Recent pub attacks in Mangalore (or shud i say mangaluru) has started debates over pub culture in every possible way.
Coming to incident …. no doubt it was most shameful and cowardly thing to do. But apart from the act it has opened a can of worms which was very comfortably packed away for sometime.

These kind of attacks have been very much trademark of activists of organizations like shiv sena against valentines day for quite sometime. Infact if i remember correctly bajrang dal once took out rath yatra on valentines day asking the couples either to get married on the rath itself thr n thn or get tied as bro-sis. Quite innovative i must say … however stupid it may be !

Even a very casual look at such incidents point to something very common in all. Liberty to women has always been a problem to such ‘rakshaks’ of culture. Pubs n bars have been here for a long time but women drinking is problem to them.

Has anyone given a thought to women smoking beedi, hukkah and other intoxicant consumption in villages. Most of you must be aware of this fact already which is quite common in north indian villages in particular.(I m not aware of this habit in south)
No Ram or Shiv sainik will ever try to disrupt the peace and harmony there. If that is acceptable then whats the problem with pub ?
Everyone knows in so called high society parties women drinking is very common. No one has objection to that either. So isnt this whole agenda to show one as protector of society by targeting the softest target – middle class women.

Seems time and again political will prevails easily over the peace and harmony of country. Surprisingly more so we indians very easily buy these arguments too. Problem with our society is we want to be classified as developed nation walking on the western path yet trying to save our glorious culture even at the cost of personal liberty. We time and again forget that culture is nothing but the people themselves. So as and when people are exposed to changing environment every aspect related to them is bound to change. Any forced action will result if conflict and nothing else.

Be it indecent clothing, pub or mall culture, women working at odd hours in hospitality sector why are we always in protectionist mode to any such act. In name of protecting our culture we stoop to ever lower levels of cultural degradation. Beating people indiscriminately(esp if its women) is definitely more alarming sign than women drinking by any yardstick however flawed it maybe !
This debate can go endlessly but there has to be some hard actions from concerned parties before it gets even more ugly.

About 5 months back a search on 5 largest US I-banks would have fetched results something similar to

Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merill Lynch

Big names, almost a dream for anyone up for big buck jobs i guess !

Now 3 of them are history.

Bear Stearns : Sold to JP Morgan for mere $10 per share with a 52 week high of $133  !

Lehman Brothers : BANKRUPT [period]

Merill Lynch : To be taken over by BofA.

All of them survived the great depression of 1929 and couldnt survive 2007 subprime. Means situation on American front is so bad that it surpasses the 1929 as well ?

In today’s world where economy like India is hugely dependent on US economy does it mean bad news for us .. or will it open new doors of rising power centers like BRIC ?

Great depression was triggered from the US and soon engulfed whole world. Yet again the world economy seems to be goin the american way !

I am no expert in finance here so cant comment on anything except for waiting, to see how this whole drama of yet another great american follies unfolds.

27th May 2007 : Sitting all alone in hotel room fully drenched. Heart full of excitement – excited to enter a new phase in life. Mind totally occupied with imagination of how life ahead will be. Joy of being accepted as a part of a new set of people. Memories of places and people left behind adding somberness to mood.

Well this was the day after i arrived in bangalore and evening before i was to join my first job. So completed one year in my first job . wow it feels good ! Though its not a kind of job which i would like to do all my life nor it is something that people should kill for. Still last one year means a lot to me. Coming to new city all alone has never been a very pleasing idea to me but some solace that soon will be joined by a whole gang of old friends was very comforting. But when i look back at the past one year i enjoyed a lot of it. Though there were times i felt like running away from this place, totally fed up ! But still its has been so far an amazing experience. The thrill of having my first salary in bank account was a feeling that probably i ll remember for a long time ! Initial period of finding a place to stay, setting up things with all weekends devoted buying something or else, getting up early every morning to reach office before traffic takes its toll of Hosur road , absorbing myself in office culture with so much detail attached to anything you do were some of things i never imagined i will have to do before coming here.

To be part of infy was never my aspiration in college time atleast ! The kind of work i am doing here was never my dream job but surprisingly i am enjoying it . Yeah i was never aiming to be here but now i dont regret at all being here. Infact i feel this was one the best that i could have got at that time ! There are so many thots coming to me remembering past one year but seems putting them in words will be impossible for me. But still the endless parties (with iiit frens) we had here in past 1 yr. trips to places like Mysore or enless session of BC @ CCD in infy deserve a refernce Also debacle at CAT deserves a place here:( Yes it feels so odd to hear all the time so are you appearing for CAT again or dropped the idea. Always unable to ans this query. Prolly this is called peer pressure to which ppl succumb to mostly and take up watever comes in there way Lets see how it goes with me as the season is approaching yet again.

Guess thats all from my side. Many people from batch completed/ will be completing one year in corporate life over next few days so will definitely look forward to hear from them

While returning back from home i have to spend sometime in Delhi to catch a flight and usually i have 5-6 hrs to be spent there. Usually get some or the other fren/cousin to company me there but this time had to kill some time there all alone. With two bags in hand the best place i could think of to spend time was some book store. Fortunately my fren dropped me @ Oxford in Statesmen Building. Couldnt ask for more. Found that place perfect for book lovers. Apart from a very decent collection of books organised very well. The place had lots of space where one could sit and read peacefully. On top of it it had a Cha Bar counter inside. Had a real nice tea after a long time !! Sorry to say but seemed to me its too hard to get a good cup tea in blore.

Well i started off with Advani’s autobiography there but found it too dull and full of ideas which i deny to agree to. So found another one. This was One minute for yourself by Spencer Johnson. Author of very well known book Who Moved my cheese. The book was shaped in the form of a supposedly happy with life uncle and his nephew. He talked at length about thinking about yourself just for a minute and do it several time a day.

Think wat u did or gonna do today to make yourself happy or a better person. Seems quite simple but spending one minute without thinking anything else but yourself seemed like an impossible task to me. Guess i lack a lot in concentrating !! Need to think abt that as well.

He showed some real useful things in a pretty simple manner in the book. Here is one that i remember. A person got admit in some uni in new york but was unable to decide whether to go 4 it. So he kept on asking everyone wat to do. A wise man asked him to take a train to new york without any book or anything to engage you. Book a compartment and dont even have pantry guy come in. Just be yourself till there. He agreed to it and tried it. Since he had nothing to do he could think about it peacefully and finally decided to join there on reaching New york.

One thing that i carried with me form it was – we mostly know the answers to the questions we have, just need to explore ourselves to understand it. To do so keep sometime just yourself.

Seems lot of gyaan already

PS: IPL has hooked me to it totally just like millions of Indians … every evening is devoted to it these days !!

PS1: Have to be back in office frm mon. Had a 2 week off frm office first time …. and it felt gud

PS2: Most of frens r out of city … feels bad to b alone

The stage was perfect. Audience was in full strength. Even the biggies were all ears.

Well the event was a talk (or shall i say book publicity) by Prof. Kishore Mahbubani, Dean @ NUS and a renowned asian Diplomat. Whos who of Infy ranging from NRN, Kris, Mohandas Pai were part of the audience. The topic of talk was basically abstract of the Profs. new book The new Asian Hemisphere and sharing his experience with the infy crowd and as i felt a very sophiticated way to tell ppl that i have written a gr8 book. Sorry Sir but i felt it to b a cheap publicity stunt on top of all.

Coming to the discussion. It started with the talk about how India and China are fast catching up the west in terms of development. He was of the fact that west feels it too uncomfortable to cede power to asians now. Speaker was of the view that this rise is mere replication of the west and not something to topple their supermacy. In a nutshell what i understood from his views that he want to convey that this rise in Asia will do good in the world by levelling standards of people and not just shifts of power. It seemed that he wanted to wrap this neo-capitalism in wrapper of neo-socialism !!

Found a very basic flaw in his assumptions which were very hard for me to digest. I dont think India and to some level china is even coming close to the west and in particular US in terms of development. The reason behind it is that the american development was based on sound in house demand. Henry Ford while making cars made sure that his workers get extra wages so that they can afford the cars being manufactured. He himself created middle class which turned out to b his biggest customer. I dont find even a single example of it here in India. Some may argue that our incomes are on rise consistantly but thats not enough. Still a large portion of industry is dependent on minorities be it urban upper middle class or Americans and Europeans. So however much we earn in this current situation we ll b always worrying about american subprimes or dollar weakness. Until we have a solid base to support our industry it cant sustain a long time.

We might be reaching higher spectrums of the salaries with a huge talent pool earning in urban india. But this alone is not sufficient to compete the already established superpowers. We need a all inclusive growth which will include large chunk of population. If a small section keeps on rising while a larger section is still looking for a rise then surely we ll face standoffs like we already are witnessing against stores like Reliance Fresh. You cant ignore interests of such a large section of society howsoever selfish it maybe.

In 80s business and political leaders have been tlking about how Japan will take over US and will emrge as superpower. But still its working silently and working as hard it was just after WWII. Perhaps India and China should do the same and instead of proclaiming themselves as world leaders keep on working towards a +ve goal and enjoy the fruits of success that may come in the way.

PS: The MC hall where such talks r held in infy is the best audi i have even seen in real or in pics … it rox big time.

PS1: Its late in night so shud go to sleep :) 

Its been quite a long since i last blogged. Only reason for this innate inactivity can be procrastination and nothing else. And yeah for sometime it can be attributed to my ancient PC which it seems has lived a full cycle of life and is in want of  reincarnation. So saddened by its helplessness to serve me anymore i decided to upgrade myself and get something more mobile than a pc … so natural choice was a laptop – which i am working on now

After getting a brand new DELL XPS feels lot better though it left a huge hole in my pocket but guess somethings r meant to be that way …. anyways am happy to own my first laptop and feels gud so far .. hopefully will remain so

Life in bangalore seems to b pretty much settled as of today, cant comment on wats in store for tomorrow. Initially cursing this city for all kind of traffic and high costs it seems this has absorbed me in it. Ppl call it a place of weather wine and  (beautiful) women. Cant agree on more apt desciption of this place. Certainly i m in love with the weather of this place atleast if nothing else. Though it has added some -ve adjective to it be it costs, traffic, kannada vs non kannada debates, airport reachability and so on but thats part of the package u get. You will find problems with each and every city, so dont see any point in cribbing about it. Oflate been goin around MG road a lot (infact its been a regular weekend affair for sometime now) not for drinks or some shopping but jst to have food out or have a ‘feel’ of the city .

Though it is most jam prone zone of the city on weekends but somehow i fell in love with this place. Seriously its not about staring drunk females out there or any other similar activity but it seems to me like soul of this fast moving city.  The mirror of a large population of this city.

While i was in hyderabad always craved to go to hussain sagar even before eat street came up there. I never understood why i feel so much about that place which is lovers paradise and going there without a gf is not a very amusing idea acc to many. Still it was
romantic for me from the very first day i saw it while coming from Secbad rly stn. This was first thing i fell in love in hyd. In 4 years i stayed there i been arnd that place 100s of times still can feel it like a fresh coat of paint when am there. Now i understood i was drifted towards the soul of the city. Calmness as it represented.

I stayed in small town (my hometown barnala) for all my life before arriving hyd so never had this feel of living in a metro or large city where u need to go out and look out for the soul of it. Every street, corner, lane is familiar to me. It feels like being welcomed whenever i go home. No corner of that place is strange to me though i been away from it for such a long time and go there for less than a month in a year in total. I never felt any need to go anywhere looking for soul of it.
Its always like peace at heart …..

PS0: Despite this post Hyd is one of my all time fav places to go.
PS1: Its just random idea of mine … nothing to do with me going home this weekend.
PS2: Have finished few good books and saw many good movies … now feeling a strong urge to review them !
PS3: Office work is now piling up at a great speed. Seems honeymoon period with company was long over .. failed to recognize the change
PS4: Feels bad to be out of touch of so many batchmates …. wassup guys ??
PS5: Next in line for books is Mother by Maxim Gorky … seems gud so far
PS6: Next post could be Indian Cities which will be powerhouse of development in next decade !

Nice mockery of current situation in industry by IBM. Well after seeing around for over 8 months the kind of work being done or being conceived in IT research field, i am sure no where else u ll find so much work done on paper (or should say in ppts and pdfs). Talk about anything from SOA, BPM or any emerging technology 100s of standards spash across the screen and yet no use of most of them ! (Atleast to me seems so …)

Everyone has an idea but not many r trying to incubate that idea into a practical thing that makes sense of any kind. All you can find is do this do that and u will have this all but where is the real thing ? Virtualization seem to be getting to the core of the industry and everyone around is talking in abstract terms ! nothing concrete at all.

Guess the ghost of virtual infrastructure is slowing captivating other sectors as well. Latest example can of reliance power where there is no plan to earn even a single money for next 7-8 years even in paper still whole nation gone bonkers to grab it. Those who dont know what even an IPO is were seen owners of demat accounts overnight and proudly boasting of being part of reliance !! Well the bubble burst quite too soon with prices tumbling way down due to any reason. On the other hand was REC(Rural Electrification corp. ) which have complete infrastructure in place to generate money and still no one is ready to put in money in that.  The reliance got so much response becoz of publicity and faith in reliance but still so much for just an idea ?? Pretty hard to understand for me …

Guess should get back to work and give another sellable idea … keep watching

11th of Jan, Apr, Jul and Oct assumes special importance for infy each year as the quaterly results are declared on these days. Though it was like any other friday with people roaming all around in casuals but the presence of huge media contingent at the dawn draws everyone’s attention towards the event of the day !

Few mins back while walking towards my building a guy was walking opposite to me and seemed quite familiar … Just then it occured to me he is Udayan Mukherjee. Anchor of many daily and special shows on CNBC India and one of the most familiar faces of stock market analysis in india. While crossing him all of a sudden i uttered ‘Excuse me, you are Udayan , right ?’ And all he did was nodded, smiled and walked. I was like why did i just do that ?

I dont know if its just because i am curious by nature or some other reason but everytime i see a person who is a well known personality (or atleast someone who did something great acc to me) i tend to get influenced by him/her. I must have seen NRN in the campus dozens of time but everytime i see him passing i am struck like i have seen a ghost !! I know it may sound stupid and to admit it would be even more stupid but thats how its to me.

Remember sometime back at Delhi airport saw Mukesh Ambani and Parmeshwar Godrej walking for security check just like ordinary ppl, thanks to airport policies which deem such VVIPs ordinary , and it was another ’statued me’ moment for me. But after gaining my senses i realized they are just ordinary people but just with a great following still the effect on my mind ceases to fade for a long time !!

God knows how it would feel like working directly under someone like BillG or Steve Jobbs !!