Divide by Zero Exception

History as they say repeats itself. I guess the nastier parts of it repeat themselves twice as fast.

I've always hated history as a subject. In school, it was nothing but an extremely boring storytelling of the past, taught to us by another extremely boring person with exams mainly consisting to recalling dates and facts. I my opinion nobody learned anything! ANYTHING! Which is of course the main reason why history repeats itself. (And I always detested the fact that I was made to "learn" something that was repeating itself anyway). And before repeat gets too repetitive, I'll stop all the repetitive repetition.

Well despite the barrage of dates and sundry facts about events and people, I guess I did manage to learn a few things. Like divide and rule.

Raj Thackeray however either hasn't read it, or had a phenomenally boring history teacher and slept through the lesson.

What he's been trying to do over the past few days is a disgusting attempt at power, via divide and rule. And I keep reading with increasing disgust the Machiavellian politics going on.

Of course there is still a real problem in here. It is a real fact that there have been too many migrants to Mumbai not only from Bihar but from Bangladesh as well. When the number of migrants increases to beyond the point that the city can sustain, it weighs down the infrastructure. And then it's easy to blame all those migrants as the source of all inadequacies in Mumbai.Countries can try control migrants with visas. (of course when certain North American ones can't, they call it "illegal" immigration.... but that's another story). But Mumbai shouldn't and it can't. Thankfully.

The real source of the problem is that Bihar itself hasn't had the development it needs. If it had that, if it could sustain the population on itself, I'm sure no Bihari would relish the propect of leaving hometown. As long as there is a huge gap in that development, people will always migrate.

But it doesn't look like the development can happen anytime soon. So unfortunately for the Biharis they'll have to migrate somewhere, and unfortunately for Mumbai , Maharashtra and India, xenophobes like Raj Thackrey will thrive.

All that's gonna be left in the end is a broken country, with nothing left to govern (someone can call the Brits again then). And all Raj is gonna be left with to divide and rule is a big zero.

Some real news please!

Its been a while that I've been reading about how Ash and Abhishekh Bacchan have been dancing around the world, visiting temples, creating traffic jams in the process, going on karwa chauth vrats and what nots, visiting still more temples, creating still more traffic jams and so on ad nauseum.

Why is Ash going to the temple news? I mean WTF? I don't give a rat's ass whether she actually does go on a fast or hogs doughnuts. Plus aren't we trying to be a more equal society, trying to move away from being the patriarchical society which is currently is? And isn't the media being generally irreponsible (well come to think of it, THAT isn't news either. Sigh!) when they report this on the same page as the Chandrayaan report?

I'm pissed. Someone needs to act more responsibly. Please!

The Phoenix

This blog has been dead. For a while.

A lot has happened. A lot hasn't. In the meanwhile, I've learnt many new things, forgotten old ones, wasted a lot of time, had many baths and have generally come out with the feeling I'm a better person after all. The baths helped of course.

Hopefully I'll be able to revive this one from its ashes.

Hopefully.

Degrees of Happiness

It's 24 degrees Celsius outside and I'm totally enjoying it.
No heavy jackets, wool caps, heavy snow boots! Heck, not even that stupid sweater!
Time for cricket, walks, jogs, barbecues and shorts.


Yipee!

Necessary But Not Sufficient

If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

~Ashleigh Brilliant

Courage is the price life exacts for peace.

~Amelia Earhart




Sometime back, (come to think of it, a long time back.... but then, as DA said, time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so)I was chatting with Aai & Baba (over cups of piping hot tea) about how all things general. One of my close acquaintances recently had a great new job opportunity - and was now able to do something she wanted to do for all her life. It was great to hear about that. She was now in the U.S. for about 5 years and things were looking good. My dad remarked about how it had been a very difficult decision for her to leave the well settled life and leave to pursue her idea of success. It was a uncertain future for her back then. But it had paid off.

What is the most essential ingredient to 'success'? What is that one thing which differentiates the successful* from the ordinary? What do you mean by success anyway?

After little pottering around with those thoughts (and obviously with nothing better to do - what with the depressing snow et al.) I've an observation and a conclusion:

The basic fact of life is that we all prefer to stay right in our comfort zones. And that's where it all goes wrong.

All of us face problems. Different ones at different times, but we all face them. They may be palpable ones - ones that have been defined for us - or ones which we seek or need to define ourselves.

Quite often in life we prefer not to deal with our problems/hurdles, simply because we are afraid of failure. We are scared that we may fail, thereby not to achieving what we set out to do. Many of us, I'm afraid, wonder "what people would think". We seem to almost lie in waiting, waiting for that moment when the problem would pass away; after all it would be so much easier.

But somehow we don't seem to realize, that it is by denying action on those problems that we actually end up failing.

Ironically then, we fail because we are afraid of failure.

I'm sure that there comes a time in everybody's life, a moment of realization,when you can see that if you don't act you will definitely fail. This is usually a breaking point. It is a point where the person is stretched to his/her limits. It is then the character of the person which decides how he or she will react. Some will break down and accept failure. Others will fight all odds/act on it. Remember though, in all cases success comes only to those who get out of that comfort zone.

That said however, getting out of the comfort zone is a necessary but not sufficient condition for 'success'.
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* I won't waste my time defining success here. Take it as whatever you think it is. It _is_ basically what you think it is ;-). But there's definitely more to say. It deserves another post though.
**Don't you scoff at that. If you don't believe me, try searching for 'success' in wikipedia. You'll be redirected to an article on (surprise, surprise) social status. Now that says a lot doesn't it?

Goldman Sachs - BRICs

Although I'm sure most of you must have read about the BRICs phenomenon, I thought this presentation, made by Jim O'Neill at Goldman Sachs, the man who invented the concept of BRICs, was quite interesting.

Have a look at:
GS - BRICs

Bhurjee Pav

It was a wet July midnight. Me, Adeesh, Shailesh, Mayuresh and Harshad had just finished watching the Italy v/s Germany semifinal. Man it was a awesome match. Well not the entire match, but the last few minutes were breathtaking - and painful.
With the excitement of the match not waning away, none of us (except Adeesh probably) were willing to sleep. We chatted on and on about the match and everything under the sun... when all of a sudden we realised how hungry we were.

The solution? A short drive to Shivajinagar railway station for a plate of hot bhurjee pav and a cutting chai!!!

Man just those memories drive me crazy!

I miss all that. I miss Pune. I miss India!