Common Wealth Games : Celebrating Slavery

Sometimes I wonder if Britishers had injected some slavery bug into our genes before leaving India. If you are wondering what the hell am i talking about here goes the entire Article to explain myself.

If you have ever wondered what common wealth games is ,

a Quote from wiki

"The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and previously known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states. All but three of these countries were formerly part of the British Empire."

It is a game that is played by members of common wealth nations , members who were part of British colonies.Basically one's ruled by British!

So after celebrating 61st republic day , if we still get Prince charles to come and inaugrate[ok jointly with Prathibha but still!!] the Common Wealth Games, arent we celebrating our slavery? Had Subhash Chandra Bose been alive today , this act would have cremated him alive. Is this the respect we are paying for all the struggle?

Now if you say Globalization, India getting visibility and such crap , The only visibilyt we got was for ,"The Great Indian Corruption". When It might not have affected any of these corrupt officers , It has bled the heart of every honest tax payer in India.Yes Inaguration was great , there was folklore , there was this great Indian railways program with people from different parts of india from kashmir to kanyakumari coming in. Again is this our reality ?, Doesnt the whole world know of the issue we are facing in Kashmir , Naxal problem ? Isnt this the act of wearing silk robe for a day when everybody knows that you wear rags otherswise? Had we honestly used the same money to fix food, education , funding for sports , encouraging entrepreneur rather than showing bigotry by organizing games , Probably we would have been far far better.

But then wanted to humor myself , Inspite of all the rage , Bingo! Remebered this joke about English :

"British might have ruled us for over 200 years but Indians have been taking the revenge ever since by killing their mother tongue day-in and day-out"

Just looked around and found these pictures .. :-)

Living the life cycle of butterfly in a day

One of my favorite game in my childhood days was to run behind those colorful butterflies in the small garden in our backyard.It has always been an enigmatic , pleasure filled , exhilarating experience , the sense of joy and freedom.It was recently when i visited the butterfly park in Bannerghatta national park(Bangalore) the same pleasure was recreated.

This time thanks to my canon S5IS camera and hardship with which i was trying to take picture of butterflies,the guard there took pity on me and i was lucky to have got an opportunity to see the entire life stage of the butterfly in the laboratory there.It has also taught me an invaluable lesson for life. so i would like to share the details of the life cycle of butterfly(with pictures) along with my perspective of the cycle as i find it very similar to the mental lifecycle of us human beings.

Butterflies belong to the group insecta and reproduce by laying eggs , And there is a high probability that you will pass off the eggs without even noticing it.

Eggs of butterfly 1

Then comes the larvae/catterpillar stage. In the initial stages it supposedly sheds its skin several times before growing into an adult. This information forced me to draw a parallel of the learn/unlearn cycle that we go through, How many times do we shed our ignorance and build a new layer of fresh knowledge.This is a beautiful stage of growth is what i think.Here are 2 pictures of larvae of 2 different types of butterflies sorry that i forgot the name though.

Larvae of a butterfly

Larvae of butterfly 1

Pupa stage is the true testing stage in the butterfly life cycle, it is a stage where it builds a cocoon around itself.In the natural scenario it also has the responsibility to camouflage to protect itself from predators.But the interesting phase is the end , where it has to struggle its way out , it is this struggle which gushes the blood into its wings from its body and brings out the beautiful butterfly out.Once we learn/pursue what we believe in it is the assimilation and the introspection that makes the learning worthwhile. There might be struggle but the end result is always an enlightened mind and success.
pupa of butterfly 1
Then finally as the result of all these hardships comes the butterfly colorful and beautiful all set to explore the world , fluttering its wings without any rest jumping from flower to flower as though to make the fullest of its short 7 day life and relieve itself of the lethargy of staying dormant for so long .I could relate this to the "ah ha" minute that follows after solving a tough problem or anything that you can relate to .. which may be shortlived but unforgettable.

Butterfly 1

With this completes the butterfly lifecycle and my walk in the butterfly garden. Well i was thoroughly rejuventaed after this expedition, looking forward for more of these..

Race called Life

I am not saying anything new in this blog , but posing a question which we tend to ignore even when we know the answer.

There is an African proverb that reads

Every morning in Africa ,a gazelle wakes up

It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed

Every morning a lion wakes up,

It knows it must out run the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle When the sun comes up you better start running.

I am pretty sure that atleast 9 of 10 of us will be following this proverb day in and day out.

But if you try to introspect do you know what you are running after ? When the lion knows what it is after and gazelle knows what it is running from I'm pretty sure that 7 / 10 of us will not know for/from what we are running.

It so happens that , when we start running we tend to forget what our real ideals and morals were , probably we would have already crossed what we were after even without noticing it in the wake of this run.

Infact I was intrigued by the fact that the rate at which heart ailments among the mid 30 is increasing at alarming rate ,that shows the pressure or stress that we bring upon ourselves .In fact my neck pain which turned out to be something minor was a sort of wake up call i must say.

No I'm not propagating communism saying that every body should remain satisfied with whatever one has and it does not matter if you are poor or miserable as long as everybody else is in the same state.. in fact I'm a hard core ayn rand fan promoting capitalism.

At the same time I want to remind myself and whosoever is reading my blog that probably while running we are prone to taking on every crap because we don't have patience or time to think whether it is good or bad.

writing this I remember a colleague of mine who told that do what you want to do today because twenty years down the lane sitting in your balcony you should not regret about what you did not do today. yes it makes a lot of sense and it goes by principle that if you dont have time to do what you want to do then probably you have not understood your priorities well.

When it not possible to halt it is always ok to slow down , do you remember the details of things around you when you hurried ? or when you took things slow ?. I guess when you slow down you do things better ok now I better stop writing more ,this is more of a remainder to myself to introspect what and why I'm running and re-prioritize if needed.

What are you waiting for put on your thinking cap?

Understanding (mis)Management

My itch to understand this question why people leave/switch company? triggered when my junior asked why a senior member in team was leaving , although he was leaving for his own personal reasons the question was valid ; So as always my buddy Google points to the answers to weirdest of the questions i had earlier so I tried this search out.

There were umpteen research done by esteemed companies which said people leave when they think that they are not paid enough for their work or if they have a bad boss or when they feel that they are not recognized for their work .when I sympathize people who think they are paid less, pity those hapless souls with bad boss I don't think that is strong enough reason to quit a job. I could not continue this search as I had to attend to many things at work so my thought was curtailed there.

Idle time in bus is the time when all these memories/unanswered questions haunt back so as I was thinking and thinking a thought struck my mind ,yes it is the reason! idle mind indeed!!! when one feels that one is not learning anything new or making progress in one's work that is when the frustration builds creating emptiness that ruins the mind. Idle mind is just like stagnant water that stinks.

I have heard that people play farmville in office just to be occupied ; if one can play that horrible a game (come on don't tell me you find abandoned Cow or some farm animal update interesting, if so you should reconsider the work you are doing) I can imagine the level of frustration . I remember having gone through this phase although for a brief period but thanks to my management it was fixed early nevertheless I had thought of leaving atleast 100 times a day in that period but I guess that is one of my good decisions not to have quit.

So yes coming back to the topic I think not making progress or not learning is a major factor for people to take drastic step of changing jobs ,besides that I want to list few others which I think has more impact than money ,if you still remember the start of blog where I have not commented on recognition as a factor , IMO when you have good work you don't really care for recognition but even the most selfless soul who has worked hard on something will agree with me that if somebody else is credited for your work or somebody less worthier is praised when you are chided you lose interest in continuing .so recognizing wrong one is greater evil than not recognizing.

Now i was quite clear about the fact but I wanted to understand this more so some googling along with little data collection from my own friends helped me understand this better, let me try to explain , major reason that frustrated people was when they had a boss who would let the pressure and bad name percolate down but would always hog the good name. But then there were several different minor reasons widely varying right from having a smart ass team member who would have great tempo with boss and try to get all the good name for what is not done but then a organization which cannot recognize such phony bunch it's not worth staying, to Having a bunch of disinterested people in group who would spoil the spirit , or having a bad work life balance.

As a conclusion although there could be 100 other reasons I personally believe that not making progress and wrong credit would constitute 80 percent of the reason why people change jobs.

My Favorite Movie/Novel Quotes

For sometime now , i wanted to list all my favourite quotes from novels/movies .Although a huge post , here is a small set of my all time favourite quotes , will add more in coming posts.Being a huge Ayn rand fan i start off with quotes from her books.


Atlas shrugged

1) In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

2) Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason.

3) Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking...

4) Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

5) If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?” " To Shrug

6) Contradictions do not exist.Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises.You will find that one of them is wrong.

7) What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.

Following are links to John galt's and Fransico d'anconia's speech in atlas shrugged.
http://www.working-minds.com/galtmini.htm
http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/economics/money/1826-Franciscos-Money-Speech.html

Fountain head

1) Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched.

2) The person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him.

3) To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I'.

4) From the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.

5) It would be kinder to acknowledge people’s existence by hating them


We The Living

1) Do you believe in God, Andrei? No. Neither do I. But that's a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know. What do you mean?
Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they'd never understand what I meant. It's a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do—then, I know they don't believe in life. Why?
Because, you see, God—whatever anyone chooses to call God—is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.

Legally blone : Elle woods

1) Passion is key ingredient of life. It is with passion, courage of conviction and strong sense of self that we take our next steps into the world.Remembering that first impressions are not always correct,You must always have faith in people.And most importantly, you must always have faith in yourself !!

PS I Love you

1) All I know is, if you don't figure out this something, you'll just stay ordinary, and it doesn't matter if its a work of art or a taco, or a pair of socks! Just create something... new, and there it is, and its you, out in the world, out side of you and you can look at it, or hear it, or read it, or feel it...and you know a little more about... you. A little bit more than anyone else does... Does that make any sense at all?

2) Finding someone you love and who loves you back is a wonderful, wonderful feeling. But finding a true soul mate is an even better feeling. A soul mate is one who understands you like no other, loves you like no other, will be there for you forever, no matter what. They say that nothing lasts forever, but I am a firm believer in the fact that for some, love lives on even after we're gone

Gone with the wind

1) Someday I’m going to do and say everything I want to do and say, and if people don’t like it I don’t care.

2) After all, tomorrow is another day!


Pride and Prejudice

1) Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates

more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.

2) Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion

Shantaram

1) A dream is a place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare.

2) If fate doesn't make you laugh, then you don't get the joke.

3) Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.

4) The past reflects eternally between two mirrors - the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.

5) The real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it.

6) People always hurt us with their trust. The surest way to hurt someone you like is to put all your trust in him.”

7) Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that's all there is. Love & its duty,sorrow & its truth. In the end that's all we have - to hold on tight until the dawn.

8) Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we've loved them, left them, or fought them.

Ladies Coupe : Anita Nair

1) Among the five elements that constitutes life ,I classify myself as water .Water that moistens , Water that heals , Water that forgets , Water that accepts,Water that flows tirelessly , water that also destroys.For the power to dissolve and destroy is as much a part of being water as wetness is. In the world of chemicals it is called a universal solvent swayed by the character of all those who take over it. But just because I am familiar, I am not typical.

Millennium Trilogy

1) "Friendship-My definition is built on two things.. Respect and trust , both elements have to be there and it has to be mutual!.You can have respect for someone but if you don't have trust ,then friendship will crumble..."

Totto-chan

1)Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having
minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore
never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster.

PS:All the quotes above are property and copyright of their respective owners.

Appearance says it all

Its been quite sometime since my last blog , but neither did i have anything compelling to write about nor the right mindset to write a blog as all my focus was shifted on my photography blog.

Life is all about learning something new everyday and i want to share what i learnt by traveling in a bus on Friday.Friday i took a volvo (Ac bus in bangalore) from my place to Marathalli and it is a long 2+ hours of journey.Normally that bus is full of office goers as the price of the ticket is quite high.

When the bus stopped in banashankari stop , a dhoti clad ,villager looking old man boarded the bus and then 2 old north Indian ladies who were mumbling some chants followed. Immediately the conductor started shouting at those 3 people and was telling that this is a high priced ticket bus and there is checking in next stop and asked the driver to stop the bus and asked those 3 people to get down from the bus.

I was seriously taken by surprise by such a behavior , from the expression on the old man's face it was evident that he was surprised too. In a calm way that old man asked the conductor to tell the ticket price ,and told that he was ready to pay for it and asked why should to get down if ticket was priced high ? and then promptly paid the ticket amount. Also when the conductor asked 10 bucks from those 2 old ladies for 2 stops and when they were counting change of 50paise / 1 rupee and were short by few bucks , the old man volunteered and paid for their ticket and the conductor moved away in shame. This gesture of the old man atleast made me guilty as to why did it not occur to me to pay for those ladies.

This one really moved me and in a way changed the way i want to look at life. This is just an instance , but how many times we see this kind of discrimination based on appearance in our day to day life at various levels.Even when we know that most of the high end frauds/cheating is done by a white collar well behaved/ appearing person we still go by appearance.

Yes it is true that , when you don't know a person ,you just go by how a person looks/conducts and many a times it might turn out to be true too,but not a rule , thus hereon atleast i have decided not to be judgmental by how a person appears and make a love or hate decision at first shot but to treat everyone alike and respect everyone.

Probably i might have missed out on knowing so many good people because of this mistake all these years , better late than never.So just wanted to jot this down to remind myself few months down the lane , if i forget my own learning.

IPL,Cricket ,India ,people,bollywood basically random thoughts

People who know me will be squirming and wondering what is this cricket moron writing about IPL , me writing about cricket is like an illiterate commenting about shaskespearean book, but then IPL isnt really cricket is it ? It is more masala, more bollywoodish and all about money.

"Cricket is a religion in India" , I remember having read this umpteen times right since my school days .My brother being a huge fan of cricket whether i like it or not i have been watching cricket but then i really really dont mind watching IPL.

Indians have always supported cricket team also Indian govt has funded cricket may be at the cost of other games (result is obvious in Olympics et al) but still we always cheer India as a team right but then hats off to Lalit modi for segmenting the cricket into bits and pieces within India and getting players from other countries and still make people follow it., How did it tick off by the way ?
1) Suddenly followers of cricket who were fighting for india as a team are now fighting for teams by state per se.
2) Hard to get tickets for rare matches are made available for a reasonable price and now everyone gets to see it.
3) A match for which initially you had to set aside full day is now 3 hours , time taken for a typical bollywood movie, so it is now a perfect after office hour entertainment.
4)But I guess the biggest plus it gets is because of the glamour involved , suddenly bollywood and cricket was one ! Bollywood stars being owners/brand ambassadors of any franchise, so be it the after hours party which makes to page 3 or the cheer leaders .Thus this factor makes it
more appealing to non-cricket crowd .

But one thing i must admit about this set up is that it is extremely honest , we have all known that money and self - obsession rules any day and what other set up but IPL proves it better.Though the viewers identitfy the team by their region , if you see the team there a lot of foreigners playing so what is the identification for them ? Before we all used to raise the cricketer to a level of sacrificial philanthropist who owes all the runs to india and his fans in here .But what would a greatest player in IPL tell ? At max he would tell is he his hitting for his team or the regional fans but is it really ? Knowingly or unknowingly we all admit that its all money that the player cares for(very fact that a player can be moved from one to other proves it) . Now if we get to the non IPL set up lets see what is the incentive for a player there , he would bag more endorsments and also win some accolades which will make sure he will continue to remain in team and thus would be able to secure his endorsment rating but the money factor there is less acknoweleded. Where as in IPL is more pronunced and thus i call it honest.
Now coming to the people aspect of it we often are hard core Indian cricket team supporters be it in world cup or any tri series or even a 2 team matches for that matter , but now what is driving us to support IPL ? There was report in TOI that TRP rating of IPL has fallen this season less than some popular serials on TV , but is it ? May be ? if so what is the reason ? The very people who would watch match on TV are now in stadium and identifying themselves with the cricket of their region remains just a reason , because if that was the case with whom would keralites or people from Assam would identified themselves with ?
So has IPL proved that cricket in India is not as sanctified as it was hyped to be and more mortal ? So now would this make people watch less of it after few years ? Not really .. People will still be drawn to it now not just with the hope of following or cheering it but also with the hope of one day playing for one of the region (especially kids and teens), without realizing the fact that it is only the top of pyramid that makes fortune when there is a huge under thrived base.
But IPL rocks ! For its revolutionary idea and yet getting people to watch it. I know i'm a little late writing this blog but still ....