IM-PACT!!: 2009

How close together???

What can be better in life than loving someone and being loved. And moreover when the love reaches the depths of souls, so much so that the souls of the two people are connected with the same thread of love, we reach the heights of bliss and ecstacy. But being myself in a relationship and seeing my friends and others too I have observed that something prevents all of us from letting our love seep in our soul. There is a strange kind of a hesitation in all of us from embracing that love fearlessly and completely with open arms. I mean really with open arm!!. There is a hesitation in becoming one with that force of love which fills us from within and without and seeps into every cell of ours.

As I write this a vivid picture comes to my mind of a person walking in the drizzle. Have you ever seen that when it is drizzling most of us clutch our fists and hands, bow down our head and walk in a way to prevent our selves from getting wet? Have you ever noticed those lines on the forehead as a result of us tightening our facial muscles while walking in the drizzle? It seems that though we are walking in the drizzle and getting wet unavoidably but we still do those small things to prevent ourselves from getting wet. The lines on the forehead and the clutched fist is nothing but a sign of resistance to get wet, even when we know that wont help at all. And suddenly when you let go off all the resistance and fear and open your arms and raise your head to the sky the fine drops of rain slide down your forehead and onto the nose and you break free. That feeling is so great and fine. You feel one with nature and you really let the rain and bliss seep in every cell of yours.

The love in our lives is no different from the drizzle. And though we know that letting go off the resistance would ultimately take us to the path of bliss but the counter force to let go off that fear and resistance is too strong. The battles and challenges of life, though worth living, have made us individualists, it has made us highly strong headed, and at the same time has made us more rigid. We have narrowed down our individuality and our identity to our strong headed opinions, our principles, etc. And therefore we are afraid of changing and accomodating because that in our opinion would mean losing of identity. It is this which prevents us from opening our arms and raising our heads to the sky when God, through another human being has decided to shower love upon us.

All said and done. The above resistance is not completely invalid, and in many cases infact it may be your strong suit too. It may be something which helps you win in other areas of life. And moreover the term Unconditional Love may really sound heavenly but its not possible to love someone unconditionally. Two people in love may have a different view of life, different ways of working, different principles, etc. And unfortunately lack of acceptance of these differences come in the way of unity of souls in the real sense. And even if one of the person accepts the differences does not mean that the other will also do the same. And even if both the people accept the differences doesnt mean that the differences have disappeared. Trust me acceptance might lower down the resistance and increase the possibility of reaching a common ground, but it will not unite your souls completely because somewhere something is being compromised. Not only these differences but certain other differences due to the acts of God like differences in destiny, death of a loved one, etc come in the way of that blissful unity of souls.

Are we as humans doomed to an incomplete love inevitably? Or can we indeed live life in a way where irrespective of our differences we are really drenched into each other, as if sleeping naked in the same blanket in the cold winter night, where at least for sometime physically and emotionally there ceases to be any barrier?

So does that really mean that we will never be able to live that life of onness?

Below are the words of Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet. Reading these lines I have got some answers and some peace..

"You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow."

The height of laziness!!!

When girls say that you are a handsome guy and still you are not bothered about the growing size of your ass you can safely conclude that you are touching the heights of laziness!!!

I am experiencing pretty much the same thing these days. People have been telling me dude you are gaining weight slowly and I am least bothered. I have become so lazy sitting at home that even the thought of joining the jym has become an ordeal. Yesterday when Reedima hit my butt with a newspaper and said it is looking fatter and heavier than before, I decided to do something about it.. So today I spent half an hour on the net and googled how to eat and still loose weight! (Laziness right?). I found something interesting over there but then its again not less than a battle to convince mom to prepare that kind of food everyday for next 15 days at least, and moreover since I am so lazy these days, I dont wanna make that effort too.. :-) So again I am back to square one.

As a matter of fact really I did nothing today. I woke up at around 9 in the morning but dint leave the bed before 10.30. Then mom came in and shouted on me to get up and do something.. (You know she cant stand people sleeping away to glory after the sun rise). I woke up reluctantly, got hold of my laptop and began surfing the net on the bed itself. Ate breakfast and realized I dint brush my teeth. Did the toilet business and the rest of day continued as slowly.....

I am waiting for the college to reopen and waiting for the action to come back in life. Honestly. Meeting the deadlines of completing presentations, projects, assignments, and attending seminars of corporate organizations and still taking out time for hanging out with friends is always better. Gives you some sense of fulfilment and satisfaction instead of becoming a lazy bum!

To pee or not to pee.... What is it with toilets???

Lets talk about toilets today!!

All random stuff.... :-)

Great thinkers and Scientists, we have heard, used to sit in toilets for hours together either on the shit pot or in the bath tub, before shouting 'EUREKA' or coming up with brilliant and life transforming ideas!! I dont disagree with this, because I myself have found that my brain works wonders when I am sitting in the toilet. Trust me the kind of ideas I get there makes me sometimes feel proud of myself!! After all what is it with toilets man??

Unfortunately I dont know much about the relationship which women share with the toilet seats, except for the fact that women watch them selves in the toilet mirror for hours and hours from different angles before stepping in the shower. And at this time the only thing they do is either wishful thinking(in case they think they are fat) or feel proud of themselves for having the perfect figure and having appropriate flesh at strategic places ;-). Though the one thing which I dont understand is that why do women see themselves everyday in the mirror, before stepping in the shower?? Do they expect to grow fat in one day?? hehehe...

Anyways, we were talking about the relationship with toilets.. Yeah as I said above, I dont know much about the relationship which women share with the toilet. But yeah, men share an intimate relationship with the toilet seats, because even the research says that shit pots are the spring well of great ideas!! Probably when you are shitting you are more receptive to new ideas to fill in the vaccum again :-)

Not only this.. Men have even sharpened their sense of humour inside toilets by writing silly yet extremely funny jokes on the wall in front of them when they are sitting on the shit pot or peeing.

Recently while peeing in a public toilet I could not hold my laughter when I read a one liner on the wall!! It wrote-

"देश की आबादी बढाने वाली चीज़ तुम्हारे हाथ में है!" :-) :-)

And yeah, how can I forget about the favorite washroom talks.. Till long it used to elude me that why do girls go to washrooms in a herd. Obviously all the girls dont go to pee togehter, then what is it?? Till now what I could only observe that whenever I or any other guy used to talk to a new girl, she would rush in the bathroom after a few minutes with a group of girls running behind her.. LOL!!! I am sure they giggled how HOT or how NOT i or the other guy was. :-)

Then the second thing which I have observed million times is that if one girl would cry then the entire heard of girls would rush after her in the bathroom.. :-)

Guys talk about sports, about how sexy that girl was looking today, and about shagging and all.. LOL!!!

To pee or not to pee is not the only thing you do in the toilet!!!

There is a lot more :-) :-)

The two worlds!!

There are always two worlds in which we lead our lives. An internal world and the external world. And more often than not there is a ceaseless conflict between these two worlds and sometimes we end up searching for our place between these two worlds, and since we as people love to have a sense of belongingness with the external world, we manage to find our place somewhere out there. But that is not all! In our quest of finding and establishing our place out there, we try to keep our basic values, ethos, principles, etc intact because we want to minimize the conflict with ourselves too.

In the contemporary times specifically when we find an invasion of varied everchanging and dynamic thoughts from all around which is the springwell of lifestyles, relationships, and everything around us, we find our very principles shaking sometimes. Lets accept it. I have seen that the principles of most 'principled' people have shook because of their on going conflicts with the external world. And let me make my ground clear over here. I am not complaining that they were weak people. I have examples where I have restructured my principles etc. So i am not complaining. What i am just trying to say that probably they were too rigid and now they find their ice cold rigidity melting away due to the heat of their conflicts with the two worlds. And the conflicts arise due to the paralysis which the 'rigid' principles bring and which render the person unable to live in peace and harmony with the two worlds.

So where does all this put us??

On the one hand our principles are at stake, and on the other hand our survival of living. In the struggle to find our place we sometimes give in to the external world, sometimes happily embrace the external world, sometimes refuse to budge, and in very rare times weave an awesome dynamic and an optimum balance between the two worlds. Its not an easy task to weave that balance.

All said and done I dont have a solution to the above described problem and no one would ever have a general solution. We all are travelling a different journey and our solutions have to be different because the two worlds in which we live are different and unique from the others, and so our conflicts are different.

Towards the end I would say that the basic principles of humanity have to be upheld in all circumstances because indeed they are the life blood of our civilization, but I dont hesitate in saying that the superficial principles can not have a quality of timelessness in them and have to be restructured all the time in a way that a delicate yet perfect balance is weaved between the two worlds, because these two worlds will always exist with people at any time and the best person would be that who minimizes this conflict within these two worlds all the time.

The Orgasm!!

A bit of anticipation and a bit of foreplay can send you to the heights of orgasm. Isn't it?? ;-) And the higher you reach before the orgasm, the lower you are sent after the orgasm.. Thats exactly what is happening with me right now. The Diwali festival brought with it self a great degree of anticipation for fun, playing cards, parties, dinners, etc few days before Diwali.. All this anticipation transformed into a reality with all the parties and get to gethers happening at my place and sometimes at my relatives places.. All the events happening almost every night and every evening brought complete merry making all around. Then there was the Diwali evening and the night when we played cards the entire night and to add to the fun more dad won around 7 grands in the card games which went on till 4.30 in the morning!!

Today 2 days after Diwali, i have nothing to do. Days have become all slow and boring.. Dullness is the right word!! No more cards, no more good food, and no more drinks.. Guess what.. The orgasm has all ended and from the peaks i have come down to deep valleys. Christmas is far. New year parties are far, till then i hope i find out ways to live high again!!

Tonight i will go for beer with my friends for sure. :-) Lets get high again!!!!

The Fairer Sex!!!

Well... Lets talk about women :-)

You see disagreeing is an art which men of today must learn because every time you disagree with them, you run a risk of earning a reputation. And especially if you are one of those guys who dosent want to be called a male chauvinist then please disagree properly, because women have misused this term and this is one of those many terms which is tossed around very loosely in the air by them without understanding its true meaning.. :-). Infact women today misuse everything which is somewhere related to feminism.

You see the very word called 'FEMINISM' is flawed completely. "Wikipedia defines Feminism as pushing for EQUAL rights for women as shared by men in the society." Well if that was the case then why was the word 'EQUALITY' not used??? Why Feminism???

Very humbly submitting that i know that women are not equal even today.. Thanks to those dogs (men) of the previous generations who kept the women down with an iron hand. And really i for one appreciate women who have developed and demonstrated that even they are no less. They handle the child almost single handedly in the initial years, they have shown immense capabilities even in the business world and what not. But i would also like to submit very humbly that women, in their quest of getting there have overdone what they should have done. So much so that its getting dangerous.

No dont get me wrong.. I am not afraid of women developing and growing, and i am really all for it. But they, in the quest of their growth are not only trying to pull down the men but even pulling down the other members of their own sex which is quite funny.

This somewhere shows there desperation which is though understandable considering their not so good history but that alone is not a reason enough to push so hard, that you pull down even the members of your own sex. It seems women to satisfy their urge of domination etc have themselves become 'more men' than men themselves, and thus have ended up defeating their own purpose of emancipation.

Thankfully some good sense has prevailed on the young men of today and they have realized that women should have an equal say in every aspect of life, and that they are capable too. To this realization of men, women have responded very aggressively. So aggressively that relationships have fallen apart.

Another thought is that men and women are not equal and so nothing is wrong with that... Well read on..

Men and women are both endowed with different characteristics which complement each other perfectly. And so men and women are not equal!! Here i am not talking about superiority or inferiority but its just that they are not equal.. They are different. Research shows that men are better off in certain things and women are better off in certain other things. Sadly the research which i am talking about only talks from the context of the behavioural aspect. It doesnt say very explicitly that which activities are done better by whom.

And finally there are a breed of funny women these days who say that women are so self sufficient that now due to technology and shit, they dont even need a man to father their children.

Well, i want to ask, were the women treating men only as sex objects so that they could have kids from them? And now when you have technology to fertile your womb, you say that you dont require men?? For God's sake!!! what kind of an attitude are the women of today carrying? And thats why i wrote above, that sometimes this kind of a behaviour in women can be dangerous for the balance in our society. You very much need men just like they need you.

I apologise for the injustice my grandfathers and your grandfathers did on my grandmothers and your grandmothers, though an apology from me is not warranted for. I empathise and sympathise truly the strugglesome battle which women of the world faced till sometime back due to male domination and I acknowledge that completely. But an appropriate gesture and response from women is what which is needed to maintain balance.

P.S. The other day i was travelling in the metro and a lady came after sometime with her 2 friends. All three of them were looking healthy and were talking and laughing.. Suddenly one women asked me to get up and give her the seat. I was not sitting on the ladies seat and the way she asked was as if the metro belongs to her father :-) :-) I found it very funny and I responded her in the same tone in which she was talking. I said I am not well and I wont get up, ask for a seat from the ladies section. To this she responded in a typically complaining tone which has become a way of life for many women today. She said 'gents ko tameez nahi hai ladies se kaise baat karte hain'
hahahaha..... For God's sake..... WTF!!!

The identity crisis!

We as human beings have made our identities very fragile by integrating our identity to things other than our real self. Now defining real self exactly is a subject matter of pure philosophy so i wont go there, but i am sure intuitively we know what I am talking about...

So what is the most fragile thing???

Well they could be many, but to my mind comes one thing which is not only fragile but highly vulnerable to disagreements, or sometimes even attacks in rare situations. This means that if we integrate our identity with this particular thing only then obviously we would be in a situation where we would feel that its our identity with which people are disagreeing and its our identity which is being attacked sometimes.

I am talking about the word 'OPINIONS'

Everyone has thoughts and opinions about everything. Sometimes we become so opinionated that we become our opinions. In other words we narrow down our identity to one thing called opinion. And then we guard that opinion of ours against all others. We guard it with our blood, life , and soul, because we have narrowed down our identity to simply our opinion, and to safeguard our identity we'll do anything.

Consider the following example which is in a very macro sense.

Religion. Some people start living in a fallacy that their's is the only religion and their's is the only God. They start having this opinion obviously and so even if someone talks about being an atheist or an agnostic from their religion, the 'keepers of the religion' would rather eliminate such people. (Pakistan, Afghanistan have a death penalty for practising atheism)

Why would this happen at all??? I think again it happens for the same reason. These few people of the religion have integrated their identity with their dear opinion about the greatness of their religion. (I am not doubting the greatness of any religion. I am just talking from their perspective). The identity has been integrated so much so that they would be offended even if someone practises atheism. They feel that by disagreeing and by not practising a religion, atheists have attacked the very identity of the keepers of the religion.

Forget about religions. Relationships fall apart due to the differences of opinion. The girlfriend gives one opinion and the boyfriend disagrees for his own reasons and the girl wont appreciate it much. Whats the big deal?? The guy never disagreed with the girl or with her identity. He only disagreed with the girl's particular opinion. And the girl would make all stories in her head, feel bad, offended, and what not as if the guy has attacked her very identity.. Again this happened because here the girl's identity is same as her opinion, which is vulnerable to disagreements, and sometimes even attacks.

(Girls reading this, dont get offended. I had to take an example so i did. This can be with boys also.)

Having opinions is not bad. Because its through them that we set our principles in life and decide whats right and wrong. But then Identity should not be brought down to the level of an opinion. Though undoubtedly an opinion comes from the identity, but it should be kept apart. Otherwise disagreements will continue, relationships will fall apart, wars will take place, tolerance level will diminish, etc etc.

Picture perfect life!!!!

I have some great artists in my friends. Manjesh is one of them. Everyone who knows him is usually enthralled by his photography skills. And not only that. The captions which he puts complete the pics. You see a picture is just a picture. The soul of every picture is the message which it gives you, or rather the message which you extract out of it.

See the following pic....

The caption of this pic is "A Ray of hope"

In his blog Manjesh says that this pic was taken by him by mistake while doing the camera settings. For most of us this pic is a piece of trash which should have been deleted right away, but for a person who is a photographer nothing passes by without an interpretation which reflects very fast and is highly instintive.

How many times in our lives also we disregard so many incidents and happenings because they pass by in front of us and we dont even live that moment or that incident. As i said above that a picture is just a picture, and the soul of every picture is the interpretation the viewer gives. By the same analogy, incidents and happenings are nothing unless some meaning is given to them.

And indeed, Life is empty and meaningless. its void of all meanings and purpose. No, this is not a pessimistic statement. Its just reality. The fullness and meanings are provided to life by our own interpretations. And the purpose too is provided to it by us. Life itself does not have any inherent meanings or purpose. And just like the caption above, without which this pic would have been a piece of trash, or rather completely meaningless, in the same manner our lives are to be seen.

Indeed the caption made the pic worth. And yeah, just because of the interpretation provided by the caption, its one of my favorite pics too.

What the hell Raj Thakrey??????

Why do you think Raj Thakrey behaves the way he behaves?? An insecure dictator who desperately wants to secure a flawed and a completely useless ideology built by his own fancies. The man (by the way he shouldnt be called a 'man'. Doesnt deserve this term) almost runs a parallel Government in Maharashtra and runs the state on the pillars of his completely idiotic ideologies.

I dont understand how does it make a difference if Mumbai was addressed as Bombay?? Did the sun start rising from the west or did the Stock market crash? But surely enough it created tremendous tremors in his head and he went ahead to even ban the movie, Wake up Sid, in Mumbai. What kind of an utter nonsense..

Amitabh Bacchan speaks in hindi and Raj Thakrey gets offended because according to him only Marathi should be spoken on that land. SRK expresses his love for Delhi and he ends up facing the wrath of Raj Thakrey who wants him to express his love only for Mumbai because according to the ideologies and utter rigidity of thoughts of Raj Thakrey that was a SIN!!!

Unfortunately some where down the line his thoughts and ideologies have managed to trickle down even on the commoners in Maharashtra. There have been incidents where commeners have become incresingly arrogant and their behavior towards people from other places of India is simply disgusting.

I strongly disliked the concept of the movie SARKAR and SARKAR RAJ. Keeping aside the fact that it was a blockbuster and showed some mind blowing performances, it also glorified the existence of a 'Sarkar' which was a parallel Government in Maharashtra. Obviously that was based on Bal and Raj Thakrey only.

How shamelessly has the movie shown that Sarkar is people friendly and has a broad mind and an excellent development plan for Maharashtra which is not true in reality.

Unfortunately media influences the people a lot and this movie has been instrumental in glorifying Raj Thakrey in a flawed way to the people of Maharashtra. This can be destructive for the future.

I fail to understand this person. He is a jerk!!!

P.S.- I applaud Karan Johar for apologising to Raj Thakrey for using the term Bombay in his movie. Its rightly said, "you can not win arguments with fools because first they bring you down to their level and then beat you with their experience" - Chinese Proverb.

I am sure in his heart Karan Johar thinks about him just the way I think, but he satisfied the foolish guy by saying sorry which I am sure he dint even mean :-)

I am sure it dint hurt Karan Johar much if saying a fake sorry can lift the ban on his movie in Mumbai.

TIME, The destroyer and creator of the worlds.

Time is one of the dimensions of the universe, but surprisingly human beings have this awesome capability of living outside of this dimension of time. Of course physically they cant live outside this dimension of time, but mentally they are capable of living beyond what we call the 'NOW' moment. Be it the past or the future.

And though its an amazing phenomena that indeed mentally we can out run even the spirit of time, but in the end who would finally win this grand battle; we or the spirit of time?

The Austrian economist, Joseph Schumpeter pioneered a theory called the Creative Destruction in the context of capitalism, and i would like to extend his very insightful theory to every area of life, because the fundamentals on which this theory is based is TIME, and TIME is the fundamental of our life and the universe.too.

In the larger context of life Creative Destruction would mean every phenomena on earth and even beyond is constantly going through the phase of creation and destruction. Be it society, human beings, trees, ideas, organizations, and even this universe. This shows that indeed the Time Spirit can not be ignored as its the essence of everything.

Having said the above things, I would like to Put the above philosophy in the context of one of the aspects of our lives.

Why has it happened that we become disoriented more often with everything around us these days. Our job, our partners, parents, children, friends, etc.? Is it a symptom of some psychological or mental changes through which we are going, or is it a symptom of some kind of resistance to change?

I strongly believe that change can never bring friction or difficulties for anyone because change is like a moving vehicle which is constant for those who are on board. Change is the soul of everything around us. I believe that its the resistance to change which creates frictions and difficulties. This resistance is obviously born out of mind and so is not real in reality.

As the pace with which everything around is changing has become faster so is our disorientation with things and people around us. Why blame change for this? And even if change is to be blamed then it wont be helpful because you can not wish it away. As Mr. Alwin Toffler suggested in his book, The Future Shock that, "the disease of change is here to haunt everyone of us, and the things around us have become overwhelmed with change in these years." Hence people who cant cope with this Change will be eventually thrown out of life or the area where action is happening.

Analogically the pace of change has become like the pace of treadmill, where one has to run in order to stay where they are.

So in this grand battle of TIME and HUMAN BEINGS, we can win, but that is not equivalent to saying that we can defeat TIME.

How to bargain in streets of Janpath and Sarojini Nagar..

I have been shopping pretty much since yesterday and since poor me gets a limited money to spend every month, (the irony of my life is that no matter how much i get, i always wish i had just 100 rupees more today) so i bargain all the time.

I have even done shameless bargaining and believe me, its a sin not to bargain at Janpath or Sarojini Nagar and moreover not bargaining takes away the fun too..

So how do you go about it.......

First of all we must know that as consumers its our right to bargain at these places. If you'll not go with this mindset then you'll fail. Remember the shopkeeper needs you, and you dont need the shopkeeper (even if you do, you have to pretend the other way. hehehe )

Secondly, when you are trying out accessories , sunglasses, shirts, tops, etc at these places, kindly do not be very expressive even if you really like it. Remember if the stall keeper sees that you are happy with the thing, he will immediately raise the price. So just be stonefaced.. :-) (i know this is very hard for those people who love to shop, but then its the question of cash)

Now the third step would be to ask for the price. The moment you get to hear the price from the stall keeper, just raise your eyebrows and say, ye to bahot costly hai bhai, and give your price which is at least 50% lesser than what he quoted.

The person at the shop will obviously say no and now is the time to throw some tantrums.. Start walking away from the shop but dont walk too fast otherwise the person at the shop will not be able to call you back. Start walking away slowly and after 5 seconds you'll hear the shopkeeper calling you back. When he calls you back dont be over excited, but just stand there and start negotiating. Now he'll slowly tank down the price and when he finally agrees at your price, or closer to your price you can finally purchase it.

Finally when you have the thing in your hands, you can show all your suppressed emotions of happiness and excitement and now unfortunately the shopkeeper cant do anything. :-) :-)

Today i tried this trick again as always and i could get a pair of sunglasses only for 100 rupees from janpath, which was initially quoted for 350 bucks :-)

P.S. -- I have tried the above trick always and almost every time i have been successfull. This trick is only for places like Janpath and Sarojini Nagar. Girls specifically can take out a print out of this post and revise it just before entering a stall or a shop :-) Have fun :-)

A perspective of Life!!!

"In our existence for eternity, we become manifested for some time.

What do we become before and after that, is known by the force Divine."

"I wrote the above lines one year back, when i was once sitting in a chair in my balcony and gazing into the infinite universe with stars spread in the night sky. This has always been my one of the favorite pass times.

Last night again i was standing in the balcony and was watching the rain. Lightning struck in the sky and something struck me too.

What are we here for? Whats the purpose of our existence? In this infinite universe, our planet seems like a speck of dust, and in that planet exists life. Just like the flash of lightning in the sky last night, our lives are also like the flash of lightning in this time spirit which spans to eternity. In this short span of our time can we live happily and contribute for the cause of humanity?

I strongly believe its love which makes the world go round. Love is the spirit of this existence. Lets live happily and with love. Recieve love and give love. Happiness and sadness come only from the sense perception. They have no independent identity and so are only dependent on our perception. Change which is the very essence of the universe is a constant phenomena.

"As quick as the clouds change its form, and our world changes with a thought. So does the moment of now!!"

- Anonymous

So lets embrace the entire universe. Lets embrace 'change'. Lets embrace love. Lets experience life it self as it is.

Probably we get only one ride on this crazy planet. Make the most of it!! :-)

Love and regards to all!!!!

Everything has got to do with sex baby :-)

As a student of MBA, i have become more vigilant to the environment of marketing and finance around me. And not to my much surprise i discovered that the basic human instincts and basic human needs sit at the bottom of the pyramid of all the activities that a person does (even marketing).

Borrowing the concept of Abraham Maslow who

pioneered the concept of the Hierarchy of needs of every human being, he said that Physiological needs sit at the bottom of this pyramid which include food, shelter, cloth, and sex! above these needs are the safety needs, then the psychological needs, then esteem needs and finally self actualization needs..

Though probably he forgot to tell that all these needs can also mutually co-exist, and in most cases they do, which is a fact.

Anyways talking about his concept is not the epicenter of my post, though its a sort of a base or rather just a pillar to my post. I intend to talk about something very interesting over here.

Why sex sells in advertisements of products even though the product is not at all connected to sex? we can easily understand sex in a lingerie add and due to getting used to many more ads we can even intuitively explain sex in other ads, but what is the need??

Even the ads of real estate, vaccum cleaner, hamburgers, foot

wear, coffee, ice-cream, mobile phones, milk, etc resort to some kind of sexuality in their ads.

This is an add of Volvo car.. Quite interesting man!!! It says we are just as excited(rather sexcited) as you are :-) The ad doesnt tell anything about the car, it merely shows an errected handbrake which does all the magic!! Personally this is my favorite ad too, and it makes me find more about this car. Also interestingly Volvo targets female consumers in a big way.. But what has car got to do with sex??

The above is the add of Lavazza coffee.. Highly explicit and to some people even vulgar!! But still, the sales are touching the skies in the respective country.. What has coffee gotto do with sex after all??

Its just a burger!!! Why is she eating it in such a seductive way?? why doesnt she sit in a chair comfortably and eat it with leisure?? And i am sure no one is looking at the burger.. Even though i am a big foodaholic i am not looking at the poor burger. ;-) My eyes are wanting to look at the curve which her back clubbed with her waist makes so beautifully.. (rather sexually)

This wants to convey the benifits of drinking milk.. Then why the girl is not showing drinking it?? again a sexual depiction of a product like milk which has no connection at all..

So sex all the time and everywhere!!! Yes sex has got a lot to do with all the things even products which a marketer wants to market.. But that certainly doesnt mean that sex over the board in ads will sell the product.. Just like a good humour has a quality of never being fully explicit. Rather its left at the minds of the people to make further meanings out of it which make them laugh and amused, similarly i think that good sexual depiction in ads should not be very explicit, and thats why i like the Volvo ad better than the milk ad, even though rationally the milk ad should be more appealing to eyes for nudity and other 'obvious' reasons.. The vlvo ad leaves the viewer slightly amused, as it has a tinge of humour to it also. And as a matter of fact i think that after food and shelter and the basic necessities of life, its the SEX and the HUMOUR which sells the most and which humans want the most. Basic emotional requirements!!!!

Marketers understand this... and so they show sex more often than the product charecteristics.. Sex leaves the consumers excited and the excitement leads him to find about the product or in some cases purchase it deirectly...

If Volvo was in India, i would have gone for it man ;-)

When was the last time you did something for the first time???

For most of us, life continues to be the same unless some external force is present. The same morning, the same putting off the alarm again and again as it snoozes for the fifth time now, then slowly getting off the bed, and going to the washroom to do your morning business. Coming out and getting ready for college. Till then mom calls for the breakfast. Eating it gradually as you have no other job to do in life but to eat. Then suddenly realizing, WTF!! again you are late for college. Rushing towards the college and reaching late as usual.

Studying, chatting, playing, having fun and the day ends and slowly you get towards home. With tiredness profoundly visible on your face as if you've worked your asses off in the college.

Reaching home finally and telling mom to prepare something good to drink because today was a tough day, full of hard work and studies... hahahaha... watching a little bit of TV, reading some newspaper, and heading straight to Facebook and Gmail, where you find your classmates online even before you have signed in. Chatting with them for long as if you are meeting them after some 10 years. Keep chatting untill you drop dead on the bed. Calling your girlfriend or boyfriend if you have one and talking to her/him for an hour or so, and going to sleep finally...............

Ahhh!!!!! A new day has come again next morning, and as expected, the same routine will be followed even this day. We can probably follow this routine for months or years together without even realizing.. Ofcourse a few variations here and there are always there, but they are not even worth mentioning..

So the question is that, "When was the last time you did something for the first time?"

Havent we become a victim of our routine and a phenomena which i call the familiarity syndrome, wherein everyday we do the things which are highly familiar because we have been doing them since years together???

And so our development goes for a toss!!! What if we can add one new thing every day, or week so that from the familiarity syndrome we step into a place where life is really happening, where our mind is no longer on an automatic mode because its a new thing which we are doing so we are analyzing, thinking, and executing this new thing.. Why are we wasting it away??

An enlightenment of sorts right???? so are all of us ready to challenge ourselves and step into the zone of unfamiliarity which means that we will have to leave behind our comfort zone.. Are we ready to do new things rather than wasting ourselves??

As Kahlil Gibran spoke- "The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master."

The Lateral thinking... How to get a seat in metro train.

If the topic of this post eludes you a bit and there is no way you are able to decipher the connection between getting a seat in the metro and lateral thinking, hold on for a few moments till you read it till the end.. :-)

We all have experienced that not getting a seat in the metro specifically if you are a long distance traveller can be bit frustrating.. Even for those who dont mind standing in the metro would also agree that sitting is better than standing, even though marginally. And since i have to travel almost everyday from home to college in a metro its important for me to sit, specially in exam days so that i can revise (or rather study for the first time) on the seat :-). I am not one of those people who would run like crazy to grab a seat the moment the metro door opens, and neither will i throw my hankerchief/hanky from far on a seat to claim it. (Btw i have started carrying hankies.. courtesy Reedima).

So finally after thinking i carved out an intelligent way to get a seat in the metro most of the times. Here luck favours me a bit because my station is the second station so the metro may still have some vacant seats. But ofcourse my job is to ensure that i am one of those lucky few who gets one of those very few vacant seats in a huge metro. So what did i do??

Well a little bit of observation came handy. Here goes the explanation. I am sure all of us have seen that there is always one escalator and one stair case which leads us to the platform. Most of the times these escalators and staircase connect to the two extreme ends of the platform. Now the main point is that most people use the escalators to reach the platform for obvious reasons, so obviously that end of the platform which is connected by the escalator is always more crouded with people, and since very few people use the stair case, the end of the platform which is connected with the staircase is relatively empty.

Moreover as the law of central tendency and normal distribution states that everything in the universe tends to locate in a normally distributed way, so many people from both ends walk towards the center of the platform to board the train.

Here goes the trick. I always take care of both these things and so i take the staircase to reach that end of the platform which is scantily populated and i dont walk towards the center, and trust me most of the times i successfully get a seat, as correspondingly the probability of finding a vacant seat in that end of the train which corresponds to the end of the platform which is connected with the staircase is immensely high. (Ofcourse the precondition is that this can be only done in first few stations that is when metro still has some seats vacant)

Now you probably know what has Lateral thinking got to do with finding a seat in the metro..

Intelligent guy... eh!!!!!!

Hope you too start finding a seat in the metro more often :-)

The Opening.

So at last i have made a blog. Friends have been suggesting me and telling me dude why dont you make one, and i have been making good and valid excuses of not making one. Anyways now that its done so let me start with writing my first ever blog post.

So what should i write in my first blog? Should it be something extraordinarily grand or just a simple thing would do.. As i struggled to decide, i thought let me begin in the traditional way of introducing myself. Ofcourse all my friends need no introduction, but in case i overcome my laziness and take this blog to heights [lol] where even strangers want to step in then in that case the introduction will be handy.

To keep it short and less boring, I am Advaita. I am pursuing my MBA from Usha & Laxmi Mittal Institute of Management. I am a person with numerous thoughts in my head all the time, running in all directions. Sometimes i get so filled with them, that i simply toss the salad while indulging in conversations. So i think somehow that I will be happy to blog because as my girlfriend says, that you dont have to write about some rocket science in a blog. You can be highly random while writing a blog, and Randomness is there running in my blood all the time. :-)

So here I am looking forward to blogging actively and puting my randomness to some use.

See you :-)

IM-PACT!!