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 […]
Monku was growing up to be an exceptionally inquisitive and smart monkey. He loved to read and what he didn’t understand he would go and ask grandpa, dad or mom, sometimes all three. So he was reading this book which talked of leprechauns and how they hide pots of gold at the ends of rainbows. Monku wasn’t so convinced so he went and asked gramps, “is there a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow?”. Gramps thought about it for a second and then said “no, but then no one has seen the end of a rainbow either”. […]
with no brakes….. Growing up we used to read ideals handed down to humanity by thought leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, some of the doyens of human civilisation….. prominent amongst them were the ideas of equality, freedom, restraint, team work, living within means, elimination of greed, focus on intellectual growth rather than materialism and more such…. all important ingredients to a stable, peaceful co-existence with our fellow human beings. For decades these ideals, these ideas have served humanity well. They have helped keep us all together and helped us stay, broadly speaking, peacefully sane. These ideals somehow are […]
Thoughts become things think about what you want and not about what you do not want in your life say yes to what you want If you do not like something don’t say “no” to it instead think of what you want instead and say yes to that. For instance if you do not want poverty do not say you do not want poverty instead say I want plentifullness. Focus on what is good in your life and appreciate it everyday do not let a situation anger you or disturb you as all that is achieved by being disturbed/angered by […]
One of my very frequently revisited tenet of life is “if you want it done right do it yourself”. Today we want perfection in everything however are we doing our bit to make it a perfect world for ourselves? The thought was triggered by a recent tirade by a dear friend. He was worried about the mushrooming slums in the vicinity. This is Mumbai here slums rub shoulders with 40+ storey buildings… slums that house the huge support staff. Our maids, drivers, painters, plumbers, security guards, dry cleaners, istree waala… everyone who makes sure we are able to live comfortably […]
Monku was 7 years old now and fast growing into a rebellious pre-teen like so many others in his age group. He questioned everything and never agreed to anything without a trade. Dad was growing increasingly anxious and impatient with the boy. This was a time when things could go horribly wrong or beautifully right for a growing monkey kid. Like every morning the day began early. At the breakfast table though it was only dad and son as mom had left last evening to visit the grandparents. Dad moved the glass of chocolate milk in front of Monku and […]
ever notice how a dream that wakes you up all agitated and disturbed at 5AM proceeds to get completely wiped out from your conscious thoughts within moments of you waking up…. He was in town with his wife to visit the boy and his wife….. at 72 years of age this was quite the journey. At this age it was something he never did anymore…. all his life he had travelled the world, his job had taken him to the remotest of places and the two soul mates had gone without complaining in fact actually enjoyed their travels…. but now […]
I posted this to parents at my kids school today…. sounded like it should feature here as well”. So I got scolded at school today…. had to happen I was misbehaving. As we were inching our way to the gate I asked my daughter to hop onto the front passenger seat (the rear ones we have child lock enabled on to prevent any accident), put her bag on her shoulders put the bottle in the pocket (you know how kids are sometimes even the shoes come off in the journey from home to school)…. all this while waiting for the […]
A recurrent theme in my life has been the constant and ever present choice I’ve had to make between fight and flight. Mark it up to excess adrenaline, excess testosterone or whatever the science nuts will have you believe but it’s always been the central fight of my life. I would like to believe there are a lot more like me, like 100% of humanity has to make these choices on a daily basis type more. So essentially this is not something unique to me it’s an everyday choice that everybody needs to make, some do it faster almost imperceptibly […]
For forever now I’ve been meaning to write a book. Everyone who’s ever read my stuff wants me to write a book. So why have I never written a book? Today I think is a good day to start writing a book. A dear friend suggested that I could always write the book later on but for now maybe the better thing to do would be to put together a collection of my notes, the ones I keep publishing to Facebook, and putting that out. Build the audience. So that’s part of the plan. The other part is to start […]