Is it lunacy! Is it a fad! No, it’s the CAT !!

Well I have been waiting a long time to write this (1 P.M, 19th November 2006 to be precise).
But somehow, never felt like doing it. Till now, the day the results were announced.

And it isn’t that I’m crying hoarse because of my inability to score well, but only because of the people around me.

People, who studied like there was no tomorrow.
People, who religiously gave practice tests over practice tests every Sunday.
People, who wasted every single weekend of their life for the past 6 months.
People, who fought foot and nails with their bosses to take some time off for studies.
People, who scored good enough in practice tests to put me to shame.

People, who meticulously did everything in accordance with the textbook, except for that single day.

And all this just to get that coveted IIM stamp on their royal posterior.

And it makes me wonder… (Led Zep to my rescue)

Isn’t it that we Indians (sorry for generalizing the whole lot) are like cows?
Simple and steady, doing what our master (replace this with any one’s name whomsoever dictates your life) orders, following each other in a herd, taking in everything our big mouth can take and cud’ing on it later. And with just two wishes in our life –

• To get the right brand on our ass (IIT/IIM/NIT/AIIMS/Any damn engineering /medical college will do).
• To provide our masters with the best possible milk our udders could produce

And we can go to any extent for this. Even forgetting if there exists any other reason for our existence and that at the end of the day, each and everyone of us will find his/her way to someone’s dining table (depends on which part of India you reside in) or some fat lady’s purse, wallet or that kinky little dress (it again makes me wonder…).

Hmmm….
I think I’ll have to start thinking.
Until, of course, the next bug catches my ass :D

This blog is cooler than evah befoe...
And the Decemberists are awwwwwwesome.

Post No. 100.

Dedicated to Google - Saviour of the In'duh'viduals

My two cents...

I know this blog is dead. In fact it's way past its death, multiple re-incarnations, some subsequent deaths, burials...basically been through everything remotely related to all that life-n-death crap...and is finally in a state of limbo.
And that, actually, makes writing here all the more worthwhile. Firstly, you don't expect any response whatsoever. Secondly....umm, well there isn't anything worthier to do on a as-bluesy-as-it-gets monday morning, when ur manager's on leave, and the work can, well, (to put it easy) can be overlooked.
So.
After all this mindless thought which used to be the very essence of this blog, comes the question i've dreaded for the entire 5 mins. I've spent writing this: what to write about in the first place!?
...
...
Arrr, what the heck, I might as well write about the damn weekend yet again. At least saturday ('cause sunday was spent healing my aging muscles who had to bear the brunt of the physical and mental stresses I'd been subjected to the day before). It all started on friday itself, with my manager coming up with another one of those ideas that makes you wonder %$#^ - to have a team cricket match, at 8 AM the next morning!! Curses, pleas, brickbats came his way from all sides of the team, but he was not a man to be swayed. So, here i was, at 8 on a saturday, standing on a cricket ground, barely able to control the shivering.
Thankfully, the match turned out to be more symbolic than what i'd though, with 3 of the 8 ppl failing to show up, and the rest in no mood to do anything at all. Just a few overs of struggling with bat and ball were all it took to send us packing back to home, with joints aching as if everest had just been conquered. But just as I'd happily trotted into home, aiming to stealthily make my way into bed till lunchtime, disaster struck, with the family declaring about plans to be out in 15 mins, and head towards a day-out at Akshardham temple!
Phew! What a behemoth of a monument is that place...just the parking expanse becomes tiring to cross. But it sure is a nice change from the regular expected experience at such huge religious places - well organised, informative...it resembles a museum more than anything else.
Anyways, after negotiating through the animatronics, boat rides, miles of walking, we finally got through with it, and I resumed plans to doze off right in the car itself. But lo and behold...such wonderful plans weren't meant to be...as my enthu-about-masala-movies brother reminded that we'd made advanced booking to watch - yeah u guessed it -Dhoom 2 - at a shady south delhi theatre!! All my "God bless PVR for not showing the movie" chants failed. My repeated rants about the new levels of crapiness the movie achieves were yet again ignored as the already sleepy me was dragged into a 10 to 1 nightshow.
Well, I can't find anything to write about the movie. Just can't. Skateboards that move faster than a Honda CBR can leave you too stunned to speak. The only consolation was to be proven right, at the end, that the movie did suck. Bigtime.

As the horridly tiring day drew to a close, I was too exhausted to even let out a whimper of complaint on being reminded that the wedding season had begun, and I had to be mandatorily present at each and every one of them.
And you thought weekdays were scary...

We are the champions....

And bad mistakes
I've made a few
I've had my share of sand kicked in my face
But I've come through

Nothing like listening to Queen, especially at times like these :D

The questions without an answer!

A Diwali weekend, crackers that make more noise rather than exploding: ka-ching!, Motor Cycle Diaries and the biography of Che Guevara - A deadly combo that can shatter your self-beliefs and make you question yourself.

You see your friends running to add that extra zero at the end of their paychecks and at the same time you see that poor fellow trying to remove the zero from his.

Are we on the road to progress?
Definitely not that kid who looked bewildered, seeing the sky lit up with a thousand colors (or was it the thousand rupee note)

India is progressing.
Salaries sure are.
And so is the disparity among the different sections of society.
Juvenile Crime rate is.
Naxalite and Maoist revolutionaries are.

So what is the solution to all this?
A revolution.
A communist government at the center.
A more socially-responsible corporate sector.
Or maybe more and more people giving back to the society.

I don'’t have the answers.
Hell, I don'’t even know the questions yet.

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.