The return of the Blogger...Evolving Thoughts

You would have noticed that I am back with a bang on my blog after a gud 10 months :D ... now setting the record straight on this it can only be attributed to my current status of employment ... and i'm loving it !!
life has been great over these months .... and learnings ever so , after travelling across probably the most inhospitable places on earth over the last year (atleast of whatever little I hav seen in this short life) and another year of added experience :) ,there has been quite a change in the way I see things .... My initial obsession with doing something to change the way things work here in India have come a full circle , being involved with a lot of "like minded" ppl , seeing the way things work away from home has made me realize that the vast country that India is with all its cultural / regional diversity and the way the political democratic system works here .... there is little that can be done by an individual, and its not attributed the fact that we dont have the will to do it or the ability , it comes from the very fact that coming to a consensual agreement on any issue of national importance in this nation even among the educated elite is near impossible and the fact is everyone seems to be right the way they see things, and if you add to it the aspirations of the larger populace of the vast uneducated India it gets even worse. And trying to do anything you deem correct will only be imposing your school of thought over a vast majority !!
India as such is correctly called a sub continent, it surely cant be one nation with a common culture , a common history and a common vision , and the fact that we still have been able to co exist can only be called an extraordinary achievement of all of us which I would rather controversially attribute to the Hindu way of life which is predominant in our country otherwise ther is no reason we would have been another europe with every state being a nation in its own right.
Now coming to the larger question , what is our future ?? I belive the media and and the Information revolution in the decades to come willl play a huge role in either integrating India into a common culture or on the other side if it gets a bit irresponsible ... might as well lead to a disintegration .... as both these forces do exist .. it will depend on which one is flashed across .... common national achievements in the world stage will play an important part .... Judicial activism as they call it is the first impact the media has been able to achieve ... and its a positive start , for any society forceful control is the precursor to creating a general positive cultural control ... and the judiciary has a role toplay here ..and to keep it in check ... it comes back to the media to exert the correct kind of pressure ...
But again coming to the first point made .... the real challenge will be actually coming to consensual agreements of major issues which plague our country and with so many perspectives thru which any issue can be viewed will make it ever so difficult .... but then again we have been moving ahead for the last 60 yrs even though very slowly there should not be any reason why it wont continue ...

Climate Change - the Inevitable

There has been a lot of debate recently about how Human activity has led to a dramatic change in world climate and how such changes ... being irreversible will forever change things for the worse ..
Now whether this change is for the better or for the worse ... is maybe debatable , what is not is that change is inevitable !! .... had it not been for such changes dinosours wouldnt have gone and probably we as Homo Sapiens wouldnt have evolved ... for dinosours change was for the worse ... for humans maybe for the better. Change is something that will happen ... whether we as Humans contribute or not is a different story .... There is a lot of talk about the legacy we will be leaving for our children and future generations ... I just dont understand this when we all know that our planet earth is doomed by astronomical facts ... so if that end comes a few generations earlier or later shouldnt concern us all that much...
For me the best possible legacy we can leave to future generations can only be scientic research and development through which hopefully we can reach a stage where inhabiting space becomes a possibility and for that if u need too pump in all the more CFCs or CO2 ... so be it , and if we cant do that .. we should live life the best we can and enjoy it till it lasts .. slowing down indutrial growth and technology innovation just to preserve the climate for a few more years really doesnt help.
My firm belief is ... as we have evolved over generations ... our future generations will also evolve .... and adapt to the climatic conditions they face at their time ...if they cant as darwin said they will and should perish.
And finally the ultimate fact remains unless we move out from our planet ... our days our numbered!!

The Rahul Bose style of humour ....

there have been a plethora of filmy(bollywood) award functions all over tv in recent times and I have been made to go thru quite a few of them ... txs to my roomie ... i was surprised at the nominations and awards being doled out in most of these ... we had nominations for among the worst films of the yr ... if screen had a fondness for Vivah ... which was nominated for every category possible , filmfare had a soft corner for KANK ... which as per my view should be close contenders for the worst film of the year .....
though there were a few deserved ones like RDB and Lage raho .... I was surprised not to find even a cursory nomination for Pyar ke side efects which in my view was among the best entertainers of the year .... another one of rahul bose's classic jhankaar beats which came a few years back also doesnt find the kind of appreciation that that kind of humour .. i feel deserves ..... or is it me only who has ...what do u call it ... a weird sense of humour ??

My Passion for Cricket ... has the end come ???

after Indias dismall performance in the carribean there was a recent discussion with friends and fellow cricket buffs ... , many were of the view ... wht a waste of time following cricket .... especially the way we follow .... ball by ball till the last ball is bowled :) .... the general view was that cricket is for retired ppl who dont have anything better to do !! ..... logically speaking sounds pretty true ... who in this fast paced world can afford to put in 8 hrs often bunking work ... sitting in the canteen or even goin to the extent of taking an off from work ..... to watch this stupid game !! ... and in that respect India crashing out from the super 8's has indeed been a blessing in disguise for a atleast a few who can now do that “somethg better”.
After that discussion which led to a surprisingly unanimous conclusion ....i just thought for a while ..... what can that “something better” be in my case , which i'll do instead of watching the next India Pak ODI whenever that happens or even the 17 or so ODI' s India is supposed to play against Aus this year of which I am pretty sure we will lose a min of 15 ...
Only then I realized that if there is anything near what ppl call “passionate about“ .... cricket beats the 2nd second most by miles ... and it has been that way atleast since 1987 when I was 7 years old ... my big bro told me that India will play pakistan in the finals of something called a cricket world cup .... I didnt know much about cricket then ... just that India was the world champions having won the last world cup and also the world championship .... off which I have faint images of seeing Shastri winnig the champions of champions trohpy and along with that an Audi ..... with the complete cricket team on top of it after the presentations ..... India never played pakistan in that final with both losing in the semis .... and Inidia been done in by one Graham Gooch century ... that was the first time Australia won a world cup and for sure it wudnt be their last !!
actually cricket was not the first sport to have captured my imagination ... it was sometime in the summer of 1986 when we had recently got a new - second hand color TV ... my bro and father were quite excited about the prospect of a 16 or so yr old lad taking on one Ivan lendl whom i distinctly remember my brother calling him the best in business at that time .... I really had no real idea what this sport of tennis was all about .... but since my entire family was glued to the TV set that evening .... i was witness to history, I still distinctly remeber the setting that day ... in our pali hill flat , with the TV at one corner of the drawing room and me lying on the diwan at the opposite end , and believe me I had just turned 6 then ! I have imgaes inscribed in memory of Boris Becker flying all over the court taking impossible volleys and generating non geometric angles on them .... that very day i fell in love with the sport and Boris becker was my hero and he still is .... I remember playing against the wall with piece of wood and a tennis ball .... something I quite later realized resempled squash more than tennis ... but for me I was then the invinsible Becker and the wall were all his comtemporaries :) ... my love for the sport later bloomed following another great ... steffi graf , her calm demeanour and composure and that deadly forehand over the excrutiatingly noisy Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and later monica seles ... whon i hated from the bottom of my heart !! .... and this love affair culminated at the wimbledon of 1989 when Boris Becker and Steffy graf won the singles titles in the same year ....
But once my heroes were gone .. i hv never been as passionate about tennis as i was once upon a time ... and the sheer dominance of federer has further eroded the charm ...... my Passion for cricket has lasted longer and today if I lose that, there will surely be a void .... difficult to fill .... and the dominance of Australia over the last decade akin to that of Federer ... and Indias reluctance/inability to move ahead .... has all the ingredients to bring an end to what can easily be said as my only love today !! ...

Survival ... the Basic instinct

Being in the place I am, among all its constraints and restrictions, is my compulsion to watch CNN world endlessly.... there isn’t another English language channel around :( ,

Of what i had heard of CNN ... of its being a US propaganda mouthpiece is not far from wrong.. you find most of the reports bragging about what the US is doing ... on the War on terror in Iraq ....or how will the highly advanced missile defense system can track a north Korean missile launch, inform Bush about it within x secs , get a decision in y secs and shoot it down in z secs :) ... i cant comment on how biased the reporting actually is …. as there aint any way to verify out here ....but for sure CNN takes pride in being American and I see nothing wrong in that … now looking at the positives .... Which I have started doing more often than not since landing in this god forsaken place J ..... my knowledge on international affairs is better than it has ever been ...

It was one of those days .... back from another hectic day at office ... i reluctantly switched on the tv having nothing better to do .... And as usual it was preset at CNN.... but this certainly wasnt like any of those days.... the face that appeared was our very own Rajdeep Sardesai ... and the coverage wasn’t a normal CNN world coverage .... what i was seeing was a Breaking Story … a live coverage on the very familiar CNN-IBN ... the story of those 11 minutes that rocked Mumbai .... Leaving around 200 dead and more than 700 injured..... and more importantly once again reinforcing the uncertainty of life.

Death off course is inevitable, but survival is often considered as the basic instinct of any living species and when we talk about ourselves.... the Homo Sapiens.... its complete evolution to this day has been fiercely driven by this very instinct.... there has been a constant Endeavour in this direction .... through developing basic tools out of stone for self defence against wild animals to developing the best of medical procedures to fight death ...predictablity is the hall mark of any develpoed society .... be it about the weather forecast or your life !!

Darwin provided us with the mantra of survival ... survival of the fittest ... only those will survive who adatp and change according to your changing environments .... newton another great told us of inertia ... a body at rest tends to be at rest until an external force is applied .... for us I believe the external force has been applied a bit too often in recent years and its overdue to get out of Inertia .... and get fitter if we need to survive as a sovereign nation.... we no longer can afford to be a soft nation and a soft target for such acts of indiscriminate violence ....

This is not the first time such a dastardly act has been committed in Mumbai .... the culprits of the 1993 blasts still roam around freely .... organize weddings at the grandest of scales under full media coverage and we and our authorities are still trying to prove that that person exists .... we need to to do an Israel or a KGB or a CIA or even and ISI ..... track each one of those associated with such acts and if need be even get them assanitaed !! ... the point is that the message should be loud and clear that no one will be spared .... if the US can ravage an entire nation to search out one person .... or Israel can launch attacks to search out one of its soldiers ... why are we so soft ..... Why the only statement that our PM can make is 'stay calm' ....

There are schools of thought that talk about motives and rationale of such attacks ... but for me killing of innocents is the greatest act of terror that is possible and beyond any kind of mercy .. and as a friend of mine says "Till the time violent groups strike at such soft targets...till the time they keep on killing innocent civilians just because every act of terror gives them 10000 rupees, they will remain to be called Terrorists...the day they get their target right they will become freedom fighters and nationalists " … read more about these views at http://tedioustedium.blogspot.com/

People today are talking about the spirit of Mumbai and how two days later those very trains are packed again ... but does that mean we don’t care ??? does that mean that this will be one more incident that will keep moving down the pages of our papers and one day forgotten till another similar incident happens ??? if things stay the way they are this is what is exactly going to happen this time round too .... the inertia of our govt machinery that has set in is too high for such "SMALL" incidents to shake ....

Why are we as a nation like this, what makes us so soft .... what makes us to accept things as they are .... When will the time come when we will learn to protect our honour .... our lives and that tooo with authority ... when will the time come when we as a Nation will assert ourselves ??? when will we have our very own CNN !!! i guess no one has the answers now .... but surely the time will come when every indian will start asking these questions and then we will see a revolution !!!! .... just hope that I manage to SURVIVE till then .....to witness the new India ...