Randomized Thoughts

This is an imaginary love letter, written for an imaginary girl by an imaginative nerd.

Your presence makes every electron in the universe tingle,
Even the likes of inert gases will be ready to mingle.
You are more attractive than gravity of a black hole,
Any other guy who looks at you, should be labeled an a$$#@!e.
You are more vivid than picture in an HD television,
You generate enough heat to trigger a nuclear fusion.
You are more special than the special theory of relativity,
A touch of you causes any metal to adopt super conductivity.
A minute with you make me feel richer than Ambani,
Even a Tata Nano feels faster than a Lamborghini.

Your beauty might cause many accidents on the roads,
Coz you radiate brighter than light emitting diodes.
You catch people's attention like a Silk Smitha's poster,
With voice packed with energy of NASA's rocket booster.
In short, you are like a princess in a fairy tale,
With more curves than that of any sinusoidal wave.
I am feeling lucky that by you I am smitten by fate,
Your presence now is more universal than NAND-NOR gate.
You are better than any model in beau monde,
May our love stay stronger than an ionic bond.

I had a chance to go to Kolkata for a business trip. I will not subsitute Chennai as home for any other place, but found Kolkata surprisingly close to home. I had a pleasant stay for almost a full day, though divided into two halves (like a football game). Things that strike you immediately as you land in Kolkata is that, by mistake your plane landed in a bus stand. Kolkata airport is mighty small, though city dwellers take pride in it. The second most striking distinction of Kolkata is the ever red, ever lasting herbal art.

This herbal art is the combination of saliva, paan and some mystery material that makes the mix of the organic colloid distinctively red. Visitors can treat their eyes with delights of this art in every sq. meter of the city. Historically its argued that the art form is not a native art of Kolkata and was introduced by immigrants from Orissa. In either case, people of Kolkata have adopted and refined this delightful art for generations. The proof of this can be seen in the dry spits in a bus, tram, train, taxi, food path,.. (wait didn't I just say it is in every sq. meter of the city). I bet many fathers and sons of this joyful city would compare and contrast their respective artful spits lying side-by-side (but separated by a generation in time). If you are in Kolkata you just cannot miss this.

My friend took the visiting friends to Victoria memorial. Not sure why it is called memorial, but for memory I have taken a photo of me showing middle finger at some english-walla's statue there. It surprisingly felt the right thing to do then. Anyways, the police constable in Kolkata wear whites. My theory is that, there is so much red spit on the road, that people could easily mistake red light of the traffic signal for yet another paan spit. But red light's color cannot be changed, as across the world the traffic signals have to be uniform. So the intellectuals (I mean the people) of the city changed the uniform of the  police. Ingenious in my opinion.

Then there was a short ride on a Victoria Tonga. I was so happy when I sat on the tonga. We just crossed a traffic signal, and I was waiving my hand to the people who were waiting for green lights. I surpringly thought it was right to waive my middle finger at them, but realized that the tonga was not the horse of a Ferrari. So I chose to add the rest of the 4 fingers for my own safety. My Kolkata friend was embarassed by my theatricals and chose to duck his face under a cheap tourist hat we had brought earlier. Alas the joy of the tonga ride ended there. As soon as we crossed the traffic signal, we were disturbed by the honks of all the filty old buses of the local transport. Even though I could see the trams, my head was in a state of trauma. I wanted to travel in trams when I went to Kolkata, but Tonga and bus honks was enough to make my head spin.

My Kolkata friend took us to a place near river Hugli called Lover's point. Its filthy and dirty and has some weird looking statues. I don't know how that place could be Lover's point. There was nothing that was remotely romantic about that place. My theory was that this could have been Lover's point 50 years ago (when I think the place would have been much more cleaner and without those weird statues), but was surprised to know that couples come there even today. So my alternate theory took to the fact that there were boats that resembled the Gondola of Venice. So people in love can take a ride on it. But still.. all the boatman had no shirt and had huge pot bellies. And curtains of the boat cabin was substituted with lungis. I mean how can a guy or a girl can feel romantic in that setup? But I guess Kolkata and its people continued to surprise me. I find that many girls in streets of Kolkata were beautiful, but was scared of feeling romantic by now. Caution dear reader, if you have a significant other from Kolkata, next time you go to Kolkata do not feel romantic. Else you will be riding on a filthy boat with the breeze of a dirty river hitting your face through a lungi.

Next we went to Park Street. By this time I got into the usual lazy mode of Kolkata. Any more activities proposed by my friends was followed by Cholbe na, Cholbe na from me. But there was no Cholbe na when it came to lunch and we had our lunch in a delightful place filled with lovely girls (though this part of the trip was not planned). We had to board our flight soon and so before leaving I wanted to contribute to the herbal art form of the city. So we tried paan. I was chewing it for close to 5 minutes periodically checking with my friend if the paan + saliva colloid in my mouth was anywhere close to red. To my disappointment it seems there is some mystery material, that only people of Kolkata use, to make the paan red. Visitors like me cannot be shared with the precious secret and so I had to leave the city with no contribution made to its culture. But surely I have taken some of its culture in form of Rosagullas and Ghanti (that my friend's mom gave me) back home.

Thanks to Keshav Modi & family for such a wonderful time in THE CITY OF JOY. Thanks to Munish for paying for everything I enjoyed in the city (I have no intention of repaying him though).

Dear readers
Its been a long time since I blogged. Honestly I thought that the cardinality of the reader's set of my blog is zero. But it was brought to my notice by few of my friends that its been long time and they like the posts. So the number of readers of my blog ceased to be imaginary and have now become real. So dear reader, I am sorry that I thought you guys were 0+0i and not any X > 0 in number. Please accept my insincere apology for it and to make amends I have decided to waste few moments of my life every now and then for your benefit.

WARNING: Any person who thinks in the right direction (even left, up & down directions included) should not be influenced by randomized thoughts (just to remind its my blog's name). It is the sole discretion of the right, ---, --- & --- (please fill in the blanks) directional thinkers to continue thinking after reading posts of this blog. Any further damages caused to the neurons of your brain is strictly accidental (though intentional) and cannot be used as the evidence or cause to file a lawsuit on me. (You see I don't want to go to jail for your stupidity)

A lot is said about Women's bill to be discussed in the floor of parliament. The cartoonscape in The Hindu has saved me the trouble of describing the plight of this particular bill till today.

To be fair I am quite confused about this bill myself. Not because of the message and social uplift that this bill promises to bring about, but on the grounds of its implementation on basis of reservation. Its been said that 33% of the all legislature is to have women representation. That would mean that the all candidates of 33% constituencies should be women, and these reserved constituency will have to take turns. So one in every 3 elections all constituency in India would see an all-women electoral candidature for legislative bodies. Now this is more worrying. Not that I am against women, but it is a pure violation of article 15 of our constitution. Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth is the most fundamental essence of any civilized community. Else what separates us from Taliban? Now there is an attempt by state to discriminate men from contesting election (even though it is once in 3 elections). I feel we Indians are not quite sure of what kind of constitution we want. We are running around in circles just like the bill depicted in the cartoonscape.

What is even more worrying is that fact that to uplift women, we actually need to pass a bill. I am quite ashamed that this country does not have many women representing its people. But shouldn't this representation come out of social reforms and change in people's perceptions rather than forced reservation?

Politicians talk about women being oppressed and exploited. They are not given equal opportunity as men. My contention is that only poor are being oppressed and exploited today irrespective of sex. A poor man does not have the same opportunity as that of a rich lady. I don't want to dwell into communism, but the point I want to make is that the approach we are taking will not head this country in right direction.

A better suggestion would be to have reservation of 33% for people living below poverty line. Surely that would be a better reservation policy than on the basis of sex, caste or religion.

A lot of professionals working in big firms are only content with the same mundane work as they are compensated with fat salary, though they are not utilizing their full potential. There are other who jump off the cliff to start a company of their own or work in a startup. If an economist has to term the attitude he would use the term "risk appetite". Both these kinds of employee would try to gauge the "Return of Investment" (ROI) of their efforts and the quality of life they lead or will lead in future. But the quality of life has a major (in my opinion the primary) factor which is "Happiness at work".

As professionals spend a huge percentage of their time at work, it is only imperative that work holds a key for a persons well being. Even if a professional tries to keep personal and work life as discrete as possible, frustrations in one will naturally have an effect over the other. This is because its a innate human nature to be multi faceted constrained with a singular emotional nerve center.

There are no doubt lot of books are written on how to be happy at work. I am not going to tell why or how to be happy at work. I am sure these books would have given lot of pointers for it. I am here to say when people will be happy at work. In my opinion its the culture in the organization, the quality and compatibility of colleagues and the trust they entrust on each other, the team culture and the freedom of space to pursue a persons interest at work (something that should not diverge a lot from the line of work, after all professionals are paid for their time).

If I have to choose one of these factors, I would choose trust. Any relationship is only built on trust. Economy runs mainly on the trust. The very concept of money is trust. But its a sad state where people in a race to be successful have forgotten that the success they are trying to achieve, is nothing but a trust level of all the stakeholders involved. And when people forget that, it will naturally shake the foundation of happiness at work which in turn percolates to personal happiness.

To be happy at work can be a very easy or very difficult depending upon the trust a person places upon himself and others in his team. All other factors are just derivatives of this simple mantra. But though a simple mantra ittakes a long time to derive it. Dr.Manmohan Singh when addressing the world on the recent economic downturn had said "Trust grows like a coconut tree but falls like a coconut". Golden words to be cherished.

I took my family to watch a matinée show of the film 3 Iditots. I thoroughly enjoyed every scene of it and am proud to be a fan of Amir. But one thing that stuck me well was the message conveyed.

To give a brief background on myself, I am from a family full of doctors. My parents, my sister, my sister's husband, my aunt, my uncle everyone of them are doctors. When I had passed out of high school I had a choice of becoming a doctor too. It was taken for granted in my school that I will become a doctor. But I loved solving math problems. I will not forget the day when I laid hands on a computer for the first time in my life. I drew a house in MS paint and immediately wanted to know how it worked. Its the curiosity to know and a passion for math that made me choose Engineering. Boy, was there opposition from my family. It was year 2001 when dot-com bubble burst, when lots of Indians were coming back from US due to lack of opportunity after Y2K. And I became a rebel in the family not to choose the family path.

Today I can say for sure that the decision to pursue my interest and passion has served me well. There was one message that I have learnt late after coming to the industry, one which is conveyed very well. Don't run after success, pursue excellence. A big thanks to 3 idiots team.

I had written a post titled WHY PAY TAXES? where I had poured out my frustration on the tax policies in India. Today I heard a wonderful news. The charitable status of BCCI is revoked. And guess what they have to pay penalty to cheating the Indian public. I am doing happy dance right now.

I only hope that the money got by taxing the richest commercial cricket body in the world is channelized to develop other sports. All in all this news has made my day.

Now I can say I will surely pay my taxes. Thanks.