“Aapko kahaan utarna hai?”

“Aapko kahaan utarna hai?”
“Chembur”
“OK”
Nod.
Nod.

A conversation of this kind with an absolute stranger won’t make any sense till the time you are sitting in a II class Mumbai local train. The system carries more than 6.1 million commuters on a daily basis and constitutes more than half of the total daily passenger capacity of the Indian Railways itself. It has the highest passenger density of any urban railway system in the world.
And trust me, mutual understanding can’t get better. The nods are an agreement saying – ‘After you get down at Chembur, your seat is mine.’

I used to find it silly. Why not simply sit when a person leaves? Why tell her? Why ask him?

But one is a fool to think so. You will probably be beaten up if you sit without ‘booking’ it with the ‘lender’ beforehand as someone else would have already done so. Sitting on someone else’s booked seat would be a crime bigger than land encroachment in Kerala.

Approaching a (sitting) prospect is like approaching a super-hit movie ticket vendor on a Saturday night. Most probably sold out. Most probably booked. But we thrive on hope. For all you know she may be your fairy god mother, she may be your lender. Getting a lender is as good as getting a PPO. There is assurance. There is security. There is neighbor’s envy. There is owner’s pride.

I call all of them survivors. If you drink only mineral water and always used dad’s car for school, you probably don’t understand Darwin’s theory. Spend one hour at Kurla Harbor Line station and watch people get in and out of the train, you’ll know what survival of the fittest actually means. Its as difficult as a wedlock – andar jaana mushkil, bahaar nikalna aur bhi mushkil.

So what does one standing survivor say to another?

“Aapko mila (lender)?”
“Haan”
“Toh phir, Aapko kahaan utarna hai?”

In love but a little lazy

Too tired to write. Yet I feel the need to dedicate some space to my latest heartthrobs…

Ranbir Kapoor and M S Dhoni!

My mom fell for the father, I fell for the hot 'son':

I also fell for a fella-cancerian, the hot 'Dhon':

Waah!! Kya banaya hai bhagwaan ne :)

I can’t handle alumni meets. For various reasons.

Everyone comes in cars. I felt like a lesser mortal. I and Divya grandly entered ITC Grand Maratha in a black and yellow auto (as a tribute to the auto-rickshaw community). After the meet I decided to be good to all the car-owning acquaintances in and around Mumbai. I also plan to start a All Mumbai SIBM Alumni Car Owners Association on Orkut (... a post-Kerala symptom).

Then again, I can’t handle them coz I don’t get as senti as I am supposed to. I start faking it a little. When they show old pictures I make a stupid sad face and groan a long ‘Ohh Yaaaaaaaar..’. That’s what I do when I am actually missing my friends. A long ‘Yaa…aaar..’ and then another ‘Kyaaa yaaa…aaar’. I keep moaning yaaaar-yaar till someone asks me why am I not on the dance floor.

Thirdly, I can’t gulp that I am an earning corporate now. Living with the fact that I am an alumnus forces me to act mature. It’s a burden I tell you. I wanted to ‘boooo…’ something going on stage. I suddenly realized that I was coming from office and if someone from my company is present here then it might just be one more career limiting move.

Then I had to hug people whom I never bothered to smile at in college. Worst was banging into people from other batches. We exchanged numbers which, I for sure know, will occupy space in our phonebooks for no reason. We exchanged greetings after which we appreciated the paintings on the wall as we had nothing to talk about. I would have preferred meeting a wholesaler. Atleast he’d have something to crib about.

Worst of all. It made me miss all those people who weren’t there. I really missed the yeda gang. Had they been here, we’d have either spent time sitting in a corner playing Bingo or copying each others dance steps. But we would have had fun. The kind of fun I can never have with any other set of people in the world.

Miss you guys. The alumni meet was great. It would have been greater had you been there. I just got a little senti later that night (and that weekend). That’s the only real reason I can’t handle alumni meets.

I am a loser

Everyone in the world specializes in something....My mom in scolding me, my sister in mocking at me, my dog in licking, my friends in making fun of me, Air Deccan staff in stealing........ I specialize in losing.

I look at a loser when I look at the mirror.

I lost my phone again.... :(

Dad said, " are you sure, you lost only the phone...?"

O kerala!!

I’m sad.

I’m leaving Kerala tomorrow and, I don’t know why, its hitting me bad.

Some things I’ll miss:

Uncle, Aunty and Kalyani

Watching the backwaters from the bus window

Getting drenched everyday

Kerala rice and avial

Weekly strikes

The smell of fresh banana chips

Ayyappan temples

Cocoa Tree, Cochin

The Mundu Mafia

And the zha zha zha

And lots of other small-big things. I know I’ve missed a lot of things. Hope, God’s Own Country gives me a second chance.

Chak de - One of the 3 best things in the last 3 months

1) SRK

Every one will love him…… Coz he is sexy!! Coz he gives his typical eyebrow twitch in the end (and only when required). In his white shirt and Rayban sunglasses, gives his fans a mini turn on!
I sometimes felt he was going through a MPD coz when sitting with the ‘Association’ in the conference hall he’d throw chutzpah filled declarations bilkul absentmindedly and would shift his gaze from one person to another as if he were Russell Crowe from ‘A Beautiful Mind’. ..Then again, he’d get into ‘Any Given Sunday’ Al Pacino’s shoes, trying to buck up his girlies against the indian men’s hockey team.

2) It gives you wings!

Its beyond imagination of an average mind. About Hockey! About Women hockey! About victory in women hockey!!! For 2.5 hours it took me to a utopian world where we defeated New Zealand, South Africa, England, Australia..!! Indians are emotional fools, hence all of us will love this movie as it beautifully roasts on something each one of us yearns for – Victory, Redemption, Pride…Public’s applause and screams at every goal, every slap, every revelation proves that we ache for impetus and we constantly need the ‘Go India!!!’ slogan behind us.

3) The girls!!

They make it great. The haryanvi tomboy, the chandigarh sex bomb, the jharkhand pair, the ill-tempered sardarni everyone rocked, me likes the bitch-turned-princess Bindiya Naik (Shilpa Shukla) in the movie.

Though, Vidya Malvade (Vidya Sharma) disappointed me. She did nothing apart from being right all the time and screaming ‘Vidya Sharma, India’ thrice. She was a puppet captain to the hockey team, just like BJP would say our PM is to our country. SRK played Soniya ji on-screen and didn’t let her do any captainship :P

4) The eve- teaser hammering

This one, I personally loooved! They rocked at it. I wished it were in the field so that the ladies could use hockey sticks instead of floor vipers. Mast dialogue by SRK, “kya karien hamare hockey mein chakke nahi hote”

5) The Product Placements

Ultratech and Puma couldn't find a better platform. I don't think McDonalds and Aaj Tak were really placements.Dunno if McDonalds should have let their venue to the director to host a brawl.... The SRK-Aaj Tak reporter scuffle and then the blame game highlighted the askewed vision of the media. It might bring a bad name to the media house.

In the end, there was something that confused moi!

Coach Kabir Khan says it hazaar baar, “Ham India ke liye khel rahe hain, fir apni team ke liye, aur uske baad agar himmat ho toh, apne liye”. Nice line Coach!!

But I think Kabir ji was coaching for something else, something very personal to him. He didn’t start coaching coz he wanted the Women’s team to win or because he loved his country. He started because he wanted to prove a point and take off the ‘gaddaar’ label. I found Kabir’s role contradictory to what went in his mind. But nevertheless, I loved it.

Control Engineering

Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters.

After three months into my first stint, I realize that meeting sales targets traveling all day in KSRTC buses, in tiny villages, in this ceaseless rainfall, in places where all you get in the name of vegetarian food is a Kerala porotha and pazhampuri,,,, ain’t easy :(

Esp. if you’re in a country where you don’t know the language. Esp. if you are a girl. Esp. if you’ve screwed up habits!
Lore says, Control is the key to success. I don’t disagree.

• I love drinking water. I used to drink lots and lots and lots of it before I realized, I was searching for a clean loo every two hours while doing the market. The thought of using a public toilet killed me. Once I made my salesman sit in a coffee shop, while I used the washroom. My (water) drinking habits were getting too much to handle. Mornings would be spent answering the million dollar question, "where would I get a clean place to pee in this little town if I need to??" Thus, I decided to control my water intake. Now my early mornings and late evenings are spent savoring the liquid :) I hate to admit, but I envy indian men when it comes to this. They pee anywhere, everywhere. Shamelessly. They don't even need a clean place (I've never met any guy searching for one!!).
  

• Another place where I quickly need to get my control mechanisms working, is my back slapping habit. I somewhere am of the contention, that if people are really relishing their work, they’d do a lot of real hard back slapping to each other. I realized how culturally insensitive I was the first time I hit my mallu salesman on the back. He instantly moved away several meters and till date refuses to work with me coz he is a brahmachari!!

• Thirdly and most importantly, it’s the parlance. They don’t understand when I ask them for directions in hindi or english but they’d give me a dirty look when I use the F word. I’ve learnt that there are some not-to-be-uttered-words (even when you know the other person doesn’t know your language) like sex, daroo, love, kiss to name a few. Hindi Gaalis like BC, MC, C*****, G***** should never-never-never be used. They eat drink sleep in Malayalam but abuse in hindi. And I..., gotta control baby!

I listen to Janet chechi’s song, for inspiration nowadays:

This is a story about control, my control
Control of what I say, control of what I do
And this time Im gonna do it my way
I hope you enjoy this as much as I do
Are we ready? I am? cause its all about control
And Ive got lots of it

- Janet Jackson, Control

Oft repeated words of wisdom

"fat rahi hai..."

"mara raha hoon..."

"kat gaya hai..."

"baja di..."

Golden Rule : Don't ask 'kya' after anyone says any of the above

Thanks to sales.

All for the eye-pie!

If you walk in your regular grocery shop, chances are that you’d be picking up your pack of chips from a spacecraft like Bingo stand or your toothpaste from a rocket sized Pepsodent gondola. If you plan to open a retail store, I suggest don’t buy the furniture as the stands, racks etc will soon follow, don’t waste money on painting the walls, the wallpapers and vinyls will be there soon.

Older home-grown brands like AVT are leaving their diffidence behind to fight with international majors like Nestle in display and shelf space. Innovation is at its oomphy best. A brand like Appy, which desperately wants to be called a cool drink in its TV ads,throws a sex appeal when it comes to its champagne like stylish display.

The kind of dough companies were spending five years back on display was nothing compared to what they are doing today. The amount of merchandising done inside a normal kirana store shouts for the ‘buy moi’ pull brands are creating for themselves. A few years back one could see (in a few high- throughput shops) max-to-max a Cadbury dispenser and a Coke refrigerator as ‘company ka maal’. These days you have Boost vinyls, Lays stands, Hutch sign boards, Kissan Jam racks, Airtel counters, Sunfeast gates, Bytes hangars, Maggie bags, Munch cut outs, Vicks dispensers, Red bull refrigerators, Cadbury visi-coolers, Red Label swinging insignias, Surf washing-machine-resembling boxes, Mentos trays and what not. Everyone wants to rule the category nobody is ready to be a anybody!

Fight for shelf-space is far worse when it comes to organized retail. Companies want branding on walls, flooring, ceiling, staff uniforms, bla blah….and then there are nitty gritties like extra margin, display charges etc.

Nowadays when I walk in a shop, more than the product, I appreciate the efforts put in by brand managers to catch my attention as a customer!

What is the only 'dry' thing left in Kerala?

Humor, perhaps.

The day before yesterday

The day before yesterday

Bug 23 bit me so badly last night that I suddenly felt like going back to all my School days- College days- AIESEC days-SIBM days once again. To add to my misery, a few sadistic friends (Pai, Pathak & MJ) called me in the middle of their reunion in Pune.

Damn!

I brainlessly went through some 5 GB of old pics and videos and felt sad. I listened to ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘High’ and felt sadder :(

Two things that made me believe that I am just 7 years from the officially dreaded ‘not-to-be-mentioned’ number:

· I went home for a nap after lunch, before going out in the evening

· I have the ‘tanha tanha..’ song from Rangeela as my phone ringtone

I spent 90% of my day talking to people over the phone and the rest 10% to cutting birthday cakes(s)। Thanks to Nik and D, Pritam, Dinesh and of course mum-dad!!

Yesterday

I realized it was Monday again and along with my usual distributor-market visits, I had to go the bank to re-apply for my ATM cards.

I entered the North Ernakulam branch of HDFC Bank through their ATM door at 9.45 am. The gifted heavily lip-sticked help-desk woman stared at me like I’d entered her bedroom at the wrong time.

She: “Entu?” (What?)

Me: “Chechi, enikku malayalam arrayill” (Sister, I don’t know Malayalam)

She: “Tamil?” (Do you know tamil?)

Me: “Illa(No). I lost my ATM cards two days back. I need to re-apply”

She: “Irrukku” (Sit)

She gave me a form. I guess it was part of her job to offer everyone a Gold card. With her 10% english and 90% malayalam muddle and vociferous gesticulations she tried to explain the benefits and yearly charges to me. I was getting late for work but somewhere identified with her incompetent sales pitch to a customer who doesn’t understand her language, so sat and tried to decipher the details.

Those ten minutes were full of unhappy ugly realizations. It was like staring at the mirror.

She did a miserable job. It reminded me of those dozens of hopeless efforts I’d put in my last few days to convince those uncompromising contradictory retailers. I’d spoken softly (and sometimes not so softly), smiled at their smirks, cleaned their ant-ridden display counters, put posters on their cluttered dirty walls and even shook hands (I hate doing that with random men!!) but just didn’t work sometimes:(

Pitying her, I silently filled the Gold card form.

Today

It was my third consecutive visit to the police station to get the ‘certificate of complaint’ so that I could apply for a duplicate copy of my PAN card and Driving License. No matter what the general perception is, I think it’s a rather friendly place. Atleast people were trying to understand your problem or atleast they acknowledged that there was a problem(expecting that they’d do something about it is asking for too much).

I made pretty good friends with a lady constable who’d just sit and feel bad for you and go back to her newspaper (she used ‘aii-aiiyyo’ some 100 times as if it were the biggest robbery she’d ever witnessed) and the sub-inspector’s typist who tried hard to speak english.

“Molu..Bombay?”

“For work Molu?”

“Entinannu..come?”

I didn’t much understand of what all he said but in today's one hour, I had tea with him and asked about his children and family. He told me what would be the best time to see Mr. Sub Inspector which means I’ll see him tomorrow again:)

On the way back I noticed two things which made me feel a bit closer to my homeland.

First at ‘Franch Express’ courier services. Reminded me of the ‘Sandwhich’ – ‘Berger’ snack counter we had near my bus stop in school:

Second, on a movie billboard. Made me miss those half-hindi half english name plates in Jaipur eg. Retd. Lt. Colonel R . S. राजावत, Dr. D. S. मीना :

J’ai 23 ans!

Aiyyo!

I’m gonna be 23 in a couple of hours and I have lots to whine about.

1. No family and friends to celebrate with (not that I’m crazy about cutting cakes but now that I’ve nothing else to do, might as well whine)
2. I’m factually penniless (my wallet’s destiny was similar to my mp3 player’s and Nikhil’s phone’s – all got stolen)
3. No plans for tomorrow (thanks to the never-ending downpour– viral fever is in vogue and I joined the club today!)
4. My cumulative sales achievement in the last two weeks is 88.5 % (I don’t need help from people to get completely f***** if I don’t do something about it)
5. I’m in Kerala for 42 more days! Everything about me is becoming Malayali by the day. I go to ‘affice’ in ‘odos’ and ‘besses’. My name is ‘Pervel Serme’ and my real name is ‘Parvathy’. And I sell ch‘o’colates (‘o’ pronounced as ‘oa’ in Boat).
6. Damn it, I’m single!! :( :( (I shouldn’t be expecting any flowers, gifts, cards…boohoo I’m such a loser in life)
7. From tomorrow, my parents will suddenly start their ‘groom-finding’ exercise with full force, which I had requested to put on hold till I’m 23.
   
8. The word 'base' doesn't hold any hidden connotation anymore. (I'm in BASE business:))
   
9. I cannot find many people online to whom I can crib. Hence, this post.
10. I’m so bored I can’t find a 10^th reason!

Adsense ??

Since childhood, Outlook has been one of my favorite weekly news magazine. I laud them for their articles and reports, style of writing, consideration to detail, gripping headlines, attention-grabbing graphics and most importantly their technique of making bland news interesting.

What goes missing sometimes is the synchrony between the marketing and the editorial teams. I admire Vinod Mehta (Editor –In-Chief, Outlook) for his quality of journalism and principled writing but the latest issue of Outlook magazine demonstrated low business sense on his part. Not knowing whom to hold responsible, I blame him for silly placement of ads.

Take for instance page 27 of the 16th July issue:

West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya looks rather uncomfortable sharing the same page with a Jockey model in her undergarments!

Dear Vinod,

My first suggestion: Recruit more MBAs like me who have learnt nothing else but 4Ps in their 2 years of B-schooling. (‘Placement’ happens to be one of the 4Ps) It might just help!

My second suggestion: If you have too many MBAs in your team, sack a few. It might help even more!!

For The Irony of Adsense read Nikhil's blog - http://nikmuse.blogspot.com/

Mundu Mafia!!

One of the most noticeable and interesting things about Kerala is the mundu men wear and the way they wear it. It is supposed to be graceful and all but frankly, it looks like some shady lecher’s wrap around esp. when they fold it up to their knees and ride bike or sit stiff on a platform with their legs apart....!!!

Worst is when they start scratching their crotch or they lift it up to wipe their faces.

Here is a picture I clicked when I was ‘doing’ the market.

And they thought they were leching!!

Choosing Choicelessness

Visiting parents is fun! Especially when you do that in 4-5 month gaps (and not for more than one week). My aim is to savor as many homemade sweets as possible in that little time. My mum, on the contrary, has a well defined agenda of ‘topics to discuss’. Now these ‘topics to discuss’ are forbidden territories which will remain untouched in the normal course of time.
But things have changed now. As I’m done with my studies, I’m working and I stay in a different part of the country altogether, these topics have gained undue importance and HAVE to be conferred on atleast once in my visit to Jaipur.
What I fear most are the ‘talks’ of ‘mutual agreement’ which are nothing less than traps I fall for. I very well know that my mom’s perennially worried about me and is out of answers when our relatives ask her about my plans. While talking to me she acts like one of those super cool moms and what I do with my life is the last thing on her mind. Her initially indifferent facade with hidden anxiety is truly commendable though it starts to wear off as the conversations progresses. But with her experience in dealing with me over the years and a couple of nods from Dad, she regains ground and fights back!

You can read the rest for yourself.

Few days back..
Mum: Parul, what are your plans?
Me: As in?
Mum: See, we are not in a hurry
Clueless me!!
Dad: She should be making her own choices
Mum: Arre… that’s what I’m saying. Let her take her own time. Parul you have full one and a half year! If you have someone in mind let us know
Me: What the f….hell! Just 1.5 years? Nanana… I’m out of the conversation already
Dad: Your mom’s crazy. You chill. You should make your own choices
Mom: Ya ya..we have never stopped you from doing what you wanted all your life. Just be sure this time.
Me: Aaarrree meri maa…kkkya zabardastii hai?
Dad: We are ok with anyone you’ve chosen or will chose. Make sure he is dependable in terms of job and background.
Mom: Just make sure he’s a hindu …Not only a hindu, we need a Brahmin only. Nahi toh what will others say?
Me: Anything else?
Mom: Don’t get so worked up. We know where you’ll adjust. You’ve been in Rajasthan most of your life. You won’t gel well with a southie.
Dad: So you want a north indian Brahmin?
Mom: No I want a Rajasthanii… preferably from Jaipur. Our Parul will be close by and she’ll have no culture-issues:)
Parul: Waah waah... so you want a guy who has first-class degrees and a first-rate job plus a cultured family and no bad habits and happens to be a north-indian preferably a Rajasthanii brahmin and that too from Jaipur!! I thought I was the one making choices!!
Mom: We’ve given you our requirements you are free to find one for yourself. Stay within these limits if you actually want to see us happy!!

I only know how much I detested this topic before the conversation started and how glad I was towards the end (not because of the playground I got but because the conversation ended). No marks for guessing that I’ve asked mum and dad to do the needful as my playfield in the Venn diagram is too small for me to exercise my options.

In other words, like a lot of other times, I fell for it, I chose choicelessness.

Of Should Be and Shouldn’t Be

Coming home to Jaipur after staying in a city like Pune for two years is like sitting on a bullock cart after driving a Ferrari. Worse is the thought that your racing days are over and now you are expected to tune yourself for something called ‘Real Life’. I use the term Racing Days because of two reasons. One, I was against time…trying everything I could in the little period I had. And two, I was enjoying the wind hitting my face. It gave me a birdlike feel.

The first few days at home were full of revelations and nostalgia. After that what hits you is the clause of social appropriation (or misappropriations) of your procedures. Invariably, a Shouldn’t Be pops up more number of times than a Should Be does. I shouldn’t be calling my friend at three in the night. I shouldn’t be using the F*** word. I shouldn’t be passing sarcastic remarks in this gathering. I shouldn’t be asking him to not bore me. Once one passes the shouldn’t be stage, should be becomes easier. I should be dressing in a salwaar kameez. I should be appreciating her miserable sense of humor. I should be hiding the contempt while they show my horoscope to the pundit. I should be earnestly interested in her choice of car. I should be…..I shouldn’t be….I should be…

When I get up in the morning I see tea by my side
I enter a clean bathroom with a towel fully dried
No bets No frets No brawls over bikes
The cosmos conspires and reality strikes
Soon I shall witness an office table full of files
A milieu of scathing words and plastic smiles
A neat pile of ironed shirts and socks kept bordered
It hits me bad, its gonna stay sad; this isn’t the life I ordered

And hence…before I forget and get lost in the myriad of excel-sheets, in the never-ending chase of targets and responsibilities and the innumerable social and personal expectations, I am going to make a few things public. Here’s a list of things I want (read have) to do in my years to come.

1. Learn to ride a bike
2. Go for 3 month backpack trip (Cover: Incredible India)
3. Work till 70 (if I’m alive)
4. Read Mahabharata and Geeta at least one. Read Ramayana again.
5. Attend one Aerosmith concert
6. Do Masters in Economics
7. Teach my kids
8. Sleep for one full day without disturbance
9. Dub for animation
10. Fly

And if I happen to disregard them, it’s the onus of the reader to remind me from time to time. Hope you do your job well!

Marching ahead...

In the past few days I have felt all possible emotions one can, in the shortest possible duration. Fear, reticence, glee, boredom, amusement, conviviality, frostiness, melancholy, hilarity, nostalgia, agitation and of course thrill…

Management Day, 3^rd March 2007

After infinite number of speeches by the inexhaustible and tireless panel we moved on to the much awaited masti formally known as the cultural program (I have no clue what’s cultural about it).

There were two kinds of people on stage. One side had prodigies like Basu, Daniel, Yagga and Irfan who were known to be miraculous when it came to showcasing talent. The other side had people like me & Palit who for some reason felt it would be good fun for the rest to see us doing something on-stage after staying off-stage all year (I believe it was less of aptitude and more of joblessness after Transcend that we were on stage).

I personally had awesome fun preparing the skit with the Doc, Nurse Shaggy and the rest. Being Dikha Tintingania & Laina Jain on stage was extremely enjoyable (I realized that there was a next step to the vella-mimicking I keep boring my friends with all the time).

I wanted the fun to just go on endlessly cuz somewhere inside the end of the program was symbolically the end of my B-school life. But I ain’t sad or anything. Just looking forward to everything. After all Today is the Tomorrow I worried about Yesterday.

Holi, 4^th March 2007

Happy Holi to u all!

Too much muck and little color. Lots of thandaai and small laughing fits.

Tata Crucible, 5^th March 2007

Kudos to Rohit & Nikhil!!!!

This is something they were waiting for since they came here. This is something that we all were waiting for.

We always knew you are stars just that this time you outshone everyone else.

Congrats buddies!

eXtra-insane-C!!!!

10 reasons why everyone in Team Transcend zzzimply rocks:

1) Pillai is always modest and is proud of it!

2) Our clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer courtesy Rohan.

3) Palit will ask you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.

4) Whatever Saket says is worth taking seriously is worth making fun of.

5) Macha’s artificial intelligence usually beats real insanity.

6) Asha’s clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

7) Baldy’s conclusion comes when where he gets tired of thinking.

8) Sonpari’s consciousness is that annoying time between naps.

9) Pooja’s good judgment comes from bad experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

10) Chirayu’s funda for sponsors: If you can't convince them, confuse them.

Totally love you guys!!

India Poised?

I wake up each morning and flip through the newspaper not to know what’s happening around but for a small feel-good here and there. A news piece on the Tata - Corus deal, a 8% + growth talk, an article on the ever-escalating sensex gives me the required feel good and then I start my day, smiling. I feel proud to be an Indian and I consider myself lucky to be reaping benefits of the boom (I have no inhibitions in accepting that fact that salaries today are offsprings of the demand-supply rumble and not our exceptional performance). On the whole, I am pleased at my present condition, all the more relaxed when I look into the future. ‘Survival of the fittest’ is an old, hackneyed, oft-repeated phrase sans relevance in today’s economic upsurge when you don’t have to try really hard. If you are reasonably sensible and you know angrezi a plum offer is waiting for you.

But things have been different since I watched Parzania. I shuddered at what I thought I didn’t want to acknowledge. For the first time in years, I felt I was a part of an ashamed and crippled nation which chooses to overlook problems because they haven’t been solved in the last fifty nine years, which chooses to take a microscopic view of the country and cover up its incapabilities by campaigns like India Shining/ India Rising/ India Poised and which chooses to ban Parzania in Gandhi land for fear of violence.

There are issues in Kashmir, North east, Gujrat, Andra Pradesh, Orissa. Naxalites who were present in just one state in 1948 have now spread to seven states in India. Safety is a farce be it Mumbai local or the Parliament. The bhagwa moral police is a question mark on our very fundamental rights be it Maharashtra, UP, Bihar or Rajasthan. Our foreign policies have been a failure as we can uncomplicatedly state that our relations with all our neighbors (except Nepal) are a let-down. Then there are other problems like poverty, malnutrition, floods and draughts, infrastructure, corruption……

And yet again we choose to celebrate the fact that US decides to end fiscal aid because they think our days of penury are over or because Asian Venture Capital Journal says we are the most favored PE destination in the world. The acidic truth is, we are still very much divided as a nation. One India deliberately alienates itself from the other’s encumbrance.

India might be rising but its only some peaks we’re looking at.

India might be shining but I don’t think it’s luminous enough to enlighten those emasculated mentalities whose unpardonable acts have embittered generations to come.

It's that time of the year again!!

Guess what's god send?
Transcend
Transcend

The transcend website's up:

www.sibmtranscend.com