Small Inconveniences, Larger Impacts...

I was jus wondering what is so great about my country that I wanna here. Actually speaking, there are a very few things that are even worth mentioning. My home, a few of my cherished friends, and a great history. In fact today, out of 116 countries in the world, India was in 97th position a couple of years ago and now, it could be rated 116 for the amount of corruption and inconsistent policies about the Maoists. Say all this to the public and ask them one question, are you proud to be an Indian, Most of them will come out with one thing," Mera Bharath Mahan" No one even realizes, the impact of corruption on the common man.

If an MP seat costs about 2 crores today, to buy 100 seats would cost 200 crores. As of today thousands of crores of Rupees is being spent on buying the seats and where to politicians go for reimbursement of the money? Tax payers. The price of petrol and other consumables are increased to sky high prices. Who is affected by it, us, the common men. to be able to cope up with the prices, we put in some more efforts and make the extra bucks for the petrol. Remember, the available time per day is limited, only 24 hours. How long will we keep walking the extra mile. Dont we need any rest? We succumb to the inconvenience the government causes. When countries like America and UK are paying Rs 30 for petrol, why should we pay Rs 55? More than one and half times.

Next, the infrastructure, the country's infrastructure is so inferior, that if you have a plan to travel for an hour, you can predict a couple of hours of delay, which means if you have to spend one litre of petrol, you tend to shell out 3 litrs. How much of an economic waste is that. The traffic lights dont work. Even if it does, we dont follow. We occupy the entire road, not allowing the opposite traffic to flow. The inconvenience is never taken seriously. We wait and wait and wait for the police to come and clear the traffic in fact some times, it takes a few hours to get out of a jam. The economic waste is not realized. Irony is, it takes people one hour to fly from Chennai to Hyderabad, but it takes more than a couple of hours to reach their destination in Hyderabad.

Coming to the Common Wealth Games. For a country that is struggling to feed half their population with healthy and one whole meal a day, is a sports event, costing 70000 crore Rupees required? out of which we spend 2 Rs for every rupee quoted. Mr. Suresh Kalmadi, the Chairman of the CWG and his team, has made his country men so proud, that a country that was in 97th rank in terms of corruption could be rated 116 now. What a shame? Rs 1 lakh tred mill, was bought at Rs 10 lakhs on hire basis. Apart from all this swindling, we will have to pay for the tickets also? tax for the infrastructure they have developed for CWG.

Are we to blame the Government alone for all this? No. When we say, India is the largest Democratic nation in the world, we dont realize, we can practice the terms by the book. When the country is being ruled, by rotten, old, blood sucking politicians, whos only motto is to swindle our money, we sit and watch the news over a cup of coffee and some bondas. No one revolts. Forget about revolting. How many of us are responsible? Right from littering in the public, to spitting red pan on the roads, to jumping signals, common men are to be blamed. When we hear an ambulance siren, we dont even make an effort to give way for it. Life means nothing to us. The buses are over loaded. Why cant we wait for the next bus to come or why cant we start 30 mins early to catch a bus that is empty enough? Every morning, the front page of the local news paper, shows, how many ppl die in an accident.

How many of us, respect a pregnant woman and give her a seat in the bus. How many of us respect an old man or a lady. Physically challenged people find it a night mare to walk in the streets. My blood is boiling and unless, we decide to take a step to keep our surroundings clean, help people around us, our country will never develop.

Jai Hind
Happy Independence day

Lets have Suda Suda Dosai and avoid Suda Suda News

Blog time finally arrived with the agitations in Andhra brought all of us a 2 days forced holiday. Finally after a couple of weeks found some leisure time to catch up with some news and good articles in Metro Plus and Education Plus. Sipping a cup of coffee, enjoying an amazing combination, the chill morning breeze, the smell of the print, mom's suvayaana sambar and crispy suda suda dosai. While glancing the paper, I came across an amazing Ad by Amul, "Slice butter, but not the country", there was a picture of India and a golden ring like the one around Saturn, which symbolically represented United India. There was also a caption in addition to all this, "A state of Bliss". Just a couple of statements, but the Ad spoke a lot. Appreciate the man who thought of it. I drove my dad to his office, he wanted to pick up some of his papers, so that he could work at home. While we drove back I was reminded of one of the issues Bharkha Dutt was debating on last evening on NDTV. I have always had great regards for her, because she was one of the reporter present at the Kargil. I felt she was a sensible journalist. Last night after some provocative discussions with the Congress and BJP leaders, she switched topic to Hemanth Karkare's case, who was the martier in 26/11 attack at the Taj Hotel. Bharkha was talking to his wife about the tragic incident. The case was about some sweeper having disposed his bullet proof jacket in the trash. Was is a cover up story or was it really true and in that case who was that sweeper, and how he is involved in the case. It is always possible that Hemanth's wife is not interested in investigating her husband's demise. Amidst the greif and trauma, Bharkha kept provoking as to how she would fight the battle to find out the truth. The moment she used the words, fight and battle, I realized, how insensible she was. Such words provoke any human's subconscious mind and such words would evoke desperation in the woman's mind. As one of the CEO's she might be using her education and experience very well to improve the TRP rating of "The Buck Stops Tonight", but as a human she has lost her modesty. This is so typical of any media these days. I appreciate Obama, when a couple barged into White House, during a dinner meeting, it was blown out of proportion, calling it a security lapse. Obama closed the case and said, we should stop doing the post event analysis and should look at how to strengthen the security than spending our time on this loose talk. 

In Iraq, with all the havok and unpleasant scenario, even today, the news headlines in all the news papers is a positive statement. Hope is the essence of life and lets not ruin the essence by encouraging unpleasant news reports.

Alright guys, its lunch time, I am gonna have a good meal and probably catch up with some sleep.

Deposit thoughts to your brain and withdraw the positive ones.from your memory...

What would be the performance of your car if you filled the crank with a couple of scoops of mud...
The same is the effect on the mind's performance when you feed it with negative thoughts.....

Master ' The magic of Thinking Big'

A man went for school and graduated with a honors after 4 years. Before he attended school, he always told his friends that he wanted to start his own business once he graduates. Once he finished schooling, he came to meet one of his friends in his town. The friend asked him, what happened to his business plan. The man replied, saying that he has no idea of starting one any more. His friend asked him why? He said, " All the while, in the last 4 years, I learnt what issues and challenges a start up company could face and all the different ways a business could fail"

Repeatedly sowing seeds of failure in your fertile mind, reaps fruits of failure.

If only the man had learnt or thought about the positive things that might happen to him, he would probably be a successful business man...

Life is about how we live it and not about how long we live -Part 1

Inspired by a couple of books I read last week, I am writing this blog.

Gone are those days, where my blogs extensively contained issues that were closely related to my experiences and emotions. In fact the number of blogs that I wrote were more than the inputs I obtained from different sources. May be this behavior was the outcome of my ego. After having experienced a few setbacks and challenges, I decided to find out what exactly was missing. I resorted to reading. Books have not only been a great source of inspiration but also provided me solace through my valleys. I was amazed by the way things turned up the moment I started practicing a few exercises suggested by the authors.

Every man encounters a number of situations. Some of them gives him happiness and some make him sad and frustrated. The situations may be related to his work or his personal life. Most of the time man blames his circumstances for dearth of happiness and joy. Every one commits mistakes and blunders. It is totally fine to have committed them because that his how he could react to the situation with the awareness and information he possessed. Life is all about how he wishes to pursue his life ahead from the experiences he has had in the past.Now let us focus on the uncomfortable circumstance prevailing over us. Instead of blaming it on some one, lets take a moment and see how we could make the situation amiable for us to learn and find a new and a totally different route to glory. By considering what the truth of the situation is and determining the value the situation could add to our lives. For example, we are waiting for some thing to happen to us and its taking a long time for things to fall into place. First thing we do is resort to the calculative, logical personality, which suggests to us that things should not take this long, why is it happening to me and I dont deserve this. This exactly what I did first and I freaked out. After which, I realized everything around me went out of my control the moment I freaked out and for many things to fall into place it was already late. But then you know, may be for those things that did not fall into place, it had a reason. For all that I know, the situation is prevailing over my life just because there is something I lack and I have to develop that missing link. I realized, I lack patience and I had started depending emotionally on my close family, which I feel is not a virtue of a strong and a composed man. I felt I should make best use of the situation to learn to be a lil patient and make myself peaceful even during these valleys. This starts happening the moment you start concentrating on what I can do for others? for a change the mind stops thinking of you alone. That is when you lose all your ego and start looking at the world around you with a different perspective. Its been a week since I started practicing this and it works. I am much more peaceful than what I was a week ago. Probably this is something that I have to experience while climbing a high peak. This experience will also be useful when you reach the next valley. The more the experiences, the easier it becomes for us to get out of our valleys faster and manage our peaks better.

In case some one is interested this is inspired by a book called ' Peaks and Valleys' by Spencer Johnson

When Bill Gates and Robert T Kiyosaki can be Millionaires...Why Cant I be? Do I need to be the CEO of Microsoft to be Rich?

My journey towards my destiny has not been that simple, In fact today, I don't even know what is in store for me... What is it that drives all of us... What is that, that keeps us active and going? What do we owe this world? or is it that we are just left into a dark maze and jus because we need some light are we sprinting towards it? If that is the case, why do we need light? Is that the purpose of life or is it totally different? Do we even sit back, relax and think, whether this is what we want from life? Are we like the herd of sheep or do we want to live like Lions? Do we realize the purpose of life? Atleast I dont. I am a selfish spoilt brat that wants success by no means. I am obsessed about making it big in life..,. ok now define big? well, I dont know what defines that...A BMW, a Ferarri and a huge bunglow with 5 people to serve you breakfast and 2 people to provide me with a towel for shower and so on....ok now, if I have achived that, will I stop there? or will my greed for success grow? What did Ambani do? Was he content with what he had or did he want more? he wanted more? was it for money or did it have another purpose.. ok if it had a different purpose what would that be? mental satisfaction of providing opportunities for a number of people? It is overwhelming? is it? I know it is... but you know what, I am no philosopher, who says, please donot pursue money, success, fame, career, goals... please do it with your purpose noted. I am not the one who says please be contented with what you have.. because if I preached that, you would call me a saint, which I am definitely not. Go behind what ever you like to be or do, with obsession....Make use of every second to achieve that goal... every single thought must be about achieving that, how and what are the ways to do that.......see yourself 100000000 times in the place you want to be........make it look as if it was achieved with ease...only you know the secret of that success.....make a number of mistakes, never hesitate to learn from them.....correct and recorrect the path...glory is yours...Seriously those people who say money is not at all important to them do not know the value of it...or they are those who have made all that they need and do not care about it any more....Failures call success 'LUCK'.....I call it perseverence....We all know Edison only because he became famous for having invented an electric bulb, but in the process he had 108 patents, which most of us are not aware of...he is known as the scientist but not many of us know he was a great industrialist...he brought about a revolution in Ameican Economy and energy sectors....The topic I have chosen to write is highly complicated....a blog will not suffice my thoughts....I need to write a whole book......Any way....Most of you would have similar questions and answers......What you are is finally what value you add to this world....

Wake Up Sid

I may not be able to claim that, the director has chosen a new concept or the screen play was amazing. It is a mundane story, a lazy boy becoming a successful man, well knit around the main two characters of the film. What makes this movie so special is the setting, camera work, colors, art direction, the couple's chemistry and inspiring music. Shankar Eshan loy have cast their magic charm again on the film.. the movie has both light and heavy moments, the gaps of which is superbly filled by the music. Aaj kal Zindagi and Iktara have the trio's touch in it. The remix version of the Wake up Sid was placed really well in the story. Shankar's rendering as fresh as it was when he came out Breathless, makes the album special. On the whole Wake up Sid is a good entertainer... A new combination of stars, a good attempt by the debutant director Ayan Mukherji....

Forgot to mention, Ranbir's T-shirts were awesome and really really cool... I am trying to find them here...

Watch it and enjoy...

PS: do not expect logic to kick in at any portion of the film...