Category: Society & Culture

  • Moving On

    once upon a time there was a town. the geography of it does matter, but we will come to it later. the town had a decent share of manufacturing units, and fairly big ones at that. these units understood their social responsibilities very well. they built their share of the infrastructure – roads, parks, living quarters; and since the aspiration levels of the citizens were at a reasonable level, life seemed to be good all around. people started settling there after their retirement coz of the good infrastructure and excellent climate. you could see happy smiles all around, no traffic snarls, no road rage, slow paperwork instead of frenzied mails, (no blogs too, but thats okay, i doubt whether any of us could do anything worthwhile then ;-)), altogether a leisurely pace of life. pops have enough money, so kids can enjoy at the pubs, which have started to happen. but life is one phenomenon where the laws of inertia does not work.
    enter the 90’s, entrepreneurism is the happening thing, software companies , (read start ups) appear on the horizon, a new breed of techies are born, they have the money, they have the career path figured out, they wanna spend, baby, and rao obliges, liberalisation is in…infrastructure has not exactly kept up with the pace coz these companies are more into branding than infrastructure, but still not that bad… pubs mushroom, discos are in place, life is a party and the animals are evolving. life is slightly hurried, hey, but what the hell, we are enjoying it!! inertia doesnt work, we have to move on.
    the 2000’s….the first gen techies are in middle age, but the new gen has almost the same mantras in place. then come the call centres, kids after college (some before college too) have access to quick money, so what if they have to be nocturnal !! kids, no i am not demeaning them in any way, but kids…. kids who have a limited, skewed view of life, kids who have no career path, kids who have no clue, no, have not thought about what life will be 10 years later, kids who will buy fast machines so they look ‘cool’ in front of their friends, kids who do not realise that their ol’ city hasnt got the infrastructure to support their lifestyle(infrastructure?? my a**, we are into cost cutting) , a city that has to adjust to the nocturnal needs of the new breed, but hey wait, there are guys who say it is shining, so it must be…. kids now, kids hoping to be kids forever…..inertia?? uh-huh
    2010’s…. the call centres that came in zooming are zooming out, the kids are told that their counterparts in a remote part of the world they have only heard about, can do work at a lower cost…so in the larger interests of the organisation the jobs are being sent there….the kids’ future just collapsed coz there aint no plan b.
    look at the town, no, the city- the plazas, the malls, the complexes are all empty coz the kids now have no money to spend, the new techies are too busy, the old techies have lost the fire…the manufacturing units are closed a long time back coz the kids never wanted to work there. somewhere along the line, it ceased to become a pensioners paradise coz the traffic got too heavy, the atmosphere too polluted, and life too fast. a city dying…..
    we can be happy now, coz this is not happening here. but this is my expanded view of what happened here. i am not a pessimist, lennon would hardly call me a dreamer, but realistic?? i think so……
    the political system ‘there’ is much less volatile, what about ‘here’? in a society and politic that is already divided and subdivided on regionalism, religionalism, casteism etc, can we afford the volatility when (and if) the jobs (which were an integral part of the shining) left us??
    sam pitroda, the man behind the std booths you see all around, says the telecom boom we see are a result of the seeds sown a couple of decades ago…. what are the seeds we have sown for tomorrow??
    check this out, not exactly in the realm, but getting there…………….but hey, maybe “its not for us to question why, its only for us to do and die”
    and so in
    manuscrypts trivia
    this is about us…., this is the link to the ‘bad sex’ awards, and my usual quotes
    “Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness” ~ James Thurber
    “Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.” and “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”~ Einstein
    “why cant male sheep be called heep?” ~ manu (couldnt resist)

  • We don’t need no India Shining

    thats probably what the IIMs want to be singing after the govt slashed their fee structure….. i am actually confused, and have very ambivalent thoughts on the issue…on one hand, i dont like the govt sticking its hands into something thats an established brand, and has shown thats its perfectly capable of handling its business, it looks like they wanna have a share of a good thing, maybe even use that in the ‘india shining’ campaign…. on the other hand, i also feel that a govt influence might make the IIMs more accessible….
    btw, the election commission has warned the govt not to spend the revenue from taxes for the campaign, so we might get a breather.. 🙂
    speaking of IIMs, i just had a thought, humankind protests against all kinds of disparities – race, sex, age etc..but arent institutions like IIMs promoting discrimination based on intellectual aptitude…. at every level of academic life, we strive to take tests and pass, arent we therefore subjecting ourselves to a screening for checking our levels of intellect….they are just standards that suit the majority… i get admission in a good college coz i performed well in school, i get a good job coz i did well in college, the list goes on….but what gives us the right to discriminate against those who arent as bright?? … is it right to condemn them to a life of misery, self doubt and frustration just because they cant utilise their brains to the extent we can?? but we do, coz if we dont, a lot of existing systems would crash!!
    saw “plan” during the weekend, expectations were close to nil coz of the reviews, but surprise, surprise, it wasnt that bad, which goes to show that you cant trust reviews all the time….sanjay dutt seems to be perfecting the ‘comic don’ character…. the movie has some corny shayari, courtesy, dutt and mahesh manjrekar, who has also done a good job..think this one takes the cake “sher ke saamne sher bolne se chooha sher nahi banta; bache paida karne hote hain, god lene se koi baap nahi banta”……. 🙂
    been reading a whole cartload of articles on ‘outsourcing’, am actually wondering whether He has outsourced sustenance to someone, that would answer a lot of questions regarding the way humankind is evolving, the ‘quality’ issues….btw, have a look at this link, a good read.which brings me to
    manuscrypts triviadont remember where i got it from, but its good
    In The Adventures of Griswald Gnome: A Fairy Tale for Children of all Ages, the magician gnome starts by saying, “I am a Peristaltic Basaltic Cabalist.””A reformed deformer, searcher for research, a regrind grinder, one who once faltered, but reflated and did rejoin as a joiner. If I might presume, I’m going to lecture you. This statement is my testament: my supreme objective is to preserve the perverse,”and the usual quotes
    “To a large degree reality is whatever the people who are around at the time agree to.”~ Milton Miller
    Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. ~ Einstein

  • Exact vs Abstract

    i will most prob buy a cd today, but am finding it difficult to choose between john denver and the corrs.. i know, the genres are different, i have listened to a couple of songs of both, so….will share the other point that is inspired by a ‘spark’ from ‘india unbound’..unfortunately the author does not give a great deal of space to it in the book…it is to do with exact vs abstract….we pursue the study of exact (science) more than the study of abstract (art)…maybe because it is more difficult to make our mark in the latter, and only when we make a mark do we get some monetary returns on it….but in the former, we dont need to be extra special to make money…but i envy americans coz they somehow manage to pursue their dreams, i am speaking in generalities, but if i sing reasonably well here, i wouldnt try all my best to do that, it is subjective but i am speaking more or less for a majority of indians …. i think it is do with a lot of factors – culture, attitude, conditions…..i hope we can reach that stage one day, coz if our work is based on our passion, we will be successful and happy, right??thats it for today, heres
    manuscrypts trivia
    just a forward i got…TWO TOUGH QUESTIONS Question 1: If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion? Read the next question before looking at the answer for this one. Question 2: It is time to elect a new world leader, and only your vote counts. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates. Candidate A – Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists. He’s had two Mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day. Candidate B – He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening. Candidate C He is a decorated war hero. He’s a vegetarian, doesn’t smoke, drinks an occasional beer and never cheated on his wife. Which of these candidates would be your choice? Decide first, no peeking, then scroll down for the answer. ANSWERS Candidate A is Franklin D. Roosevelt. Candidate B is Winston Churchill. Candidate C is Adolph Hitler. And, by the way, the answer to the abortion question: If you said “YES”, you just killed Beethoven. Pretty interesting isn’t it? Makes a person think before judging someone.

  • Our kinda modern

    first up, a very happy friendship (yester) day to all of you…though to be honest, there shouldnt be a day for this, friends are forever… oh, well, those poor archies guys have to find ways to make money, dont they..hehei have finally finished ‘india unbound’, and am now reading roald dahl’s supposedly best stories, and to be very honest, after 110 pages out of 360 odd, it still hasnt delivered the kind of stuff it promises on the back cover, so it is not on my medialist…!!
    there are some guys outside my office protesting against the government for something, regular stuff in india, but the difference today is that they have stripped down to their undies…hehe, gives a whole new meaning to ‘india unbound’..yeah, speaking of that book, stll a couple of good points to share…one, about our concept of modern….our modern is mostly ‘western’… whatever is accepted there gets accepted here too…. from pizzas to music videos, oit is ironic that there is a jam packed crowd for every performance of indian maestros in the west, but here, its is only a niche audience….i dont think quality is the chief criterion we employ when we choose goods, services or whatever, there is basically a bias towards whatever is western, and thus we tend to kill whatever is homegrown, yes there are brands that survive, but i believe they entered the indian consumer’s brain before the concept of ‘western-modern’ came about……the other point, tomorrow’s post….meanwhile
    manuscrypts trivia
    “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” – Carl Sagan

  • If its ok with them…

    it seems the quest for happiness is dogging everyone, (read wonderbug’s post today)…like i wrote a couple of days back, ‘true happiness’ is so dynamic, that we only have just enough time to experience it, so defining it is way way off….Carrying on from yesterday, with most ‘sparks’ from the book i am reading now…..i doubt if our generation can produce a bhagat singh…..who would die for a cause…. just a thought, who knows what his intentions were, maybe he measured his happiness by his martyr status, and made a gamble….but i doubt.. i am still a fan, and believe in the nobility of his intentions…we have produced individuals who would endure for a cause they believe in, the cause is usually money…the college dropout who is the richest guy in the world, the petro giants whose dad started out as a petrol pump attendant in yemen… only stating the rule, not the exceptions…. not taking anything away from their achievements,but the motive..and so it is that most heroes today are industrial giants, and not gandhis and nehrus…again the rule, not the exception….so , society has changed in terms of aspirations and therefore motives…i am not talking of sailors who went in search of treasures, i am talking of commonfolk…where did it all start, hmm, not here, though we had our tatas and birlas, the industrial revolution really happened in europe and america…is that why we always look for endorsements from there…why we compare our quality of life with them, love the coke, mtv lifestyle…dont mistake me, i am not talking swadeshi here, just wondering….prof. amartya sen lauded kerala yesterday for its high life expectancy, low infant mortality rate etc..but with all that, kerala is on a downhill now, the attitude hasnt undergone much change…kerala does have all the indeces of quality of life in a position, where it compares favorably, even with the west…but…..to be continuedmeanwhile, all you guys interested in a kind of lateral thinking, check out this have a great weekend, everyone, not before you check out
    manuscrypts trivia
    “You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.”~ Albert Einstein