YESSS! one of the most precious things in my life …

completes a year today

It wouldnt have happened without YOU !!

THANKS for all the motivations and feedbacks

Before starting let me confess this is not my original idea …it’s borrowed from a friend who’s too lazy to write even a page! Oh yes Shivangi, would have loved it if it came from your pen, let it be now thanks for the really interesting idea and I will try to do justice to your thought …let see how successful I am!

I guess it’s really very important that with the exceptional quantitative growth of our country, it is also important that we grow qualitatively, become better and more responsible citizens, let the country grow with helping the government in terms of development of infrastructural projects which in turn will help us later. So while talking to Shivangi I came across this real weird or rather interesting thought, a very interesting comparison between EDUCATION, STANDARD of LIVING and CLEANLINESS

Its inevitable that the more money you have the better your lifestyle gets, you try to look good, have a better cell phone, buy a bigger car, go around with people of your class, show off, so invariably the lifestyle becomes royal… but you still do things that your servant, a beggar or a hawker does… you litter the place!! Be it a cigarette bud, a chips packet that goes down on the road and not in the dustbin. So is it improvement in life but you still are the same gawaar as you still were, your habits don’t yet match the upper class. Do they??

Now take another scenario, the youth of the country is said to be highly educated, more than 2 lakh people appeared for CAT last year, around 350000 engineers pass out in a year, around 40 lakh college graduates in a year, these days its become a fad to talk against the system… the education system is crap, it only meant for muggers. But have you done that one important thing every teacher taught you… throw trash in a bin!!! You never did it…chocolate wrappers, chips, paper goes down the road, down everywhere but the dustbin, and we still are proud to say we are MBA’s, engineers… if you are one please behave like one!! Or please give away your degrees and go back sweeping or rag picking

One thing these days I get really frustrated seeing is …young parents don’t even care their kids throwing litter on the road in the room or everywhere, agreed you never learned the manners please teach ‘them’ for god sake!! The other crap thought I come across is “USNEY BHI NEECHE PHEKA TOH MAI KYU NAHI PHEKOO” so the next time you get to know that “Woh” loves to pee on the road try that too. C’mon that’s a point of view of the uneducated, education empowers you think for yourself so kindly think for your self and not the others!!!

Quite an hard hitting article this has become so let me just close down wit a debate, so heres the problem… we need to get cleaner, in our habit as well as in our thoughts… should we come out yet another campaign that educates you not to litter and go in vain, or should we have police kicking you’re butt for every trash that you throw on road. So the debate is open come up with solutions and lets see if we can make it big time remember more than a 100 people will read this article at least and one of them could be an influential person somewhere !!

Freedom from communal riots
Freedom from quotas

Freedom from corrupt politicians
Freedom from waiting in government offices

Freedom from being tagged as a “poor country”
Freedom from malnutrition

Freedom from mediocrity
Freedom from being gold medal-less at Olympics

Freedom from dirty and filthy roads
Freedom from standing in trains

Freedom from beggars
Freedom from long queues

Freedom from female foeticide
Freedom from rape

Freedom for more …..

What do you want freedom from …. ?

19^th July 2001, a day I will always remember in my life, the reason: it was my 10^th standard board exam results and just this Tuesday my cousin had the most memorable day in her life, last Tuesday 29^th May, 2007 was her 10^th standard board results, I had scored 78% then and she scored 85%, great, round of applause to her! Board exams a great experience, the anxiety, the excitement helps you grow as a person.  But there was this one strange thing about her results. My cousin was ill rather down with fever around the results, really very scared and cried a lot, well yes there is a lot of  pressure , but four days of illness, real mental trauma, stress and even after all this she scored a good 85%. She didn’t eat well, sleep well, her face had become as small as a mouse’s face   

             When I sit back and remember my 10^th days, things were completely different, well if you don’t know, in Mumbai you complete school after 10^th so 11^th and 12^th are college days, so a week around the results I was quite busy buying admission forms for myself, I remember I saw lagaan just a day before results and cricket was the top priority I used to play a hell lot, it was as if the clear blue skies were there forever so I never felt the tension or the pressure, I even remember on my D-day I was busy buying forms of few colleges sharing the fear and angst of the similar peers in a queue and wait for a long time, my mummy had taken my seat number and when I went home she was ready with the percentage!!! She had gone to this local cable waala who had the results of all the people. so at home, i had kept the door open waiting for her, those were ”ABSOLUT SCARY” 15 minutes ever, lift reached the fifth floor, door opened she quickly came out, happy with a really wide smile on  and said “Nikhil 78% haii, i was like 78!! shhee i lost out. i expected more than 80 . wow ! Quite an experience it was!!             

 Well what I want to convey here is these are two very different experiences, even though I was low on the percentage  I was more relaxed and took it as a really good experience, I would say it was my personality that kept me floating on the situation and and just laugh it off, but my cousin almost froze out like a small chicken I personally was really shocked looking at her state of mind, how can you ever take so much tension, yes it is an important exam but why the tension during the results, its been more than a month since you gave an exam, nothing’s gonna change now, no matter how much you cry or you are scared.  

            So lets go down memory lane and look at your experience, remember the day of your 10^th results or your 12^th results, write down the tension the anxiety that went in that day … my word it was a great learning experience, if government is thinking to scrap 10^th standard board exams they shouldn’t do it, 10^th actually helps you a lot!

                 Yes its right
India is shinning, our country is really beginning to glow like a neon bulb, high growth rate, higher disposable income, huge market to reach.. I believe everybody would have read this many times now. Yes it’s true to some extent we are getting bigger and better with every month, but we still have a long way to go, not in terms of the size but at the mental sphere as well, its time we become a bit more professional in our approach. So while sitting idle last afternoon with less work at hand I was wondering at some things that have made quite an impact in the last few years, some business that have done quite well, surprisingly!So the below listed businesses have caught my attention not because they are new in terms of the novelty in the concept but also the face that it is really startling to see these kinds of businesses really doing well in a not so innovation friendly country like ours . I believe that INNOVATION has been the corner stone of the success of our country and for any country to do well, it has to be open and ready to face and accept innovation, it really helps a nation to reach new heights in all respects. To name all the business they are

· ONLINE NAUKRI PORTALS- timesjobs.com, naukri.com, monsterindia,com there are so many and almost every one having a 25 lakh users under their kitty, that’s huge user base and huge money as well. Its surprising to see people having such a lot of trust in these portals !!

· ONLINE MATRIMONY- Imagine getting married in India on the net, yes it’s possible and it has a huge market too. Shaadi.com has around 7 lakh success stories; bharatmatrimony.com has 7 million registered users. This is probably the logical assumption that this generation is a lot innovative and we rather easy diffusers of innovation.

· RETAIL BANKING – The banking revolution would not have taken place without this, bank has become a grocery story, e-banking, home loans, car loans, personal loans, debit cards, credit cards all in one stop… money everywhere. was banking so prevalent a decade ago ? Now my dad goes to a bank almost everyday, while a couple of years ago it was merely a weekly affair.

 · SALON’- we all want to look good, feel good,   so in the age of makeovers we have seen a heavy makeover to the hair cut n styling industry, its added dimensions, now u get facials, body massages, make up’s and every cosmetic giants have put their act together n now got in. Lakme, L’oreal, Marico’s etc. ask your mother if she ever wanted to become a hair stylist, their parents would have laughed it away

So what I mean is all these businesses that have more than a Rs. 100 crore market each wouldn’t have done well at all say 10 years ago. The above mention business were also light on investment .INNOVATION is here to say and more we innovate more we get ahead. So we still need innovation in infrastructure, governance, human resource operations and I guess we are slowly getting there. Think about it and list down more businesses you think have done well which couldn’t have proliferated say a decade ago.

I remember once I had gone to a temple, there I read a quote, “there are three things a man should always be afraid of, and they are “GOD, YOUR FATHER and YOUR BOSS”. This was around 3-4 years ago and the thought that “why should one fear from God?” jammed my mind. Then after reading a lot of articles on theism and atheism I realized that GOD is the thought in your mind that helps you get through you tuff times and acts like a punching bag for all of us or some object we can throws tantrums on

When I asked an atheist that what is that one big reason you recognized and you stopped believing in God, he had an interesting answer, he said that man is too lazy to achieve its targets or desires so because he couldn’t reach the targets he should have something to blame on, or curse on that is why God was invented, so that we fear from someone, we blame our happiness and sorrows on someone, he always pondered on the fact that if God really exists, where is he why doesn’t he ever come out , is he scared of paparazzi, he should be or else heel be on every tabloid around the world

Being a non believer myself I thought that yes that was an interesting thought, with more advancement of science, now we now know how the earth revolves, how humans are born, how they die, basically we can now explain everything in scientific terms and refrain from saying that this is a miracle. One of my friends who told me a quote “Is Man God’s biggest mistake or God man’s biggest mistake” think closely and you will realize that if there would be no God there would be no wars, after all God has now become a religious demonstration, there would be no temples, no superstitions, and people would have had no complaints

One of the biggest reasons I stopped believing in God’s existence was and is that, I am the one who is responsible for my fate and for my destiny, if I work hard I reach the heights I desire, nobody on this earth has already written my fate, I create my own, so why should I think of somebody to whom I’ve not even seen and listened to, there’s no such thing called luck, you create it yourself.

Just recently I happen to read about this theory called as the PROPOGANDA THEORY, which says that after the 2nd world war people like Hitler used to control the media and the newspapers, the radio were just used to propagate only positive things about themselves, he was quite successful in doing it, he ruled Germany for years, and a technologically advanced country like Germany started believing in what he had to say…. He said that “the memory of the people was very petite and they only remember things that have recently happened”, this was the psychic he could catch hold of. So in the same way ….. All I believe is that GOD is the best propaganda ever that could have been played on the humans, and its still successful.

For people who read this and are staunch believers in God,
This is a point of view I don’t want to demean your faith. It’s your way of life
I am nobody to change it!

Indian television has gone through a revolution in the last 10 years from just a zee TV and a star world it now has 100+ channels in its kitty. We have the highest number of news channels in the world. We produce the highest number of films in a year, in the world. So when it comes to movies and television we are amongst the largest and the biggest in the business across the globe.

But when you look at our television closely just three things have defined Indian televion or the entertainment in the past 5 years they have been cricket, shahrukh khan and saas bahu serials, but have you ever thought what are the quality levels we are working at, the answer would be that the quality levels are disgusting

Take the saas bahu series of serials, every serial you see in the 9-10 pm slot today are either women fighting each other or families fighting each other, I cannot imagine the fact that a same concept have worked wonders for over 5 years, and we still love it. How the hell all women in India accept this utter crap, mann what’s wrong with your state of mind, this ekta ‘asshole’ is making you so succumbed to all this bullshit and you still want more, we need to change our mindset , we need to be open to new ideas, so directors, don’t just follow the bandwagon come out with some innovative ideas, we saw great serials like Sarabhai vs Sarabhai, office office or even a siddhanth but since women marshal the TV scene in our country they go out of airwave due to low TRP n ad rate!

Cricket, so we’ve finally lost to the Sri Lankans and are out of the world cup, we have flowed thousands and thousands of crores in terms of sponsorships, movies, music videos and all our cricket team gives us this crap, they didn’t even looked mentally prepared to play the world cup they seemed like Alice in wonderland, it’s finally time that we kick cricket from the top of mind slot and start giving more weight age to sports like football, hockey or tennis. Men here have to take the initiative, stop hogging all day for 7 hours and watch a match where India loses, be more open to other sports and develop a taste for that too, we may see an Olympic gold soon if we switch over

Shahrukh khan, hmm he’s the culprit for all our bad movie taste, so guys have you ever wondered that when we see a movie like dil chahta hai or a rang de basanti we feel “ wow this movie is different mann!” most of us do that, you know what is the reason because the last decade we are been bombarded with all the same kind of movies, the boy the girl the villain, mother dies and all crap ends, shahrukh khan has been a key instigator along with yashraj films to make the audience so gullible to love stories that just a small marketing stunt makes you believe that the movie is different, shahrukh khan is a crap actor, all he can do is cry make a face n get away, that’s not acting all about, its just making a star out of yourself, and all these years we see shahrukh khan in a movie not the rahul or the ram that he plays in the movie

Yes this post sounded sarcastic and passionate but I think its time we raised our bar in terms of quality in television. We will have to come together and make a difference, either kill Ekta kapoor, shahrukh khan or sachin tendulkar or stop watching them !

Recently I’ve been doing this interesting project, where I go to this place called DIGNITY LIFESTYLE in Neral which is supposed to be an old age lifestyle home, a place you will actually love to be in the gray part of your life, its royal, sophisticated with a lot of facilities. What we do here is we meet old people, know about them and write about them, this is more prominently known as an oral history. I’ve been meeting some really interesting people here in the age ranging from 65 to 95.

So while talking to them, we learn about the dramatic, eventful lives they’ve had. There is somebody who was the PA to Indira Gandhi, somebody had vivid memories about the partition of the country The man I am talking to nowadays is Dennis Carpenter; he’s from Cambridge, UK settled in India since 1991. Well he was the chief designer  and the master mind behind  FANTASYLAND, Mumbai; people remember it for the 1^st roller coaster in India with a full 360 degrees turn. Quite a rage it was during its time but the floods had a different story for it and it was shut down.

So today we had a chat to him about his childhood and life back home, being from UK he had seen the 2^nd world war closely, was really absorbing to hear a 70-year-old man talking as if he were a 4-year-old kid. So after the whole conservation I thought that all these old people have had some real great stories to tell whether it is the world war, the Indian freedom movement, the partition and many more.

So Is there anything our generation has which is as huge a magnitude as the above mention calamities… well, we had no wars, no freedom movements, no partitions, so what stories will we tell our grandsons, about India reaching the finals in the 2003 world cup or about our great actors, or corrupted leaders, hmm all these stories don’t sound that interesting, do they?

So guys think about it …what can be the reason for this, proliferation of media or dependence on money or jot down stories we can share with our grandsons

After being a victim of one of the most popular tricks in Mumbai, PICK-POCKETING… I decided to dedicate my next article to the Rs. 2,600 I lost and to the MUMBAI LOCAL TRAINS ….its a heck of ride and it actually means a lot more to a Mumbaite than just a public transport service. Let us say it carries 6.1 million passenger form one place to another …mann!! That’s a lot of people …..any new immigrant to Mumbai will get terrified when he sees the rush, the desperation, the extreme anxiety to just get in a train.

It is the weirdest place in Mumbai and you may find most of the weird things happening here. 1^st thing you’ll notice in every train will be a gujju guy shouting aloud on his cell phone and asking on his phone “ jignesh bhai ITC ka bhaav kitna chhey, market bahut saaru karuu chhuu….”. on the other side you’ll hear people singing old hindi songs in their worst of voices and yeah their favorite “Pardesi pardesi jaana nahii and mera piya ghar aaya ….cheers to local trains these pathetic songs are still one of the most heard around. Well women discuss everything from sari to jewellery , about this guy and that guy and the giggle sounds echo all over the day

Just five months of travelling in these trains I realize that local trains symbolize life of every Mumbaite, well you must we wondering how … I relate to some of the instances that happen everyday at an average local train station and train in Mumbai …

STARTING with the 1^st ….Mumbai local trains symbolizes COMPETITION; well the sight of just the train coming at the station can bring goose bumps in the minds of the people. Like a hundred men trying to get the one and only girl that lives on earth, they jump, push, crumble, crush to get in a 2^nd class compartment, just like the life in Mumbai you need to fight for your existence and compete with everybody including yourself to lead a decent life.

Then I talk about DEJECTION; …. Dirty, Over flooded, stinking trains with people’s breath and bodies emitting obnoxious smell makes you feel dejected and feel really awful on what life am I leading right now. Now compare it to the problems mumbaite faces …. Less water, dirty neighborhood, immigrants’ increasing like Mumbai has the most precious diamond in the country and even loneliness the young mumbaite’s feel today

Third and the last is FRUSTRATION; imagine 15 people sitting in a Maruti 800, the conditions in local trains is even worse so obviously you tend to get a bit frustrated, start cursing the government, fighting with people in the trains… the same way Mumbai city is fast, ever challenging and you have to fight with destiny everyday, the increasing population, taxes, no proportionate infrastructure is making Mumbai people frustrating too

Though at the end of the day, I salute to every commuter of Mumbai local trains, you guys are real fighters, probably that’s why after all the great negatives it has, it is still the same train that takes to work and help us earn our livelihood, help meet some really interesting people on-board and it’s the LIFE LINE OF MUMBAI as we know and we are proud to say that MUMBAI IS THE BEST CITY in the world, an emotional Mumbaite says that