My dirty neighbourhood

The post about "Dirty Indians" ended with a question, a wish and expressed the dreams, inability, and helplessness.

Upon thinking further in that direction, I was able to see some light. It is very easy to blame someone for any kind of situation we are in. Any simple logistic query would give us the following cycle - We start blaming that particular private or public sector, then the governing body, the politicians misusing the power etc. There is one more level to be blamed. All of us. I am not taking the argument that we elected them and so we should be blamed. I am talking about sociology. As a society, we value wealth, power, status etc. We value these too much to an extend that directly or indirectly we assume the ill stance of "means is not as important as the end". This result oriented, fast track society breeds corruption, laziness, cunning cheats (like the apple vendor who cheated me recently. Actually I went to his shop written with the words "cheat me" in my forehead. He swapped the paper cover which had shinning apples with the cover of rotten ones), injustice, terrorism etc etc. We happily pass on these values to the next generation. We donate to schools for making them successful. They will eventually turn out to be successful corrupt (what outcome to expect from a corrupt institute?).

However, I dont believe in an answer which blames others. The problem with that external answer is that we are satisfied by finding that answer and we stop bringing up the question again. I was looking at my life. I do clean my house because I like a clean environment. I do put the dust in the bin and dispose in the right manner. Apart from this, my personal life is not worthy. Sometimes I read thought provoking books or play computer games, or day dream about future, or watch some porn &/or fantasize some girls in different combinations. Once in a while I think about social service and choose something I find it easy -- take tuition for underprivileged kids, that too whenever they call me.

May be I feel I am too dignified to clean my neighbourhood myself. I might be shy to talk to the neighbours about this problem and face their ridicule look, smiles. I thought about finding three or four like minded volunteers and take the cleaning activity as a project. Before even putting some solid plan to ask for help, I came to know that our office is shifting. Probably, I will have to move to another house. I will try to find a house in a clean (relative) street rather than spend time in cleaning the current street. Well, with this attitude, I doubt if I would ever be helpful in cleaning the environment. However, I get irritated when I see people dirtying the place around.

I complain about raising house rent and greedy owners. Occasionally a thought comes in regarding my aggressive investment in real estate business; that could be an important reason for the rental market to shoot up. I feel comfortable to dismiss this thought whenever it shows up.

The bottom line is, I am noticing and complaining whatever I dont do or I take care of. I am not willing to know or change whatever corruptness I am made up of.

Mangalik or non-Mangalik

Today's lunch discussion went around marriage practise, something similar to the horoscope discussion we had earlier. There were many explanation given for topics like gothra, mangalik etc. Mangalik stuff happened to be discussed actively.

Looks like mangalik can be nullified by spending money for doing so. That is how a magnanimous movie star was able negate her mangalik. Is that conversion from mangalik to non-mangalik so costly for commoners to follow it? Why should cream layer of society be given that allowance and general public have to go through the hard life of being a mangalik forever?

Are you wondering what kind of hardship a girl of mangalik clan has to face? Well, she is an unwanted person in the matrimonial market. The rule says that a girl with mangalik should marry only a mangalik boy. I was looking in the net if the converse is true, however I didnt find any statement about the mangalik boy. In practise, even the mangalik boy doesnot prefer a mangalik.

In the horoscope text, mangalik is a concept discussing about suitability of bride and groom. However the reality is that the word mangalik had become a bad omen. Due to this, there are many cases where the girls do not get married at all. What a cruelty!! It is totally inhuman to deprive a basic need of life.

Let us assume that the people are aware about the meaning of mangalik factor. Even then it is a big setback for the girl. She doesn't have a free choice of profiles. She has to match her groom based caste, family status, earning capacity, expectations, family background and apart from matching all these, the mangalik factor should also match. The choice available to her shrink to one tenth in comparison with a lucky non-mangalik girl.

This is a severe discrimination not only against mangalik and non-mangalik, but also a great divide between haves and have nots.

micro X = X + 1

While I was in the pantry, the office boy asked if I worked in another building few years back. I responded positive. He was able to recognize me after a long time. I had a chat with him in local language.

Earlier he was working for a catering service which served our office. Later he joined as an office boy as he got 25% raise. He is quite happy with his decision, brought his cousin to the city and fetched the same job to him.

I asked his native, what he was doing there etc. He started narrating his plans. He is clear that the city life will be good only till marriage. After getting marriage, he wants to return to his village (some 100km from the city). He told how good it would be to return to the vegetable farms and start cultivating stuff. I was nodding and agreeing to his statements. Definitely it is a good idea. The way food materials shoot up and farm land urbanized, it is a sure win to bet on farming. After the discussion, I returned to my seat and started thinking in what the boy was mentioning.

When he marries, there is a high chance that he is going to find a girl from his village. This assumption is because of his plans to return to village. I doubt if any girl from city would like to accompany him to his village and settle with his family gang. He will be having many options to choose from out of the village girls. His city job would have raised his status way high up in the matrimonial market and has an edge over his cousins who plough the land or share their wisdom in the tea stall.

Best girl among the choices could be slightly above our boy's family and financial status. This acceptance from the girl's side will be because of the 'city lights'. After settling in the city, they might start buying 'essential' things for city life. He may not dare to talk about shifting back to village. With kids, their education, job, life style, comfort etc etc will make them stay here. Kids will be taken to village for summer vacation. However, they will not agree for settling there. (Few of my uncles moved to city. Cousins from their families do not like visiting our town, which is not a village).


ah! I had read this somewhere. Yeap, this is our x=x+1 theory, just by replacing the software engg by our local hero and the green shores of US by our bustling city.

Amazing to see how the macro factors work at micro level too.

While we are at it, read the comments to x=x+1 by "Jai Shanker, Former VP and General Manager, now unemployed" at http://www.garamchai.com/XPlusOne.htm

Book: 80/20 CEO Vaman Kamath

I bought this book in the weekend. Since it is a thin book with lots of white space, I was able to read in a day. This book is an interview with ICICI Chairman, Vaman Kamath. Lots of information packed in each section and since the sections are two page long, it is easy to read. Inspiring thoughts and ideas, dynamic nature of business environment, attitude of change managers, how business identify talented and sidelines bottlenecks .... these are few topics of interest.

There is a discussion of Gujarat money scarcity rumour. Very very interesting and amazing way the bank handled the situation. We could feel the heat while reading. Btw, I read the net version of the story and it portrays how the world perceived the event. The inside story is much more thrilling :-)

The book gives the challenges at a CEO's office. Nice narration and interesting tales in the corporate world. Good read for anyone in the career path, particularly for the guys aspiring higher up.

Dirty Indians

Yesterday I was strolling through the streets. How dirty we are!! Garbage thrown all over the streets, stagnated sewage, small restaurants dump the wastage in the road side, mutton shop hang the skinless animals for display, hmm .. I wish I was else where.

What is that we lack to keep our surrounding clean? Relatively our homes are cleaner than the surrounding. Before blaming someone, let us look out the answer within. Foremost factor is laziness. We are too casual to throw plastic wrapper, waste paper, empty can, used clothes, anything we don't want on the streets. We don't know the right way to dispose things.

During college days, a friend of mine taught us how to dispose waste during travel. Simple things like carrying a plastic bag to collect waste, throwing it in a bin at any stop point, reducing the intake during travel -- were few tips. I try to follow whenever possible.

As any Indian, let me bash the governing system. We do have waste handling process in the city. People are paid by the corporation to clean the roads, collect wastes from door to door, ply vehicles to transport the waste out of the city etc. I have seen uniformed people doing these acts. Are these adequate? Nope. We need a system which would be responsible on what it does and result oriented. I had seen these people dumping the waste they collect from homes into a nearby empty sites. In due course, this empty site becomes dumping ground for the houses nearby.

Considering the health risk we have with these unhygienic habits, I hope we wake up early before some irrecoverable hazard.
Thou I dont have answers to many questions, I would like to involve in betterment of the city.

Beautiful names Part 2

Like the vi- series in part 1, we have ni- words like Niroopa, Niranjana, Nirguna etc. This prefix negates the meaning of the root word. Hence the above three words could mean formless, beyond-desires and characterless(?!). These words has positive annotation to mean someone or something who is not restricted by the forms, desires and the behaviour; something that had transcended or overcome these qualities.

su is the prefix to indicate auspiciousness, goodness and prosperity. suguna - good or pure charactor, swagatham - agatham is to inviting someone, swagatham adds a wellness to it to become 'wel'come. swarna is auspicious or nice color, usually this word is used for gold.

Anirudh is a quite common name we hear these days. I was curious to know the depth of the name. Happen to read a book about Krishna, the flute guy. Krishna's grandson is Anirudh and Anirudh is the only survivor of Krishna's community. Rodhah is to block or stop something. Nirodhah is to imprison and stop the flow, and hence Nirodh is the right word for condom. Anirudh is someone who cannot be imprisoned and in this context, the one who didn't let the dynasty flow to stop.

Such etymological analysis helps us to understand the words better and also throws some light on the language/word creators. We will be able to extrapolate the ancient life style, social values, ideas and ideologies. That is a Science by its own with the name Semantics.

Quest of the students

When I get a chance, I will be visiting my college. Last week I went to my native and thought of going to the college. As usual, staff members asked me to handle a session and discuss about industrial experience. Students were quite interactive and asked many questions. They were very curious to know the working culture, the interview process, the technologies that are in demand, what is the good approach in studies and many more. Had a healthy discussion which was very useful to me and hopefully some of them benefited out of the discussion.

A team of students were asking about designing a sniper utility and asked my opinion on using ejb versus corba. Since they need a minor interface between c and java for their network oriented project, I suggested corba instead of going through ejb concepts. Off hand, I am wondering if a xml data exchange would have been a better choice for them. Need to understand their project and suggest the best approach. Nevertheless, I thought of discussing this question with my friends and pass on the details to the students (if the students contact me through mail).

I mentioned about the blog I had about gaining experience without getting a job. Forgot to mention the hunters04@yahoogroups.com details. I should have asked them to join this group which sends job related info.

Overall, it was a nice experience being in the campus and interacting with fresh minds. Would like to do so frequently. Once in a year seems to be optimal. I should prepare well to face them again.

Who is intelligent?

A friend of mine sent this webpage. The message lingers in the mind even after the smile of the joke fades away. Is the society biased for the 'intelligent' species or is that the payment society gives for the learnt who really contribute? Is the mechanic really sees the smartness in people or he releases his frustration?

Water Water

Was reading this article about Cauvery water dispute. The issue had worsen in recent times due to increase in population in the river belt areas and cities which are dependent on Cauvery water. I guess the situation is going to become very bad down the line as the water scarcity is expected to multifold across the globe.

Wish we could unite the rivers in the country and improve our prosperity.

Apart from this water issue, I feel the borders between states should dissolve and we should think more about the country rather than the local state. The way we are divided by caste, creed, religion, language etc are the barrier for us to raise. These divisions may be useful for few people but not for the commoners.

Chennai marriage

Went to Chennai for LN's marriage reception. After having dinner and wishing the couples, just relaxed in the hall and looked around. I thought of speaking to LN's mom as I happened to talk to her whenever I visited their house.

I saw her in green saree, coming out of the dinning hall. Started a conversation with her.
Me: Hello aunty, how are you doing?
She: Fine. Who are you?
(Surprised that she didnt recognize me).
Me: I am friend of L and worked with him.
She: Who is L?
(hmm .. does she has some kind of memory prob?)
Me : LN
She: oh .. maapillai paiyanna?
She: ok, nice to see you.

I felt strange about the way she was talking and walking away in a relaxed manner.

After 30mins, I saw her again in red saree. She was quite active and energetic. Just to check her reaction, I walked in front of her. She recognized me and started talking. I introduced my wife to her. She enquired about our travel, dinner and usual queries. I mentioned about the strange green sareed lady. She laughed and mentioned she is her sister. What a resemblance!

However, I still carry a pinch of suspicion. My wife and myself were curiously observing certain odd things. We never saw LN's mom and the green saree lady together. When we spot green saree, LN's mom would have vanished from the stage. When LN's mom comes back, the green saree would be out of vision. We had fun trying to put forth difference theories. Recollecting various Indian movies where the same person swaps into different roles by simple attire change ... It was quite interesting evening.

Sales skills

PG narrated his experiences with Multi-network marketing companies. These companies train the members in sales and marketing skills. They shed away their inhibition in meeting strangers and socializing with them. PG mentioned couple of incidents at the shopping malls when he went with his wife. The sales couples used to approach PG and his wife on some context. For example, the lady would start a conversation stating the girl looks beautiful. With such pleasantries, the ladies would start discussing. Obviously the guy would be left with nothing but to talk to the other guy (the sales guy who would be waiting for a talk or start one himself). At the end of the discussion, they would exchange the contact numbers. In a day or two, the sales couple would call and propose a business opportunity. The rest is the usual talk and conversion rituals.

The other ice breaking openings range from "I have met you somewhere" to "you resemble like my cousin" ...

In the first meeting itself, they would extract enough details about a person and use this detail to assess the suitability of the person into their gang.

Thou these kind of marketing skills improve the communication of people, unfortunately there is a chance of becoming socially out casted. After attending couple of sales seminars and trainings conducted by the company, the members are too obsessed with success and money. Their thoughts, mind, soul, house, car and whatever they have are filled with the company's motto, logo, posters, articles and other junks. They speak about the same to all the known circles they have. After a while, their friends and relatives would start avoiding them. Once their known circles are exhausted, they venture into unknown territories and circles.

Not sure how they come out and what happens further down. I guess these people's behaviour and social interactions are worth doing a research.

btw, I happen to buy (was led into buying) a small bottle of some super-powered medical capsules for super-duper amount. I am trying to resale that bottle to some bakra like me and never did that in this one year of attempts. I guess I need to attend one of those trainings.

Tips for health

My wife forwarded few articles related to health. She thinks I need to gain few good habits to maintain my well being.

sleepfoundation.org talks about myths and truth behind sleeping. Very interesting to know about new info and burst few old thoughts.

This article lists out 13 tips for overall healthy life. Topics like morning breakfast, planned food nutrition, exercise, social well being, dental hygiene, skin care, balanced mental composure, fruits, water, milk intake etc are discussed in detail.

If you suspect depression, here are few tips.

Land cost

Today VY, MsAD and myself went to Adigas. Good food.

VY was mentioning a piece of land in the city. Also, we were discussing about the appreciation of land price. Over the past five years, the rate had increased 10 fold in most part of the city. Not sure if such sudden raise was realized in any part of the country in the past.

Recently we happen to know of two BHK renting out for 21k. This is not aimed at hi-society ppl but for the upper-middle class (whatever that means; when we are at it, why is the middle class broken into three? Are there more divisions?). In the same area, a single BHK was shown to a bachelor for 14k.

A year back, there was lots of demand for rental houses. Never we could see a 'To let' board as people would occupy when there is a vacant portion. However, these days we see lots of boards of vacant houses. Many are not occupied for a long time. May be the rent had shooted too high and owners are rigid in spite of no takers. Even with such trend, there are umpteen building constructed all over the city and beyond.

Let us observe the progress and see how things move. Most probably we might have to put up with this raise as the money generators like IT industries are still growing with more activities. We can expect a saturation in IT sector once the cost of living raises in par with western countries. In such case, outsourcing might become costlier than inland development/service.

cost of music

Today we went to the shopping mall. Had lunch and then went to the bookstall. I wanted to buy refill for the diary. Quiet lazy! Each year while buying the refill, I use to resolute that for the next year I will buy during December. Never happened so, always it was by end of Jan.

Before getting the diary stuff, I was browsing through the cd racks and picked few music. While comparing the prices, I got the following idea.

• Old classical film songs are quite cheap. If it is 40s and 50s era, then you get those vcd for Rs 40 or so.
• Then comes the devotional section. Starts from Rs 60 and keeps going up. Most of the cds are for 125. This depends on the time people are invested to prepare the audio collection and how popular that theme is. Celebrity singers' work fetch above 200.
• Also looked at the drama section. The comedy drama collections are above 200
• The dvd prices usually starts at 350 to 400.

Most of the above are available in our street video parlour in mp3 format. Price? Rs 25 for each burn!

Bangalore riot

In a far, far land there lived a tyrannic king (as per Western view). Once his government was toppled, the people in that land held him guilty of genocide and other crimes any normal dictator would do. He was hanged.

A month later of that court ruling and execution, Muslims in Bangalore gathered to protest that act. Fine, their choice. However, what does that execution got to do with the peaceful people who were walking in the streets of Bangalore? Highly unlikely if anyone in Bangalore had any remote connection with hanging of that leader. (None of the Indian media held a sms polling for the hanging).

Anyway, why should our buses, shops, people be attacked when some activity happens half a globe away? If some pope guy comments negative about a particular community, why should my way to office be blocked?

Does such mobic riots happen in other parts of the world; particularly curious to know how the Islamic developing countries like Malaysia handle such world events.

Interaction in a website

GA and myself had discussion about the technology. We were going through the advantage and disadvantage of a website allowing users to interact to a contribution level. User participation may be through wiki kind of editable page, blogs or forums.

Advantage

• The site comes alive with lots of interaction, awareness and many useful activities
• An integrated website may provide multiple facilities like forum, catalog, customization, wish list etc (depending upon what the website is aiming to do and the audience)

Disadvantage

• Need for continuous monitoring of the posted articles for maintaining healthy quality of the website
• Required resources for addressing the queries raised by users
• Able to take ownership and responsibility of the website content

I tried convincing GA by the fact that a team of staff would evolve out of the user community. They would monitor the content and such team would be a strong resource. This will avoid burdening the site owners. The staff can answer the queries pasted by the users and if the queries require the owners' attention, the staff can raise a prioritized attention grabber.

Let us see what GA decides.

zaika!!

Today we went to the restarant, Zaika, in Raheja Arcade. Earlier this place went with the name Annambrahma. Now the same management had renovated the place.

Ambience is fine. Tasty North Indian food. Price as you can expect in any such posh restarant; around 150 to 200 per head.

Try it out.

T-Shirt slogans

Like to read t-shirt wordings? I am with you. Some people feel that it is not a good habit. If that is so, why do we have those wordings?

I wish there are few facility available in such t-shirts. To start with, we need a comment column just like this blog has. When someone feel like posting a comment on the wordings, the t-shirt should open-up a section for it ... okay, before we get carried away with further imagination, let us get into work.

Here are few wordings I had noticed, and wished to comment in this line.

No job, No girlfriend, No Problems
No life!

I like you, will kill you last
A killer with conscience

Virginity is curable
Guess the treatment involves some injection.

I am rich. Marry me.
Thanks for the invitation. Let us wait for the gay marriage clearance from the legal dept.

MBA - Master of Bad Activities
I guessed it after interacting with our HR


If you have any, post in the comments.

Bookmarks

The bookmarks I use are of wide variety. Off late, KPN bus provides a counter ticket while boarding. It is a good one for bookmarking. That too it helps a lot as I would start reading a book in the bus (their TV system is too loud while playing some stupid movie). When I go to bookshops, they give complimentary bookmarks with their advertisements. I get couple of more from them. Another favourite bookmarks are visiting cards!, either mine or whoever passes to me. If nothing is reachable, I tear a small portion of newspaper or waste paper for the purpose. As I don't like spoiling the books, I don't fold pages to mark them. I like the books which comes with a small thread to use as bookmark.

Now I am planning to design few bookmarks for myself. I want to distinguish the books I am currently reading, books I am yet to start and those which I have read. Want to place different colored bookmarks to separate these three categories. Hence I am planning to cut bookmarks out of red, orange and green thin cardboard. Red is for books yet to read, orange for ongoing books and green for completed one. Actually I don't need green marks, I could assume books without marks are completed one; but to match with fancy traffic colors, I can have green too.

If you have better suggestions, please pass on to me.

Thiruvasagam

Happen to hear Thiruvasagam as composed by Illaiyaraaja. A feast to ears and mind. It is a music blended with Eastern and Western instruments. The foreground goes with the classical Tamil lyrics, and mixed with English translated verses. The CD came with a booklet containing the lyrics. It is easy to listen the songs while reading them. My wife and myself used to pause at the end of each song and go through the meaning of the song. Overall nice experience and worth trying. Planning to play it frequently.