Relationships these days!

Saw this pic and couldn't help agreeing! :-)

Dogs and Humans

We humans are a funny species. Every morning near my home, i see a lot of people walking  dogs with most of them being hired to walk the dogs. The irony of the whole thing is that we take an animal from the wolf family (which was used for hunting purposes earlier before it was domesticated), tie it, confine it to a small place, feed junk, make it lazy and fat,  then hire a person to walk the dog to give it exercise and keep it fit. Entire industries have come up in pet foods, pet doctors, pet hotels etc

The Personality Cult and Lack of Tolerance for Criticism

If there is one thing we are the undisputable number in the world, I think it should be in practising personality cult and hero worship, whether in sports, movies or politics. The trigger to write about this topic is the overdose of Sachin mania in the last few weeks, but it is not about Sachin or against him… he is a good and humble person who hasn’t let all the success and adulation get to his head. It is rather about our mindset.

Let me give a few examples from the field of sports.

Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo may be great footballers and make big money, but they won’t be considered equal to Maradona or Pele till they win a World Cup for their country.

Michael Jordan had to win many NBA titles before he became the Chosen One. Kobe Bryant even after winning 3 NBA titles with Shaq, had to win a few more without Shaq to prove others that he is great in his own right. More recently LeBron James had to win a few NBA titles to launch his way to greatness.

Federer may have the most gifted and talented player, but still he has to win 17 grand slams in all surfaces to be in considered among the all-time greats. So is Nadal.

But we are different. Objectivity and Rational thinking has no place when it comes to our holy cows. Even if someone attempts it, it is brushed off. This is damaging the cause in many ways. One is real merit may go unrewarded. People who do the work get overshadowed and may get demotivated. Secondly is that these people become bigger than the cause. People watch cricket just for Tendulkar, watch a movie just to see the Rajini or SRK irrespective of the quality of the movie and people voting for leaders (several) irrespective of the performance. Some people would even prefer a Sachin scoring a century over a win.

Why is it so? I think it is inbuilt in our psyche. All our mythologies are about eulogising a warrior or king or a God. We likely have carried over the eulogising part, but over time, we may have lost the ability to objectively evaluate their achievements. So overboard we have gone that we have lost the ability to take objective criticism in the right spirit. Any objective criticism of an icon or ideology will invariably result in a strong or sometimes violent reaction and so people who can speak up against mass opinion are just going to shut-up and we as a society are not going to evolve or progress.

Note: I have deliberately used the term objective criticism as there is also a tendency for some to criticise the person rather than the problem. This is of course no excuse to being intolerant of objective criticism.

London Calling!

I got an opportunity to visit London during end of August. I was travelling on business to UK and my company's UK office was located in Ipswich which was about 80 miles from London.  Started a day earlier than I would have otherwise to get some time to see around London before  going to Ipswich. Got to spend a day and half in London and started liking London. I wasn't expecting to like when I went there.
There were huge open spaces in Central London like the Hyde park, St James park, Area near by Buckingham palace etc. There were also a lot of space on the side of roads for walkers and cyclists and you actually see a lot of them walking and cycling around unlike US. The weather was very pleasant that time and it was really a pleasure to walk around and sitting on open top bus and sight-seeing!
The other thing I liked a lot about London is that old and the new  co-existed very well and they have retained the historical structures and the architecture unlike the way Glass and Concrete structures are taking over Indian cities. The palaces reminded me of the architecture of Hiranandani Palace Gardens in Oragadam Chennai. It was not surprising as the township was modelled on British palaces, but I was surprised that how closely it resembled the British palaces.
The other aspect of London that I really liked was that it was multi-cultural. While walking around or in the underground tube, I was surrounded by people from different ethnicity's speaking different languages. You could speak your native language anywhere without looking out of place. You could even see people dart across the roads like back at home. Felt at home…  :-)
Some of the things I did was to walk along the banks of River Thames, going for a ride in London Eye, visiting Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey. Visited but didn't like Madame Tussauds much. Harrods was just too expensive though I ended up buying some handbags at the Harrod's store in the airport.
The Underground tube was very efficient and cost effective and sitting on open top bus with wonderful  weather  and sight-seeing London’s landmarks was great experience.

Back from a Break!

Finally woke up from hibernation and realised more than 2 years have passed since my last post. I can't think of any reasons why I stopped and why I am starting again either!

Balidanam Veer Lakshanam

This was the motto displayed in entrance arch in a big army campus on the way to turtuk. The meaning is Sacrifice is the sign of a warrior. It has been a tradition from time immemorial that it was considered a warriors duty to sacrifice one's life for the country or a just cause. The tradition continues even now that our armed forces are ready to lay their life to defend our country from external and internal threats, so that people like me can live peacefully. I do have a feeling that as a nation, the leadership and people included, we don't value the lives of men and women who are serving our armed forces. Is it because we have many people willing to serve and lay down their lives for the country, that their lives have become cheap? If you see western countries, even a few causalities in fighting creates a lot of public outcry! Those countries use technology extensively as a force multiplier and try to minimise human causalities. Why cant we do the same? For example, our armed forces operate in harsh conditions in high altitudes in Himalayas without adequate facilities resulting in a situation where more soldiers die to weather conditions than fighting! It is high time that our soldiers get their due and their lives are taken more seriously...

Leh Travelogue

Actually it is a mini-travelogue. This is my first attempt at writing about my travel. So please bear with me! :-)

Leh Travelogue

Financial and Emotional Investments!

When it comes to the term "investment", most people seem to think of it in purely financial terms. When you invest time, money, human resources, agreed that these are all a financial investment. What about the investments we make in our personal lives? So could the time, emotions that we invest in our friendships or for that matter any relationship be considered an "investment" as well! If there an investment, then comes the return on investment (ROI). All financial investments are made with a good ROI in mind, but doing a emotional investment with ROI in mind would be sure recipe for disaster or so it would seem. But the unfortunate fact of lives nowadays seem that most relationships seem to be made on some expectation or quid pro quo and if that is not met, the relationship fails. The differences between financial and emotional investments seem to be blurring and I think it would be  easier to deal with a failed financial investment than an failed emotional investment!

Boredom Log

Life was generally boring. Work was becoming routine and monotonous after almost 10 years at the same organisation. There was no silver lining in the horizon. Add to it the chaotic way things are run in the organisation. Also I have accumulated a lot of vacation time by virtue being in the company for so long and which would go waste by end of the year if I don’t use it thanks to a new leave policy. It is in these circumstances I struck upon this brilliant idea to take 2 weeks off work. I didn’t have any clue on what to do in that time. Originally I planned this vacation to coincide with my friends visit to his native Chennai so that we could hang around and also go to Bangalore to meet some more friends. But his dad was unwell and hospitalised and he had to take care of him. As the vacation neared, I tried to list down things that I should do during this time and I couldn’t come up with many! So I decided to take one day at a time and not plan much in advance. So in due course of time, the last working day before the vacation arrived and I duly notified all and sundry about my vacation plan and put on the out of notification in my outlook mailbox and headed out….

For full story, go to Boredom Log

Blame it on FB!

It has been a while since I wrote on this blog, more than 7 months. I had wanted to write quite a few times, but it is because of my laziness that I didn't. But why take the blame myself, when it can be put on something that won't complain. Yes, its because of FB. I had been quite active on FB in the recent past. You see, to post in FB, you don't have to think too much, dont have to worry about noting down the thoughts that seem to happen at random moments and writing them to the blog. In FB, you can "post" a few one liners, "like" a few posts, cut and paste a few "links" and "share" some of your friends posts and be active. Not a lot of work uh! Not that Facebook is going to upset being blamed. Rather it would welcome it. If many people use it and blame it like me, its market value may even go up from $100 billion to $200 billion!

Nano Thoughts!

Don’t get mislead by the title! It is not about minute thoughts, but it is about Nano the car. I was reading about October car sales in team-bhp and was surprised to note that Nano sold only about 3000 odd cars. The highest selling car was Maruti Alto and that was more than 30000 that is 10 times more. This was unexpected I would say. Nano was definitely expected to sell more. In its defense it was said that suppliers are moving to the new plant and so Tata didn’t make enough Nano’s to sell, but it still doesn’t explain as even before this month Alto was outselling Nano by a factor or 4 or 5. So here is my wild hypothesis on why Nano sales is not taking off as expected. I think positioning it as 1 lakh rupee car has hurt it in a couple of ways. One is many people didn’t expect a 1 lakh rupee car to be a complete car. They expected it to be more like a 4 wheel auto rickshaw. Secondly, in reality people are paying close to 2 lakh or more for buying Nano which was marketed as a 1 lakh rupee car and this made it look expensive in the eyes of the people. This along with the first factor makes people think that for another 40K or so, they can buy a M800 or a decent used car (meaning real car). I am not against Nano. I felt happy and proud when Nano was launched, felt bad when people trashed it for fire accidents and now feel sorry that it is not selling well. This car really put the (low cost) engineering capabilities of the Indian Automobile Industry in the world map and deserves to Succeed.

Star Power

I am writing this post during the weekend when Endhiran has been released and Tamil Nadu and pockets across the country and around the world seem to be gripped in Endhiran Mania. I haven't seen it yet, but I do have tickets for the show 4 days from now. This Endhiran mania is not particularly new to people like me. We are aware of Rajni's mass appeal and the excitement his movie releases create. Only this time, it is even larger in scale. I am not particularly a hard core fan of Rajni and infact I like Rajni better for his anti-hero roles in his earlier movies, but I would still like to say that this movie release is a perfect illustration of "Star Power" and what a "Mass Hero" means. If you look at this man, you will never believe he is a movie star, much less a superstar. He is very humble, looks very ordinary and doesn’t hide his age, does not kick up controversies to promote movies nor does he show up in 20 TV channels to market his movie and yet his movie release creates so much anticipation, excitement and mass hysteria across all sections of society across all age groups. If this is not star power, what is? I think this is not something that you work at and achieve. It is a gift and I am sure Rajni would be the first to admit it. I would also say that Rajni is the only star in India who could have made this movie a success given the costs involved. Hype driven Bollywood should well take note of this phenomenon!

The Invitation

I came across this poem (or whatever you call it) a few years back and liked its strong verses. I again came across this when checking out some old mails and I thought I should post it here. Since it was long, I have given the link.

The Invitation

Enemies aren’t half as dangerous as loved ones!!!

I read an article yesterday and the gist of it were the two sentences below.
Enemies aren’t half as dangerous as loved ones today, because people closest to our hearts are the ones who are selling us out
Be nice to all, friends with few and trust only one… you!
If this is really the state of affairs, then it is a very sad situation. Well I don't believe it is true broadly speaking, though these of incidents do happen as we hear about. One aspect to think about is why do these people get-together in the first place. While I am not running down the affected people, I do think that people have become more superficial these days and neither have the time or inclination to invest time in relationships and even personal relationships are based on need, convenience and possibly some expectations. In that case even all relationships become businesslike in nature and selling out for profit is part of the game. So people can't complain about selling out. If you have your heart and mind at the right place, then you will have the right people around you, this won't happen.
About the second statement, I can't disagree with the last part more. If you can only trust yourself and no one else, then I think there would be no growth for you either in your personal or professional life.

Clouds and Moods

Okay this is going to be a crazy post. I had written it a couple of weeks back, but hadn't published it. Some days my imagination runs wild and I will come up with theories that mostly won't make sense to anybody else... :-)  Lately the weather in Chennai has been so atypical of it. It has been raining regularly and Sun has been playing hide and seek with the clouds. One of those days it was bright and sunny when I started from home, but had become cloudy when I reached work and after some time it was sunny again. Somehow it seemed to me that this unpredictability was similar to the moods. So hence my theory... Clouds are like Moods. They are transient most of the time. They come in suddenly and they go away after a downpour or disperse after some time. Similarly Moods also change if you allow yourself to get distracted by work or friends or just let off some steam. What say!

Madrasapattinam

I don’t feel like dissecting this movie and picking holes. This is a beautiful movie that you should sit back, relax, soak in, experience and enjoy. The background music is excellent and visuals are beautiful. More importantly this movie has all the things that ravanan lacked (couldn’t help taking a dig at Maniratnam). I don't think it is Arya's movie. It is the heroine who owns the movie and the movie revolves around her, which is a rarity in Tamil cinema. She is expressive, charming and a big plus to the movie. It reminded me of how Asin took over Ghajini's first half. Vijay and technicians have done great work and actors have done their part. Climax is neat without much melodrama. For the critical part, the running part could have been curtailed a bit and I am not sure if Arya's hair style is indicative of the 40's.

The German Surprise

Ok this will be my last post with respect to the Football world cup. The German team has been one of the surprise packages of this world cup. This is both in terms of their results and also their style of play. Not many including Germans expected a 3rd place finish. But for me their attractive style of play was a big surprise. Style and Flair were words you can hardly associate with German football. Efficiency, Industrious, Ruthless is what is German teams of the past are know for. I am not a big fan of their playing style earlier, but it has produced good results and you can always count on German teams to reach at least Semi-finals of any major tournament. Now this team is young is different. To start with nobody gave them chance to reach the Semi-finals. Without having seen them play, I was actually wishing that they get booted out in the first round along with Italy and France. Thankfully Italy and France deservedly got booted out and Germans were deservedly not. What happened in knockout stages was not something expected. They beat the over-hyped England 4-1 and favorite Argentina 4-0 and finally it took a strong Spain team to stop them. Though I was rooting for Spain from before the start of the tournament, I wouldn’t have been sad if Germany had played well that day and won the match. One thing I observed in this German team is that there were so many players from different ethnic backgrounds, something unheard of in past German teams. Klose, Podalski, Ozil, Sami Khadira, Boateng, Mario Gomez are not ethnic Germans. That makes me wonder may be this diversity in the team is the cause for the style and flair that is exhibited by this German team.

Looks like many people think this German team is different from earlier teams. An ESPN article says "Loew's 2010 World Cup side are the sexiest thing to come out of Germany since Claudia Schiffer became the supermodel face of Chanel”

Winning Ugly!

Arjen Robben of the Dutch team said before the world cup finals that he would not mind winning ugly. The Dutch did in fact try to win ugly knowing that they cannot compete with Spain at skill levels, but failed anyways. What they succeeded was to turn the finals into a ugly game that made for a painful watch for millions of fans. I am pretty sure that Dutch would not have got any new fans after this display. For a moment it looked like the Dutch may succeed in their endeavor when Robben went clear with only Casillas in front of him, but casillas saved the day for Spain. To me, more than Spain deserving to win this World Cup, Dutch did not deserve to win this World Cup. This is a sad situation because Dutch teams of the past were known for their flowing game, which made for attractive viewing. People still talk about the Johan Cryuff's 1974 Dutch team (Losing finalist) that played total football even after 9 world cups and 36 years later. I doubt if anybody remembers the boring 2006 World Cup winning Italy team. So is Winning the only thing?

Dishonourable Killings!

What is really honourable in honour killings, which seems to happen so frequently in the recent past. It could be that it was always there, but only recently it is in the news. To me it is a barbaric practice which has know place in any civilized society at any point of time. It just reflects people's narrow mindsets and intolerance of other point of views. To me, it is no use crowing about our culture when we have such inhuman practices like this and others amongst our midst. This actually brings our country, culture and people into disrepute and dishonour. It is sad that this practice often has the sanction of village leaders and shameful that even the government and major political parties are not speaking up and taking strong action to stop this because they may lose votes. This only goes to prove that we don’t have any leaders, but have only vote-seekers. The hallmark of a great leader is to take good decision if they are going to be unpopular!

The Sikkim Himalayan Trek - Coming up soon hopefully!

I really hate myself for writing about this trek so late.. long after the energy and enthusiasm generated from the trip had died down due the drudgery of the routine life. So I don’t think I would be able to do justice to experience we had in that trek, but I will write anyways. What a trip it was...