IIT & Rickshawala

This was an interesting mail forward I got. Not very sure of the authenticity, but definitely fun and worth a read.

There were two rickshaw-walas vying for our business, when we wanted to go to Sankat-Mochan temple in Benaras. I agreed to go with the one, who was about 20 years of age, seemed like a regular young rickshaw-wala, but I found something interesting about him. I was not proved wrong.

He wanted Rs 50, we said Rs 30. We settled for Rs 40.

Here are the highlights of the conversation that ensued, while we rode the rickshaw:

"Aap kahan se aaye hain?"

"Delhi."

"Bijness, ya kaam karte hain?"

"Naukri karte hain."

"Kismein?"

"Internet mein."

"Humara bhi kuch wahin kaam lagwa dijiye."

I just chuckled.

"Main try kar raha hoon engineering padhne kee. Achchi naukri lag jaayegi tab."

"Achcha?" I asked a little interested.

"Haan, delhi mein Guru Gobind Singh Indraprashta University mein engineering ke liye apply kiya hai. Achchi hai woh university."

"Haan, achchi hai", I agreed.

"Haan, kal hee maine JEE bhi diya."

"JEE matlab, IIT ka?"

"Haan, Joint Entrance Examination" he pronounced it perfectly.Just to make it clear to me what JEE stood for. "Mushkil hota hai exam."

"Haan, 2 saal toh log padhte hee hain uske liye, asaan nahin hai."

"Delhi mein Akaash coaching institute hain na?"

"Haan, hai."

"Aapne kya padhai kee?"

"Main engineer hoon, aur phir MBA bhi kiya."

"Kahan se engineer?"

"IIT Delhi se."

He swung back, surprised, a little delighted, and smiled. "Ok, aapke liye Rs 30."

Swati and I laughed.

Swati asked "Padhai kab karte they IIT ke liye?"

"Bas, rickshaw chalaane ke baad raat mein". Then he added

"Kismein engineering kee aapne?"

"Chemical."

"Toh aapki Chemistry toh badi strong hogi."

"Nahin, aisa nahin hai."

He continued "Yeh bataiye....jab Mendeleev ne Periodic Table banaya tha tab kitne elements they usmein?"

Now it was my turn to get surprised. He was quizzing me. I said "Shayad 70-80."

"No, 63" he said sharply. "Kaunse element kee electronegativity highest hai?"

Swati was laughing, and I didnt try too hard and said "Pata nahin."

"Flourine", he said confidently. Without a break he asked,"Kaunse element kee electron affinity highest hoti hai?"

Now I was laughing too and said "Nahin pata"

"Chlorine. toh aapka kaunsa subject strong tha?" clearly having proven that my chemistry wasn't a strong point.

"Physics", I said.

"Achha, Newton's second law of motion kya hai?"

I thought I knew this one. "F=ma", I said.

"Physics is not about formula, it is understanding concept!", he reprimanded me in near perfect English. "Tell me in statement"

I was shocked. Swati continued to laugh.

I said "ok, Newtons second law, er....was...."

" 'Was' nahin, 'is'!Second law abhi bhi hai!" he snapped at my use of 'was'.

Surely, my physics wasn't impressing him either. "Yaad nahin, I said"

"Force on an object is directly proportional to the mass of the object and the acceleration of the object", he said it in near perfect English. "Aapne M.Tech nahin kiya?"

"Nahin, MBA kiya"

"MBA waale toh sirf paisa kamana chahte hain, kaam nahin karte."

"Nahin, aisa nahin hai, paisa kamaane ke liye kaam karna padta hai." Didn't think too highly of me apparently anymore.

In a minute we reached our destination. We got off and I told him that he must and should definitely study more, and that I thought he was sharp as hell. He took only Rs 30, smiled and began to leave. I got my camera out and said "Raju, ek photo leta hoon tumhari". He waved me off, dismissed the idea and rode off before I could say anything more....leaving me feeling high and dry like a spurned lover.

Damn, what a ride that was! India is changing, and changing fast.

The most stunnning illusion EVER

I am sure we have all seen numerous illusions but this one so darn stunning that I literally let out a shriek seeing this one.

Look at squares A and B. They are the same shade of gray. I am sure you wont believe this, I didn't, well take a printout, cut it into 4 pieces, take the squares A & B side by side and see for yourself. Lazier ones can use mspaint/gimp to see the magic.

Brightness and color can have powerful effects on perception. In this illusion created by vision scientist Edward H. Adelson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our brain does not perceive the true brightness and color of each square but instead determines the brightness and color of A and B by comparison with the squares surrounding them

Edward de Bono and String Theory

Every now and then I am sure we hear of analogies that seem to make absolutely no co-relation to the topic of discussion to anyone other than the analogizer [;)]. I once had a friend, lets call her XXX who used to boil down allllllll things known to mankind to a sambar wada problem [XXX if you are reading this, I am not talking about you, its about some other friend who has that sameproblem interesting habit ;)]. We have a long interview process for a candidate and we sit together to decide if the candidate is the right choice. She goes - "He is an idliwala and we want to make samosas!". We have a week long sales meeting trying to see if a product makes sense for India market, she says: "We are trying to sell idli in Chandni Chowk" [which in all probabilities meant that its not going to sell ;)]. I could go and on with how everything from string theory to making tea can all boil down to idli sambhar problem but then it wont leave anything for your imaginations :). It sometimes gets entertaining to watch an analogizer stretch his analogy thin to demonstrate that indeed it does make sense.

The other day in a casual office chat AR says "Retail business is like doctors". No worries... I didn't make head or tail of it either [however if you did, read on to make sure that you got it right and if you DID get it right, Hats off to you for the lateral thoughts (as an aside, the same AR just helped me remember the phrase "lateral thinking" by asking me to google Edward de Bono!)]. Anyways, what he meant to say was that professionally unless you are well known as a Doctor or a Retailer, you dont make a lot of money. He went on to explain the analogy; A small retailer cannot make a lot of profit unless people know him, at which point he can go on to charge a premium for the stuff he has, a smaller retailer needs to offer the stuff at the lowest price he can afford to attract customers. NOW do you see the analogy? Well.. honestly I dont :) :)

On the brighter side however, these analogies truly show how wonderfully human mind works. Relating two seemingly very different things to better understand the problem at hand, to see a pattern in the chaos is a quality of a beautiful mind.

PS: If you are thinking how the image of the brain relates to the post. Well.. Its not about relativity.. is it?

An ode to friendship

It was Eid-Ul-Zuha yesterday, and though there is an Eid every year, this Eid was special for me. Ever since I have moved out of home for college, I have been away from home in Eid only a couple of times. Once in college and once a few years back on job. Now college is always fun, there are way too many friends around, it is almost like a home away from home. But the time I was at job, it really sucked. I had really missed home and I think I had never felt so homesick and desolate before that.

Footage from last year: My Birthday

This time I was again away from home for Eid, but now I am a family man [Cheesy.. I know ;)], and I live in a home and this was the first big festival we are alone (my wife and I).. It was wonderful, though I missed home a lot, but it was fun. We went to a friend's place in the morning and had friends at my place in the evening and at night. We did nothing much, just ate, talked junk [me doing most of the talking, to which I got a feedback that lately I am talking a lot;) ], called home, called friends and talked more. It was fun, the day reminded me of the importance of friends in life. Family is obviously important and cannot be replaced with anything else, but friends have their special place that cannot be filled with something else. I am grateful to have made a few very good friends for making me feel special.

दिये जलते हैं,
फूल खिलते हैं,
बड़ी मुश्किल से मगर,
दुनिया में दोस्त मिलते हैं!

Wheels of change

After a long pause, here I am, back to the random bakar. The thing about long pauses is that there is so much of an inertia to start again, you keep looking for the big bang to come back with (damn Newton!). Well, but then, mea culpa [One of early comments in code by one of my seniors who opened the doors for me, to the world of absurd comments].

Anyways, I am sure that no one would be interested to know what was keeping me busy; but just in case someone was wondering, well, I got married, switched jobs [after four wonderful years at my last company] and moved to a new place. New job came with new responsibilities, new team and a brand new product that we have to develop. In smaller setups this would typically boil down to ad-hoc meetings, filling every corner of the whiteboard which cannot be erased as no-one keeps meeting notes other than the faithful whiteboard, team huddling up every now and then around every other cubicle and every possible nook and corner for lack of enough meeting rooms (I remember we once huddled up in a restaurant where we had gone for a team outing but ended up talking about work). But in a larger organization where the meeting rooms are a-plenty, you got to "book" a meeting rooom in the outlook organizer for setting up a meeting. You got to send meeting "invitations" to all concerned parties and once the meeting has started, you got to send a "gentle reminder" to everyone to say that everyone should assemble (compared to the smaller setup where all you do is shout out loud, call people and start the "huddle"). One then shares his screen and someone else would take meeting notes and in an hour you would loose the meeting room to someone else who has booked it for the next slot and you walk out satisfied with the heated debate or with the joy of having scheduled a follow-up-meeting to discuss what was left incomplete :).

But that was about what was keeping me busy, the blog was about this new.. mmm... maybe I should call it a hobby... that I have developed of drawing cartoons whenever I have some free time. Hope you like it... :)

Again I am sure no one would be interested in knowing when I get free time to do all this junk, but in case you are wondering... in those long meetings when I dont find anything better to do and I have my notebook and a pen handy :)

Age of Empires

I am sure most of us would have played or at least would know what Age of Empires is. For the un-initiated, its a game where different players represent kingdoms. It is a game based on the simple paradigm, "Survival of the fittest". The fittest is the one with most resources, most land or most advanced. Countries start from some Age [Industrial Age for instance] and advance to Nuclear Age etc.

Well, I am not here to talk about the game. I came across this article about China building one of the most efficient power plants in the world. "China’s ability to generate its electricity more efficiently could be critical as the sector expands". It is doing everything it can to win this game. From Olympics to Technology and Infrastructure it is racing against the world's super powers, but India seems to be slowly panting along bogged with its baggage of greedy politicians and lazy beaurocrats, with us who dont seem to care a lot about where India goes. The infrastructure for common-wealth is nowhere near the target deadlines, it is apalling to see the "Sheru On Track" hoardings in Delhi, sometimes I wonder if Sheru knows that there is no track ahead.
I dont believe in cribbing and ranting. But it was really a helpless feeling to see this article. Maybe I should have stuck to Electrical Engineering and worked for Power Industry, maybe someone else did and I hope someone is working hard to put Indian Power India on the globe.

Letting go of the burden

Sometime back I was talking with CK about how carrying a burden stops us from seeing the beauty of life. We all do things that we don't want to do, we aren't proud of doing and we feel bad about them. Sometimes we just don't forgive ourselves, I remembered this very good story about an old monk and a young monk. They were walking through a forest when they came to a river bank and saw a beautiful young woman standing at the edge of the bank and was afraid to cross the river.

The old monk, seeing that she needed help offered to help by carrying her across the river on his back. She accepted the offer and thanked him for helping her cross the river.

The 2 monks continued on their journey, but the young monk was shocked and disturbed at having seen his older companion break his vow of not touching a female so nonchalantly. Finally, after 3 hours of walking and thinking, he could contain himself no longer and he burst out in anger, "Why did you break your vow? Why did you let her beauty tempt you?"

The older monk remained silent for several steps and then said, "It is you who should tell me what it is like to carry such a beautiful young woman. You see I put her down 3 hours ago at the river, but you are still carrying her."

It is a simple story, but sometimes we forget simple things and we carry too much load on our back. Let go off the load and we will be a happier person

Perspectives

Recently I read a post from a dear one, which talked about how he was ill-treated by life and how he learnt a few of his most important lessons the hard way. We all learn our lessons, life is a tough teacher, every baby falls and hurts itself only to learn how to run (a marathon!). We are betrayed by our trusted friends to learn how to judge a person a better and not to learn never to trust again. Love fails, we loose the most precious, and learn how to value them before they are lost, for loss is inevitable.

Sometime back I was talking to a friend, and we happened to talk about the movie Crash. I rate it amongst the top 5 movies I have seen; this friend says, "Yes, this is the movie where everyone is screwed by each other"; I was amazed, this very same movie, I remember as the movie where everyone in the end attains salvation, where justice is meted out to everyone. There is realization and forgiveness. There is this particular mini story where, to console his daughter when she was scared, he wraps her with an invisible scarf that has protected him from all the dangers and which his mom gave him and she should hand over to her daughter when she is five. Few days later, this guy is at gunpoint outside his house, by someone who wants to take revenge. The girl comes running to protect her dad - the man shoots - the girl clings on to her dad - the man who had shot realizes his mistake - the girl holds tight, says, "Daddy, my scarf will protect you!" - nobody dies, but in that moment everybody realize their mistakes. Everybody, somewhere in some crude way sees justice and salvation.

Judge not a book by its cover

I came across this today and I was stunned, touched, shocked and humbled. This is sheer talent that does not always show from the outside. This lady seemed to be one of those who come to the stage for some sadistic pleasure. I couldnt really make a lot of sense of the lyrics, amidst all the shouting, but what I could make was... "I dream a dream"... And yes.. It takes a lot of conviction to stand up for the dream you dream of.

Kudos to BGT for letting such people present before a wide audience.

Conquer Your Weakness

This is a story of one 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a devastating car accident.

The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing well, so he couldn't understand why, after three months of training, the master had taught him only one move.

"Sensei," the boy finally said, "Shouldn't I be learning more moves?"

"This is the only move you know, but this is the only move you'll ever need to know," the Sensei replied. Not quite understanding, but believing in his teacher, the boy kept training.

Several months later, the Sensei took the boy to his first tournament. Surprising himself, the boy easily won his first two matches. The third match proved to be more difficult, but after some time, his opponent became impatient and charged; the boy deftly used his one move to win the match. Still amazed by his success, the boy was now in the finals.

This time, his opponent was bigger, stronger, and more experienced. For a while, the boy appeared to be overmatched. Concerned that the boy might get hurt, the referee called a time-out. He was about to stop the match when the Sensei intervened. "No," the Sensei insisted, "Let him continue."

Soon after the match resumed, his opponent made a critical mistake: he dropped his guard. Instantly, the boy used his move to pin him. The boy had won the match and the tournament. He was the champion.

On the way home, the boy and Sensei reviewed every move in each and every match. Then the boy summoned the courage to ask what was really on his mind. "Sensei, how did I win the tournament with only one move?"

"You won for two reasons," the Sensei answered. "First, you've almost mastered one of the most difficult throws in all of judo. And second, the only known defence for that move is for your opponent to grab your left arm."

The boy's greatest weakness had become his greatest strength.

Of good, bad and technology

We hear the oft repeated cliched, "Everything happens for a good reason" over and over; and sometimes we wonder what good can come out of bad things, what good can come out of killings and misery, most of the time we are left without an answer, but today I came across this EXTREMELY interesting use of almost a massacre for something that might have a ground breaking impact on way things are today.

Ratan Bhardwaj and his colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, used radiocarbon dating, which is normally employed to establish the age of archaeological or geological remains, to work out the age of heart cells compared to the chronological age of the person from which they were isolated. To do this, the team took advantage of nuclear tests done during the 1950s and 1960s, which led to a sharp increase of radioactive Carbon 14 in the atmosphere. The radioactive material was captured by plants as CO2 and then worked its way up the food chain and into the DNA of the human body. Soon after the tests were stopped, atmospheric C14 levels declined again, leading to a corresponding drop in the C14 concentration in human DNA.

The team measured C14 levels in the heart tissue of twelve deceased patients aged between 19 and 73 at the time of death and found elevated C14 even in those subjects who had been born two decades before the nuclear tests started, indicating that the radioactive carbon must have been incorporated into heart muscle cells long after birth. Similarly, the C14 levels in the hearts of younger patients did not match the year of their birth but rather indicated a younger birthday for the cells.

- MIT Technology Review

It totally amazed me, on multiple counts, foremost, using radioactive dating to find cellular regenaration rate itself sounds absolutely fabulous a concept. But to put to a good use, a nuclear catastrophe, is what amazed me. Hats off to the team and the weirdly fabulous ways that we think.

Next time I hear someone say that everything happens for good, I would surely think twice before neglecting that as a cliche.

How fleet is a glance of mind

How fleet is a glance of the mind! Compared with the speed of its flight, The tempest itself lags behind, And the swift-winged arrows of light.

It is amazing how easily the mind can shut off all the external voices and how easily it can be transported and carried away to a different world.

It was past midnight as I sat in my room infront of my laptop working on some document, I got up to get some water and I realized that the folks next door were playing loud music to celebrate something. As I drank the water I notice that the songs they were playing were the old dance numbers that were ever so hit on the campus - Summer of 69, Saturday Night, Its my life... In a moment I was back in that Thomso night, dancing like there's not a worry in the world, shouting, running from NesT to Hanger... Incredible.. A fleeting memory of the EE gang, IMG gang, those friends KU, GB, PG.. Those were really the best days of my life.. I call KU to know he is working late in the office.. PG to know she is M***I** [Top secret ;)]

Load shedding... Zoom in to present... MS saying that "woh bhi din the... aur aaj bhi din hein" (those were the days... and these are days too [not exactly... but hope u got the sense if u didnt get the original])... and in that moment my mind takes another flight; to the Kungfu master Tortoise Oogway from Kungfu Panda (Must watch if you like animations or action movies)

Oogway: You are too concerned about what was and what will be. There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.

And yes, today is a present.. to be remembered in the time to come.

Highest goal of life

Recently PG forwarded an article to me. It was as if I was reading my own thoughts about life. Everybody has a simple choice to make, being happy or being sad; this choice I strongly feel can be made independently of the events happening around us. This might sound difficult and high philosophy, but I have often found this natural and I really hope that in future we never so bogged down with the events happening that we are unable to make this choice for us.

Read on.

+Fasih

The highest spiritual path is life itself. If you know how to live daily life, it all becomes a liberating experience. But first you have to approach life properly, or it can be very confusing. To begin with, you have to realize that you really only have one choice in this life, and it's not about your career, whom you want to marry, or whether you want to seek God. People tend to burden themselves with so many choices. But, in the end, you can throw it all away and just make one basic, underlying decision: Do you want to be happy, or do you not want to be happy? It's really that simple. Once you make that choice, your path through life becomes totally clear.

Most people don't dare give themselves that choice because they think it's not under their control. Someone might say, "Well, of course I want to be happy, but my wife left me." In other words, they want to be happy, but not if their wife leaves them. But that wasn't the question. The question was, very simply, "Do you want to be happy or not?" If you keep it that simple, you will see that it really is under your control. It's just that you have a deep-seated set of preferences that gets in the way. […]

It's not a question of whether your happiness is under your control. Of course it's under your control. It's just that you don't really mean it when you say you're willing to stay happy. You want to qualify it. You want to say that as long as this doesn't happen, or as long as that does happen, then you're willing to be happy. That's why it seems like it is out of your control. Any condition you create will limit your happiness. You simply aren't going to be able to control things and keep them the way you want them.

You have to give an unconditional answer. If you decide that you're going to be happy from now on for the rest of your life, you will not only be happy, you will become enlightened. Unconditional happiness is the highest technique there is. You don't have to learn Sanskrit or read any scriptures. You don't have to renounce the world. You just have to really mean it when you say that you choose to be happy. And you have to mean it regardless of what happens. This is truly a spiritual path, and it is as direct and sure a path to Awakening as could possibly exist.

--Michael Singer from "The Untethered Soul"

Economics for dummies - Part II (Petro Bucks)

In my post some time back I had talked about how the people of Squanderville sold bonds to Thriftsville to support their squanders. However that is not the only option Squandervillians have. Below is an oversimplified version of the other option that a country can take. It is, what I call a dummies version of this story. Read along to know what we are headed for.

Any sane civilization with some self-respect and dignity eventually goes to war, killing its own people and leaving the survivors in suffering. It was in those times that the United States of Warriors realized that they can make some money. Warriors supplied arms and ammunitions to its allies for gold, by the time the war was over, Warriors had amassed enough gold that their currency was seen as more stable than Gold. Oil, which everybody needs began to be traded in WarBucks (Currency of Warriors) just because the currency was percieved stable. The demand for WarBucks, therefore started rising, Warriors made use of the oppurtunity and started printing WarBucks and bought stuff with them. In effect they bought stuff for free! (If you are wondering why cant everyone do this, well, read Part I. In short, if I start printing currency and start buying stuff with it, the people who have got my currency will come back to me and want to buy some other stuff with it, if I print too much of my currency there will be too much money chasing the limited amount of stuff I have and will result in things getting more expensive - Inflation. WarBucks however, were used by others to buy not stuff at home but oil elsewhere thus no inflation)

Soon everyone has loads of WarBucks that they use to buy Oil. Now the United Emirates of Oilers decide to stop trading in WarBucks and use NewBucks, suddenly the world realises that they cannot do anything with WarBucks and they want to sell the WarBucks. WarBucks fall steeply against NewBucks, Warriors do not have enough stuff to sell if the countries decide to sell WarBucks for WarStuff. Essentially Warriors can go bankrupt. What are the options they have:
1. Start producing stuff, and do that more economically than others to make it economically viable for others to buy. Which also means that the cost of labour has to go down drastically (They obviously had been squandering all along with free stuff they had been buying with WarBucks)
2. Do what they are best at doing: Go to war, thereby forcing all its allies to use WarBucks again.

Option 2 obviously sounds much more sensible, doesnt it?

Of Maatra Bhuumi, Motherland

This weekend I saw Munich, I was really touched to see these people fighting for land, a never ending futile war. Below is a particular dialog that really made me stop and think, it is between Avner, an Israeli-born Mossad agent of German descent and Ali, an Arab who is fighting to get back Gaza from Israel, which he thinks of as his mother

Avner: You'll never get the land back.

Ali: You'll all die old men in refugee camps waiting for Palestine. We have a lot of children. They'll have children. So we can wait forever. And if we need to, we can make the whole planet unsafe for Jews.

Avner: You kill Jews and the world feels bad for them... and thinks you are animals.

Ali: But then the world will see how they've made us into animals. They'll start to ask questions about the conditions in our cages.

Avner: You are Arabs. There are lots of places for Arabs. Tell me something, Ali. Do you really miss your father's olive trees? Do you honestly think you have to get back all that...that nothing? That chalky soil and stone huts. Is that what you really want for your children?

Ali: It absolutely is. It will take a hundred years, but we'll win. We want to be nations. Home is everything.



I really found it weird, it is not a melodramatic speech, people all over fight for land, closer home, Kashmiris want to get away from India, there are fights from completely barren useless piece of land all because it is what they call "home". The way we are born and brought up, we really look at this piece of land as ours, and I am sure if there is a need tomorrow most of us would be ready to kill or die for this. Weird, but true. And while I was thinking about this, I see this video, believe me, I could actually feel the emotions within, goosebumps is too mild to express. Watch it, its a 2 min clip really worth watching if you are an Indian.

My First recording

To strive to seek and not to yield....

Some things we do might not be very valuable from most of the point of views, in fact it might be totally worthless or sometimes plain simple wastage of time, yet there are things which makes me happy. It keeps re-inforcing the adage that my Maths teacher once said... "A Man can do what a man has done... ".. Running a marathon or learning guitar (without enrolling for a guitar class >:))

Anyways, so this is my first recording, definitely not very good and dumb windoze would not allow me to record more than 60 secs worth of data (on the brighter side, you can claim to have sat through my entire performance without getting very bored >:)).

Enjoy...
Please feel free to comment :)

[Special thanks to my roommates PK & G for bearing up with me as I did my nightly riyaaz] >:)

And yes.. .my voice sucks >:)

The ethics and the Sutta

The other day over the lunch Mallaya bidding for IPL players came up; and with Mallaya came his wealth, the way he made money, MG said was unethical, the reason being he was selling alchohol. This basically set the mood for the day's afternoon debate :) which I found entertaining enough to blog about. The topic then formally was, "Should the goverment interfere in the operations of cigerattes/daru companies?". Interestingly I was against the topic... [Interesting because I am a non-smoking tee-totaller :) Infact the only selfish reason I have to be against the motion is that I own ITC(Indian Tobacco Company) stocks ;)]

Anyways, in brief the best points for/against the motion were:
Against :- It hampers the freewill of an individual, we are born with the right to choose for ourselves
For :- If all were to have their freewill then there should be no legal system, let people steal/rape/kill
Against :- Stealing/Rape/Murder affects somebody else's freedom Govt is doing right in protecting it. Drunk driving should be banned because it can cause an accident leading to somebody's death. We accept that drinking is bad because the chances that a drunk person would do something he would regret or cause others harm is much higher then when he is sober but so is a person in anger. The point we are trying to make is, what the Govt CAN do and SHOULD do is to educate people about the ill-effects of Alcohol and Cigerettes instead of trying to stop them from doing it.
For :- Society as a whole takes a course over time, the Govt's role is to shape the course, if alcohol is not available much lesser number of people will drink and consequently they will contribute positively in the society's direction ahead.
Against :- People who dont know what is good or bad for them or who cant control their actions knowing something is not good for them are not the kinds who will take the society anywhere.
For :- [By far the best argument :)] The govt has social responsibilities towards people. It has to ensure that everybody gets proper health treatment/facilities, now drinkers/smokers being worse off than non-smokers and non-drinkers take more money to mantain [>:)] hence economically, for the good of the larger population, the govt should stop the people from being high-mantainence [Credit goes to BS for the wonderful argument]

As you might have noticed that since I was arguing against the motion, the post is biased towards my viewpoint :)

Thoughts?

Vodafone wants me to be a cricket geek

"Please.. One last chance... If it doesnt work out, I will personally call you up... " says an honest sounding female on the Vodafone customer service. It is pretty difficult to get me worked up, this was one of those difficult times :). I say "OK.. But this would be the last... The next time I call.. I would not be listening to anything but the way.. and I will make sure that this is fixed and a few people screwed even if it translates to taking a week long off from work".. and I hang up.

It was some two weeks back that I had called the Vodafone customer care to find out about something and after talking to the customer care representative, I SMSd a feedback to the Vodafone when instead of the regular reply I get back a message stating that I have been subscribed and that it will take 24 hrs for "it" to be activated. I called the customer care again to find out what "it" was and how to de-activate whatever it was, to know that it was some cricket info!!!!!!!!!

Now, I have never been a great fan of cricket (or for that matter any sport). I ask the guy to take my request to de-activate the service. Turns out that it would not be possible, the service has to be un-subscribed by the user, he tells me the process which was.. "SMS DCT CKT to 56789". I thank him and promptly send the SMS, reply "Invalid response code".... I am like... WHAT?? Even an embedded device would throw up a more meaningful message. Calling the customer care again tells me that I cannot de-activate it till it is activated. So I will have to wait till the evening. I am like OK..

Evening... "Invalid response code".... Customer Care... "Oo sorry... please SMS DCT CKT99 to 56789" OK.... "Invalid response code"... Customer Care... "Oo sorry... please SMS DCT CKT to 567889"... This was a great difference over the previous attempts.... I got back a message which went like... "Thanks... To activate Caller tunes ACT CT... For Shaer-o-Shaeri ACT SS.. For Jokes ACT JK.... blah blah blah blah... " I was like... Ok... done... By the way... What the hell makes Vodafone think that I have a lot of time to get Jokes and stuff on my phone... Anyways.... So I am having my dinner... ting-tong-ting.... SMS... I read it... Ganguly hits a six... blah blah blah... uuooo its not fixed yet.... Customer Care... by this time I am pissed... I tell the person that I am not able to de-activate it.... sir it has to be de-activated at your end... we cannot do that... please SMS CKT99 to 1111.... Obviously with no help... I had started keeping my phone mute.. everyone in the office found it funny.... I get SMS not only of the international cricket... there are SMSs of local cricket some chunnu team playing munnu team sorts... there are jokes running around the office about my phone... somebody would say... "So whats up with basketball these days..." then someone woud say... "Ask Fasih... He might be getting a few updates here and there about those" somebody else would chip in... "No... Vodafone is busy teaching him cricket... One sport at a time"

Finally I get a call from the Vodafone guys on what my problem was.... he talks to me and tells me that it would be addressed soon. I get an SMS a while later, "Issue addressed. Sorry for the inconvenience caused" I heave a breathe of relief, unmute my phone, get to my seat... ting-tong-ting... I take the phone.... Bombay rapids meet bengal tigers (or some such animals) today... This time I am totally pissed.... My ex-boss pitied me and narrated a similar torture to which all he did was to call them up and ask them how to escalate the issue. I decided to do that...

This lady takes the call... "Sir, why do you want to de-activate the serivice" I never liked cricket... Now I hate it because of Vodafone... Is that a reason enough? Or did she want something in writing too? Thinking back I might have been a bit rude... But the escalating stint really fixed it. She said I had to send.... "I am not going to do a SINGLE thing... do you get it? Just tell me how to escalate this..." That was it... She asked for a last chance... Which I grudgingly granted (Guess because I had already shouted so much...) And I have not got an SMS from them till now... except for the "Your bill dated 15-Dec-07 has been dispatched...." a while back which triggered me to write this account... :)

What a wonderful world

I once used to be an optimist, a hard core optimist who found a bright side to everything and a silver lining surrounding the darkest and largest of clouds... I found the world so beautiful... With time however I realized that not all is as rosy, there is a lot of pain around us... And as NB once very rightly said... ignorance is bliss and with knowledge comes the pain and the bitter truths... and as GB keeps saying that everything changes... and that the world is not as rosy as I think it is... it was almost like I had started believing that pain outshines joy when PG sent me this song... this was a song that I have practically asked everyone who knows me about... I still dont know where I heard it.. the one I heard was in Hindi... And it went like... "Socha ye dil... kaisa sundar ye jahaan..." And here is PG sending the original English song (and I owe her a BIGG treat for this)... The world is indeed beautiful...

Sacrificing the gift

Every now and then one hears various views about how to live, one hears about success and failures, about love and pain, of friends and foes. One of the most common beliefs is that one should know what one wants to do in life. I find that very difficult to grasp, I find it difficult to believe that we can find what we want to do in life, the way I see it is, life is like a series of events some of which effect us and some don't; our responsibility is to do the best we can of that passing moment, of the immensely large number of things that we are capable of doing every moment pick the one thing that we like to do.. Do it with all the passion and love... not as one more thing that has to be done... It is only when we find that true love can we say that we have "used" that moment and fulfilled our duty.... Recently I read this Chinese proverb somewhere "If you are not putting in your best... You are sacrificing the Gift"...

Lets not sacrifice the gift...