Just too apt!

Dilbert

Our smart senas

Indian public seem to be the epitome of terror magnet. It is not infrequent that disciples of al-quaeda or jamat-ul-dawa descend upon india and get their jollies with desi men. Fond though they are of indian public; they are also conscious of the fact that there are others too in the market who also just can't have enough of us. So every now and then these foreign disciples go dormant for a while and leave the field open for other hunters. These others, who are mostly domestic elements, are usually members of groups which they reverentially refer to as sena. If one goes by their names - which almost always begin with the name of an indian deity - ram or shiv - then it isn't very hard to assume that they must be working for the betterment of common man. And, indeed they are or at-least they believe so!

These sena people, unlike foreign elements, subscribe to subtle means for delivering their messages. For instance, while foreign elements would explode a train or blow up a hotel or crash a plane to convey their message; these sena people would rather be content with austere approaches such as forcibly making their way into pubs and (mis)using batons against unarmed innocuous youngsters or even subtler, pushing unwary girls out of pubs and calling them names. While performing this heroic operation they ensure that there are multitude of sena people attacking few so as to maintain a healthy ratio. And, to top it off, they publicly claim that their act of bravery is aimed at preserving indian culture.

Another indian species who share aforementioned ideas can be found in the indian capital mumbai where some hooligans have made it their lifelong mission to wipe out all non-marathis of the state. To ensure a continual stay in the glamour they ensure frequent displays of their bravery which are on the similar lines of their brothers' acts recently committed in mangalore. While their attempts to grab media attention are frequent in major parts of the year; it was interesting to note that there wasn't a word from these fellers when a big hotel in their city was taken by terrorists for three days.

Now these recent activities by domestic elements, when freakonomic concepts applied to them, are actually helping india in getting rid of terrorism! How? Simple. The disguised motive of all these activities by sena people is actually to discourage terrorists by making them redundant. If sena keeps on persecuting our public, for sufficient period of time, like foreign terrorists do then this will eventually obviate the need for foreign contribution in this holy work. Ultimately, foreign elements' interest in india will wither away. Moreover, if there is enough skilled labour in our own country, then why would the import be a need anymore? Why do Microsoft and Oracle push for H1Bs? The same reason - lack of skilled labour in their country. These foreign terror organisations would inevitably then go bust with no further business opportunities. That will be the turning point in history of india when our senas will disclose what their actual motives were and will hopefully wind down their sacred operations. This global phenomenon of demand-and-supply has been very shrewdly observed by the architects of our desi senas and, to my surprise, they are effecting this change very bravely and glamorously. Mangalore incident should be an encouraging accomplishment for them. A framed certificate to be hung in their living rooms. And, for this out-of-the-box solution to terrorism, Muthalikji, much thanks!

Reliable Rumours

So yesterday the sensex rallied by 299 points. The most obvious reason behind this sharp surge as touted by Indian media was a rumour that ambani brothers were heading for an out-of-court settlement for their natural gas dispute. Quite an effective rumour that was. Considering the strong influence that rumours emanating from ambani brothers have on indian stock markets one would wonder how these rumours can be turned into panacea for all the pains that investors are enduring these tough days. If only rumours related to reconciliation between ambani brothers make the sensex leap by almost a couple of hundred points and in effect soar the wealth of millions, imagine what could be achieved by actual acts of fraternity performed by ambanis!

It hasn't been long since the horrendous scam in satyam was revealed and in a matter of few days a rumour (which was later denied by reliance industries) has eclipsed that actual fraud which is to the tune of 7000 crores and has propelled the stock market strikingly up. Part of this frenzy can be ascribed to the over-ambitious investors who took the rumour seriously. However, taking a sanguine view at the turn of events, shall we expect more rumours from ambanis to catapult the market up further? I mean, why not hope for a day when only rumours drive the stock market? In which case, by letting only positive rumours make their way to the media ambanis can ensure a significant surge in the not only their own wealth but also of the millions other who hold stocks in reliance companies. Could charity (which indeed begins at home in this case) get any better than this? But then why even keep this formula of wealth creation restricted to ambanis? The more the merrier. The best way going forward would be to encourage rumour-mongering by the chiefs of every blue chip company in india and consequently entirely avoiding the impact of health of balance sheets, cash flows and profit & loss accounts, on the price of any blue chip stock.

This practice will have favourable side effects too. For example, frauds similar to the one committed in satyam won't be able to erode the hard-earned wealth of thousands other innocent investors. Why? Because, in satyam's case erosion happened due to shaken investor confidence on account of cooked books. Now when the chiefs of blue chips will be rumour-mongering religiously the balance sheets and other relevant data will already have been rendered unimportant, useless and eclipsed by the power of rumours. Few would care about the stats and no dumping of stocks would happen in case of frauds thus preserving the value of investments.

Coming back to my original point of turning this practice of rumour-mongering into a cure-all for investors; why not go a step further and organise events which will have even deeper impact on the stock market? Say, for example, why not organise an event of gilli danda or khokho between ambani brothers and also invite mittals, tatas and other bigwigs to it? Imagine how this act of fraternity by top honchos, when properly packaged and delivered by media, would positively impact investor's sentiment in india while keeping all the petty balance sheet stats out of picture. Gosh, wealth creation was never so easy. Who said times are bad?!

Feeling orkutty!

After having cursed myself for long for not being as much productive in my routine life as I used to be, the other day I decided to compile a list of activities that eat up most of my day. To my surprise, the list was long enough to be considered for a thought and mostly included general time wasters; most prominent of which were sleeping long hours, net-surfing, watching movies & sitcoms, watching more movies & sitcoms, roaming around in market, listening to music and other trivial activities. Now the list is ready so it's time for making improvements. Being in a part of the world where in winter mercury dips as low as -8°C, weather doesn’t permit one to be stingy about their slumber hence a hibernation of twelve-thirteen odd hours in one go sounds reasonable for weekends. Give or take one-two hours for weekdays. Therefore the idea of making an adjustment to this habit of lying dormant eternally was out of question and totally against my motto of preserving the health of my brain (waking up early inflicts a severe damage to brain cells). Moving on to the next activity in the list – net surfing – I began dissecting it into several sub activities which included emailing, orkutting & facebooking, watching more movies online, downloading music, checking out blogs, news, friends’ photos etc etc.

Gotcha! I thought, the bull’s eye had been nailed down – “orkutting & facebooking”. Back in college days, when orkut was launched I recollect how I had dismissed it in a single glance as an awfully inefficient tool for communication purposes. After all, if one had to enquire about their friends’ whereabouts or assignments or the plan for next day why in the god's name would they put that query on a page called scrapbook as if the rest of the world was a sucker for whats and whens of this president-to-be’s life. Why not simply make a phone call or drop an email? Not only did it seem to me very illogical to have this sort of communication in a publicly visible page but also a very tiresome process considering one didn’t frequent websites like orkut on a daily basis and visits were made only when a notification of update was there in mailbox. Back then I visited orkut only to accept new friend requests or view scraps whose notifications were flooded into my mailbox by orkut servers. Once I was so ticked off by this flood of emails that I had even set up a mail filter to delete all the orkut emails. Not just me I expected the rest of world as well to despise orkut and deem it a time-waster. When someday the piled up notifications were to be cleared and orkut was to be opened in office, I ensured that orkut window was small in size so as not to be visible to many and readily minimizable. The matter had gone to an extent that once I and a colleague of mine went on to celebrate the near miss by a senior level manager who had almost caught us fooling around on orkut rather than working in our initial not-so-intrepid days at our maiden job.

But fate had something else in store. Having born in a period just before liberalisation of economy, one gets to spend their youth in a period of economic boom. Jobs are plenty and easy to get. Not only do they inflate the bank balance but some also present opportunities for overseas travel which any Indian IT geek would happily put as ‘on site’ perhaps accompanied by a big grin on their face. The twist – as I say it – begins here when one lands on site. Life takes a topsy-turvy turn especially when one is unmarried. In the initial few months, to say that one is on cloud nine would be an understatement because the pleasure of being in any place awash with superb food, plush infrastructure, comfortable transport, and natural beauty all around is immense. I experienced the same when I descended on Queen's land a few months ago. The initial two-three months go by like a matter of minutes when one is checking out all newly opened up vistas – markets, restaurants, museums, castles, beaches, islands, culture, art, people and what not. Post this come the days when the eyes open up to reality and one realises that not much is left to explore in the vicinity and this is when one marries their laptop. These are the days when after finishing all the chores of the day from sleeping, working, lunching, roaming around in markets to watching TV, all that remains in your room is you and your laptop; you staring at the laptop and the laptop glaring at you. It appears like a marriage continuing from previous life and to be continued for the coming seven lives. The marriage with machine also nurtures the love for orkut and facebook. This is when the dislike for orkut mutates like melting butter into an intense feeling of heavenly love between two separated souls. This is when scrapbook doesn't seem that bad a thing. This is when one loves to visit orkut on a daily basis or rather hourly basis to be precise. This is when one knows about the new scraps in their scrapbook even before the orkut server delivers the notification email to their mailbox. This is when one always appears in the list of top nine people who are online on orkut home page.

Orkut is doing an excellent job after all. To check the whereabouts of a friend in the friend list one doesn't even need to check out their profile. 'Oh! She appears on the home page of orkut all day so she must be on site and vice versa!' - is something that can be assumed safely, in my opinion. Besides scrapbook, orkut has added some terrific features of late e.g. status updates (pinched from facebook/twitter), photo sharing, video sharing, custom apps. Now it provides myriad possibilities for time killing. That day I played teen patti with some of my geographically distributed friends. If that is not enough, just upload an interesting or controversial photo on orkut and wait for comments from all the lovable friends and here you kill another three-four hours in discussing a world-altering affair. Legion other possibilities lurk there in Apps folder. Orkut must be praised for making time-killing as easy as a pie for those desperate to kill time. From an inefficient communication tool Orkut has brilliantly transformed itself into an experience sharing platform. Such plus points apart, it gives a feeling of connectedness with those miles away. For instance take status updates, using which one can easily avoid becoming Id ka chaand among their friends by regularly putting not-so-revolutionary platitudes in there. Who cares if they were copied from a website called quotes of the day dot com. You never realise how easily the time goes by once you login into this time devouring boredom gobbling blue monster which beats even black hole as in the black hole can consume only light but orkut can consume light as well as time. Lately, observing how much I use it, I have started believing that ten percent of the traffic to Orkut must be originating from my machine. Kudos to Orkut for being a friend in need. Keep it up Orkut team!!

Coming back to my original point of making my life more productive by kicking out Orkut/facebook or new found love twitter from my schedule of activities; this idea doesn't seem to be eligible for further consideration at all. Movies, music and sitcoms are equally, if not more, inseparable from me as orkut is. So, I will kill some brain cells instead. I must hold off blogging now and login into orkut as I am feeling orkutty again. Oops did I update that in my status?!