Maitrem Bajate (Cultivate Friendship)

Thanks to the 2 hour daily commute, one is bound to listen to quite a few songs in IPod...And interestingly, the song list varies from Shaggy's,"Angel" to Carnatic music :)

Here is one of my favourite Carnatic music songs by MS. As Kurai onrum illai, so does this song totally mesmerizes one...
MS rendered this Paramacharya's composition, Maithreem Bhajatha, in her concert at the UN in 1966.




Thanks to this link, following is the song lyrics and meaning.

Peacocks in the terrace!

Few months back when i went home, i happened to see a peacock hopping in the vacant land in front of the house... It was quite surprising for me to see it there...Even though, there was a small coconut farm near our house, i didn't expect peacocks! When i enquired with my mother, she said there are lot of wild peacocks in nearby area, they come there to eat the maize which has been cultivated in a vacant land few yards away...She also complained that they spoilt the whole cultivation. btw, the market rate of the vacant land runs in few crores and the owner seems to be happily cultivating maize! I am tempted to curse him with an ICICI Bank Home Loan, out of pure jealousy ;)

And the next day, i was totally surprised to see around 7-8 peacocks and peahens sitting in our neighbour's terrace.

Somehow, this picture makes one feel very happy and peaceful :) Apparently, my mother doesn't seem to share the same level of excitement... maybe, they find this normal!

Interestingly, this reminds of one thing...When we, set of strangers from same hostel, shifted to a new flat, we were happy to see so many pigeons near the windows (In Tamilnadu, we had never seen many pigeons, that too so near to the living area )...The house owner warned us that they'll create lot of mess around, if allowed to sit near the windows...We wondered why this person was full of dislike towards the poor pigeons...After 1 month, we were in the same state wondering what exactly could be done to overcome the pigeon menace! Later this problem continued in many more flats where we stayed... :)

Interestingly, in the new city, i haven't seen that many pigeons...

Bunch of things!

6 months old news...but quite a different one...

Penguin becomes a "Sir" in Scotland.

A week old news...Satellite collision on space...looks like Humans are having enough trouble on earth to be bothered about this!

And this is the irony of the world...2 months old news...
As Recession Deepens, so does Surplus of Milk. And there are millions of malnourished people in Africa and developing countries.

India after Gandhi : I

After Harry potter books, i never had the mood for reading any book with more 300pages. Recently, there was an exception to this. That too a nonfictional, history book. It was "India after Gandhi : The history of the world's largest democracy".

This is the first history related book i have read. And i am highly interested in reading more books with the next book in search being "The Idea of Pakistan".

I have always wondered what defines India? why are we the way we are? why did we somehow end up surviving the democracy when Pakistan struggles to maintain democracy? how are we progressing despite these corrupted politicians and system? how are we staying together as a country even though we have a strong linguistic and regional bias? (i mean the fervor with which we consider these things. Anyway, in the recent days, these feelings seem to have reached extreme level as well!)

And frankly, all these questions came to my mind not because of any soul searching effort or thought provoking discussions...it came out of the day to day frustrations in living here and seeing the news channels!

Interestingly, eventhough it's frustrating many times, i used to miss India when i went onsite for more than 3 months...i have never been able to explain it to others...here is a post written in April-2005 about this countrysick :)...god, it's been more than 4 years since i started blogging...am becoming old and it's depressing :)

Coming back to the topic, these questions are the main motivational factor behind my reading of this 900page book. And honestly, it was worth the reading. It's a well written book which holds the attention of the reader till the end. The only problem was, there were lot of facts and it's quite difficult to remember everything at the end of the book. So i am contemplating to read it again :)

Also, i want to share a few of my favourite snippets to my blog readers. First i was planning to post it while reading the book itself. Unfortunately, i couldn't.
So, here comes the first installment...

Indian constitution is the longest written constitution of any sovereign nation in the world, containing 395 articles , 12 schedules and 94 amendments, for a total of 117,369 words in the English version. Besides the English version, there is an official Hindi translation. Being the supreme law of the country, every law enacted by the government must conform to the constitution.

On August 29, 1947, the Drafting Committee was appointed, with Dr.Ambedkar as the Chairman along with six other members. A Draft Constitution was prepared by the committee and submitted to the Assembly on November 4, 1947. The Assembly met, in sessions open to public, for 166 days, spread over a period of 2 years, 11 months and 18 days before adopting the Constitution. (Link)

Eventhough, the Assembly had 300 members, 20 members were the most influential lot and among them 12 had law degrees...Now, isn't this an amazing fact looking at the current scenario? :)

Also, the author compares the framing of Indian constitution with that of Japanese one which happened at the same time in 1946-47. While the Indian constitution was solely written by Indians spreading over 2 years with hundreds of discussions, Japanese constitution was written by foreigners (US) in utmost secrecy...

The other interesting thing about the Assembly is the representation of varied cultures and ideas. There were atheists, secularists, RSS and hindumahasabha members, socialists, representatives for dalits, representatives for women. When submissions were asked from public, there were hundreds of responses as varied as from District Teachers Guild of Vizianagaram and the Central Jewish board of Bombay!

I would like to highlight one interesting discussion now.
One is regarding women reservation. The female members of the Assembly were not in favour of any reserved seats, quotas or separate electorates,

Mrs. Hansa Mehta (Bombay : General): we have never asked for privileges. The women's organisation to which I have the honour to belong has never asked for reserved seats, for quotas, or for separate electorates. What we have asked for is social justice, economic justice, and political justice. We have asked for that equality which can alone be the basis of mutual respect and understanding and with-out which real co-operation is not possible between man and woman. (LINK)

The only voice in favour of reservation for women was a man's. And below was the strange reasoning... :)

Shri Rohini Kumar Chaudhari: Sir, from my experience asa parliamentarian and a man of the world I think it would bewise to provide for a women's constituency. When a womanasks for something, as we know, it is easy to get it andgive it to her; but when she does not ask for anything inparticular it becomes very difficult to find out what shewants. If you give them a special constituency they can havetheir scramble and fight there among themselves withoutcoming into the general constituency. Otherwise we may attimes feel weak and yield in their favour and give themseats which they are not entitled to. (Link)

Will post 2 interesting discussions in the next post :)

India is rising from the slums!

After a long time, i read an article which seems to perfectly resonate my thoughts :)

"Notwithstanding the giant strides made over the past 18 years, Indian criticism of “Slumdog” also reveals the chasm between the country’s self-perception and projection and any reasonable measure of its achievements. India may boast homegrown programs in space exploration and nuclear power, but – as a first time visitor to India immediately notices and as the film mercilessly reveals – it also struggles to provide its people with electricity, sanitation and drinking water. About half of Indian women are illiterate, a higher percentage than in Laos, Cambodia or Myanmar. It is at number 122 – between Nepal and Lesotho – on the World Bank index that measures ease of doing business, and 85 on the global corruption index maintained by the anti-graft NGO Transparency International. To put it bluntly, the squalor of the slums depicted in “Slumdog” is closer to reality than an elaborately choreographed Bollywood dance sequence shot on location in Switzerland. " (LINK)

I think this is the real reason why many Indians cringe at seeing the portrayal of India in "Slumdog Millionare" and in "The White Tiger".

I watched "Slumdog Millionare". And my first thought was, it wasn't Oscar material! It's a perfect bollywood masala with a happy ending...Rahman's music is actually ok...Many of his other movies were much better than this. Still, he truly deserves an Oscar for his talent and i hope/wish he gets it.
Regarding the story, i liked it, it's a normal DVD worth watch. In the whole movie, i felt only one scene to be highly improbable...the scene where the kid jumps into the feces, gets up and runs to meet Amitabh Bachan.
Everything else seems plausible in India, including the cheating by Anil kapoor in the show! (maybe, this is the reason SRK turned down the role!!)

A question!

Nowadays, if there is one expenditure that hasn't taken a cut in my daily life, then it's books.

Today evening, while browsing in a deals section of a bookshop, i picked up a book titled,"All about french cuisine". I was about to open the book and the girl next to me asked whether i know french.

This actually opened up a sudden wave of guilt inside me as how i was supposed to join French class after moving to this city, how i still haven't done that, how eventhough i have taken up french at school and given one certification test i currently don't remember much...

Ofcourse, nothing of this really showed up while i replied,"No" to her. :)

A thought!

Wonder whether setting a time limit and allocating a specific time in one's day schedule for blogging will really result in blogging! Anyway, guess i am going to try that out :)

Today was a different day. Instead of going to office, everybody went to a conference hall in a hotel for a day long presentations. Yes, that sounds quite depressing. But actually, it wasn't that bad! I liked it. It was nice to know as how the company fared last year, what went wrong, why, what next, challenges ahead...Ofcourse, the one thing which is on top of every one's mind is Job security. And there were quite a few discussions and interpretations out of the presentations and questions asked as well. And as usual, there were diplomatic replies that they don't have a list in their pockets(yet?) and are uncertain about future job cuts. Only advice was to work harder and make oneself indispensable and highly valuable to the company...

All these presentations made me draw parallels with my first company...

We did have similar presentations,but it was all in the company itself.

Also, the slides used to contain more words and graphs... here, there were more lively pictures and videos than words... Pictures were so common that i wondered whether these guys are following it as a template! (bcos, at few instances, the pictures weren't relevant)

And i found one word to be missing in the company values presentation. It is "Ethics". I am not saying that the company doesn't consider "Ethics" as one of its values. It is considered as part of one of the values. Also, it's so important that Code of conduct was one of the first mandatory courses for individuals.

But still, absence of that word is quite different from my first company. If there is one thing which has been totally imbibed on me because of my first company, then it's "Ethics" (while "Protection of Proprietary Information" comes second :)) . Because "Ethics & Integrity" were the core principles stressed in all different manners there and i found it quite surprising for it not to be present as a main value in the top level itself!

Maybe, this is what cultural difference is all about...because, even here, they emphasize on the same value, but the way it's portrayed and worded is different...

Anyway, this made me wonder how one's first job impacts an individual directly as well as indirectly....

Life in a new city...

Below is a snippet of info from one of my fav books,"Buddha" by Osho,
"Buddhist monks never stay in a place for more than 3 days for a period of 8 months. Only during the rainy season of 4 months, they stay in the same place." Osho continues to marvel on the quite strange phenomenon of human tendency to become more comfortable and accustomed to a place if they continue to stay for more than 3 days and hence the 3 day deadline followed by the buddhist monks.

When Human returned from UK,Europe after around 2 months or so, her first comment on entering the house was,"It was really great out there. I miss it".
And my reply was the above quote which made her go into a nodding state :)

So, it has been more than 10days since i moved into a new city.

And I hated it to the core for the first week. Because suddenly life seems to have become hectic and more scheduled.

Infact one thing i hated in US is spending every day as per some schedule...In US, i used to drive to a place for jogging everyday morning...While returning at 7am, the leftside of the road used to be totally empty while the right side was totally jammed...because that is the time when everybody leaves to office.

Now, my life seems to have ended up like that...7.15am is the cab time...everybody reached office at 8am...return cab is at 5pm and everybody reaches home by 6-6.30pm.

Ok, some might argue that it's good to return home early so that one can spend quality evening time...but the mere thought of seeing the exact same faces in the bus stop or while walking towards the bus stop is quite irritating for me...it's as if every single weekday is no different from the other which in turn sometimes makes me wonder on the exact day!
Also, now one is forced to get up at 5.45am during weekdays that i am not even able to sleep beyond 8.30am during weekends...This is in stark contrast to the great life one had in prev city. I can only imagine how great life was, when one had the luxury to get up at 8am, get ready at 9.15am, reach office at 9.30am :( (I sometimes wonder, maybe this is my brother's curse, which has forced such a schedule to me now...because he was the one who used to reach office by 8.30am and be jealous of my laid back schedule of office hours!)
Anyway, now if i think, this seems to be better than what people go thru in Mumbai! Because this used to be the schedule for my brother when he stayed there for 1 month,
Get up at 6am, get ready by 7.15am, 10mts walk to station, catch the train at 7.30am, reach office station at 8.45am, 10mts walk to office, start working at 9am, leave office at 6.15pm or 6.30pm, catch train at 7pm, reach home at 8.15pm, have dinner and sleep at 10pm.
By the end of 1 month, he, the cool, easygoing guy, became so philosophical that he started questioning the purpose of life, job, earning, joy and materialistic life :)

Anyway, coming back to me, there is one more strange thing. In office, everybody seems to be working always..."How's it possible?" That was my brother's surprised question...But, that is the truth...It's more of an open office and i can see atleast 4-5 of my colleagues monitors and never once i saw gmail site...I generally donot browse any unnecessary stuff or chat a lot during office hours, but i think it's terribly inhuman to be working for the whole 8 hours.

Honestly, with terrible guilt, i am typing this blog post now...(yet to get net at home) Now, one understands why i haven't posted for the last 2 weeks ;) And, i seem to be mentally writing a complete post in the evenings...hmm, so much to addiction.

Inspite of these irritations and upsets, one great thing is, one can go home for weekends and parents are happy.

Infact, it even made me wish there was a similar bullet train lines in India...
Then one can actually stay at home and also work in a different city... A travel of 3-4 hours per day will be worth it.

And i wonder, maybe the current recession period is the right time to spend on Infrastructure. Because the commodities prices are down and this spending will also generate employment within the country...