Intellectually Superior??

I was wondering!!! Within my short career I have interacted with a number of peers, friends of various countries. But time and again I am intrigued by the thought how much superior we Indians are with respect to our intellectual capabilities. We are much more competitive than any other people in the world.(Perhaps Americans are the only ones who can come close & I have never interacted with Japanese people). Nor even the Chinese. In spite of this, how could the British control India for such a long time. Why India is still developing and not developed? These are some of the questions I have tried discussing with my friends and the answer is not very hard to find. Perhaps we Indians lack in mental strength, the same competitive spirit is what kills us. I will delve more on this topic in the coming days.

And I am back :((

I told you: The good times would just daze off !!! I wonder if the velocity of time is actually constant. Anyway the trip has given me enough material to blog on for the next couple of weeks. Right from the point I set my foot on the Calcutta airport to the time I set my foot off I had been trying to understand what is wrong with my country, specifically my state. But amidst all the wrongs, what is it, which is pulling me back to India. What is it, which is telling me constantly: "Foreign Land" this is not where I belong. I will write in details.
In the meantime let me tell you life for me is changing "FAST". (I am so intrigued by the velocity of time). The details of the latter would be revealed in due course of time as well. I hope in the coming months my life settle in exactly the way I want it to be. I know that is too much to ask. But I have this habit of going against the norm, and follow my heart. Remember when I ditched IIM-A for IIM-C, my mental set up is somewhat similar at the moment. And I also have this habit of driving life my way. I will do that. I have certain dreams to follow.
The tone of the blog is absolutely what it would be after coming back from home. And why not because home is where the heart is.

Home Calling

And I am going home..!! After four months I am catching the next flight to Kolkata from Kuala Lumpur. I know the next ten days are going to fly away.
For the last few days I am contemplating why the hell I am going around places looking for job. Why can't I settle down in Kolkata itself. The place where I have the maximum number of well wishers. I know some of you are laughing. Even I would have done so a few years, or a few months back. But this thing about settling in Kolkata is into my head now.
I feel jealous of people whose home town is Mumbai, Bangalore or Hyderabad who have so much of option to choose from. If only the stupid government of West Bengal, or the opposition would have a different piece of mentality. I somehow feel that the effect of inactivity, doing nothing at work has corroded the minds of Bengalis in such a way that nothing can happen in that state any more. People simply do not have the vision, motivation of getting the state forward. And the conclusion is: my dream of settling down in Kolkata with a good job is perhaps never going to come true. I am sure there would be a few thousand who would echo the same feeling with me.

And I am 50 blogs old

50 blogs in three years!!! Well yes my stream of blogs is three years old...Which puts an average of 16.66 blogs per year, just more than one blog per month. Dismal!! Considering I love writing so much. I should write more often.
Looking back I wanted to rate the blogs that I enjoyed writing the most. Tough job, but following would my top five:

1) Feel Good Factor: The internal Variables
2)Food for thought: A question from Economics
3)Distance & Teleporting
4) Gambler in Casino & Stock Market
5) Archive: The Beginning

I felt thrilled when I was making the choice as I thought there are a couple of others blogs which I have left out. I liked my last blog Three Wishes, & A day with parasites. One more thing, as I am writing more, my thought chain is improving. Perhaps some day I would collect all my blogs together (leaving aside the cheesy ones) and get going publishing in the hard copy format. If only I could get some more feedback from my readers. It is hard to know without the comments. I hope my 100th blog comes up before 2011.
Frankly I want to be a writer some day. And tell you what, I want to write in the same way I write my blogs:
1) Erroneous Grammar
2) Using words not present in english dictionary
3) Deconstructing sentences to fit my style.
4) Putting in lots of mathematics. (I am going to increase them in the blogs)
5) I would try a little bit of personification of inanimate things. Know what..you can write on controversial topics using this style.
Frankly I can do all this if my brain remains fresh, and this stupid world and my experiences keep feeding me with ideas that tweaks that grey thing

Three Wishes

Imagine this: "God or someone with supreme power suddenly appears in front of you happy to grant you three wishes. However the three wishes have to be realistic, nothing abstract. What I mean is, you can ask for lots and lots of money but you cannot ask for Happiness. But wait there is one more constraint!!! Mr God is in real hurry and you just have a few seconds to make the wishes. So what would be your three wishes???"
Have you already thought of the wishes??? I have often given this "case study" to my friends and now I present the same to you all my dear readers. I know the case study is old, something you have heard of, in those innumerable folk tales, and the mythological stories. But what intrigues me to think is the fact that individuals has so much to demand, so much greed, so much wants in their life what exactly would the lucky fellow ask. I have put the constraint of asking for realistic things, and less time to think, just to make things more intriguing. Perhaps Maslow's hierarchy of needs would be perfectly reflected in the wishes the person makes. Let me not get into the prediction game of what the demands would be across socio-economic classes. Rather let me write in my wants. Of course the constraint of time does not apply to me, for I have spent so much time thinking on this matter and anticipating someday somebody powerful would be granting me such wishes.
Remember Goopi Bagha, the eternal Upendrakishore characters, immortalized by Satyajit Ray (Well the "long" description is for the non bengali readers who would like to know more on them)?? Somehow I see myself making almost similar wishes as they made (to the king of ghosts: for further referral). Let me list:
1) Perennial supply of good food and clothes
2) Ability to move from place to place in a flash (Teleporting)
3) Great musical skill: To mesmerize people with their singing and instrumental abilities.
Let me tell you these characters in the story/movie are poor. So the writer: Upendrakishore certainly did follow Maslow's principal in a different sense. Look at the order the first want is basic need, then comes desire and last comes creativity. It is perfect. He never read about Maslow. This shows that Indians don't need American bookish principles to understand humans, the principles are already embedded in the thinking of the Indian people. Well for me I would make the last two wishes. And the third wish would be to wipe out all kinds of viruses from the society. I got a little figurative over here. Well I would ask him to remove all bad elements from the society. And if I am allowed to be a little abstract I would ask him to remove all those chemical imbalances, hormones from the human body that make people selfish, hypocrite, & greedy. (Perhaps that would help God from not making any more of these three wishes, for people would not have any thing to ask).
So my dear friends delve deep on your three wishes, who knows if someday the situation happens to you, you must have your wishes ready, for the time constraint would be there and you only have three wishes to pave your way to bliss. :)

Piano in my Roland: I need to improve

This is one of my favourite songs "Eki Labonye Purno Prane". The sound gets distorted in the microphone. Sadly could not introduce a suitable rhythm. Listening to my own performance I can understand I have to improve a lot.

Immortality is it a possibility???

Why do men die? Why do people age? Aging not in the quantitative sense but physical. Forget the philosophical answer for a moment and let the practical/scientific way prevail. Think about it for a while before you move forward reading this blog.
If you have watched the movie "Man from Earth" the answer would have come immediately. The interiors of our bodily system is an epitome of purity. Mind my words!!! Our cells, the mitochondria which ultimately releases the energy needed for our body to sustain, receives the purest form of all the inputs. The lungs, the kidney, the liver, the stomach are the major organs that creates a security net against the foreign impure objects. Whenever the security of this purity is breached there is a problem. However our body has its own way of treating this security breach, and this is what keeps us alive. Over time the amount of impure elements in our body increases. Mostly because the security gates (read kidney, lungs, stomach) stops functioning to their optimum capacity. Thus slowly breaking the web of pristine purity of our body and consequently it starts to age. And once a threshold limit is crossed the man finally dies.
So let me put the bigger picture over here. Our body as a system needs some inputs to sustain ourselves. To help us grow to a certain level. These inputs come mostly in three packages of the good and the evil: the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. Our bodily systems filter the evil out. Slowly this filtration process weakens, resulting in collection of garbage inside the body, things rotten, worsen and finally dies.
So why immortality is still an impossible concept? The scope of Medical Science till now has mostly been in treating diseases or clearing the garbage out of the body. Vaccination is a small step towards filtration, but still far from it. What is needed is an efficient system that does not allow any foreign body into the body. Can such an external shell of filtration around a human body be created that performs this filtration? I don't find any reason to answer in the negative. However I am not sure whether this right direction towards immortality has actually been identified. Like it is always said "Prevention is better than cure".
Getting back to philosophy: Human beings' every step towards attaining immortality with new drugs have been met with further challenges in the form of new diseases. I am pretty sure when the medical world would turn its attention and make some advance in this filtration mechanism, there would be other challenges faced in gaining immortality. Moreover, just think of filtration on the face value. Smaller the size of the particle difficult is the process. Add to this the fact there has to be a selective filtration, and the filtrates are bacterias, viruses, or molecules of compounds which measures in microns.
Hupps!!!! I am not saying immortality is impossible, but whoever created this universe he made sure that human beings can't get as powerful as him so easily.

Culinary Expertise

I started cooking during my first job at Pune. The space of learning has been fast. Frankly I am amazed by my space of learning new things and excelling, even something as remote as cooking. The learning has come in various stages, which I will try to describe over here: The first day => Expertise in pulses => Daal-Chawal-Bhurji => Egg Curry => Chicken => Prawn
The start was not at all good, in fact horrific. It was a saturday night in Pune, and finally I decided to cook myself. A huge menu: Boiled Rice, Daal & Omlette. Rice & Omlette was easy, but I had a horrid time in boiling the daal. I had no idea in the proportion of water that was to be mixed. Finally after four hours I got the daal half boiled. Did not have the patience for four hours more. So I consumed whatever was done. Thank God, the next day was a Sunday as I was confined to the four walls of my room and another smaller room for the reasons I think you can guess.
As I have always said Morning does not show the day: Slowly I developed by own way of cooking daal, that became a huge hit among my friends. Then came the IIMC days when I thought I had lost my skills due to lack of practice. I was proved so when in London I made a sad start in cooking. But again slowly I improved and during that time I added the Bhurji to the list of my expert menu.
Now here in Kuala Lumpur, the menu list has become long. First I experimented with Chicken!! And the very first time it was a huge hit. Egg curry was never a problem. I tried Gobi masala as well. And finally yesterday I ended up cooking prawns. It was a huge success. Right mix of masalas, proper sequence can get any food you are cooking taste good.
Somehow I feel whatever I cook tastes the same. This is because the sequence of masalas is always the same. I think I should experiment a little next time. So next time anyone of you my friends planning to visit me, let me know in advance so that I can prepare the choicest of meals for you. Non vegetarians are preferred though!!

A day with parasites

Yesterday in the afternoon of diwali we decided to go for our second trekking expedition into the Templar park water fall. After the fun we had in our first at the Kuntching forest and water fall (very near to the second) we had expected another great day of expedition. There were practically three differences in this trip.
1) There were not many people around: We did not care, the risk takers we are.
2) This place was less rocky/hilly, more damp, swampy and at places there was practically no pathway: We felt more excited, making our way underneath fallen trees, through the slippery stream and bushes
3) I had forgotten to wear sports shoes and was on my Woodlands: I don't know why the company named its shoes woodlands. While how much good these shoes are, they are not meant for trekking. In fact the soles of the shoes are so slippery that it gets difficult walking on a wet floor. Leave aside the swampy or the slippery rocks on the stream.
As always my enthusiasm with these activities took me to the front of the group. However a failed tarzan like stance when I tried to do some rope climbing on a hanging bamboo tree got me surprised, as those were dead trees and it could not take my weight and the result I fell heavily down and those trees fell heavily on me. That hurt and that hurt my new Reebok Tee more :(. Then after innumerable number of falls on the ground due to my heavy slippery shoes got my enthusiasm somewhat down. At this point we reached some short of a dead end on the stream as there was no "road" beyond that and we had to get into the stream completely to cross the point and make our way ahead through the bushes and swamp. I was a little down at that point and thought of going back to the point where there were at least a few people around. But you know enthusiasm is contagious as one of my friend was already into water. It soon got to me and I found myself crossing the stream.
After that we were climbing steep, the region was swampy. I could sense irritation in my body, but we still proceeded some 800 meters or so. Soon we reached a point which was completely a dead end. From there on the bushes give way to huge trees, and swamp. There was no place to move on. We could sense it might rain soon. Hence we decided to go back. It was at this moment I saw the first parasite, a leech, climbing up my jeans. Frankly I did not know it was a leech. I grabbed it and threw it into the water. In the return journey we decided to follow the stream, in fact wade through it. Forgetting the stream might take a course inhuman enough. We got into the water, but I could sense the irritation in my legs had increased. I removed my shoes and found innumerable number of leeches struck into my legs, filled with blood. I got freaked. I got mad. I started pulling them out. It was real difficult. And the moment I would pull one out it would get struck in my fingers. It was like "Ewwwwww". But hey... I could see there were more leeches around, more than I could imagine. My fellow adventurous souls got freaked out as well. There were leeches on them. There were hundreds of leeches rushing on to us in a twirling motion, fast. And the species was clever as well. They did not attack us directly. They were getting into our shoes, knowing we cannot go barefoot. It was futile trying to get rid of the ones struck into our body standing at the point as before we could remove one there would be 10 more getting in. We decided to "run" and leave that place as fast as we could. But by this time, we had lost the trail we had followed while we came. The emotions beyond this point is hard to replicate through blog. Every moment we tried to stop, to find our way, I could see those creepy creatures on the swamp. But yes we finally could find our way out for otherwise I wold not have been writing this blog. The experience was horrifying and I can't imagine getting so freaked out by such small creatures. How much I despise these parasites and other parasites living in this world?
I would like to end the blog with three comments (on request) which after those freaky hours while removing the ones struck into the body I made:
1) Can there be an intelligent leech who would secretly be resting inside my shoe, go home and drink blood out of our body every day. We actually found one such leech inside my shoe after the whole episode. Can there be one more??
2) Next time I visit that place I would carry a bagful of salt, and going to carpet bomb these parasites out of this world.
3) One leech is still un-accounted for and I fear it is somewhere inside my home.

I am so so freaked out!!!!

Distance & Teleporting

Have you ever felt that many of the problems that we face everyday, is a product of the physical distance of where we want to go and where we are. The fact that few days back I was so nostalgic and the consequent emotional atyachar was just because of my physical distance from India. Just think of the innumerable number of problems that could be solved if physical distance could be brought closer to the virtual world. Just a small example: When I first arrived KL there wasn't any direct flight between kolkata and kuala lumpur. And that very fact bugged me a lot. If I am to go home, two days are lost just on traveling (in fact waiting in one of the stupid transits). And then suddenly Air Asia announces its new direct flight between KL & KOL, and wow (forget for the time being that it is a low cost carrier which is even better) my distance from home suddenly reduced so much. Information Technology: The mobiles, the Internet actually brings the physical distance closer to the virtual distance.(In Newtonian physics virtual distance is 0). In my school days when letters were my only way of communication with home, I used to wait weeks for a letter from home or some near one. Home seemed so far away even being only 300 kms away from home.
The world takes time before going virtual. In the days of letters or even prior to that when information was sent through a guy on a horseback. Information used to be physical. It took 2000 or so years until information completely became virtual ie physical distance between the receiver and sender became unimportant. We can actually say physical distance for information became virtual ie 0.
Similarly when the subject of carry is not information but the person himself, it occured to me can the same thing be achieved. There would be certain steps. First of all air travel speed would increase. Just a simple breakthrough that if each of the flights become supersonic at affordable cost. Distance reduces by half. Then if flights become hypersonic I can actually go home after office, again, given the fact it is affordable. Perhaps days are not far when such travels would be possible. Six generations down the line I am pretty sure a person like me would have breakfast at Kolkata go to office at London, and come back home for dinner in a hypersonic BMW. Even then things are nowhere near virtual.
So what might be a possible solution, human beings would need to be sent like information. Visualize this: year 4009. You want to travel to London. You take your mobile, type in a number. The mobile converts you into a digital signal encoded and send you to London, where you are decoded back to your self. Sounds simple. This is what I call teleporting. Satyajit Ray showed this in his movie. Life would be so simple, at least the emotional problems of a human would be so much solved. But will this be actually possible?
The day human beings achieve this, man would no longer be mortal. The simple fact that a human being can be converted digitally means, any disease can be treated just by the flip of a few binary digits. For a better explanation: Every human being would have a digital coding. Now when a disease occurs it means on the digital side some of the codes have encountered errors. So it is just a matter of time to digitize the man, identify those codes and flip them. I understand this cannot be the case, for every man has to die. However the closer we can get to this the better our life would be.

When Narcissism is good

I ran long after a long time. Last saturday we had the internal run for "Frost the trail", the CSR initiative of our company, a run through the nature for 8.1 km. It was a kind of a dry run for the final event that is going to happen next week, where runners from different parts of Kuala Lumpur would be joining us. However the important question is how can somehow be happy running such a long distance through extreme terrains, ending up with cramped legs, not being able to walk properly for two consecutive days??
This is the question I am trying to answer connecting with the happiness function that I built. The body aches, pains but still I am so happy. (Can I also connect it to the response function to pain that I built, all my critics what do you think??). While I try to find the answer let me give you a complete description of the proceedings. The 8.1 km trail was at the forest reserve of Kuala Lumpur. We had to run past lakes, run uphill: really up at times the angle of climb could be as high as 40 degrees, run through forest. It was fun. To add to that it was raining and the whole package was just awesome. I did not have much time appreciating the nature as I was running fast. I clocked 49 mins and was the first to finish the race. And after the race we had fun cycling, playing football and taking snaps. It was fun all the way. Now what is the factor that made me feel so good. The Narcissist in me makes me think the importance that I got being the first placed runner has made me happy. Then there were the external variables. It is true it is pure narcissism. I feel happy being the best in everything I do. Frankly I love changing the world around me, making it the best. I hate being second, I hate being on the bench being the substitute. And that is why, I thrive so much to perfect myself in whatever I do, and when I get results of those perfections, I am happy.
Right now, I am having difficulty in walking. Thinking about that, I have to run another 8.1 km this coming sunday my legs start aching more. But I love it. During my school days this competitive spirit was always in me. I was nowhere near a good sportsmen compared to the other guys over there. I could never run 100 m in 12 secs, 5 km in 20 mins. But I always gave my heart out, improved over the years and finally I was second in my hostel. (The first was way too good). Then there was the obstacle course. We needed to jump over a 10 ft wall. I could never achieve the feat until the last day I tried it. It was the inter hall competitions and no one from my hostel could do that. Someone made of fun of that fact. I tried for one hour continuously before the event and finally I managed to do it and in the next one hour I perfected it. Though during the main event I failed, I felt happy that I could prove a point. Sometimes I feel whatever little I have achieved in my life or something which fuels me to achieve more has got a lot to do with the Narcissism, the ego, the jealousy in me. So do you think these attributes are good???

The Ruckus on IIT

At last I could not stop myself from venting out my frustration against the Indian System albeit through my blog. I have always felt that the politicians have some sort of ego against the likes of IIT and IIM. Perhaps this comes from the fact that not a single politician can claim him/herself worthy to be branded in those league. Inferiority always brings in ego. This is the reason time and again the bunch whether it is Murli Manohar Joshi, Arjun Singh, and Sibal (forgot the first name of the last one..and I don't have any enthu to find that out at this moment) have tried to dictate terms over them. And today when I saw this statement of the HRD minister that "IIT's don't make nobel laureates" I could not stop myself laughing hysterically at the ignorance of those people.
I sincerely have always felt that IIT professors are paid less. In fact I have spent hours discussing the same with my grand father in the past. I might sound racist: but I have never been able to fathom why should an IIT prof be paid at a level at par with some random college? It takes a lot of altruism on the part of any professor in the IIT system to dedicate himself to this service. It is a fact that any counterpart of him who might have been his friend during his student days would be earning at least 10 times in the corporate world. Perhaps this is the reason why the quality of professors in the IIT system is degrading everyday. I don't know whether any professor of IIT-s would ever be reading my blog, but with all due respects I personally have seen this degradation. Some of the best profs with whom I was fortunate to interact with during my first four years of IIT retired during that period and the substitute lot was never a match.
Can anyone show Mr Sibal the statistics of the number of IIT alums teaching in the US universities some of them in MIT as well. Mr Sibal would you accept that they do produce nobel laureates. Why do you think they are not coming back to their country?
While I understand that the previous thick heads Mr Joshi & Idiot Singh had their vested interests on the vote bank for whatever decision they took, I fail to find any more logical reason for the current fight, apart from ego of Mr Sibal.

Food for thought: I (A question from Economics on Growth)

I wanted to blog it up before it goes out of my mind. It just came: What if the RBI decides to change the value of the Rupee ( I don't remember the exact terminology of the event hence I need to be verbose ). What I mean is lets say the amount of money we now call 100 rupees is made equal to 1 rupee. One rupee in that case would mean One paisa and current lakh of rupees post change would be a thousand. Such steps have been taken in the past by the reserve banks across the globe. Specially in cases of hyper inflation (like Zimbabwe) where the reserve bank is forced to print notes worth thousand of trillion. I hope the reader understands why this change of value is required under such scenario.
Now take the case of exchange rate. A pound which is usually equal to 80 rupees would be equal to 80 paise. Apparently it seems that the home currency would value up in that case. Due to my ignorance or my amnesia of forgetting the exact terminology I will cause this phenomenon "valuing" the currency. The opposite step would be "De-Valuing"
So my question is if the RBI values up the Rupee will it cause a GDP growth or the opposite?
Let me give you some facts: normally when the currency becomes stronger to a foreign currency lets say the dollar. It leads to reduction of export. Remember 2007 when the rupee was at 38-39 against the dollar. The Textile & Jewelery industry was taking a beating due to reduced exports. This is simply because of the fact that a foreign customer had to pay more to get the same object. So if the Rupee is "Valued" apparently the home currency gets stronger and exports would reduce. So in that case growth would be reduced. Actually this is not true, it can be shown that "valuing" or "devaluing" the currency does not have any effect on Net Exports of a country. Get any book on international economics and the explanation would be there.
I have a different conclusion to draw, nothing to do with the exchange rate but something to do with the Growth. The thought came when I was to make a choice between two places for dinner. I was informed that the difference in cost between the places would be absolutely 1 Ringgit (Malaysian Currency). I had a hearty laugh in fact all of us had, caring less for the one ringgit and removing the constraint of that one ringgit from the choice. However I soon thought that if I convert that one ringgit to rupee it becomes around fourteen. And then Hey!!! Fourteen Rupees!!. I am sure if the currency was pound the same thought would have come to the mind. So here brings my question. If the RBI values the rupee exactly by fourteen and I am in India. The situation would be absolutely same. I, in fact most of the people like me have a similar perception of one rupee. We would not care much in spending that extra one rupee. What that means is consumption increases, this should lead to a GDP growth. What if during the recession the Fed in US had taken a similar decision?? I know this conclusion is extremely debatable. But short term economics (Demand-Supply) is extremely fickle: something as I explained. So in the short run under such a scenario we might see growth. The economists out there any thought???

Reflections of economics in the last question?

The concepts of Utility functions- not withstanding how much misused, mishandled - can be put into effective use to answer the bunch of questions that I ended with in my last blog. Assuming many of the readers to be non-economist I would explain the concept as I go ahead defining the functions of utility in the current context and the budget-constraint line. I will try to make things as lucid as I can.
Meanwhile let me tell you, I am back with my enthusiasm of continuing with my futile task and development of the functions for the other variables, simply because I get the feeling that it is my blog and I have the right to express my opinions. Contentions are always welcome. However now I will take time in posting in order to make sure that there is no misinterpretation.
Let us consider two baskets. Call them B1 and B2. These baskets contain different needs of a human. I am trying to commoditize these needs. The two baskets contain needs that dis balances each other. Although I am not saying the needs are independent.
Let us imagine:
B1 contains Career, Luxury, Money, Ego, Glamor
B2 contains Family, Hobby, Recreation
Let us say there are a number of each of these baskets (equivalent in nature) available in the market. The question I am trying to answer is the number of B1 and B2 a rational individual would buy from the market. For this we define two functions: One is the utility function and the other is the budget constraint. As the name suggests the utility function would mean the utility derived out of a certain combination of B1 and B2. While the budget constraint is the line which constraints your buying based on your total income. You might have started wondering where this income is coming from. Let me explain, for those who have not had a course in economics. If you substitute the contents of B1 with oranges and B2 with apples. Then your utility function is the nutrients that you gain out of the baskets. But you can only buy a maximum of these baskets with your income. Coming back to the current context the utility function is your satisfaction level with the individual baskets. The budget constraint is certainly not income but some other variable which I will explain later.

Defining the Utility Function: For a general understanding please click here.
Figure 1 describes the general nature of the utility function. The Y-axis shows the number of B1 and X-axis the number of B2.
Note:
1) Each curve is an iso-satisfaction line. Which means take any combination of B1 and B2 from a particular line and compare it with another point on the same line, the two would give you same level of satisfaction.
2) Points on different lines would give different amount of satisfaction.
3) In general as you move in a north east direction, the satisfaction levels on the lines keep on increasing.
4) As the number of B1 increases the satisfaction gained out of B1 increases at at a decreasing rate. For example: 13 apples and 14 oranges might give you same level of satisfaction as 12 apples and 15 oranges. Where rate of substitution of apple with orange is 1. But on the same line 3 apples and 30 oranges would give you same level of satisfaction as 2 apples and 40 oranges. The numbers are insignificant. I just wanted to explain the nature of the curves. Why they are flattened at increasing B2 and straightened at increasing B1.
5) As I claimed that as one moves north east the satisfaction level in general increases. This would be due to some exogenous variable. For example if the salary of that person increases. Taking the fruits example oranges somehow become more sweet.

(I am not going to break this post in a series. Since it would take some more time before I finish this blog I thought of publishing this much, so that readers can have a grasp of the matter. I will later on edit the post, and post the rest of the matters as it is prepared.)

Feeling Nostalgic

The bashing the I got of my last post seriously made me consider deleting it. I have not - as yet -. As I would proceed, the functions would get complicated and I am pretty sure the number of points of contention would keep on increasing. Seriously reconsidering - whether I should go ahead with the analysis. Frankly, I am beginning to feel it is not doing anyone any good apart from satisfying my analytical mind. In the meantime I thought of writing down my feelings after spending exactly a month outside the country. Well I spent two months in London before. But this one month is different considering that the stay is going to be longer and I am not sure of going home anytime soon. Coupled with it, it's the Durga Puja time and this year it is going to be the first time I am outside my familiar zone during the festive season.
Someone told me tomorrow is Mahalaya, and that moment I did a few things:
1) Opened You Tube and watched clippings of good old Mahisasur Mardini.
2) Searched for this year's Sharadiya Anandamela, wanted to buy it online but found it too expensive.
3) I felt nostalgic
I remember the old days the mornings of Mahalaya and wanted to relive those moments with time. The gradual shift of time that I can visualize can be broken down into three periods:
1) Pre Sainik School Days (Till Class V): My mom would wake up at 4, I would be lying on the bed awake and watching mom, getting fresh, cleaning the rooms and being busy with one or the other religious/spiritual things. In the meantime the radio would be on. I would get up around 5 and watch TV with everyone else. The whole package would create an unusual feeling of joy in the heart which every Bengali would be able to identify with. For the others it is little difficult providing the explanation.
2) Sainik School Days: The day before Mahalaya would be spent planning to get up early as we did at home, so that we could watch TV: the same program I was referring before. Most of the time I would be late. However those were the days when the joy in my heart knew no bounds. In the hostels I used to prepare these chits called DLFGH, meaning Days left for going home. Every day we would tear off one page of those pack of chits. On the day of Mahalaya this pack of chits would be really thin. The sheer thought that I would be going home within 3-4 days made me so so happy!!!! I miss those days. I really do.
3) IIT days: The feelings by then had changed. Those sweet feeling of longing, the desire to go home were missing. Of course I felt happy feeling Puja has arrived. But it was not the same. Perhaps I was not a child any more.
Time has definitely changed, and so has the feelings. But this is one period of the year when I would definitely love to be with my parents, my grand parents. Then why am I staying back here. Why am I not running away catching the next flight, forget about all these craps of career, luxurious life and just do what my heart wants. Why am I so confused about my wants? Why is everybody else in this world confused about their wants?

Am I a risk taker??

The futile task has remained suspended for a while due to lack of time. Specifically for the last few days of last week I had been extremely busy with work. Not that I don’t blog when I am busy, I can always pull off half an hour. But the subject that I am handling requires some thought and I have not been able to garner the time, The next part however is being documented and would be published soon.You might ask what the hell I was doing in the weekend!!! Exactly that is what I am going to describe over here in this blog.
After the visit to the casino in Genting Highlands, this weekend we gave a shot to Kuantan, a beach on the South China Sea on the East Coast of Malaysia about 300 Km from Kuala Lumpur. Relax!! I am not going to provide a boring anecdote of how beautiful the beach was, how much fun we had jumping around in the water like fifteen year olds. In fact I am going to write about the thrill of the journey. During my London stay I had those wonderful road trips. Unfortunately then, I did not know how to drive a four wheeler. I could only sit on the back seat watching the scenery and appreciating the driving skills of my friend when he reached speed as high as 210 km/hr.
This time I was up with the past experience of having driven some 300 odd kms. The amount of confidence that I had on my driving skills is anybody’s guess, for almost three fourth of those 300 km was spent in the driving school. Moreover the rickshaw-wallahs, the auto-wallahs, the porters and even the pedestrians in a Calcutta road are so much disciplined when they are on the streets that as a driver you could encounter such incidences that might leave a lasting impact of horror in your mind: at least as a novice driver. The result: I was not at all confident.
Comes last Friday, and we as a group decide to hire a car and just ‘GO’ without thinking about the destination. From here I start correlating with the title of the blog. People think I am a very calm & composed kind of person with a very stable head. A few days back a lady suddenly pointed out: he looks so composed & responsible. I describe this quality as being near “Risk Averse”. I have always been perplexed by my care-freeness inside a games field. The two simply don’t correlate. The first line that I started with in this paragraph does not correlate as well. I love that suddenness in life where you don’t know what is coming. Coming back to the trip, our destination was however decided when we got the steering in our hand. I started the journey at my usual position observing others take control. None of my companions were doing great on the wheel, showing under confidence, which gave me the confidence to try it out. The fact that it was an automatic car helped me. I wonder why the car makers in the world still persist with making models that require you to push a lever to shift the gears. It is both ergonomically & technologically the most inefficient thing that needs to be removed. I start driving and decide to keep myself on the slowest lane and not cross the 70-80 mark. Humm!!! - How can that car overtake me?? – I was getting back to myself. That me on my bike, who does not like driving below ‘80’ - even on a crowded road. I sped up and soon was at 90 – 100 driving on the mid lane, Oh common, cars were still zooming past me, I shifted to the rightmost lane and was at 110!! “Hey I have done 110 with my bike” and this is an automatic sedan I am driving!!! I pressed on the accelerator and soon I was at 150. By this time I had overtaken all those Michael Schumacher-s who had zoomed past me. My friends were freaked out; one of them was constantly rambling and shouting at me to slow down. I did not. I did not slow down at the curves. I was totally amazed at my control of the wheel. Soon I reached my top speed of 170 km/hr!!! I wanted to speed more but both the GPS system in the car and my friends did not allow me to.
The return journey was even better, for it was night. And the part of the journey when I took control of the wheels was some hilly region. If you have traveled on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and remember the curves near the Lonavala Khandala pass, the road was similar and the curves even sharper. I did not mind, I was completely care free. I was at 120-130 and maneuvering the hair-pin curves with utmost ease. I can go on and on but must stop over here to get back to the point. Now sitting back at home when I am thinking of the journey the question that is coming to my mind is did I do the right thing? Perhaps not, but I have a certain me who likes extreme thrills in life. Who wants to do something, which normally other would not dare. I remember an instance in IIT Kanpur flight club where I was the person who feared most of heights, and it was the same me who put his hands up first when asked for a volunteer who would dare to fly up to 5000 ft in a glider. I should some time write about that once in a lifetime experience of mine.
The basic conclusion is “I am a risk taker”. Remove the few constraints in my life (my loved ones) and frankly I don’t care about the entire world. The reason I wanted to delve in this topic is because someone asked me what is the greatest quality required becoming an entrepreneur. And we concluded that one has to be a risk taker. Perhaps I can be one!!!

PS: Please don’t go away; the next part of the futile task is almost there. It has got some intricacies and I require your opinions.

Bankrupt

Currently I am bankrupt, and bankrupt for a good cause. I did not know that I am an impulsive buyer. I have actually bought my new 'advanced' key board. No offense to my old one,for that was the one that taught me how to be a musician and made my fingers nimble enough. While the old one would always be there, this new one is fantastic. It is a Roland E-09, Black Colour model. My first one Yamaha PSR-275 was a silver coloured one. While the old one looked beautiful as well, I have a penchant for black, remember my bike is a black beauty as well!!! And the amazing thing is this keyboard has some Indian rhythms loaded into it, which calls for some experimentation. Probably this time I am going to record some thing and going to pin it up over here.
Ok!! I did not stop over there, bought a reebok-T and a short, was about to buy a squash racket: postponed it. Add to that my daily food expense is almost about 25 RM, which is about 300 Rs. I am going bankrupt.
About the impulsive buyer thing: Actually I should have realized this before. Just remembering the London days when a visit to ASDA (The general store) would mean four packet full of useless articles. Some of them would actually end up in the dustbin.
Perhaps one sales girl understood this when I was returning from the mall- after getting the keyboard. She came up to me and sprayed a nice perfume on my hand which smelled beautiful!!!

Kuala Lumpur: The Beginning

I seriously need some sleep now. But still cannot resist posting my first day at Kuala Lumpur. No nothing rocking...but the first day is always a mixed bag.
I have got used to international travel but this journey was different. Could not sleep the entire journey. To add to this traveling east means I gained on time. And I seriously hated Thai Airways: Even the Air hostesses were bad. In fact there were more host.
The flow of events:
1) Confusion at KL airport: I was hurrying ahead of the other passengers to avoid the rush at the VISA check. Ended up at a dead end where some trains were running. Thought I was at the wrong place, everybody boarded the train and left. The train is the mode of travel at KL airport!!!!
2) Journey from the airport was awesome : The car zooming at 150 km/hr remembered London
3) Went out for lunch and did some hunting as well: The games are real bad. I am already missing India, London, Germany
4) Went to gym after a long time, I hope I regain my bulges at the least possible time and bring in more.
5) Had dinner at an Indian restaurant as if I am missing Indian food for a long long time. I sometimes feel this longing, missing are such mind games.

Tomorrow morning I would be back at office. The workplace seemed cool from outside. I hope the work turns out good as well.

Chennai Episodes

It is my last week here in Chennai. And it occured to me why don't I write down all the places of outing that I visited weekend wise. No description would be provided. This blog is only meant to substitute my memory. :)

1) (one day weekend) : Dublin
2) (Two day weekend) : Bike & Barrels, Sleep
3) (one): Ten Downing Street [**Black Out]
4) (Two): Ten Downing Street, Mahabalipuram, Kayaking
5) (One): Sparkz, Avik's Aunts place
6) (Two): Pondicherry
7) (One): Bike & Barrels, Night out on rooftop [I lose my watch :(]

This helps me releasing some of the bytes from my memory cells. Oho I should also write down the movies that I saw during this time ( In order)

1) Paying guest [Left the hall midway]
2) Nuyork [Yak]
3) Hangover [Awwzzzome]
4) Ice Age 3D [Great]
5) Short Cut [Torture]
6) The proposal [Source of the feel good factor]
7) Love aajkaal [Sailed through inebriated]

What more to remember : Yes the nights at the beach, long walks, Card sessions, Mafia Sessions, Random anger rush, Blur, Cribs, Excel Sheet updates, Shubham's B'Day, Stories cooking up/rising from no where, pulling legs of people during card games....
I admit the last 7 weeks have been awesome fun. You enjoy certain periods of your life when frankly you are least expecting. :).
Chennai Rawkkdddd!!!!

The Feel Good Factor (The Internal Variables)

It is monday morning, I have loads of work to do, Running body temperature, to add to that I had a great weekend. So what do you think my feel good factor would be?
The internal variables frankly is much more complex and unlike the external variables don't vary much from person to person. A sub-note over here: I hope by now you all have understood that the feel good factor I am talking about is on the relative sense. That is a positive effect of these variables would take you forward in the happiness scale but won't mean you are really happy.
Every moment a human being's mind is being marauded with hundreds of thoughts. Starting from the excess cash that he spent last night, the short handedness that he showed with the autowallah or even the breakfast that he had. So basically the mind at any moment exists in an n-dimensional space. I can't stress enough the importance of this 'n' over here. Let me put it in a functional form.
n = function(individual, time)
Gautam Buddha (or for that matter anyone who attended nirvana) in his earlier life was stressed by a number of questions. At that time this 'n' for him was high, but at his later life after 'realization' this 'n' was small. So a higher 'n' is a bigger constraint to happiness. How you decrease this 'n' is altogether a different question. At every moment 'n-1' of these variables form a nebula around the mind and only one variable is dealt directly. In fact the mind has its own way of dealing with the nebula or the factor in hand. And here comes the concentration factor. Once again let me quantify the mind.

state of mind = CF*function(Variable 'n') + (1 - CF)*function (Nebula 'n-1')

points: CF = Concentration Factor
The n'th variable keeps changing.

The mind of a 'Sanyasi" who has just started his journey towards attending nirvana is absolutely similar to a layman. Slowly he starts increasing his concentration power. (I am not sure how he does it). Ideally he tries to reach a stage where CF = 1, After this it is just about controlling the variable that is affecting his mind. That variable should be a happiness variable to him. More importantly that variable itself is not determined by other variables. For someone it is GOD, at the other extreme there are the drug addicts. I hope you have got the hang of it. Of course these two factors: God, Drugs they themselves can never be unhappy. But if your sole variable is lets say one of your family members, the hypotheses does not stand for they themselves are affected by so many other factors. Perhaps this is the reason a monk would never talk about his family.
I can't finish talking about the concentration factor so soon. Certain times without you knowing your CF would be really high. Lets take the example of all the CAT or IIT JEE takers. For the serious people they put a lot of energy into these two exams. Automatically the CF is high. So when you get a favourable result in these exams, other variables don't matter, you just feel happy about it and you know how bad it is in case of a failure. Similar is my story when I play volleyball. Invariably my CF is high. And thus you know why I am always happy in the court because I never lose :).
A disgusting note but worth it: Can you now tell me why you feel so happy after shit?
For the not so gifted ones. For whom the mind is mostly a nebula and the CF most of the times is less than 0.7, dissecting happiness is real difficult. I don't even dare. But thee are certain instances when a small thing suddenly makes you happy. A "sorry" from someone who behaved badly with you may be. These are instances that dissipates your nebula without your knowledge. Thus one variable that was bugging your inner mind suddenly disappears. Or say you help a child in need. In that case your nebula actually gets thickened, but since it is the positive note you get happy. As a next step if you find that the same child actually be fooled you by taking the money you get twice upset. This is because your nebula is already denser and the sadness part has just crept in.
Hupps enough of it .. If someone manages to creep through all these bull shit, I thank him.
Another disgusting note this time with respect to the nebula cloud: Can you tell me how is your nebula cloud behaving the day you did not have a good morning pass :). Hey now you are thinking: How such small things can affect you and your happiness.

The Feel Good Factor: The External Variables

Sometimes I feel that I should have been a Happiness Consultant rather than a Growth Consultant. No I am not claiming that I am eternally in the bliss, but I think my funda about being happy is sometimes good. ( A growth consultancy service provider itself is not perennially on the growth track ..Right??) or (A strategy Consultant does not always get his/her strategies right :) )
So what are the variables that makes one happy. Frankly the question is absolutely subjective. While you and me might be happy gaping in a Goa beach , she might not :). Got the twist!!!
So, let me quantify my feel good factor (I need a consultancy fee for others). There are two broad groups of variables: Internal ( You can say random factors ) and External. It would be easy delving into the external factors first in this blog. The internal factors would be coming in the next blog. It is a different subject matter altogether.
I would first write down a few things that no matter what makes me happy (feel good is a more apt state of mind). Based on those I would try to figure out the variables.
1) A room with my keyboard. And a few sad romantic, 'contemplating' songs. (Yes sad!!!)
2) A ground with a 2 meter high net and a round object called a volleyball with 11 others like me.
3) A long walk through metalled/non-metalled road crossing lakes, forests, paddy fields, (the environment has to be cool and serene)
4) A night out of random bakar with Sushil, Sushant, Gregory talking about the futility called Life, Music, etc... (The names are more figurative in nature)
5) Writing a good blog, reading it myself again and again ( I am a "Megalomaniac" to a few and they are correct...It is like the queen looking at herself in the mirror and enjoying her own beauty )
6) A long talk over the phone with some friend and giving him/her a nice speech on life, trying to set everything correct and then feeling good thinking I am such a philanthropist (God knows what they actually think of me..a pain in the a** may be).
7) Some good food by my grand mom (I am homesick :(( )
8) Jadoo Ki jhappi of my mom
9) Solving an intricate 'x' puzzle (x = Mathematics, Statistics, Finance, Physics, Economics)

.... Pause .......

Hupps.. I have taken a good 5 mins after writing the last point searching helplessly if I could find the tenth thing that make me feel good. The list is small. So the next step is to identify the variables.
Without getting into the reasons I am just listing the variables over here.
Feeling Good (me) = Function( external(music, games, walk, blog, bakar, fundas on life, grand mom, mom, brainteasers), internal (???))
So these variables externally create a complex interaction to make me feel good. Anyone thinks there might be some other forces at work as well??

A feel good factor: Part I

Have I deviated from my last promise?
Could not help. Know what..For the last two weeks I have been trying to write a blog on a potpourri of topics. Freewill, my Kayaking expedition, night outs in Chennai....
But somehow I would not be able to sustain the tempo. And frankly I don't like writing a blog that lack the punch, the x-factor :).
Let me try explaining the situation through a musicians perspective (The not so musical readers pardon me). It is like when you are trying to strike the right chord you know you are playing it correct but something is missing. You think it is the C-major (or minor may be). You are pressing the three notes correctly, but you feel hey!! I am just not there. Then suddenly you find that if you add that extra odd note (the fourth key). Making it C-Major 7th or C-minor 9th ... you say aha!!! My situation has been something like that. Though I wanted to pour my heart out in writing on Freewill or kayaking the fourth note was missing. And yesterday while watching the movie "The Proposal", feeling good, being randomly happy ..I felt Hey!! isn't that the thing I just love writing on. The random things in life that make you happy.
So I dedicate this blog to those who just want to be happy. Today is a day when I have thousands of things to do, but still I want to blog. Just because I am feeling happy. The Part II of this blog would give in the details. Till then just randomly keep on feeling good...HAPPY!! The feel good factor for me today is high..!!!

Freedom & Freewill

I could not resist posting this link to the blogs a friend of mine maintains:

http://srinivaskc.blogspot.com/2009/04/human-nature-part-1-this-is-first-in.html

A wonderfully structured, deep insightful blog that I thought you all who read my blogs should read. Quite intricating & provokes you to ask a lot of questions.

The immmediate question that I raise: is there something called "Negative Freewill"? If not then the bell shaped curve assumption cannot be true. EIther it is a truncated bell or may be something like a chi curve. I am giving it a thought and my next post is definitely be on "negative free will" which I believe can be defined.

Chennai

So the period of boredom has finally come to an end (or has it??) as I am spending my training days here at Chennai. Life is not too different from similar days before. The only difference has been the Chennai heat which by the way has been killing at times. The rest of the things have been routine like: Coming to office, Cribbing, Going out, Again Cribbing, Cards, Late Nights and the cycle repeats itself. Doesn't it sound familiar.
Yeah one more difference; after a long long time I am working at office in a weekend.

A kind of different incident

Yesterday evening I was biking through a busy street. Had I been on my legs I would have said I was 'moseying'. Could not find a better befitting word in the case when we are not on legs but on two-wheeler. And then suddenly I could see (sorry feel) a pulsar-180 zooming past me. He was fast. But that did bother me. True my Apache is only 150 cc but I couldn't be left behind like that. I rolled my wrist over the accelerator. VROOM!!! and I was speeding at 80 (through a busy street). Soon I could sniff the PULSAR.
But hey!! Isn't that guy just a teenager. How can I compete against him. Am I not looking like a fool. In fact at this point the other guy could sense my intentions. He sped up as well. I needed to shift to top gear now. But then this dilemma started in my mind. Am I being a bigger fool trying to compete with a teenager or would I look smarter if I can go past him. I thought the former is more important.
In the meantime the teenager once again zoomed away leaving me far behind.

Archive: The Beginning

I am kind of tired expressing my own feelings and incidents through my blogs. From now on I have decided to add anecdotes of incidents not encountered by me but my near ones, such incidents which I enjoyed listening to and would try not to forget. The world of blogs would be a good warehouse to archive these files. Of course I would not spare the stories from my own views and I would add a small note of critical appreciation at the end. Let’s kick off:
This is a story which I recently heard from my grandfather: A page from his childhood days, year 1940. My grandfather lives in a small village and in those days the village was smaller – I mean remote’-r’. He used to study in the local pathshala (Lower primary school) with a handful of other extremely studious pupils. I glorified them ‘studious’ because in those days education was a luxury which could not be afforded monetarily or was considered an absolute non-necessity by most. Result only the most ‘studious’ few were seen with books. The school had a single teacher; ironically he was also the administrative officer, principal, and even the peon - The sole person responsible showing the path of light to the villagers. The adversities of the monopoly given to such teachers are well documented in a number of Bengali movies. However the teacher in my story was dedicated to his job. One day he had some personal work and hence announced a holiday in the school. Upon getting an unexpected off in the mentioned day, my grandfather was roaming around under the hot summer sun with his marbles, trying to find a suitable partner for a marble tournament. This is when he saw two persons dressed in non-rural clothes-one of them in suits-coming up to him. They asked him the direction to the school and seeing it closed they asked my grandfather the reason for it. For the readers who are still wondering about the identities of these persons: one of them was the school inspector and the other was another dignified person from the school board. And yes they were not expecting the school closed. My grandfather took the responsibility of calling the pupils from their homes and in the process ended up gathering quite a large crowd of curious onlookers. In fact a large part of the village was soon seen inside the school premises. If you are wondering how such a large crowd could find a place inside the school building, let me tell you that the school building was mostly open air. The inspector kept himself busy asking different questions, thanks to the hard work of the school teacher, the pupils were up to it. This got the inspector visibly happy. It was around this time one could see an old man coming running down the lane. In fact he was not running, he was hobbling because of his corn affected foot. It was the school teacher. He had not got the time to put on his shirt and was bare chest. The moment he reached the classroom he started pleading guilty and was inconsolable. The inspector was however very pleased and he did not complain. It was soon known that the school teacher had applied for the school to be graduated from Lower Primary to Upper Primary and the inspection was solely for that reason. The graduation certificate was granted.
This is however one part of the story. Let me give you a few facts: the school teacher used to live around 10 kms from the school. In those days there was no bus service and he had to walk that distance. He had some personal work on that day (the reason for announcing the holiday). One should wonder how he got the information of the inspection and how he could run the distance with his injured leg. My grandfather says that the teacher -after finishing his work- was resting in his home when he had a dream. He saw goddess Kali was pinching him and informing him of the inspection in his dreams. This got him running, I mean hobbling. Super Natural!!!! Are you not convinced?? Then maybe you should believe it was telepathy a page from para-psychology. Whatever it was it saved the day for an otherwise extremely committed teacher and also the school. The same school now stands in the village which achieved some more levels of graduations since that day. It is now a higher secondary school and of course not open-air. How the funds were collected is another story.

I am in a boring slumber

I hate my current stage. Yes I do!!! Now I miss those busy hours, the pressure of solving cases, appearing for quizzes preparing for interviews. Surprised?? This is life..Nowadays I am practically jobless, getting bored to hell with nothing to do at home. And to add that I am not being able to blog for the want of a net connection at home. Today I got so desperate that I thought that I would blog sitting inside a cyber cafe. Frankly it is a time when I have so much to write about the political scenario and the gimmick called IPL. SAD!!!!
A typical day in my life consists of getting hold of the TV remote and constantly surfing through the channels. The only saving grace is my synthesizer.
I want to get out of this slumber. And yes one more info I have been posted in Kuala Lumpur and that has hammered spirits down further.

At the end I am HAPPY

Hupps!!!!
That exclamation is much bigger and pronounced than those 5 letters. A journey that started in 1985 when I walked into my first school holding my mothers hand is about to end. And the journey seems accomplished. The road was not easy, was long, but full of memories and I know I am going to miss it.
Thank God, Thanx to all the well wishers I have been able to sail through the recent course of adversity :: Getting a good job in the final placements. For your information Bain & Co was once again kind enough to give me a shortlist and one more from Frost & Sullivan. Pretty dismal considering that I did not get one from the other 6 companies. (I am talking only about day 0) But at the end while Bain did not find me good enough FnS did. So finally I have cracked Day 0 at the final placements. Frankly something to feel happy about...Accomplished!!!!!!!!!
Moreover the location is London, a city that I loved being at, during my summer internship. Alas!! my partners in crime during that time would not be with me this time. But hopefully the new crowd would be as much fun to be with.
I am now absolutely convinced of two phrases :
1) All's well that ends well
2) In the long run everything falls in place.
While the former is true for everybody the latter has been absolutely true for me. At this moment my life seems extremely fulfilled. Frankly what more to ask?? And hence for the last three days I have been genuinely HAPPY.

Last JBS performance?? Perhaps!!!

Could not resist putting this up over here. Though the performance was not the best, but my only performance which has been recorded. And then it was all nostalgic.






Should post a few more, once I get hold of them. And please to encourage :P

Been There Done That

Nowadays I am feeling that sense !! Yeah Deja Vu ... Life once again has become extremely hectic and for a change I have taken studies a little seriously for the time being. The pressure of preparation, some added responsibilities :: everything together makes me remember the innumerable number of times I have been through this. Only change is that now I have got used to it.
Meanwhile my Germany trip is done. Was an wonderful experience walking through the snow, feeling my fingers freezing up and not being able to talk because of the cold. Made quite a few friends over there and the last night party was awesome. But it was for the first time that I had the language problem when I went to a local store to buy some stuff.
I know this blog is a little diversion from my usual philosophical ones and that is because I don't have much time in finding the reflections of philosophy in my life nowadays. Trying to be practical and fight out the externalities, believe me the battle had not been more difficult before. I hope I am soon able to write a blog expressing how I have flown through this adversity like I have always done.
Are you wishing me the BEST!!!!

There's something that money can't buy

Isn't that absolutely true. Felt like reminding you all the recent ad-campaign of VISA where you get to see a group of friends throwing the hotel bill away to one another and the same group in their balded age snatching the bill. Nostalgic feelings. Perhaps one would say that we are still at the former stage or still some time is left before we reach the latter. But, for us by which I mean people like me who had grown up in hostels from the kindergartens such reflections come in early. Yesterday was such a day.
It was a get together of a few of us who spent the most beautiful part of their lives, grew up together under the same almamater Sainik School Purulia. And it was in honor of a very close friend of us who is in India on vacation. The moment we met those strange old feelings were back, there was so much to re-enact from the diaries of our school days. The same old leg pooling. Tell you what each of ours fathers had some special place amongst us in those days. I was simply surprised to find that we still remember those revered names and the associated masalas :P. And how much we loved our hostel superintendent. An example of his greatness can be found in my last blog. We were together for about 5 and half hours but never felt like departing. In the end when the restaurant bill came the sight was absolutely similar to the VISA ad, of course the latter part. In the school days the same 'we' would go the cafeteria and cheat each other to feed our own stomach in some others account.
I am still having a heavy heart. Thank you Sainik School Purulia for giving me such a wonderful set of friends. Thank you for making us all think alike, thank you for giving me some people for whom I can say yes they care. I feel lucky, I really do. For some of you the story might seem similar. If only I could make you feel the DIFFERENCE - the selflessness - !!!!!!

Wishing & Hoping for a better year ahead

Let me be optimistic (I know that sounds utterly pessimistic) that the new year would be prosperous and would have much better things to offer than 2008. With the usual New Year wishes the query that one gets at this stage is how the New Year celebrations was. Thought of blogging it down. In fact I am trying to blog down all my New Year celebrations as far as I can remember. My friends who have been part of these "years" let me see whether you remember those days. Incidentally I get so much response about my blogs from different people but none is a little patient enough to pen them down. Anyway I am a little lost in which way to start. I mean going up the memory lane or down. Which way would keep you interested enough to keep reading the whole post. (Marketing Strategy!!!!). Let me start with the oldest ones.

1994: Class VI. Was into the first year of my hostel life. But was not in hostel because of Christmas vacation. In fact my transition into the new year was inside the sleeper class of Puri-Howrah train. Yes I was returning from a trip to Puri with my family. I so very well remember the emotions cooking inside me at that time. The vacation was about to get over and the thought of getting back to the hostels was killing me.

1995 - 1998: These were the next four years of my school-hostel. The Christmas vacation was done away with after class VI and my new years were celebrated in School. Ironically there would not be any emotional doldrums, in fact I would enjoy the days to the fullest. We used to have our school annual sports week culminating with the annual day in this period. This used to be a helluva of an affair and would take me more than just three lines to talk about it.

However in between these four years two of the years were special and anti climatic to each other.

1997: Phew!!! I had just been suspended from the school for slapping someone. According to the guys parents it was an attempt to murder. Thankfully my parents gave me a lot of moral support, and did not have much damage done apart from the suspension for ten days. The period of suspension got over exactly on 01/01/1997 :)

1998: Ahem!!! A few months back I had met a creature from some other planet. So you know New years are meant to sent messages of well being to such creatures. ;). And emails having not been the standard in those times, this poor fellow had to wait for the postman. 31st December night it came. (Quite a coincidence) But it fell into the hands of my friends and a period of "you know what" started. And finally when I got the letter in my hands our hostel superintendent calls me up for making commotion inside the mess and writes a long letter of about 10 points to the headmaster complaining. One of the points was that I was creating a group among the boys to go against him. I was quite a politician you see ;). A new year to remember.

1999-2000: Yes I was muggooo...I had nothing to think about during this time apart from books & IIT JEE. And frankly I don't have vivid memories of what I did.
2001 was spent in frustration having done miserably in IIT JEE mains again my memory chip is blank.
Is anyone thinking about what happened to that creature? The loser I am, books became my paramount importance and the creature was left to get to get lost into oblivion. I know I am not doing any good by saying this :D.

2002-03: The happiest two new years that I spent and not meant for blogs :). Sorry Mates.

2004-06: The days of IIT had started long back. The last three years were different from first two. These wold be the period when I would just be back from Inter IIT sports meet. And relaxing the new years at home.

2007: New year in Pune!!!! Celebrated like a true working man. :) Got the hint??

2008: New Year at IIM Calcutta and the most shitty one I have ever had. We went to aquatica in the night and it was an awful experience.

2009: Perhaps the best New Year celebration till now. I played my keyboard for the most of the night along with the other members of the band. I was inebriated and it felt awesome playing music around the bonfire. Once the show ended we had a nice walk around the campus, and the finally the night ended with the usual cursing of our luck, the economic recession & the job scenario. Harbinger of things to come

Hey I am again getting pessimistic, let’s be optimistic for the New Year. Oh Common!!!!!!