Ummeed ! ( Hopes)

I am sitting at home, after (yet another) a failed attempt at asking someone out - feeling like a complete ass (Gaddha). While my miserable run with flirting continues, I get this forward from Seena which brought a little bit of hope into my life.




Ek Gadha:- Yaar mera malik mujhe bahut maarta hai.
[First Donkey: Friend, my boss hits me a lot]

Dusara Gadha:- To tu bhag kyu nahi jata.
[Second Donkey: So they why dont you run away?]

Pehla Gadha:- Bhag to jata par yahan future bada bright hai ..
[First Donkey: I would have run away, but the future looks very bright here]
malik ki khoobsurat beti jab shararat karti hai to malik kahta hai,
[my boss's scolds his beautifiul daughter whenever she is miscievious]
'Teri shaadi gadhe se kar dunga...!'
[and tells he that he would get her married to the donkey]
Bas isi ummeed me baitha hoon........
[I am living of this hope]

Keeping Hopes may not improve your future, but it will certainly
reduce the pain of Today !!!

Yea .. so given that, ..Main bhi bas isi ummeed me baitha hoon........

:D

Queen of my castle

I was forced to go with this title, but hell i was easily persuaded !


The castle that I refer to, is my wonderful apartment, just around the bend in Kader Nawaz Khan Road. In fact it is the first house on KNK Road. Its the lovely Mansarovar Apartments.

We moved over to Mansarovar sometime in the summer of 2005...and that's where i met the queen of my castle - literally!
The way we fist met each other is worth a mention. If my failing memory does prove right, it was one of those weekends, when I had come down home from B'lore and had as usual brought along a lot of office work with me. Yea .. that was it, I was working on developing a prototype for Revenue Projection and I was working on that day in and day out for about 7 days. So as usual I was in a mess, unshaven, unkept and on top of that totally lost in my project. And that's when the queen walks in. Poor thing, she must have had a fright. Now with that fist impression, you can imagine ... whatever followed could only have been better :D

What followed was nothing short of a fairy tale. As promised, Ashwini, I shall pen down some of those wonderful moments that we did share together while we were at Mansarovar...and if I do forget something, do feel free to re-jig my memory.


1)Ashwini has always pepped me up whenever I was low - which was like almost every other day.

2)On numerous occasion we have gone out on walks. Once we went all the way to Marina for a walk, the other time along KNK road to pay my bills, but that aside - mostly on the terrace or along KNK road. Its surprising, how she did not lose her mind when I kept bombarding her such crazy whimsical ideas of fun walks :D .

3)Every evening, when I came home from work, I would get off at Nungambakkam and walk down KNK road hoping that I bump into Ashwini. And invariably i don't - but yea that's my luck. When I get home, I usually shout out to Ashwini and she would be out on her balcony , we have a cheesy conversation with the watchamn staring at us and then having jinxed the watchman I get back home satisfied.

4) There was a small little stunt we (tried but failed miserably) pulled together - GRE. We decided one fine afternoon that we had to do something with our lives and GRE would be the way out of all our miseries. We tried hard - preparing for the vocab and maths. She was amazing with Vocab and I was better off in maths. That stunt lasted for a few weeks and then she got into NUS and me into LSE - and we did not have to write our GRE.
Thank God for small mercies.

5) The Milkshake episodes - I hate that one. Once in a while, I would take Ashwini out to the Barista next door and get her her fav Chocolate Milkshake. What annoyed me the most was that everytime the waiter took the order, he would be like - "Mam shall I get you the usual ?" and then reluctantly take his eyes of her and come over to take my order. The funny thing is that I always have an Iced Tea and when I say - yea I shall have the usual as well - he would go like - " Ummm and what would that be ? "


6) The Aditya stunt - i tried getting my colleague at Infy , Aditya , to get ashwini a milkshake - but knowing aditya .. he wouldn't spend a penny without seeing returns. That did not work out, but yea I had a lot of fun kidding Adi and Ash with each other.

7) The Friday and Saturday evening dinners. Invariably we would have dinner every weekend at one of our places. I remember how John uncle used to get Ashwini to call up the hotel and make a booking. Ashwini used to play her part well - acting like the hot secretary calling up the restaurant to make a booking for a bunch of us in the middle of the night. She would go like - "No no , we need a table right now , else Mr. John Abraham would be pretty upset".

8) My miserable attempts at getting her to let me take some snaps. Not worth mentioning - other than the fact that i failed miserably.

9) Drives - Adding that bit post reading Ashwini's comment. Of all the drives in her car, there is one of them that I distinctly remember. This was on the night I came home with her after Nithin and Dia's party. We were almost home when we found our quiet neighbour Mr.Bhatts car iun front of us. Ashwini was a bit tipsy and was annoyed at seeing them so late at night and she said " what are these Bhatts (butts) doing out at this time in the night?" Those were the good times. Other than that, we did a lot of drives in her Zip drive, was fun and yea once in a while I drove (but, yea Ashwini realised it was better if she drove)! Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaa !


I guess, we never realise how important the other person is until we move away from them. With Ashwini so far away, our relationship I believe has only strengthened. Thinking of all those times we had together at Mansarovar just reminds me of what a wonderful person you are and how good you have been to me.

Right now Ashwini is pursuing her masters at the NUS - or rather she is done with it- She is busy job hunting but she has agreed to make an exception and is now willing to settle down with a rich millionaire.
Ashwini is an adorable person - a genuine sweetheart.

A Formula for Failure

I coudnt help but take a snippet out of Paul Ormerod's latest book Why Most Things Fail and use it in this post. He quotes P.J. O'Rourke from this book Eat the Rich : "One thing that economists do know is that the study of economics is divided into two fields, "microeconomics" and "macroeconomics". Micro is the study of individual behaviour and macro is the study of how economies behave as a whole. That is, microeconomics concerns things that economists are specifically wrong about , while macroeconomics concerns things economists are wrong generally". (Don't mention this at the LSE, you would get slapped)

That led me to thinking deeply (:D) about failure. Failure is all around us! Government policies fail (almost always), markets have failed, predictions fail, businesses fail...even Newtons laws have failed (refer theory of relativity and the space time fabric in case you doubt me). My first class at LSE was about failures. My first assignment that followed the lecture was about investigating IS failures( IS according to Ian, is always a failure. so that wasn't a tough task). My attempts at flirting has been a failure (always), and my attempts at failing have also failed miserably(no its true, I had decided to fail one of my exams in the 3rd Semester of my engg...the subject was digital display systems... I had not studied a word for that exams and wrote all sort of nonsense in the paper... must have written for about 10 marks out of hundred and when the results came I got 96% ...so yea even that was a failure). Right now my writing this post instead of studying is also a sign of impending failure in my oh so sad exams.

But then, an optimist would say .... Failure is the stepping stone for success. And that leads us to
Bill Gates -> college dropout who founded Microsoft
George W. Bush -> failed oil executive who became president of the USA

Hmmm... guess I should go with the optimist

My Experiments with TRUST

I have not trusted many people in my life. Just a very few. And it takes me forever to trust anyone. Let me tell you a story of this chappie called Prashant.

I met Prashanth the very first day I arrived at the LSE. He was my senior, who had just landed a job with T-mobile in London. He was at LSE meeting up with his friends and Dr. Khanna (Ash to us). This was the day two major turning points in my life happened. One was Ash (do expect a separate post on this), and the other Prashant. As Steve Jobs said..its possible to join the dots when you reflect on your life. And Prashant is one of those very important dots in my life.

Now, life was not all that easy between us. Prashant is someone who is an ace at whatever he does and he is much better with technology than most of can even dream of being. Every discussion that I have had to date with Prashant, has always ended up as a major heated argument, with him coming down on the idea from a hard technology stand point and me pushing a hard ( i hope) business / i don't care standpoint. As you can imagine, neither of us would budge an inch from our points of view. But at the same time we do end up with a result...God alone knows how ! ! !


But in spite of all this arguments and debates, we listen to each other, discuss anything and everything without having to think of consequences and above all respect each other. To me, Prashant is someone I know whom I CAN trust and fallback on at any point in my life. He is my alter ego, my friend , philosopher and guide.

Prashant - You Inspire me!

GRADUATE JOBS AND INTERNSHIPS

The first thing that comes to mind when you think of taking up a MSc in London would be - Would i get a job? Can I work parttime while i study ? What are the intership options available.

This link should give you necessary details

Complexity is Opportunity - (to me the unwanted opportunity to fail ! ) why cant exams be simple !

Well the status may or maynot make sense ... but my idea is pretty simple .. why cant exams be a simple task... rather why exams in the first place ...

Revising Burrell and Morgan's four paradigm for Monday's paper got me thinking ( what to do , I am an Angellist... I think ! but, I do agree thinking on the day before the exam is a waste of time... and so is blogging .. but then .. what the heck)

The education system follows the functionalist paradigm: those who believe that there is a science of society as phsysics is a science of nature. Functionalists say that social reality is governed by immutable laws of causality that can be discovered through the scientific method, based on unbiased observation, supported by empirical evidence, and then used to advantage to explain and build cohesive and stable structures in society: the fundamental tenets of social engineering. And out of this fundamentall flawed thinking has risen the notion of exams and the education system. THey believe : feed the students with input -> take an exam -> test the output . the output decides how good or bad we are and if we are ready to take on the world.

Senseless? Hurrah to B&M !

Seena's Bday...

Happy Bday Seena !

Seena has been a wonderful friend and a companion in London .. one of my best. Guess my life here wouldnt have been the same without her... and today is her Birthday. Divya and Priyanka had planned an elaborate surprise. We got the gang together and went over to Seenas !



And I had promised long back (in one of my spirited moods) to cook her some good fish.

We all met up ... cut the cake .. gave her the 'facial'.. and then took a lot of photos followed by the usual nonsense gibberish conversations .. had a few laughs .. and then came back home to start studying for Monday's exam!

Its wonderful to know that I have friends lke Seena and Priyanka. I dont have enough words to tell them how much they mean to me ...

bits and bytes on accomodation in London

Hi All,
there seems to be a lot of queries regarding accommodation in London, private vs lse halls ..

Here are a couple of mails I got from an ex-lse student.

. In terms of costs, how much is a week at an lse hall? I can give u a comparison with staying elsewhere-anywhere else you'd have to pay a min of 150 a wk for a one bedroom unless u find someone to share with. If u stay in a flat, ud also have to pay council tax of 2000 a year per flat plus utility bills of abt 25-30 a month. Food would be about 50 a week and travel abt 20. So I guess lse is cheapest plus good way to meet people. I guess it all hinges on the course .... Ill try my best to come up with something for you today.
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

Hi Govind,
I would suggest passfield - it has the best social life and is fairly close to lse. Also good are bankside and high holborn. But these three have students of all ages - if u want only master students, go for butlers wharf (was where i stayed).....but drawback is that its quite far away from lse. 35 mins. I dont think u meant that ur options are lse hall and residence - u meant lse hall and intercollegiate residences right? The diff is that the first has only lse students. So id go for that....unless inter college is much cheaper.


Hope this helps

DISCLAIMER (expires on 21st May )

**will not respond to individual emails during exam period**

PLEASE POSTS YOUR QUERIES / COMMENTS HERE AND HAVE A DISCUSSION AMONGST YOURSELVES. I WILL PUT IN MY THOUGHTS AS WELL WHEN I GET THE TIME ... ITS EASIER THIS WAY RATHER THAN WRITING SIMILAR REPLIES TO ALL OF YOU... I UNDERSTAND YOUR ANTICIPATION AND TREPIDATION AS I WENT THRU THE SAME LAST YEAR .....ALL THE BEST FOR NOW

Thanks Priya for the advice ...

Discrimination and our lot !

Discrimination is my current frustration !

I hate the discrimination that i receive from my own country-men ! I guess, I althemore feel the need to rant out this frustration at this point in my life, when I stay away from my motherland. I hate being classified based on my religion , sex , colour , caste , region or anyother box in which I am supposed to belongl and it gets worse when this discrimination comes from one of my own (people).

The words of John Galt from Ayn Rand's epic novel "Atlast Shrugged" still rings in my ears... "The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours. But to win it requires total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence, which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth."

This is my prayer as well.

What we need is intellectual honesty. The only way people should be recognised and respected ( and again not discrimnated ) is not by these man made classifications but on the basis of his intellectual capcity. For this we need an 'open mind,' but an active mind - a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them criticially.

Only when we embrace each other with an open mind would we be able to discard such discrimination - it is then that we would learn to respect each other.

I look forward to this day. And this is the only ray of optimism that would dare have. Everything else is rubbish.... My role is that of a sketptic and of a hopeless pessimist - and I play my part well.

I am a Capitalist !

"Capitalism demands the best of every man – his rationality – and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him." (' Ayn Rand... For the New Intellectual' 1961) "When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism – with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as a separation of state and church."
("The Objectivist Ethics" in 'The Virtue of Selfishness')

I believe Capitalism is the way forward for India... Its time we phase out our so called implementaion of the socialist philopsphy in our country. Five Year plans and the plannig commisions must go. We need to think of how to uplift the country from its roots, from the villages upwards ...bottom up and NOT top down!

Two things which immediately come to my mind are Dr. Kalam's PURA project and Grassroot Innovation and the honey bee network !

Knowledge Powered PURA (Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas)
President Abdul Kalam's address to the Nation on the eve of Republic Day- 2003 :

More than two thirds of our billion population live in the rural parts of India. The vision of transformation to a ‘developed’ India can only be realized if we launch a mega mission for empowering the rural people. My visits to the rural parts of India have confirmed that the problem of rural India depends on the extent of connectivity available there. The connectivity that I refer to, would include four components. Physical connectivity by providing roads in rural areas, electronic connectivity by providing reliable communication network and knowledge connectivity by establishing more professional institutions and vocational training centers. Schools with best infrastructure and teachers who love teaching, primary health centres, silos for storage of products and markets for promoting cottage industries and business, employment opportunities for artisans are some of the elements of PURA. All this connectivity needs to be done in an integrated way so that economic connectivity will emerge leading to self actuating people and economy. Such Model of establishing a circular connectivity among the rural village complexes will accelerate rural development process by empowerment. I am sure that removal of poverty will call for Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas (PURA). The model envisaged is a habitat design that would improve the quality of life in rural places and make special suggestions to remove urban congestion also. Instead of village population coming to urban area, the reverse phenomenon has to take place.

The PURA has to be a business proposition economically viable and managed by entrepreneurs and local people and small scale industrialists, as it involves education, health, power generation, transport and management. Government’s support should be in the form of empowering such management agencies, providing initial economic support and finding the right type of management structure and leaders to manage and maintain.

More than two thirds of our billion population live in the rural parts of India. The vision of transformation to a ‘developed’ India can only be realized if we launch a mega mission for empowering the rural people. My visits to the rural parts of India have confirmed that the problem of rural India depends on the extent of connectivity available there. The connectivity that I refer to, would include four components. Physical connectivity by providing roads in rural areas, electronic connectivity by providing reliable communication network and knowledge connectivity by establishing more professional institutions and vocational training centers. Schools with best infrastructure and teachers who love teaching, primary health centres, silos for storage of products and markets for promoting cottage industries and business, employment opportunities for artisans are some of the elements of PURA. All this connectivity needs to be done in an integrated way so that economic connectivity will emerge leading to self actuating people and economy. Such Model of establishing a circular connectivity among the rural village complexes will accelerate rural development process by empowerment. I am sure that removal of poverty will call for Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas (PURA). The model envisaged is a habitat design that would improve the quality of life in rural places and make special suggestions to remove urban congestion also. Instead of village population coming to urban area, the reverse phenomenon has to take place.

The PURA has to be a business proposition economically viable and managed by entrepreneurs and local people and small scale industrialists, as it involves education, health, power generation, transport and management. Government’s support should be in the form of empowering such management agencies, providing initial economic support and finding the right type of management structure and leaders to manage and maintain.


Grass Root innovation and the honeybee network !
.... Will update soon .. !!!