Gujju fests-Faralli fasting

I think the best thing that Gujarat has to show for except for Mr., Gandhi and Sardar and all those great freedom fighters is its long list of festivals. Really if you consider yourself a Machiavelli or even a Type A personality or a workaholic, I think its best you stay away from Gujarat. Because it has so many festivals which people crazily follow, you are bound to stall at one festival or another.

It all starts with the month of August (correct me if I am wrong, but I am starting according to the EPL calendar). This is the month of fasting or Shravan mahino, as people fondly call it. In this month people enjoy abstaining from food for I think around ten days. Now why did I write enjoy from abstinence. The thing is that you cannot eat normal food, but you can eat farall, a kind of food which is so delicately categorized for eating, it is so delicious and fulfilling that even during the days of fasting you are bound to eat like hell. The food included under this includes faralli chevdo, faralli wafer, faralli samosa, farrali burger, faralli this and faralli that and all the junk food that you could imagine of. Really at the end of this month people actually gain weight instead of losing it. In fact I had one of my friends asking whether PEPSI or even a Coke be categorized under faralli. I said damn man! , The only thing that could be left here would be faralli non-veg.

A common man with simple economics knowledge could ascertain that during fasts the sales of eateries should go down as demand is equal to supply. But you need economists like Friedman to really calculate the demand-supply curve existing here. In this case the eatables sales actually receive a boost instead of a declining curve. We can name it anything supply shock, Nash equilibrium or faralli tendency. But the fact remains that Shravan is one hell of enjoyment from abstinence.

Thinking to take a weekday off .Think again you can kill yourself if you do so.
5 things to consider before you spend your week day at home.

1. The ringing door bell of the milkman, the school bell if you live near to a school, the early morning train if you live near a station all this are major contributors to disturb your sleep in which case you actually are looking for sleeping that extra two hours.

2. Try talking to your neighbours , they will all be mostly retired oldies who hunt people to bore them out of their skins.

3. Try Star Cricket, it will make you watch an entire test match not even an ODI. By entire I mean the full bloody 90 overs and it literally stretches over five days.

4. Try flipping music channels, it will be full of realty show who will make you watch that stuff even it you don’t want to.

5. Try getting online at this time of the day, the whole world is online your broadband will work like a 280 year old sea turtle

PROCLAMATION: DESIRES FROM 2010

PROCLAMATION: DESIRES FROM 2010

DESIRES FROM 2010

10 things I want from 2010

1. No matches between India and Sri lanka.

2. Jayasuriya should retire this time around.

3. No more lame tricks by Microsoft to beat Google in its market share.

4. End of debate whether India is in a recession was in a recession or is it a temporary correction or a long time depression.

5. Sensex predictors targeting 20k every now and then and as usual tanking every time the predictions are made.

6. End of the roadies journey, man they are stretching it like a soap opera.

7. Some less coverage by economic times of IIM-A , its acting like a bloody IIM A newsletter.

8. No more acquisitions by Indian cos just to show power.

9. No more poor jokes on menhgi dal, sabzi, shakkar, doodh , pani ka pouch etc etc. In short nothing about foodflation.

10. More and better posts from me.

MANAGEMENT OLOGY

Some really cool management names for some of the most unethical things in life.

Groups of people promoting plagiarism through visually stimulating techniques and multimedia effects and showing excellent command over language just to state the obvious:-PRESENTATIONS

Groups of people shamelessly performing the act of mud-slinging, character assassination and destructive criticism: INDIVIDUAL FEEDBACK.

Groups of people engaging in healthy backstabbing, unhealthy competition and social loafing: A DYNAMIC TEAM

Groups of people discussing cricket, bollywood, surfing, for a fortnight and a half and slogging like donkeys for a week: EFFECTIVE DEADLINE COMPLETION

Groups of people engaging in gossips, rumor spinning mills to project something positive in a really negative way: WHISTLE BLOWING

Groups of people indulging in scathing remarks, killer statements and being the most unappreciative of somebody’s hard work just to show lame superiority: PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

Groups of people engaging in discussing the most irrelevant matter in a sophisticated manner, keeping timers, using resources, showing utter disrespect to other people’s personal time just to go round and round the matter and not even coming close to discussing the irrelevant matter at hand and finally after all these unanimously deciding that it was irrelevant and is documented. BRAINSTORMING

Groups of people engaging in threat calls, legal threats and any other kinds of intangible or tangible threats: MOTIVATION

Groups of people showing shameless flattery like laughing at poor jokes, laughing louder at poorer jokes, taking sides, losing all sense of dignity or self respect just to be the “yes-sir” kind of guys to their superiors: MAINTAINING GOOD RELATIONS WITH SUPERIORS

TRYST WITH POETRY

Dreams a path to reality,
Reality a path of Agony,
Agony a path to pleasure,
Pleasure the ultimate treasure.

Walk the life uncared,
Care the most scarred,
Pain when it rains,
Rains when it pains.

Track your moves,
Move your tracks,
Get into the grooves,
Groove into the hooves.

Life gets sick,
Its easy to pick,
The ultimate niceties,
But pick the vagaries.

Dream on,
Until dawn,
Wake the soul,
Let the body full.

Your heart like blood,
Water like the flood,
Sling the mud,
Damn this world.

Sorry for the agony you might have gone through but this piece of crap was test of my poetry skills written at one shot without any sense, stop , revision, just all the English you bloody know at one go.

BOOK REVIEW: POSITIONING

The marketing gurus “Jack Trout and Al Ries” are back with a masterpiece this time. In cinematic terms it would be called a “remake”. Actually it is modern view of their earlier concept about Positioning. It’s a 1980 classic about how market dynamics has changed from the “product era” of the 1950s to the current “positioning era”. It talks about the current overcrowded market where the consumer is bombarded with a whole lot of advertisements and information that it is hard for a corporation to create a space or “Position” itself in the minds of its customers. It is essentially a brand management book and takes an inside view of how successful brands made it to the minds of the consumers and the rest simply melt away. Loads of examples in almost every industry have been given, right from the bottling giant “Coca Cola” to Proctor and Gamble’s different FMCG products. It has given many success stories where a well thought out and simple names can work wonders for the product. On the flipside it also criticizes major corporations for not concentrating on brand and logo management and losing out market share to those who do. Its perspective ranges right from the huge corporations like GM, Ford to the smaller ones like Avis and even gives a broad strategy on how to take on the “big fish” in your own industry.

It has even given excellent ways where marketing yourself in your career could do wonders to your career. How to go up the corporate ladder and how to make a name for yourself and get credibility for all the hard work you put in. Out of around 18 laws the most interesting that I found was positioning of a ladder where a product establishes itself on the first, second or third rung of a ladder. It also warns about how major companies fall into the line extension trap, complicate their product names, prefer initials over full name of the company, and concentrate on producing already established products. It advises companies to go for niche market segment which they call as finding a hole, that is at any given time each market has a segment which has still not being explored. They also give various ways to discover that hole and stamp your authority on it. The good thing about the book is that it has been written after exhaustive research and analysis. Hence after you read the book you are bound to think over the daily products that you use in marketing sense.

Although the book is excellent in presentation with interesting facts and figures to keep the reader hooked but there were some follies in it too. Although you have be highly critical to criticize this book, but it simply does not explain the rise of General Electric which is a major in around 12 market segments. Further the examples sometimes get too repetitive and because the concepts overlap, many times you are left to wonder if you are reading the same things over and over again. Anyways a good book to read if you are seriously considering marketing as your specialization. But even if you are not its self marketing concept is worth giving a read for future success in career. The authors other best selling books are “The Horse Sense”, “The 22 immutable laws of marketing “ and a few others. All are worth giving a go.

Litigation free India

An interesting article by the economic times has caught me thinking ( a difficult task to achieve). It was the fire at the Indian Oil Corporation which raged for more than a 100 hours. It said that how litigation protected our country was. After 100 hours of constant fire and so many deaths and I don’t know how much ppm of pollution , still no organization or a single person has come forward to actually ask compensation. An interesting observation if you might say. Because for the past two years I have litigation filed for each and everything. Like the average movie producer is the worst sufferer. You have people taken to court for movie title names which for strange reasons have been hurting people’s sentiments. “Billu Barber” is a case in account. Interestingly this fire was one of the best opportunities to cash on some heavy rewards from the Fortune 500 Company if I am not wrong. But sadly like the 5th one day international against Australia it too went begging.

An American counterpart would have been sued heavily by those affected directly as well as indirectly. I think that is why companies in U.S. have such strict code of conduct more from fear of judiciary wing rather than the ethical code. I think that is the reason U.S. companies prefer to work around in India due to such lax laws that prevail in the Indian regulatory system. IOCL in fact responded by hiking their oil prices in all of their franchisees, a strategy which could dangerously hurt their reputation. Moreover the “loss by fire” for major oil companies is mostly insured heavily hence I don’t think there is a problem over there. This also shows how we all the time for the silly things in life for suing film makers to change their titles and stop hanging dolls as marketing strategy but if fire rages for more than 100 hours encircling a city and endangering my lives it is always “the other’s problem”. Again here the rage of stupid journalism played their part to perfection, which has been a constant cause of concern.

Another thing our religious belief often clouds our judgment because we tend to believe that God is superior to the gift given by him “human life”. Again this is main reason why we fail to come so many problems in our lives just because we label them as other region, the neighbor’s problem that is his lookout. When this is the same things that come full circle and cause obstacles in our lives too. Hence we can bear human tragedy but we cannot surely bear religious or Godly tragedy. A person killed near a Gandhian statue will be watched upon but someone throwing stones at the statue of a dead political leader will be killed and buried there and there. Moreover the miscreants destroy public property on account of this and police becomes a mere spectator in that case.

The Demise of ODI

A current wave is flowing among the cricket experts and non cricket experts about discussing the death of the ODI. Now that is a pretty stupid thing to discuss first of all. Come on now how many times would the ICC change its stance or bring circus like innovation to the gentleman’s game to attract spectators. Now firstly I totally disagree with the killing of ODI, no matter what T20 will do. First of all the talks about the demise of ODI is entirely based on stadium revenues. Yes it does play an important part in generating revenue and giving the sponsors good value for their money, but again here we are looking at a very small part of the picture or we are being forced to look upon that small part of the picture. Sponsors and organizers always want a large share of the smallest part of a business unit, no matter what and if they find that another unit is giving that large share of the smallest part it is better to discontinue the current business.

Now take the case of ODI it is true that stadium revenue are low for the ODI games but we do have high TRPs for them. That means viewing is not quite affected due to the longer version of the game. On the other hand for T20 the stadium revenue has huge chunk which maximizes their profit to a large extent. Here is fact to support, the champion’s trophy is slotted to have a higher TRP than the champion’s league although the Champions league is said to have been the event of the year. Moreover CLT20 has done a poor business in terms of viewing revenue even though it was slotted for a higher than 10 TRP.

Another problem with killing ODI is that people do not watch it because they are bored of the long schedule of the match and today in this fast paced world no one has the time for watching all these stuff. But an interesting statistics will show the danger of treading such path. The TRP of last year’s IPL was much higher to this year’s one. Even though some of the biggest stars were roped in to counter balance the losing interest. With the sponsors adding the strategic breaks the pain was turned into agony. This shows as people have lost interest in the ODI format people are getting bored with the T20 format, then we will have cries for Hong Kong Six over games, but then will the cricketing world yield to this also. This could to demise of the pajama cricket itself. All we would be watching is people selected on power and agility and killing the art form of the game. This is more of the American form of playing a particular game.

VENKY THE NOBEL FALL GUY

As the news of the nobel laureate Venky comes in about his irritation towards people contacting him for networking purposes. It is not quite surprising that people now want a piece of the action hence professors , teachers and students which are “so called “ are trying to contact the great just to show off or snob off. Considering the simplicity of the man who used to cycle to work and a mere layman existence is flooded with attention of superstar its indeed asking too much to cope up with. Even after such flooding of adulation he quite modestly was back to work and complaining about people’s email flooding his mail box daily, he said he spends minimum of an hour cleaning his junk mails( hasn’t he heard about unlimited storage).

But that shows what is it like if you are famous and on top of it you are Indian, you will have so many fans just because of the sheer size of the country. They will praise you like hell which if you do something which is good according to their perspective but on the contrary they will hammer you if they find you evil in their perspective. Yeah everybody has experienced it whether its Sachin Tendulkar of Rahul Dravid or even for that case the prince himself Sourav, you had during the world cup his house being painted black but during exclusion from the national side you had riots and violence everywhere. That is what we have as Indians that we think with our hearts, have a very short term memory and tend to act on it quite impulsively.

Another thing is that why do we get excited when somebody of our origin excels using resources of some other country because its like the caretaker is more important than the one who has given birth. We have many Indians using foreign shores to excel in fields and why is that whether it is Sunita Williams or Kalpana Chawla or any other artist. We should be ashamed of ourselves that our country does not have the back up or resources to retain local talent , that such talented individuals have to leave shores to excel in their respective fields. Then these guys do well all we do clap for them after they have achieved their goals through sheer hard work we do not support them when they require us the most and after they have done their thing we are there to shower false adulation just because it is cool to do that.

BOOM IS BACK

After a long hiatus of ongoing recession we are atlast seeing some signs of recovery. The market is getting up like a tiger dying down before rising up again. With exactly one year since the prediction of end of capitalism we at last can see it is not that easy to kill capitalism atleast for this time. I think recession or slow down is a necessary evil, something which like a nagging mother pulls back to the ground saying that money is not something to be squandered around. Anyways after seeing some positive growth we again have a slew of IPOs listed back on the bourses but this time people are careful and not getting carried away by the sudden jump in growth rates and the positive mood. Come Diwali and I think we can expect more of the same as we could just looking for a bloody bull run.

A positive impact really has a great rub on effect on other sectors too. Like we could see a great increase in blockbusters during such times even crap movies do well on just the buyers sentiments. People start buying crap even if they do not need it giving a rise in the retail industry. Wallets become highly volatile getting thicker and thinner by the day. People start preferring computers over mechanical, suddenly the worker in them becomes technorats. Suddenly people will choose finance over marketing in MBA , because the finance sector is doing well. I don’t know the exact pattern but yes the mood around really affects decision making. You have people with no accounting sense predicting rise and rise of companies. You have passports for U.S. increasing because the mama nu motel is doing really well. You have people throwing parties for no particular reasons. You have suddenly a slew of crap channels being launched and a slew of series being launched just to do a quick business. You have mobile phones giving endless features schemes and policies to confuse you with a shit load of data.You have production houses being started up again to do a quick business. All this happens so fast that you simply do not have the time to note the movies let alone the production houses. You have your relatives sons and daughters ( avoiding gender bias) getting picked up by top MNCs or sent US to get trained at something which he already knows.

All this happens until a pessimist like me forsees another debacle another slew of tight monetary policy and another game of allegation and counter allegations. Well that is how the cycle works believe it or not.

Life's Ironies

Recently I have noticed bow life is full of ironies, (he most common way to start a post but sadly I have to start it this way whether you like it or not ). You would have often noticed that as students we have to bear the brunt of the most psychopathic individuals that have laid foot on this earth. But the irony is not that, it is how a particular subject can very much mould the character of a person. I think experts who study human behavior according to environmental change will agree to my following theory. A subject or a course which a particular person teaches very much moulds his character, his life-style, his dressing, his walk and talk, his attitude towards life etc.

To let me prove my point let me cite a few examples ( cite not give , you will know the difference if you have studied chemistry ) . Ever notice your physical instructor at your school and by schools I mean most Indian schools. Because I do not know much about other countries who have NFL players as coaches to students or ex-basketball player who was caught doing drugs during his career and has been relegated to this position by life the great teacher. But here in India you will find the physical instructor to be the most unfit person in the school , he chews tobacco speaks bad or broken , disjoint, disparate English, flaunts a family super saver pack and beats you like a local hawaldar if you do not listen to his broken , disjoint, disparate English. While on the playground he would probably tell a student to get a stool for him to sit and tell him to run otherwise he would beat the crap out of him. He perches himself like Buddha under the shade of tree with a whistle in his hand. And any kind of misbehavior on the ground leads to severe punishment like lifting him from his stool getting beaten up by him , he beats the crap out of you just to get the blood flow going in his body.

Then you will have your math teacher a guy who most probably will have receding hair line. This increases his ability to think better as his head is an open book. He will usually be the most unorganized, confused person in the world and will make math for you as confusing as it possibly can be. He loves the number but will keep forgetting your name hence you will be probably be known by your number like a jail kaidi . Then he when the math gets heavy will probably dish out cold number jokes. Like 2 times Reena (roll no 2) is equal to 1 Suresh ( roll no 4). If you put A (roll no 6) in a square you will get B (roll no 36)

Then you will have your biology madam because subjects related to medical and paramedical are preferred mostly by the ladies. (They simply love cramming). They are like Matrix’s Keanu Reeves who like a hard disk stores anything and everything. The ultimate irony is that they hate violent movies but they absolutely like cutting human corpses and studying them for the sake of it. They cannot see a bird dying but they can work at a morgue with a damn dead body. They should be featured in the most dangerous jobs in the world show on NatGeo . They like to cut through intestines, spleen and don’t know what else stuff. They make friends with the dead corpses and call humans as subject, specimen or a sample (how cold).

I think in a way I have proved my point here. Of course this theory is open to discussion and can be contributed with better examples like the history lecturer being the most boring of them, literature professor being the most abstract of them but come on now I am writing a post here not a book.

The I-DAY RUT

Independence Day or the I-day, the hippie likes to call it is here and gone by the night. Yet does it hold a special day for us Indians, especially for our generation who have seen a free India since their birth. Well going by my experience it is nothing but a routine holiday for us where we like to enjoy the day off. Well do not consider me to be any anti- Indian guy because lets face it that’s the truth. We only know the names of the Kranti-veers because we are forced to remember it during our history lessons in school. Its nothing bad because we have not experienced their struggle or shared their passion to see free India. All we have heard is that “"Angrezo ke zamane mein yeh hota tha or woh hota tha par kya hota tha who baad me jaye” Yes that’s true and we have to live by it.

Let me share with you the typical day an average Indian family goes through during the I-day. First of all the father gets up grumpy because he has to send his bloody kids to school for flag hoisting. He hates it because this MNC guy has just got his probably only leave for the year. Why do bloody school people have to open the schools on this day. Probably because they get summer and diwali vacations hence they do not know the value of a holiday . Damn this lazy Indian education system and damn entire academics sector who do not prepare their children for the real world which I am now experiencing.

The child gets up thinking “Shit why do I have to get up on a holiday and why did the bloody principal declare a holiday on this day when they are being called on this day. The kid is right technically. He has to get up go to school on a holiday. Now if you take the typical Indian school I-day you will see grumpy parents taking their kids to school who on this day have to stand like jerks for two hours in the hot sun just to see the flag unfurl (I could do this at home). The two hours at school is total punishment even if you are MNC guy. You have to see your most boring teacher giving the mother of all boring lectures on Indian history, culture and Krantiveer and all that stuff. And if you notice this most damned and unanimously hated lecture is to be given by the most boring monotonous teacher of your school. Then you have some chief guest who would be most probably be a school alumni and who like a college student being ragged wants to inflict the same pain and agony that he had experienced during his school days. He is applauded at his every momentary silence, cough or any sign of emotion or exhilaration that he shows which suggests that he is nearing the end of his lecture. He even points out that he understands that you are bored but somehow he is enjoying your situation.

After the chief guests sits down you have the class topper reading some verses of Khurran, Bible or Gita depending on the level of torture, it has to be just right or else you might die. Moreover adding insult to injury he explains that stuff to you. Then adding injury to your insult you have your parents comparing you with him. After all this you have two words from the principal vice principal the secretary the treasurer the clerk which extends the two hour torture to a agonizing four hour one. You get restless you start making moves , sounds , howls then eventually screams, but to no avail” bolne aaya hoon to bolke hi rahunga” This is where the average Indian starts learning to disrespect other people and starts to strive to be the worst human the world has seen.

After this four hour ordeal, there comes the mother of all ironies. The bloody chief guest gets to hoist the flag. Come on now we are the martyrs here we have spent our blood sweat tears to make this event possible unlike our Lok Sabha members who stage a walk out during such situations. We are the Krantiveers not the damn chief guest, Anyways we are just too happy to revolt like in 1857 so now we are good to go.

SWAN FLUE

After a long time an epidemic has hit India. Last time it was SAARS if I am not wrong and this time it is the swine flu which very intelligently pronounced as Swan flu in India’s regional languages. I think the pronunciation was deliberately done by some meat eating maniac who just could not see the plight of some swines getting killed by some activists especially PETA. This similar phenomenon had happened during the chicken flu days when all the infected and non infected chickens were killed in the name of the chicken flu, or was it Avian flu anyway these days so many flus or should it be flues are coming up that it is hard to keep note of.

Again we have news channels donning the hat of Sherlock Holmes picking up the microphones and blaring out in your T.V, set that Swine Flu is here and it is here to stay. Atleast the BMC (Bombay’s Principal Culprit ) doesnot get the blame and for once the poor drainage system is not crucified by the news channels because they are all too busy investigating the rates of masks that have shot up due to the ongoing swine flu. All and all Rakhi Sawant would be quite sad because all publicity is going straight to the swine instead of her.

I personally think that this is natures backlash. For years man has eaten chicken , goats ,beefs ,swines or pork I don’t want any swine to sue me for the derogaratory use of the word swine ( oops there I go again). Now it is time for the us bad guys to have a taste of our medicine KGB style. KGB because all the swines have picked among themselves a group of suicides swines who poison themselves with the H1N1 virus and when they are eaten by us we get killed as the suicide swines are martyrs in their won right dieing for a cause of their existence.

But vegetarians do not rejoice because you too could be in for a scare. What if the methis and the caulis decide for a suicide mission then even you could end up in doldrums . Why don’t plants and vegetables eat sleep and and respire like me. (ME, because I perform only these primary functions during my entire day and still after meeting an expert botanist I was certified a living organism). So where does it leave us not eating plants like cows and not eating animals like animals hard to say but just think about it.

The Bull run

Now with the world economy steadying a little, its time for small investors to again look at the sensex with lust. Yes it had last to last year been an object of desire as it went on a roller coaster ride which had started by breaking the 15000 mark and then it never looked back and cruised to about 22000 in no time. The bulls were thrown out of Dalal Street by welcoming the statue of the Bull in front of the NSE building Wall Street style.

But sadly the joy ride did not last much longer and the stocks fell like the Great Indian batting line-up, in procession one after the other. This was largely due to the SLR crisis that had been waiting to burst. Now after around two years we again flirting with the 15000 mark and again hopes have been raised of small time investors to wet their hands in the moving water (It’s a phrase ). Again people with Obama at the helm are hoping for change in the market economy and rubbing their hands for what could be another joy ride in the coming. You could sense the optimism with the current Adani Power IPO which was actually to be launched a year ago but was withheld due to lack of interest in the market. However this time around it has been different with the scrip already being overpriced around 4.5 times people are expecting a boom this time around. Its price band is around 90 to 100 and is expected to launch right from the opening bell.

But what would be fresh from memory is the last time such kind of hoopla had been created and the Reliance Power scrip started losing from the very first few minutes of its birth. Considering this around the case would be different as last time the Reliance Power had indicated an end to the boom time and a start of the bloodshed. Similarly we are expecting that Adani Power would indicate the end of the slump and the start of the boom. But that depends how does the market react to the Adani Power share.

Again considering that the FIIs might have turned their heads back to India as their favorite destination this could be quite a good time for the Sensex.. However investment experts have advised people to not throw caution to wind and invest wisely a thing that we hardly consider when we ride into the boom time. Overall it could be predicted that by mid next year India would be chugging back into its growth path. For that to happen we must look into our manufacturing sector much more closely otherwise we would miss this opportunity to China which by then would be recording double digit growth rate.

MTV OVERDOSE

MTV as of sorts is in the race of breaking records. No it is not competing for the most watched channel on the Indian television but it is aiming to be the biggest churner of reality shows of late. I think it has taken the path that is being currently run by the Bollywood films of producing over 300 non-sensical crap movies within a year and then selecting the best among the crappiest and sending that to the Oscars and praying Indian ishtyle thinking yes we can win this time too. But sorry folks we need to do better.

Coming back to MTV a channel which has transformed the culture of many a countries has now been bitten up by the reality show bug. If you see right from Roadies 1 now to Roadies 6, then you have Splitsvilla then you have “the fast and the gorgeous” then the teen diva , all with shitty sequels, then you have the latest “connected” . Then you have the “Stunt Mania” ,” the Rock Band’ and you are left to wonder how rich is Rann vijay. If you see none of the shows have that high TRPs but you still have contestants crying spilling beans washing dirty linen and all that kind of stuff on national television. You are then wondering how does MTV get all these samples. Is there a biological laboratory with MTV samples written on it that produces such things.

First of all the Roadies is still the most watched show on MTV. But if you see it has become repititve with Raghu trying to do the unexpected but even a kid knows what he is going to do next. And yeah we donot need Airtel digital to know who would be eliminated next. With Raghu trying to play mind games with the contestants but he ends up mind boggling our minds. Three seasons for any show is enough (except if it’s the Simpsons) otherwise what ‘s the point in dragging a show just so that you could give your unemployed brother , Rann Vijay and Nikhil Chinappa some work. Then you the latest game show that is Connected , where everything happens twice I think they should even air it twice show advertisements twice because no one is going to sponsor them. It lacks quality and content. You have contestants doing some silly tricks and the only requisite is that his partner should do it in the same way. That is MTV ‘s way of determining how connected two people are. Move away all astrologers and HR executives because MTV is the man. If there is sequel to this show it should be called Connected 4 because the first one happened twice ( got the logic ) I think a hollywood script writer and Mahesh Bhatt should be on this show because strangely their stories match they are the most connected.

Then you have Splitsvilla a show where love is war. You have contestants trying to prove who is the dumbest among them all. The first show had such poor TRPS that instead of four winners the winners had been narrowed down to two and even the prizemoney was halved. Moreover the airtime that the winners got on MTV even that flopped due to poorly managed content .They really think that we audience are really dumb. Then we had teen diva who nobody watched and nobody could watch.

Fast and the Gorgeous a show which selects the pit girls for the Team Force India is another such futile attempt . It is quite similar to the one adjudged by Ganguly to select the cheer leader for the KKR. Sadly KKR were so poor in the IPL that the cheerleaders started to cheer other teams like Indian politics. Similarly our Force India team is so poor with Adrian Sutil and Fischella that during the race the force India team doesnot get that much airtime leave alone the pit girls. You have a force India car either crashing and burning or reaching the finishing line when all the other drivers have reached home.

Not learning from all these MTV has started yet again brought Stunt Mania .God knows who will watch this when all have YOutube. Anyways whatever might be the case I think one thing is for sure the MTV Tickr is going to be voted the most watched tickr in history because of such shows it is getting food for its tickr even when you don’t have a Jacky Bhagiani or a Govinda film out.

PERSPECTIVES OF A DANGEROUS MIND

The human mind has generally three perspectives to a singular situation. It could be a positive perspective, a negative perspective or a practical perspective. I would like to quote a very famous aphorism “I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist but I am a realist”.

Now lets leave all that aside and concentrate on the human psychology alone. Whenever the human mind takes up something like a task to be done or a work to be done it goes through all the three above mentioned perspective. The transition that takes place among the different perspective is what makes this post worth reading. Let me give illustration to explain my point of view or POV as it is called. These are day to day situations that we lazy species on the face of earth face and how we citing these three perspectives start accelerate and end up doing things.

Instance 1

Optimist: I am going to hit the gym the first thing from tomorrow.

Realist: Working out in the morning is not that fruitful as survey shows that evening work outs produce quicker and better results.

Pessimist: Working out in the gym consists of lifting weights and endurance training which leads to the body bulking up hence running and skipping is the way to go I am going to run tomorrow.

Instance 2

Optimist: I am going to run from tomorrow and I have set my eyes on Usain Bolt he is my inspiration.

Realist: I have knocked knees, flat foot and don’t what hence running can only aggravate my problems. (Man you should be a lawyer)

Pessimist: Running could lead to exhaustion and that affects my performance at work hence from its dieting for me.

Instance 3

Optimist: I am going on a diet from today.

Realist: But it would not be a instant one as it could lead to amnesia and sometimes unconsciousness

Pessimist: Dieting is dangerous to health and it can cause the swollen arteries , hence it could cause low blood pressure hence I would say to hell with dieting. I am going to gym from tomorrow.

And hence the cycle continues…..

ZERO PRODUCIVITY

Zero productivity work, an entirely new concept discovered by me while I have nothing productive to do. Now some people might wonder what actually is zero productive work. Some might even argue how can work yield zero productivity. But actually its definition is quite simple. When you work and you do not gain anything by doing that work either physically emotionally or meta physically or alpha biologically or gamma chemically or theta mathematically ( it was meant to confuse) then we call such kind of bullshit a zero productivity work. Let me discuss a few instances with you on this entirely strange concept.

1. Blogging. This is the first and most useless thing that almost every Joe takes up with a singular selfish motive that is to earn money. Now although we all are aware of the fact that we all are dumb at writing stuff and that even trained and professional writers do not earn much. Still we have that Shakespeare in us who tells us to write or not to write. They all take heart from the great Labnol, thinking they can make it big too. Sadly in just a few months the Shakespeare in us becomes a shaken spear. I have seen way too many blogs which starts with great posts then after a while due to dryness of ideas they turn to time.com or news.com do a CCP (Cut Copy Paste) of the first page along with the photos and shamelessly promote plagiarism on their blogs. If the guy still has some originality left in him then he starts posting about what he did from Monday to Sunday from morning to evening and other silly stuff. Now if you are writing it has to have a target audience, what is the point of letting other people know that you cut out newspapers and make shapes of dogs and monkeys out of it. You are making a monkey out of yourselves by doing that. Then you have people cooking something and putting pictures of that on their blogs. I had seen a guy putting photos of burgers on his blog. Wow! Burgers that is indeed a divine cuisine!. If the guy is still more lazy to write then he starts posting posts containing the photos of nearby post offices to public toilets to I do not know what all stuff. You have camera phones so freely available that you have “Click when you talk policy” (IDEA ad ). He keeps on clicking all the useless stuff and then posts the entire shit collection on his blog.

2. Social networking sites. Now this is the greatest and the dumbest thing that people today are hooked to. Now it makes sense that you might have joined any one of the social networking sites because you need to catch up with your friends after college or after school or who lives abroad but what is the point in joining and registering a whole dozen of them . Like you have orkut, facebook ,MySpace which are quite famous. But then you have a lot of useless other networking sites like the newest craze Twitter, Bebo, Lobo, gikeo, chambu , damphas, and I don’t know how many of them. And you have your inbox of your only email id full from your silly friends who constantly poke you tweet you treat you beat you murder you expunge you decimate you tag you from all the different sites that they might have joined. Don’t they have other better stuff to do , you are left to wonder. Even then you accept their invitation and join such sites because you are afraid you might get left behind. If such sites are not enough then you have crazy application that they run on their sties. Like lets measure your brain size or The Elvis presley test or the Hollywood test in which you have score of different guys being posted on it. You start to compare it then you are sure that you too have joined in the rat race.
Anyways I have no special grudge against any of these networking sites or blogging because I also belong to that elite class of technocrats (as they like to call themselves) but think about it is worth it?

SPORTS-A-MANIA

Now its that time of the year when nobody has really anything interesting to do. Its July and you have all the sports coming to a halt. All the seasons whether it is NFL,NHL, PHL or FA League everything has come to a grinding halt. You have people especially sports buffs like me and having nothing more important to do asking for more. The cricketing season has just shifted gears onto the test mode where all the nations are busy playing the purest form of cricket . After six months or so of pyjama cricket some sanity has prevailed. You have two big transfer deals almost complete. That of Kaka and Ronaldo. Amidst so much sports one cannot help but miss the Confederstion Cup. You almost would have missed the Wimbledon was it not that Federer would have reached the finals and gotten through. You had the poor American Roddick getting thrashed quite gracefully by the great man. You had almost everyone in the tennis world present there to witness the greatest man ever to play tennis . Before this you had India defending the T20 cup as though they had been forced to do so. Before that you had the IPL spanning almost 40 days. With this edition not generating the same fanfare as before.

Just when you thought that cricket was over we have the Ashes where Australia had some extra practice on English conditions following their early exit from the tournament. After Ashes it’s the Champions Trophy following which there is Champions League T20, followed by IPL again and then another T20 World Cup. Really ICC should do something about it, otherwise how will John Abraham give us more horrendous expressions from his usually docile face.

August is the beginning of the EPL , the Spanish premira and the Italian league followed by the world cup of soccer next year. Boy I am sweating as I write this . As you come out of this in between you have the AustralianOpen followed by the U.S. and then the French and the Wimbledon where Federer would win his 16^th Grand Slam. If between this you are considering the F1 race that is around 18 then you better not switch your Television off . With so many sports channels working around , you just cannot take your eyes off. If hypothetically you consider the eight F1 teams break-off and create their won Ivy League then again you have another 18 races with some of them held in India.

So if you are a sports fan my advice to you would be shut the hell up and cut your cable televisions otherwise you just cant take your eyes off this one.

RECESSION BLUES

Now at this moment of time you have the whole world talking about recessions,take-over,bankruptcy etc. But the problem is how do we know that recession is around. We don’t watch CNN neither we work at GM. We have no company to take-over nor a company to be taken over by our poor Indian government. We have just voted for a long standing government and we believe that it will take care of the recession in India as we have its leader a lecturer from Cambridge in economics. For us whether India is doing well or not depends on how our stock markets are performing and an occasional glance at the GDP. That too we only know its good if it is around 8% as China maintains that. So how do we the insolent, ignorant people, rustic from the backwaters of a Third world country know it is recession. Well do not fear cause the expert is here. Here are signs if you notice this around you know it is recession.

1.Your daily rag-picker carries a Satyam, Wipro, Cognizant, TCS identity card. No he is not flashing a style statement nor is he emotionally attached to the company. But he is actually a recruited guy waiting for his appointment letter.
2.You find a General Motors or a Satyam hoarding in your garbage. Or you might find your son using those hoardings as stumps during gully-cricket.
3.You find I luv GM,I luv Satyam coffee mugs, flash-drives, T-shirts at Sunday Bazaar, Revdi Bazaar, Mohammad Ali Road, Chor Bazaar and don’t know how many other Bazaars. Caution : The above listed products will not be found at Big Bazaar because Big Bazaar is one of the items kept for sale at Chor Bazaar.
4.You will find people writing more posts on blogspot. They have no useful thing to do.
5.You will find scraps from those guys that have never scrapped you or poked you or tweeted you , I don’t know what those mean but suddenly such occurrences increase and you say Whoa! Duggu, he still remembers me.
6.You find that your resume cannot be accepted at any of the company websites because their server is overloaded with them.
7.You find some guy coming in the night and knocking at your door and asking “Walk-ins chalu hai kya?”. This is insane.
8.Suddenly you find that there are youngsters working in all the kirana stores, mom and pop stores, grocery stores (sabzi mandi ,I had to be subtle), hair saloon (hajaam ki dukan, again I had to subtle) etc. You think the trends of the western countries are picking up in India where children for their education but one more look at the person at the grocery stores and you say “Yeh to wahi ladka hai jisne IIT clear kiya tha” And you are left to wonder.
9.You will find parents of engineering students exclaiming that “Mene kaha tha ki Mechanical engineer mechanic banta hai, electrical engineer electrician banta hai aur computer engineer dono bante hai i.e.(mechanic and electrician).
10.Sadly the author cannot find the 10th sign because he is a computer engineer and on the keyboard he cannot the find the number 10.