There once lived a pack of wolves in the jungle. They were led by a ferocious leader who was as wise as he was strong. He led the pack on numerous difficult hunting expeditions on a daily basis and pulled off feats that were considered impossible. Rounding up deers and buffaloes and goats and sheep and all sorts of game animals that the pack devoured hungrily because hunting with the pack leader was no walk in the park. Slowly as time went by the pack grew in size as every wolf in the jungle wanted to be a part of […]
musings
98 posts
1…. An eye for an eye and the whole world would be blind… the need of the hour is to shun our differences and come together. Black and White is all good but go beyond the feral instinct and recognize that every right and every wrong is not in isolation. Respect the grays, read between the lines, understand your customer, build products that evolve with feedback… don’t just shove what we are selling down the customers throat….. for after all a Zebra also believes in adapting to change and end of the day survival is about embracing the gradients between […]
ever notice how when you’re going up in an elevator to some higher floor, it stops somewhere in between and four bumpkins tumble in scratching their oily hair and busily hitting the like buttons on FB running on their phones like their lives depended upon it…. then the doors close and the lift starts moving up to the 20th floor from the 4th floor…. and then they let out a collective groan and simultaneously look up at you as if you are the problem…. then one of them manages to say “oh fuck this is going up”…. All this while […]
the state of the nation today is such…. I was so looking forward to driving down to Jaipur, hang with friends, brothers, their families and parents after a long time…. a road trip hasn’t happened for a while now but guess it’ll be a while… We started planning the trip and inevitably the question of the overnight stay that would be involved came up. We’ve stayed at this RTDC resort at Rishabhdev everytime we have driven down from Mumbai to Jaipur. It’s a quaint little place with caring staff and it’s conveniently bang on the highway. So last night as […]
every passing day one notices things that reinforce the belief that humanity is dead or nearly dead and that the end is just around the corner. Delhi schools are being asked to stay closed. The Airtel Delhi half marathon is being advised to cancel by the IMA. We as a generation have failed our children, they can no longer go out and play they have to skip school just so that they can avoid breathing in the pollution. What do we do about it? We bicker like mangy dogs about the merits of Modi over Kejriwal. As if these politicians […]
a few days back, well 3 days back to be precise, we got us a new car. This was a replacement for our 10 year old work horse that is still going strong… well an attempt at a replacement at least. When we first got the Fusion, 10 years back, the car was ahead of the times. It still is. The Fusion which we got was a diesel. In the last 10 years I have never lost a drag race, not that I consciously raced anyone at traffic signals. The low end torque peak and exceptionally great road presence of […]
dimwits is the word that comes to mind…. First we create problems and then we solve them and then we reward ourselves for having solved “that” problem hand out nobel prizes and all….. a little later we realize “WHAT THE FUCK HAVE WE DONE!!!”…. look at dynamite to understand where I’m starting off from…. Today we in India talk of this thing called “DEVELOPMENT”. It’s what we all want. We just don’t understand what it means though. Ask a man on the street what he understands by development and he will tell you about these huge factories and jobs for […]
lots and lots of roads…. that’s when out of habit she holds onto my hand tight. I let it stay that way till as long as she’ll not need the hand back to scratch her nose or adjust her hair…. I don’t know how much longer she would find it appropriate to hold my hand while walking but for now at least I know she will always want my hand when crossing the road…. I know that because that’s true for the mom as well even now after 22 years of crossing roads together…. So yeah I guess I know […]
Morning ritual wake up at least 2 hours before you need to be somewhere start the day with gratitude. 5-10 minutes of being thankful for everything and anything. It could be something as simple as the view from your window and something as complex as the opportunity to be up, awake, breathing alive watching the sun go up one more day. This is essentially meditating and drawing more of good into your life drink up…. get a head start on your daily water intake target by downing 1000ml of the mana, warm preferably but no one’s judging so cold […]
we recently bought a nice place in this up and coming hub near the proposed international airport… yeah well you get the idea lots of promises loads of marketing spiel. The builder is one of the best, maybe the very best in all of Navi Mumbai and the buildings are pretty well rounded. So the idea was to put it up for rent and continue to stay where we are right now…. essentially let it pickle while we went and chased our rainbows… So yeah the possession happened, we got the keys to the new house, spent a night here […]
“associating with crowds is dangerous”… so said Seneca of the way blood-lust at the Colosseum kept rising to a point of being a deafening crescendo. The observation was mainly about how even the most resolute of non believers become drunk on the fascination of bloodshed goaded on by a crowd of excited bystanders. The question we want to ask ourselves is “are we there yet? or there is some redemption still possible”…. The way today we look to news to provide us with information about the “latest” atrocities of the ISIS and the Donald in the west and our very […]
So today morning I woke up to a beautiful article written by a much respected artist from India. Do watch one of my most loved scenes from one of his movies here. The sum and substance of the article resonated a lot with our lives so far (Sonali and I). Made me want to write about it… My sense of resonance came from parts other than the growing religious fundamentalism aspect that the article highlighted. I am married to a person who incidentally is also a Hindu (Bengali, brahmin), we were lau birds for 9 years before finally deciding bahut […]
so a CAG report had come up a while back and it said that Reliance Jio was given an advantage of INR 3367Cr (or $530 million) by being allowed to land voice calls on the broadband spectrum…. the report as expected was rubbished, suppressed and conveniently forgotten…. however that old headline yesterday got me thinking…. is free really free? The whole country has been going all gaga about the amazing amazing value being offered by Reliance through their Jio offering. They have ruthlessly slayed all competition, and whatever is left is clamouring for corners where they can somehow hide and survive. […]
the second one this year, last one was on 15th of January. So what was special about this one that it merits a write-up? I learnt a few things. This was my first official half marathon, before this all have started from the pavement in front of our home and ended right where they started. Among other things I am an optimization consultant and my job is to extract the maximum amount of juice possible from web servers. I cannot for the life of me justify a trip to the start line which is >1 km away from home, let […]
an old someone-from-school sent that image on the school group recently…. my response as expected was an over reaction…. thought provoking…. I usually do not make sense to most people but then anyway here goes (my two cents as usual)… “depends on what one considers cheating…. with fitness there are rest days as well as reward diet days…. of course it’s difficult to see how those would work in a marriage context…. but then again it need not be such hard work either…. after a point marriage like fitness like marriage (yes that repetition was intentional) becomes a habit and […]
On what’s going on in the world today….. you see it’s a strategy…. earlier the right wingers (both in America and in India) used to point to an enemy in a different country-region-people (Pakistan always for India and the middle east for America… always Muslims). That yielded a rich dividend for them as the gullible eat-up-all-the-shit-that’s-dished-out-by-the-government-idiot population used to lap up the nationalistic pride argument and happily support every act of terrorism that the state indulged in using the military. Today it’s becoming increasingly difficult to wage those wars outside. You never know who is sitting on a nuclear bomb. […]
“What’s sex got to do with love?” …”money, the real sort, is silent, all five letters”.. couple of my oft repeated phrases…. couple of the more controversial ones as well. I recently did some degree of reflection on these “to live life by” rules of mine and the new realisation, interpretation is heart warming if anything… reiterates my other inherent belief “good people always win”. Sex has nothing to do with love, at all. It is as mundane and trivial a physical interaction as say shaking hands. Standalone at least that’s how “huge” sex is. You might as well be […]
today’s been a fun day…. I received a package from China, a replacement for the window switch for my car, it’s a Ford Fusion which was rare while it was still around and now that it’s been discontinued for over 5 years it’s parts are rarer and costlier still…. so anyway my fusion buddies (fellow enthusiasts) discovered that Aliexpress stocks parts for our cars and I being the fool (who rushes in where devils fear to tread) went ahead and placed an order for the switch… so yeah that arrived and within 5 minutes of signing off the couriers manifest […]