2014 - Abki baar, kiski sarkaar...?!

Well, my personal answer to the title question is 'Modi Sarkaar' ofcourse but then again, i dont want to make this blog as a propaganda bugle for the BJP or 'rashtravadis' as many calls us (with a negative connotation ofcourse). Anyways, you cant shut mouths of each and every individual who is out there to criticize you as you are not supporting his/her party so chuck it. Who cares. You know whom you voting for. Hell, you have already voted for your own candidate. So shut it and forget it!

I dont know whether this feeling is mutual or its just me that 2014 elections are on a very different level. People, technology, media, corporates, fan following and what not has been an active part of this time's campaign. Rather than they participating, its the 'way' in which they are doing that. Where jingles and songs and specific ads were the carryovers from the past, this time around, social media, one point focus, news channels seem to make the difference. I would like to touch up more on the last one here. We all remember the 49 day CM of Delhi, Mr Arvind Kejriwal. I dont wanna go into his relations to US foundations or Congress and whatever. But why i have mentioned him is because the continuous footage he got from the media all over. To a certain extent, it want be wrong to say that media has contributed in a way in making him what he is today (btw is he anything today? #doubt). Agreed the Nirbhaya case and Anna Hazare gave him the much needed push and made him the CM of Delhi. Did he delivered or not is a different debate all together. So for now, media made a certain difference!

Lets change gears and move to our next candidate, the one who was born to be the PM of India, Mr Rahul Gandhi. For him i would say, media hardly did any good and in actual wasnt it the other way round! But all said and done, there was much more to be done in continuation to visiting poor shanties and sharing meals. I dont know whether he came up of something out of this world all together, honestly. Please dont consider this ignorance of mine as a 'no support' to the scion of the great indian dynasty. Though he had some presence on social media and brought in folks from his youth wings to make some ads, which all of us know, backfired. He will have the poor votes, but educated ones am not sure of. So lets keep him aside for now.

Lastly, lets come to the PM aspirant. Mr Narendra Modi. Supporting him or not, i would just request one and all to take a neutral look at his marketing strategy. It was 360 degress! The educated ones from the urban areas were targeted via social media, the educated ones from semi-urban and rural areas were given additional attention via on field teams, rural ones were targeted via party workers with a tiered down approach wherein daily reports were generated and shared to make next day strategies. Then there were Modi branded merchandises from pens to sarees to cups to mobile phones. Teams from every economic strata was active in this exercise not forgetting the vast NRI base in the US and other countries making their own contributions. If this was not enough, his first rally in Delhi as PM designate was aired on LED screens spread across 100 locations across the city. So if you cant come to the rally, watch me wherever you are! If all was not enough, he started with 3D speeches to reach a wider audience across the nation. But the core to the BJP strategy was one slogan, 'Ab ki baar, Modi Sarkaar'. If you all have observed, this went so viral on social media that it became part of public discussions on a day to day basis. Hell, when i asked for a leave to my boss, he asked me the same question, 'ab ki baar...?' and well my ans was known! His challenge was so focused or shall i say BJP's challenge was so focused on him as the savior of the party fortunes that every BJP wall was painted by his name.

On a serious note, I dont know whats in there on 16th May but if the popular guy is not becoming the PM then some things that can happen are as follows:

Sensex dipping 2500 points
Rupee going on to 65
Real estate market losing another 10%
Gold getting dearer
and more.

Reason is that all these are sentimental indicators in the short run and all have already considered him as PM in their recent performances. Anyways, as agreed, we are not to discuss this. Hope india gets what it deserves and people are able to choose one of the lesser evil!

Jai Hind.

'nayak', RDB, UPA2 & new year..

new year eve....such a huge amount of excitement in the air....everyone trying to fit in the final party passes across the city, sending 'hppy new year' messages 15 mins b4 to avoid the Re1 charge on 1st jan...doing masti wid their loved ones and so on and so forth...but on the other hand, i am sitting in my living room in front of an idiot box...down with throat infection & fever... :( nywys...was lazying around watching EPL weekend matches and mann...what a match between the reds and blacks..!! nywys...its almost 6 hours in front of this box and its 12:00 am. seems the new year has arrived and i think will take some time to figure out how it pans out. anyways.....a movie named 'nayak' is coming on zee cinema

yeah its the same movie that came while we were in the school some 10-11 years back. we laughed at the fundoo stunts performed by anil kapoor and loved the 15-20 mins part of the movie while he went on suspending govt servants while was 1 day CM of maharashtra. but today, after a decade, looking at the pathetic political events in the last few weeks, i think this movie was actually a prelude to Rang De Basanti..!! seriously...just try to recollect both the movies and analyze them with the current situation in the country. RDB was kinda a revolution which took the youth for a ride and showed them an alternative course of action to the filthy political transactions. seeing 'nayak' and the actions taken by him during his course of being a CM actually showed that after all the actions were not that flimsy. there was some amount of practicality and logic in the events and actions performed by anil kapoor. i personally feel that with these two movies bollywood had evolved and tried to contribute from its side.

lets try to understand what can be our contribution or atleast what we can understand of the current polity in the country. we have one dynasty in the country which has considered projecting its latest heir as the savior of the country as their basic agenda. for achieving this, a huge amount of money is borrowed and spent in the form of subsidies and benefits. the country's fiscal deficit is nearing 6% against a targeted 4.6%, the govt has already exceeded its borrowing targets and is now and then issuing sovereign bonds which is making their cost of borrowings high and in turn reducing the credit rating of our country. there is wide spread 'rahul-flation' in the country due to the freebies awarded across the masses just for the sake of winning some votes here and there. ofcourse this doesn't mean that the other parties are better. we have one lady ruling the biggest state of the country whose only job seems improving her 'image' and constructing elephants all around the state while the people are dying due to hunger. we have another party whose only motto seems disrupting the parliament from functioning and a lack of clear course of actions of what it wants to do. no matter there are highly qualified leaders, but what it lacks is leadership.

the buck doesn't stop here. already things were not good on the policy front for the UPA2 where the PM is loosing all the credits he had won in the past, anna hazare posted the biggest war against it. the scenes we saw on TV from rajya sabha a couple of days back said the whole story on the intention of the govt on this issue. i mean on one side there is one individual who has ionized the population for a cause and on the other side there is a useless bunch of politicians whose only work seems to create new hurdles for the proper functioning of the country. looking at all these, i feel that if not 'nayak' then RDB is definitely something that should not take us by surprise. looking at the current penetration of the media in the country and the awareness of the population of the govt's actions which is causing system paralysis, something like this cant be denied. i believe that these Aholes must really understand that the people are no fools as they used to be 20 years back and seeing the current situation, this UPA2 might really bear the brunt of their actions in the coming elections in 2012 for the five states.

with a hope that when we wake up tomorrow after all these celebrations tonight, we would see some positive actions by UPA2 and the remaining polity and the events like 'nayak' and RDB would be avoided...

with this, wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year.. :)

a RED day

i know you all are feeling the same

its for the politicians to take the blame

till when would the mumbai streets bleed

till when those mindless hooligans succeed

its time the mumbaikar take things in his hand

its time we all get united to take a stand

today again, our hearts were torn apart

seeing those poor souls depart

today again, we were tensed for their well being

of our dear ones with whom with laugh and sing

ofcourse it was a great sight, to see everyone together

but i dont want THIS, as the reason they are standing for each other

i think there is enough said and done

we need to be the flag bearers when there is none

lets not limit ourselves to push the FB 'like'

lets strive to do something and be the spike...

a RED day

i know you all are feeling the same

its for the politicians to take the blame

till when would the mumbai streets bleed

till when those mindless hooligans succeed

its time the mumbaikar take things in his hand

its time we all get united to take a stand

today again, our hearts were torn apart

seeing those poor souls depart

today again, we were tensed for their well being

of our dear ones with whom with laugh and sing

ofcourse it was a great sight, to see everyone together

but i dont want THIS, as the reason they are standing for each other

i think there is enough said and done

we need to be the flag bearers when there is none

lets not limit ourselves to push the FB 'like'

lets strive to do something and be the spike...

Internship diaries: A perfect end with and a new beginning..?

Hey friends….cant wait to see ya all. Its being a long, hot and sweaty summer since we all have met and had some fun time together. Baring me, I hope everyone of you had a great time during your summers and have definitely learnt something new at your small stint out there. This one, the last part, m not writing it in one night. But m writing it over a period of time. The time m not in Mumbai and on a trip to find out my inner peace… !!! yeah its kinda true and daga and pandya/saubh would more than agree with it. so somehow I managed to sneak out a week earlier from my internship and thought of say ‘run away’ from the mad mad world around me.

Putting things into perspective, my place is around 1000 kms/ 18 hours away from Mumbai and I had no direct ticket to my last destination. So due to this the journey was more than exciting than exhausting. It was like a race with time and somehow I had to win it to avoid waiting at a bus stop for a night out. I left my home at 5:30 am to catch a train to Ahmedabad which was suppose to reach around 1:10 pm and I had a bus booking from there further down my road at 2:00 pm. So twas quite tight to reach on time and catch a ride till the bus stop. But luckily the train kept up its reputation and was right on time to reach station. Then that bus was suppose to reach around 7:00 pm to Jamnagar and I had another booking for a 8:00 pm bus to my final location. But no, the race was still on and my bus faced a technical issue and reached Jamnagar at 8:15 pm and I literally had to beg the next buswala to wait for me. Somehow I made it at 12:00 am to my native Dwarka but twas one hell of a ride.

Before that on Friday, thanks to daga, we went out shopping our last lot of alphonsos of the season and after a long search found a good deal and luckily they were the best I had this summer..!! Saurabh shah must promise me to send a couple of dozen every summer wherever I am across india cause these are really the best mango breed among the more than 2500 of them. So coming back to dwarka, it’s a holy place where lord Krishna spent 3 quarters of His life. It’s a small town with a nice beach, a kinda sunset boulevard, totally windy, an awesome temple with its peaceful environment, holy ghats and best of all, almost the entire clan of mine lives there. Was an awesome 4 days out there meeting everyone, updating with the latest gossips, awesome food and sleeping on the terrace in the long cool nights..!! Though you might not be that much spiritual, but if you see the temple deity and the gold/pearls/emeralds/just flowers etc etc decorations of Him, you would just stand out there enjoying His looks and somehow feeling for his blessings. Life couldn’t have been better than this.

Till Tuesday, I think I had got what all I could collect in my memories and so I decided to go home. Home, a place in a small town called Mithapur on the western most shores of India and whose virgin sands are washed by the mighty Arabian Sea. An appropriately sized place with a garden bigger than the built up area and ofcourse with a swing. With trees of coconut, chicku, pomegranate, banana, guava, aamla, jasmin in there, that’s the best place on earth. Then there is my oldie ride, a 1990s LML Vespa with a pickup that puts down the Hondas to shame. All my schedules for the days out there were figured out. Waking up late, cooking, watching repeat seasons of sitcoms, Sonia shenoy on CNBC TV18 (she is the best Prasad, mind it..!!), sleeping, then comes the beach time where luckily this time there are high tides and its just the best thing to take your slippers in your hands, wear shorts and just walk down the shore where the milky white waves clung on to you with all the love in them. Nights are late with watching movies, sitcoms and pulling down your chair in the front porch of your house-close your eyes-and savor the sweet wind blowing past.

A very strange thing happened on one of my first visits to the beach. Usually I have a habit of looking for a specific type of shells which are like pistachios shaped and quite rare as they are delicate and break easily when hit by the waves. So on that day, I was looking for them and as usual, initially found none. Then I got my hand on a couple and met one old guy who I was damn sure was collecting the same ones. So I asked to confirm and when he said yes as he gives them to kids every day, I handed him mine. Then I moved on and surprisingly, I kept on finding them and at the end I had found 15..!! That’s one hell of a number as there are times when I haven’t found even one (almost always) and hence that made me thinking. I came out with a theory that this time, I had a motive behind it. I wanted to collect more and more to hand over them to that old man. Every other time, I just did for the sake of doing as in I didn’t had anything to do with them once I found them but was just doing as it was like a ‘default setting’ whenever I walk down the shores. It also led me to think that that is the reason for many of us not being successful (read ’bored/frustrated/cant take it more’) in whatall we have taken up. For example taking up an MBA if passionate about design, studying engineering for that matter, taking up marketing because no good placements for operations, taking a job in IT when you knew you can do better somewhere else and many more. We didn’t had a motive in doing them. We did them because our father said so, or by being an engineer you can earn respect, compromising cause of an education loan to pay for, IT pays nice (a myth by the way). I think Indians are strong mentally but when it comes to running behind your dreams, we are far behind others nationals. Just a thought.

Apparently I had started this by saying that I was in search of inner peace. Frankly speaking, I didn’t had the slightest of an idea about it while I was on this trip. I don’t even know what it means exactly. But while I was away from the chaos of Mumbai, away from friendship issues, away from a jerk saying ‘I have found this place so I wont adjust (or something like that)’, away from all the failures or shall I put ‘feelings of failures’, I felt good. I felt really good. I was not at all tensed/frustrated and my scalp tried to keep my hair intact from falling out of tension..!! I was cool/carefree and enjoying almost every moment that I had spent. The best time was by far the beach time as every day I would decide to go there and think whats going wrong with me (or searching that mysterious ‘inner peace’) but the waves just pulls me over towards them. The last day was the most emotional one when I tried real hard not to take a dip in those beautiful incoming waves washing up my feet. I knew it would be tough and so had took precautions to carry my wallet and cell phone in a plastic bag and believe me, they really helped J. So, I never thought of thinking and allowed the child in me to take over.

As I write this closing para while in a train to Mumbai, I think that you need not search for inner peace as it is always within you. You just need to see where you should invest your emotions and where you should not waste them. I believe that the problem with most of us is that we try to be open from the outside but from the inside, we are really close. We try to think about someone/something/etc from a single perspective that somehow we have nurtured over the period of time. Why do we get irritated with the ‘I don’t care’ type of people? Cause they have developed this psyche that they don’t give a damn about others and its possible that they are happy or satisfied. On the other hand, we - the normal kind, worry for others-want to share their miseries; in short ‘we care’ (Nope…I still hate the SRF initiative that had killed some of my 1st year Fridays). But again, its not Life if everything is hunkie-dorie. We need bad times. Overall, this trip, I needed it badly and I am glad that I took it. It seemed like a perfect ending to the year that has gone by and with a hope in my heart, I am sure that it would bring in a new beginning that would be beautiful and fulfilling…

Internship Diaries: Part 6 Nearing the end..

Hey guys...so finally we are nearing towards the end of our internship. some of us had a good time and some not. seems the freshers had got an experience of the corporate world. all in all, the thing is that we would soon be meeting each other and bas be the div E we are known for. so anyways, the other day, one of my friends said that the part 5 didnt seemed interesting to him and was too obvious. there wasnt enough originality in the note. but then i was like common, m just trying to share some thoughts that i came across. moreover they are some of the mistakes that gave me realizations about how the issue should have been tackled. m not here to share my frustration/jealousy/ego whatever u say that.. :P but yeah, this time around i would like to share what i need badly..

as always has being the case, i have taken my friend's criticism seriously and have started putting some efforts on losing some flabs here and there. so for that, i go juhu beach every evening after office for a walk and 'some' jogging. i have realized that it is an awesome experience and why there are people who are following the same routine for more than 20 years (yes its true...have met them). so there i was on evening strolling around on the beach with awesome wind blowing around and ofcourse the chicks out there are awesome too... ;) ahh...m going out of track. ok...so u know apart from our summers, the kid's summers are on too. yeah their vacations. in the evening when the sun was quite strong, there were herds and herds of crowd at the beach. children bathing in the sea water, their mommies sitting by the shore and keeping an eye on them, some kids making sand castles, some flying balloons, older ones playing cricket/football and like the whole atmosphere was so lively. there was pure innocence all around as they were not worried about their results, summers, placements, friend/girlfriend issues i mean nothing at all. they just lived by their dreams unknown and i must say unworried of the future.

i envied those kids. i too wanted NOT to care about anything. i too wanted to to play in the sea water without caring about the sewage waste visible on the shore. i too wanted to make sand castles and want to create canals to make the sea water flow. then while walking, i started thinking where has it lost...? the innocence/carefree nature/fun etc etc...where have everything gone. have i got myself so much tangled in the all the worldly issues around me that i have changed myself from what i was...?? how can one change himself/herself so much...?? big question right...too big to comprehend our present situation. i think that there are two sides of a person. one white, which is pristine/pure and another one black, dark as in competitive/jealous/treacherous. when one is born, the person is totally white and as time passes, the black side emerges and it seems that only a few can manage to keep the black side at bay. i thought i was always successful in doing that. but time and again, some or the other event makes me realize that i have failed. i have allowed all these evils to seep in me knowingly/unknowingly.

so what next..? how to go back to square 1..? frankly, i dont know how. yes, i am trying my best to figure it out. i badly need to..!! at times i feel that enough of this bull shit wherein we are fighting among ourselves for trivial matters and forgetting the good times we all had shared. i seriously wanna try to be who i was before...after all as said my master Shifu in Kungfu Panda II, 'If you have inner peace, anything is possible' and i am on my way of finding that...

Internship Diaries: Part 6 Nearing the end..

Hey guys...so finally we are nearing towards the end of our internship. some of us had a good time and some not. seems the freshers had got an experience of the corporate world. all in all, the thing is that we would soon be meeting each other and bas be the div E we are known for. so anyways, the other day, one of my friends said that the part 5 didnt seemed interesting to him and was too obvious. there wasnt enough originality in the note. but then i was like common, m just trying to share some thoughts that i came across. moreover they are some of the mistakes that gave me realizations about how the issue should have been tackled. m not here to share my frustration/jealousy/ego whatever u say that.. :P but yeah, this time around i would like to share what i need badly..

as always has being the case, i have taken my friend's criticism seriously and have started putting some efforts on losing some flabs here and there. so for that, i go juhu beach every evening after office for a walk and 'some' jogging. i have realized that it is an awesome experience and why there are people who are following the same routine for more than 20 years (yes its true...have met them). so there i was on evening strolling around on the beach with awesome wind blowing around and ofcourse the chicks out there are awesome too... ;) ahh...m going out of track. ok...so u know apart from our summers, the kid's summers are on too. yeah their vacations. in the evening when the sun was quite strong, there were herds and herds of crowd at the beach. children bathing in the sea water, their mommies sitting by the shore and keeping an eye on them, some kids making sand castles, some flying balloons, older ones playing cricket/football and like the whole atmosphere was so lively. there was pure innocence all around as they were not worried about their results, summers, placements, friend/girlfriend issues i mean nothing at all. they just lived by their dreams unknown and i must say unworried of the future.

i envied those kids. i too wanted NOT to care about anything. i too wanted to to play in the sea water without caring about the sewage waste visible on the shore. i too wanted to make sand castles and want to create canals to make the sea water flow. then while walking, i started thinking where has it lost...? the innocence/carefree nature/fun etc etc...where have everything gone. have i got myself so much tangled in the all the worldly issues around me that i have changed myself from what i was...?? how can one change himself/herself so much...?? big question right...too big to comprehend our present situation. i think that there are two sides of a person. one white, which is pristine/pure and another one black, dark as in competitive/jealous/treacherous. when one is born, the person is totally white and as time passes, the black side emerges and it seems that only a few can manage to keep the black side at bay. i thought i was always successful in doing that. but time and again, some or the other event makes me realize that i have failed. i have allowed all these evils to seep in me knowingly/unknowingly.

so what next..? how to go back to square 1..? frankly, i dont know how. yes, i am trying my best to figure it out. i badly need to..!! at times i feel that enough of this bull shit wherein we are fighting among ourselves for trivial matters and forgetting the good times we all had shared. i seriously wanna try to be who i was before...after all as said my master Shifu in Kungfu Panda II, 'If you have inner peace, anything is possible' and i am on my way of finding that...