The World is Divided in their views of Life

Very Obvious.

I wanted to just summarize two events which crossed my path during the past two weeks.

While one part of the world is starving and leading a life in absolute misery while the other is enjoying the best the nature had to offer them ;like clean air, water and a good livelihood.

Why did such a rude awakening come to me all of a sudden?

I was in a restaurant a week ago along with a mate of mine and just while we were seated by the polite looking waitress, my mate pulled out a small plastic bottle.

I was stunned looking at the small bottle and asked him what it was . He looked at me and replied , the world is dirty and this is a lotion to clean the hand. I was genuinely intrigued by advances in medical sciences and technology, however, the reply came as a thunderbolt and took me by surprise.

The next event was on Monday this week, when couple of people in my office were so annoyed that their keyboard was dirty and bought in soft wipes to clean that and were complaining relentlessly.

I was just stupefied.

I looked at the event in utter dismay. The only thought that occurred to me seeing it was " Half the world across people cannot clean themselves even for their basic needs and here they seem to be complaining about keyboard not being clean". What else could i possibly think?

I come from a place where people try to be clean but there isn't a genuine opportunity to follow that. Leave that aside , how many times in a day that we see people not having clean environments but still put up a brave face to get on with their daily chores of work with a happy face.

Its such a disparity in this world , where one side is annoyed that their keyboard or the place in a restaurant is dirty , while in the other side , people live in shanty places and make the best of what they have.

Both of them strive for the same thing in life " Happiness" , however their views of life are poles apart and each one views life in a completely different manner .

Such an irony!

Watch out next blog - God is Great but i think he is Unfair.

x,2x,2x^2,2x^3,2x^4:)

Weirdo.

What kind of a title is this?

OK let me explain what that "X" in the title is and then you'll understand what i want to write and why a smiley at the end of the title.

The "X" is the number of people that i see in a bar in the city of London on a Monday evening and the comma separates the start of the next day.

It still fascinates me how the number of people in a bar explodes as the week goes by. By Friday evening as can been seen from the title, it is the melting pot of just people.

A bar hosts people from all walks of life right from the most affluent to the modest, you can see a man drinking a Budvar or the most expensive malted whisky. No religion, no creed, caste or sex . There is no discrimination.

To say you the truth, i have now become party to this Friday mela. I have been going to a bar every Friday for the last few weeks.

What i typically find is that its a great place to gossip and unwind. One can see that people start slow and end on a high, not to forget that people start early and stay as late as possible.

If one can keep ears open, its easy to find out what is happening in the city, in my view its also a newsroom but miles away from the flashy studios but serves its purpose.

The ambiance of a bar is key to its success, its that one which brings in an eclectic mix of emotions to all those who are around.

The ambiance is the oxygen of a bar , the blood are the drinks.

The ambiance and the buzz makes it a magical place and with a chilled drink in hand , what better place on earth to live on a Friday night.

Not to miss out those chicks who add to the irresistible charm of the place.

The biggest plus in a bar is that every one's truth comes out , couple of drinks down and all of them speak straight from the heart. That's one of the most interesting part that i can think of going to a bar.

Its a great place to relax , if one can manage oneself within limits, a visit to a bar isn't that unreasonable nor a taboo.

It can be one of the happiest place for a reunion or even to talk serious business or while away time or just to be mischievous.

Time just flies sitting in a bar. Simply a great place but with a different setting.

Hang-on if you have by now thought when did this guy start drinking , you are grossly mistaken. Who in the world said that one need to only drink alcohol in a bar, a creamy thick latte is still possible.

I have been going to the bar just to be a part of this culture and true to the word drinking is a part of living here. I can be the only person to have been to a bar to drink a hot latte and that too seven consecutive weeks in a row.

Am sure that made you smile.

Let Go!

What a powerful word.

Why did i choose this as a title of my blog and what on earth am i going to write. Read on.

As humans we are packed with emotions, this emotion is what ticks the world. Without these emotion's we would be mere machine.

That being said , this emotion is what brings all the peril.

Its quite clear that we crave for things be it happiness, love, care, affection , new gadgets ... the list is endless.

This emotion defies logic , sometimes we know we cannot get it but still we crave for it. Why? we never think why, i know i cannot get it but why am i craving. Why is there no application of Brain, why no commonsense?

A classic example is a failed love. The person in question knows that its a lost case and she will not be back but the heart still craves for her. Its emotional trauma. Completely oblivious to the fact that the world around him is moving on , this emotional trauma crushes him with no end in sight.

I took the above example as its much easier to explain and put it into a context.

Its pointless to keep staring at the phone to see if that 'sms' would come from her. We just sit there and waste time all in the name of emotion.

Emotion to the right level is perfect, a step too far can be detrimental. I mean detrimental in every sense of the word.

Sometimes as often said, we need to step back and say ' let go'. Its easier said than done but it works magic , lightens the heart and gets the senses back to normal from illusion.

Once an individual let's go of that emotional attachment, all the pain starts to disappear slowly. Iam not saying that world will change upside down but its a step forward in the better direction.

Letting go of something hurts , ask any couple they would explain that to you , ask a child how much it felt seeing to loose the most cherished toy, ask a parent how much it meant marrying the daughter away, ask a person how much it means to loose a friend.

The answer in most case is always - ' This is the single biggest pain in my life?'

It hurts but lets come to reality and face it . Let go of the emotions and we should be fine and clear in our head .

Let's be more practical and not be tied down to the clutches of the sheer emotional bonding.

I dare not say that we shouldn't have emotional bonding at all but all i say is that we need to have it in the right quantity.

Some times in life , we need to say ' Let Go' . If you purely cherish it , things would come back to you.

Doesn't this contradict the statement ' Chase your dream'. I think it does slightly but when you let go of things , one gets more energy and clearer thoughts which would enable one to achieve their ultimate goal.

Am sure lot of people would have a wide view on this and most importantly i am unable to put my thoughts convincingly. It is quite apparent that the flow isn't too coherent and i could see holes in my logical break down of this problem but i think i have done reasonably well to put my thoughts across.

Don't get crushed under the weight of emotion, LET GO!

Have i tried it in recent past - YES . Did i succeed - No, would i try again - Yes.

Chaos

That word brings great emotions to lot of people , i want to write about the beauty in Chaos and the opportunity that it brings.

Of course realms has been written about how the recent financial crisis played out and how the chaos presented nice opportunity to players such as JP Morgan and Barclays.

I don't want to write about that but i actually want to write about the beauty of chaos in a ' market'. Some could argue that its no different from financial markets but for me normal markets are the mother of any other markets and i would like to focus on a day to day markets also called Mandi's.

Yesterday evening i went to buy my weekly groceries, i went to a large up-market super market store. Everything was in order, i could see signages and one could not miss the item that need to be bought.

I had a list of things that i had to buy , just went into the market and picked up the things , came off to the counter , paid the bill. All done in less than thirty minutes.

I just thought that was nice and easy, while i was just coming off, i just took a wrong turn and wandered off into a long corridor. When i came off the corridor, it was all chaos all that i could hear was frantic shouts and lots of people walking up and down.

I was taken aback , i could not understand what this was and why are so many people here and what is this noise all about.

Little did i realize that i had stepped into one of the largest weekly markets. I watched in utter dismay the voices that rose and the increased decible levels.

Even in the chaos of a free market , i could spot some savvy dealers forging very good deals, be it in selling old mobiles or selling few kilos of potato's. I could clearly see traders charming the buyers with improvised verses and also saw people who had already done great bargain deals.

It was commotion in short but not a sort that one need to be alarmed to but one where there is raw power of buying and selling.

As i stood there , i was just wandering off in my mind to villages in India where such weekly markets were the norm , i understood how much those markets were making India tick.

Its small in comparison to big supermarkets but i think i have fallen in love with the raw selling power of the merchants and the intelligent buyer spotting opportunity to make that extra savings.

I really did like it and i was watching the whole fun for almost an hour.

It was chaos all the way until Five in the evening , when order returned in the form of closure of markets for the day when all merchants had done the deals and many people were happy that they got what they wanted and even in those chaotic moments, there was beauty and opportunity.

It was true reflection of human spirit. Boy did i love it and left shaking my head with a big smile on my face.

Pure reflection of free market forces in action where supply and demand are the king.

Free market theorists would love this post!!!

When Responsibility Strikes.

A change in my attitude towards many things sparked off this blog.

Where do i start? I'll go slowly and one by one.

Never ever in how many ever years have i eaten food which was cooked in the morning at night, my mom never asked me because she knew i didn't like it . Even at the darkest hours , this was one thing that was never compromised.

Never before i had thought how much provisions someone need to buy for running a house

Never before i had thought how much of a task it is to balance the budget, although both Vijay Lavate and Suresh have given me enough thoughts about it and Suresh even went to the extent of teaching me how one can compute the current worth of oneself off the back of the hands but i never took that seriously.

Never before had i thought can i buy this stuff next month rather than this month?

I have covered most of the above scenarios in my previous blogs but in this one i want to delve into the food part of the above sequel.

Has it suddenly occurred to me that food is valuable and there are a zillion more people out there in the cold who don't have even a bowl of porridge? Or has it occurred to me that wars can erupt when food isn't available?

These are all known things and not new to me, so what has changed in the last couple of months that has radically altered my habit of storing food items in the fridge and re-heat them to be served later. This was unthinkable a couple of months ago, i wonder what has changed?

While i sit back and think , something suddenly strikes my face and tells me the cold truth. " You are now taking care of yourself".

I counter argue and say i have always been taking care of myself, isn't it? The voice says "Well, you are now taking care of yourself". This relentless press about me taking care of myself gets me nervous and got to a point where i said to myself maybe that voice is true.

I sat back with a hot cup of coffee to think about it , my mind raced to think ' what is it about that statement that is so striking , am not getting the point but it strikes me as true'. There was that commotion in my mind which only experience can explain and not words.

Sitting there and going through the statement and i began to think through it in detail.

Ah! the answer comes in a flash not as a movie or whatever , but in a single word ' Responsibility'.

Yes, that's the answer to the above conundrum that i was looking for. All along my mother used to be responsible for everything and she managed everything for me and i never bothered about how much of an effort it was to cook.

Now that i cook all for myself , the attitude of throwing away the last portions of the food has changed , it could be a salad made in the morning to a good sambar made for lunch . The responsibility of me cooking for myself has radically altered my view of eating food for dinner that was cooked for the mornings breakfast.

Lesson learnt is that when responsibility strikes, attitude towards things changes accordingly , this confirms to the old tamil saying , which i would like to put it in a dialogue sequel.

Father :- Sir , my son isn't responsible and doesn't take care of himself or us, he is just loitering around

Relative/friend:- Don't worry , get him married , when he has responsibility , it will all be OK.

Whether the bride changes anything to this poor man's life or not is debatable, but in countless instances, the sheer attitude towards life changes after marriage , why ? It's just because of added responsibility.

You could argue that my experience tell's that i didn't have common sense before and now i have but that's not the point that i wished to illustrate through this example , all i wanted to say was that when responsibility comes , attitude changes.

Learning to Eat With a Chop Stick

Self explanatory title.

Yes, i learnt to eat using a chop stick. Although the thought of eating food in a chop stick intimidates people but it actually isn't that difficult as what you think it is. That's what i found out .

What makes it interesting effort is what you eat with it, do you eat rice, noodles with it or go with food which are bigger in size?

For a novice , if you try eating rice or noodles with chop stick , well forget it, you are going to have an absolute nightmare.

So coming to story at hand or event that happened today.

I went to a Japanese food chain along with a colleague of mine for dinner. This was the second time iam going to a Japanese restaurant. The first time i went i just ate with spoons but this time i wanted to try eating with chopsticks.

We had ordered dumplings to start with, the dish came in , looked awesome but tricky part was , i was given a chop stick to eat. My colleague thought me how to use it , on the first try it didn't work the way it had to and on the next try, yeps all up and running. I finished all the dumplings six of them in my portion without spilling anything. That was quite an achievement for a first timer. I was proud of myself.

Then the main course of rice with potatoes came in , it was appealing but instead of being a hero and try to eat it with chopsticks, i was conservative and asked for a spoon and a fork. Job done.

Although i learnt to eat using a chop stick but i would like to try and eat either noodles or rice using it. Well , next time i will try that.

It was an interesting experience.

Internet My Saviour

What , Internet saved you ..... from????

Ok ok, it saved me from starving. This is what happened.

Joe came back from office all tired , looking to cook a nice meal and eat. The choice was zeroed down to rice and sabzi.

Ok i get cracking with cutting the vegetables a mix of tomato,capsicum and onions . All done and dusted in fifteen minutes , poured the oil in the pan which was on a light sim heat. Once heated , added few mustard seeds , typical southie cooking.

Once done , added onions and stirred it until crimson brown , then went in capsicum and then tomato and all masala. So subzi ready in less than 25 minutes. Hot hot and neat, ready to eat.

Only to realize that i forgot to cook the rice , in a hurry i made sure i washed the rice and got it ready to go into my new Panasonic Microwave , brand new .

Right , rice is in its microwave cookable vessel , in it goes into the microwave , alas how do i operate the new microwave?

I have never used this model before , all funcky new stuff . I search for the manual and to my horror , i dont find it .

I search every where , it just skips my eyes. One hour of frantic search , toying around the buttons just provide a futile attempt, only irritation and anger was left.

I almost gave up , i was angry and upset. Just as i turned around to give-up my Mac magic shone bright oh a split second idea, get to the internet and search for online manual.

Open the laptop, connect the internet and open google, type the search ' Panasonic Microwave Manuals'. Off its goes , returns with what i need. I still need to find the right manual for my model, which was another five minute search and once i had all the details , it was just matter of minutes to find the manual.

All done , cooking underway . After about two and half hours hot food was ready , had to re-heat my Sabzi .

Superb Dinner for a starving stomach , just that it was too late in the night but nevertheless worth all the effort and went to sleep saying that was good and all extra calories that i built up , i can loose in a visit to gym :)

Internet my saviour , technology at its very best.