Random Ramblings

Often, I have seen and observed human beings who think in similar way, who act in similar way given a similar situation situation. They have similar values and beliefs, and deviations adherence to these norms or questioning them seems unthinkable. It is as if giving 10 such people same set of stimulus and getting exactly the same output from all 10 of them. Not only it does exist ... it is often actually encouraged, and at times forced upon. For instance I have seen kids who are forced to become right handed just because it seems odd to be a left handed in a world full of right handed people. Even if this means labored eating and writing using by using right hand. Or almost every other unsuspecting 2-year old kid expected to recite millions of things millions of times before the guests. Often you are expected, and at times forced to have same set of interests so that you fit into the society. For instance you must like similar hindi film music, you must like and appreciate dance and...

One of the important tools used by marketers for identifying potential market is market segmentation, in which subgroup of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics are grouped together. Using similar concept, people can be segmented based upon their basic philosophy or their basic approach towards life. It might be extremely difficult, as not all may express their beliefs openly. Maybe few sort of weird approaches mentioned below might help. One such method can be segmenting on basis of their movie or book preferences. For example a person whose favorite book is The Fountainhead or 1984 is likely to be different from a person whose favorite books include Sidney Sheldon and likes. Or a person who likes reading The Catcher in the Rye over and over again might be different from the one who prefers Eric Segal instead! Similarly a person whose favorite movies includes likes of Jaane bhi do Yaaron or Rang de Basanti would be different from a person relishing Suraj Bar...

"If only I had ..." "I should have ..." "I shouldn't have ..." "It was too harsh on me ..." "That wasn't too fair ..." ... and many more such common refrains we hear, here and there. The underlying thing remains the same - regretting things which could have been different, had some decision or some input been different. Often these phrases seem to be excuses for things having gone wrong or unfavorable, and often they are the reasons why others did better than us. But, if I lost to any of other factors which I may regret, there might be some other factors in which the person who wins may regret. Maybe, there wouldn't be any person in the world without his share of regrets, including the most powerful or the wealthiest person or most successful person in any field. Probably, that young business tycoon sitting in his ivory tower still feels bad having fought and broke up with his girl friend few years ago, but he chose no...

"Hi, How r u doing ?" "I am fine" "Howzz life ?" "M doing great. Life is great." "Great. Life is great at my end too... you tell, What's new ? "Nothing special. Enjoying at Delhi" How many times has this or one of its variant been repeated! Maybe often, be in case of two friends catching up after quite some time catching up probably on a social networking site like Orkut, or catching up through chat or mails. Maybe, in case of a telephonic conversation, it may last a bit longer getting to some the specifics. But more often than not, the script is similar. Usually people are always doing great, they are always happy. The facade usually remains similar. But how much of those times do we actually manage to look beyond the facade? Maye, very rarely. Maybe many of these goody goody things are quite 'good' if not great. But often behind this are many layers - layers which are hidden from majority of the outside world by means...

"Freedom of expression is the freedom to say what you want, as long as you say what they want to hear" - Freedom of expression – One of the hallmarks of great societies of the world; one of the basic rights guaranteed by our constitution. But is it all in theory? Take the case of Tasleema Nasreen or M.F. Hussain or students of MS University, Baroda or many others who dare to express things against the norm, but have to face wrath of some self-appointed moral police every now and then? … Or consider countless others who do not even dare to express, because of the fear of consequences from likes of Shiv Sena or Bajrang Dal or infinite others self appointed guardians of our culture. Yes. As a nation we have had fairly decent record on this front, if not anything great … but that is not enough. It must be made much better if we need to progress as a society. But where are we heading for ?

Figure this - Some (publicity hungry!?) lawyer sues Mr. Narayan Murthy for showing disrespect to our national flag! Some other (publicity hungry!?) lawyer sues Sachin Tendulkar for showing disrespect to our national flag by cutting some Tiranga cake! There have been many other controversies related to insult on national flag, and pertaining to millions of code of conduct to deal with it. But, probably these two have been he most high profile ones in recent times! But all seems too idiotic to me. Probably these two persons in question have contributed million times more to the nation than those 'petitioners'. And they are being belittled on basis of doing some act which they think is a proxy for insulting national flag, which they believe is a proxy for disrespecting the country. Hadh hai ! But, a part of blame lies with the kind of laws and code of conduct that exists for national flag. Maybe, we are too much concerned about proxy for respecting a nation, than doing something c...

He was 10 years old. When asked he said that he was 15 years old. He didn’t know why. It was just that his master told him to do so. His name was Raju. When he was born, he was named as Shivkumar, but that name did not suit his master. So his name was changed. His master owned a small juice shop in some big institute, with around 500 people. Most of these students were his customers. They visited him regularly for juice, cold drinks, eatables, cigarettes etc. This was a popular hangout, chiefly because of large credit extended by Sharmaji Raju had 3 other siblings -Two sisters of age 13 and 11 respectively and a brother of 7 years. The eldest sister worked in a small carpet making unit. She has been employed since 3 years and worked for 12 hours a day without taking and day off. Probably, in a year or two she will be married to someone from a nearby village. Probably her family would get few thousand rupees in bargain! The younger sister was employed full time with a sort of well to ...

An organized communal riots, gaining the proportions of a pogrom ... but the popularity of the person in command (Mr. M) increased and he got a landslide victory in elections! 5 years later - Mr M walks away (rather runs ...!) from a popular TV show when quizzed about his role in that pogrom. A (somewhat questionable!) TV sting showing Mr M's role in that riots Mr M banning TV channels which are about to telecast that! and Mr M and his aides refusing to come out clean ... Still he continues to be at the helm of affairs. He ruled the roost for a long time despite his highly questionable conduct (... without giving any defense, but rather perpetrating hatred which makes us believe more in his role!) Still, he rules the roost (at least as on Friday 26th October, 2007) ... rather he is allowed to ... Without taking any sides, I am just tempted to ask are we living in a civilized society, where we are driven more by hatred than anything else? If yes, what kind of civilized society is...

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 ...

(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 ...

Recently I read a quote in TOI: " What is difference between Indian democracy and American? Ans. In American demoracy it is OK to kiss in public, in Indian it is OK to pee in public but not to kiss in public " Moral police, what do you say? Probably you would love people to be forever in the dark and not make any choice out of their will, but rather they would love to see them towing to their line of thought, or rather lack of it, pollute the culture of free will and people taking responsibility for their actions (if it exists !), and ransack the place where they read this thing, if at all they do.

Few hours and it has been world of a difference. I had to catch a flight and to catch that I had to go to Delhi taking a 2 hour ride in general compartment of a train. In the general compartment, it was not much overcrowded, maybe 120 odd people in a bogie that can seat around 80 people. Not overcrowded by any standards in this part of world, and they all were comfortably adjusted at their seats. There was a teen smoking his beedi, who reluctantly put it off after I complained that it was causing uneasiness in me. Then there was that lady in her teens probably married who was hollering on probably everyone out there. Then there was a group of 3 ladies, of whom one was a grandmother, and 2 had probably 9 kids between them (I could count only till 9!). They seemed highly ignorant about where Delhi was and were reluctant to believe that they had still more than an hour before Delhi came. Yet they were adamant on being close to gate as they had kids and didn’t want to be left behind when...