The good and bad guardian angels on a persons shoulders went out of fashion after JFK's time.

I wonder which idiot critic gave it it 4.5 stars. For me,I would demand compensation for the time wasted watching the senseless crap.

Avoid it. Unless you have nothing to do.

Hell! Avoid it even then.

SATYAMgate

2009-01-18T23:20:00.003+05:30

Q.) How do you blow all your money in a day?

A.) Invest in a company called Satyam.

Over the last few weeks we had the Satyam saga unfolding in front of us.

A company which was the recepient of the prestigious "Golden Peacock" award for corporate world with over 2 billion dollars in the bank as reserves decided to buy Maytas infrastructure in a surprise move which smack of the promoter misusing company funds.

But the investors and market baulked, tanking down the share price. The management reneged on the deal but the damage had been done. The share prices were so low that a takeover seem imminent. A large number of shares were being bought by two or three companies.

Then one morning the promoter writes a letter saying all the cash reserves were imaginary and the books had been cooked for decades.
.
It was over.

The prices went below the face value. In one mement all the talk of the IT sector as a shining example of corporate governance was over.

So now as the investigators pick through the debris, I wonder how will SATYAMgate affect the Indian IT outsourcing industry.

Now some people beleive it will scare companies away from India and its all doomed.

I beg to differ.

Satyamgate is nothing more than Enron for India. Or maybe a Madoff.
Its a bad scandal but it just shows mighty are greedy and weak.

Unlike what Heena says on her blog, call-centers are just a small part of the out sourcing story. The bigger picture is in IT where new development, testing and more importantly maintenance projects are being handled by big IT companies like Infosys, Wipro, etc.

Maintenace especially cannot be stopped or easily shifted to others. So the thing is projects will stay. We save a lot of money for the companies which as Bank of America's chairman said allows them to expand around the world.

And today the indian IT industry has built up an expertise which cannot be easily matched.
Also SATYAMs demise is other IT companies gain as client will shift. I can tell you some have been gained even when there is no active poaching
The situation is bad because of recession but its not apocalyptic.

On a random note

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Musings

2009-01-14T23:08:00.003+05:30

So I am back to my old ways, musing about love. I am sitting wiith my laptop at around midnight savouring a glass of grape juice which if I was in a more ruminating mood would transform into a glass of the finest Bordeaux wines(Nope, I dont drink but imagination unlimited is the theme).
Anyway so I was remembering this line that I read somewhere and have loved ever sense."There are only three things men can do with women-love them,suffer for them or turn them into literature."
I excel at all three. I should add tragically.

However when love is not returned, when it has been shunned beyond redemption, why do people not quit? Why dont they realize the story is not meant to be written and try to move on?

In the name of love many people start harbouring wild fantasies.Love turns into harrassment, stalking and so many other things. I am not a gal but if I was one, I am sure I would feel very insecure because of a jilted wannabe romeo(On other hand if I was a gal, and if the user interface was the same I would be one scary gal.I am not sure guys would be falling left and write). write=right

Jokes apart we have had so many acid throwing incidents in India recently. Imagine the pain,the smell of acid burning whatever it touches. I have no sympathy for any of the throwers. I beleive they should get the death penalty with no exception. Because this is no crime of passion but a cold-hearted plot to ensure no one else gets the girl he could not get. He forgets if he choose to love and fall for the girl,the girl exercised her choice and choose not to reciprocate. But in a country of a billion where every 8 men collectively carry the guilt of a a single missing girl,killed in the womb of another girl, men frequently forget the girl has a choice. Its in the soil(deep sarcasm intended). Feel some shame people!!

Anyway ,I cant end on such a negative note. So here's the story of Marilyn Monroe and Joe Dimaggio,her second husband. Imagine a love so deep, a loss so huge.

In 1951 Joe DiMaggio saw a picture of Monroe with two Chicago White Sox players but did not ask the man who arranged the stunt to set up a date until 1952. She wrote in My Story that she did not want to meet him, fearing a stereotypical jock. They eloped at San Francisco's City HallJanuary 14, 1954. She wrote him a letter about her dreams for their future, dated February 28, 1954.

It did not work out. She filed for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty 274 days after the wedding.

Years later, she turned to him for help. In February 1961, her psychiatrist arranged for her to be admitted to the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, where, according to Donald Spoto, she was placed in the ward for the most seriously disturbed. Unable to check herself out, she called DiMaggio, who secured her release. She later joined him in Florida. Their "just good friends" claim did not stop rumors of remarriage.

On August 1, 1962, DiMaggio — alarmed by how his ex-wife had fallen in with people he felt detrimental to her, such as Frank Sinatra and his "Rat Pack" — quit his job with a PX supplier to ask her to remarry him.

After her death, he claimed her body and arranged her funeral, barring Hollywood's elite. For twenty years, he had a dozen red roses delivered to her crypt three times a week. Unlike her other two husbands, he never talked about her publicly, wrote a tell-all, or remarried.

2009-01-09T09:00:00.003+05:30

The story ends for 2008 but November 2009 is the final date.

So my CAT 08 result finally arrived and I had not made the cut as last year. And the overall percentile was lower than last year by about 1.5. Not bad but not good enough for me or for the IIMs.

Whil I always held out hope but I knew getting a call this year would have been too much about luck. Because I had training in my job during Aug-Oct, I just did not prepare. So its all in a days work.

But CAT 09 to be held in November 09 is my final attempt. By that time I would have sufficient work experience. The stage would be set.

The work would start soon. Hard work has to meet luck to end up at the right place. And I cannot depend upon english section. I need to get data interpretation and quant solid. I might also give GMAT but that is another post. another day bye

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T10:07:00.002+05:30

This is wishing everyone a happy new year and hoping that the coming year will bring you loads of joy and happiness. May the year exceed all your expectations. Amen

I

2008-12-31T01:46:00.003+05:30

I am against terrorist attacks
I am against cruelty of any form - be it cruelty to mumbaikars, kashmiri pandits, kashmiri muslims, palestinians, israelis, iraqis. i condemn it.
I am against any religion changed to suit your own purpose.
I am against nuclear warfare, time, money, energy, resources spent making weapons to kill each other. I am against war.
I am against dirty politics - politicians who dont care that all you really want is to live a good life
I am against people who force their beliefs on you.
I am against the trend of becoming immune to violence and people saying "yeh to chalta hee rehta hai" - that is not ok.
I am against things that go opposite to your logic, your kindness.
I am not going to be played by politicians, religious facists who promote their own agenda.
I am not going to lose faith in people. Thanks to nameless employees/people/NSG/police at the hotels who put themselves in the line of fire.
I am for education.
I support the freedom of expression.
I consider right to life as sacrosanct.
I still have hope for tomorrow.
I believe in equality.
I am against poverty.
I am for democracy.
I am against stereotypes because I and so many I know do not fit the cast
I am Muslim
I am Indian
I am Human

This post has been taken from Heena's Blog. She wonderfully stated so much of what I felt. I have added a few things to the original which can be read here. http://life-in-prose.blogspot.com/2008/12/i-i-am-against-terrorist-attacks-i-am.html