Homo sapiens–nomads?

It is the dusk of 2010, we as human beings have evolved and traveled a long way. But we somehow still seem to be nomadic in our way of life.

Yeah! Look around oneself, we don’t have a community as such to bank on, to depend. We are pretty much living a secluded life. Whatever happened to the self sustainable communities that we had seen during our “evolving” to the current “progressed” position.

Aren’t we rootless in many ways than one? Families are disconnected-both emotionally and distant wise. Sad state? I don’t know maybe as we are made to believe this might be the price we pay for “development”.

No wonder we look at nature with eyes wide open, whenever we visit our native villages and towns, the frequency of which is coming down drastically-we are not even ready to accept that we need a break from our mundane lives. City dwellers seem to have lost life somewhere during the transition.

What is the solution? What is the problem? Why have lost connect with our roots? Are we aware of what we are trying to achieve?

Love and respect women

The women in India cannot decide for themselves when they want to have the “family planning surgery”. Simply put, husband has to sign before the surgeon goes ahead with the surgery. What a sad state of affair!

It is said that if the husband has sex with his wife without her consent then it is called as rape in the court of law. It is the mother who has to undergo the pains of bearing the child for nine months, the labor pain, the constant medication, frequent trips to the hospital and God forbid if the child is born with some deformity or ailment the women is scorned at. All the man has to do is you know what. Not just the bearing, women does the majority of the rearing as well, husbands hardly do anything. It’s another story that even if the husbands tried to do it, they would screw up that as well.

And then there are other extremities wherein the in-laws decide for the lady, husband is just the signing authority. Here the women doesn’t even come in the picture.

Amidst all this there is no one to talk to the lady as a friend. More, often than not husbands also fall short of their duty maybe because of their ignorance. And even if the husband were to take care of his wife the society bills him as hen-pecked. And so the taking care is  left mainly to the nurses in the hospital or some maid (if the family can afford), or to some elder women folks of the family.

And then, it’s known that Indian families love only the male child, so the above circus continues till the lady gives her in-laws sufficient number of male children.

Wake up people, treat women with love, respect and let her decide what she thinks is best for her.

Anupam Mishra: The ancient ingenuity of water harvesting | Video on TED.com

A genuine story of not so ancient India. Trust me it's truly Incredible India!
Watch it for the magic, magic because it is truly remarkable!

A beautiful, awe inspiring TED Talk by Anupam Mishra at Mysore, India.

Anupam Mishra: The ancient ingenuity of water harvesting | Video on TED.com

My thoughts after reading “Leonardo Da Vinci’s resume”

My cousin Shilpa, sent me an email of “Leonardo da Vinci’s resume” you can find it in http://marketing-jobs.theladders.com/career-newsletters/leonardo-da-vinci-resume. After reading Leanardo Da Vinci’s resume Duke did not have any choice than to hire him. The most important thing here is that da Vinci is very confident of his "skill sets", so he has come out with such a wonderful resume/CV/bio data/profile/whatever.
I was impressed to say the least and then some thinking led to these observations:
Wouldn’t History classes be more interesting if similar examples from the past were used? Which would of course make students love the subject than make it a dull and boring session where students are more often than not are caught napping in the last benches or playing book cricket.
The students would learn the art of writing in history class along with what they learnt in English class, or in fact they could consider this as an “Application” or as an example for whatever theory their English teacher would have taught them.
What better than to learn how to write a resume in one’s high school? Maybe, then very few people would go to consultants of the job portals to get their resume “written”.
Help students think of bigger things in life than the next unit test where they had to vomit all those "Dates and Events" and arrange them in Chronological order!
Big thinking would naturally get the better out of students and they would set bigger goals in life than clearing competitive exams by mugging, cramming or going to the coaching centers, we would get better professors, politicians, teachers, lawyers, scientists, engineers, doctors above all better human beings.
Then history could have been taught without a teacher, but really a teacher that is history/life!
Would this have not left an indelible impression on the young minds!

Enlightenment, courtesy: Classifieds

One afternoon two weeks ago, I was just lazing around, I saw the classifieds page and began reading it. Let me tell you it was an enlightening experience about the present day Indians. You don’t have to read high sounding books or research papers to understand the marriage life of the present generation, just read the classifieds ad.

The Ads did suggest increasing divorce rates. People who were out of marriage in just 6 months had placed Ads. And then there were people who seemed to have made an attempt at weathering the storm had also placed Ads, the USP of these second set of people was “issueless”. Across the board in the Ads by the second set of people the main highlight was “issueless”, that’s why I called it as USP.

And then the Ads by men were just outrageous, they bluntly stated they wanted “fair, beautiful, homely, well educated”. Hey come on guys are you mentioning “Requirement Specifications” of a product? Sorry, I don’t understand any of the adjectives.

At this rate I doubt if we will even have any “functioning” families by the end of this decade?

Good luck to all of us!

Customer care

Customer care according to me is anticipating customers’ demands and delivering them. The company need not be told the obvious by the customer. I came to this conclusion when I was at a Chaat shop with my friend.

This happened quite sometime ago, my friend and I went to a roadside Chaat shop to have some chatpata snacks. We ordered Bhel Puri and some other specialties of the shop. Anywhere in India in these roadside Chaat shops water is not served first, I don’t know why. But in the Chaat shop that I had been to the owner had appointed a boy to serve water only to people who were eating, I had not come across any Chaat shop like this. That shop was particularly famous for its spicy and chatpata taste, so invariably customers would need water to drink water very soon. This boy would promptly serve the water almost at the same time the customer would need it, thus negating the inconvenience for the customer of having to ask the water and then wait till the waiter came or worse in some shops customers would have to fetch the water for themselves.

The owner knew his cuisine well and also the fact that customers would want water and he need not be told that they be served water, so he had hired person specifically for that!  Very smart indeed.

Noughties vs Old times

Old times to me mean 90s, to some of you it might mean 70s, 80s or still older days.  Of late many people including me are being overly nostalgic and romantic about ‘good old times’.  I think the main reason might be that in the noughties (2000-09) everything was so on the face right from mobile phones, 24X7 media, movies,  ‘modern culture’ name it and people felt it was on the face to an extent that people are nauseated. Having said all of this, I still feel noughties is an important decade in the history of humanity because many good and important events took place and there were sadder events as well.

The penetration of communication into the lives of people living at the bottom of the pyramid, media playing the role of crusader, onslaught of TV channels, many companies coming up with Direct To Home facility, the rise and rise of internet (broadband connectivity (optical fiber cables being laid even in towns and villages where there is no proper electricity available)), projects like the Golden Quadrilateral being done with a fair amount of urgency, International Airports in many cities, setting up of new IITs and IIMs, good solid real estate growth in places like: NCR, Noida, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mangalore, Mysore. Many companies which were otherwise in other industries and also new companies jumped onto the retail industry bandwagon, we have seen chain of stores for: food & grocery items, shoes, mobile phones, clothes, electronic goods, vehicles and the list goes on.  These enterprises created a lot of employment in the organized sector itself and then there were many people who found/created opportunities for themselves in the unorganized sector and/or became entrepreneurs. This huge growth in urban areas naturally attracted rural people and they in turn found employment opportunities in cities mainly in the construction & infrastructure business.  One observation from all this is people who have braved the competition and stuck it out till the end have benefitted immensely. 

The negative aspect of the decade have been the increasing terror attacks across the globe. India also faced the wrath of these attacks. These attacks were an attack on humanity and not any community or any country in particular. Only time will tell an answer as to when these attacks will stop.

It would be better for us in the new decade if we take everything that comes our way with a pinch of salt, use the noughties as a learning experience and improve upon.