Of Maamis and Mamiyaars!

Maamis are an Indian species,  who have a unique possession called "vaith erichal" or in other words, "green eyes", with which they emit envious radiation on children and youngsters. You come across these species when you are dragged to family functions, marriages, and get-togethers. Their rays can affect you from spoiling your mood till making you really frustrated in the end. But the truth is that we all have to face these species in this Indian society. They also possess other avatars like chitti (maasi), perima (badi maa), etc.
My encounters with such species have been pretty interesting, so far. When I was a kid, I did not understand their techniques and methodologies. For example, one maami would often tell my mom, how tanned I have become. After a point of time both my mom and I got irritated, but when we saw her kids, they were really tanned! Then, one always wanted to create a complex in me. So, she would always praise my cousin sister in front of me.
Another one, the most irritating of all, whom I have learned to ignore, would be ready with her advices. She is one hell of an agony aunt, who would give free advices to everyone around. She would tell me that you kids are so spoilt, you see MTV all day, don't learn good manners. Ahem, her girls dress like MTV VJs and even put on accents, and she is advising me! Once, when all maamis made a gang, ya gang :'(... and started to pressurize my mom to get me married, this one started advising me on how should I change my manners and all. I was so tempted to talk back "Why don't you advise your gals? They change boyfriends like their nail paints, go out with guys, sit in their lap, drink with them and even put the photos on Facebook and orkut. They need your free advises more than me!"
Recently, when I had to meet this maami, she came to know that I was doing my MBA. She told me about a girl who was also doing MBA in a college with less fees. As usual, I ignored her. :)
In the end, how ever tempted to talk back you are, its best to ignore these people. But what I have observed so far, is that these maamis are jealous because their girls are not doing that well as I am. So they take out their frustration in this way. So long, my dear maamis......

Are our metros still standing?

Are our four glorious metros: Delhi , Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai as great as they were during the British era?
My answer is that these metros have only been successful in changing their names so far. Mumbai, my favorite city, when it comes to bashing, is so broken today.
The underworld threats, political problems, pollution, fully non-functional infrastructure, and the overgrowing population have harmed the city so badly that future development in the city is uncertain. Kolkata's political non-development agenda to keep the people poor and businesses away has been successful so far. Today, it is not even considered a metro. Chennai, is better than Kolkata, as it has attracted the IT and and a reasonably functional infrastructure. But I foresee social squabbles because of the increasing influx of immigrants. And it has a closed culture due to which it is not preferred by expats.
Delhi is the only survivor because it is the capital. It has managed a reasonable infrastructure, a pretty good influx in businesses, planned suburbs and a quality life. And Delhi is slowly usurping the title of financial capital from Mumbai, as financial businesses are moving their head offices to Delhi.
In the end, the fact remains that today tier 2 cities like Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad have a better quality of life compares to these metros. And tier 3 cities like Ahmedabad, Mysore, Coimbatore and Jaipur are also joining the bandwagon.
Hence, the so-called metros need to do a reality check and see where they are. For all that I know, It will take a century before Mumbai becomes Shanghai ;)

Review on Raavan

Highlights:

Prithviraj is hot without moustache!

Ash and Vikram have done a good job.

Storyline and direction are pretty good, but dint feel Mani Ratnam's oomph factor.

Good music!

Things I did not like:

Long poetry like dialogs

Karthik flying like "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon"

Prabhu- He irritates me....

Well the story is around Tirunelveli, but I doubt its shot there....its more like Ooty and Kodai, cos lots of mountains around. Ash is perfect for the role of Sita. ;) Married but still makes any guy go mad for her!

In all a good entertainer, but not worth spending money at Inox to watch this.

A pirate that I was meant to be!

Well for those who know me will also know that I must be talking about a game ;). The game is "The curse of monkey Island". Never guessed that a point and click game can be so interesting and challenging. Nevertheless this game is awesome and so funny.

The main character in the game is a wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood. He rescues his lover Elaine from the Zombie pirate Lechuck. The characters that Guybrush meets during his quests are very interesting and the clues are also planned brilliantly.

I got stuck in this game so many times that I have finally started using hints from the web. I know that sucks but I am not that intelligent to solve all the puzzles by myself. The scenarios in this game are also very fascinating. This game is so made for me.


All in all, a very adventurous game for all wannabe pirates. :)

Corporate Sheman!

Women make a bad example, when they try to ape men. One such example was Priya. When she laughed, her team mates would get scared. People in the office kept as far from her as possible. Whenever, someone joined her team, they would get the “best of luck” from people around. She was one great example of people who liked to drop their shit on others and penalize them for that.

She had scraped her way through promotions by her family influence and became a team lead. So, she was very insecure about her abilities. Once, a new project manager joined the company. When Priya got introduced to her, she introduced herself as a project manager!

She had her harassing techniques in place. Whenever she received a storyboard, she would make a hell lot of edits and tell the content writer that it was a poor quality work. Whenever people replied in mail for doubts clearance and verification, Priya will never mail back to them. She would go and sort it out verbally. This was her strategy, because later whatever was wrong would be shoved back to the person and she would be on the safe side. Her motto was to never make anything formal from her side so that she will not be held responsible.

She had no hint about the word professionalism. She thought that her team members were puppets and she can behave however and talk anything to them. She would demand formal birthday treats from her team members in the name of team activity. She would call people names, under the pretext of being friendly. Whenever someone would tell her politely to stop doing it, she would get back at them and say that they are not cooperating as a team.

Her best tool was that she was irritating to the core. People would do anything to make her go away. Therefore, she was a difficult person to handle. When someone would get the strength to confront her, she would just confuse them. They would give up and she would prove them wrong.

Phew, never thought I would meet such people. But only when you meet such people, will you know the worth of good people.

Petting memories

It all started from Kiki. She was my first pet. She lived in the kitchen window extension area, with her mom, dad, and little sister. Thats when we discovered the pigeon nest. Well, we discovered it, when Kiki's parents nested one set of babies before Kiki's turn. But at that point, the baby was almost grown up and was learning to fly. Kiki was around 10 days old when I saw her. She would squeak so loudly when her mom visited in the evening. Her voice could be heard in my room, when I was busy playing age of empires. She would try to put her beak into her mom's beak and pester for food. Her sister had a weak growth from beginning. She stopped growing from her 6th or 7th day. Kiki looked very old, big, and fluffy in front of her. When mom and I used to peek from behind the window, Kiki's mom would know that someone is around. She would hint her to stop squeaking and stand still. Both of them would stand there without moving, like statues. Kiki was the cutest baby I had seen. Her innocent round eyes, her small wings, cute little tail feathers, her cute squeaks that earned her the name Kiki. :)
Then came peeku and teeku, velvet, later pingu, black beauty, baby and a whole lot of cuties, who made our window their home. In some time, there were babies in our bedroom windows, and balcony area too. Whenever I was bored, I would pick and gather the babies and have a tea party. Their dads who baby-sitted in the day time would get annoyed with me. One dad at the kitchen nest would make weird pigeon sounds to tell me that he wanted his babies back.
I miss them so badly. Watching them was so much fun. The mom pigeon cuddling the babies, the mom and dad sharing the egg-sitting duties, the babies learning to fly. Take it from me: Birds, especially pigeons make the best pets!

All's swell that ends well!

Phew! The journey along these five months have been pretty insightful for me. You never know where life takes you and you reach a point and introspect to find out that thats the place, where you wanted to be and were planning to be. These five months were definitely my testing period but I did reach where I planned to be. So, I will have a good night's sleep today.

To begin with, let me tell in simple words, what I went through for these five months. Starting with the placement season at my college, my first interview was with Manipal for a marcom role and ya I was not selected. I took it with a pinch of salt and moved on thinking that I will get a better role. Then came Optima on day zero of placement, where again I was put aside. Then there was Heymath, where I thought this would be the one. But when I reached their office, I felt a tinge of my old elearning days and asked myself, if I wanted to go back to the same atmosphere. My interviewer set me free and I was again rejected and this time I was not disappointed. Then came Marg, 3I, Everonn, Exemplarr, and Infinity.

Finally, I started searching for a job myself, which was a more disgusting experience. I got calls for technical writing(most boring job around), IDing (less boring but boring), and even call center openings! Even more worse was that most of them were on contract to hire. Everyday became routine where I started applying for as many jobs possible in Naukri ( trying to reach the goal of applying 50 openings per day) besides playing sorority life.

Surprisingly, I got a call from a corp comm role in TVS, I applied and was called for an interview. Even more surprising was that they selected me that day itself. Well, now I look back and find out how life is so testing but also promising.

Ahem..., so I met the VP of GSCM yesterday, will be meeting VP HR today and things are pretty interesting at this point of time. So I am to make up for the time and start filling my blog space again!

Maximum sad city

Bombay, Mumbai, Bumbai, Bumbaaai……The plight of the city is nothing but its spirit, undying spirit called hatred. The problem of Bombay (its still Bombay for me) is that it was born out of violence. Therefore, it still lives amidst violence and might even die out of violence. Its main problem is diversity. Bombay was diverse even before it was born, unlike Chennai (doesn’t make a difference…..) or Calcutta(here too its still Calcutta for me).

In all my 23 years of stay in Bombay, I was mainly a victim of groupism. Well I was always a victim of many things. But coming back to the subject, I found others too sidelined, in school, college, not much in workplace, but many of my friends experienced it, so it exists anyways. In my school, there used to be a marathi group, a gujarathi group, and an north Indian group. Unfortunately no south Indian group, so I finally managed to fit in a Northie group, that too without being fully accepted. But then I have got over it now.

This city has people with different mentalities staying in the same place, that’s why, one experiences such an animosity around. It has the bombaite mostly from north, who lives in posh areas in South Bombay, hangs around in Pubs and Discs and does not vote. Then it has the mumbaite, who is a middle class non-maharashtrian, settled here only for a job, partially votes, and feels guilty when Shiv Sena launches a campaign against him. Then there is the mumbaikar, who is a maharashtrian, settled here from interior parts of the state again for job, votes, and thinks that he/she should get a job just for the reason of being a maharashtrian and therefore supports Shiv Sena. But little does he/she know that the party is here only for money. And then there is the muslim community, who have been here for long, who face the usual identity crisis. When they wear out, they finally start supporting the terrorists. For all who do not know, Dawood Ibrahim is very much from Mumbai, who ironically supports its undying spirit.

India versus China..

Almost everyone in the business world is discussing it. From Prof. TN Srinivasan's lecture, the fact that India and China together had 50% of the world's GDP in the 18th century, came out. It is so enthralling to think that India was once a rich country. It is even more enthralling that it is gaining back its glory and we are all a part of it. A whole century of utter poverty has made us feel that we as a country can never be powerful again. But things change so fast.

When I used to read Childcraft around 20 years back, I used to see images of India as a little girl in rags in a field. Well the picture has not entirely changed. The little girl is in the field, bur she is not in rags anymore.

The professor told us that if India had opened trade barriers in 1966 itself, our growth rate would have been far beyond of what it is now. He also said that countries like Korea and Malaysia opened up in that era. So they have surpassed India. But I have a different opinion. It is good that we opened up late. I know that this might not be a intelligent analogy but it fits. India, like the Hindi cinema hero has been taking all the lashes of the villains for a long time. But during this time, it gathered strength from inside, in becoming self sufficient. So now when it finally strikes back to the world, it is a powerful strike and a sustainable one in strategic terms.

Many argue that India has concentrated on being an inward economy that why it lost out to the competition earlier. On the other hand China, has been outward and hence experienced a rapid growth rate. But a rapid growth rate is not a sustainable growth rate. Just like crash dieting is not a sustainable way of losing weight, though it makes you lose weight immediately. India has had a slow growth rate compared to China. India has not grown with foreign investments but China has.

India's greatest victory so far has been that it could run its house amidst severe global recession. But India's greatest loss that it still has not finalized it foreign affairs strategy. It has not chosen allies and enemies. As a country, we need to realize that we can't be friends with all the nations. Having a Prime Minister who smiles and spreads goodwill is not the only solution. Our government needs to make strategic decisions.

Copenhagen Summit or the blame game summit..

Yet another summit without any results. It is very ironical the way the west tries to create summits and try to bully small nations. It was successful at bullying before because it was self sufficient before. It is not now because it depends on the east for its resources now.

Now it is a blame game on who screwed mother nature and who has to pay. The rules are to invest methods to bully others into paying for their sins. Each one reminds the other of their sins. But no one accepts the sin and most surprisingly no one feels guilty at all. The US reminds India and China on the wastage of resources. India and China remind US that it uses more energy than both the countries put together. And the game goes on. Europe is in a trance between guilt and denial. The Western Europe says that we need to pay for our sins. The Eastern Europe says that we are not guilty so will not pay. Alas it was just yesterday when Turkey was the sick man of Europe. But now the number of patients have increased.

The Arabs are happy because they know how to sell their energy and resources. The Africans are unhappy because they are not even aware that their energy is being used.

And it is a sad sad world, where one has the Big Mac and the big bucks and the other struggles to survive.