2009 - Revisit

Today is the very last of the year 2009. It's time to say bye-bye 2009 and also a time to revisit the incidents which had huge impact in our lives. Everyone will have their own list but here I am trying to compile a list of top 5 events which made huge impact without being partial. Here it is:

1. Rise of Rahul Gandhi and Congress: 2009 will be the witness of rising of Rahul Gandhi, the Nehru-Gandhi scion and Congress as a party. The general election 2009 outcome was a pleasant surprise when congress won 207 seats and made it possible for Congress to create government at centre on it own terms. It is not small that madam Maywati see him (Rahul Gandhi) as a threat for her political career. Rahul Gandhi is picture perfect of young Bharat and he will definitely impact our lives and take our future in newer and better direction.

2. Drought: Last year sugar was 20 Rs./Kg and this year it's at 40 Rs./Kg is one of the most common statement we are listening nowadays. Not only sugar but the prices of all the food items have skyrocketed and still going up. This is the end result of the drought in most of the parts of Bharat this year. You can get the fair idea of seriousness of the situation by knowing that this was the worst drought in last 37 years.

3. Pay per second: When earlier this year TATA-DOCOMO has launched per second billing, it created a revolution in Bharatiya telecom industry. Existing players were shaken to the core. Telecom Industry in Bharat was having least billing rate in the world even without per second billing. At that time no one even thought of going it down further. But with almost 50% cut in telephone bills people in Bharat are definitely talking more. That is why we are saying "Eat less Talk more".

4. H1N1: Also known as Swine Flu in general language. This was the virus which came from Pigs. Till now there are 10K death around the globe by this virus and the toll is still growing. Though it made less impact in Bharat as compare to other countries but it had definitely impact our lives this year. There was a time when in media, every news was of Swine Flu. We literally craved for some news other than Swine Flu. People using mask (sugical mask - which was not helpful) was a very common sight in malls, multiplexes, and at every common place.

5. Roller Coaster Ride of Sensex: This is not the event in itself really, but the result of all events happened throughout the year. But it has definitely made impact on people lives so giving it place in my list. Most (read all) of the finance BigBs were negative on the share market until February, 2009 when the market took a complete U-turn and going North since then. Till February experts were skeptical of reaching to even 12K mark. They were saying that it could down upto 5000 odd level. But the fact is when everybody seems to be confident of the situation, share market always unfold some new story.

With this, it's time to bid adieu 2009 and welcome 2010. May this year our live will full of good energy and all our wishes come true. Amen.
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!!!!

Now my complaint will also be FIR

As per today's news Union Home ministry will write to all the states to register all the complaints as FIR. Till now if you go to police station to report the theft case (which is of not much amount) at your home, they never used to write any FIR for that. Moreover, everyone knows how the India police works as far as complaints are concern.

They use to tell us to write a complaint on white paper and give it to them. That's it. No follow ups, no tracking of the record. Many people might have same story.

But not any more, police has to take all the complaints as FIR. And frivolous, incorrect and false FIRs can be rejected by the police after investigation as said by Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram.

I really appreciate the move. Many more steps to be taken Mr. PC.

What's you take on the issue, let others also know. So, do write comments :)

What's Your Resolution - 2010

One of the most hot topics these days is about the New Year Resolution. It's always good to take a new start. And 1st January gives a great opportunity to take first step towards that change. It's like rejuvenating your mind and soul before year long run. Everybody is busy in preparing a list of do's and dont's for the year 2010. Some of the hot favourites are:
1. Lose Weight
2. Stop Smoking/Drinking
3. Better Time-Management
4. Save/Earn more Money
5. Find better Job

So, Have I made new year resolution this time? NO!!!! Because somehow I am not convinced with the theory of new year resolution or may be I've rejected it after believing and trying so hard for many years. Good to make a plan in advance but I prefer flexibility of changing my deeds according to the situation. And anyways my past history also does not suggest me to do so. Yes,I had made many plans in past. Some of them definitely got successful but most of them were lost half way through.

But I definitely think of one thing not only as new year resolution but as a daily resolution for myself to be a better Human. This is subjective and vague in nature but still I'll go with this.

So, what's your resolution for the new year. Share with us. May be it'll help others in planning.

In case you do not hear from me in 2009, Wish You Folks Very Happy New Year!!!!

Hindutva - Common Man Perspective

Disclaimer: I am not a subject matter expert on Hinduism. I am sharing my perceptions about the same. I am sorry, if I hurt anyone's sentiments.

What is Hinduism, who is Hindu, How it like to be a follower of Hindutva? There are many such questions which come to mind every other day but do not get proper answers (I do not want to get the answer from so-called Hindu Gurus also). I've seen people who follow proper Hindu rituals but quite ignorant to the blind person on road who wants to cross the road. It's very common to see a person (including me) who calls themselves Hindu without knowing ABC of Hinduism. I've never read any book on the subject, I am ignorant to the history of the subject yet I called myself Hindu.

But still I am one level above of the mass (who never give it a thought in their whole lifespan) where I thought about it and created my own version of Hindutva based on whatever little information (Thanks to television and my Hindu background for the same) I have.

The bottom-line of Hindu religion, as per my opinion is love for all the Human Beings irrespective of their colour, looks, region, language, race. A single and only word "LOVE" is a core of the religion. Everything else is created upon it. I've my own points to reach to this conclusion, which are as follows.

Let's start with Lord Shiva. He is seen as the Supreme God. But how he looks? He has three eyes. Shiva smears his body with ashes. He is the one with matted hair. He is accompanied by Ganas (Boothaganas, or ghostly hosts, on account of their nature). Shiva wears a snake. Frankly speaking, I will not like a person who has not-so-well-behaved friends, do not take bath and use ashes on his body. Who does not have proper hair and the body defect of three eyes. But we still worship Shiva. I chant "Om namah Shivay" as soon as I see any temple/mosque/church/gurudwara. Why? It's because Hinduism says don't go with the looks of a person. Look at the inner heart. He has saved earth by holding Ganga in his hair. He drank the poison churned up from the world ocean. This is why we worship Shiva. This is what Hinduism says also.

Will you like a person with three heads (Yes, I am talking about Brahma), I really suspect so. Again the moral of the story is looks does not matter. We should love and respect every single human being.

Why we worship Krishna who used to steal butter, who was very much involved in eve-teasing. Who had affair with every girl in his village and nearby. Do you really like a person with such image in today's world? The answer is yet again, a BIG NO. But still people are mad about Lord Krishna.

The best is Ganehsa and Hanuman. Look wise they can't be put on normal Human Being's category. But still they have long-list of devotees.

Not only these there is a long list of Hindu God/Goddesses who has more than 2 hands, more than1 head and so on so forth still we worship them not because of there colour, looks, region, language, race but for their deeds. All the books (Vedas, Granthas) etc which are filled with similar stories directly points towards "LOVE" for everyone. And this is the only core of Hindutva.

Please let me know if you think same or otherwise. How you look at Hinduism or any religion for that matter.

Weird Thoughts

There are times when you don't know what to write, but you do. As a result, this post. I had many things in my mind, but not now :). Lets talk about thoughts, weird ones. It’s weird how time flies by, how we forget others with time, how others want to forget us with time. It’s weird how close we feel with someone very far away and how far we feel when we are close to someone. Sometimes it feels like ages have passed away and sometimes it feels it just happened yesterday. It’s weird right? A person so close is just a contact in your address book, which even you don’t remember its there. Sometimes I just surf around my address book to check whether I am still holding on or I have moved ahead. Most of the time I find myself holding on. Hope is weird too, it assures you of something will happen or someone will come back. You hope, you wait, you dream, you live, and then one day you forget everything when the hope fades away. Have you loved someone, have you not? Do you miss a part of your life, or do you realize that part even exist? Are you brave enough to face the truth or will you just pretend to be brave to move on? It will not matter after sometime. But it’s okay, this is life. It moves on, so do we, so does everyone. What we can do is, to be grateful for what happened, and LEARN. At the most, we can remember as long as we can because even if we do move on or forget, what we experienced(or felt) at the very moment was real/true, even if it was for once.

Lately I realized my loneliness has slowly and steadily changed into solitude. You might ask what is the difference? But that you can realize only if you have been through these phases. I can only tell you what I have realized. So, when you are alone and you fear to be alone again, that is loneliness. As Mother Teresa said “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.”. Now what this fear can lead you to? By affect of this fear, you try very hard to avoid being on your own, so you either trap yourself in an unfulfilled relationship by pursuing a wrong person or you do other weird things too :). My Loneliness has transformed into solitude. In words of Alfred Polgar , “When everyone leaves you it’s loneliness you feel, when you leave everyone else it’s solitude.” So now I enjoy being alone.

P.S. : To readers, so when did you last surfed you address book and found a contact which was once very important to you? And is your loneliness still a loneliness or solitude?

-- Atul

The writing here is solely a fictional work of Atul Rawat.

Nonexistence of Human Being Yet Fake Egos

Yesterday I was going through an old family photo album and saw myself in a snap with The Great Himalayas in the background. I was looking at the snap and noticed that I was looking very small in front of those peaks. And I don't know how the mind went towards the question of my existence in this world? Suddenly I started feeling very light.

The thought process reminded me the mail in which the comparison of our earth and some of the biggest stars and galaxy itself was portrayed. Our earth was looking like a tiny dot in front of the bigger stars. As compare to the size of galaxy, our earth is no-where. Take one step upwards and just think of millions of galaxies. Thinking about the vastness was like a conundrum to me. All of us know that human mind is a superpower. It can think beyond our expectations but the universe is spread beyond that.

An interesting data I want to quote here is, As a guide to the relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if it were reduced to 10m in diameter, the Solar System, including the Oort cloud, would be no more than 0.1mm in width (0.001%), source Wikipedia. People say one picture is worth of thousand word. So just watch this video and decide where we really stand?


Let's come back to the human form. If we try to see ourselves in the same scale, we would not be able to see ourselves. But the way we are living in this world and doing all types of nuisance, it looks as if we are superior to everything else. To satisfy our false ego we are fighting with each other, wasting all our resources, energy, power, time in maligning other person, country, and even race. When we are in a city, we fight for our blocks. When we talk in a state level platform we think only till our city limits. Then at next higher level, we talk about states, so called culture, languages which will not have any meaning once we are out of this world. Then at the next level we say that I am American, I am Bhartiya, I am from Africa and so on so forth. And within all this we keep fighting based on our race, caste, religion, origin.

How many of us can be so sure that our forefathers were of the same race, religion or the same caste and belong to the same place where we are living right now? Just take any history books and you'll get an fair idea that how frequently people changed (by their own wish or forcefully) their religion and places. Even then if we feel that we are so called pure blood then, I can only laugh at you.

We spend most of our lives in satisfying our fake egos rather than doing something "bigger and better". That "bigger and better" can be anything. I'll leave this to you to decide what can be the "bigger and better" means to you. I believe every living being in the universe has it's own purpose of living for which only, we take birth. And if we do not work towards that purpose, we are not only trying to make ourselves fool but also cheating to our respective GODs (or the power in which everyone believes).

Happiness is Easy : If you look around :)

If you will look around, you’ll see where you can find happiness. Don’t ever look at me. I smile without any reasons and I do have a whole stack of PJ’s for which my loved ones despise me :P. So as the day began I realized it’s not too hard to squeeze happiness out of the moments. I observed and what I found was amazing.

1st Smile: The first one who smiled was me. While I was going to office I saw a girl waking up at 11 O’clock. She just opened the door and the first face she saw was of me. She smiled I smiled back. (Am I a clown? No, need to answer please.)

2nd Smile: I like watching out of window while I travel to office. I saw a kid running behind other. They were both laughing. Happiness is easy you see.

3rd Smile: A college couple holding their hands. They were both talking and smiling. The thing about being in love is you Smile even when you are alone. Isn’t it amazing?

4th Smile: I reached office and everyone was smiling. Okay now this is a professional smile but anyway we smiled.

5th Smile: I was taking a break and a half paralyzed old man asked where Dr. X and Dr. Y are? He was smiling constantly. I asked him twice what he was saying? I was lost in his smile. This is amazing again. People, who somehow are incapable, make up with things which capable people find difficult. How hard is smiling you capable people?

6th Smile: While coming back to home, I was listening songs on my mobile headphone and making weird noises which I call my singing talent. Two kids in front of start giggling and soon they were laughing, smiling and singing and of course teasing me. Yeah I am a clown, officially now. Although, I doubt they even know any word in Hindi. But the song they were singing was “Aashiq Banaya Aapne”. Himesh, there is nowhere escaping you:(.
Since the time I started my day to the end of it there were many instances where I saw and felt happiness. You see happiness is not that much difficult? Just look around and feel. Don’t think you are confused, you are just inquisitive.

-- Atul

The writing here is solely a fictional work of Atul Rawat. Any resemblance to any person living or dead or any event is purely co-incidental.

Magic Of Love - Part 1

I was reading a quote about love and told 1 of my friend about it. She immediately stopped doing whatever she was doing and the first thing she did was to forward that quote to one she loved. That was then I thought about the Magic Of love. Is not it amazing? You hear something and the picture of someone appears before you instantly. It's very hard to explain what you feel when you are in Love. For me its impossible because I never fell in love with anyone fortunately and unfortunately. But whatever I’ve heard from people around me (like this friend of mine) I will tell you. And also about the longing which I feel sometimes.

1. 1 of my friend told me, when you are in love small things add up to one magical world. I don't know what he meant at that time because those talks really bored me at those times and above all he was a shit-head(oops). But now I realize what that fool means. He wanted to tell me that everything seems to be special when you are in love. I remembered him ordering 2 glasses of juice in mess all times, the 1 that he drinks was paid by her and vice versa. He use to find reasons to show his love and surprisingly that senseless gal use to do same. I saw him watching intently towards her room in girls hostel. Fortunately for him girls hostel was close enough to have a clear vision ;). But his reason was love. For him love has created a magical world out of small things.

2. He was weird/philosophical but 1 thing that made him common was love. He was a different species of lovers, the one sided ones. And the amazing part was he was happy. Just being in touch with her made him happy. I saw sparks flowing out of his eyes whenever he saw her, talked with her. He often told me “when you are in love, everything seems fine. World is a better place.” I use to wonder how. Now I realize how. Whenever he was angry, he reached to her and everything was fine. Whenever he was sad, he talked to her and everything was fine. Everything about world was fine because she was the part of his world. In fact she was his world I guess. Fortunately she also realized that, although after 1 boyfriend, but they are living happily. An ideal example of “Love will find its way”:).

3. He was the one whom I least suspected will fall in love. He was a looser(Although lesser than me since he at least got 1). But someone once told me “Love transforms and if its true, it does that for good.” He just sat with a girl once in class. She realized he was a looser because somehow he is not able to understand things being taught in class. And the reason was he was not from an English medium. Most of girls will never entertain such a guy. But she did. She explained her everything, sometimes more than required ;) .(You dirty minds.) And he started doing wonders. This was the first time I have seen love growing. It was not for looks, it was for two souls destined to converge into one.
Continued…

-- Atul

The writing here is solely a fictional work of Atul Rawat. Any resemblance to any person living or dead or any event is purely co-incidental.

CAT 2009 - Hard to Catch

CAT, One of the biggest exams in country conducted by IIMs most reputed institute for business studies. But 2009 is the different year for CAT exams. This year CAT went online. And the contract went to Prometric, renowned name in online test. And it cost whopping $40 billion to IIMs.

This year since the online system went on air, it went down. It cost several futures. Several years of preparation went in vain for many candidates. It created havoc all over the country when those systems are still not working fine even after 4 days. But who will take responsibility for that. Prometric just happily said that it happened due to virus. But is it not a responsibility of Prometric that it should have conducted thorough test of the system before opening it for students? The students who did not get the chance to give exams are still in better situation because they got new dates but what about those students who have completed all the sections of the paper but at last, system said your DI section is not completed and time remaining is just 15 minutes.

Here, I tried to find some feedback on Prometric's online test system. This link tells that the user had a problem with Prometric, but even after 2 months it did not get resolved. In another instance we can get the fair idea of the horrible experience with Prometric systems.

Every system has it's own drawback and the problems are natural to have. But when there are so many stake holders involved, many years of hard work are at stake, is it not the responsibility of respective authorities to make sure that system works fine even in the worst scenarios? They should have done many round of testing before opening it for CAT aspirants.

The Rain

It was the 1st time since he proposed her, that he was holding her hands and was so close to her. As soon as they went out, it started raining heavily. So to run for a shelter,he caught her palm but did not let go even when they reached to the shelter. He felt her hands were still warm. After a minute of observing the moment, he said ” Do you know, it was raining that day too, when I first talked to you.”

“Yes I do.”

“What ? So why were you so cold towards me back then. I thought you don’t even know me. “

“I am a girl. I wanted to be sure.”

After a minute’s silence, she said “Do you know, when I saw you for the first time, I believed we will be in love someday? “

“Yes I do.”

“Huh?”

“That was why I was running around you. It was love I knew.”

They remained there for a while even when the rain stopped, staring blankly in the darkness feeling the light that was in their hearts.

- Atul

The writing here is solely a fictional work of Atul Rawat. Any resemblance to any person living or dead or any event is purely co-incidental.

Burden In My Heart....

"What the hell?" I muttered. I burnt my fingers again. It's a weekend and I was pathetically trying to cook. So,I thought its better I eat outside as usual. Within 15 minutes I was in Mc D. "Hello Sir! Can I take your order?" greeted the Mc D boy. I think they recognize me by now, I am a regular face you see. "Of course you can." I said. And smiles all around." I will decide in a minute." I said. "Sure Sir." The boy replied smiling as if he is happy that he will not be taking my order. I wonder whether they trained in "Smiling" too. "Boy you are useless." Smile. "Boy I am useless." Smile. "I want one Maharaja and one medium coke."
"So you are quick to choose now." Now that sounds familiar. I turned back and there she was.
"Oh... Hi. aaaa... Ambika."
"Is it so hard to recall my name, Chandru." And all smiles. "Sir your order."
"Oh yes! Can I take your order? What do you want?"
"It's okay, I will give my own order. You go and sit somewhere." It's 4 years since I left the college but I guess some things never change. She is still the boss.
Within 5 minutes she was above my head. "Can I sit with you?" "Oh! Yes."*(Like I had any other choice.) "Are you shocked or what?"
"No, just it was unexpected. So what are you doing in Bangalore?"
"Same as you, working. I was sent for a project. This market is nearest to our guest house so I thought to roam. Feeling hungry so came to Mc D."
I started devouring my burger with proper sound effects.
"You still do not know how to eat."
"Oh sorry."
"So how is life? Still single?"
"Yes."
I don't know what was wrong with her eyes, but I have never been able to make contact with those two sources of light protruding into my soul. Her eyes always seem moist to me. Earlier I thought its because she is "I can cry anytime" girl, then I thought, no may be her eyes are showing sympathy for a looser like me but later I realized it's love that has made her eyes so lively for me. So from that day onwards I restrained myself from looking into her eyes.
"Are you still afraid to make eye contact with me?" Asked Ambika. (What are you, a mind reader, I thought in my mind.)
Within 5 minutes i finished my burger and she was still playing with hers.
"Well then! I will see you around."
"Yes. Of course. By the way, although you did not ask but let me tell you. I am married. My husband works in the same company as mine."
"Oh congratulations. Bye." Those Mc D boys were still laughing, I hope on me. This time I did not smile back. I calmly went outside Mc D, took a deep breath, looked into the sky. There are times when even your mind does not know which emotion to choose to reflect on your face. I took steps towards my home. Those steps were the heaviest I had ever taken.

The writing here is solely a fictional work of Atul Rawat. Any resemblance to any person living or dead or any event is purely co-incidental.