Random Ramblings

He waited for almost 2 hours. The Captain was about to come. He was about to be given a hero's welcome in his home town, a not so big city. And why not ? After all he had won the world championship after beating arch rivals in a nail-biting final, when people had almost written them off at the beginning of the tournament. They were now the world champions in that format of game. This was a shorter version of the game. But things were never the same. He was among many people who burnt the captain's effigy few months ago. They were protesting against him. They even tried to attack his house and car. Reason - Extremely poor performance in the World cup tournament., which was another version of the same game. The captain was then just an ordinary player, who performed miserably in the tournament. Back then, he was even referred by someone as a disgrace to the team by few people. But now it was a different situation. The noise was becoming louder by each passing moment. The captain

This is just another incoherent random collection of arbit thoughts ... rather questions, one of the posts of "direct dil say ..." kind of posts. Some of these are within some corner of my heart occasionally venturing to the surface and often close to the outer word but are once again sent to the same obscure corner of the heart where it was before. What motivates us to do things we do? I think more often than not we are guided by the fact that everyone else is doing it. There maybe a small element of "we wish to do it" ... but again after some probing it comes to XYZ is doing so OR others are doing it kind of things. Maybe it is too deep rooted. Why do people expect us to be different ... yet be like "everyone else" ? Maybe, it is due to a kind of peer pressure, or due to a fear of 'rejection', Or is there any other reason? Why are many people not even open minded enough to realize the need of being open minded. And how can we make them realize t

Dictionary meaning Hospitality - 1. the friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers. 2. the quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way. Indians are believed to be one of the most hospitable people. It may be true to quite an extent, but there are some elements which seem strange. Say the obsession with eating, or to put it in some other way, guest eating well being a surrogate of a good, hospitable treatment. This may be more visible in interior or 'traditional' parts of country where ofter the person who is 'guest' is supposed to be 'following' or 'eating' thing served by the host. Plus there are some unwritten rules like you need to be always smiling, you need to get along well with everyone irrespective of age, believe with XYZ rules and all and blah blah. To hell with what you believe in, to hell with what you like or dislike, to hell with what you are as a person! It all rem

This is one more post with nothing in particular. It was just that I was feeling like writing something crappy as no one was listening to me. I was watching a movie, not studying, was in a mood to do nothing in particular, getting bored and all that stuff. Actually I was browsing through people’s Orkut profiles. They have written such a nice bunch of krap. I mean all sounded so unreal, so phony. I mean, every second guy is a cool guy. That I must have seen million times by now. This all scares hell out of me. I mean I don’t say that I am someone great or someone like Howard Roark or John Galt, nor I can be. I don’t have such great ideals or morality or any such krappy stuff. But it all sounds so unreal and millions tonnes of aaattitude and exhaggerations thrown in. Dude … they are so arrogant. I mean, they are such idiots that they think that only they are the only human beings on earth, and others are just crappy combination of cranky bones and muscles. And all those artificial and c

This is just a random take on some of the Bollywood movies. Have tried to represent on a graph, with two axes. This classification is quite intuitive and may at times seem devoid of logic. It is inspired by techniques of perceptual mapping in marketing research and somewhat from strategic mapping. But this is about my take on it, with minuscule impurity of the world view. Also, a classification doesn't automatically label a movie being good or bad. This is done with no particular end in mind. It was just a random time waste ka idea while watching a movie and surfing the internet in parallel (Please click on the pic to see it clearly) My personal favorites are available in my profile though !

The lights faded. The shooting for the day was over. The hero retreated in his van, away from the public glare. He was one of the most popular man on the silver screen in the tinsel town. He had been ruling the roost since over a decade now. It was he who dictated shots to the directors and producers. He was linked with half a dozen ladies, mostly the top most beauties of the silver screen, before tying knot and breaking it up with his schooldays buddy. He enjoyed public adulation to the maximum. The public once went gaga over him, only to love to see him fall after a string of flops, before he came back with a bang with the biggest grosser of the decade. This was four year ago. Since than there has been no looking back. He had delivered 9 blockbusters in a row since then. He now commanded highest billings in the industry. Calling him a superstar would e an understatement. Now he called shots. The public loved to imitate him. He enjoyed the limelight earlier. He had always dreamed to

Feels good to have the following published on IBNLive website ... wo bhi photu ke saath :-) http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/iday2007/blog_story.php?id=46747 Below is the direct copy paste from the above link (sans photu) _________________________________________________ In history, very few nations can boast of having a journey as monumental as India’s. We were once considered to be sone ki chidiya few centuries ago, we lived as a British colony for few centuries, and then we became known by the western world as ‘the land of snake charmers’ and are now considered being a potential superpower. Yet, India continues to be a land of contrasts. Our GDP is growing at a rate of 9%, yet there are places which remain decades or even centuries backwards. Businessmen are entering into exclusive club of world’s richest men, yet a fourth of the population lies below the poverty line. We have 5 star hotels coming up, yet there are hordes of people who cannot afford even a square meal per day. We are

“Hello … Is anybody sitting here?” “No”, she said, making room for him to keep his book on the library desk. She kept wondering why he would come to sit on the same table as hers in the library, while others were lying empty and more importantly, when they did not talk much in first 3 years of their engineering. In fact, they usually did not get along well, especially after many spats earlier during their college life. They did not see eye to eye in any matter be it scheduling of tests, sharing of notes, or even sorting out an issue with a faculty member or anything. In fact, once in the canteen they were arguing over petty issues like who should get the sandwich first, as both ordered same thing nearly at same time and the sandwiches came at an interval of 2 minutes. But there was more to it than plain not getting along. It was after all a matter of image. If he relented, his image would be tarnished in his group, and more so in the boy’s hostel. Same was the case with her.

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.” – Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged) There are some premises on which you build your thoughts and opinions; and often there are times when you visit these very assumptions and question them. These are usually when we find that something is not in sync with what we believe in or what we believed as self evident. Assumptions exist at different levels. At individual level, it these are usually the core beliefs upon which we base our other beliefs and attitudes. Most of them have been passed on to us, as part of our environment or teaching. There are some assumptions on which institutions like the legal system are based, like principle of natural justice or principle of equality of all men. And there are assumptions in bureaucracy about seniority being equivalent of competence. Those in favor of caste based reservations (in principle … and not just poli

(Disclaimer: I am NOT justifying any action or behavior. I am just speculating why people usually act so) _________________________________________________________ “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented” – The Truman Show (a 1998 movie starring Jim Carrey) The above line explains a great deal about why we hold on to some beliefs as gospel truths, and form our judgment about things and act in a specific pattern. This movie (which I feel is still quite under-rated!) had Jim Carrey, a person whose entire life had been a live, non-stop, unedited television show. He lived in a world which was completely artificial; everything, everyone knew that everything were fake. But the person was real. His emotions were real. He was conditioned to a certain realities of world, and believed in it. The makers of the show did not want to show him what the ‘actual’ world was. He was made not to want to explore the outside world, made to fear things that could have led him