There is no such thing as right or wrong. Honey, there is…

What is with this new school of thought :: there-is-no-such-thing-as-right-or-wrong.. and that its all based on perception…
My first reaction to such an argument is… Bleh ! 😛

If you believe in God, this is a no-brainer.. This blog is for those who don’t.

Following is my take on few of the arguments that the followers of this school of thought make:

Argument # 1: Everyone is selfish… What’s wrong with that ?

No, everyone is not selfish.. You want me to give an example… Ha, that’s an easy one, your Mom 🙂
Now one of my lunch buddies would have dealt with this argument by saying that, “Thats  an exception.” (His typical reply when he finds someone having a different school of thought than his)

Oh okay, so here the list goes: Your Best Friend, Your Mentor, Your Dog, Your Favorite Teacher etc etc. Oh ! for me, Jesus tops the list 😀 These are the people whom you cherish and love to talk about… They are honest, they love you and they would have done something for you which made them so special.

Now imagine that most of the people around you are good and helpful. Won’t the world be a better place to be in ? Or may be imagine not so good people around you ?? Any thoughts honey ??

Argument # 2: How can one decide what is wrong and what is right ?

Sweetie, I am quite hopeful that you might have something know as conscience inside you. Remember ??
Okay, now here is how you can use it. Ernest Hemingway once said, “So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”

In simple words, if your actions harm or hurt any fellow being, its wrong. And if they benefit fellow beings, ITS ?? RIGHT !! Very Good 🙂
(And I do believe that during such a categorization some actions will surely fall in the grey area. We can focus on those actions sometime later).

And ofcourse, there might be few people who gain sadistic pleasure out of wrongdoings.. We call them PSYCHOPATHS.

I understand that a lot of bad things are being done in the name of righteousness. But as my lunch buddy says, those are all exceptions 😛 Okay, on a serious note, bad actions produce bad fruit even if, its a priest who does it.

If you are afraid of being lonely, don’t try to be right. But that just shows how weak you are (all spirituality, all upbringing, all experiences down in the drain). If there was no distinction between right and wrong, do you think that this world would have existed this long ?? Think about it 🙂

Post MBA Depression and Mid Life Crisis – Its Traumatic

•  10th standard: IIT is the place to be.
•  IIT JEE Exam: Oh No.. I dont need to wait till the results are out. I already know that it was catastrophic.
•  <Settled with a normal engineering college. Aiyyo> 😐
•  Pre Engineering: After my B.E., I will get a job that satisfies me and that’s it. Yo Baby !
•  First Job: Really ?? This is what I did my B.E. for?? I could have saved 4 years of my life if I had joined this company after completing high school. 😦
•  MBA Preparation: IIM A, IIM B, IIM C. There ends my list. Thats what I deserve.
•  Interview Calls: No calls from any of the IIM.
•  <Admission in a Top 20 B School>
•  B School: Slog.. Slog.. Slog.. I have to become an investment banker.. After 1.5 years, self realisation occurs “I cant live to die every day”
•  Placement: Got into an IT company with a decent salary..
•  Current Status: BLANK :-\

 2 + 12 = 16 lac rupees and 4+2 = 6 years of my life.. Gone in the air… Ouchh 😐

It frustrating to see old and new non MBA friends who now have 6-7 years of experience at their jobs. They had amazing onsite experience which earned them both money and respect. And you sit there trying to understand the industry and the domain and more importantly keep hoping to do the ACTUAL MBA LIKE WORK. Moreover, there are delivery guys who term you as “WHITE ELEPHANTS”. I have not met a single person who cares that I have an MBA. Seniors consider you as unimportant after you do all the shitty work for 2 years. They obviously get new minions (fresh from B School and obedient) to replace you. Worst part is that your parents still believe that you are doing some cutting edge stuff.

Sad that at 28 years of age (at the brink of mid-life crisis), I have not yet realised what my passion in life is. There should have been a purpose of my birth into this world. I always thought that I planned my life well. And now I am nothing more than a part of a small rat race..

I hope and wish to get just one breakthrough in my life, with no expectation of it coming sooner or later… 🙂

Day ends with Bad TV.. Week begins with Good TV…

I am watching Bigg Boss 7 nowadays (everyday) … I know that it the worst of bad TV.  Still ?!!?

I enjoy watching it and I wait anxiously for the clock to hit 9 pm and so that I can laugh a little.. Oh No 😐

The secret is that I sometimes google the latest happenings in the celebrity house… Tragic 😦

The following thoughts are creeping into my brain and I am utterly confused:

• Am I not the good kid anymore ?
• Am I used to watching people bitch and fight and play politics and absence of this upsets me ??
• Will I get influenced ???
• Maybe I should continue watching this show so that I can deal with corporate politics..
• Oh whatever.. I don’t want to feel guilty over watching a stupid series… And BTW Comedy Nights with Kapil is a good enough show to clear my mind on the Sunday night.. Gutthi, I adore you.. Kapil, you are awesome.. You guys rock !!! 😀

Experience Growing-Up With Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird”

This beautifully written novel by Harper Lee, is set in a small town Maycomb, Alabama during The Great Depression. She wrote just this one book which won her the Pulitzer Prize and eventually the Presidential Medal for Freedom. It is a much read and much loved all time classic.

When a colleague recommended me this book, he added that the narrator in this book was a 8-10 year old girl. I immediately ordered it online. And guess what, I can consider it the most worthwhile investment in books till date.

This book took me straight back to my childhood – summer vacation, school days, the knowing-so-little-but-asking-it-all phase and most importantly when I started getting an idea of the world the way it was.

This book eases the reader into the mind of a girl Scout Finch. Her father Atticus is a lawyer. The way Atticus controls his kids, his mannerisms, his values and most importantly his honesty and courage makes him a very admirable character. Jem, her brother,  is on the verge of hitting puberty. He keeps requesting Scout to not behave like a girl for half of the book and shouts her to act like a girl in the rest.

On one hand, Scout displays a strong foundation of values provided by Atticus whose actions are as good as his words. And on the other, she narrates events where racism , oppression and injustice prevail in her small and once peaceful town. She feels torn between good and bad, right and wrong and so will the reader. Throughout the book, the reader learns and grows along with Scout.

This book isn’t depressing… This book isn’t preachy… But it does teach us one thing:  though the world is prejudiced in its own ways, we can fight and overcome injustice. The book is magical enough to strengthen the ideology of innate goodness of human beings and that the world isnt that bad a place afterall.

The ‘Invisible’ God

Many a times we hear people grumbling about God’s very existence. This usually happens when they face some trials and tribulations…. A series of questions usually arise during such circumstances: “Why me?”and then “Does God exist?”and then “If God exists, why is he invisible?”.

I believe in God and I can’t imagine a life without spirituality. I do have questions of my own. But I believe that God has answered me all the time: sometimes through servants of God, sometimes through some life events, sometimes through his Word(Bible).  Whenever I am impatient, I usually tell my friends that God should have allowed us to ask him ‘five’ questions to Him in our lifetime. I guess  that’s not going to happen, so I have decided to find few answers by myself and share them with you guys!

First of all, does God exist? In one word, the answer is ‘Yes’. But what makes me confident? We have a conscience of our own. We always want to make things better. We have the capability of believing. If God doesn’t exist, where does all this come from? Look at the perfect universe around us, look at your own body… If we are not God’s creation, who else is perfect enough to do this?

So, why is God invisible? Hmm.. Tough question!

Now I believe in using technology whereever it can be use. So I looked for the answer in google. Some guy said that, God might be having a different fourth dimension. This makes him invisible. Nice Imagination!  Some other guy said, that God is just a spirit. There was a person who went ahead and said that ‘The invisible and non-existent look very much alike’. So Sir, wind doesn’t exist? Dr. Gregory House from House M.D. in one of the episodes says, ‘Either God does not exist, or He is unimaginably cruel (as millions get killed in wars, tsunamis, bombings, accidents)’.

Now what do I believe? As per the Bible, God walked with Adam & Eve in the garden of Eden,’before they sinned’. This gives us a clue. God is Holy and we are long time sinners. Only the pure at heart can see him. We are not good enough to face him. If we do, we would for sure die. Convincing?

There is this incident mentioned in the book of Mark.. Once Jesus healed a person with a dreaded skin disease and He asked the healed person to not discuss this event with anyone. But the man went away and spread this news everywhere. He talked so much about Jesus that Jesus could not go into the town publicly. Instead he stayed at lonely places and people came to Him from everywhere. Imagine a situation where God is visible and accessible to billions of us all over the world. Umm… I hope you got a clue..

Also if we got every answer to every question.. would our life be still interesting? Would we use our conscience as much as we use it today?I guess, the answers are ‘No’ and ‘No’.

One more thing…There is one verse in the Bible which says, “Blessed are those who believed yet have not seen”. Oh Yes! I am blessed one 🙂

Our Ordinary Lives !

Let us have a look at few of extra-ordinary people living extra-ordinary lives…..

Last year, one of our Professors showed us clips from the movie, The Insider (based on a real story). It speaks about a guy who acted as a whistleblower. He lost his job. He was asked to sign a contract that would restrict him from divulging any information about the company. If he wouldnt sign, he would lose all the benefits entitled to him by the company. But he held his ground, gave an interview on CBS (which was not aired for 3 years) and let out all the secrets. His wife left him, he received death threats and what not… The movie was 2.5 hours long and it sent shivers all over my body. Imagine the struggle the guy would have had every day in a span of three-and-a-half-years. Today, this man Jeffrey Wigand is world famous because of his extra ordinary courage and perseverance. 🙂

In today’s ET, there was a news regarding a man named ‘Shailesh Rao’. The fuss was about him moving from Google to Twitter. I don’t know much about the guy, his managerial skills etc. But the thing that made him extra-special was his qualification. Rao has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, a BS from the Wharton School with a concentration in finance, and an MBA from The Kellogg School of Management.   !!!!!!!!!!

Taylor Swift, a 22 year old girl, is a world famous musician and singer. Lady Gaga, a 25 year old girl is renowned for her creativity, her openness and boldness. A thing that is common to them is that they both were bullied at school. Other students considered them to be eccentric and provocative… I bet those students today proudly boast of their friendhsip with Swift or Gaga in school days 😛

Emily Bear, a regular guest at The Ellen (Degeneres) Show, has composed over 350 pieces of music. She got to play at the White House for President Bush and is one of the very few to have performed at Mozart’s Piano Concert. I just adore her 🙂

A young boy Homer Hickam, lived in the town named Coalwood (where every person worked in the coal mines). The only way to move out was through Football Scholarships. It was 1957 and the news of Sputnik being launched successfully was a world wide event. Homer knew that he had to be a rocket scientist, the moment he saw Sputnik travelling across the sky. Even in midst of oppressions and difficult situations, he managed to create small rockets and won the first prize in the National Science Fair. Homer Hickam is today known as one of the most famous  NASA Engineer (retired). {Watch the movie ‘October Sky’ for more details}

Art, Business, Social Service may be the primary ones but there are a zillion ways of living an extra ordinary life.. Sometimes it appears to be sheer luck, sometimes it appears to be the result of a lot of hard work and struggle.. The safest assumption can be.. inorder to lead an extra ordinary life, one needs to have a combination of hard work, struggle, luck and a bit of divine intervention.

What about the ordinary people! When I see around, I find people struggling hard to keep their ordinary life normal (including me). We get overwhelmed and find it difficult to handle small successes and small failures in our lives.

“I got placed… woohoo.. the bestest thing ever..”

“I am married… yay.. I have never been so happy…”

“I am a Dad/Mom…woof.. the biggest sense of achievement everrr..”

There is a friend who knows that he is born to write, but is hesitating. Most of us often settle for much lesser than what we deserve. There are many of us who quietly accept defeat.  Ordinary people like us are short sighted, lack perseverance, we imitate others throughout our lives and often select the easiest and safest tracks for ourselves.

Perhaps the most significant thing that we do is ..we stay ordinary and let others shine 😐

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The above list of extra-ordinary lives is not even the tip of an iceberg. There are many notable personailities like Steve Jobs, Mother Teresa, Zuckerberg, Page & Brin, Gates, Buffet etc. I am quite sure that even a separate post won’t be enough to describe each one of them. And there are thousands of extra-ordinary people about whom I will learn with time.

Privacy Debate 2.0

Mark Zuckerberg in 2010 said, “Privacy has ceased to be a social norm…”. It was when Facebook faced thousands of critics over the privacy issues….Today its Google who is facing the brunt.

I got to know about the changes in the privacy policy of Google via an email. Since Google had taken the pains of notifying me, I had an idea that this change was an important one. I tried to forget this issue but Google kept reminding me to check these new policies whenever I made a search on Google or sent an email via Gmail or watched a video on Youtube.

So…What is this fuss all about? Would Google know a person better than his/her life partner? Would this change be bit too much revealing for a normal chap? Does this defy Google’s informal motto ‘Don’t be Evil’? I can’t answer these questions with certainity nor can most of the critics…

Google has been gathering a lot of data in the past. It claims that it won’t add any other ‘type’ of data to the exisiting bunch. So what is going to change? It is the way in which Google weaves the data. As we know that Google provides a huge bunch of services like, Search, Gmail, Youtube, Maps, Google Plus. It is planning to use the data collected via one service while providing some other services. In simple words, I would be considered as a single user across all the products once I log in.

For example, if I make a search on Google for a mobile phone. This would suggest Google that I am interested in buying a mobile phone and it would immediately be added as a ‘task’. Suppose, the next day I am wandering near the market place with my friends, and Google Maps locates some Mobile Phone shop near by, it would immediately remind me of that ‘task’.

Another example: Say, I watched a video on Youtube, let us say, it is about a hair styling product. Next time the ads placed on my Gmail page may contain information about similar products for sale.

So, would this enhance user experience? I think it would! But would this make some of us uncomfortable? Again, I think it would!

Some critics have been supporting Google and have following considerations:

• Google won’t collect data if you are not logged in
• Google makes life simpler, saves time and money. So the cost of having a non-intruding ad on search page or gmail page is not much. After all one doesn’t have to click on ads.
• Since Google is a publicly traded company, its primary aim is to make profits for the shareholders. It, for obvious reasons, wants to sell ad space to businesses at higher rates.
• Almost all the Google products have substitutes. So rather than relying on the single provider one can opt for different bunch of providers. If I don’t like it, I won’t use it.. Simple!
• Some are happy with the fact the Google has been so transparent about these changes.

The only part that bothers me is that after March 1, all the old policies will be revoked and new ones would be in place. There is no turning back. So will people abandon Google. No way! Today communication systems have become more akin to food and water and are not considered luxury services any more. And Google has touched the life of almost every person in the planet in some or the other way. Taking it out of our lives doesn’t seem to be an option at all….!

When was the last time you took a decision all by yourself?

When was the last time you took a decision all by yourself?

An easy question.. Isn’t it? And what is the obvious answer?…. ‘Hey, All the Time!”  😀

But please do think for a while…. Do we keep aside all our prejudices before making a decision? Don’t we take a decision and then reverse it due to peer pressure? Does the huge load of information obtained via TV, Movies and Internet affect our decision making capabilities?

Let us first talk about some BIG decisions that we take in life…

• Mr. X wants to go for higher education. He looks around and MBA seems to be the public’s choice. He appears for CAT, XAT, SNAP etc. Gets a call from XL for the PMIR course. He never was interested in the HR job. He never respected the HR job… But he joined the course! Why? Because, some people (known or unknown via web) recommended it.

• Ms. B wants to get married. She is a huge fan of Bollywood movies and TV soaps. She feels that her dream boy would be a perfect husband material. He has loads of cash, has a huge bungalow, a glittering car and no office stress. The best part is that he has all the time in the world to love her. Ms. B looks for such characteristics in every boy and is rejecting them one after the another.

• Mr. Z is all geared up for the placement season. He wants to get into Finance. But has done majors in Marketing as well. He has taken few subjects in Systems and has couple of years of work experience in the software field. Luckily, he has some exposure to Operations as well. Just before the placements begin he finds out that he has applied to some 25 odd companies .. And you guessed it right. He gets into a field that he always felt was not meant for him.

Today we have friendship with someone coz s/he is perceived as ‘Kewl’ by others. We abuse others, coz we feel its trendy. Chetan Bhagat is our favourite author, coz he has legalised the use of words like ‘F**K’. We love Sachin and Dravid one day and hate them the next day (decision is made as per the FB status updates). We wear t-shirts of Che Gueverra without having any information about him. We claim some Professor is ‘GOD’ even if he is the worst one that we have ever met. We love some girl from within but inorder to impress friends we keep on trying up five others.

For how long will this continue? I guess the situation will worsen with time 😦

For all those who crack jokes on Manmohan Singh!

Please go through this article and you will have an idea of how this man tried to change the course of Indian economy:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/how-the-indian-economy-changed-in-1991-2011/articleshow/9339258.cms

Chavanni is dead :(

I got this bad news today…. source: Economic Times. Chavanni which came into being in the year 1950, is no more with us….Banks have refused to accept it for exchange. Ab is zamaane me chavanni me aata hi kya hai? Mahengayi jo itni badh gayi hai…..

Inflation…

During the recent guftagu that our humble PM had with editors of several magazines, he was asked questions about rising inflation…. He replied, ” there are three factors which are out of my control – the international commodity prices, the Middle East crisis, the oil prices”. But Pradhan Mantri ji, high rates of inflation in our country are primarily due to inflation related to food products. And a quarter of the food grains produced in our country are wasted due to lack of storage facilities.. Iss par aapke kya vichaar hain?

Hope you remember that it was an ‘overpriced onion’ that threw the BJP out of the raaj-gaddi…. Will it happen again?

If this continues, one day, atthanni would be gone, and then Re. 1, then Rs. 2 and  then Re. 5…. and may be, Congress led coalition government 😦