Survey

A relative of mine wanted to do a survey for her school work. I requested friends to take up the survey. It was quite interesting; it was about Science & development of India. There were few questions and couple of them were debatable. We carried the discussion over the lunch table and spent quite some time in analyzing things. Interesting question was about social impact on science and science's impact on society. I gave the sample of internet changing the social style in terms of bringing people closer. The example for social condition driving the Science is the military needs arising out of society and the way military drives innovation out of Science and technology.

Other question was to find the responsibility of Historians, Journalist and Scientist. I found an odd combination of profession to compare or discuss. Later it strike at me to realize the domain or tense in which these people involve .. ie the past, present and the future. Thinking in this line, the Scientist seems to be both promising and threatening lot compared to other two.

Gandhi's life

Today we went to Utsav. Had a pleasant time in the restaurant as the people around were also good.

While KS was talking about 'Balaji disease', it came to my mind about Gandhiji's autobiography. He is the man of guts. He was able to expose his deep secrets and make his inner struggle as a public book. There were many aspect of the book (read only 70 pages so far and it is so insightful; regret of missing this for a long time, thou I had bought the book couple of times).

We are able to perceive the social structure in the 19th century, the culture, people's mind set, practical aspects are clearly documented. It is like traveling back to the past and meeting people of different time.

Then comes the aspiration of people and how the inner desire pulls people out of their shell and makes them roar to the sky. Gandhiji never used to travel out of his town; however when he sought of going to England, he build up the courage to speak to people to get support, also to face the wrath of his community elders who out-caste him for traveling abroad.
Even this desire driven revert is minor compared to his transformation from a meek, shy person who is afraid of public speaking into a giant pulling a nation behind him. He says his shyness helped him to using words carefully .. but to think about what passion and focused mind can transform the personality is ... just amazing!!

Read the book and you will enjoy it.

Back to work

Nothing much interesting today or I was not participating in the conversation. People came back from loooong weekend. Some talks about movies was running around the table.

CTC in marriage market

A friend of mine is scanning through the matrimonial site to fish out a groom for herself. Out of few criteria she has, one of them is that the salary (CTC - cost to the company) she earns should be less than that of the groom.

Sounds logical requirement. Her justification to hold such belief is based on cases where there is considerable ego clashes between husband and wife. In a traditional settings, husband is expected to earn. While coming to dual income, there is an unwritten expectation from the society or the couples that the husband should be earning more. When this situation is violated, there is a chance that the couples pick up some kind of inferior/superior complexities and leading to frictious altercations, drifting from the harmonious life.

Hence my friend feels she needs to find a person whose ctc is more than herself. This fix seems to be difficult but doable. However, in my opinion, this workaround seems to be superficial and doesnot address the original problem.

If the friend finds the person who meets this criteria, and after marriage the friend gets a hike ... there are few paths she could take.
* Tell her manager that she is not interested in the hike and put down the hike
* Request her manager to delay the hike till her husband gets the raise
* Accept the hike and never tell that to anyone .. that will prevent the ego clash

Well, none of these seems practical.
My friend's response to this case study is to manage the situation at that point of time. If the situation is manageable at that time, why not relax the criteria and seek a person who is mature enough to cooperate in managing such situation?

MsAD dreams

We would expect her to have a pleasant dreams as she is scanning through 100s of profiles in the matrimonial sites. However, the dreams seems to be scary but interesting.

Seems like she was dreaming about talking with RS and suddenly he was hit by something or someone. He had to be admitted in an ICU. MsAD was listening him talking in that state. She was horrified. In the same thread of dreams, she was with friends and JB is telling that he is able to see ghost. Others are not able to see.

JB: wah! I like that. From childhood I used to fantasize about being with ghosts. When I became a teenager (that is 2, 3 yrs before), the fantasy improved and started specializing in handling feminine ghosts. Did you dream about male ghost or female ghost?

MsAD: If you are seeing it, it has to be a female ghost.

JB: That is good. I like female ghost. There are lots of good points and advantage with them.
1) They come in white, transparent saree; if we are lucky they get drenched in rain.
2) Usually they are beautiful.

RS: Ya, sometimes they are prettier than the heroines. I dont know why the hero doesnt go behind the ghosts .. they are good looking and powerful.

JB:
3) They dont insist on long term relationships.
4) They dont bug us in the daytime .. they come when we need them :-)
5) No hint or request or order for any ornaments. They can pick what they want.
6) You never need to be in a situation to pass comments on "will the green salwar go with this chudi or should I wear the pasta colored saree with peach bindi". It is easy to buy a dress for them (globally).
7) You think and she is there. That cuts down the money wasted on std calls.

RS: That is cool. So, MsAD, what kind of ghost you were seeing?

PG: She would have seen a male ghost.

JB: Let us see the advantage for MsAD.
1) No dowry requirements.
2) Never heard of Mother-in-law ghost etc. So, no issues from the in-law side.

PG:
3) He will carry you and fly where ever you want. No travel expense. Even entire family can be carried.
4) He wont be a drunkard. Have you seen a drunkard ghost?

RS:
5) They will have a romantic honeymoon. Imagine an aloof hillstation settings .. in the middle of the lavish greenery, there will be milky smoke covered bed!

JB:
6) None can deny her request. She can demand the manager for vacation and ask him to complete the tasks. Everything will be done as per the request.

Accidents

Yesterday there was a freaky accident in the airport road. A luxury bus lost control and ramped over few vehicles. Paper says 2 person, rumor was for a higher number. The bus driver ran away from the scene. Mobs torched the bus and 74L was burnt into ash.

Discussion revolved around accidents, carelessness of people etc. Stupidity of people crossing railway lines and when they are hit by a train, they expect goverment to compensate ... also unsafety in the railway coaches, derailing of trains etc.

PG narrated an agressive driver and a narrow escape from accident.

btw, due to Diwali, the caterers arranged for special food. Got some chat items, icecream etc.

Marriage customs

We went to Nandini. We started talking about Deepavali and who are traveling home etc. The topic went to Deepavali customs of newly wed couples invited to in-laws house.

Took AD as example and if he is invited to in-law's house, FIL need to give him a gold ring.

JB: At my town, for 3 months after marriage, the groom will stay in in-law's house.

RS: Daily?

JB: All three meals. The have to treat him royally with proper care. For a guy like me working out of the town, if I marry a girl from that town, I may not be able to opt for that practice. Instead, guys like that used to get some object in return.

GA mentioned that a community in his locality has a different customs. After marriage the groom stays at the girl's house .. forever. This is the custom practiced at all marriages.

JB: At other places rarely such marriages happens. If it does, it means due to a rich parents not interested to send off their girl to another house. Usually they do not get a match as per their status. They have to go slightly below their status to find a guy to accept that norms. Also they might have to pay a hefty dowry for that.

GA: Even in that community, dowry is normally huge.

JB: So, if the boy gets the dowry amount, will he brings the money to the girl's house? :-)

GA: No. May be money goes to the guy's father.

JB: In our community, we normally do not ask for cash. We ask for gold and that gold belongs to the girl alone.

JB: Also one more good thing in my community is, the groom's side and the bride's side during marriage ceremony arranges two separate halls .. may be some distance apart. Both the parties do not mix each other. During the rituals, groom's side start a procession and reach the girl's hall. Marriage happens and immediately the groom's relatives go back to the groom's hall for feast. Even if the girl's side ask them to have food at girl's hall, they will deny to do that. The expense incurred by one party is borne by the same party. In that sense, lots of quarrels are avoided and the marriage expenses are shared equally.

RS: That looks good.

JB: However, I am not for a marriage which spends lakhs of rupees and waste the money on two days. Instead, I will have a simple marriage in a temple like I did and invest that money in some properties or savings.

SJ: Well, marriage is an occasion where the money gets spread out and many get employed. Instead of buying one property, you diverse the money for many to get benefited. Particularly that is the time when black-colored money comes out.

JB: I agree that for a wealthy person such splash out are needed or acceptable. Think about the most common marriages .. happening in the have-not families. They still need to keep their family pride or status. They borrow the entire marriage expenses, bloat it out in two days and suffer for the life. That is pathetic.

Balancing the head

MS was mentioning about a feeling of imbalance. He feels physically fit but his is not feeling all right. Seems like when he spoke to his doc, she asked if he had a problem in ears. PG added that such imbalance sense could arise out of excess or lower fluid level in the head. He was explaining how one of his friends got similar feeling and a bulging sensation of eye balls. That was scary. Good thing is, such state of liquid can be controlled through medicine or by removing excess of liquid from body.

That line of discussion again brought my usual way of thinking in terms of balancing done by nature. If we look around, we can understand the unusual balancing act performed by mother nature ... like the temperature, pressure, water content, sun ray, ... just suitable for the living beings to sustain and continue.

Thank you, nature.

Village festival

We all went to Gramin. The discussion went around the restaurants in the city. Looks like there is 'Romali with a view' a North Indian restaurant with good food.

On our way back to office, we walked thru the shopping mall and enjoyed the shows and events happening there. It was like a village carnival festival. They have set stalls selling ornaments, cheep dress materials, tattoos etc. There were games like throwing rings, blowing out the cans with balls, gun shooting etc. We had lots of fun playing those games and we won some prizes.

PG wanted to check with the mall marketing guys about the stall rental etc. His wife is running a business of fancy ornaments and jewels. He was enquiring for the same.

Flight crash

Seems like yesterday a flight crashed against a raised building in Manhattan. People panicked by recollecting 9/11. RS started with the National Geography's aircraft investigation documentaries. He was narrating who interesting they are and many more details.

RS talked about the pilot who made a mistake of switching off a working engine instead of a malfunctioning one. In such state of condition, he had to crash land and led to many loss of life. JB brought in the flight whose top was ripped off while flying high; the pilot managed to fly home safe in spite of the missing roof.

We were watching lots of flights landing continuously .. may one in every two minutes. We thought may be they have some emergency drill or something.

The coming Sunday, most of us are planning to go to an amusement park. Talks about the thrill rides, who likes what etc were discussed with great excitement.

Self-arranged Vs Others-arranged marriage

Ten of us went to Taste of Rampur. Buffet lunch was good. Interesting topics turned by during the conversation. The teenage date line, Feb 14th law in UP, etc were hot topics. Slowly the discussion moved on to our ever time favorite discussion .. the self-arranged marriage and the traditional cruelty.

JB: Heard from unofficial source that NT govt has passed a secret note to the courts in the state. After seeing the alarming divorce rate, the govt wants to have a control over the situation. They have asked the court not to involve the parties into arguments, instead drag the case for 2 years or so by conducting consoling and hearings. This way the number of divorce that need to be issued might come down because the parties might frustrate and turn away. That seems to be a stupid move. When there is a problem with the basic process upon which the marriage is build, we will be seeing such collapses in the relationship matters. If the root cause need to be address instead of doing a superficial polish on the outer side.

VY: JB, what do you think is the cause for the sudden raise in the rate of divorce?

JB: I would say that the main cause is the parents', relatives' involvement in deciding the spouse of a person. The criteria of the parents for a person is different from what a person might be looking for or need. That needs to be looked into. When we see a marriage advertisement, we always see the detail about caste, community, status, horoscope, occupation etc. Those are the criteria the parents think are required for a happy married life. If you consider a boy and a girl deciding to marry, none of these criteria comes into their absolute requirement ... not even a 'preferred' to have list. So, there is a vast different between their perception.

SJ: Let me tell you why the parents' pick is better. Before marriage, the couples will try to impress each other and try to put their good characters out. After marriage the real face turns out and frictions comes in. Parents and relatives come in help to resolve the differences and soothe the relationship.

JB: I agree. I don't say that self-arrangement imply that they live happily ever after. They will have to face issues, frictions, they might divorce etc. But I am talking about the criteria to choose a partner.

GA: A divorced person can never find happiness. He or she might marry and get divorced again and ruin their life.

SJ: That was the case 30 yrs before. There was no life beyond a normal married life. Marriage means for life two are together .. they like it or not. The society looked it like that it was impossible to come out.

JB: Today it is different. One can jump out of marriage, in one week marry again etc. It is possible.
The point here is that boys and girls have matured much beyond what we were earlier. We have more exposure. We can choose things. We want to decide our own life. In such cases, it is difficult to walk through the path chalked by others.

PG: JB, parents have also changed. In our house, when we are looking for alliance for our sister, we asked her her preference, if she is interested in someone. We included that boy in the list of prospective and considered in par with others. We didnot promise to pick him but we will be choosing the best out of all.

JB: That is nice to hear. Wondering how many are broad like.

GA: Most are like that. It is not that they fix someone and you have to marry. They ask your opinion and if you are not interested, they drop the proposal.

JB: Not sure if it happens like that everywhere.
Anyway, the case of others arranging marriage is not unique to our country. It was followed all over the world. The problem with us is that we hold some tradition too dear to heart in spite of its danger. None of the other country practice such barbarian acts.

SJ: Just because others have changed doesn't mean we should follow them.

JB: I didn't mean to follow others. I would like to see the society becoming mature enough to grow out of the old way of thinking.

[Note] Thou we had discussed this topic for n number times in a lengthy manner, never we had come to a conclusion.

The lighter side in today's lunch is after RS dropped the spoon and the barrier picked it up. RS was able to related it to a joke and shared the same. I asked if it is bloggable. SJ suggested to point to google. Yes, I am able to find the same joke while searching for "spoon, waiter, thread, joke" :-)

Variety in life

Had a task at bank and hence skipped the lunch at office. Planned to have lunch outside somewhere. It took quite a time in the bank, more than the expected time ... or should I expect that to be normal because always I end up doing something or the other in the bank usually in a messy situation. This time it was a wrong form they gave me to fill and had to redo after they figured it out. After the bank, I didn't feel like having lunch. One reason was lack of company. Few years back, I never felt odd having food alone. These days seem to be different. May be I got used to the company of friends and hence finding difficult to be alone.

Hence I thought of picking up a quite restaurant, have something light like a soup and a salad. I slowly directed the bike while watching closely to the buildings and people around. During school days, I used to do such things frequently ... that is to roam around aimlessly, just to be in my cycle, keep going in any direction I felt like, mostly to roads I have never been. In such moods, I liked watching strangers, their dresses, their style, behavior extra. Even had a habit of looking into the houses (not starring for even a short time), seeing their decorations, furniture, pictures in the wall etc.

After a long time, I felt like doing the same (not the house part but roaming around stuff). I took deviations from the usual route to some unknown areas, slowly riding the bike and gazing the new places. It was a nice experience. I was looking for some restaurant to suite my mood at that time. Found a vendor in the road side with tender coconut. Had one and continued by voyage. Seeing the changes in the localities made me feel like traveling in a train; the way sceneries changes from lush green pasture of fields to swampy water land then to waste land, perhaps some coconut groove with mountains at the background ... same way in the city, we could feel the changes in the posh-ness, slummy things, typical middle class chaos, then the busy streets, deserted loneliness ... gave a different picture about life by just going out of the routine path and thinking.

Usually I have a sense of direction. Even while taking random paths and getting lost in different places, I kind of figure out the way to go home back (well, if I have time at hand, I wouldn't like to waste it by asking directions :-)). This time that campus in me failed a bit. I was in a big loop reaching the same place where I started from the bank!! Had to travel through the entire circle again and winded up at Shiva Sagar, a restaurant near by office :-)

Communal Violence

Today's topic went into violence that sparked up in Mangalore. As GA is from that locality, he was able to give better picture about the scenario there. He was talking about new communities colonizing and causing disturbance in the otherwise peaceful atmosphere.

Slowly the topic shifted to broader discussion -- how we perceive things and how conflicts between cultures and faith happens. It was interesting to discuss upon different sects in Hindu society and their belief. Some of the communities stick very dear to their ritual that they forget the reason behind those.
This is not something happening only in India. Through out the history of civilization, there are hundreds and hundreds of samples were culture form out of nowhere .. settle in a place and slowly growing big enough to out-number the earlier society and frameworks. Things keep changing, either we accept and adapt or get carried away in a forced manner ... Or take a firm stance to retain the values one stands for.

Today another interesting topic came up which happen to be talked for a longer time. MsAD had registered in a matrimony site and getting lots of interests. She had threatened me of facing consequence if I write about that discussion; hence I dare not. .. as already I am handling another controversy elsewhere, I better not take this too at this time.
I am sure something interesting is going to come up soon and I promise to share with you ...

TV market

After a week, most of us gathered at the lunch table. Nice to be back in the group.

MsAD is planning to buy a TV (got approval from akka and bawa; yet to get a nod from naina, amma, mama, chikkanaina, his maid servant and 15 more ppl).
MS: Sony and Philips models are costlier compared to LG. With LG we get almost the same qualities and features. Go for 29"
MsAD: Oh! I am looking for a simpler model. If I want 29", I can as well go for plasma.
MS: That would start from 75k. 29" starting price is 17k.
MsAD: SJ, are you planning for a plasma?
SJ: I might go for a lcd. That is wall mountable.
MS: Can't we place a plasma in the wall?
SJ: No, plasma comes with its own stand. Lcd is very light and slim. Can be mounted in the wall; also can be used as computer monitor since the resolution is same as a monitor.
VY: MsAD, you can buy a high end model now so that AD need not buy in future.
MsAD: Let me wait for him to buy.

A Taste of Rampur

Went out for a team lunch with my manager, hq visitor and colleagues.

The ambience was simple but good. Taste was wonderful. Since YW traveled through China, the discussion revolved around China.

SA: We see movies and get an impression that all Chinese are martial art experts.
RP: All guys from China looks like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan :-)
YW: Rarely anyone goes through such practices. In schools we have basic exercises.
SA: Most of the kungfu movements are based on animals; like tiger, eagle, elephant, monkey etc
JB: Even yoga postures are formed based on animal movements.
YW: Ya, JB is an expert in yoga. Do you still practice?
JB: Yes, I do.
PV: Getting up early in the morning is the tough part.
JK: YW, do you watch Hindi movies?
YW: No, I have never seen one.

The girl in yellow churidar

Today I had my lunch with another team. The reason were 1) due to extended long weekend, many of the usual lunch mates did not turn up to office; 2) my manager called for an ad hoc meeting, which was supposed to get over by 12.30pm, however extended much up to 1pm.

I pushed myself to the table where AT, VG and KD were having lunch. They were having a serious discussion about the girl waiting in the lunch queue. By the time I went in, I got pulled into the discussion.

VG: JB, you have to help in setting with that girl.
AT: Till now only 3 of us were competing, now you have brought in one more.
VG: No, JB is like my elder brother. He will help me.
JB: As I am your elder brother, I need a major share.
VG: Hi JB!! how can you tell me like that. You know, in Ramayana, Valli was told by Rama not to seek his younger brother's wife as Valli should respect her as his sister.
AT: Now it is in a deciding stage. Once she is decided as your wife, we will all treat her as our sister.

VG: I don't find anyone 100% perfect in this world.
JB: You will not find a perfect person to your likings. Instead you can take my suggestion.
KD: Pls tell me, JB
JB: You find someone 75% perfect, after that look for someone 25% perfect. In that way, you will have a satisfaction of finding all that you want.
AT: That is a good idea

Well, I find that it is not only me or our team that is 'checking out' things or looking for 'perfection'. It is happening elsewhere too ... may be everywhere.
I didnot have a chance to look who that yellow churidar is. Her face was not visible in the queue. VG told she is passing us, after she was far away from our table!