Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Feeling Rusty

‘am reading ‘losing my virginity’. For the less aware souls – it’s not a book about the first bangs of life but an autobiography of Richard Branson, the maverick CEO of Virgin Atlantic. From the start of the book, I am getting related to the Man (now who doesn’t like to get related with success). He talks of how his was so very enthusiast about his business plans right from his school / college days and how he enjoyed drafting these plans, working for school magazines, trying to take risks.
It reminded me of my days and the things I enjoyed most – debating, elocutions, managing college clubs, organizing fests, sponsorships, magazines and a passion for anything related to business.
But IT industry happened to beat the risk taker in me. Though a couple of plans were thought, a few discussed and a very few documented; none of them saw the light of the day and looks like they never will.
I am losing hair, gaining tummy (though gaining on the pay slips too) and may be turning lethargic. Comfort and coziness can be bad, very bad; they can kill the fire in you. I guess they already are.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

‘RDB’ Karun kya?

I know all blogs, papers, discussions and channels are laden with the topic of reservation, but still I couldn’t resist myself from getting in it. No I am not here to give you some facts and figures of reservations, but just share a thought which came across.
When a few days back the media made a hero out of Abu Salem, and brought to public his evil doings there was a much hyped incident of Gulshan Kumar’s murder. Salem had done it for extortion. After that murder when Salem called others for extortion dhamkis, he went ahead as ‘Tera Gulshan Kumar karun kya?’. Whooops.
Now why do I talk about it here? Because many years back I had seen on news channels students burning them selves, but I never understood it back then. Now I understand what the hell Mandal commission was. And when Mrs. Gandhi’s puppet dear Mr. Arjun Singh plans the same for the lust of votes, it brings back haunting memories. But is there a way out?
You guys saw ‘Rang de Basanti’? I really liked the movie though I was unable to digest the message. But now that these monsters don’t seem to change, lets go ahead.
Someone send a CD of RDB for Mr. Singh’s viewing, with a message ‘Tera RDB karu kya’??

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Light out

Visited home last week. While nothing beats the feeling of being home, nothing beats the summers too. If anything comes close to fighting these summers for an average Indian family, it’s the coolers, their God in summers. And I am no different.
So there are the coolers, water, ACs for the relatively privileged ones. It’s like everything is set but there is just one little problem – electricity. Any time of the day any time of the night for any number of hours in any number of homes the lights can just turn off for reasons unknown.
An option is to take connections from 2-3 areas of the city, so that when one goes off ‘may be’ the other works. All other connections except one are ofcourse illegal. But most of the people do it, paying only for one. They don’t have options besides nobody minds a little free supply. But dad isn’t too keen.
One fine day some lads from the electricity dept come and cut the supply off. Some one from the shop outside comes and tells us that they are planning some changes in transformer or something. Our supply needs to be shifted to another pole, but they don’t have enough wire right now (as if they didn’t know this before cutting the supply). If we need the wire from them we need to write an application which I am not sure will take how many days to process. So we rush to the market and busy the extra wire needed, from our pocket. When we come back and ask them to connect, there is another little problem, its already 6 in the evening and they have to go home. I am furious from inside, but as always - there is a way. He will ofcourse do it for a ‘tip’. And so its done. And we consider ourselves lucky that it was done without ‘much hassles’.
Among all this and some frustration I get an inverter at home. Just praying that there is some electricity to charge that inverter atleast.


Passing thought: Light no light, one things always rules 'ghar ka khana' :)