The Season Begins!!!

Seriously i did not know what to write and i had this weird goal that i set at the beginning of the year . The goal is to blog every week. Its easy to give up but to blog at least once a week is doable.

Hence this blog.

The Tennis Grand Slam season is underway with Australian Open completed and French open underway . Whether it is going to be the King of Clay " Rafa" who is going to rule or is it going to be the elegant Federer or Andy Murray or Novak Djokovic or Soderling or Verdasco ... its too difficult to predict the mens section.

In the women's section , it looks more like the clash of the noted top seeds specifically the williams sisters again this year, with a very little room for upsets, may be that's too early to conclude.

However grand slams have always provided the much needed upsets. So we cannot yet say what would be the outcome of the tournament that has just got underway or can we predict the outcome of the rest of the grand slams which would be as keenly fought as always.

What ever happens, let sportsmanship be the order of the games and may the best player win this tournament and the subsequent ones.

Money Makes Many Things

Money Makes Many things so goes the saying.

It was a classic display of the old adage last week.

On Sunday i took a flight , economy class to Singapore the flight was good , travel time short and inflight service was ordinary. I forgot to order my vegetarian food , when i asked for one , they said they'll try and some how found the same for me. Will not delve into cramped seats etc ,which is obvious for the class i travelled. Lets focus only on service.

I get water in a plastic cup, same with the juice . Probably juice served only twice during entire flight and that too in the plastic cup. More over i had to remind them that i need vegetarian food.

Just five days later on my return i flew the same return flight but only that i flew the class of coats , suits and fake smiles i.e. Business Class.

Whoaaa what a difference in five days . Ordinary mortal just turns close to immortal. Seperate check in queue , once checked in , i am whizzed past through immigration. Then onto the cozy lounge to relax and connect to the world if need be .

Then comes the time to board the aircraft , the announcement goes like this . " we call upon passengers with seats xyz to board and our business class passengers can board the flight as and when they wish".

Once in my seat , a stewardess comes to me and says " Sir what would you like to drink, champagne , wine, coffee or juice"

Again same mistake i did not order veg food , this time the difference is that the stewardess finds the meal for me. I get different magazines to read, offered many different kinds of news paper. Have a range of entertainment to choose from . The list just goes on and on.

What a world of difference in service. Money makes many things , what better evidence can i see to substantiate the old adage.

Phew, it does make a difference . Is it ethical to differentiate people based on money ? Well that's for a different blog altogether.

As of now , money does make many things.

Marriage Market

This topic was coming , surely this was coming for many reasons.

Couple of reasons was that i just finished the book - Logic of Life by Tim Hartford . In the book, the author has dedicated a chapter on this topic. Secondly one of my batch mate blogged about something similar today in his blog.

When i was speaking to my parents and couple of family friends yesterday on the topic of Marriage , the common theme was marriage is all about destiny.

Is that really true or in a more scientific manner on how Tim had taken, is it more economics driven?

My take on it , atleast in the society that we all live in , its a mixture of both.

Why do i say that?, the reasons are multifold.

At the very outset i.e. when a family wants to get their daughter or son married, economics dominate the scene. The requirements of the family for match making is such that it can only be driven by economics, given the requirements how is the supply meeting the demand.

As time goes either the supply or the demand increases or decreases but we all know here the problem is the increase or decrease does not happen proportionately on both side. Hence the economic angle of why we see people who are very eligible and who as an individual could be considered really good is unable to find a match, this is more the economic conundrum.

Now come to the other angle of this discussion. How well does destiny play a role. Pretty much destiny does have a big role to play.

Lets go a step back and see in the economics of marriage market , we say its driven by supply and demand , however say for e.g. person X is in that market and there are 9 such men and say 8 women who are there . So in the match making process , not all women would want to choose for various reasons , lets assume 4 women choose.

This would mean that out of ten men 4 actually get married and the rest six wait . Now out of ten the four were destined to get married and six weren't destined.

Of course this is way off simple to explain such a complex stuff and in our examples we have implicitly stated that all ten are equal across all factors which are necessary for getting selected. Which may not be the case in real world.

However this market dynamics do work and the possibility that getting married is a mixture of economics and destiny, cannot be ruled out.

Sunset

Sunset - What emotions does that word bring to anyone? Normally the word is associated in a slightly negative context , the truth is far from that.

I was cycling this evening at around six . After a blistering summer sun hammering down through out the day , believe me sun set is one of those very beautiful things to watch. Its such a pleasure to watch the sun set and to see the orange sky and moon just about being illuminated, what a bliss.

Its gracious , concomitant with cool breeze, beauty of the occasion and the vastness of the universe.

Great emotions come in, its so soothing to see the sun set and the moon come out . What a romantic setting to take a stroll with one's partner or take a relaxed walk, exercise for a healthy life or even sit back and enjoy a novel with a cup of hot tea or coffee.

Its the time where in my opinion , nature is at its very best. Nature lets all the living beings on earth know that after a hard days work , it is ok to relax and enjoy.

After all aren't we born to enjoy.

Govt Office

Disorganised, pathetic, mundane ... list of adjectives is endless.

That's what comes to our mind when we say govt. office and my experience yesterday at a government office was along the similar lines and by the time i finished my job i was sweating profusely, tired and dizzy.

Some of the basics amenities and planning was missing . What i found the most intriguing is the answer to why is this happening.

I keenly watched what was happening .Whilst fifty percent of our thoughts about govt offices are correct and are caused by the babus of the nation while the rest of it is contributed by the people/public themselves.

Much has been written about babus and what they need to do , I wish to look at what our public are causing and what they can do to assist in running the govt office in a better manner in this blog.

Firstly, we do not either read the rules or do not understand what it means, thereby causing misunderstanding, confusion and short of pandemonium.

Secondly, we do not obey the rules of the office , if the officer says to come at 11:30 we either go at 12:30 or go at 8:30 . This only irritates people.

Thirdly , our genuine lack of discipline either may it be standing in queue or going to the counter in order .

These sound silly but in a big scheme of things , these fairly rudimentary principles cause problems to the efficient running of our govt. organization .

I just realized that we need to contribute our bit to ensure that we help the govt. as much as possible.

Folks, next time when you go to a govt. office instead of complaining about the endless delays and bottlenecks , please do try and see what you can do to make it better.

Defending A Title

Folks,

My apologies for not being regular over last few weeks , the Internet connection back home is still not up and running .

I have heard that if you are a defending champion in any kind of a sport or an event , they say you have to soak the pressure of defending the title and people's expectation. As always when somethings are said its hard to understand until such time that one has a practical experience.

Yes, I had a hands on experience of defending a title yesterday.

Since last year , we have an annual quiz event in our organization. Last year , our team won by a narrowest of margin, we won by one point. This year the quiz was conducted yesterday and we were overwhelming favourites to win the quiz.

As you can imagine the pressure was on our team from the word go , to first get through the preliminary round and to make sure that we get into the finals which we did reasonably well. Although we did make couple of obvious mistakes in the preliminary stage.

Into the finals pitting against eight teams, the whole crowd expected us to win hands down , as one can imagine expectations rise sky high in no time . There were five rounds in all and by the end of round one , we were sixth with four points . We did not miss any questions but other teams did well.

Come round two , we still were in sixth . Round three came and we we just notched up couple of places to move into fourth place. We could have capitalised even better had it not been for the nerves to get the better of us in couple of questions.

There was a eerie calm before the start of round four we still had a mountain to climb , the deficit between first placed team and us were twelve points , we were focused and calm , we scored ten points and moved equal to second placed team and two points adrift the top team.

Come the last round , we were not leading and we missed the first direct question again due to pressure we knew the answer but blurted out the wrong one , fortunately for us none of the other teams got it right , so positions remained the same. Then came the real magic , The first placed team got one question half right to score two more points and we got three rebuttals and answered all three to go seven points clear with one question remaining which for reasons other than being tricky one , none of the teams answered and we were finally relieved to have defended the title. Although not in the best possible way but still results is what counts.

This was just an ordinary quiz amongst colleagues nothing major was at stake , i just sank and thought about what it would be like to be a Roger Federer , Sachin Tendulkar, Valentino Rossi or could be any major sporting icon . It would be like a pressure cooker and they absorb those pressure time and again . These people have done this for years now and that too in front of millions of their fans ... Phew that's phenomenal feat and an achievement in my view of epic proportions.

Jessy - Vinnai Thandi Varuvaya

Its not my normal habit to write about movie characters but this one definitely deserves a mention in my blog.

All credit to Gautam Vasudev Menon for making the character as real as possible. Does Jessy live in real life? yes i think so.

When i was watching the movie the thing that struck me the most was how confused Jessy was and why the whole mess? She tends to waver between to hold on and to let go.

The character tends to keep everyone around her and herself happy. Is that at all possible , surely not .One cannot keep everyone happy , its close to utopian to even think about keeping everyone happy.

Jessy seem to be thinking that she would be a good daugther and a good lover and also keep every one happy.I was just dumbstruck as you are. I was thinking oh , what a joke , that you come from a traditional family and get into an affair and want to keep your parents happy , well forget it.

That's precisely is what she did. Whom did she forget , well the scapegoat in the whole drama - Karthik.

There are umpteen Karthik's in real world as well. To be fair to him , its impossible for a real intense lover to even imagine that his love will break, trust is everything in love and he trusted Jessy blindly. Do i say that he could have anticipated what transpired, certainly not.

As to Jessy, she was torn between Parent's love and a Lover's intense love . Ultimately parents won.

Does that mean Karthik lost , definitely not. He did make it big in life as a director . A great saying goes like this "When you trust some one, trust them blindly either of the two will happen. Either you get a good person in life or learn a lesson of life" Karthik had to learn a lesson of life.

As is often said behind every sucessful man , there is a woman. Even in Karthik's case there is a woman but just sad that she was his Ex-lover.

Was Jessy right in doing what she did ,its pretty hard to say. One need to be in her shoe's to even comment. Its a matter of one years love vs 23 years of love,care and affection.

Everyone knows the longer the love,the more intense it is , so was the case with jessy that her love for her parents ultimately was decisive.

Luckily she did not spoil Karthik's life , atleast he was not a Devdass at the very end .I certainly believe that it should not be the case in anyones life.

Life is much bigger than any one individual,life has its own ups and down's. That's the way its designed . Life has to move on in any case.

All good things happen because it had to happen and all bad things have happenned because they have to happen as well.

Jessy could have been little more decisive.

To all the Jessy's and Karthik's in the world , love isnt everything. If its lost , it is lost for a reason and if its won , its won for a reason as well.

If you have lost it , well better things are awaiting in your life and if you have won , well this is the best thing to have had happenned.

To all the parents of Jessy's and Karthik's of the world, you are putting your daughters and son's through hell and a pain full process. It is not worth anything . Is this why you bring them up with lots of care and affection? Do think for yourself. The answer is already in your mind.

In anyways keep enjoying life. Life is never lost with just one incident.

Note:- This is just my opinion, if you would want to refute it , please do . Do not think that i dont seem to understand Jessy's pain . I certainly do understand and empathize with Jessy but life just does not end here.It certainly has to move on.