of iCons

Though I never owned a Apple product have often tried them second hand , loved them and felt sad on hearing news of Steve Jobs demise. But then Facebook posts on and on forwarding his famous speeches esp his Standford one my favorite since I blogged about forwarding it got me thinking me of something quite else.

Humanity loves an icon – something to worship , to inspire , to make you believe in something wonderful and worthy about life.
Powerful inspirational preachings and words can be so wonderful at certain moments in life
but most can only be inspired for that fleeting moment ,
some can seize that inspiration and make something of themselves
and rarely if ever can anyone replicate the inspiration
cause the very inspiring words have a hidden fallacy…
Not that I do not like those quotes/speeches – I absolutely dig many of them and Steve Jobs Stanford speech is still on my list of all time favorite speeches since I first read it in 2005 but yet
I browsed through countless tributes and yet what was in mind was captured here

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/10/why-we-mourn-steve-jobs/246238/

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life," he urged the students. 
And yet to produce Apple products requires that thousands of workers flawlessly execute Jobs' business plans, which is to say his life.

However brilliant everything he envisioned was fact is to get him that glory and satisfaction of living his life he needed quite a bunch of people to willing be assembly line workers i.e live someone else's life.
Its not just him , everyone who talks of be yourself , get a life – innovate think outside the box makes me want to ask them – if there is no box at all whats the whole point of it ?
Fact is not all men are equal whatever they say
Some tower over all others and thats the way of life.
But that does not mean those who are not a match to that towering figure are expendable or have a pointless existence.
They are the very lifeblood on which such towering figures subsist

Working in a industry where creativity and innovation is the buzzword I seriously wonder how any thing of worth will ever get done if no one does the implementation of ideas – the execution and some of the necessary boring work . I mean in a team of 10 having 2 or 3 misfits creatives – different thinkers is great but imagine a team of 10 bright innovative huge egotist team members with no respect for rules .
So while we should look up in awe at the gifted geniuses – be inspired to go beyond what is the norm – we should live our very own dream and not someone else's dream . .
The important thing I guess it to have the right dream . Jobs surely developed the clarity for it

 "It was one of the first times that I started to realize that maybe Thomas Edison did a lot more to improve the world than Karl Marx and Neem Kairolie Baba put together." – Steve Jobs

This I say because as many people do forward and  read these famous words of his literally
"Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do"
They then act and convince their craziness as genius and it may or may not be – but it might not always bode much well for the world I guess
This I thought as was randomly reminded of someone who was crazy enough – has changed the world – died this year and
well has been the worst thing for the US – Osama

Fact is Genius may be good or bad but they will always be rare and will always shine .
Their words are just odes which makes people like moths come to burn in them
not realizing that they were never meant to be the flame.
And then the cliche – flames can light up the world or burn it
Ok as usual I drift in my thoughts and posts but then that is why this blog .
Words are such playthings .

A quick jotting

Somehow was feeling this has been an immensely depressing year. There hasnt been anything good for ages in life but this year it has been like the end of hope.

I was thinking about forcing a change , taking risks and all that and this  crossed my mind - Sounds stupid but well !!

To take a risk and jump off too you need a cliff

What can you do in a vast desert - beyond giving up and hoping to die 

OR keep dragging yourself on hoping fate lands you at an oasis out of the blue.

But yeah its again onto fate .....What can you do in when all you have is shapeless pointless and endless sand ? 

Well as I post this I thought again - May be stare at the blue sky and be delusional that there's water - all you need is to stare up

On being moved to appreciate trivialities


Usually quotes come to mind as I write some thoughts but when I started to write this post after much laziness preventing any writing I could not much recall any that fitted the exact thoughts in my minds which triggered me to post this until I found this.

“To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.” - Jalal ad-Din Rumi


And so you could say for anyone who can really praise anything while not directly involved with it.
While human craving for appreciation is so well known what we do not realize is how few can truly appreciate.
I do not mean the appreciation mailers really I blogged on but more like enjoying something irrelevant really enough to appreciate - not because it is a success or because everyone loves it -But really be able to be touched by something small thats well ignored in general.
May be I am confusing it with many things I think in this respect so lets go to the background that framed the thought.

Someone from our team was leaving - well to build the character first
- the chap can be exasperating in his questioning which is where we started off when he came new
- argumentative when he knows something and absolutely I care a damn about authorities.
He kind of had a reputation for being a confuser - in which I played a good part due to the way he confused me too - but more
esp as somehow his communication style made life worse for him.
But then with time I really could see the passion with which he worked on what he liked even when no one cared and I seriously appreciate that.
One of the downsides of having a policy at work where its like do what you want , how you want as long as what we want is working is no one out there differentiates between how well optimally or precisely someone got it to work.
No one appreciates the finer backend stuff .
So well time went on - we had new manager , new leads and now this guy was leaving and so he arranged a knowledge transfer of his work. There were just two of us me and a new senior lead who was now picking up most of the work writing code and he walked us through - at the end the senior chap just said to me - "he has written it so well"
Something I always knew and saw but there was nothing I could say as in the end its all about what is accepted as working
- in which we had less success
This new senior guy is also a very hard working chap and has made a success out of things so well that stands out. What no one sees is - he writes things to work for that moment - his success is due to his heroic efforts - which in future would be hard to handle by others - unlike someone who wrote it more well neat with a thought for ease and longevity.

But I thought at least this guy had the eye to see the good work - something the so called managers pre-occupied with making ppts dont. And so that incident and another below brought me this whole thought of how
- can we appreciate and - what we appreciate tells so much about us.

My father is one of those persons about whom one of the advertisements jokes - "tab tho un dinon street light ke paas kaafi bheed rahi hogi" (it must've been really busy with so many people under the street light)- Yeah he too says I studied there .

Nevertheless he was viewing the new 5 star add where two guys sat on a wooden horse thing and well he said "what crap is this . They pay lakhs for this nonsense" . Well I thought - Ok he's off on his usual rant - but then he remembered a ad and appreciated it - a rarity and that would tell so much about him - its not a enjoyable or fun ad but he appreciated it.
"He said that add where a kid takes a wire and makes something like tongs for his mother - how nice that concept was" - It was for Havell's fire proof cables
The fact is my father is one of those people who loves making things out of such crap which exasperates us no end as this pretty much means nothing in the house can be thrown out - everything could be useful in some way !! . Yup oyr house is full of old wires being used for clothesline - broken shoe heels can be fashioned into door stoppers and what not :(
And so I realised that was why that ad touched him and he liked it .
Just as someone who loves to code appreciates a good code.

Indeed to praise the sun is praising your own eyes - your own love for the light & warmth it bestows

Of the value a winning joy brings


Last month in one of those moods when I just go ahead and buy books I bought the book Chinaman by shehaan karunaatilake .
Been a very busy month and I still am just halfway through so will post seperately on the book itself.
I started reading the book in train and as I read this quote in there I focused on those lines with a long pause
on the words

But once in a while, the very best of them will.... and thought of Sachin's centuries
and smiled to myself and though lucky us
we've had quite a many "once in a while's "

So When India won the World Cup and that too beating Sri Lanka
- may be Sachin did not fire - may be it isnt a left arm seamer but still I still recalled the quote in that Sri Lanka based novel
and thought of how the moment was all value for a billion.
It probably wont be much of use to most individual lives and will hardly change our daily lives or
cure any of the the ills we are living through yet....... what amazing value it brings to a collective memory of a nation

“been told .....that there is no use or value in sports,”
.....................

“In a thousand years, grass will have grown over all our cities.
Nothing of anything will matter. Left-arm spinners cannot teach your children
or cure you of disease. But once in a while,
the very best of them will bowl a ball that will
bring an entire nation to its feet.
And while there may be no practical use in that,
there is most certainly value.”

Pondering some endings...

Yesterday I was again reminded of this awesome poem by Agyey in hindi.
It was not a happy thing, though it doesnt not -yet- mean directly for me.

Someone I worked with remotely for over past 2 yrs suddenly is supposed to move out of a project he initiated.
In corporate life every decision has its merits & demerits but some how the way somethings are handled at times makes you feel bad.
There is not much you can say to someone whom you reported to for 2 years once a week but never knew anything else.
And all I could think of was that poem.

In Hindsight - I am a hopeless creature who gets nostalgic about things which are part & parcel of life

P.S: Someone please invent a better line to convey that some work is very
precious and dear to heart rather than - " Its my baby"

Of being reminded ...


A old friend from college days called up and started talking about the reunion of sorts they had in the US of a few of our hostelmates.The conversation made me glad of having this blog as I seem to have a terrific ability to forget many things which I dont care about personally .
May be I either outgrow things completely OR I always just hang onto them never letting go . There seems to be less of a middle path in my case.

She started off relating how S a senior has not changed one wee bit , she still behaves as though she is the center of the world and they stupidly still sort of catered to her. "Remember How she did not even ask about having food when we had travelled so far for her marriage. She even neglected and left our gift lying in the corner crap"

Now I had lost complete memory of such things as S was another of those acquaintances we called friends - no attachment neither any great respect/liking which for me can be mutually exclusive. But here I was being reminded of all that and I wonder about myself.
Why do people bother so much about these things and somewhere I know why I don't - because my expectation level with people has been very low and whenever I've raised it Ive been quite dissapointed.
But then I never raise it for everyone esp when you know that they are not worth it. Keeping it low has sprung many a pleasant surprises with people.I am amazed in fact when people remember me esp as I dont see hugely what they had to remember me for.
Nevertheless, people I dont know why nurse such bad memories which mean nothing really for years together.

It makes me wonder if having a good memory is all that good.
As Nietzsche said
"The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time."
So to complete the corollary "The advantage of a bad memory is that one never remembers the bad things "
But then may be it makes you prone to repeating your errors - or does the subconscious handle it? Whatever !!


P.S:
I am having some insane time at my office , making my friends say lady enjoy the drama while you can .
Its something like ek resource theen manager . Thats an upgrade from the two I had last who dont see eye to eye literally.
I have so many issues of my own nuisance at home that I just let the drama go on rather than add to my stress,
but if only there was a smart player what an awesome situation this is .
But then only a fool like me can end up in such stupid situation.Lets see how it ends cause things have to move now some way.

and so --- Still listening to Udaan's awesome Azaadiyan song

Kahani khatam hai ya shuruwaat hone ke hai (Is it the end of the story or the begining)
Subha nayi hai yeh ya phir raat hone ko hai ( Is it a new dawn or the start of night)
Aane wala waqt dega panha hai/Ya phir se milenge do raahein ( The time to come will take care of us Or will I again stand at a juncture)
Khabar kya, kya pataa ( Who knows)

P.P.S: I really dont want to write much on facebook but I always end up noticing such inane ridiculous things there that well I cant help it.Imagine you have a Sr manager on your friendlist and on a post - your sister , husband comments saying what a bunch of lazy buggers you are and how the org pays you for free as all you do is spend time on FB . The whole team is a kaamchor.
Seriously even if it was a joke - people are idiotic . Even if you dont care about the job its such downright senseless behavior but seems the world is anyway full of a billion of them . And after all Truth is Great and we should not be hypocrites.

Udaan – Realism without the addons

While a lot of people watch movies to experience may be what is absent or what cannot be and enjoy the thrill of it,
there are few movies which end up as chilling reminders of what was.I wouldn’t write much on Udaan really , but that when I saw the movie end , I just thought if I was a guy I’d probably have ended up being that guy in some way.
Its not a entertainment type of movie , but it does not bore at all for most part.

I know we as a society love to relegate people on high altars based on just some social roles.People have kids because its the norm and kids are supposed to be indebted for being brought into this callous world.
Its a chilling story of the middle class we grew up in where its a insult to stare back into face – you have to lower your eyes.Throughout the movie the “aankhen neechi karo ” almost brought back ghosts.
Hell even the location Jamshedpur was almost recognizable having lived in steel cities of those days.

I loved the part where the guy says back to his father ” Its an awesome method – First you scar a child for life (and that always need not mean physical beating scars) and then say sorry”
People underestimate these scars of childhood so much ,I have seen and not all have the same spirit.
I just wondered , had the guy not been in boarding at all would he ever have gotten that spirit – knowing only being a crushed spirit.

Also the movie does try to give us some insight into the opposite side – its about a character who is wrong but – its the same thing – scars of their own memories( somethin which preachy movies like Taare Zameen pe and 3 idiots simply dont. As I wrote in TZP a movie where it simply does not give one scene of empathy for the father)

Many people have past scars – some try to repeat them by scarring others to feel it was right ,
some try to ensure that it never repeats and therein lies the difference forward.

Jumbled thoughts of times we live in...

I have lost the art or may be the patience of writing a nice one topic based post which is why I write in such directionless manner , but the real issue is finding a title for such posts honestly.
Well I started writing on this thinking of facebook. There's something sinister about the way facebook is developing - I mean the way its being planned to be used by organizations.
Nothing's clear(though we all know the conspiracy theories) but what do you feel when you get an invite from
- the senior managers who rarely nods when they pass you by,
- people sitting two blocks away and all managers who rarely say hi (not that i mind , even I dont do that but then I dont go adding them)

Its isnt quite the orkut style stranger friend requests - its a deliberate thing by people whose request you cannot
refuse without being rude.
I have seen someone who added people in a whole department in a week . He probably has spoken directly to 40% of them even once.
If keeping in touch - professional contacts was the thing there's always linkedin which should be used.
But somehow no senior manager bothers on that Platform.

Organizations are begining to have social media policies I hear , but that is for employees being restricted,
I wonder if organizations themselves will have any scruples at all using stuff they pick up on employees.
But then thats an individual problem.

I am amazed at the idiots galore who put up their birthday on facebook fully correctly when thats actually the minimal authentication for many banks. No wonder Citibank type frauds happen. I was feeling hilarious
when I heard he cheated the Hero Group and at the same time it seemed scary.
If thats the level of sophistication really what chance do we have.

But yeah the sums that get talked about on TV and internet makes you feel really so small .
I mean nothing less than a crore gets discussed , be it IPL, frauds scams, or shopping and then you get
hikes of a thousand rupees or some single digit multiple . You seriously question yourself about you being any good really
until you see the IPL auction.

Ravindra Jadeja gets bid for 4 crore plus while some of the best across go unbid or for what 1 crore + /-.
This is a twisted world really. Nothing professional about it .
There you go Ayn Rand !! - If you ever want to see why your pure capitalism is not perfect and fails just see this auction.
The best will not rise to the top by default in Capitalism.
Capitalism is simply the lesser and preferable evil which allows everyone a chance to be evil , but evil it is.

Then again I think Ayn Rand was wrong but may be she had to exaggerate capitalism and its perfect world ,to put across her point among the fanatic socialists.

Thats the only way it seems to make a point. The assasination in Pakistan of Tasser and other religious hardline stuff we hear -
simply keeps increasing day by day even on the internet makes you realise the importance of someone like Richard Dawkins.
He seems as fanatic about Atheism as the religious fanatics he opposes(which is why I found God Delusion a wonderful read but odd ) but its at these times you realise why thats necessary -
without that fanatic passion you cannot make a liberal open minded counter argument to the relegious extremists.

I havent seen the movie The Devil's Advocate yet but I heard this quote from it which I liked because esp of the line
" absentee landord " as it reminded me of my favorite perfect song describing God for me

"aasman pe hai khuda aur zameen pe hum "
aaj kal vo is taraf dekhta hai kam"

John Milton: Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do, I swear for His own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. Ahaha. And while you're jumpin' from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He's laughin' His sick, fuckin' ass off. He's a tight-ass. He's a sadist. He's an absentee landlord. Worship that? Never.

Jottings on some Movies over the Holiday Season


2011 is here but well I'm not quite inclined to write on heavy stuff
still which in a way is good as it might mean heavy cribbing of sad things.

So well let me make some quick jottings on some movies I saw last few months.
As I maintain my posts are not reviews as I watch most of them so very late
and i write only about what I felt based on my state of mind.


First the good one -

The first movie in saw in 2011 Band Baaja Baraat was sweet. I mean really sweet .
Its been like long after Jab We Met that I liked a romantic Hindi movie as much.There were few good movies like Love Aaj Kal but most lacked the emotionality somehow . always the same thought - concepts nice but something more could be done.
I sort of liked this movie though - almost made eyes blurry at few moments which once upon a time was nothing but these days is real feat.

And then if you dont like it go watch Break Ke Baad . Irrespective of taste preference I am sure 90% will
then like Band Baaja Baraat.Seriously Break Ke Baad is a lesson in how movies can be made boring. There's nothing you seriously dislike out there but it drags on .

Its become this typecasting of Deepika Padukone - the one who keeps breaking off. There's that Sonam Kapoors's Aisha, I hate Love Stories and all of them confuse me as one movie differentiating from other . The same hip hop looks careers and story packaged as romance.
It is here that Band Baaja Baraat is refreshing. All romances are the same - its that mush which needs to be varied
and humor without cheap jokes is always a plus with me.

Next disappointment was The Deathly Hallows - Part 1 - in harry Potter series ,though it was lessesned by the fact that after the Half Blood Prince I have toned down the expectations with the director anyway . He makes them like art movies . They are fine may be technically and so on but something stays amiss .
The thrill is gone and also I am quite sure people who have not read the book cannot figure out half the stuff. The detailing is bad.
Now may be this is good to encourage book being read but still the book seemed more thrilling more heart rending and touching.
But thats just me . I'd probably say that of most books but the revelations about Dumbledore in the book were a big thing
and affected you much , here its not quite the same.

The amazing part I want to note is again perceptions. I read a post by someone that what they liked about the movie was the
lovely scene betweek Harry and Hermione which was not in the book but added in the movie and its so caring and
touchingly beautiful of a lovely friendship which is quite what I felt.

So when I go to you tube to check it out I get led somehow to some other reveiw wherein the complain was exactly the opposite .
They felt that that dance should not have been added as it gave wrong impressions about their friendship which was absent in the book. Hmmmm its all in the mind.


Similar stuff I felt when I read this about women offended by Social Network. The directors response is good.
Issue with getting offended with some things is applying one potrayal of someone from a group as a benchmark for all .
Its hard to resist stereotyping .

I had on my laptop a movie which I had been postponing since long. Perfume - The Story of a Murderer.
The movie is based on a man having very strong olfactory sense and hence can know the smell of everything to very small detail.
Then he smells a woman and gets obsessed over capturing it and hence kills 7 of them to make a perfume that subjugates the world to him.But then he realises his nothingness despite them and sort of gives it all up by getting himself killed in the same fish market where he was born.The ending seemed stupid but overall the story was very well developed.
Its a different movie sure but may leave people quite uneasy . The opening market scene of the fish market and all
- the worms, the gore of it was way too much for my sensibilities which is why while watching action is all fine -
I sort of stay off movies like Saw etc. Blood and gore are just not my cup of Tea.

Finally about Guzaarish . Now thing with this movie for me was not the movie but the way many people asked me
Did you like it ?
Unlike other movies which is either trashed or said as good for once or great - there was this apprehensive questioning esp
because it seems quite a few liked it. I too found it Ok but there are two things to consider here.
I watched it comfortably at home and I had very low expectation - hoping for something like Black or Kites and all such tragic saga.
But the movied moved on quite better. No awesomeness, slow movie - sort of arty kind but did not bore me somehow.
Half the people though are surprised and wondering how come the other half (of the usual normal set )managed to like it.

Another Year

Whats a year but a number when life seems to be almost in slumber.
2010 drifted really in a nothingness sort of way for me

Have been in a strange mood since December. Dont feel like reading much.
Dont feel like writing too.
Thoughts come to mind but there is a tendency to just lie still and not jot them.
Hope 2011 lets me get over all that and we come to a grand end as predicted the following year.

Sounding too morose this post for a new year?
Well here's a lovely song that makes me feel hugely better
always with lovely lyrics as usual by gulzar

ek subah ek mod par

P.S: This post was made just hoping that I try to post more or rather something better than what I did in 2010
And just as I am planning to click publish I remember its a new decade too. Ok so next post may be a decade recap ? Let see