Infinite loop of Indian Democracy...

A man is killed, not for extortion but as a fake terrorist, a minister orders the killing, not for the nation's security but for business lobby profits, some cops fake the encounter, not for its citizen's defence but for promotions, a chief minister accepts responsibility, not for his honesty but to capture secular votes, the incumbent government exposes the issue now, not for its righteousness but to distract from inflation, a particular channel bombards the audience, not for pursuit of truth but for its government allegiances and TRP, we choose to watch this channel and get angry, not to act on it but just to criticise. A man is killed...

The Wedding Thrashers

Its been a long wedding season this quarter, starting from early November right until 1st week of February and attending a lot of weddings has brought a certain type of behavior amongst the attendees to my notice; I call them the ‘Wedding Thrashers’. Sounds similar to Wedding Crashers?? Well I believe the former are worse than the latter ones.

So who exactly are these ‘Wedding Thrashers’? Well it could be anyone around you who’s attending the wedding; it could be your friends, family members, I discovered that even my own sister is an expert WT! I used to be one too until I realized my mistake.

I think we all will agree that lots of weddings are attended for the sake of formalities and one keeps hearing “Aare ghar pe khana nahi banaya tha…isliye aa gaya”, “Doesn’t look nice if we don’t attend”, “I just got this new dress and wanted to wear it for some event and this wedding came up!” and a million other bahanas for having to attend a wedding as an obligation. And these are the perfect set of people who turn into Wedding Thrashers and don’t even realize they are at it!

“I think the bride’s nose is too big” Giggles Giggles Laughter

WT 1 : “I don’t understand why everyone has to have their wedding in XYZ Hall/Hotel. I am sick and tired of eating here”
WT 2 : “ I know yaar, I think I have started recognizing some of the staff around here too!!”

WT female 1 : “What kind of make-up is that!!! My hair looks better when I get out of bed in the morning”
WT female 2 : “Totally, it looks like an eagles nest, and did you see how evil looking her mom-in-law is! God save the girl”

WT male “Saale ka matka lag gaya hai!!” grinning at the groom while saying this.

If you have ever heard these conversations around you in weddings then you have experienced Wedding Thrashers, and if you have been part of these conversations, then you are a WT yourself!!

Why am I making so much fuss about casual comments passed during a wedding you may ask? Well the point is that 2 individuals and their families are tying a knot after having taken one of the most important decisions of their life and want to share their joy with you by wanting you to be a part of that memorable event. They must have spent endless nights trying to arrange things for their guests, not to mention the amount of $$$ spent that keeps the F&B industry in business. After all that pyaar and pain what WT’s do is simply walk into the wedding hall and be critical about anything that doesn’t look right to them. Well ofcourse there will be goof ups, the couple might not be Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the food might be a little too oily for your liking, but all these cosmetic details of the wedding shouldn’t distract you from the main purpose of being at that wedding, which is to congratulate, support and shower blessings and good wishes to those who thought that your presence mattered that day!

This is no movie or restaurant to play critic about the poor direction, make-up, acting, ambience, food or service! Think beyond that, take a look at the close relatives of those party to the wedding; look at the alacrity with which they welcome you, the happiness on their face, their warm hospitality and then the event will look much bigger than trivial things like sabzi was too teekha and poor decoration. Sometimes in life, one needs to have a selfless approach towards things, and most of us do have it but lose our way because we forget the real reason behind the action, WT’s are guilty of this, and the sooner they mend their ways, the better it will be for everyone to enjoy the real pleasure of the event.

Elephants of Indian Cricket!

The recent decision taken by the Indian cricket selection board to go into a big Australian series with a young team is definitely a brave one! But this article is not about applauding or criticizing that decision. Its to draw analogy with a documentary which I saw on National Geographic some years ago...(well yea...so I am a little geeky on occasions and I do enjoy watching NGC and Discovery!!)

The film was about a new wildlife reserve being set up somewhere in Africa. So animals were procured from already established wildlife reserves from various parts of Africa, to be introduced into the park. There were giraffes, wild beasts and packs of other animals including a young herd of Elephants. The specialty of this herd was that was that this group was entire consisting of young male and female elephants and no elders, since it was difficult to transport old elephants plus it was difficult for them to adjust to a new environment.

Everything was going well in the park, with the animals adjusting themselves in their new home, but soon a very bizarre occurrence came into light. The young male elephants in the park started getting very aggressive; uprooting trees and causing damage to property and life. A team was flown in to study this sudden destructive behavior that developed amongst the young males. The team noted that not only had the herd become more violent, they had also started mating way before the average mating age in elephants. Their eating patterns and lifestyle were studied intensive and no particular reason could be concluded for this aggression until someone pointed out that it could be the absence of older males in the pack which could be leading to this wreckage. This was noted and three mature male elephants were introduced in the pack as no alternate solutions could be thought of. And indeed it worked; 1 month after introduction of the new elephants, the violence went down and gradually it disappeared.

The explanation given to this entire episode was that the young elephants did not have any guidance or role models to replicate or follow initially and hence went on a rampage showcasing their power and might without any fears. With the introduction of elders in the herd, there was a sense of fear and at the same time an example was set in terms of behavior.

Whats the relevence of this with the Indian cricket team? - you may ask. Well, the situation of the new Indian team is quite similiar as that wildlife park; Dravid & Saurav have been dropped from the Indian team, Kumble and Laxman returned after the Test series, and this leaves a whole crop of young boys in the dressing room barring Sachin and Gary Kirsten. There is no doubt that these young boys are like the young elephants of the jungle. The have great potential and talent, and the onus lies on them to take Indian cricket forward; but in the absence of senior pros in the team, it might become difficult for the players to handle sudden fame and media attention. From Yuvraj, Harbhajan and Sreesanth's recent on and off-field behavior its clear that they aren’t the best examples of well behaved gentleman, with Yuvraj swearing and abusing on the field quite frequently during the recently held 20-20 championship.

That is where I believe there is a need for a few senior players to spend time with the boys, not only for technical assistance but also to teach these guys how to live in the media spotlight and not get carried away with the money and adulations causing permanent damage to themselves and Indian cricket like those young Elephants did to the park. But I hope that humans are different from Elephants, and even if there are no seniors in the team, they shall but their best effort in terms of performance as well as demeanor and act as perfect ambassadors on the game.

Mighty IT - Decoding the language

Hi all, sorry for not having written anything for so long….have been very busy for the last 6 months, 1st with college placements, then partying and rejoicing my placement with Infosys, and finally with all the work that landed up in my lap thanks to the placement. Err…actually the last line is a complete lie!! I couldn’t think of anything to write about for all these days and hence the gap. But all that is about to change, I am planning a return after a hiatus of almost half a year and what best thing to write about than my work or rather the industry in which I work.

After a lot of speculation, analysis and counseling during my MBA days, I came to the conclusion that IT was the sector of my interest. To be frank it wasn’t too difficult a choice; I had slogged it out in the sun during my summer placements and tanned skin, loss of hair and low pay were reasons good enough for me to choose IT as a ‘comfortable’ sector to work in. The sector turned out to be quite an interesting one, with the best brains in the industry striving hard to put Indian software services on the global map and I must say they have succeeded to large extent. But this article isn’t about that, it is about the corporate jargons that I came across in my so far short n sweet stint in the industry. Here is a list of a few jargons that I have come across – some I could decode the others are still bouncers for me.

1. Out-of-box: For any person with average English knowledge, out-of-the box is not a new word. But welcome to IT where deletion of the word ‘the’ absolutely inverts the meaning of the word. In IT parlance ‘out-of-box’ means standard features offered by a software packages minus any customizations and configurations, unlike out-of-the box which means different, unconventional and odd. In other words, out-of-box in IT stands for plain vanilla – now I wonder if that’s an IT jargon too!!
   
2. Folks: This term may be specific to Infy, or may be used across the industries, am not too sure about that, but I sure do find it amusing!! So whenever someone is addressing a group of people, he/she addresses then as “Folks”!! Not Guys, Not Team, But Folks!! 1st thing that comes to my mind after I hear this word is a group of traditionally dressed people, all set to do a ‘Folk dance’ on some ‘Folk Songs’!! Just when I manage to get rid of that image, the second thing that pops in my mind is that pig/daffy duck/bugs bunny from Looney tunes cartoons that says “that’s all folks!!” By the time I manage to kick out the second image out of my brain, the speaker is almost done with his speech and the damage has been done!!!
   
3. Hang-around: This is the favorite line for all bosses of the entire lot of benched guy in IT!! 1st week of bench is bliss, in the 2nd week one runs out of interesting websites and somehow even the newspaper doesn’t have any good articles!! 3rd you dare to go to your boss out of sheer boredom to ask (read as beg) for your next assignment and he says “Actually there are a few things planned in the pipeline, but nothing concrete – you just ‘Hang-around’ and touch base with me next week!! Hang-around??!! What exactly does he expect me to do!! And then when you have absolutely nothing to do, you keep landing up meeting your boss in all the odd places – the elevator, the coffee machine, the wash room, the longest aisle on your floor…where each one of us keep staring at the other, and all we can manage is a smile or a infrequent “hello” cause both know there is nothing else to talk about!!
   
4. Dynamics of the IT industry: This phrase is used so often in IT that it might beat the word ‘the’ and become the new most frequently used phrase/word in the world!! (*please see the list of the most frequently used 100 words at the end of this article, for all those who are interested in knowing it, and have nothing better to do in life). For every question that cannot be answered quantitatively or qualitatively in IT, there is only one answer, “you have to get used to the dynamics of the IT industry!!” ‘Why am I being relocated?’, ‘Why was I not allocated to this project?’, ‘Why am I not getting a release in this project?’, “Why did Britney Spears get a divorce?’ can all be explained by one common reply “The Dynamics of IT industry!!”

The 100 commonest English words found in writing around the world:-

Source - http://www.askoxford.com/
( Could you believe it that f*** does not feature in that list!! This thing is so f***ing rigged!! Hehe)

Freshizza - Dough Disaster !!

Recently Pizza Hut India launched the Freshizza range of pizzas with a large advertisement campaign. Anyone who visited the Pizza Hut joint after that launch must surely have been prescribed the All-New-Freshizza which has a dough made freshly on the same day unlike all other pizza bases. Everything fine till here...but then I noticed one small glitch!!

Now Pizza Hut itself has 3 dough crust :-

1. Thin Crust
2. Normal Crust
3. Freshizza Crust

So not all pizzas at the joint are Freshizzas..i.e. made on the same day...that privilege is only for Freshizza eaters.... and if that is the case....even their own pizzas (thin crust and normal crust) are as stale as the other competitors pizzas...the ones whom Malaika calls "Basi Thakelas!!"

I wonder if this is a case of bad marketing idea...or is Pizza Hut trying to ride on the customers ignorance...whatever the case...lets see how the whole concept works out!!

My opinion about the Freshizza is that it is thinner than the regular crust but actually a bit more difficult to bite into compared to the regular crust..so the entire idea of having a crust "Not too thick...Not too thin" gets nullified...my call on Freshizza...it will not be a favourite amongst the customers and finally just become a part of their menu card!!

VIRUDDH - The Film

Another Amitabh Bacchan movie release which makes me wonder how long will this man go on....!!
Viruddh is a movie about a family which gets punished for supporting the truth. It gives us a very realistic picture of legal system that exists in our country.
Mahesh Manjrekar handles the story well and unlike many other movie makers who have ventured into similiar story themes, he doesnt over-do the torture and the torment faced by the Patwardhan Family.
The bond between the family has been potrayed well with the help of several small anecdotes and incidents that are packed in the first half of the movie making it very enjoyable.
Amitabh and Sharmila Tagore have delivered power packed performances and with so many mindblowing performances, this year the question raised wont be as to who will win the Best Actor award but rather for which of his movies will Amitabh win it!!
Sanjay Dutt and John Abraham perform moderately well in whatever small roles that they have in the flick.
Another very noticable thing about the movie is the advertisements inserted in the movie. Though they may sound quite out-of-place, I find it a much better way of financing movies than getting money from the underworld. Infact even the advertisers would be quite satisfied as they find the complete attention of the audience when in the movie theatre unlike when in on TV where the audience have the liberty of switch channels.
The end is a bit bland and could have been handled better. The movie shows the judge apologising to Mr.Bacchan for the pain that he has been thru and says that all the system has to say to him is "Sorry". This gives a feeling of injustice and instead the judge should have taken steps to improve the system so that another patwardhan family doesnt suffer.
Overall a very good movie, every child should watch it, because apart from the entertainment, there is a lot to learn from the movie. It just made me realise the things that we take for granted when we take the lttle risks in our life.....so what happens if i am a bit late for a lecture...is it more hazardous than the aftermath of a road accident that happened cause i drove my bike way too fast just to make it on time. Or is the scenery so beautiful while hanging out of the train that its worth being handicapped for the entire life!!!!
Life is very precious and we need to understand the attachments that come with them. The movie has made me much wiser and I have got more than my moneys worth from the movie....after a very very looong time.