Captive Adaptations

Whenever I am in India, day in and day out, I see people with immense hardships just chugging along each day, hiding their pains behind a smile. At the same time, I see lots of psuedo-intellectuals like me just shouting, yelling, getting annoyed and frustrated over small issues. “Empty vessels make more noise not knowing the simple truth, that its all about shoving it down your #@$”. Here read this piece below.

When the husband arrived home, his wife met him at the door sobbing. He asked her what was wrong.

“It’s the pharmacist,” she wailed. “He insulted me something awful on the phone this morning.” Hearing this, the husband immediately headed downtown to confront the pharmacist and demand an apology.

Before he could say more than a word or two, the pharmacist cut him off and said, “Please, just listen to my side of it.”

“This morning my alarm didn’t go off,” the pharmacist began to explain, “so I was late getting up. Going without breakfast, I rushed out to my car only to realize I had locked the house with both my house and car keys inside. I had to break a window to get my keys.

”Then, driving a little too fast, I got pulled over and was given a speeding ticket. Later, about two blocks from the store, I had a flat tire. When I finally arrived at the store there was a bunch of people waiting for me to open up.

”I opened the store and began waiting on these people, and all the while the damn phone was ringing off the hook.”

Taking a breath, he continued, “Then, I had to break a roll of coins against the cash register drawer to make change and they spilled all over the floor. I got down on my hands and knees to pick up the coins, the phone still ringing off the hook. As I stood up, I cracked my head on the open cash drawer. This made me stagger back against a showcase filled with perfume bottles, causing all of them to fall to the floor and break.

”Meanwhile, the phone is still ringing without letting up. When I finally got to answering it, it was your wife. She wanted to know how to use a rectal thermometer. Believe me sir, as God is my witness, all I did was tell her.”

I happened to read this wonderful piece today, had a hearty laugh for a while. If there is one gift that I could get from God, then I think it is Humility.

It happened again !. Well this is the second time in less than 2 months, and has surely beaten my odds. What am I talking about did you say ?. Here’s the story. One of my childhood buddy has bought a new Fiat Palio some 2.5 months back. Now, its the first time he has bought a new car, so he has been extremely excited about his new toy. Most times, my childish pranks on his car, has drawn his ire. So needless to say he is very passionate about his car.

But here is the big joke. Less than 3 weeks after he bought his car, a rat found its way into his car’s hood, then got crushed resulting in a breakdown. Now our muscle-man (yes my-buddy-is-a-monster) is most of the time a gentle being, but this incident, really irked him. For one, he is a mechanical engineer and loves Engineering Design. So, for 2 weeks, we had to hear his rhetoric about how foolish the design was to allow a rat to navigate its way into the engine. As an exaggerated sigh he even remarked to the service men, that their design would allow “elephants” to probably make their way into the engine through the hood of the car !

This incident caused some inconvenience, but we were more or less able to pacify him saying it was a one-off incident, and its very rare that such events happen. Lo and behold, how wrong we were, and the bigger joke, yesterday, it happened again ! The culprit a “Rat” again. Can you imagine that !.

Most of us, who have comfortably learnt to juggle with the “Californian Lifestyle” and the “Bangalore Lifestyle”, have some lessons to learn from this. The concepts of “High Availability”,”5 or 6 Nines Design methodology”, that we so easily expect and speak of, in reality we need to learn tolerance for such unimaginable events ! Rats, amazing test cases for design verification. Again, it happens only in India !.

When you have a tsunami nose, a clogged and heavy chest, and are shivering involuntarily, you just know that you are going down…, I hate it.., I hate it…. I just hate falling sick.

Its been a long time (nearly 8 years) when I have actually taken to bed, so I have lost the instincts to stand up against such infections. I remember my Dad many years ago, when he was terrified just because he had fever. His emergency response was so pathetic, that we as kids started to laugh at him, while he was complaining about regular fever as if it was a major disease !.

Yes, I agree, sometimes its good to be normal, and fall sick once a year. But then, I am praying that I don’t get arrested in bed. Yak!, even the thought is so awful, but there is something that I noticed is cheerful, our news-man is back, and our cable operator has also started to beam this channel.

Introspections are really funny activities. And while I am in the phase of “year-end” introspections, it dawned on me that as a Hindu it is quite but natural to culminate all acts with a philosophical review. Why one might ask ? For eons, Hindus as part of the child rearing activity have ensured that a healthy doze of Vedas or Upanishads are fed to the child. For the un-initiated, Upanishands (philosophical revelations) are usually found in the last section of each Veda (the intellectual scriptures of Hindus) , and therefore the philosophy of Upanishads has come to be called as Vendanta. And while I am a Hindu, and although I am not a brahmin, my upbringing ensured that I be exposed to good amount of Vendanta.

So its quite but natural for me to introspect and conduct a “philosophical review” of events in a given time period, say like a year. Hoping that the output of such an activity will provide all the “Things to be done”, and hence be incorporated as my new-year resolutions.

Interestingly I find a good deal of similarities in the new age “Time Management” ideas and the concept of Vedas. Here, read for youself, why Vyasa Collected, Processed and Organized all Vedas, and made sure that reviews or Upanishads were part of the last section, and interestingly he did so because he noticed that people had less and less time, due to their pre-occupations.

Now compare and contrast that with GTD - Getting Things Done, how striking are these similarities !

Few days ago I read the news article that Rajdeep Sardesai and team are back on Television with CNN-iBN. And one of my new found friend, actually asked me to comment about the declining standards of Television news channels and media in general.

Its a straight forward question, but it highlights one of the fallacies of Democracy, which is the need to cater to the lowest common denominator. Reminds me of Winston Churchill’s statement,

the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with an average voter

This statement holds so true in the context of this post and I think also answers the question for declining standards on our Television channels. As programs and news gets more personal, on a Broadcast medium like television, personalization can happen only at the average joe’s level. So in essence it would really diminish in appeal for the brighter audience.

And since we have all accepted that we have to work within the bounds of democracy, I think we need to have some intellectual enquiry as to how a higher degree of reasoning can be achieved on our daily news channels, while still catering to the average joe. And in a developing country like India, how low is the reasoning capability of the average joe ?

Its certainly not very encouraging, but an effort has to be made. Otherwise this pessimism can serve to “justify” inaction and an abdication of public responsibility by all of us who consider our selves to be audiences who have a heightened awareness on most issues.

Just stumbled upon this. Worst Job Ever. I could not stop laughing for quite sometime. As compared to this guy, I am really lucky for the dream job I have

Okay, I have to admit, when it comes to beauty Latin America & Mexico (Spaniards in general) beat the rest of the world hands down. Gosh, how come I had never noticed Paz Vega until last night while I was watching Spanglish on my flight back to SanFrancisco. I am now completely blown off by her charm, her elegance as an actress, and boy oh boy, her feminity is an absolute killer.

I still can’t get her off my mind , its not just lust, I know when I feel lusty, but thinking about an actress even after some sleep, is very unusual for my lustful mind. This is definitely a mixture of lust, admiration, respect, infatuation, whatever.., in short I have fallen for her.

She has not only stormed into my personal favorites list, but has disrupted the normal process by which I build my fav list. She commands some precious thought cycles, needless to say, the flight back to Sanfrancisco has been just too much for me !

This post will tickle a few ribs, raise a few eye brows, redden a few faces, surprise a few minds, but overall will leave everyone with a sense of shared amuzement. This apparently is the future of media right here, a Flickr style video service. Check it out.

Kehl Dekho and Living Dangerously, is now on a Global Playground, lets enjoy our 20 seconds of fame, thanks to some nice camerawork, some good commentry, and above all the slick performance under pressure from our very own star !!

I have watched this movie a half a dozen times. Its so wonderfully made. In particular this scene is etched in my mind, and above all the conversation here highlights the insecure and vulnerable feelings that people undergo, when in love, but are not sure if their partner feels the same way. Check it out yourself.

Please keep your volumes down as the conversation has some language. BTW, any guesses which movie this clip is from ?