Mathematics - my first love

[Dedicated to all my friends who know me really well and were with me during the times described below, all my teachers who loved me for what I was, and to all my students who liked me for the reasons only they know :) Happy Teacher's Day!]

"Is There a ‘Right’ Way to Learn Math?" - I read this article today and I could relate to this article so much that I felt I was writing the first few paragraphs myself..

The exact example of the relation between multiplication & addition happened with me too, and incidentally that was my first thrilling experience with the subject. When I discovered that 2 x 3 is the same as 2 + 2 + 2, I was thrilled, but when I realized that is is same as 3 x 2 and further that all of these also equal 3 + 3, I wanted to jump out of joy. The excitement continued for a few days, those few nights were my best sleep nights.

And my fascination for Mathematics continued, for a really long time particular fascination of numbers remained, while other areas like Trigonometry & Calculus enjoyed their own share of charm as well. Whatever the teacher taught in the class, used to just get imprinted on to my mind (I have a good memory people say, I agree too though it is slightly fading away - as much as I don’t want to admit, people grow old and I am no exception! :) I do have a strong photographic memory too), I never needed any repetition of any concept, anything. Once, was enough, most likely because I was in love with the subject. While I was a really studious student, I used to religiously revise what was taught in school that day and read things myself - before & after type of a thing to understand the basics of the concept taught. I would rightly guess exactly what questions would come in the exam, and when I come out of my exam I would know exactly how much would I score because I knew exactly how many marks would be cut for what kind of mistake. I never got anything without hard work, real hard work. If at all I missed a small concept, small snippet of something, that one small little thing will appear in the exam. The pattern continued through my childhood and I got real tight slaps from my mother when I lost marks because I didn’t revise that one little tiny thing. Many of my classmates did really well even without studying as religiously as me. I realized ‘luck’ wasn’t for me. I grew up to become even more studious hence. While in college, I used to sit with the calculator (the scientific calculator - it was Orpat, this one) for hours together just like that playing with numbers, I discovered the pattern:
1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987...

The differences between say 12 x 6 and 16 x 2; 15 x 7 and 17 x 5 and why those patterns and so on, by myself.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have anyone around to share my excitement. There was something about the subject, about those numbers, all types of numbers, those theorems, the parabolas, the hyperbolas, the tan thetas and sin thetas and cos thetas. Questions like ‘why was the derivative of sin theta, cos theta?’ - I would think of these questions myself and I would find answers. It was true nirvana! Two specific instances I remember from my college days are:
1. f(x) = 1/ax: My professor who used to teach us Linear Algebra, asked a question casually once on something on some function. He described some unique thing about that function and asked us to guess and let him know the next day. All that day - during the class, after the class, during my commute to home after college, doing my household chores I kept on thinking. Suddenly, while I was doing the dishes at home late evening that day, there was a spark in my mind. I had the answer. The function was f(x) = 1/ax. Next day in the class, he asked and I answered. I was confident it was true because it was satisfying all the clauses mentioned. My professor reacted ‘Vhery good’, and he would almost jump off the dias. ‘Very good’, he repeated!
2. Two lines of regression: Related to Mathematics, my profound love to Statistics also grew. I was particularly in love with Regression as a topic. And while reading through this book Fundamentals of Mathematical Statistics by Gupta & Kapoor (this book), I found something very different from what I usually worked on. Usually, there is a regression line and we have a dependent variable and an independent variable. At least I, never thought of the case when we interchange the roles of the 2 variables. Hence, comes the concept of 2 lines of regression. This was not my discovery though, but there was something about this concept. I read the entire chapter twice and thrice to just multiply the thrill. I wished before the exam that that question should come and I would answer, and it did, and I answered like I achieved nirvana! I had this thing, I would leave all simple questions, pick up the ones that are challenging, and answer them first. Feel the nirvana and then answer the rest of them which didn’t matter much, from the nirvana standpoint. It worked, my hands ached after every exam because my mind ran faster than my hands & fingers and my hands & fingers used to feel literally racing with my mind. In that exam, I scored 58/100, for some reason all my answers were incorrect but I was extremely happy because that one question was there and I had the opportunity to answer that.

I grew up to teach Mathematics at school, both Maths and Statistics at college and so on. I loved teaching too, but never wanted to teach the regular topics, though some of my students felt the same way I felt as a student, on some concepts that I would consider basic by then. So, I could relate. I loved teaching because I liked learning, the thrill remained though not that much because I was ‘working’ and always chasing a deadline, in this case covering up the entire syllabus.

Anyway, life after that wasn’t as interesting.

'Smart' parenting?

When I got pregnant, I wanted to read about the same, naturally, and all possible information at one place. I got this book as a gift through our company's Maternity Wellness Program, "What to expect when you are expecting" - by Heidi Murkoff. I don't want to go into the details of how stressful the phase was for me, for various reasons even outside of the normal & regular anticipated ones!

I want to talk about what worked best for me, from the points discussed in the above book a bit and the next book by the same author, "What to expect the first year".

The books talked about each and everything covering both emotional and practical aspects, which I loved the most about the first book in particular. It gave me the confidence that it is not a crime to think about my convenience.
I really liked how the book acknowledged that it is an extremely tiring experience anyway, and described some smart options to make the experience rewarding.

Among many, the four smart choices I adopted that worked the best for me/us so far are:
1. Crib: I always wanted the baby to sleep in her own crib, and not in the same bed as us because I had a strong feeling none of us would be able to sleep well otherwise. My family said the baby wouldn't feel safe/secured/protected if I did that. Well, while they planted that doubt in my mind, not that I cared too much, but I also didn't have an option because we have a dog who was used to climbing on to our bed and pushing us to make his space to settle well and sleep peacefully. After the baby came in, he has himself made a choice to sleep in his own bed, he is smarter & more considerate than we thought he was!

2. Day care: I joined office right after my maternity leave per policy was over. I didn't know how it would work out but since there were no major concerns at home and my husband was very hands-on, we thought I should join back. I was also clear that I would put her in the day care, the book made me more confident. We explored the option, she was growing up much faster than we (my husband :)) thought she would! She was about 8 months old when we started to put her in the day care, we started with the half-day option and after 3 months we moved her into the full day option. It turned out to be a very smart decision again to do so. There is no way we could entertain her at our home the way she gets entertained in her day care - with 100 times more toys than what we could keep at home, and many other children around. The day care also was the option we thought of because:
a. The other option could be having a full time maid - we were not used to having anyone at home and we wanted to have our privacy intact.
I know a full time maid at home to take care of the child is a preferred option by many to make sure the kid stays home, under our vigilance, and stay away from infections. But I think keeping vigilance is also a big task, day cares do that for us - they have a maid, and the vigilance is the teacher's duty so that headache is taken away from us. And, day cares have a reputation to take care of, and they are obligated in a way which a maid won't be in my view.
b. I am strongly against employing any girl to take care of my child, specially minor girls or even the ones who still can explore better options and not work like this.
Of course, the catch here is to find a good day care (especially to avoid infections and other serious issues) that suits your needs/preferences - thankfully we found one, and we are really grateful to the staff there!

3. Car seat: My husband and I wanted to be as independent as possible; if one of the two of us was missing, we wanted to have an option for the second person to handle things on his/her own. One big thing was taking the kid in the car, hence came the car seat. We bought the car seat around the time she started the day care. I think it is a good experience for the kids as well, she keeps looking around without disturbing, so far we have not had any unpleasant experiences taking her around in the car seat. It is safer, and suits more practical reasons as well like my clothes not getting spoilt/crumpled :)

4. Sleep routine: After the first few months, I started kind of a ritual of giving her a bath before sleep, or I actually tried this to induce sleep. I don't know when it became a routine for her - I think children adapt to patterns pretty quickly and a couple of days of doing the same things in the same order does the trick!

She comes from the day care really happy, and tired --> she is usually not in a mood to eat anything so we instructed the day care to feed her something before she leaves, it fit well in her day schedule and food timings also --> she plays for about an hour or so and it is soon 'bathing' and 'goodnight' time --> we give her a bath, change to her night dress and she has milk before she sleeps in her crib, and she usually doesn't wake up through the night, she never did even when she was young; unless in some outlier situations. After which we are able to do our work (like I wrote this blog :)), wind up and so on and get a good night sleep ourselves!

Using dogs to cure mental illness

I am not talking about deformities here, I am talking about illness, the two are different. Deformity can be termed as madness, there is a very thin line between mental illness & madness which at least in India, majority won't understand.

There are enough & more reasons for stress/frustration/depression in our country. My learnings about mental illness are:
-Every single person is prone to mental illness. Some people go through the toughest problems in their lives and are mentally fine, and some people go through the most minor issues but go into depression. It is totally dependent on the ability of the person to handle a situation in a particular way.
-The causes of mental illness can be two: one that is genetic and is developed through the course of one's life and two that is triggered due to an instance in one's life.
-When someone in a family goes through this illness, the entire family goes through extreme amounts of stress and there is at least one more life that gets dedicated to taking care of the patient. It is not practical to expect the family to dedicate their lives to that patient and let their lives revolve around the patient's. But a few years for sure are gone! And especially in middle class families, more complications get added for reasons I don't need to mention.

Due to the very low levels of knowledge on mental illness, people don't take the efforts to understand the illness and rather suggest variety of things to act as a silver lining, many suggest a new relationship - either a marriage, a new friendship, having a kid etc. Why not an animal?!

I visited my sister's home some time back and everyday in the morning while she leaves for office, there is a squirrel that visits her backyard and waits for her to offer a roti. The way that squirrel holds that roti in its hands and slowly breaks it into pieces and eats it is the epitome of cuteness. That is its daily 10-15 mins and watching that act is an extremely relaxing activity.
Similarly, there is a small cat also which is a regular visitor to her place for a cup of milk every morning :)
It is a way to distract yourself and get a smile on your face. The biggest positive about animals is they don't expect (rather, they don't need to) anything in return and so you don't have to worry the way you do with human beings. It is a relaxation with minimum (or as per choice) or no levels of commitment.

My strong belief is having animals around can reduce the chances of mental illness to an extent.

I am a dog parent for the past 8 years. Since I brought the dog home:
1. I never entered my home without a smile on my face.
2. I spent at least 30 mins every single day with my dog - playing or talking or just petting him. I read in a magazine sometime back that if you have a dog, you should spend at least 10 mins of your daily time to love the dog; something happens inside you (I didn't bother reading the details) which does many good things to your body.
3. I meet at least a few other dog parents every single day who are as happy as me, and when we meet no discussion of mine with them is anything to do with cribbing, complaining or any other unpleasant feeling in life or anything around - so at least 10 mins of happiness sharing every single day.
4. I meet many stray dogs and some of them walk the entire way with us. And some just come wagging their tail, they just want us to pet them once. The activity of petting that dog is doing something really nice to me and my body. I can feel that relaxation.
5. There is somebody around me to listen to me - ALWAYS!
6. I have walked at least 1 hour every single day - I have breathed the fresh early morning air every single day.
7. I was never alone, I am in my ME space but at the same time I have a company.

Dogs are slightly different from other animals because they respond to humans better than the others. I could not find much research around using dogs as mental illness therapy, but I have a strong hypothesis that they can act as great remedies! Long time back, I read an article in an in-flight magazine about an organization near Pune that trains dogs to act as therapy for autistic children. I searched on Google recently and found it, it is called "Animal Angels Foundation".

My dog may have reduced my chances of being prone to mental illness :)

On Start-Ups & Funding

[Disclaimer: The thoughts in this post are my personal opinions derived from the in-person and virtual interactions with start-ups & potential start-ups, publicly available data, experiences & observations as a user/customer of many businesses, articles in various media that I keep reading, and the knowledge of the market and the consumer that I have developed over years.]

How this word 'Start-up' took a huge leap in a very short span of time is beyond imagination. How many of us would know friends of ours from a decade back retaliating that they didn't want to be the heir of their ancestral business. All of a sudden the phrase 'meri dukaan' has garnered so much of valuation for itself, its startling!

Starting one's own business is very easy but running it can take a toll on you. And in the current times it is exponentially more difficult than running our father's dukaan, with all the hype that the idea has attracted. I joined this app called the StartApp started Sharad Seth. Everyday, on that app, there is at least one new message on a new idea or a new ask for funding. There is a huge amount of enthusiasm to just START UP. However, there are a few things that are worrying:

1. Lack of focus on the user: Most of the businesses have huge dependencies on their website/app. Take all the websites started in the last few years and check how many of them are mobile friendly. I am quite disappointed that apart from the key big ones and some niche ones, none of them are user-friendly on mobile devices at least. In the current times, there is a very high chance that a user would encounter your website on a mobile device first. In such a case, one needs to focus on building a seamless mobile experience first, then focus on the desktop one; not to say desktop is not important.
It is a harsh reality that the user is critical and has very high expectations. A few basic but extremely crucial principles that need to be followed while building a website/app are:
a. The user should never be confused on landing on the website/app. Many websites (even a few big ones) still don't have the full product information on the page: like the dimensions, size, volume etc.
b. Once the user lands on the website/app, the user should know an exhaustive list of things he can do or can get on that platform, on one screen itself. That one screen (landing page/home page) has to be the ultimate summary for the user. Usually, in the competitive spirit to make the 'BEST' website/app possible, the designer in the makers might overtake the focus on the user and that may lead to a disaster. It is extremely necessary to sit and chart out the entire flow of the user journey in sheets of a paper (this I learnt from my friend and colleague Aniruddh Jain, founder of http://salespatron.com/) and I cannot agree more on this with him.

2. Lack of knowledge of feasibility: I have always believed and stand by the belief that India has a latent demand for just about everything. However, that latent demand is not in masses. Many people think of an idea but also think of going mass at the same time. Not all ideas can be mass ideas. There is a huge enthusiasm about 'I want to start this', 'I have this idea', but how much is the market is something many are not thinking, though all planning would be based on these facts. To this, all think we just start off and it will run! Never be that sure. Of course, it will run but the scale and other facts need to be realistically known before starting.

3. Lack of conservative thinking: 3+ years back, I ordered a nailpolish from a very well-known apparel+accessories ecommerce website [no prizes for guessing which one!]. When I received the package, I was shocked. That packet could have fitted at least 3 200ml bottles comfortably. In that package, they sent me the 6ml nail polish bottle. My colleague noticed my reaction "how are they going to survive!", and replied "who cares about packaging Sridevi!". "Isn't cost the first thing that a business would look at?!", I wondered. 3 years later, just a week back I ordered a house utility article from one of the top ecommerce websites. The object was a small one that could have fitted very comfortably in the packet of say a 500ml Milton flask (20cmx5cmx5cm). The object was sent in a packet (cover) which was approximately 40cmx60cm. There are many examples like this, I would have ordered hundreds of articles online and I just keep calculating the savings they could have made from a more efficient packaging! The key is that the big guys can afford all this, it is the VC's money; but it is someone's money right! How can it be overseen! Looking back on how much money could have been saved on packaging alone, it would be a very starling figure, it would have possibly covered for all the discounts offered.
Everyone thinks they can get VC Funding, there are some messages on StartApp that read "need funding", some claim that they have an idea and it is a multi-million dollar one! We all think high of ourselves, but we need to analyze ourselves critically too!

4. Lack of Long-term vision: I wonder how we don't have an inch of hesitation from participating in a rat-race! This start-up wave has also evolved very quickly into the same again, and one just wants to enrol to participate in the race. The questions on 'what after enrolling', 'are we ready to participate if selected', 'are we fit to participate', 'how long will we be able to sustain in the race', 'what if it is too sunny', 'what if it rains': none of these questions are asked by many! The fancy terms like "Exit" which few are lucky to be a part of, have caught up which I think is leading to lack of commitment. By the way, I am sure many of us have come across businesses that are not clear on what to do with the ones they acquired (is it 'if I won't, someone will'?)!

Some key questions to ask before ideating would be:
1. What is the problem that this idea is going to solve?
Is it only your passion or is it a problem in the market that you want to solve?Also a lot of times, due to the early fame that the business attracts, the business model is changed and the fundamental problem that the business started to solve disappears in the fame! That is very sad.
2. Is the problem, really a problem for the users you are targeting?
And more important, do the users you are targeting really want a solution to the problem?
3. What are the pre-requisites for a user to use the service/product?
I see some business ideas based on apps, but the users targeted don't seem to be the target group owning or using smartphones :)
4. Are you committed towards the business you are starting?
There are some problems that you know your business model has or would definitely encounter. You don't need to start and run the business to know and realize them. These days, failing, and talking about learnings from the failure is considered a resume point unfortunately. Yes, it would be, but only for the founding members and not for the employees. When you start up,  you are taking a risk. But it is of utmost responsibility for the founding members to realize it is much riskier for the employees joining them.
5. Never start off by giving your products or services for free or discounts extraordinarily.
Much is talked about the ecommerce businesses thriving on discounts, those were big businesses and still they are a victim of this. Take a look at some data from trak.in on how much funding has gone into the businesses!
A scheme is good like a promotional offer, referral bonus or loyalty points, but don't ever bank all or majority of your business on discounts. If it is a marketplace, the discounts offered may be by the seller but as the marketplace owner, do make sure that you don't offer very differentiated pricing.
6. Never, ever over-commit - neither to yourself nor to the market.
I personally don't find any need for this, it is totally unnecessary. Make the realistic commitment and just strive to keep them, that itself is a mammoth task! If you exceed it is very good but try and never miss.

Lastly, kudos and best of the best wishes to all in the race; definitely a tough-one!

Cheenti

When I search for 'ant' on google, the prominent results are on 'Apache Ant', some software. Why?

When I click on the Images tab, the images that turn up are totally unpleasant to the eyes, some are creepy as well. I feel sad for this little nice creature! :)

In my school days, when I was in classes 2-5, we used to go to a small evening school called the 'Hindi School' in this place called Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh. It used to be an independent school in itself. It had proper classrooms for its standards/classes (like the classes 1,2,3 in a regular school). Initially of course I only used to mug up things and just give the exams. Doing that, I passed the preliminary class with flying colours and moved to the 2nd class of this Hindi school, the class/exam was called 'Prathmik'. Now I had small stories in my books. It was then, from the story of Shahjahan that I learnt that he built the Taj Mahal in the memory of Mumtaz and that he amputated the hands of all the labourers who constructed the monument. I could not sleep for a few nights after learning that. I kept reading the story again and again, and kept feeling sad!
There was another story called 'Gora aur kaala' which was about 2 girls one of whom was 'gora' and the other one 'kaala'. The story was about fair girls insulting dark girls and the moral of the story was that one should not look at the colour of the skin but the person :) It was a very cute story.

That was the starting point of my interest in Hindi. As I moved ahead, I became very good a grammar (even things like sandhi & samaas), reading, writing, reciting and so on. I was good at interpreting poetry as well and my teachers were quite amazed by that, and the credit always went to the fact that my upbringing happened on-and-off in Ahmedabad.

And that is how I actually know a lot of Hindi literature poets like Makhanlal Chaturvedi, Maithili Sharan Gupt, Sumitranandan Pant, Kabir, Rahim and Tulsi ke dohe and all. Kabir ke dohe are the easiest to interpret and while there is a tie (at least for me) between Rahim & Tulsi, my vote for the toughest goes to Tulsi(das). I actually don't remember any of the Tulsi's dohe now (sad!).

Coming back to the ant, I grew up with too many creatures around me - the prominent ones I recollect are: birds (sparrows mainly), cows, pigs, buffaloes, catterpillars, lizards (both domestic & garden lizards), rats (my favourite in this family is something called 'pandikokku' in Telugu; everyone was so terrified just by its sight, it used to be a huge rat, its sign used to be a huge hole among the bushes in the garden) & snails.
While I did notice flies & mosquitoes also around me, what I never thought of was this creature that was nearer to me, more than the rest; until I came across this poem called 'Cheenti' in my Hindi text book. It was a wonderful poem written by the great poet Sumitranandan Pant. I had not preserved those books but thanks to this wonderful invention called the 'World Wide Web', I could to locate the poem. Since my encounter with that poem, I started noticing the ants a lot and started admiring them so much.

This new house we have moved in to, is a slightly old construction and is cozy with respect to the atmosphere and the climate (I mean good insulation etc.). This possibly is the reason, I again got a chance to have these little creatures around in my kitchen. A few days back, while filling the water bottle from our PureIt (in a nuclear family, even filling water bottles is a task), I noticed this line of very, very small ants, on the edge of the wall, moving up, to somewhere. I could not figure out where the line was ending. I think I found a reason to fill the water bottles again, only to attempt to resolve that mystery! I was successful in my 3rd attempt and a few cms below the ceiling, I noticed a small little black dot. And on observing this line very carefully, I noticed that the line was disappearing at that small black dot. I then realized that small black dot was a tiny hole in the wall and noticed these little ones entering into that hole. We covered the hole this morning and since then, this group seems to be at work for a plan B. They have not given up!


[And I googled, there are quite a few articles on corporate lessons to be learnt from ants - haven't found an impressive one yet though!]

A tribute to Comedy Nights with Kapil!

Well, I don't think I have missed even a single episode of this show - even before we had Tata Sky at our home :)

The first show that I watched was of 2 hours; full of laughter. [An old friend of mine used to say that I could laugh at anything; some people have said that my laughter is contagious, so it's good that I laugh :)]
I wondered why they had started with 2 hours show and that too 2 days in the week; also repeating the show just after the show time. I thought why couldn't they think of saving the content for later. Every time I watched one show, I used to fearful of them running out of content.

But what confidence! The show went on; and on; and on; and on --> laughter and laughter unlimited! In India, every single moment people face with issues that bring with them reasons for depression, frustration, unhappiness, irritability and so on. Many, many genuine thanks to this show which let people enjoy and laugh their hearts out at least a few minutes every week.

I love the show, I love the actors; possibly because I have a special place in my heart for all the people from small towns who make it big in any industry; especially in the entertainment industry because this industry we all know is mean, and they are the ones who survive and grow purely based on talent and nothing else! [Unfortunately, still Suraj Pancholi for Hero wins award against many others like Vicky Kaushal for Masaan]

What I like the most about the show is how the entire team of the show have observed the minutest details and nitty-gritties of the small town India - whether it is Sittu's makeover, or the wedding commentary by Sunil Grover, or the buffalo of lachcha :)

A big gratitude to my two most favourite people of the show:

Sunil Grover: Sunil Grover wins my first vote, slightly ahead of Kapil Sharma in sheer talent. I was somewhere abroad with no job for a few months and one of my past times was of course watching television. Once when flipping channels while having lunch, I noticed this guy mimicing Shahrukh Khan; I noticed the details of the show and it was called 'Chala Lallan Hero Banne', and this guy was playing 'Ruk Ruk Khan'. I really liked him, he does mimic SRK extremely well. I did notice him now and then on television and a few movies and whenever I noticed him, I never missed mentioning it to my husband, 'this is the Ruk Ruk Khan from Chala Lallan Hero Banne'. I like him the best in Ghajini :) In Gabbar is Back when he faces Gabbar and says that dialogue 'I know who is he...Gabbar', my jaw dropped and I was thinking now he is going to start, "aap aaye hain iss bagiyaa mein" - which is the patent song of Guththi.

My most memorable moments of the show are of Sunil Grover:
1. In the Gabbar is Back promotion episode when Akshay Kumar actually called Sunil Grover and Guththi said, 'thodi technical problem hain...' :)
2. In the Dilwale promotion episode when he and SRK enacted the SRK's patented romance pose - he played Ruk Ruk Khan after 10 years again :)

Kapil Sharma: (Bittu Sharma, and Sittu Sharma) I have been religiously watching comedy shows and was a big fan of Great Indian Laughter Challenge back then with Raju Srivastava, Sunil Pal and others. Not sure if anyone remembers 'pehchaan kaun' :) Siddhu and Shekhar Suman did make the show a bit more lively. I took a little while to adapt to the comedy of Kapil Sharma and I didn't watch the show regularly. However, when I watched the show while relating it to the surroundings and situations, it felt funny. Kapil Sharma did not win the first season he participated in, he won the next one. And rest is history. I like his singing too, he sings well.
I have watched all 18 seasons of Comedy Circus too; and the one participant who stood out exceptionally well from the rest was this man. The best part was his spontaneous comments which were not a part of the script.
Comedy Nights with Kapil of course showcased his talent in the best possible manner, so many hours of comedy making people laugh at every single punch!

I love each one of them in the show including Raju, Siddhu, Sumona and others; all of them display humility, commitment to their work, completely enjoy what they do which is contagious, they do their work with complete 'shiddat'.

I don't know why the show has ended, it should not have! Once again, it proves that negative energies overpower positive ones. I feel sad about all those who lost those few minutes of sheer enjoyment every week!

India has seriously got talent

I have been a religious consumer and admirer of the reality show India's Got Talent ever since it was aired first on television. The acts vary from mediocre to extra-ordinary, barring the funny ones. The talent coming on the show is just growing by leaps and bounds in every season. I am glad the confidence is being built in many performers to come on to the show and perform; otherwise in a country like India, we would know of many people whose talent just remains inside their houses due to lack of opportunities, encouragement and resources to come out of those walls; many don't even know what talent they have; very sad!

We all think good nutrition etc. is necessary for a healthy mind and this is a necessary condition (but not sufficient) to focus. I notice quite a few individuals who come on to the show have gone through no professional training - whether it is for a particular dance form, or for any other type of an act. Some people who do balancing acts are so fit, their arms-strength so good; many of these have not got any kind of formal fitness training. Many of these individuals have good muscles also, which usually are thought to be built by regular gymming. What I realize is these people don't survive on food or water, they eat and breathe their passion and their dreams; which they see with open eyes; and that's what gives them all the energy. In a country like India where people don't know and understand the meaning of the phrase 'personal space', taking time and space out to keep practicing dedicatedly, to pursue one's dreams is indeed commendable.

In one of the earlier seasons, a group of two boys had performed using some yoga postures and it was seamless beyond imagination. They had represented India in an international games event and had won too; but unfortunately their talent is not recognized enough in India to make them a good living. When the International Yoga Day was announced, the first thought I got was 'Wish people like them get recognized and they can make their good living out of their talent now'. I think some money should be spent on promoting other games and sports also and not just cricket.

Some time back we had gone to Las Vegas and my colleagues and I went to watch a show whose ticket was worth Rs. 6000; the show was definitely very good; but even at that time apart from one act everything else I had seen in one of the India's Got Talent seasons. Unfortunately, we don't publicize our own talent enough.

India has seriously got lots of talent; there should be more platforms created to showcase this talent There are so many award functions where celebrities of big and small screen worlds perform; why not give this talent a chance to perform in those award functions? There should be a way to reach out to these people to invite them to perform in corporate parties or events too.

Even when I was watching KBC the last two seasons had got contestants who were from the lower sections of the society and I thought that was a very good initiative. Every single person in the vast majority of India has a tragic story; and that story & struggle is what keeps giving that push for one to dream, dream with open eyes, and pursue one's dream.

My personal favourites this season of IGT are:
Individual performers: Yogeswari Mistry, Manik Paul, Prahlad Acharya, Jaydeep Gohil
Group performers: XIX Junior Group; Sonu and Shikha,
A very special favourite is Nangbia Chanda because she comes from Itanagar which is a different world altogether and I hope she reaches great heights through this exposure!

Yes, there are too many; as I said this season's talent is at a different level :)

The Joy of Giving!

It was 2nd October 2014, marking the start of the festival ("concept"), The Joy of Giving Week. It was a long weekend and I landed at Ahmedabad on that morning to visit my parents. For a change, we took an auto rickshaw from the airport to home; there was no Ola or Uber at that time in Ahmedabad and we wanted to try an auto instead of the taxi. When the auto rickshaw dropped us at our home, the bill was in some multiples of 50, we gave him the nearest multiple of 100 and when he was returning Rs. 50, I asked him to keep it. For a fraction of a second, he could not follow. Then he realized and the smile on his face was priceless! Earning Rs. 50 extra on a day is such a big increment in India, many of us don't realize. There is a large section of these who don't use that additional Rs. 50 constructively, but those also don't work religiously so you can make out.

The joy that you feel when you give something to someone cannot be explained or expressed. In today's situation and probably forever in India, money is & would be the most needed. Giving money is the best, the other things of course are fine but those are perishable. Since then, I decided I am going to tip for every service. I tip the home delivery guys, almost all of them go back with a smile on their face. There is a small South Indian restaurant that we regularly order food from, I realize this one guy probably comes to deliver each time only because he knows I tip him :)

My husband is very particular about tipping for any service we receive. When I started using Uber, I tipped almost every driver unless I didn't like the driver at all, which is thankfully rare with Uber at least. They are the most courteous drivers, a possible reason could be that they earn more than decently. Recently I have had many interesting experiences with Uber when the drivers refusing to accept the tip. This happened first time in Mumbai, I was taking a morning flight and took Uber from the guest house to the airport. The driver was a young Malayali boy, he was very decent. When I offered him the tip while getting down, he refused and said 'No ma'am, thank you'. He didn't smile, he was those serious kinds. That was the first experience for me when someone refused the tip. I asked him why, he politely replied again, 'No ma'am, not required, thank you'. I respected his decision and said fine if he was not comfortable with it. Incidentally, after that, I came across many drivers of Uber who refused to take the tip politely. India is a land of khuddaars too, I realized. After that experience, I started asking the driver whether he accepts tips, a few of them say no and I don't bother them. On one trip, I asked the driver if he accepts tip and he said very happily, 'why not, if the customer gives', I liked it and I gave him the tip. He said with a big smile on his face, 'give me 5 star rating also'. I asked him why, he said the company pays Rs. 50 for each 5-star rating that the driver gets. Ever since, I only give them 5-star unless the driver is too bad, of course in that case I put in a written feedback too.

Recently, we were on a vacation and while the vacation was about to end, my husband was telling me thousands of rupees go in tips for us :) Our biggest expense head is vacation, and small percentage of the expense is tips. Anyway, the receivers of those few thousand rupees (separately) are more need of them than us. Its fine I guess.

You feel a different kind of happiness and fulfillment when you give something to someone in need, and more if you are able to see the receiver's face and expressions while receiving it. Hope I live long, and remain able (physically and financially :)) to keep giving all my life.

The road towards imperfection!

India is a strange country, not in a positive or a negative connotation but just as an observation. The strangest section among the strange India is the middle class section. This is the section that is always struggling to move towards a higher point than where it is currently, but more often than not it is not able to, never in the first generation at least. It always keeps working the hardest, getting only modest rewards, and whatever little rewards it gets it keeps saving for its next generation.

Among the strange things that quite a big portion of this strangest section battles with is something called 'perfection' which comes from insecurity most likely, especially in the lower middle class family. Meet parents of this section, and their only aim is to make their child the perfect child on this earth. When they let the child meets their friends, the friends should praise the child the most! They want to send the child to the best possible school (which everyone wants to), but they also want the child to have 100% attendance, they want the child to come first in many different things and so on and so forth. I was one such child from one such family.

My father was fine but my mother wanted me to not skip even a single day's school, restrictions on just about everything from watching TV to playing time to what not! I got 4 marks out of 10 once in a class test and I was dead scared to go home because I knew that day I had to have it from my mother! Having been brought up like that, slowly and steadily I started becoming a victim to this disease called 'perfection'. If I miss school one single day even due to very valid reasons, I would cry and feel like the earth is going to shatter. If I come second in the class in any one subject, I would feel like that's the end of my life! Extreme addiction to studies also stems from the fact that I belong to Andhra Pradesh in India where if you study arts or commerce, people would not even look at you - I hear it still is the same in most parts of the state. I would prepare extremely well for an exam and if I forget a small formula in the exam, I would not be able to digest as in how could it happen to me, I tried so hard!

Having such a thing ingrained into me, I was still like that during the early years at my work. I would not use my Frequent Flyer number when I travelled for work, I felt that is not correct :) I must accept life had become very difficult post studies for me. After all, from a perfect atmosphere within yourself, when you come out of it, it is an imperfect world, and it is not bad. But it becomes very difficult for you to adapt to it, and accept the imperfections. It becomes very difficult to let it go or to accept the people around you who let-go. And it is very critical to do that. Till date, that instinct exists in me - when I play a game on an app, I am not competing against anyone but I want to score more than my last attempt otherwise I feel bad. This leads to a lot of stress, you can't concentrate on better things in life due to such small and unimportant things bothering you unnecessarily. It is very bad for you in every way.

My current workplace and industry keeps challenging me on this same weakness of mine, very frequently. There was a day a few years ago when suddenly I went to the cafeteria early in the day, everyone was talking about this viral video 'kolaveri di', and I was stunned on why I didn't know it. Then I realized it all happened overnight. In today's era, you follow many different apps, first thing in the morning possibly you browse through the 3-4 regular apps and check the updates. It is possible that one 5th app you didn't have time to open, go out and learn that it had an update which already everyone knows about. You reach office and people start discussing. I have learnt that it is fine if you don't know it, you missed it because you probably spent that time in something that mattered to you more that morning. Once you are out of this trap, you are also able to set targets for yourself which are practically achievable, once you start achieving them that in turn builds confidence in you.

Some time back, I had written this post on 'Obsession to self-dependence', my biggest learning is if you have the obsession to self-dependence, you need to have machinery to depend on or you cannot be obsessed to perfection, else it is impossible to live life happily. I used to get restless when there was even a small amount of dust around me, because I knew I had not cleaned it up and I possibly would blame myself of not being able to manage everything. Today, I see the dust and know it is there (there is dust on this table which has this laptop I am typing on :)) and when I think I know there were 30 mins when I just sat and chilled or watched TV or read a book but did not use that 30 mins to clean the dust, but I still don't care that much because I know its fine. I let it go :) I have moved quite a bit towards the better side though, now that I am gaining a bit of wisdom may be. But one thing I still cannot compromise on is punctuality. I want to take my dog out at 6:15AM sharp, my husband usually delays by a few minutes and only I know the amount of stress that spreads in the atmosphere during those few minutes. A colleague of mine delayed for a client meeting, he was quite chilled out while I was getting very restless. When we reached the client location, we still had to wait for quite some time, I still want to be on time from my side though I have learnt to let it go.

I see many parents around who want their children to be perfect again, they get stressed out if the child is not learning something in school that the other child has already learnt in other school. This stress passes on to the child too. To all parents, it is not possible to learn and know everything in this world. Let the child be, let the child learn at his or her own pace. Even if the child becomes perfect, there are only so many places where perfection stays, rest all is an imperfect world. The individual needs to learn to accept the imperfect world, and the imperfect world also has to accept the individual. Most importantly, such children/individuals would have extreme problems and would face a lot of discomfort and may go into depression too when they notice imperfections being rewarded as opposed to perfections, and such things do happen all the time. Teach children to let it be; that's how the world is and unfortunately we are to live in this same world!

Of India, and changing India

All of us, once at least would have asked this question: “What will happen to this country!” (“kya hoga iss desh ka!”)…

I have asked this question several times to myself and now I helplessly admit that I have concluded that “iss desh ka kuch nahin ho sakta!”. India is going to remain India. By this I mean the attitude of the people and not the other dynamics – like usage of mobile phone for example. Recently I traveled in a train a few times after some years. I observed the train is exactly the same as it was decades ago, every single compartment was the same, the toilets were dirty, the bedsheets were not as good and just about anything that you could have observed about a train during your travel over the past few decades! I have travelled across many different sections of the country from North to South and from East to West. (What I found is the platforms in Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh were the neatest of all. The platforms of Uttar Pradesh were the worst of all. All other zones come in between somewhere.) I have travelled in general compartments, sleeper class, 3rd AC, and 2nd AC – in that order from childhood to adulthood as my changing ability to spend changed. The situation of each compartment and services remains exactly the same – by and large.

Now I want to know if India is changing, train resembles India, why has it not changed at all since decades?

Also, the movies – there was ‘Zanjeer’ about an honest ‘dabangg’ police officer in 1973, and then there is Singham on the same lines in 2011. 40 years and the same theme??? Does that mean the corruption situation is still the same?

Of course, things would have gotten only worse, surely owing to the increased population of ours and some changing environmental parameters. Then, are we actually changing?

Why are there NGOs for women empowerment perpetually existing? Are they not able to empower women or are there enough women to empower at any given time? In that case again, things have not changed for women at large right?

I may be termed as a pessimist but being an optimist here is very unrealistic to me. My most logical sense is, change happens – but at an individual level, at a small group level may it be a small community or a village (In case of railways too, there might be pockets like South Central railways for example that might have changed but to generalize, it is the same still!). For change to happen at an individual level it takes a few years, for change to happen at a family level it takes a decade or so, for change to happen at a community level it takes a few decades but for change to happen at a national level, it would take several decades but there are too many barricades in between that stop from the change to happen. For that mass change to happen, everybody needs to feel that change is needed for him or her, and there needs an individual or a group to make each and every individual feel the need first of all – that I feel is a close to impossible task! A lot of people don’t feel the need to have sanitation. When you go to some places like Uttar Pradesh, there is hell lot of dirt all around. Won’t people feel the need to not make the place dirty first of all, or clean it up once filthy? How many individuals can run the swach bharat abhiyan? can a small group go and clean the place all the time? That group needs to be dedicated for that task alone in that case, which is not possible. Even in a household, if just one person takes the responsibility to clean things up and every other family member keeps making the house dirty, how would that situation be? We are changing in terms of adapting to the new revolution like mobile phones or internet. But our basic attitude remains the same at large, it has not changed at all! We change in small groups and move to a strata that has changed or is changing, and feel that India is changing. It is a myth  India will remain India unless the attitude of each and every one of the 1.2Bn people changes, possible?

I was a part of Jagriti Yatra 2014 where I met someone from Kenya. I asked him what is the one word that comes to you when you see India, knowing that he was visiting India for the first time. He said ‘dirty’, ‘chaotic’ and a few other related adjectives, I appreciate his honesty. It doesn’t feel particularly good when a visitor feels like that in your country  But I have to accept the reality, though it is a harsh one. He mentioned India is not a country where people should be left on their own, they need a dictator kind of a ruler who will give them a task and just get them to do it, no matter what. Only then India will improve. He gave the example of Rwanda, I was curious and asked him how many years did it take Rwanda to transform? He said 30 years for such a small country.

Imagine about India transforming then!

This country is run by women

For quite some time, I have been observing around and I come to the conclusion that this country is run by women (this is a generalization, outliers remain though)!

If you actually see and analyze, the amount of work that a woman does is much more than the amount of work a man does. There are set duties for a woman, almost all the duties are pertaining to others in her life; anything that she has to do for herself she has to take extra time out – whether it is going for a walk, or office, or beauty parlour, or gym, or any other of her choice. Any of these activities happen only if and when she gets free from her routine duties that are defined for her. And even when she is on her own in any of these activities, you would notice her taking calls pertaining to her ‘duties’ again  Why is everyone so enthu about defining duties for women? A friend of mine said once that they didn’t have a cook during their childhood, if they went out on a day of the weekend, her mother used to prepare the food once they were back home. In her own words, ‘bechaari meri mummy ghar aake khud saara khaana banaati thi’, those were not the days of cook for them, also not the days of ordering from outside. I am sure many households are still like this, except for very few outliers.

I had a maid servant some time back who looked like a 12-year-old kid. She was married with 2 kids, she didn’t know her age to tell me when I surprisingly asked her after coming to know she had 2 kids. She was very hard-working and diligent, her work was perfect, she used to come on time, when she came that is. But she used to fall sick very often. Poverty leading to no proper food was most likely the cause. When asked about her husband, she mentioned once that he doesn’t do anything; then a few days later she mentioned that she got the society pass for him too with the help of the other house owners where she worked. So the husband got to sweep the society and earn some money. This lasted a few days and in those few days she was happy and regular at her own work. But just after a few days she again became irregular and when asked, during the conversation she mentioned her husband left the job. There was no feeling of frustration or desperation, she very casually mentioned about her husband leaving the job. He was not doing anything again. She used to work from 6AM to 11AM in the morning, go home and make lunch, feed her children and have it herself. Again at 4PM, she used to come back for the afternoon part of the work. I once asked her if she cooked anything before 6AM when she came for work? She replied in the negative and I came to know that her children don’t eat anything till lunch time. She could not afford that much milk to give them, it seemed. She would be most likely beaten up by the husband also very often. What is all this I wonder?

I have a vegetable vendor near our colony. We make sure to buy from him whatever is needed so that they make some money. They keep vegetables, milk, bread, eggs, curd which are the usual regular day-to-day stuff. The shop is run by a couple who have 3 kids. A few days earlier, I went to the shop in the morning when the woman had opened the shop and was organizing things. There was another customer before me. Our guard came running and asked her where her husband was because a kid had fallen ill and the guard wanted her husband, who also runs an auto-rickshaw, to take the kid to a clinic. She said he had gone to the vegetable market in old Gurgaon, which is his usual morning task. Soon, the other customer left and she burst out in tears (I don’t know what comfort she shared with me) – she said her husband has not gone to the market but he is sleeping because he didn’t come home last night, and was found in the morning in the neighbourhood. He was drunk last night. She was so worried that the vegetables stock was not enough for the day. The kids were ready to go to the school but he is not in a position to drive the rickshaw. She also mentioned there are two other drunkard friends of his whose families are in Bihar. They are regular drinkers and her husband joins them. She was worried about him not making rounds of the auto-rickshaw, saying income from that has stopped because of his habits. While saying all this, she also said ‘didi, 3 bachche hain, ek baar bhi bola nahin hua nahin ki subah uthke school ke liye tayaar kar de’? (didi, I have 3 kids and not one single day has he woken up in the morning and offered to get them ready for school). He is always found loitering around, instead of taking the rickshaw rounds.

What nonsense is all this? Here is a woman who is trying to do everything from managing household, to kids, to the shop. It is obvious that this auto-rickshaw has to be driven to make money, and it is obvious that this man has to make money. Why doesn’t he get it? Why is he not fearful like her on how will the household run? And on top of it, he is so dumb that he cannot weigh the vegetables properly and calculate the money too. I very patiently tolerate his dumbness only because of his wife, I want her to make some money. She has taught him to use the calculator, she once lightly shared that he loses money because he makes wrong calculations. How nonsensical!

I think there is an inherent talent in women that they can multi-task (tasks of different variety, not many tasks of same variety – there is a difference and the former needs more talent) much better. And in the lower classes, I have noticed many couples where the women are much more intelligent than the men. Since childhood, girls are brainstormed about ‘duties’, which take up their entire time, and they are not left with any to grow in their own way. And more often than not, they just succumb top those duties. I am sure they would be getting married under this immense pressure to perform their duty, and further perform more duties to have children and run the household. Had this not been the case, they were capable of getting a much better spouses and would have grown a lot differently, to great heights.

I witnessed an instance in a village where in a family many men were refusing to marry. It was high time as per their age that they get married. There was an elderly man who expressed the worry, ‘why does no one want to get married? who will cook in the household?’. I was shocked! They want them to get married because they can’t cook themselves? Why don’t they teach them to cook themselves?

Who has given the right to men to define duties for women? I think these kinds of men especially are afraid that they would be left behind if these duties are not imposed on women, and when women become more successful their ego hurts and things like acid attacks happen! Otherwise I wonder why are there no acid attacks on men? (At least not reported).

Most of the women face situations like these, at various levels at various intensities – some or the other in the family, in the society, in the surroundings is there to remind the women about their ‘duties’, sadly women themselves also, very sad!

I am reading this book ‘Lean-In’ where Sheryl Sandberg described in detail on how women inherently don’t come forward to take on new things (possibly because of the upbringing, its in the air), and in work-life balance, with all the fears and the biggest fear of being a good mother/wife/daughter etc., usually work is left behind. How true! I realize it is a world-wide phenomenon and just an India story. The intensity magnifies manifold due to the other problems in our country.

To all women – read the book Lean-In.

Why I love Internet!

I keep reiterating that the major problem solver for me is internet. Any issue or a problem or a question that I face with, I first type it on Google for it to look up on the internet and my problem gets solved usually in the first click, and a few times in a few clicks. While it is amazing how Google finds out right link to the solution for me, it is amazing how people all over the world have already faced such a situation and patiently documented their problems and solutions. Indeed the most useful and amazing innovation!

- My mother messages me 'paap means sin, punya means?'; and I Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V on google on my mobile phone and I find the answer in the first link itself :) And I type the message back to my mother - all happens in 3 mins time.

- A Motorola phone of mine stopped working, it just doesn't switch on. I try my best to do something with the available buttons on the phone, I ask a colleague of mine. Then I type it on Google, the first link is a forum where people have discussed this problem and also have suggested solutions that have worked for them! I followed the most talked about solution and it worked in the first attempt!

- I was working normally when suddenly wherever my cursor goes, it would select everything I click. I didn't know what to do, I opened a new tab on my browser and just wrote 'cursor selects everything, and didn't have to even click and go to the respective page to get the answer - problem solved!

- Eggs in one form or the other are a part of our breakfast usually, till about some time back it was usually the boiled ones. We used to boil the eggs normally in a small steel vessel. I was tired of the same and looked up in Google if we can boil eggs in a pressure cooker, the answer was yes and its been 3 years or more I guess now that I boil eggs in a pressure cooker.

- My pet Bruno was unwell the other day with bad stomach. I knew there is a medicine at home in his first-aid kit, but the strip of tablets was torn and I could not see the name of the tablet to be sure that is the medicine I should give him. I could see the end portion 'dal' on the strip. I wrote on google images 'dog bad stomach dal', and I got the tablet strip images with the name 'dependal', the strips were exact match of what I had with me. I gave the medicine to my Bruno with confidence and he was alright the next morning!

- Most of us would have seen the last Google Search Ad, the famous 'jhajhariya' one. I had a similar experience. I had a colleague long time back, whom I completely lost touch with. I had made a lot of attempts of asking people, common friends and colleagues at various time periods about her whereabouts. Out of the blue one day I thought let me try Google. I typed her name alone, no luck. I typed her name+school+<place I knew she was in>, the school link came up with her name as some head there. I clicked and saw a picture of her's in an event group picture. I called up the school and through that I got her mobile number. I called her to find her astonished and saying 'tumne mujhe kaise dhoondhaaaaa!' - this was before the jhajhariya ad :) I found her after almost 8 years :)

- I had my in-laws come in and they were watching a programme on the television where some random guy rattled a long sentence claiming it was his own creation. I had heard it before and I knew it was not his creation, it was a meaningful dramatic dialogue that is made of the movie names of Amitabh Bachchan. I had a cassette of Amitabh Bachchan songs that started with this dialogue. I wanted to look up for the same because it was quite fascinating. I looked up randomly putting some names of movies as I recollected from the long dialogue, it took a few iterations but I did get it and felt really good :)

Long live internet, people who actively post content on the internet; and Google!
The few things that could make it even more powerful is translations (currently, they are not very accurate - I used many dictionaries English to English, English to Hindi to English, English to Telugu to English, Hindi to Telugu to Hindi, English to Gujarati to English - it is fascinating to use a dictionary, feels very knowledgeable and intellectual, but I very reluctantly now use Google); and identifying songs by the music when someone is humming (I found that there are a few websites for this for English music, I think it will be great to have this for Hindi music as well - going forward I guess it would be very useful).

Lyrics - where are they going!

I heard this song playing in a radio channel whose lyrics go like this - "....aa tujhe pyaar karoon sare aam baby...', and I am realizing the lyrics go like this:

Har shaam baby, tere hi naam baby
Aa tujhe pyar karoon main sar-e-aam baby
Hai intezam baby, kar ehtram baby
Iraade nek mere, na koi ganda kaam baby
Ishq, pyaar aur waar khule aam karoon
Main hoon mutasib tujhse
Dil ye tere naam karoon
Aaja meri baahon mein
Let me love you baby
Kahin tu mujhse ye na keh de
Je menu yaar na mile, mile.. mile..
Te mar jaawaan

How can anyone write these? Do they make any sense at all, how dirty & nonsensical is the language even to read!!! There were those lyrics once which said, 'tumhein koi aur dekhey, toh jalta hai dil...' and now these which say "....aa tujhe pyaar karoon sare aam baby..."!
Earlier the songs were mostly the voice and the lyrics, now it is the beats mainly, I learn that even voice is made up using technology. (I really like Alia Bhatt as the person she is and as an actress too, but when she came to Comedy Nights show for a film promotion and sung the song 'jugni, pataaka guddi', the notes she tried to catch were nowhere closer to what the song was and the rhythm was totally out of place, and I learn she has sung that song in the movie.)
Is it the lack of isolation and peace; or is it the less time spent appreciating the nature that people are not able to write well and still the song becomes a hit! This song was very 'catchy' apparently, I recollect my cab-mate almost yelling at me when I changed the channel on noticing this song playing :) "Arrey Sridevi, tum beats suno, itni emotional kyon ho jaati ho", she said :) I was at the parlour and they had incidentally played the Kishore Kumar's songs for a change, all amazing ones ranging from 'oh mere dil ke chain...', to 'zindagi ke safar mein guzar jaate hain jo mukaam...', to 'rimjhim gire saawan..', to 'ek ajnabee haseena se...', to 'koi humdum na raha...', to 'yeh reshmi zulfein..', after a few minutes most of the people there started humming those along. One thing is they are sung by the legend. But the more powerful thing is that there is such deep thought and meaning in those lyrics. They probably didn't write to write, they just got written it seems by their emotions!

My best friends!

"Best friend" is the one living or non-living thing in one's life that is the most amazing thing one can ever have.I have had very less number of friends in my life and a lot of circumstances led to me being an extreme introvert and not sharing anything with anyone usually, that made things worse by me almost not being able to call any human being 'my best friend' and I doubt if anyone could call me as theirs. I feel sad about this but when I think, I find that I did (and do) have three best friends <in the order I got/found them>:

1. Transistor:
We spent some years schooling at my grandparents' place in Vizianagaram. Vizianagaram is a very small town, the district headquarters that houses many good schools and colleges. There was a phase during that stay when we did not have a television at home. We had a very old transistor that was in a pretty bad shape, almost dead. But it used to play, with a lot of disturbance. Every evening, I used to wait longingly to play it, all my Maths homework and anything related to Maths used to happen during the 1.5 hours between 7:00PM and 8:30PM (which included dinner of about 20 mins also). 7:00PM was time for Hindi news for 10 mins, "Fauji bhaiyon ka karykram Jaimala" of Hindi songs used to start at 7:10PM, go on till 7:50PM. There used to be a break for 10 mins and at 8:00PM, another program of Hindi songs used to start, go on till 8:30PM. In between there used to be another channel from 7:50 to 8:10 that used to play some Hindi songs, I used to switch between channels very patiently and used to hear all the songs without a miss even with all the disturbance on the channels. And then used to start the boring time, I remember at 9:00PM, there used to be English news by someone called Vijay Danielle, I can't find this name now on the internet :) I used to sleep early and wake up early so there was just about 30 mins of time for me to get bored, during which I used to usually hear to my grandmother's stories and chats. I (we) could hear her for hours together. That 1.5 hours of time used to be so crucial in my life, radio was the device that made me familiar with most of the old Hindi songs. Normally the anchor used to say 'aaaiye sunte hain fauji bhaiyon (she used to read out the entire list of fauji bhais who made the farmaaish) ki pasand ka gaana x (male singer) aur y (female singer) ki aawaaz mein film z se'...I could tell from the names of the playback singers on which song was going to come. There were days when none of the channels played good songs, and that day I used to go into depression, very bad sleep, very low enthusiasm for school the next morning but followed by an exciting wait for the clock to tick 7:00PM again, to hear good songs. Almost all the singers I knew only through the radio, that's why I think I know the films and songs and singers but I don't know the videos and the picturizations of many, many. There are songs like 'muskuraata hua dil churaata hua mera yaar' from the movie Lahoo ke do rang starring Vinod Khanna and Shabana Azmi, it is a beautiful songs with very good lyrics but the picturization is extremely hillarious (not meant to be :)). Another such song is 'chalte chalte mere yeh geet yaad rakhna'. And many more.
I used to come home for the radio, I used to finish homework other than Maths fast for the radio so that I can do Maths during the radio time, I used to keep the radio attached to myself throughout the evening and sometimes a bit later in the night too when I wasn't sleepy, it used to be my life! I could not have existed without that device. It was indeed my best friend, till the time it existed at home and the time it became extinct, I miss it so much! Even now, I love to hear good Hindi songs, mostly slow and not too loud ones unless the song has really good beats and there are many more avenues available for the same, but that fascination is irreplaceable.

2. Book(s):
My mother was a very intelligent girl/woman and for various reasons, could not pursue her studies & career the way she wanted to. She was an introvert, not liking many people around her and always appreciated being in touch with books and always used to tell us to make a book our best friend. She used to make us 'read' (apart from 'studying') books as a part of our daily routine. My elder sister enjoyed it more than me, for me it was a bit boring at times and irritating too when my mother forced me a lot to read when I didn't want to. We were forced to read all sorts of things - essays, lives of great people, bed-time stories and what not! The first time I read some sort of a short story was in my 12th standard's English subject book of short stories. The first short story I completed I felt really good, I realized I was engrossed in the story so much that it was a surprise for me to find out where I was after I completed the story. I developed the habit of reading gradually but never actually took proper time out to read regularly. After I met my husband, I picked up the habit from him again and developed quite a bit as he reads a lot. Quite a few years now, I feel my mother was right in many ways, books are and can be actually very good friends of ours. It feels very nice and refreshing to meet them often. It is good to take time out for them. These are the friends always there with you, they will always have time for you and give you knowledge and information that become amazing tools to build all sorts of conversations. I truly admire people who write and every time I see any book stall or a depot or a big shop, I am left dumbfounded by the massive amounts of information/knowledge/recreation/entertainment that lies inside those infinite number of books. Hats-off to all the writers in this world!

3. Dog:
Read I as We (my husband and me)
What do I say after the universal saying about this best friend! I have this friend of mine with me for over 6 years now. And it is not that my parents got it home and I am just another member of the family. I got him myself, into my family and I take care of him myself. Long back I learnt speaking English standing the conversing in front of a mirror. I did study in English medium throughout and while I was theoretically perfect, I did lack in speaking skills. Wherever there was a mirror and I found some time with it alone, I used to whisper in front of that in English randomly. Now, it is not for practice that I do, but I think this friend of mine has replaced the mirror now :) No matter how much I speak, he listens to me. I was an extreme introvert who hardly uttered a word with anyone around. After getting him home, I have started speaking to people much more than I used to do earlier. He sleeps when I sleep, he runs around the house when he knows I am home and he can't find me around, he waits for me at the door when I go out in odd unusual hours (they recognize patterns somehow), he waits for me to talk to him, he waits for me to make something for him as he likes food cooked by me more than his regular food, the clock ticks 6:30PM and he starts waiting for me when he is left at his day care thinking I would come and pick him up any time (again a pattern he has recognized and concluded something logically). Emotional blackmail :) but I come home running from wherever I am because I know he is waiting for me. I give up dinners and any outings in the evenings to stay with him because I know he likes to be with me, I avoid as much as possible to keep him alone at home during the evenings because I know he doesn't like me going out leaving him alone at home in the evenings. I need not do all this, he doesn't demand anything nor does he create any damage when alone at home any time, but I don't know why I still do, with no pain or force. My best(est) friend indeed!

Reading print!

When I am at leisure (actual leisure after I am done with anything to do with the many connected devices around me), the one activity that I really want to do is read something offline - print!
When I am reading a newspaper, invariably I come across something that is very informative and it has come to me organically without me looking for it. I am sure I would never have 'searched' for it and there are very, very remote chances that I would have been reading up something related so that I would have got this particular article as a recommendation; there is also very, very, very small chance that any of my friends/connections on Facebook or LinkedIn would have posted it - and even smaller a chance that I would not have missed it!

Whenever I go to the beauty parlour, I pick up a magazine from there (ranging from fashion to cinema to retailer to Outlook to anything else that's available there) and I end up reading at least a consolidated 15-20 pages of different articles which are too good - which I would have never found online, but I feel thankful I found them and read them. Not too sure if such a content is not there online, or I am unable to find it, or such good writers are not publishing and popularizing themselves & their work online. More importantly, it is somehow more relaxing also to read something in those magazines or any print version.

Today, for example I went to the parlour and read up 3-4 different articles from various magazines available there - one article on big data in online retail; another was an interview of Ajit Joshi, MD of Infiniti Retail; another article on hot coconut oil massage for hair :); another article on the changing trends in bollywood dialogues - the author thinks that the current audience is possibly not apt for the dialogues like 'jaani yeh chaaku hai, bachchon ke khelne ki cheez nahin, haath kat jaaye toh khoon nikal aata hai' or 'Saleem tumhe marne nahin dega aur hum Anarkali tumhein jeene nahin deenge' - but also puts a very interesting viewpoint of hers that probably there are no actors who can deliver those or such dialogues with that much depth and impact - very true I thought! And finally, I came across this hilarious cartoon depiction of the movie Ram-Leela, my Gujju friends would be able to appreciate the humour in it much better, but all would love I am sure, read page by page:



Each of the articles I read were extremely well written, they were all seasoned writers it is apparent; somehow online is more casual though it may have its own charm and definitely opens up the platform to many unseasoned writers to express themselves, but online has a long way to go and compete with print when it comes to impress people who really like reading, it may be another point that such audience might be slowly diminishing too.

How it died!

I was driving my car to the nearby market for some usual work. There was this so called city-bus in front of me on the road, driving very slow and stopping every few seconds just 50 mts away from the market to pick many people taking advantage of the slow-moving traffic to get into the bus at their own pace & places of choice to avoid walking for the small 3-5 mts stretch.

There were two piglets (about 0.75 ft tall and about the same in height so they were not too small) trying to cross the road from the right side of the road to the left, running one behind the other.

1st second:
I notice these two piglets trying to cross the road and one of them quickly making its way to the other side just before the bus moves, and the second one, very confused trying to just follow the first one.

2nd second:
I stop, wanting to let the piglet pass before me in case it wants to since it was so confused. By then the bus hits it - not too hard but it is already touched by the bus, probably the front tyre which looked really giant in front of the little pink creature.

3rd second:
The piglet thinks it has escaped itself and tries to cross the road from the space between the front and rear tyres of the bus. The bus hits it and drags it for a fraction of a second. I hear and see the piglet's baby screams. It was shocked and didn't know what was happening with it, tried to get out of that situation but of course could not.

4th second:
The tyre crosses from top of it piercing it, and I see its stomach and intestines out in blood. The piglet could not scream anymore but it was alive, its voice was gone though it looked like it wanted to scream.

5th second:
It fluttered 1...2...3 for half a second and then it was still!

<tch>

The obsession to self-dependence

I belong to a Telugu Brahmin (top-notch) family in which the concept of maid servants is unheard of. Reason being the caste differences: the kitchen, the puja area etc. are supposed to be SO auspicious that very few people in the home are allowed to enter those – that too immediately after bathing, wrapping that wet saree around, just in case any of the readers understands Telugu, it is called ‘madi’. There is this 'madi' time every morning for a few hours where usually the eldest lady in the home along with one other for help; does puja, cooks food etc. And a shorter version of the 'madi' happens in the evening (sandhya time) also. I stayed with my grandmother for a few years, and we used to make trips often and thanks to that I know all of this. I used to blindly accept these as we were taught the same from the childhood, though I don't agree to all this superstitions now, I do respect people doing it, it is their way of generating positive energy, of course if done religiously - it is the intent that matters of course! We grew up in Ahmedabad with my parents, my mother also never had a maid - one reason could be her upbringing & family, and the other reason could be that she never considered Gujarat to be her land, she never trusted anyone there generally, not even now after almost 30 years! - also probably because we could not afford one, and all of us were females at home so we used to  manage things ourselves well.

So, basically, we never had a household help due to various reasons. My grandmother was a very good housewife. She used to manage a lot of things by herself and used to keep the house as clean as possible. Rarely would she ask for anyone’s help. Somehow, her 2 daughters could not get this quality, but her 3 granddaughters – my 2 sisters and I got this to the core - the obsession to cleanliness, and I have gone 2 steps further, I caught another obsession - the one to self-dependence. We were not like this earlier but slowly and gradually, especially after starting our own households, this quality became too much ingrained.

I started my household in Kuwait where I didn’t need a maid. Though, due to my husband’s generosity we got one to clean our home & car once a week, there was no need for cleaning beyond once a week, but still I did. I never admired the guy cleaning my place, I wanted to do it myself :)

We shifted to Hyderabad, getting a help who would work religiously (as per my definition) was a pain there. We changed 2-3 helps in a span of 2-3 months and each of them had attitudes to the core - why can't they study and do sophisticated jobs then, I wonder. Overall, my experience with helps wasn't good - the main cause is my expectations are too high from them. We shifted to Gurgaon, the house was bigger, and it was extremely cold for me who had never seen the actual North India winters before. I was not sure if I could manage the entire maid-like activities of my house myself. I started off but soon I got a maid, I didn't like her work. But I had learnt to deal with it by then, along with my job in the new place, managing everything was tough. The maid left - one maid - then the other - then the other - then another - and almost 10 maids now - again I am left with none! I did get 1-2 good ones though, meeting my expectations but they left without any notice, such an irritating act!

When I analyze, it is not the dissatisfaction with the work - it is the dependence that kills me more! Waiting for someone to come when he/she is not turning up at the committed time or when one leaves without informing - is the worst part of dependence - whether it is a driver or a maid or a bathroom cleaner or a plumber. Getting the work done and the work not to the satisfaction - is another part. Asking someone else to do something that I can do myself is the most difficult thing for me, next to impossible. I like to do everything on my own unless there is no option, because I can do it at my own pace, the output is as expected and no frustration and a lot of satisfaction in the end. It is very tiring at times managing too many things - sometimes I also hurt myself while doing household work, but I learn a lot, I am able to sustain individually. I have used many household tools since childhood - I play an electrician, a maid of course, a plumber, I had played a mochi (cobbler) also [when I was getting married, my mother commented "throw the mochi kit away now, the mochi is going :)"] - I have all these tools at my home and I feel very glad I am able to use them to fix small things which would end up in dependencies on many different individuals otherwise. And also I do it in an educated & a smarter (I have learnt to always keep looking for the smartest way to do a job) manner than the actual helps using smarter tools so its fulfilling. There are things beyond my capabilities - like repairing a soldered work say - even this small amount of dependence when I know the job is out of my capability is something that I cannot digest fully!!! In the process I must say I have collected many good tools :)

I don't know if it is good or bad, it might be unrealistic, but in the current times I am glad I have this obsession!

C'hhh'ennai 'Y'express

(I actually have a page dedicated to movie reviews but since I am not able to write reviews regularly, I thought of putting this one as a blog post)

Today I had a true South Indian treat - one was the lunch at a new authentic south indian restaurant Madhuban that was so authentic that it reminded me of my grandmother seriously (not in the Hindi sense of 'naani yaad aa  gayi' - :p) - her coconut chutney, her tomato paste-type chutney and her dal chutney: yes there are too many chutneys and powders that we South Indians eat :)

The second one was the movie "Chennai Express"...well, I feel so nice that I am familiar with and am able to follow and relate to the most prominent regional languages & cultures of our country - South Indian (any of the 4 states), Gujarati, Bengali. Hindi is of course well known to me by virtue of the push that my family had on me to learn Hindi in my school. And hence, am able to enjoy the sarcasms depicted around these cultures in our Hindi cinemas & shows.

I read 2 types of reviews of this movie Chennai Express before going & watching it - one was the newspaper's critic review which sounded good & genuine & gave the movie 3.5 stars. The other one was a viewer review that gave the movie a 1 star. I didn't expect too much out of the movie because of the following:
- I could not relate to & imagine Deepika Padukone doing any justice with the Tamil accent
- I could not tolerate any movie of Rohit Shetty apart from his first Golmaal (that was a fantastic movie)
- I thought he would bore with long scenes on blowing up cars and other nonsensical things

The movie started on a very high note I must say, especially with the comedy and Shahrukh Khan's acting. The entry of Deepika Padukone was good and funny, the scene was not dragged too much and the fun elements that were put in the movie which usually Farah Khan uses in hers were good like relating dialogues & scenes to SRK's earlier movies in a funny way...were good, apt and unexpected. Deepika Padukone has become a very good actor I admit - I liked her a lot in 'Yeh Jawani Hai Diwani', they say she acted very well and had a good role even in 'Cocktail', I just disliked the fact that Saif Ali Khan was looking like an uncle of the two girls and hence can't resist the movie. Her Tamil accent was surprisingly good and more than the accent, her typical south indian-like hand & face movements while talking were very well practised. SRK's acting and especially the punches with the confusion with Tamil were too good. Half the movie was in Tamil, the clothing etc was entirely South Indian, it can very well be declared as a Tamil movie - the only thing is in Tamil land, they will miss the fun of contexts to the other Hindi movies. I loved the music by Vishal Shekhar, the two songs lungi dance and 1-2-3-4 song - the typical element of the non-stop random movements all through the song was genuinely South Indian. Such a film actually can be dedicated to Rajni Sir and so his virtual presence was justified completely :) The cinematography was good, choice of scenery was very, very good. The only thing I felt about lungi dance is that the two actors were a bit sophisticated for such a song & probably that sophistication could not do complete justice to the steps for such a song!

What I thought was missing in the movie was there was no single instance of the mention of the word 'aiyyaiyyo' or even simply 'aiyyo' :) The word had many instances in the movie to fit itself perfectly well - like for instance when the couple had fled as narrated by Deepika, the instant reaction of the villagers a South Indian would expect is this.

Anyone who does not have a touch or have not experienced a flavour of South Indian culture will not be able to appreciate the film. I guess the 1-star rating to this film is by one of those :) I feel very sorry for the fun they miss in life! The film definitely deserves at least a 3 from my side.

Bollywood & us!

Sometimes I think what would it be if there was no Bollywood! (its not cinema, its Bollywood that I am particularly mentioning here)

For a thin layer of the society, it may be just any other source of entertainment and may not be so important. But imagine the innumerable people in our country who are probably just alive because of Bollywood. I wonder how many live because Rajnikanth is there! How many people must have become left-handed just because Amitabh Bachchan is! How many people must have learnt or taught their children some form of classical dance because Sridevi or Hema Malini are! Of course things have changed a lot since the actual 'cinema', but somewhere it is these emotions within our country that make the country special and very different from the rest of the world. Could totally depend on the sheer mass of population that tends to just 'emotionally' admire these stars with no logic. I was named 'Sridevi' after the actress that is admired by 3 generations in our family - my grandparents admire her for the 5-year old girl who played a role in the old Telugu black & white movie named Chanakya (Akkineni Nageswara Rao had also enacted in that movie). My mother loves her eyes and especially her saree look with that long plaited hair - like the character 'Anju' in the movie Chaalbaaz. I obviously like her too - I particularly like her acting and I thought she looked wonderful & her best in the movie Chandni. The 3 stories of the movie Bombay Talkies (except the Karan Johar's) were amazing depictions of the impact of Bollywood on the society. I love what the scene with Nawazuddin Siddiqui closing his eyes after his little accomplishment conveys silently! I can totally understand the murabba story, that last twist was fantastic, my mouth remained open during those 10 minutes of climax :)

The passion with which movies were made especially till about 3-4 years earlier before the cinema took a bit of a changing turn is something that particularly interests me. The passion with which the movie 'Hum' was made. It is interesting that even then actually the difference between the leading male star and leading female star was quite the same as it is now. Probably because at that time information dissemination was so limited that one could not actually find out how old a star was :) I was watching this video of Simi Garewal's 'Rendevous' show in which the Bachchans came, they talked about the accident of the BigB during the Coolie movie and how he was in coma and almost died, he was reborn all over again is what they say. I just wonder how many normal people's lives came to a stand-still during those days of Amitabh Bachchan being in coma! No wonder the crowd gathering before the hospital after he came alive again and went out. A colleague tells me that the news headlines every day at that time were saying that we were losing the superstar.

The legendary movie 'Sholay' - Ramesh Sippy's newspaper interview on the occasion of the centenary film festival said he had made the movie with no violence actually seen. The change of the scene is what conveyed the violence - like the Thakur's story narrated after the Holi song and Gabbar saying 'yeh haath humko de thakur' and the change of scene with his shawl flying off. Similarly Gabbar pressing the insect in his hands and the change of scene with Sachin's dead body :) What --- a -- thought, I felt! What passion! What involvement! And that's what makes a movie legendary it is like you don't make a viral ad, it becomes viral by itself - it is the passion that makes it viral. Infinite number of TV shows even now recollect those moments, mimicking the styles of Shatrughan Sinha, or BigB, or Pran or Rajesh Khanna or anyone - how much one misses of not being able to follow & admire these shows/programs/acts I wonder, I am one of the fortunate ones thankfully!

I love recollecting the suspense of which movie would be played on that one Sunday evening, or which language movie (our family used to wait for a Telugu movie) would be played on the Sunday afternoon after that news for dumb & deaf! I even remember my grandparents 'listening' to the movie 'Bawarchi' on the 'radio' !!! - I am sure some small towns & villages have this fascination even now! The music, the dialogues (arrey oh pushpa!! or 9 lakh ke haar ke liye 12 lakh ke aansoo!! or one of the latest '....arfi'), the dialogue delivery - the entire thing about making you sit for 2-3 hours and make you "FEEL" emotions & the drama that are being played on the screen! - Commendable. And how we all carry those emotions back home and drive ourselves motivated through our lives basis those emotions is far from being logical! But that's the reality, and how amazing is this reality!

Some classic music pieces in the praise of Hindi cinema (of course you can look up for many more on YouTube):
Aap ki nazron ne samjha
Aaj puraani raahon se
Mujhe naulakha manga de re
Kasme waade pyaar wafa sab
Lagi aaj saawan ki phir woh jhadi hai