Nostalgia

Why do we miss our past so much? Even the ones we have very little memory off, school days, radio, family home.

Man and Invention

We hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds things up, people won't have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important is ever going to be done over the telephone because there's no way to preserve or record a phone conversation. There were complaints about typewriters making writing too mechanical, too distant -- it disconnects the author from the words. That a pen and pencil connects you more directly with the page. And then with the computer, you have the whole range of "this is going to revolutionize everything" versus "this is going to destroy everything."

Brand India

Long after BJP was ousted in the 2004 elections, the former deputy premier L K Advani had accepted that ‘India Shining’ campaign was not appropriate. A year later Team India and the ever hyper media claimed ‘India Everywhere’ campaign at World Economic Forum as a coup of sorts in the recently held Davos meet. Once again such chest-thumping appears hollow and ironical in view of the tragedy unleashed at the ‘Brand India’ fair held at Meerut. Human lives were and still are the cheapest priced products in India. The Western media seem intrigued and rightly so by the confusing messages being sent from the world’s largest democracy.

350 million strong population comfortable with English language resulting in successful offbeat movies such as Being Cyrus , or mushrooming shopping malls in posh residential areas does not suffice as a worthy justification for miles of half-naked bodies sleeping on platforms in what constitutes as modern Indian cities. Do the cities and urban towns have a scalable Urban development plan that could viably implemented? While politicians have accepted that economic gains have still not percolated to the rural areas, supposedly developed parts of the country still face electricity shortages, infrastructure collapses, floods, name it!

For Urban planning and development to take place in crowded cities such as Bangalore and Delhi requires more importantly the participation of citizens and strength of will from the political bodies. While selfishness has always been the tracks on which individuals and communities view potential benefits, for us to take a major leap, providing developed world benefits to our citizens requires strong measures along with courage of action.

This is probably a ranting of an arm-chair dilettante disgusted with the sorry state of affairs or the generic rat-race team member not having had much of an experience in living it rough in the capital city. With no end in sight and hardly a step taken in right direction one has to marvel at the smooth functioning and coordination of various government and private machineries to sustain development through these years.

Call centres

abuses and hate @ indian call centres > developed countries show the way..

Ignorance is truly global...to assume 21st century indians as snake charmers and flying fakirs is peek into the cess pit of narrow-mindedness that some in the western world are seeping into.But,that has been my experience with the british (in london )or the americans (while i was working for company X)that while the majority seem matured,understanding and patient,, there are quite a few victims of maladroitness who blatantly walk over decorum and decency of communicating with strangers especially if your are from the developing world.Which brings us to the question....why should the call centre associate put up with such behaviour......

(i) Coz the defacto sweatshop might send you packing home
(ii) It gives a bad image to the company/country
(iii) You are slow not to reply

Obnoxious,Patronising and downright humiliating attitude never needs to be tolerated in a service industry.More importantly any contact centre person would tell you that a rude customer is way of life in such industry,offshoring or not....so what needs to be percolated to the ground level is to train them to respond in a mature and calm manner to such while making it clear that their behaviour would not be tolerated.leave the attitude of smiling and bearing it to the senile ones.

Cute and Sinful

Cuteness is distinct from beauty, researchers say, emphasizing rounded over sculptured, soft over refined, clumsy over quick. Beauty attracts admiration and demands a pedestal; cuteness attracts affection and demands a lap. Beauty is rare and brutal, despoiled by a single pimple. Cuteness is commonplace and generous, content on occasion to cosegregate with homeliness.

Even as they say a cute tooth has rational roots, scientists admit they are just beginning to map its subtleties and source. New studies suggest that cute images stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain aroused by sex, a good meal or psychoactive drugs like cocaine, which could explain why everybody in the panda house wore a big grin.At the same time, said Denis Dutton, a philosopher of art at the University of Canterbury ''the rapidity and promiscuity of the cute response makes the impulse suspect, readily overridden by the angry sense that one is being exploited or deceived.Cute cuts through all layers of meaning and says, Let's not worry about complexities, just love me,"''.

"That's where the sense of cheapness can come from, and the feeling of being manipulated or taken for a sucker that leads many to reject cuteness as low or shallow."

- New York Times

A upper lip...stiff one at that?

In his 1877 "Confession of Faith", Rhodes stated, "I contend that we (the British) are the finest race in the world; and that the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race".

Section 294

Watching Opernation Majnu on NDTV aroused indignation of similar kind which I presumed must have been so with any other liberal modern citizen of shining India.The Argumentative Indian here might have differences over what might or could have been ''modern shining India'but that would have to be dealt some other day.

For now, my issue is with the responses that i have been receiving from many of my colleagues and my close friends.The violence witnessed (slap slap slap slap,kick kick slap pull-hair slap slap!!) was condemned (thankfully)and concluded with a high-brow view that moral-depravity has been on the increase of late.The police have taken cover behind Section 294 [Whoever, to the annoyance of other, does any obscene act in any public place ... shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three months, or with fine, or with both]for this absurd Taliban-like behaviour.The police living upto their cliched stance of being ignorant,corrupt and ruthless has not suprised me,however what does my head in ,is the stance of the public in acknowledging a a mean need to train/teach/educate/ youngsters on culture n tradition.

WHO DECIDES WHAT IS OBSCENE?>society??who decides these are the dust laden principles that one has to abide to earn the right to live in such societies?

perception

''Perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information.''

Now thats like eating khubz arabi under parched condition....

What to my simpleton mind occurs is that our day-to-day activities have been unconciously thought out and visually imagined to the minutest details.Long b4 i got to work i had imagined my workplace and then unconciously set to turn the imaginary into real! We do it THAT way coz we had imagined it was So.....If ever there appears a time when u r blamed for behavioural attributes, mind not coz its perception......

Talking about it truthfully (as one always has the luxury to resort to such, when it doesnt concern the present)i was given to fit of pareidolia (somethin i came across n understood recently)a few years before during my stint in residential school.The stimulus to this paranoia stemmed from my mindless drawing which later took form of a devilish cow !!(dont ask me why....cow it was)and so what happened in plain english was i got scared of the mindless scribble on my pad which took imaginary forms in my head.I didnt sleep that week imagining exorcist n poltergiest combination wrecking havoc with my peaceful sleep.......they seemed faraway and inconsequential until i read that it could throw light on the mental state of human being....