Payday

I remember all four times when I received my first salary in the respective organisations. Each time it was special, and interestingly each time it meant a different thing, the spectrum spanning from excitement to relief to amusement to satisfaction.


30th June 2003 (Mumbai)
28th Feb 2005 (Noida)
31st May 2005 (Gurgaon)
30th April 2008 (Mumbai)


This time around its 701% over what I got the first time. And 109% over what I had got in my last organisation (pre PGDBA). Seems going to b-school wasn't that bad an option. The numbers seem to have taken into account the opportunity cost and have made it a risk adjusted return (after all shifting industries wasnt something I had conceived to be as easy).


Also, one more interesting trend is that each time the figure has approximately doubled. Wont really mind if the trend keeps going in the years to come, coz the CAGR happens to be 51.61 %


;)
:D
:)

Off course

 

So often we are told to look at the big picture. Live and understand life at the macro level. Looking at the broader trends certainly helps to see the general direction in which we are heading, but can it help take us there?

 

There is an analogy that strikes me -

 

A ships navigation system has two components- rudder and propeller.

 

Rudder which is a pad like structure gives direction, the ships moves in the direction opposite to which the rudder is pointed. Its so true with us as well, we always attempt to steer life the way we want it to go and then feel utterly frustrated when it moves in the converse direction. Our frustration is often because we looking from too short an angle to understand which path will this lead us to. As I often keep quoting "life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans".

 

That is where probably the element of destiny comes into play. Destiny is often defined as a predetermined course of events. Destiny as I see it, is not something that is hard-wired into our lives. Instead its the outcome of the all the input (thoughts and efforts) that we have put. Is it like a tool that has been provided to us for our understanding and betterment? A self-aware person who knows what he wants from life is more likely to get it, as, very early in his voyage of life he has set the rudder in the right direction.

 

Propeller is what pushes the ship forward. Its the thrust that is required to move in a set direction. Very often we know where we want to go, how we want out life to be, but lack the discipline and the willingness to head there. And this is where the smaller picture plays an important role. Our day to day life is a reflection of where we are heading in general, how much is the distance we have already covered and what direction we have chosen for ourselves.

 

The course that we steer, is our choice. We cant change the flow of the oceans nor can we control the weather and the winds. Want we do have control over is the rudder and propeller of our live.

 

And finally iExist

Somewhere on the face of earth, my temp co-ordinates 19.229514,72.84163

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Search Engines

Here are some of interesting search engines that I found during the course of work/ PGDBA/ random surfing -

Searching beyond Google -> http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156221

 

And then you have Google -> http://www.google.com/coop/cse/overview

 

Few search engine that I bumped into, during the course of my training

 

Business to Business Search Engine ->   http://www.kompass.com/

 

Manufacturer Directory -> http://www.alibaba.com/

 

The India Search Engine -> http://guruji.com/

 

Job Search Engine -> http://india.recruit.net/

Yellow Page Search -> http://www.justdial.com/

 

Ego surfing and more

 

Hindi Search Engine -> http://www.raftaar.com

 

Webdunia Khoj -> http://www.webdunia.com/khoj/search.asp

Solitude therapy

This happens to be one of the best sundays that I got to spend after such a long time. I really cant think of a more relaxing and de-stressing one in the last couple of months.

For a lot of people a holiday means to rush off to a mall, spurge on senseless shopping, rushing to movies and doing anything/ everything to keep oneself distracted. I see a lot of people making a conscious effort at disconnecting from oneself. Its such a sorry thing to do. The only time of the week when you get a chance to re-connect you choose to just let it slip and work your way in a converse direction.

Solitude makes people uneasy. It creates a deep sense of unrest. The reason being that most of us equate solitude with loneliness. Loneliness is like a closet where we keep stuffing all that makes us uncomfortable and which we do not want to confront. When we find ourselves alone all that we have kept on ignoring and denying, resurfaces. This is a classic case of "fight or flight" response, most of us without realizing and giving much thought to it, take the easy out. This is response that comes most natural to us, its "hard-wired" into our system and therefore its very rare that one puts much thought to it. The stress that the situation induces upon us is purely a cognitive one and hence there is always an easy escape from it. "Man is a cognitive miser" is one of my favorite  quotes. Most of us prefer to spend heavy on the wallet front rather than spending time in self-analysis and self-understanding.

Today I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to spend an entire day alone. I did not do anything spectacular through the day. Woke up late, lazed an extra hour in the bed. Went through the sunday newspaper, had a fruit salad breakfast, washed clothes, cooked lunch, watched a movie, random web-surfing, went for grocery shopping, cooked chana masala for dinner and since it was sprouted it was all the more nutritious, watched one more movie and finally blogged after a real long time :)

Finally as I prepare for going to bed and getting up to the same old frenzy and madness of monday morning the thought that crosses my mind is from the movie Hitch which I watched today -

Life is not the amount of breaths you take, it's the moments that take your breath.

Dreaming awake

every dream ends
so they say
and yet everyone sleeps

sleeps to forget
sleep to hide
all in vain

i had a dream
so vivid

so true
 

in the harsh sunlight
as i was

standing next to you

What is love?

This is a question that has been pondered upon by thinkers and non-thinkers alike for so many centuries. Each individual either writes about it or the lack of it. So many creative expressions have been a result of this is one emotion. I personally as well have been pondering about it from time to time.

So many attempts have been made to classify love. From divine to lustful, there is an entire continuum on which it finds expression. But again if we can these as expressions, then surely these are a mere manifestation. Then the question to be asked is, what lies beneath/ beyond, and what is it that is the root-cause of one of the most powerful and captivating emotion that man experiences.

People say that love is a state of being. If it is so then, love is just another emotional state. And like any other emotional state, transitory and affect based. By definition, emotion is the affective aspect of consciousness. This again brings us back into the cause-symptom loop, if love an emotion then it’s a symptom and now the cause. However, if we accept this premise we find attribute the seat of this emotion rooted in our neurology and hence hardwired in our brains and waiting for the right set of triggers. Instinctual love, as I would like to call it, doesn’t leave very far behind the animals, who in every mating season are compelled to go through the motions of copulation without the least bit of understanding of the whys.

Can love be rational? If love has a rational base then we can break it down to a mathematical equation. We can perform/ apply the rules of logic to it. We can add, subtract, multiply, divide it and find the resultant. This surely is not the case, as this paints a very manipulative picture of love. Yet, ironically, when we come to think of it, in real life this is the kind of love that we see around us so many times. Transactional love, as I would like to call it, involves give-and-take and book-keeping of all that one person does for the other and hence, an implicit expectation of return.

Popular cinema often equates love with sacrifice. The protagonist is portrayed as a suffering hero/ heroine. Love equals sacrifice equals suffering seems to the equation over here and hence. The more you sacrifice and the more you suffer the stronger is suppose to be your love, seems to the premise over here. Is love the same as sacrifice, if one person claims to be in love with another person and gives up everything for him/ her is that love? Sacrificial love, according to me is nothing more than a compromise. We all have our value system and our set of priorities, if one has to give them up, I would look at it more as a compromise rather anything else.

Religion talks of selfless love. Karmakaand (the ritualistic aspect of Hindu religion) and similar practices across all religion often equate social service and charity with love. Selflessness and acts of philanthropy have there own merits, there is no denying of that, but calling it love is something that is beyond my understanding. Selfless love, means to elicit the same response to all things in the world. As a meta-physical concept this is the most idealistic way ahead, however at the worldly level this surely seems to be the least understood and practiced.

There are so many connotations to this single word. Each school of thought tries to capture the essence of this emotion and bring forth there interpretations. As a free society surely there is no harm in doing so, but this starts to create problems when as a group or as an individual when there are attempts to impose these views over everyone else. This leads to a lot of fallacies, like, the government claims if you love your country then kill others on the battlefield, a number of extremist groups brainwash people and ask them to kill for religion and so on.

Love might still be an undefined concept for me, but as I start to think about it I certainly start realizing what it isn’t. And it might be an anti-thesis, but I have also started to realize that it is this very attempt to define and hence confine it to a selected operational framework that has caused so much distortion, and that too sadly, in the name of love.

I am so excited...

A good way to start the year is by spending time to plan it and making some good resolutions.

One of my resolution finally started to roll out. I joined a workshop on Creative Writing at Xavier's Institute of Communication, this is a six week part-time course with classes happening once a week (every wednesday). Now as a part of the course I had to take a sub-resolution to start writing some thing every day. So, I have decided to give atleast 15 minutes of dedicated (with a person of my kind of attention span, thats really something) time for this starting today for the next six weeks.

And hence my new blog- http://myexperimentalcreativity.blogspot.com/

Capitalism: still an ideal to be known...

One of my long term plan is to eventually move from the corporate world into the social services sector. However, the only difference being that this move will be from one service sector to the other. And will incorporate a movement of the skills that I will acquire and sharpen from the Management Consulting domain in which I am currently working.

This is the very reason by Social Entrepreneurship as a concept has fascinated me for so many years. Its a blend of business and social work, and can give sustainable solutions and not just idealistic talks.

Capitalism is the only system geared to the life of a rational being and the only moral politico-economic system in history - Ayn Rand

I have always been a big fan of Ayn Rand. Her writings have had a great impact on my thought process and have shaped my value system. Individualism as it exists in the modern society need to draw inspiration from such sources if its intended at created a positive and affirmative impact. It might again seem contradictory that one has to turn to individualism to become an change driver but as goes her famous quote on contradictions -

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. - Ayn Rand

Its easy to stay put on the face of external ambiguity but impossible to bear internal ambiguity. And the worst part is that the such internal conflicts can only be resolved by checking the base assumptions, which most of the people are plain incapable of doing and which is the cause of most of our miseries.

A life worth living will be one in no ideal is unknown or latent. The unknown ideal will be finally accepted and embraced not just a way but the way of life.

Mera Bharat Mahan...

As the year 2007 is winding up and we are all set to welcome 2008 with excitement, here are a couple of articles which surely set the mood -

The fastest-growing aviation market - http://specials.rediff.com/yearend/2007/dec/05yrbuz7.htm

The No 1 travel destination - http://specials.rediff.com/yearend/2007/dec/05yrbuz9.htm

The most attractive market for retail investment - http://specials.rediff.com/yearend/2007/dec/05yrbuz3.htm

The fastest growing telecom market in the world - http://specials.rediff.com/yearend/2007/dec/05yrbuz4.htm