Slow Down, Now

Jet speed in jet age. How fast is fast enough? Man has forgotten to slow down. Forgotten to pause a moment, to stop, to think, to help, to feel, to admire. Where is the world heading towards? Destruction, in my opinion. We are exhausting our natural resources fast. We are exhausting our financial resources fast. We want a fast remedy for our ailments, for our mental worries, for our mental stress. There are no brakes, there's only an accelerator. Imagine such a vehicle in a high density traffic. Thats the vehicle we are driving.

What is required for us to slowdown? We think taking a vacation for a week in a year and going out with family switching off all our mobile phones is a great way to slowdown and rejuvenate and enjoy and recharge ourselves. Well, I dont want to enjoy only 1 week in a year. Instead I want to enjoy 365 days a year, year on year. Relax. Play with your kids. Water your plants in your garden. Feed your fishes. Play with your dog. enjoy the flowers. you wouldnt need a vacation. These are some things which money can never buy at a later date. 10 years later everything around you would have changed. You wouldn't even have memories to live with if you didnt slowdown now!

Karnataka Elections 2008!

Well. 7 am on a saturday morning. Never had I been more charged up than my cricketing days. I was going to have a say in who governs me, how they would govern me, etc etc etc. I dreamt about great roads no longer hurting my broken back, excellent transport facility, corruption free administration and so many things.

I had seen my name in the voters list earlier, but didnt get the pink er... white slip. There was a white slip for my dad. I noted the serial number and assumed that mine would be +/- 2 numbers from it.. I reached the polling station at 7.20 am. I went to the counter bearing the part no. of my locality. There were 3 people in front of me. I was at the counter in 1.5 mins. Lo and Behold! All my dreams vanished. My name had suddenly got legs and walked away from the voter list. Alas! I would not be part of the decision making mechanism.

Better luck to all you folks out there. You are at the mercy of a few people... voting has become a privilege, not a right here!! anybody begs to differ?

Silk

Just the other day I had been to the silk exhibition. Little did I realize that a ghastly sight was awaiting me. Now, try to picturize this. There's a child sleeping, fully covered from head to toe in a blanket. Take it with the blanket and put in boiling hot water! can you bear the sight?

substitute the child with a worm.the blanket with a cocoon, which the worm has made for its personal development. and lo and behold! you get the process of getting silk. well, ultimately it's a personal choice of what to wear and what not. but definitely i wouldnt want to wear a product of such torture.

I picked up one of the cocoons which was awaiting its turn and heard its sounds of silence. That was it's death knell. Nature throws open numerous options, but then it's upto the human to select the most humane option.

Maya, even this shall pass away

My Nokia 9500

I was searching for lot of excuses to get myself a PDA. I'm not one of those guys who wants to hold the latest gizmos. Rather, I have to convince myself a lot to buy one. Finally, after the number of excuses to buy one tipped the scales, I immediately proceeded to pick up one. I had, in the meantime, done my homework and decided on the Nokia Communicator 9500. In my list of excuses, business(nice word, actually it is donkey's work) took the highest priority. So decided to go for it. Wi-fi avilability took me towards 9500 from 9300. Scrounged around and picked up a used model from ebay for Rs.17000. Been 2 weeks now and I don't have ANY reasons o regret my decision. I am not a user of any machine. I straoght take it to beyond the boundary line and watch the fun. For eg. when I get a time bound trial software, I first(without using), change the system time to past the expiry date, kill it and then check for the openings.Today my 9500 maybe groaning, but thats the taskmaster I am as far as gadgets and devices go. Believe me, it's a worthy machine.

I have surfed using wifi. Will get my gprs connection setup this week. bluetooth works, trying to surf using bluetooth. used 'documents to go'. usd 'movie maker''s to stuff movies, made ogg files for audio, ringtone mp3, etc etc. system is handling it very well. touchwood, the system is yet to crash/freeze! I have heard a lot of freezes and crashes with the windows os. in fact that was the last straw that took me to the symbian.

and they lived happily ever after(hopefully).

i have a signature for mails which goes like this:Maya, even this shall pass away(doesn't it contradict the last statement above?, well, that's maya)

Bangalore, a story so often spoken about

The heading would have evoked different thoughts from differrent people. Known as a pensioner's paradise
at one time, it is slowly turning out to be a curse of the devil.
Whatever, as of today, the first thought that comes to our mind is the IT and Software Industry. It has lured
people by the millions to migrate to Bangalore. There is a richness about Bangalore. Yes, richness in all sense of
the word except…you know what.
What would you do when a few guests are arriving to your house? Start preparing the house? Look out for temporary
solutions to some problems. What would you do if a few or more people are coming to permanently stay in your house?
You would start thinking of making permanent arrangements for them. Especially when they are going to pay big for
their stay. Extend this theory to a city.
People moving in big time to the city. People generating business, earning for themselves, making others earn, making the city rich.
What do they expect? Some basic requirements to be fulfilled to start with. Some good roads for transportation without craters.
A good drainage system. A good accomodation where water doesn’t enter thru the door! A good residential area where your car doesn't
submerge every other day. Take away all these requirements and what have you got? Bangalore!
People talk of a roof over the head to protect us from rain. But rain enters here thru the door! Can I sue the government for
damaging my back? Can I ask for compensation for the promotion I missed? I missed my promotion for not meeting deadlines.
I missed the deadline as I couldn't reach my workplace on time. Thanks for the excellent roads you provided.
I thought I had got my physics right. Everything goes down the drain(pun intended). But the drains here spew sewer up it!
If …
Oh my my…I left this incomplete article overnight. Today morning, some political party has called the IT bosses as 'underworld dons'.
All for what? For asking for their right? For speaking for people who couldn't speak for themselves? For getting in tons of money
into the state coffers? They claim that the s/w companies have been given lot of tax benefits. Why? To bring them in and to fill in
the coffers indirectly.
I fully agree with Ayn Rand in 'Atlas Shrugged'. Let the producers boycott and see what happens to the leechers.

Life is Ephemeral

This is not a general rambling or an intellectual musing. It is a thought, something that depicts that I too think!
To the phobics of the english language, ephemeral means that which isn't eternal, which is likely to, which will pass off.
'Life is Ephemeral', this thought haunts me. If I knew I may just spend about 20000 days in this world would I be
doing what I am doing now? It may have a positive or a negative effect in me. But whatever be the effect, I sincerely
feel that this fact should be thought about to ease ourselves in life. Whether we have good times or bad times, everything will
pass away. This summarizes the ephemeralism of life. The turmoils of life would cease to take huge proportions. I once
again reiterate that this thought should be taken in a positive, constructive manner. It should be used to enhance the value
of our life and get past the trivialities of life.
When we sit and introspect about our life and what went wrong and what went right in it, it is the undue seriousness that
we attributed to the useless trivialities of life, how we made it big and lost out that stands out. For instance, there are cases
where relationships have broken because one partner didn't like the kind of dress the other was wearing. Is this a reason for
strife? There have been murders for the sake of a little money.
Think. Project yourself 30 years forward. Would this trivial fight matter then? It would look childish, immature.Try to see the
world from 1 Km height. However a person is, they'll look so small, puny, vulnerable. That also helps us to understand the miseries
of others. Your problem is greater than mine. This piece of writing is not to make a patchwork on a fractured thinking, but to
direct our thinking to prevent it from getting fractured.

All about bargaining:

Bargaining is an integral part of life for many. But for some it isn't. It's a way of life for some. It's below
their dignity to bargain for some. This is not a value judgement on bargaining. It's just my 2 cents for the bargaining
community.
I make it a point not to bargain with small time vendors, where the few extra rupees is all they carry home at the end of
the day eg vegetable vendor, fruit vendor, roadside hawker… Do we bargain at the Raymonds showroom? Do we bargain at
the electronic appliance showroom? Do we bargain at the new Car showroom? We don't mostly. Even if we do we get 100 rupee
off on a 10000 rupee item. We tend to bargain 50 ps on a 5 rupee item with a small time vendor. Is it fair?
Display your intelligence, your prowess in squeezing out the big timers. Of late that is the class of vendors I am targeting.
At some point there's this guilty feeling that arises out of bargaining with the small time vendors. Neither are they going to built
mansions and towers with the extra amount we pay nor are we going to build the same with that extra amount we save! Ultimately,
I would look at the worthiness of the thing I am buying, fix a price and stick to it.

Stick to measure - Yardstick!

How would it be if I have a foot scale which measures differently from the foot scale you have? Doesn't it sound
absurd? Why? Bcos it is a foot scale, something which we can see, which we can feel and perceive. But have we
ever realized that every day, every minute we are using different yardsticks for measuring the same thing?
It doesn't sound absurd, doesn't appear that something is wrong. Why? Bcos we aren't able to perceive, to feel?
Well, someday, someday the whole setup of our life fails. Life crashes. We are caught unawares. Actually, we are
Caught not wanting to be aware. Why? Accounts had to be settled. Yardsticks had to be standardized.
The extra portions of the yardstick had accumulated and has fallen, on our own head. And fallen irredeemably.
There is no philosophy in this for those who refuse to believe in it. It is pure science. Natural Science!
Beware of the yardstick.