There is a funny similarity between a puja and a swearing in ceremony. In both the cases you are required to repeat an oath being dictated by some one and its only after you have done so you are sworn in at that rank or have completed the puja as the case may be. In both the cases you hardly pay attention to what you have said, leave aside actually meaning it.
I am making an assumption that this shot is looking good and you like it. Now if this is true, think about the news channels on TV. They take a stupid thing and hype it up for the sake of TRP. Similarly this flower is not something you would stop to admire (so far I not seen anyone do so) so does it put me in the same category of TV channels?
Like Phoenix rose from its ashes, the Phoenix Mill also managed to resurrect itself...sort of. While all the mills are fast disappearing from the Mumbai Landscape and giving way to big buildings for offices and houses, this place has managed to save a little of its existence. It is no longer a mill but a mall with a lot of up market and mass market stores and has managed to save a little bit of its structure including its chimney. It may not be what it was earlier but still... after all there is a difference of an “i” and an “a” in Phoenix Mill and Phoenix Mall.
I don't know anything about sea and the behavior of sand at a beach so what I see at Aksa beach seems to have a very simplistic solution to me. The unsafe areas on this beach are where the level of ground suddenly changes. As far as I think, the surface is made of sand and nothing solid. So one day during low tide take a bulldozer and even out the surface of the sea. I am sure this must have occurred to a lot of other people and the reason it is not done is that it is not practical to do so.
I generally don't play “farmaishi geet” like “vividh bharati” but this one is on request. A week before this we had gone to the aquarium and felt it would have been better to carry a cap for Manu. This time we did carry it with us and Manu was quite happy wearing it too but a few minutes after this shot, he took it off and was trying to fill it with water.
I guess about 25 years ago Gulshan Kumar or "Gullu" started his business of audio tapes. He started with a brand called "Tony" and there is no need to tell you who the inspiration was. It was a long time ago so I vaguely remember that the apart from being called Tony the tapes had something written in Japanese as well to make them look all the more authentic.
What do you do when you want to get in a business but lack the imagination? The imagination I am talking about is not in running the business, but lack in imagination about what you want to call yourself and how do you want to be seen by others. You have good imaginations as far as other things are concerned like what to make, how to price it and to whom and how to sell it.
Fate is being unconsciously aware of one's future without being brave enough to infer it. The future is known long before it is ever comprehended. Many intuitions are called but few are recognized. In fact, the irony of tragedy is that we often bring it about by being made unaware of it
The first time we went to Juhu Beach was in September 2003 when Mira and I had come over to check out some houses before we moved to Bombay. On that day Mira collected a bag full of such shells. We have been to the eack so many times after that but have not seen them scattered in such a large quantity. I picked this one up but realised it was still the house of someone so had to put it back in the water.
Last weekend there was an office picnic to Madh Island. Actually it is not an island but still is famous by that name only. I couldn't join them last week but on Saturday we decided to drive in generally that directions. More than 4 years ago when I came to Bombay I was talking about Juhu to a colleague of mine-Ashutosh Agarwal. He said, “Juhu is raw sewage“ He suggested going to Aksa beach. I never managed to go there till Saturday and have to agree with Ashutosh. The beach and water here is so clean that it doesn't seem like a part of Bombay.
That is the reason I have posted an image that has nothing special. Just wanted to show you the clean water.
The other day I was talking about the carbon footprints. Do you know that India and China are among the non-polluting nations? This is surprising if you see the kind of stuff that comes out China. China has killed a lot of small industries in India by supplying extremely poor quality and cheap stuff. An example of this is this plastic scissor. Things like this are available here very cheaply and they are bought and discarded without any thought. Your kid's birthday is coming and you want to buy some return gifts, the market is full of this kind of stuff that will look nice but is just crap. Energy is wasted in making this and it has only added to the non-degradable waste of the world. If this is what the non-polluting nations are doing, I shudder at the thought of what the polluting nations must be doing.
My dad is diabetic and need insulin twice a day. During his last visit, Manu oberved him taking the injection and got out his own injection from his Doctor set and gave shots to everyone in the home.
A newspaper article mentioned that people in India are not concerned about the environment to the extent of buying food grown using environment friendly process. You know stuff like using fertilizers that are not chemical based and doesn't harm the soil. The article mentioned economy is the prime concern while buying food. My observations confirmed this.
A big frustration one can have is the feeling of being tied down. I am sure you will feel choking if you feel that you have taken a risk by taking a step and while you are trying desperately to get things moving in the right direction, no one around you is helping you to make it worth its while even though they all stand to benefit from it. With this feeling I am starting my week so to have a ray of positive thought in my life, I decided to post this picture of Manu.
One of our favorite pastimes is creating controversies out of thin air. Sometimes it is the insult of flag by Sania Mirza if not her dress and sometimes it is the “Biharis” and “Bhaias” in Bombay. I am surprised how come no one has protested about the new two rupees coins. The earlier design has a cross. Although it is not a cross of Jesus Christ but that shouldn't stop the VHP, RSS and other groups to start protesting against it. The other coin that is featured here shows a hand. To some it may represent the “V” of victory as made popular by Winston Churchill and to some others if may represent the “Up yours”...or is it just “2” for two rupees. Highly unlikely.
Although I don't like these drinks and I find it absurd that 600ml of cola cost as much as 1 litre of milk but still it is not something that can be avoided. This bottle of cola showed me one more example of generation gap. We were raised with the glass bottles where we mostly had the cola at the shop from where we bought it. One had to pay a deposit for the bottle if they wanted to take one home. The deposit was as much as the price of cola itself. Today after finishing his drink Manu asked, used to only plastic bottles, if he should throw the bottle in the dustbin.
An executive indeed but a useless and abondoned one.
Fertilsers in a multi billion dollar industry. A lot of money is spent every year in research and developmet so that we can have a better yield. Over here, what you are seeing has grown without any fertilizers. As a matter of fact these small plants have grown on hard concrete.
Every year the almond tree sheds its old leaves and gets new ones. Every year the schools are closed for a year and the kids go to a new class with new books after that. In both cases there is a symbolic change to accompany the actual changes in life of both. If learning never stops and we are constantly rediscovering, shouldn't we also have something symbolic that will give us the freedom to see what we have accumulated in the past, evaluate it and drop whatever is not useful so that we are more receptive and willing to accumulate new things that will serve us well in future.
When I saw this almond tree growing in front of our house, I am reminded of the Bombay local trains. For those who have not seen the Bombay local trains, you should travel in on one to understand the true meaning of the word “over-crowded”. On each door of the train there is the message “Please let the passengers alight first” but has the patience for that. If you are only a fraction slower or weaker, people won't let you get off the train, they will push you back in. This tree reminds me of that because I am seeing something similar here. Usually at around this time of the year this tree shed its leaves and the new one replace them in a few days. This time around the new leaves have started growing even before the old ones have fallen. The bigger and the yellow/orange leaves are old ones and the small green ones are the new ones.
This also reminds me of a line from the poem Madhushala by Dr. Harivansh Rai Bachchan “Aane ke hi saath jagat mein kehlaya jaane waala. Swagat ke hi saath vida ki hoti dekhi tayaari”.
Light comes in through our bedroom window in the mornings. On weekends when Manu wants to sleep later than usual, he finds it a little annoying. Sometimes he asks me to draw the curtain "Papa, I can't open his eyes." Curtains remind me that some people have a tendency to draw the curtains even if it means the house is so dark that you have to switch on lights to read. I find it depressing and like to open the windows and curtains and let the light come in. What do you prefer?
The Centre has denied the permission to make an airport in Navi Mumbai basically because it means cutting down Mangroves. Chief Minister Vilas Rao Deshmukh is saying that they don't have any other place for it. My take on it? Two points
For those who don't know what a pressure cooker is, it is a cooking device that has a pot and a lid. The lid is secured on the top and has a gasket that makes it air tight. At the top is a valve that lets out steam so that there is not too much pressure inside and there is a safety valve too to serve as a secondary outlet for steam in case the primary one gets blocked. I never saw anyone using it in Australia and I know anyone going from India generally takes one with them since they are not commonly available in "developed" countries. The developed countries that are the biggest contributors to pollution and consume the highest of energy should seriously consider pressure cookers and other small things that can go a long way in makeing this planet a better place.
This is the last image of leaves and flowers on a car. This will give you some idea of how small these flowers are. What I posted in the last two days and your agreement with it reminds me of what Scott Adams said in his book “The joy of working” that we are all idiots. I won't go on to explain what exactly he meant but would recommend the book. Just like we feel that people from different functions are idiots, they would be thinking the same about us. Would be nice to hear or read what they exactly say about us.
Yesterday I was talking about the clients who screw up things today I would like to talk about the client facing people who screw things up. Following are just a few of those things that bug me the most
- Commit things without knowing if they can be done or not
- Don't understand the scope and are not interested in asking questions
- Have no realistic understanding of time line
- Knee jerk reactions-In a crisis situation never tell the client "I'll get back to you" and generally say things that are wrong or impractical
- Are scared of client like a cow is from a butcher
Do I need to give any clarifications about why I wrote this or should I just skip it? I think I'll skip it.
Spotted a very nice blog yesterday and read a very good article in it. It talks about clients who have limited knowledge but think of themselves as experts and as a result have the capability to screw up perfectly good projects. I am sure you must have felt yourself in the same position at one time or the other. I certainly have.
This is another milestone for this blog. On March 1st, it completed three years.
I saw school kids enjoying "imli" when I was little. It was a red thingy that one could get on a piece of papers and kids would eat it while squinting one eye. I never tasted it but I knew I won't like it because I still don't like anything sour. I like fruits like strawberries, oranges, grapes when they are completely ripe so they are sweet and not sour. A few years ago one of my aunt gave us sweet tamarind and that is when I tried it and liked it a lot. To my surprise it was not even a wee bit sour, not even as much as an orange.
