UFO Religion !

We the human beings are physically one of the weakest life forms ever walked on this planet. However by understanding and adjusting to external situations, we learnt to adapt and survive under most of the circumstances. No matter how trivial this fact might appear, but we always tend to forget this trivia in order to reassure the prowess of our 0.5 kg grey matters sitting right on top of all of us. We all want to identify the purpose of our lives, the sole purpose for which the matter of this planet is transferred from elements to us.

Let me share with you one true, historically important story, which I just made up ! Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago, One fine day, a wise man sitting alone, idle (yes, that's what wise man have been doing ever since!) near a lake, saw something in the sky. It was windy that day and some swirling dust particles floating in the distance took some mesmerizing form. With moon in the background and ever twinkling stars added hallucinating aura to the whole scene. A thunder bolt, a streak of lightning pierced the sky and the 1000s of bulbs lit-up. The wise was hit upon by a marvelous business plan of all time. Rest we know is history. Yes, you got it right. That was the day, wise man discovered God !

Somewhere else, on some other part of the planet, few hundreds and thousands of years later, Deja-Vu. By now, the wise-men has created and accumulated enough wealth, health and prosperity for himself and his entire clan. So he no-longer was interested in wandering outdoors in harsh environment. So this time, a common man with mango face was sitting near the lake, wondering about purpose of his life ! The common man has learnt from the wise men that God has created everything and though he resides in everybody's heart, its imperative for the common man, to regularly pay some fee as token of appreciation to wise men, so that wise men can connect the mango faced men with the God. So, after witnessing the scene almost similar to what wise men saw thousands of years ago, the common man, logically concluded that whatever he saw, experienced and perceived cant be God. So he coined a new acronym for that as  Universally Foolable Objects, UFOs, the flying saucer.

Lets do some math. Everyday lighting strikes close to 100000 times, somewhere and everyday some kind of cyclone or hurricane or whirlpool appears in another 96378 locations, according to some leaked calculations from extremely reliable sources. So all in all if we add just these 2 events, 196378 life threatening things are happening all around us.Multiply this number by 365 and then multiply this by 5 billion, so close to 30000 trillion life threatening events have taken place on our plant, ever since the big bang. Scary, isn't it! Of-course we can relate to only few hundreds of such artificial incidences happening everyday around us. So to cut the long story short, the probability that you are reading this blog is less then 1 / (Zillion Zillion), and yet you are !

So, now I hope you can calculate the the probability of what happened to our us and our planet, something similar will/might happen to some other planet, at some place far away from us in the same sequence ! 

Whatever non-sense I have jotted out so far, you might be wonder what is this post all about ?

So as some legends might put it, lets try to connect the .......(dots) ! We know that its highly improbable that life exist in similar shape and size as it is on earth, anywhere else in the universe, yet we want to believe in UFOs sometimes also referred as God. We know that if we were not as lucky as we are, we would not have been where we are and still we don't want to believe in our luck and instead happily, readily give credit to the wise men and his creation, the God. Perhaps some unlucky mango person, in order to get lucky created the first recorded, publicly available proof of the UFOs.

Everything written about God became religion. Each and every religious story, commandments, rules or regulations were written by some lucky individuals like us, who happened to be born few thousand years before us. Perhaps they wrote all those sacred texts out of innocence, guided by their personal encounters, perceptions with the Nature, the UFOs and the people (I hope we can call aliens as people !) sitting in or on those UFOs. I am sure even those lucky people would have never imagined, that we will stick to their stories so ardently, with zeal and passion so much that we will make their stories ours, we will live our life as per their beliefs, so as to make everyone around us happy, perhaps except us !

Some of us might argue that UFOs and the entire Science is nothing but act of God while some other might say that discovery of God is a simple case of mistaken identity because God is actually the first alien ever visited us on his (or her?) UFO !


Life possibly exists in different shapes and sizes within our solar system and if we are to believe the man in Black, they are out there, in our neighbourhood, living peacefully. A planet full of aliens all whom visited our planet at different points in time in past 4.5 Billion years, might be thriving right on our planet in a parallel universe. Each of their visits might have given rise to a specific event, which was decoded either by part of science, religion or fiction !

So where is this post heading now. Simple linear deductions, yeah that's it. To summarize we are just made of all those tiny, non brainy things ! Our planet is an insanely lucky planet to have survived so far. Thanks to this intra-celestial conspiracy, we the mortal human beings today are busy shopping, posting pictures taken through iPhone sharing instantly on Facebook. While most of us are still busy perpetuating our perception of what is written in those sacred texts.

Imagine this. Out of trillions of accidents happened to our planet, just change one and The Purpose of Life, The God and even my entire Blog Post will no longer be relevant !  

Information Pollution !

Sometimes we tend to believe that by reading everything, by writing whatever we want to and sharing whatever we like, we are exercising our fundamental right to free will which is also reinstated by the founding fathers of our nation via document publicly known as constitution.

You and me, i.e We, want to take unbiased decisions out of our own free will. We want to process all the information available to us and then would like to decide, what is right and what is wrong for us, them and everybody else around us. No matter how much powerful we think our brain is, at least the conscious brain has some severe limitations. It can only process X amount of information at a time and only a total of Y amount of information every day and after analyzing and processing all that information, it needs Z amount of rest.

Today anybody randomly can generate Data by touch of a button. And randomly we keep feeding, harping and sometimes even critically analyzing those pieces of irrelevant information.

What happens next! Fatigue, tiredness, sore eyes, loss of appetite, headaches, cramps, never seen/heard/ experienced before cravings, liquor as we gain weight on our way to Consumption Nirvana !

I am not against consumption, don't get me wrong. Infact I think that's the purpose of our lives. This post is only about the by-product of Consumption Revolution, i.e Information Pollution.

Marketers, Media and a very less know, but perhaps world's best know marketers knows about this Information Pollution very well. Infact they are sitting at the helm, with desire and power to worsen this pollution, create a hazy cloud of information always in front and even behind our eyes, so that we see what they want us to see, dont act and always react, so that they can make hay even when the sun is set. Yes, I am talking about our age old friends, our so called representatives, who are here to serve us, so that their interests are served to the maximum, our friendly, but not living in neighbourhood anymore Politicians!

Those of us who can, in order to save time, are busy buying gadgets and later on updating and upgrading them simply because we need them inside our toilets, cars and offices and bed-rooms. We are spending this saved time or whatever time left with us, in consuming more things and in the process generating more and more data about what we consumed today, who's the biggest consumer among us, what our friends must consume and what they should not etc.

We try to analyze all the advertisements, test, taste free samples and buy the most appropriate Cream or Mobile phone for us. We tend to believe that we have made a rational decision by buying the best product. I think actually we are simply buying the best marketer. All the shampoos and toothpaste available in the market claim to solve all your problems, yet none of them does solve anything. Perhaps we know it as well, yet we buy, consume something, because we have to. So is this A battle of creating most luring pieces of information (by the ways of advertisements, paid reviews, social media campaign, save the world campaigns, videos, news paper ads etc) only ?

Call it Irony or Travesty, but we don't realize Our mind works on the same basic principles on which a computer works. Yes, its widely know as GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out. No matter how much we try to be a Free Thinker,  we become what we consume !

They (the marketers,the media and our cute politicians) also know about an almost forgotten principle in an era of Quad-core processors, FIFO- First In, first Out!

That's why our cute politicians tend to chillax, make money day and night for the first four years of their tenure and announce some populist policies, attend marriages, opening and closing ceremonies and feed us with whatever possible, in the last year of their tenure, so that we recall them after we enter the Ballot Box. They know that Elections will happen on a hot, sunny day. Their will be a huge ocean of people behind each of us, and our GIGO mind will FIFO the candidates, confused by the plethora of information bombarded by several sources (including the neighbourhood uncle-ji, brother-in-law from Patna and Boss's sister's husband from Rai-Bareily) muddled with intrinsic desire to consume something as soon as we get back home, will take only few seconds to decide, push the button or put the stamp to handover our future in safe hands.

So next time, whenever you are thinking, think before thinking whether your free willy thoughts, your assumptions and even your seemingly innate desires to Consume and Act Freely are actually influenced and literally governed by this Information Pollution!!

Popcorn Happiness

I know the 'Chotu' at tea stall,

Saw him from a distance,

Selling tricolor, in the rally.

I know about his slums,

Behind Mall.

I no longer live in the town,

I was born.

But I know they face,

four hours of power cut, everyday.

So, I wear a pair of rugged jeans,

Brand new, but torn.

I was ambitious, so I left.

Lack of resources, so I left.

What I left, never left me.

But after the the right I took, I think,

Nothing was left.

From Letters to emails to sms and tweets.

I religiously acquired all the apps.

Partying this weekend, so pardon me this time.

But I know the names of all the scams.

On my way to make it big.

Someday!

Yes, I do enjoy.

My Popcorn Happiness,

So, what's wrong?

----

Nitin

The Story of Magnifying Glass !

Magnifying Glass is usually used to read the fine prints. A classic and one of the most simplest of the gadgets, in use for centuries. For thousands of year, this magnifying glass was typically found in the house of the inquisitive and smart folks. Rarely in my house, because I was happy reading fiction, printed in bold.

Since the magnifying glass was not easily available, the I was not be able to read the books given to me by some mischievous boys, since the books were completely written in fine print. And so I was never read and tried to comprehend what the heck was written in that book. But life moved on and I never felt any pressing need to enlighten myself. And that's exactly what the mischievous boy wanted. He gave me the book, because he was obliged to, but he also made sure that I don't read it. To make sure that I don't read the book beyond couple of pages (In case I ever decided to read, by chance) the mischievous boy gave the book an insanely boring title and loaded first couple of pages with jargon. So rarely me or any of my friends dared to read beyond couple of pages. Surprisingly whoever read the book joined the gang of mischievous boys.

The mischievous boy was smart, very smart indeed. He managed to trick me for thousands of years. He never taught me how to read the book which he intentionally published in fine print, one version after another. He never gave me the magnifying glass. Once in a while, he casually requested me to read the book, but I was busy enjoying fiction. In parallel he gave me several other easy to read, far more entertaining books, with vivid images, eye catching titles and colours.

One fine day, I discovered the magnifying glass in the backyard of mischievous kid. Since I never cared to learn the actual use of magnifying glass, I started playing with it. After played for few hours I threw it in the dark corner. This was the same corner where I piled those books given by the mischievous boy. Accidentally it caught my eyes and I realized that I can read that fine print. It was all very clear now. Slowly I could read and understand what was written. With some really crucial help, I was able to comprehend the jargon as well. As I kept on reading, my fears started to surface, about what was written in those books. But I kept on reading more, with some help again, my fears started disappearing. Bingo !

I realized I was duped by the mischievous boy all those centuries. But then after reading some more books, I realized my mistake. I never cared to ask the mischievous boy about all those books he gave me. My life was going reasonably smoothly all these years barring few compromises, I never cared enough to read those books. Pretty soon, I shared my magnifying glass with my friends. I told them, what I learned from those books. And slowly the idea caught fire and rest we know is a history and it is still being written. But we need to be careful and should not repeat the mistake which mischievous boy committed. I remember watching the mischievous kid when he used the magnifying glass to gather the power of sun but ended up burning his own house!

The Beginning !!

Cast

Mischievous boys - Politicians, the Powerful ones

I - You, the common ones

The Books - Constitution, Laws, knowledge

AND

The Magnifying Glass - Internet, Media

Special Thanks

Crucial Help - Anna Hazare, Aruna Roy, Medha Patekar, Arvind Kejriwal and several other 1000s of selfless individuals who helped the me, the you and the society

Youth. At any cost !

A burning desire to succeed,

Sometimes at any cost!

Against Limited supply,

Of resources and inspiration, and,

Love of family and few friends.

Learnt to learn, grow,

Shine and outshine,

Achieved seemingly impossible,

Earned and remained happy,

Sometimes at any cost!

We are open, liberal,

Perhaps hypercritical.

We do pay our taxes,

Don't litter on much on streets,

Drive our new bikes, and

friend's car occasionally.

In a hurry to reach our destination,

Sometimes at any cost !

Whenever we faltered,

We stood up, sought advice,

Fought, made our own way.

Call centres, IT, Culinary Arts or Fashion,

Yes, no great innovation,

But some of us managed to thrive,

Sometimes at any cost !

We are thankful, indebted for the privilege,

Of being born in free India.

Yes, we know many issues,

Still unresolved.

Yes, be assured will be solved,

Perhaps slowly, but,

At any cost!

-----

Nitin

---------

Frankly, I started writing a prose and soon decided to convert it in a poem instead. Writing a poem after a long time, after having written some really long articles in the recent past :)

A Happy Independence Day to all, hope this year will be an year of action, beyond watching old patriotic movies and listening to old songs !

Role of Chance and IT Industry in 21st Century India !

We are 1.2 billion people and even an conservative estimate of 25% employable population implies the employable population of India is much larger than the total population of USA/ UK/ Germany etc. Industrial revolution started in these countries 200 years before India got independence. Only on growth and development aspect, if we start comparing ourselves with China, Taiwan or Korea, I think we have not achieved anything extraordinary. We are doing OK so far, but the sheer size of our country combined with democracy and freedom has made growth a largely unplanned activity. I think still we are on a right track, BUT the unfortunate part is that track we are following is not created by Design but by Chance !!
The time consuming back end work which is also resource intensive and recursive in general and/or requires specific skill sets which are available in specific regions/ geographies is loosely termed as Donkey work...which according to me is very demeaning and superficial usage !

Activities ranging from pharma research, project management, design and engineering, medical transcription, legal processes, IT and ITES are all being outsourced/ off-shored by the organizations to drive the bottom line of that particular company/organization. This implies that there is a Simple Demand for these services and there is/will be Abundant Supply from all across the globe to cater to this Demand ! Nothing is being forced on anybody in such situations and simple demand- supply mechanism comes into play. So I don't see anything wrong in nurturing an ecosystem which caters to that Demand...because if we don't somebody else will ( E.g China, Philippines, Russia, Africa, Poland, Brazil etc) but we always had and will have the choice Right !!!

Two of the prime reason behind this effective India centric outsourcing/off-shoring model are Exchange rate and the Cost of Living ...We know that for fresh Indian graduate living in India a salary 6 Lakhs INR per annum is above avg/ fair but at the same time....this is also equal to apprx $13k per annum which is below avg/unfair for a graduate living in the USA !

Both these factors are the repercussion of economic policies, lack of education which leads to unawareness about minimum standard of livings, billions of dollars of trade deficit accumulated over years and many more economic and financial aspects !! So, only if the Cost of Living in India rises faster than the Developed world (US/ Europe) and/ OR our currency strengthen w.r.t Euro/ USD AND alternates to India are available, we will loose quiet a lot of jobs and business (please don't forget the indirect impact on ancillary industries such as travel, tourism, real estate, entertainment, auto, banking etc) and jobs as well....

In my limited experiences I have seen pilferage and wastage (in all forms - time/money/resources) are an inherent part of the bureaucratic system of our economy and country in general. So I feel that there is a huge scope to improve the efficiency of the economy which in turn will ensure better utilization of resources/funds ( i.e timely completion of projects such as Bandra Worli Sealink or Commonwealth Games infrastructure etc). By achieving that efficiency we will be still left with lot many time/money/ resources to take due care of environment and other socially relevant schemes.

We might not be the best in discovering/inventing great socio-economic/scientific or even mathematical concepts/ theories (and so we have a far lesser number of papers, patents or noble prize winners from India) but we (the people of India) are good at application and practical usage of theory/ technology etc. I still believe that private sector and IT sector in particular created a completely new business model 20 years ago which did helped in supporting/ employing millions of engineers, which we were anyways bound to produce in those 20. There was no divine plan/ vision of the government to create employment for these millions of people otherwise. So somebody's stroke of genius (Infosys) saved the governments and created employment (including 1000s of Infosys employees who went on to create their own companies + ancillary industries). If you remember back in late 80s and 90s population control was a major agenda of the government which suddenly disappeared from the manifestos because the bane become boon overnight (By chance and not by Design !!)

So, I don't think we become any type of animal in doing something unique/ unparalleled. Hopefully (Still relying on Chance!!) such stroke of geniuses will happen (in fact its bound to happen) in all walks of life, slowly and steadily over a period of time)

I think we can summarize -

-Everybody is not created same (in terms of aspirations, dreams and desires to achieve x,y and z in life). So what somebody enjoys/ prefers doing might be called as Donkey work in very vague and superficial manner by somebody else
-The choice to refuse/ accept always was and will remain with the individual and its pretty irrelevant of the geography..so generalizing - are WE donkeys/ monkeys is pretty vague to me at least !!
-Exchange rate and cost of living are something not in the hand of any single individual or the organization...
-Whether we acknowledge it or not...the competition is increasing globally in the field of outsourcing/ off-shoring including our own companies operating from alternate geographies...

AND fortunately/ unfortunately we are creating almost 3 million engineers and doctors every year and WE dont have a plan B and plan C in place as of now...infact the Plan A too just happened by chance and sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Plan A didnt happened by itself/ chance ( and not by Design) !!

Can we run a Monte Carlo simulation on Indian socio-economic decisions/ lives, the options we had and the options we used ? Is this the best we could have achieved in past 60 years with our given natural resources? The unfortunate (destiny again ??) part is we still are not working on plan B and C.

TV and Indian Society

I have always been a loyal viewer.Ever since we got TV back in 1988,I have been a regualr TV watcher.Fortunatley for me mom and dad never asked me to curb that habit :)

Prior to advent of Cable connections my TV and Movie diet was confined to our beloved national channel DD 1 . Movies were shown once a week and perhaps a movie or two were shown by our disc wala. Daddy was in JK cement those days and our town and colony was out of the reach of nearest TV tower, located 100 kms away. So we relied solely on the disc wala . We shifted in that colony in 1987 as far as I remember and after that my dad purchased our first ever TV and that too a coloured one directly (normally pepple those days used to buy a black and white tv initially and then used to upgrade to a coloured one, but in our case we jumped a level high perhaps because we were lagging behind a bit, everybody else seems to have the TV by the time we got it :D ). TV was a great source of entertainment that time. Preparing for school early in the morning we used to wait for the transmission to start (yes, no 24 hour channels those days), with this famous signature tune.

Well as a kid, I never realized that time but later came to know that TV is also a mass communication source, a source of information and a medium for spreading awareness.

DD used to telecast several classy ads, especially on Sundays, like my all time favourite ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara….’

Most of my friends used to start the play when the not so famous program by 'Spirit of Unity Concert for National Integration' was telecast. I actually memorized this whole name without understanding the meaning of all/any of the words (yes studying in a almost Hindi medium school which later instructed to teach Hindi in English was fun :D)). The 'Mile Sur' ad and 'Spirit of Unity...' programs on Sunday mornings exposed me to several legends such as Pt.Bhim Sen Joshi, Ustad Alla Rakha, to bigB, Lata Mangeshkar and several other masteros of that era (news channels or news papers or TV programs were not much focused on Bollywood artists those days).

For me these were my first rendezvous with many things like the concept of culture, the idea of diversity and different languages and people living in our country, everything was amazing. It was kind of entertainment too but unknowingly we were learning things slowly and steadily things which would have been much difficult to be taught in class I guess. It was for the first time I saw people actually speaking different language except Hindi and English (though that time even the English was more of bla bla bla boo boo for me).

I first learnt about South India through TV as I saw them speaking Hindi in a particular fashion, Bengali speaking in different accent and so everything was fun and entertainment for a kid like me staying in a tiny town. Those shows by National Geographic which DD1 cared to telecast on late nights, the amazing wild life of Africa the desert of Sahara and various kinds of animals simply left us awestruck. The background commentary in thick English accent was incomprehensible for us but what amazed us was the whole setting, the jungles the colors the animals flora and fauna in its full richness.

Then started the great epic of ‘Ramayana’. The whole city used to come to stand still on those Sunday mornings. Sunday was a special day a very special day those days not only because of school holiday but also for the fun and frolic it brought for us via TV shows in the morning and a movie to end the day. We used to wait for the whole week to watch the next episode of Ramayana ……and soon after it finished the biggest TV block buster of those times …the biggest epic of Indian history ‘Mahabharata’ was on air. Anywhere in India you go, you can see people glued to their TV sets with curfew like empty roads and shops. The whole Sunday morning was kind of festival as most of the times the neighbours and friends used to come to our place for Chai and Samosa.

I first learnt about the Boarding Schools and hostel life because of another famous program (at least amongst the school going kids) "Neev" shot in the famous Scindia School. The first Cartoon shows I remember were Bugs Bunny ( a 10 minute show in the evening) and 'He-Man' ( the master of the universe :), a rare sentence I completely understood those time).

After this the cable TV era started in early 90s and so started the soap operas and talk shows and what nots.In the beginning it started with showing high society life in metro with daily soaps like 'Shanti' and 'Swabhiman' followd numerous such shows on the notorious Zee tv in our small town. Complex relationships and blind copy paste from American soaps. Initially all this was like a fantasy for the masses with the characters in black coats and shoes all the times. Then started 'Tara' and several other shows which first bough the mini skirts to the small towns. All these serials faced criticism but went on and slowly society adjusted itself as always. And so started the diversification with talk shows,game shows n number of shows and all type and kind of serials.Very recently (say 4 years or so)started this trend of family shows which tried to capture the essence of Indian culture and joint family thing with chacha chachee ..mama mamee and hero heroine dada dadee all in one.Everybody is hadnsome and wear latest fashion things,shoes in house full time...every thing so neat and clean and tidy that it will never give you the feel of a real house.But emotions sell in India and this time even the packing was attractive so everbody liked it.But it seems people are getting bored of this also,the simple reasong being 'N' number of channels telecasting 'N' number of serials on similar lines.

Sometimes I wonder what is the role of TV in a society,where it is there to entertain people..or something more then that also.Wheter it should act as a document of what was happening in that era or whether it should help in deciding the future and affect what is happening in that particular era.In India it has always taken a passive role and is considered a source of entertainment.Perhaps nobody takes it seriously or perhaps we still are waiting for quality serials or series or shows which can be taken seriously.