Three things of every kind

Three things of life that once gone, never come back:
Time, Words & Opportunity .

Three things of life that must not be lost:
Peace, Hope & Honesty.

Three things of life that are most valuable:
Love, Self-confidence & Friends.

Three things of life that are never sure:
Dreams, Success & Fortune.

Three things that make a man:
Hard Work, Sincerity & Commitment.

Three things of life that destroy a man:
Wine, Pride & Anger.

(From profile of a fellow Ecademist, Parag Shah)

Transcend

Why not, I say,

Stop for a moment,

ToLook beyond the horizon,

Think outside the box, and

Act beyond the present.

I

I

I

Travel through the Netherlands,

Through the Europe, and

Why limit yourself,

Bound not thyself,

Transcend all the boundaries,

To reach the ocean of humanity

....all inspired by your lovely words and your beautiful art form...
....best of luck...

( a reply to Jet Rotmans over Ecademy)

First Goa Trip...SBI (1981-82)

First Goa Trip...SBI (1981-82)

I quite vividly remember my first Goa trip. My colleagues, peer group from State Bank of India decided to go to Goa. We thought it would be a good idea to travel by rail and bus.

We had reached Goa and were put up at Calangute Beach, at Hotel Avazado, our bank's official guest house. We were allotted a room and one of us anxiously asked the care-taker of the hotel if a girl from our branch, who had married few days ago and was to go to Goa, was still there. We were promptly told that she had left a day ago and had stayed in the room next to one which was allotted to us.

That was it! We had a lot of fun discussing what might have happened in the next room, how they would have mate for the first time, how he might have begged and how she might have refused, what were the sounds heard by the four walls of the room. The whole experience was a hilarious and fun.

I also remember that we had traveled up to Miraj, near Kolhapur, from V.T. and from there we took a meter-gauge train. I remember meter-gauge train as a somewhat lean replica of a broad-gauge train which was different than a narrow-gauge train that we take to Matheran.

At Londha, we entered in to Karnataka and thereafter at some place in to Goa and finally got down at Madgaon in the late afternoon. We had a lunch at Madgaon in a small hotel where the food tasted somewhat like a malwani/gomantak style. But there was a handful of serving of some kind of a small deep-fried fish served as a chuttney. This was not seen by us in Mumbai then. Quite a satisfactory experience!

We took up a bus to Panjim. Bus operators would not leave the buses unless they are fully packed with no space for an ant to enter! But the fares were very reasonable...that's what we always wanted then.

I don't remember much about Panaji on that evening when we came from Madgaon. What I remember now is a jetty at Panaji where Mumbai-Goa ships would dock, buildings that were distinctly different from what we used to see in Mumbai and a vegetarian dinner that we took at one of Kamat's restaurant. Kamat restaurants are almost same everywhere (even today). And therafter we proceeded to Calangute.

One day we travelled to South Goa to see churches and on the next day to north Goa. I do not remember much, from this trip, what we saw there except that Goan churches were fantastic and temples were more serene (as there was less of crowd we used to see in Mumbai/Shirdi and other places even then...that’s 25 years ago).

We drank lot of beer on the Goa trip as the same was available for a dirt. I really didn't like the Goan or Konkani food....I must correct myself, the one with heavy Portuguese stamp...and not the Goan curries, which we savored a lot.... that we ordered, probably a pomfret..a boiled and garnished with finely chopped vegetables and some sauces. We in fact felt like omitting...it was smelling horrible, thought it was not properly cooked. So we ate a lot of cheese (eating food like cheese and butter wasn't a health problem then for many of us, I believe).

Two of our vegetarian friends, however, would go hysterical as we were merrying drinking beer and feasting on other non-veg dishes. So they would order any weird snacks...and as it happened on many occasion that the seemingly veg food would smell like a non-veg dish in Goa. One had ordered a Cadbury chocolate when we were drinking and when asked why he was ordering it, he replied that since he was contributing equal money and was not drinking beer or eating non-veg he felt like helping himself. We said," God, save your child!". Yes, we also recognised his right to enjoy every penny that he shared in the contribution.

I also remember that we were discussing miniaturization of many products. a friend citing his neighbor who was in AT & T in the USA, said that old rotary, circular dial phone had given a way to new push-button type phone and the bulky 'Black-Box' was on the way out giving a way to slicker push-button phones. He further claimed that there was a saturation of the technology and no further reduction in size or miniaturization in case of phone was possible. After his entire neighbor was there in the dreamland called the US of America and how can we not believe him. We also affirmed his stories. And we now what has happened and from our experience we now don't like to say in any concrete manner where we may head as far as the technology is concerned.

One of my maternal uncles was a habitual drinker. I had purchased 4 bottles of liquor for him. I remember how much my older mama was upset when he came to knew that I had brought liquor for his younger sibling. Finally I had to surrender those bottles and what happened to them I have never realized. My younger uncle did not, however, forgot to thanks me saying that he was happy that somebody cared for him.

Reviews without reading a books

Reviews or Presentations without reading books

Recently at a local Rotary Club meeting there was a speech and presentation on "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps". I remembered that there was a book by the same name, and Google tells me that, it was written by Allan Pease and Barbara Pease. I learnt that the book describes how men and women think, perceive and behave differently. I must say that the small reviews at on Amazon.com were interesting enough to entice interest in the subject.


The speaker at the Rotary Club was using a PowerPoint presentation. A the outset, we were told, by the speaker, that the presentation that he was using was not his own but was a copyright of somebody else....and he showed at the part of some remarks, on the slide. We were further told that that somebody had also used the presentation of some other person. The presentation contained only text of salient features of finding of Pease duo and the same is widely and freely available on the internet.

I was amazed why was it called a copyright then? What was under copyright? Was it the text? Or was the process of first copying of the text on to the slide of PPT? Or the second copy that the speaker brought along was a work of copyright...that is to say that no further copying is allowed?

I seemed to get more confused. Why the speaker did insist that it was a copyright?

Well, the answer seems to be that I may not recognize my responsibility in protecting the intellectual property of others but I would insist that others need to follow copyright of my material, which itself has been obtained by infringement, stealing.

I do not intend to review the presentation. However, I asked the speaker if he had read the original book and he said that he hadn't. It was good that almost nobody, from the audience present there, had read the book; nobody asked him probing questions. The questions asked were sort of " how can you say this....?" and to which the presenter would reply, 'those are not my views but are of that author...?"

One of the Rotarian opined that these days nobody has a time in the world to read books however interested one may be in reading and hence it was okay to read review or somebody present the review even if the reviewer might present his review from the another review or from reading the executive summaries that are available on the internet. And thus the speaker was helping the club and its members.

And yes, he was correct. The whole internet generation is doing that. One of my friends sent me a request to view his picture album on Great Wall of China. Quite enthralled I opened it only to find a link taking me to a site where there was a huge collection of images and photographs from sites including Google Images, Flickr and Picasa. Not long ago I heard one such talk / presentation on 'Conquering the Everest"...just 2 days before Sir Hillary died. The presenter had gathered all important photos and information from the internet but presented it effectively.

Bottom-line is : present effectively even if you go to the extreme of calling for a copyright of your work when you have unashamedly not recognized other’s copyright.

Ang mardan : Maalishwalas of chowpatty

maalishwalas or masseurs of Mumbai

Long before 'massage' as a form of treatment became popular due to growth of Health centers in Mumbai, there were two types of massagers : massage offered by bhaiyyas on the streets of Mumbai or Chowpatty and then there were ( and they are still there) those Massage Centers , where massage was for namesake only but they would offer many value added services. The second type of massage centers still make their presence felt in the classified section of all major & minor newspapers claiming to offer ‘fresh stock’ and we know that the girls there are train in offering services more than just a plain massage.

My mind goes back to those male masseurs who used to wander around the streets and by lanes of Mumbai-mostly in South Mumbai during evening/night. They would offer head massage or body massage. In head massage they would put strong smeling oil and would massage your head vigourously. I quite vividly remember those days when we would get a head massage occasionally, down below our chawls. He would do a ‘chop’ on your head with his fists, ‘pull’ our ears to make a ‘click’ sound, ‘break’ our neck and then do knuckles, and finally ‘beating’ our back.

This type of massage, I believe, is quite different from the massage that you get in modern Health clubs, where it is a sort of soothing massage with an aim to relax muscles (that’s what people say) whereas the massage that I have been talking about is a hard massage given by hard-strokes and you would derive pleasure out of pain.

There were masseurs operating at Chowpatty offering the same hard massage but they must have been different. Much later, with the advent of the internet, we have learnt more about these people. But we would hear, with interest, from the older boys, that these male masseurs at Chowpatty would offer you to massage private parts also. And we were thrilled, horrified and ashamed, all together.

Morning Glory

Isn’t that a lovely scene?
That of a landscape? A picture ? Or that of weather?
That can’t be behold in,
The camera of eyes that is aging.

The foggy sky across the skyscrapers,
Dews making merry on the tree branches,
Yellow flowers piggybacking on green leaves.

A narrow lane sparse with bypassers,
Birds flying out of their nests from trees,
Chirping of birds mixed with,
Rumbles of buses plying across.

And lo! The sun also wants to be part of this ,
Adding his splash with his ambassadors.

And me, sitting across the window sill,
Confronting with nature,
In as yet slow pace of life,
Knowing fully well that it won’t last for long.

SRK... a fading hero ?

They say that Indian youths dream about SRK and Dipps...

I have a latest update...

...as a thing forthcoming...

Whenever my 13 year young daughter sees SRK she refers him as "budda"... ( old )

I believe that this is a precursor to an impending future...that SRK may not be no. 1 in the dreams of Indian youths, in when these 12-15 years something will be termed as youths...

Taare Zameen Par

This is not a review....

Whosoever might have walked away with awards and rewards,
I must say that acting & perfoemance of,
All the stars was shining...

Father portrayed by ... who cares for the name...
...from my reflection....shows all the anxiety of living in a modern competitive world...
And the mother seemed to have been torn between father and son...a hapless....

If I were some kind of an authority I would not only make it a Tax-free,
but I would give few bucks as an incentive for every ticket sold and that sum collected would go to a charity... organizations and people working for kids...

Don't think that TZP is about the Dyslexia cases....

I was stunned while watching the movie...
...it is about you and me... and kids and family....
...tension, anxiety of a modern age is taking it's toll when we are after our kids to excel, show performance, while forgettig to realise that every child (for that matter a person) is unique and he needs his own space to breathe in before he can take a flight... to an achievement...

(develop further)