ic (why) ci

A company sells 2 products - A (costing 1,000 bucks) and B (costing 10,000 bucks); both at the same profit margin.
Now any economic book would tell you that it's all about the volume and numbers. The company sells A in much larger numbers as compared to the product.

But there is one market which defies all the rules of economics, comes up with its own chutzpah and makes the economists eat their words. India i.e.

The company being discussed is ICICI Lombard and the products: A - 2 wheeler insurance, B - 4 wheeler insurance.
The number of passenger cars sold in India in FY'06 was 2.4 lakh. Well, Hero Honda alone sold that much bikes in the month of August'06 :-O
Yet, almost all the 4 wheeler owners get their vehicle insured and a minuscule percentage of 2 wheeler owner theirs'.
Which directly means that companies like ICICI Lombard are not getting the expected revenue from the later.
Which indirectly means bad service and almost nil enthusiasm among the agents for pushing 2 wheeler insurance (These people are ready to collect the cheque for 4 wheeler insurance from your choice of place/time but wouldn't except cash for 2 wheelers' at their office)

And this isn't the lone case. If asked about ICICI bank, I could go on and on...

So much for the reforms, privatisation, demand and supply shaping the economy.
(My local govt owned insurance agent would blatantly demand for a Rs.50 note but at least get the job done)

p.s. wrote a 'disgusting' mail to all the icicilombard.com mail ids i could gather (including that of the operation head, mkting head, and other damn heads..suckers.. :P

Week(ends) with days


15 hrs at office followed by a DP with ol'college friends and you know that the weekend has arrived.

And before you realize it, you are supposed to go to n different places, eat all kinds of stuff and drink at the host's mercy.
And compare that to a normal weekday: home-to-office and office-to-home is all that you are supposed to do. All you get to eat is the ghissa - pitta food served by the cafeteria and drink what !!!!!!

Life couldn't have been any more strikingly different.

Good Will Hunting

At the mall the other day, hanging out with buddies (er..correction...colleagues), as we headed to a nearby restaurant to grab a bite, I saw an elderly couple walking out from the place. Now call me old-fashioned, but I really like (don't know the reason why, though!) to see old people having a nice time at the mall (which is o/w supposed to be a youngster's haven). Anyways, being the gentleman that I generally am, I pulled the door and held it open as the two walked out. But just then, to my utter disgust, a colleague of mine, who seemed as if he had'nt eaten anything in months or had a really bad case of diarrhoea, rushed through the door, literally pushing the couple out of the way, and almost stepping on to the poor lady, just to flash an ostentatious grin and a 'thanks, yaar' at me.
I don't know why I felt sooo bad at all this. But at that moment, if I could, I would have really landed a blow on the ass' s face, probably even asked him to apologise. But then again, the years of training that have been spent in learning to control onself and not making a scene held their own, and I spent the lunch sulking away instead.
I mean, what's with most of the people and some basic manners, that they can't seem to get along? Are we too brash or uncivilised a society, that showing even a lil bit of politeness seems too hard? Or maybe too worthless...
Hard to say.

Ranjana, Ranjana...who the {beep} is Ranjana

Another addition to the shining list of accomplishments that this govt. of ours can be proud of. The union ministry for broadcasting has decided that the Indian society is still too childish and immature, that it is unable to decide what should and should not be seen on TV. That, it is too stupid that any TV content must be filtered for objectionable content, before the poor junta is exposed to it. Can't blame them for thinking this way though, 'cause anyone who brought them to power in the first place, must be nothing short of a dumbass.

And hey...no hard feelings regarding the title...just thought it conveyed the idea quite accurately...n besides its hard to have those for someone you don't really know/care about.

Strange.

You meet people you never met before.
You talk to strangers you never knew before.
And yet, you stop talking to people you talked to before.

The vicious cycle sways away.
People come and people go. A few stay, the rest fade away.

The pictures are there, the names are there.
But you can't remember the people they were.

Too embarrased to ask their name again, you find it comfortable to leave them disdained.

And yet, you will meet them again.
With a brand new face and jazzy name.

The vicious cycle sways away.


---- sabbath, bloddy sabbath ----

187 life stories.

187 lives were lost in the Mumbai Train Blasts.
Indian Express carries an article on it's front page covering a victim's life story a day.

Reading one after the other, you'll realize that you have seen this earlier.

Final Destination, anyone?
People who were not supposed to be at the place they were on that day.

The story will fade away but the irony will remain forever.

Lost in a sea of souls

Had a sucky annual day party at some fancy five star yesterday. Damn those hotels suck at making food for a party-it was worse than my friendly-neighbourhood-dhaba.
Nyways...not deviating from the point, there was something apart from the bad food and the bad music and the bad crowd that troubled me. Troubled me so deeply that it forced me to write a blog!
Consider this. A hall packed with the company's employees. Lotsa colleagues, team mates around. Throw in a dozen or so people from the company whom i call friends as well. But still...once the forced greetings, a bit of chit-chat, and the customary mud-slinging of the company/party was over, I found myself at a loss of words. I just cudnt think of what to talk about. Conversations were forced. The smiles and laughs...faked. Even on the dance floor...it was as if I'm standing in the middle of a performance...people, whom I dint feel I even knew...dancing around me...pulling me to join in. But there was no connection. Whatsoever. And all this, despite mine being quite high as well!!
I tried to make a desparate, last effort to call Blatherer, but the ass refused. Then, thankfully, a good ol' friend from the school times happened to call me, and I ended up talking to him for almost an hour in the lobby. Ah...the joy of an unabated flow of conversation! That was for me the most enjoyable hour of the party.
So now a bit of gyaan: NOTHING makes a party more fun (not even booze) than the company of good friends. And also, the luckiest people are those whose colleagues (whom the percieve to be friends) are actually friends...........sadly, mine are not.

Post Surrogate

I know this doesn't count as a post but check this linkout it is hilarious
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.criticize.html

Wanna race, punk.

'performance' bike vs. 'puny' scooterate.
12 horses vs. 7 horses.
4-3-2-1-2-3-4 vs V-matic.

Never thought a girl on an Activa would give my ol' machine a run for its money.
But the sheer driving skill, experience and hard determination made the rookie bite the dust.
The road to Sec-14 was never this fun before.

Who the hell is anonymous.

Ok, it do feels good to see someone 'reading' your blogs and posting comments.
But some anonymous fellow, linking me to an insurance / utility site. That something which really pisses me off.

@Bertie -
(Oh, I'm sick and tired of this) Share the damn admin rights to stop this stuff, since we know you are a bit easy down there :(
If not me / zz9 then atleast madmita or marvin (u still there, buddy!!)

The 1% Rule

Posted in Guardian (cross-linked through Emergic) :

'It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.'

In our case:

For every god-knows-how-many people who are online, 3 'provide' content and 3 people 'interact' and 3 people 'view' it.

Freedom finally

Looks like the government has started listening up to protests from people like us.
News article in techtree

Blogger Blocked!

This is 21st century India. Where, whn a series of blasts rocks the business capital of the country, the best retaliatory measure that the govt. can think of is to block blogging sites. The torchbearers of the freedom of expression in today's connected world.
Is it only me, or does everyone feel that the people governing us, designing policies for us, are so disurbingly dumb that they don't realise...a free mind shall always oppose anything that is being imposed on it...just like imposing reservations is doing exactly the opposite of what it's motive is (er...removing social barriers and caste-based suspicions/hatred....right?)...similarily curbing freedom is the worst possible way to combat hate-based terrorism... for someone wanting to poison the minds of others to initiate them into terrorism, blogging would be probably the most insignifacnt way....but a fanatic blogger unable to quench his urge to pen down his daily thoughts can sure lose his mind and in place of the pen, pick up an AK-47 instead!

P.S.> though what the geniuses at good 'ol IT ministry missed out are the tons of proxi-fy sites that allow anyone to access any damn website...Hail Free Will!

Brave or Indifferent.

The day after the Mumbai blasts.

The newpaper says -

Mumbai'ites cope and will move on.
Everything normalized. Things will go on as if nothing happened.

Is it really so?
Are we brave enough to move on or are we just indifferent?

What did you tell yourself on hearing the news of the blasts? - Shit. that was bad.

Hidden cult of the corporate punk

Creased, tucked in shirts. Crisp business suits. Matching ties. Immaculate speech and mannerisms. The all-accepted image of the corporate world. An image conjured out of the need to be presentable. The need to impress, to leave an impact, and ultimately the need to do business.
But is all this natural??

Damn Fight Club is a great movie. True cinema. Shakes you up and forces you to think. Not to forget, entertains you like no other.
But such grotesque, in-your-face portrayal of everything can sure have some lasting effects. On the psyche ... the rationale to judge what is correct. Or rather, what is thought to be right, but is actually not.
Man is not built to be pleasant. Hell, no other creature in the known universe is. To be presentable...socially acceptable, is a burden, and not the fruit, of what has become to be known as human society. If there is a God up there, he might as well cringe each time someone sneezes and the people around, customarily, say "God bless".

Another thing the movie forces me to think, is that more so than not, people would hate following these stupid pleasantries and customs imposed by society. People driving us to the office, the xerox machine operator...hell maybe even our colleagues and team leads. People whom we think we are unrelated to, but in whose company our life is spent. A seemingly innocent, pleasant face, hiding beneath it the craziness characteristic of a true punk. A mind, trapped in an alien world, imposed, suppressed....ready to explode at any given moment....
Look around...and what do you see? People in a constant state of rage, hurrying around, brashing out aloud on their fancy cellphones...forced into the rat race by capitalistic corporate powerhouses controlling their lives...doing what they don't want to...buying what they don't need....and then made to believe all this to be traits of good citizenship....
One may see all this as something natural, inevitable....i see a punk revolution brewing up...

P.S.>Please don't watch Fight Club more than twice within a week, and go visit a shrink if u do.

The gud, The Bad, The Silly....

Bertie Wooster is the foppish, nutty, and very wealthy (soon-to-be in this case) co-protagonist and narrator of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories. Now i ain't called betrie for nuthing....usually it's Jeeves, whose genius manages to extricate Bertie or one of his friends from numerous awkward or difficult situations. But alas!! here there was none.

Infact Wodehouse societies from all over the world are famouse for organising large-scale pranks. Well as for as pranks go this was a gud one.....but a few things here :-

1. No i don't feel bad....i mean pranks are meant to be played on frnds...especially poor'ol bertie (phew!! thank heavens not many ppl read this blog though)
2. I wasn't high, infact i remember smoking abt 3 joints (most i had at one time till now) at blah's home n telling him how this stuff ain't gud....i guess the bigger fun was in making the joints with help of seesh!!Also one of the joints is still lying in my house somewhere (holy shit!)...so that pretty much speaks of the "high" i had.
3. Have to say though.....there was this nice-weird metro ride with madmita after smoking the shit....but then again our weirdity trancends clouds of silly smoke.
4. Side effects to the prank : my kurta almost caught fire, my car got little bit burned and ofcourse messing up madmita's throat!!
5. Finally i knew about this since quite somef time actually...not gonna say how.

2nd time unlucky

Well the whole thing was supposed to come as a package.
The actual execution and then the act of telling everyone about it.

But as they say - you can fool all of them some time, but you can't fool some of them all the time. (ok that was crappy)

It started with bertie asking us to provide him with some grass.
But since we had none, we manufactured some :)
Right from the tree under my house I took some dead leaves, grinded them till they resembled some what to actual grass.

Then came the D-day and we passed on this stuff to bertie and guess what he was getting high on it.
Voila, we had invented grass. And it was available aplenty - in the garden, on the porch, on the tree........

Things were getting a bit out-of-hand when he passed the stuff to madmita as well.
Don't know whether she got high or not. (my bet is on the former)

But unlike all things which end on a happy note, things went berserk.

We wanted to end all this thing with a bang - big blog, pictures attached and the works.
But, my guess is that Bertie got hold of the whole thing thru someone else thus leading to more confusion, mistrust, tension :(

Anyways, now that bertie has gone far away we'll have to find a new bakra for such pranks. Any one game?


Private Messages

@bertie - chill dude. it was just a silly joke. we know you'll feel bad but things will change one day and you'll get a chance to aim at my & zz9's ass.
@madmita - you became a passive victim. just stranded in the cross-fire :D

Sports Overloaded

Never considered myself to be a sports fanatic. Never was, actually. I have fond memories of me sitting under a tree, trying to make sense out of an Arundhati Roy, and several classmates calling me to join the ongoing game, much perturbed on losing out on such a fine athlete...
But how times have changed. The past two weeks have been a life-transforming period. God bless soccer, and god bless the World Cup. No longer does TV seem suitable for anything other than sports. Guzzling beer and shouting aloud during a soccer match... all seems so natural now.
And not just soccer. There's Alonso strutting his stuff, troubling Schumi. And the women's semi-finals at good ol' Wimbledon have been no less exciting than a proper catfight. Hell....I even watched golf for an hour recently....and thank god, the list does NOT include cricket (read: the dead sport)

Yaay!....TV's fun again....

I'm back kiddos!...

back from the summer hibernation...
as the dark shadows of the HAnce King leave us for two years, an opportunity knocks for unprecedented wackiness to shine its way thorugh...

Blog is Dead

Officially announcing the demise of this blog and the dreams of its denizens to break into something ........