It's Ameya. No, No... It's Ameya

A few weeks back the Times Of India – Goa edition was flooded with ads from a car manufacturer. Right from the front page to every alternate page thereon it had bought out the newspaper space to advertise itself. Needless to say the marketing department must have shelled out more than a few million dollars to grab the place on the newspaper and thereon grab the attentions of more than millions of TOI readers, only a small fraction of which could turn out to be prospective buyers. The high end and top-notch technology laden cars that the manufacturer was selling, I wondered whether it was a right strategy that they had followed to showcase their plethora of products. My half-baked (if I may say so ;)) MBA knowledge inclusive of the interesting and truly involving “Integrated Marketing communication” lectures that I attended professed that when a product is from a niche segment involving state-of-art technology and coupled with a price tag which only the “most blessed” section of the society could afford, then one should resort to direct marketing. Direct Marketing is the term given to the practice of reaching out to individual prospective customer and then marketing him the product as per his taste and specification. This made pure sense to me as it was very rational to follow this approach and not go for a mass-marketing through newspapers especially when each square inch of the prized newsprint space cost a bomb and could potentially burn a hole in the pocket to the tune of millions.

When the rule of directed marketing is so crystal clear, which even I can recite without flipping back through my notes, what propelled the marketing team into such a major Gaffe? After all they aren’t richly paid only to commit such a costly mistake; leave aside the major PR blunder that come alone. “No ways! The marketing team at this automotive giant aren’t this big a fool” I unknowingly said to myself . This very inquizitive thought made rerun through the entire series of ads once again and there I found the purpose for them follow this means of advertisement.

The reason was there right on the front page, which inadvertently I had missed during my first run through these Volkswagen ads. The line in bold read “Its Volkswagen. No, No... Its Volkswagen”. The foundation level course in German language that I had cleared with flying colours had ensured that I wasn’t the intended target audience for this catch line. A second read along with the small assisting para beneath it cleared all aspertions that I had regarding this marketing strategy. Here was this Deutsche major taking to get a strong foothold into our nation with their quality products. But before all this, they were onto a campaign which would set their brand identity firm into the people’s psyche. And how could they achieve that without getting the people to pronounce their name right. I am unsure about the etymology of it, but blame it on the Germans who pronounce “V” as “F” ( फ as per Indian pronounciation). Reminds of the awesome shahid kapoor in his movie ‘Kaminey’ wherein he were mischievously proclaims “mein fha ko fha bolta hoon”. On second thoughts VW could have used his character to get their name right into the Indian Psyche. Who better than a bollywood actor to influence the Indian masses? Thus I was really pleased eventually by their attempt to make the people pronounce ‘volkswagen’ as ‘Folkswagen’ (as it is actually supposed to be) meaning “people’s car”.

After this rather very long prelude, let me get to the core topic of this blog which deals with my personal identity crisis. Very much as VW suffered with mispronounciation, so has been me right from the time of my birth. It was the difference in the way ‘V’ is pronounced in the different parts of the globe for Volkswagen that proved its nemesis; for me it was the extra ‘a’ (or is it?) that did me in. As it has been a very much prevelant practice in this part of the world, my parents named me “Ameya “ (अमेय in devnagari script) which is one of the numerously infinite names of the elephant headed god, Ganapati.

Needless to say I was way too young and worse still very much ignorant of these happenings in regards to my naming ceremony to fight with my parents then. But that only meant I had to fight with the majority of the people I encountered till date getting to make them pronounce my name right. My parents had very lovingly bestowed with this nice name (which I personally love too 8)) thinking that I would have showcase all the virtues of the original bearer of the name; and so I did to a great extent if not all (I would rather say that with a tinge of modesty ;)).

On face-value it doesn’t look too tough to pronounce, but in reality I had been struggling to cope up with the numerous variants that I encounter when interacting with fellow planet-mates. The most common variant being the ones over-stressing of suffixing ‘A’ in my name. The way they pronounce it, makes me feel as if I have a stream of never-ending ‘A’s tailing my spelling (i.e. AmeyAAAAA.... and it goes on... :( ). I do emphasise to them the trailing ‘A’ in my name doesn’t have the tilde over it and thus spared from the hard sound (i.e. AA अमेया in devnagari) but it doesn’t seem to be effective convincing tactic from my side. For me it gets doubly tough when I come across instances (read people) of AMEYA without the trailing ‘A’, and then it’s just like fighting a losing battle. And to my bad fortune, I have many such instances of AMEY (with the trailing A missing), one at college, two at office, and many more in routine life :( . Their existence meant I had to back off and accept that my name is a typo (since birth :() and only justification being the trailing ‘A’ is silent. But even for that there are a handful few who don’t let go the chance to pull my leg and call me with the extended version of my name “AMEY with the silent A”.

The irony of the extra ‘A’ (or otherwise) is a bit bearable and I could blame it upon the inconsistency/incompatibility of English alphabets in the devanagari script (Spare me for dragging my feet into the Devanagari v/s Roman scripts tussle). But my plight doesn’t end there. Still struggling with the mysterious instance of ‘A’ in my name, I was stunned when I came across a superior at my workplace. He seemingly had donned the shakespherean hat and had conveyed to our international clients his prophecy. He said to them and I quote “All Indian feminine names ends with a ‘A’”. I had a tough time before I cleared the doubts in their mind about my gender. Although I was damn sure what my manager has professed was blatant lie and a brainchild of his own; but the todays corporate world is such that whatever your manager says is the rule. So I consoled myself by self-proclaiming my name as just a one off exception to his rule without totally discarding his hypothesis. I don’t know whether this existence of exception to his rule put him off, but he never awarded me any extra brownie points during the appraisal cycle.

Then there exists the variant of my name like AMAY ( अमय in devnagari)। I don’t know where that came from. But I still have a handful of my friends calling that. I don’t know whether its the ease of calling by that name that acts as a motivation to them but surely they have slipped into a comfort zone calling me by that name and I don’t see them changing it soon. This is not all and the weirdest version is yet to come. Rewinding back to my kinder-garten days and I remember my teachers calling me ‘AMBEY’ (where the hell that 'B' came from?). I even have a certificate at some drawing competition featuring that name. Anybody would have doubted whether it was actually me who achieved that laurel at the drawing competition back then, if they are unaware of the moderate talent that I possess even now. I was probably too young, too timid, and too ignorant to fight with argue with my teachers and must have not gauged what lie ahead. Probably that was just precursor to lie in stores for me.

So here I am, with more than a quarter of my life on earth behind me and still struggling with the identity. I won’t say it’s a identity crisis but still it’s not a very pleasing experience if someone don’t pronounce your name right. So humble requests to all the readers of this, for you are the only people who are aware of my plight and surely you can help me a bit. Not by anything else, but just by calling me by my name, ‘the right way’.

Its simple. It's Ameya. No, No... It's Ameya

Yup, you got it right. Thanks :)

Enough of reality

“Don’t watch the TV from so close,” my granny used to thunder “lest you will spoil your eyesight”. Though this was back in the days of adolescence, her words still echo in my ears. Not that I was a TV buff then, at least I don’t remember to be one. However, hectic schedule has meant that my TV viewership has reached to an abyss. But whenever I have nothing more significant to do, I somehow involuntarily find myself leaning on the couch. Lying next to me and giving me good company, is the graceful curves of the TV remote. And that’s for once I have given into the human instinct of being a couch potato, and aimless gazing at the inappropriately termed ‘idiot box’. The television, TV for most, is in fact one of the historical invention to have rocked the world. The reach and the influence of it could be used for larger public good. There have been instances in the past where TV has been also related to birth control; wonder how? ;) However like many other ‘historic inventions’ TV too has attained some bad name, thanks to the ‘abuse’ of it. And that gets me to theme of this post.

As I mentioned earlier I am not an avid TV buff. And whenever I find myself in control of this priced possession of any Indian household, I find myself flipping among some news channels and onto some sports frequencies. However, while hoping among these frequencies tuned at the extreme ends; I choose to browse those all the channels in between. The reason from this action of mine eludes me for I could have comfortably skipped all the in between ‘pain’ to tune the channel I desire. Well, if you too have scanned the channels on your TV you would definitely agree to my profanation of calling it a pain.

“Excessive use of anything is abuse”, I had heard Vijay Mallya shouting this on a debate. Though he had mentioned this in context of alcohol, it perfectly fits the bill for many other things. The current (and it has been going on for years now L) trend on the TV being ‘reality TV’. And it has been stretched and re-stretched in so many different variants, that it’s hardly anything but reality. For the starters, each of these series is aped from the western counterparts. There isn’t anything wrong in copy-pasting, but before getting on such expeditions there should be a thorough understanding about the relevance in Indian context and followed by some customization to suit the local audience. However, what is happening is a blind adaptation of the original series. From the “American Idol” to “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” onto “Are you smarter than the fifth grader?” , each of these western series have appeared in their desi avatar. Though initially the rich and educative content of “Koun Banega Crorepati?” and the novelity of “Indian Idol” did strike a chord with the local audience; reality TV soon lost its sheen as such series started hogging prime time by the dozen. And not surprisingly, with the bombardment of essentially same thing with some superficial changes to elude being stereotypical, it was bound to make the audience sick.

At any given moment there are so many singing talent shows going on, luring unsuspecting Indian youth to stardom, that one needs some super power to keep a track and further differentiate between them. More over it has become such run-of-the-mill affair, that a viewer might start with watching one programme and change to some other without realizing he has switched channels. In all things, he can rest assured about not missing on any of the benevolent comments made by the supposedly learned judges, or the overtly enthusiastic pleas for votes by the anchor, or the choreographed melodrama by the participants themselves. To top this unbearable content, there is the back-stage bitching, love affair on the side-lines and controversies offstage that just adds to the pain of viewing.

Singing talent show is just a part of it; and though I hate to say it makes much more bearable than many other variants of the reality shows. Take for example these dance reality shows wherein in these supposedly celebrity, though many of the names many me wonder who?, try gyrating to the beats. Many of them remind me of physical education class, wherein we used to perform the robotic moves and there was no scope for grace or élan. To add insult to injury, comes over the top remarks by plethora of judges, many of whom ironically don’t even have any connection with the field of evaluation. Next come the laughter challenges. Such has been its proliferation of these competition that every joke is been repeated in all possible combination and permutation. All those who end up laughing are a couple of jokers who are been assigned to adjudicate the contestants. It’s a different case that the judges start to giggle long before the actual joke is delivered.

To top this all talent search competition, comes the variant which might be dubbed the mother of all reality shows. These are the shows wherein the so-called celebrities are put together and all they have to do is bitch, fight and finally survive the elimination. No marks for guessing that even these shows are been aped from the westerner, where quiet controversially our very own desi siren came up trumps. All the contestants are mostly in their twilight days of career, and they indulge in loads of manipulative games to score one up on the fellow inmate. Inmate I call it, as the show itself proclaims a subtle tagline “Who will survive in the house?”. I wondered whom do they have to survive; are there any wild beasts looming large in the precincts? On second thoughts, it’s indeed an apt tagline because surviving the fellow inmate is no less a herculean tasks.

All and all, I truly miss those beautiful days of Door-darshan. Though starved for content, it used to telecast its shows with no intrusion for the advertising hawks. There were those kiddish and very rudimentary programmes, those mega-epics which used to take from the harsh world into the land of fantasy. May be for a short time but it was a enjoyable time in front of the TV, unlike now wherein I have only one thing to say. “Enough of reality!” L

P.S: I am intending to write yet another post of one of my TV viewing session. God willing, you will get to read it soon.

Swine Flu err!@#$ Flew :)

1st prize winning entry at "Toon Typhoon" held at PSL Goa.
Theme: Swine Flu. The evaluation parameters were theme execution, cleaniless, artistic caliber and only things allowed to use being pencils. The cartoon basically has a funny take on SWINE FLEW err!@#$ FLU :)

A tribute to the legend

Its the birthday of the legend today. As the south-paw celebrates his 37th birthday, I look back into the life of the great bengal tiger.

He has epitomized the trait of a true fighter. He was down on occasion more than one but never was he out. People criticized him and critics ridiculed him; but he was there all alone fighting his battle all on his own. Being destiny's favourite weeping child and having to face to the blunt end of the stick on multiple occasion he has always emerged vindicated and more more determined each time.

Style and elegance were always the ingredients of his batting DNA and the trait of leadership just added to his cricketing heroics. He led the bunch of players and turned them all into a force to reckon with. He daredevils meant that no one could ignore the Indian cricket team anymore, for he is the one who infused confidence into the psyche of each of the team-members and taught them how to stare into the eyes of the opponents. Not that the players were untalented but then they lacked the fighting instinct and he provided it. Like any other great human being, he too had his rough times and he weathered those with equal courage.

Such was this great sporting personality who has made place for himself in the Indian and World Cricket and a place in heart of zillions of cricket fans dotting the world. You will always be an epitome of determination and would be a guiding light for lesser mortals like myself. Dada, thanks to you for being the inspiration for me and many more.

Dada, Shuvo Jonmodin!
Aap jiyo hazaron saal; saal ke din ho pachaas hazaar! :)

Churning the grey matter

This one a shortie! :)

“Shiii…. Quizzing? What a bore?” my friend grimaced. This was after I replied to her as to how I spent my last weekend. Not that her reaction was uncommon; I had witnessed similar response from quiet a few. Not surprisingly, a single trait binds them all. Ignorance to the pleasure one gets from the deriving the answer… Yes, I said ‘deriving’… because quizzing is not just gulping from a yearbook and puking it out at a later stage as many of the ignorant blokes seem to think. In fact this aint quizzing at all.

Yes, your memory cells do play a critical part in this activity, but its usage goes much beyond reclaiming stored bytes of data. One just cant explain the high one experiences when one boils down to an answer with help of all the info that one gathered in the past. And know whats the best part? Its instills a never ending thirst to garner more knowledge. Many of us dunno but quizzing can be loads of humour and sprinkled with bits of sarcasm too.

Imagine for once this question, “passing of which law made Dr. B R Ambedkar to resign from the assembly?”. Pat came the reply “Father in law” ;) . Now, definitely you cant say we are a bore… J

P.S: For those who want to experience first hand what I have written above, can join us for a monthly Sexy ;) (oops, it’s a typo) quiz. For more details log onto www.seqc.blogspot.com

Me

Just as you have done now, I too do log into this blog. My intention being to catch up with the comments that my viewers might have posted. I do like to hear from my friends as to what they feel about what I have written. Most of them are very appreciative about the content on the blog, others commend me on my writing skills. Not many are critical of my writings though I would also like to face the rough end of the stick. Though the visitors count indicates around a quarter of a million hits, the comments enumerate to just less than hundred. This could be attributed to the fact that many of my viewers convey me their views over the chats rather than posting in the comments section.

One such incident happened when a long lost friend of mine pinged me. She was a junior at school and later at junior college. An intellect herself she wasn’t in contact off late, so a message from her was really welcome. Normal exchange of pleasentaries include ‘hows u’, ‘wheres u’ etc; as was expected since we hadn’t had any updates about the other for quiet some time now. As the conversation progressed she mentioned to me that she is a regular on my blog. That was a pleasant thing to hear but the question that followed wasn’t so.

“Why are your write-ups so negative?” she questioned. Well, frankly I was taken aback by this. May be I was attuned to hear only appreciative comments till now, so when the reality struck it struck me hard. I was able to convey to her that I am not a pessimist, not even anywhere closer and I will die an eternal optimistic. She had known me for quiet some while and I sincerely hoped she was convinced with what I told her was true.

But, in hindsight I guess she had a genuine query. An unbiased glance through the posts and one might not be entirely wrong if they sense a hint of pessimism in my writing. Thus, I owe it to my readers to put a true picture of mine. If one reads through the description of my blog, I think they will experience the “eureka” moment. For the ignorant lot, the description reads “the plight I find myself in and the things happening around me”. I use this blog as a vent for my frustrations about the wrongs happening in the vicinity and some awkward situations I don’t want to be in.

Not that it’s always something gloomy that happens to me but those are few and far in between, as sparse as the number of posts here. I associate myself with the most jolly bunch of people, be at office or otherwise and try to take pleasure from the smallest thing. And for the lesser pleasant things? Well you guessed it … I keep it for the blog.

Even in my posts, a little bit of pondering and one could see the real self of me. The real me, the light humored, witty, jolly me. Who else would you find making fun of oneself, be it loosing money or flunking in exams? I am someone who has taken everything in my stride and still have the nerve to let know it to others, albeit in a very phunny :) manner.

Now that we have got to dissecting, lets do a detailed postmortem. From the parodies of Bryan Adam hit numbers to describe the joy ;) of flunking to a descriptive narration of erosion of hard earned mullah at the markets. From describing the plight in the IT world at one hand and simultaneously the ordeal of being benched and onto the significance of Google in our life, I have penned it all. It isn’t unusual to find a grumbling IT professional but only a few have the ability to pen it down in a enjoyable manner; and I am saying this without a tinge of arrogance. In fact the positivity in me even prompted a haiku out of a faulty fire detector. From the title to the content and onto the presentation of each post, I try to project the humor and wit I embody. So much so that I put more effort in deciding the apt and often humorous title once I have hurried through writing the content.

Once my friend described me as a person who has views about everything, and often contrarian. I choose to second him on this especially the first half of the statement. And views I expressed about most of the things around me. Be it the Hindu Mythology or be it the economic crisis we are undergoing through. Be it blatant plagiarism or the ills plaguing Goa. From the electioneering tamasha to a single procession to file the nomination papers, nothing skipped to feature on my blog. The Quizzer in me make sure the audience are fed with some dose to churn their white matter while the sketches make tall and by far overstretched claims 8) to challenge Pablo Picasso. In the same vein that I cursed myself for my dormancy, I had even praised others for their entrepreneurship and vision. I described my failures but at the same time commended someone on the other side of the globe for their achievements. Yes, I have talked about the ills plaguing our country, but then its just depicts my concern and potrays the patriotic side of me. Isn’t it? From the need of a strong leader to the manner the electorates are being treated by the politicians, what I have written is plain hard truth. Even the hot topic of terrorism didn’t manage to skip my blog.

So as you might have rightly guessed by now this was an sincere attempt of mine towards self redemption, an attempt to shed off any misconception about me that you might have formed in your mind. I am an eternal optimistic and will continue to be so, be what be. My motto in life has been “All for the best” and I have been dedicatedly living up to it. Things might look bad on face value but the long term repercussions of the same are always fruitful, that’s what I believe in. Takings things in my stride, I attune myself for anything and everything that’s comes my way, because……. That’s “ME”!

The P.D. Quiz

(A report by Dr. Luis Dias on the quiz conducted by yours truly. This quiz was held at P.D's as part of the monthly SEQC event for the month of March 2009.)

A Wikipedia search for P.D. gives you, among other things, Peu difficile, a French grade for a moderately difficult mountaineering route.

This seemed to be the objective of our designated QM, Ameya Mardolkar.

And a Google of "A. M." gives you (4 hits down) City AM, a business paper (Business with Personality). Coincidence? :-)

The evening kicked off with a heated dispute, Seed vs Leaderboard, which seems to be still raging, although I can sense a con-sensus emerging.

(Incidentally, couldn't help wondering, at least from a purely botanical standpoint, do you have to be nuts to be seeds? I think perhaps every nut is a seed, but you don't have to be a nut to be a seed. You however have to be a seed to be a nut).

Anyway: back to the review:

Following the seedy start:

We had a maiden over from Niyati; her first foray into QMing, and a superlative effort. Knocked most of us for six. This is a QM to watch, for sure.

This quiz also featured for first time, the Double Your Money rule, which has a lot to do with the final tally. You can gather from this comment that yours truly didn't capitalise (such a decadent word) on this very much. Note to self: Pay more attention to rules, or get ruled out.

As if to underline this, A.M. pointedly familiarised us (Can one POINTedly underLINE something?) of QM rules 1 and 2, which required several repetitions as the evening unfolded.

The first round was the Pehchan Kaun round; this was followed by a whole series of brilliantly (craftily?) crafted rounds. A memorable one was the acronyms on the NYSE tickerboard, which surprisingly all teams seemed to have fared rather well. Not bad going, considering none of us has dealings with NYSE.

The break featured a steady stream of food and drink emanating from Suraiya/P.D's kitchen, and we had to tear ourselves away to get back to quizzing.

The winners, by a landslide, were the runaway TRAN team (Tallulah-Rajiv-Anjali-Niyati).

Post quiz,we had PD's birthday bash, which began with birthday bumps (oh to be sweet sixteen again!), a delectable fare, booze flowing like water, and conversation spilling late into the night.

I speak for us all when I say: A good time was had by all.

Here's to the good old Quizky, one more round, one more round...! "

Scoff the people, buy the people, forget the people

The election fever is in the air and everyone is feeling the heat. The elections are one of the important cornerstones of democracy. The adult franchise or the universal ballot thus bestows us with the right to rule the affairs of the country, though not directly. The representative nature of our democracy enables us to send our representative to the legislative body who thus forms the rules and laws which in turn affects the public. Thus, in a way we ourselves are responsible for all the good and bad that happen to us. Virtually since the elected candidate is the nominee of the majority of the people from the constituency, he is considered to be representing the views and opinions of that majority. He or she is thus supposed to act in a manner that would be beneficial for the larger mass of the country. Thus our democracy was aptly labeled “of the people, buy the people, forget the people”.

However off late the candidate have been showing utter disregard for the human populace who has elected him or her to be their representative. They show no concern for the voters when it comes to formulating the policies and are least concern for the larger good of the constituents.

They are not to be entirely blamed either for this. For they spend huge amounts of money to see them getting elected. The electoral trend and results don’t exactly show the people’s choice and one could argue it’s the outcome of how much the candidate has spent. The election results should be the endorsement by the people in the abilities of the candidate. However, current trend shows the candidature overtures in spending money and enticing his electorate with his promises, false or otherwise, is the major attributes in deciding s/he is on the winning side or no. The votes are literally bought; or one could say people are selling themselves for short term gains.

On getting elected, there happens to be no connect between the candidate and the people. For s/he believes his seat in the echelons of power is been literally bought and there are no leaning left towards the people. The candidate gets more and more aloof for the ground reality and he comfortably forgets about the existence of those voted for him till the next such time when their votes would be needed.

Going by this trend, one can blame if we call this democracy “Scoff the people, buy the people, forget the people”

A "Guns and Roses" Affair

One… two… the rose petals continued to drizzle. It reminded me of the scenes from a magnanimous epic Hindu mythological TV soaps, where the gods from the heaven blessed some holy incarnation on the face of the earth. This isn’t less an incarnation, I laughed within myself. Three… four… the Ray-bans covered their eyes but no one could skip their hawkish glares. These safari-clad and guns wielding army were dotting every square foot of the earth and were further mapping 360 degrees. Five… six… The lesser privileged khaki clad souls were busy hustling the bustling crowd. Cajoling the female folks and threatening the rowdy men, they had a task at hands of making way for the cavalcade. Seven… Eight… The bunch of toadies who had managed to hitchhike on some vehicle was having an experience of lifetime; as was evident form their expression on the faces. Nine… Ten… Ooph! I sighed, as I missed my count.

But determined that I was to enumerate the set of wheels, I started back for the vehicle leading the pack. As I counted on and on and on the number had reached 27, inclusive of couple of ambulances. Much more surprising was the site of hooter blaring police patrol cars. “What makes them the part of the cavalcade?” I wondered. Have these cops shed their political neutrality for larger personal gains or is it just duty calls? I chose to give them the benefit of doubt and believe that they were just performing their duty of protecting a VVIP who was out on his way to file his nomination for the upcoming General elections. Somehow I withheld myself from adding a few more Vs to the VVIP but guess I wouldn’t have been wrong if I had done so. Afterall he is been tauted the “Yuvraj of Bharatvarsh”.

The very mention of ‘the prince of Indian polity’ should make it clear as to whom I am talking about. After all for the zillions dotting the planes, mountains and deserts of my motherland have been overtly obsessed by the single clan a.k.a “Nehru-Gandhi family”. But just to take a leaf of from the congress policy of ‘minority appeasement’, and for the larger good of the ignorant minority who might be oblivious of the great Indian political tamasha, I am talking about the scion of the Gandhi family and if I may take the liberty of adding a few more adjectives as in the ‘messiah of India’, ‘the PM in waiting’, ‘Obama of India’, the one and only Rahul Rajiv Gandhi. So, the protagonist is identified and so is the situation.

The huge cavalcade is not something new, more so if you have been brought up in Goa. The Mickeys and Babushs of Goa are believed to directly relate the number of vehicles in their rally to their popularity. If it is to be believed, there is an unsaid competition amongst them, about the number and types of car that form the part of the rally. More the Pradas, CR-Vs, Mercs, Audis and BMWs behind you more the influential and powerful you are. Cutting long story short, these local leaders weren’t a match for Rahul neither was the parade.

Getting back to the more relevant incident, unlike the Goan version the cavalcade assumes more significance as this was not a victory march and was just the first step towards contesting the seat. However the die-hard congressmen would confidently argue that the congress tally is 1 the moment the congress candidate files his nomination from that constituency. And frankly even the most die-hard congress opponent should give in on this, the constituency in focus being a town in Sultanpur district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India a.k.a ‘Amethi’. It is known as the seat of power of the Indian Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty. And why not? Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, his grandsons Sanjay and Rajiv Gandhi (the sons of Indira Gandhi), as well as Rajiv's widow Sonia Gandhi have all represented this constituency. Rahul Gandhi himself was easily elected to the seat in the 2004 general elections, making him the fifth member of the family. And if my memory has not betrayed me, it’s the only constituency to have sent the most numbers of PMs to the Indian Parliament.

And probably the history was on the verge of repeating itself. That was evident from the exuberance of the people who had lined up all along the road to catch a glimpse of their representative. They had dared the mid-day sun just to cheer their candidate and wish him luck. And as if that was not enough, the rear door of the sleepishly moving armored Tata Safari opened and emerged the whitest white kurta clad and somewhat blonde ‘Rahul’. With him moving out of the safety of the bullet-proof cocoon, the body guards sprung in action. Amongst the AK-47s and the raining rose petals, now much more than before, each gesture of his was applauded and cheered. The scorching sun seemed to fail to sap out even a bit of excitement from the crowd as they cheered, waived and shouted slogans. They had been fanatic of their hero and they made no attempt to hide it. Just then the other door of the Tata Safari opened and emerged the mother of the candidate (will I be wrong if I chose to say ‘mother of mother India’?). Her sight just took the adrenaline levels amongst the crowd to new peaks as they jostled. It was a perfect setup for a rock concert. Just could not withhold myself from the wondering what if Sonia Gandhi would have crooning “Sweet child of mine”. Wouldn’t it have been a perfect Guns and Roses affair?

Its Quiz Time, Yet Again!

Come March, and I was the QM again at the monthly SEQC quiz. I researched and presented the quiz for the SEQC people at PD's. Here publishing for the unlucky ones ;) who missed the live fun.

Luck? No chance!

"Luck favours the brave" said somebody and mind you this saying makes me feel timid. Not that I am one, but when luck just declines to side by you one can't help wondering.

Somebody else went on to say "Success is 99% persevearance and 1% chance", but in my case the lesser share seems to have much higher bearing than that 99%.

You must be wondering what am I talking about? Well, its about me missing to make it to the finals of quizzes by a whisker. Passionate that I am for quizzing and more so the dedication with which I quiz, I modestly beleive I deserve a much better deal.

Its not been just any ordinary event that I missed to make it to the big stage, and more so its not once or twice but third time. And adding insult to injury is the margin I have been missing out on. up, its been a single point, a half at times and worst zero point (this time missing on the starred question).

Its all started with the Brand Equity Quiz. After much coaxing our HR/admin to shell out the seemingly big amount from their cofers to sponsor us, we had travelled all the way to pune to participate in the regional round. Crazy that I am for the quiz, I surely didnt mind the bumpy overnight ride to the venue, more so when it was such a big ticket event on corporate quizzing circle in India. Reaching there, and decently attempting the written preliminaries to pick the final six; we realised we had to attend the rest of the quiz sitting in the audience and not rest our bumps on the dias. Guess what was the point difference between the coveted seat on the stage and the one in the audience? A single point had made all the difference. All we won that evening was an appreciation by the QM Derek O'Brien for reaching so near (yet so far...), a round of applause from the audience, and some crapy frying pan as consolation prizes. And ha, we had definitely won a sleepless night that evening, coz all we did that entire night was the post-mortem of what went wrong?

Next, came the TATA crucible-corporate edition. This time the organising people had chosen Goa as one of its venue and thus spared us the trouble of a bus-ride to the nearest destination. It was the first time TC was coming to Goa, and all I had to do is find someone to partner with. In absence of my usual partner who had shifted base out of goa, I had to hook onto another of those brainy fella who I had came across at SEQC (FYI, SEQC is the quizzing club in goa. Do visit http://www.seqc.blogspot.com/ for more details). New Quiz, new venue and new partner, but still my bad luck didnt seem to have stopped chasing me wherever I went. Infact, this time round I seemed to be at the abyss. After another fair show at the prelims, came the time to evaluate the answers. I realised that my score was same as another team from SEQC and they were the first team to be called on stage. Almost certain of a berth on the stage, my hopes started fading as the places started get filled. In the end, all I realised was that I had tied on the score but was eliminated on the starred question (for those oblivious to quizzing, the starred question is one which is considered for resolution of a tie).I just could not fathom that, but it was the reality and the sooner I came to terms with it the better it was for me. Again the largesse of the QM Giri 'pickbrain' subramaniam won me a lousy T-shirt.

Well, turn of the year and there was another first in the history of quizzing in goa. Tata Crucible was back, this time it was the campus edition. And thanks to my executive MBA program, I was eligible to participate in this too. Trying to find a partner for this one was a bit difficult though. Leave aside being interested, people in my batch were seemingly allergic to the very utterance of the word 'quiz'. In such scenario, my only hope was teaming up with some from the full-time batch. I did spread a word that I was on a look-out for a partner but finally what did the trick for me was a mail over the alias. Emerged a guy with a faintish quizzing halo. A series of mis-communication is all we had to go through before landing up at the venue for the quiz. This time round a much better showing at the prelims thanks to relative simple dossier of question. I guess the QM was testing the waters as this was the first campus edition of TC at Goa. First time it was for the quiz edition but wasnt so for my bad-run. It had been continuing since a while now. What came to haunt me this time round was a new format to see equitable representation for different colleges/ institutions and that the dias doesnt look like a classroom of any individual institution. But this format, pre-informed and unbiased that it was, saw teams scoring much lesser than ours ending on stage. And I did not have to face the hardship to change the audience seat that I was seated on. And once again it was a single point that made all the difference. Thankfully, this time round the QM didnt have any special words of appreciation for us though answering an audience question landed me another lousy T-shirt with "TC campus quiz 2009" embroideried onto it to remind me these bitter memoirs which as it is i wont have forgotten.

So here I am, feeling like a complete loser. Quizzing has been a field which I devour but such upsets do sometimes act as a dampener. But as the funda of my life says "All for the best", I choose to see something positive out of it and be as optimistic as I ever am. Hopefully I will break the jinx, sooner the better.

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

~~~~~

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked
myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Pablo Picasso, Who? ;)

Pencil sketches by yours truly

Against all odds

Few weeks back two personalities were crowned king. Not quiet literally but then not much objection will be raised if I choose to call them the King. And if you look at them closely, you might find more similarity amongst them than differences. So, before you could get to compare the likes and dislikes amongst the two, let me first introduce the protagonists to you people.

Well, the two main-acts of my write-up here are Barack Hussein Obama and Lewis Hamilton. Am sure I won’t have to introduce either to you. Both have achieved enough of fame and have hogged more than enough media space so as to be amongst the top of mind recall.

I personally found loads of similarity amongst the two. To start with their physical characteristics, keep their mug shots by sides, and you won’t escape noticing the striking similarities. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone likened them to brothers. Look at their entry to the global arena. They arrived here with a bang. Their skin tone has made them more of a discussion topic, because the area of the world and the field of sports they have shone, there hasn’t been many achievers from the non-white section of the population.

Does this signify something significant? Or has this more implication in the future? Who knows? Only time will tell.

The fourth season

I remember us being taught in the kinder-garden that there are 3 seasons viz: summer, winter and rainy… But of late I have realized there are four, at least as far as Goa is concerned. And no, it’s not about the climatic vagaries that the globe is subjected to. It’s more to do with the political juggernaut in the state. Yes, you guessed it right… the fourth season is the election season which has virtually become an annual or at best biannual phenomenon in this tiny state.

Just like the rainy season which is eagerly awaited by the population of Goa; the election season too is keenly looked up to by the masses of the Goa. And more of analogy with the rainy season wherein the rain pours and rivulets small and big flow, in the election months, it’s the money that pours and beer that flows. And for that matter I can’t restrict myself in noting many more similarities that season of ballots has with the rainy season.

As in the rains, wherein with the silver drops falling from the heaven bring about a welcome change in the landscape of the earth, so do the elections. With the first showers as the new leaves shoot up from every tree, just like that one could see the plastic flags in different colours dotting the scenery once the elections are announced. Just like the moss that grows on the walls and the trees, so do the banners and the posters with more often some ugly faces of some snobbish politician line to grab their share.

Just like the frogs who come out of hibernation to their most active selves when the rains pounds the mother earth, the politicians too come out of the self imposed dormancy and get seen amongst the public or the “Aam Aadmi” as they prefer to call it. And throughout the season they are always on the toes; right from the time the election-notifications are out when they hob-knob from one party-office to the other seeking the pass to howl, yell or shout in the legislative den on the hilltop across Mandovi. And finally, those who succeed in getting the proverbial go-ahead from the party office and the others who don’t, get on the electioneering bandwagon, tirelessly canvassing for them. They hop from every to the other nook campaigning. They cover every other tiny hutment to the biggest bungalow in their constituency highlighting what they have accomplished, if at all they have. They can be seen running from pillar to post usually accompanied by an army of toadies. For the more affluent ones choose to move in a procession on top on their convertibles, the majority prefer to follow the Gandhian way (may be just to strike a chord with the lesser privileged). This game of hopping just takes a innings break after the ballots only to begin with new vigor once the results are out. Here though the scale is low but the stakes are high, as the loosing tadpoles makes way for the winner frogs to move on to the next level of hopping viz: party-hopping. For that time the winning contestants quiet literally weigh their weight in gold for switching their loyalties; it’s an irony that they aren’t loyal in first place. More so, if a winning candidate is not affiliated to any party then s/he can quote any number that comes to their mouth and I doubt whether they won’t be paid that.

And there are others who seek to benefit from the electioneering indirectly. For the good-old farmer who look up to the skies only to get happy with the slightest glimpse of the dark clouds at the horizon; there are people (usually the idle jobless sloth) who desperately wait for the ballots just to hitch-hike on the campaign trail and fill their pockets with some green bills in the process. In fact the campaign time is the most early awaited times for such lazy asses as it proves to be a virtually all-expenses paid holidays for them. All that is expected of them is either crowd around the candidate or lest scream their vocal chords out sitting on top campaign wagon. It’s a money-spinner for most of them as they pocket dissent amount that might make a daily-wager go green of envy. Top it up with the “CHICKEN” and “SORO” (beer in Konkani). Even, the campaigner slightly up and above in the hierarchy tend to make hay as the campaigning moves on; needless to say the higher you are in the campaign team, the more is your takeaway. These people who tag themselves as “campaign manager” and move about with clutter of papers (slowly the laptops are replacing the files) and they being in charge of dispensing of the funds do make it sure they are the biggest beneficiaries needless of the outcome of the results.

With rains, start the season of the migration of flocks of birds. And how can the election season defy this analogy. For the electioneering is not complete without the influx of migrants who off late have turned into kingmakers election after election. They have been the faithful vote-banks for these netas and virtually the passport to the assembly. No wonder if you miss your name in the election rolls amongst tons of these migrant flocks.

Such is the vibrant fourth season…

Will anything change?

Few months back there was a news item in the local dairy. A youth was caught with some explosives in Ponda.... hold on... not RDX neither any other high impact chemical mixture. It was much lower impact explosives, something to the extent of what we blow off during festivities. But never the less it hogged much media coverage for days and weeks together; more so because of the purpose the explosives were supposed to be used. Naah, once again you are wrong. It wasn’t to be blown in crowded places and cause substantial loss of life and property neither was it to cause panic or create communal tensions. It was actually to kill wild boars.

Well, however the hype created by the wild life activists made it sure that the protagonists did hog limelight for quiet few days to come.

However, is that so with human life in India? Bombs have been exploding in the expanse of this country with such a frequency that long back we have lost the count of the number, leave alone the number of victims. Has human life become so cheap that bomb explosion and resulting casualties have not been creating any impact on the common man? People have started to skip reading such news in the newspaper; now that there have aroused some kind of regularity and similarity in such news.

From the mails to claim responsibility to the warnings sent out from the Home ministry. From the blame-game of the intelligence agencies to the blaming of our neighbours. The convening of cabinet ministry to assess the situation and the opposition party going gung-ho on a new anti-terror law. The same claims by the police to have identified the perpetrators and the same top-of-the voice and “masala”fied reporting of the so called “eye witness” in the glare of the video-cameras and the TV reporters. Same routine press conference by the DGP of the area and the same old pleas by the defendants. Will any thing change?