It would have been like any other board that warns hawkers at the entrance of a building except that it had an odd message:

गाडियों का गेट से अन्दर-बाहर जाना सिर्फ मेम्बरोंके लिए

(Only members' cars can get in and out of the gate)

पैदल आना-जाना सिर्फ मेम्बरोंके लिए

(Only members can walk in and out of the gate)

The building in this case being a commercial one, I wonder if the customers are supposed to wing their way in and out of the gate :-)

Tintin @ Sony Pix, 16th September -12pm and 4pm

'You mean to say you haven't read Tintin?' my friend Karthik had asked in shocked disbelief. 'No' I said, puzzled, wondering what I had missed. 'How?' he was still in shock. 'I don't know. I guess because I have done my entire schooling from a vernacular medium school?' I ventured. 'Then you must read it now' he said plucking a book off a shelf of our B School library (I guess they were kept there for the benefit of the students' children') and thrusting it in my hands.

'What? Are you nuts? Why would I want to read it now? You can't always make up for all the things that you have lost out on doing in your childhood, you know'.

'Who told you that Tintin is meant to be read only by kids?'

My common sense did. In fact it was practically screaming in my ears. But Karthik sounded very confident. So I checked the book out and have been an ardent Tintin fan ever since.

In case you are one from this club, tune in to Sony Pix this Sunday (16th September) at 12pm and 4pm. It is going to air 'The Secret Of The Unicorn'. :-)

When I was in school, our favorite pastime during breaks and off periods used to be opening up the Indian Map, locating a tiny place somewhere and asking the other party to find it. There were, of course, no mobile phones then, so no games and no social networking sites. I still remember that ‘Jalpaiguri’ was one of the destinations that used to often come up because it was very hard to find. Maybe I will visit it once just to see what it actually looks like.
I must confess though that I had never wondered about who was responsible for making these maps. Turns out it is National Atlas & Thematic Mapping Organization - NATMO.

Wonder what other organizations like these are quietly doing their job without the general population ever noticing it.

If it were not for Google’s Doogle, I would never have heard about Clara Schumann. In case, you are wondering who she is, read on.

‘IAF Pilot refuses to fly Rahul Gandhi’ screamed the headlines. When I came across them I was reminded of something that I had witnessed the evening before as I had stood waiting for the AC bus.

In the midst of the peak hour traffic, a police vehicle came into sight – its red light flashing incessantly. There were 3 cars closely following it. One of them had the tricolor on its bonnet. Another police van brought up the rear. The setting sun and tinted windows made it difficult to see who the occupants were. In any case, they zoomed along at a fast pace and were gone in seconds.

Just then a non-AC bus stopped at the nearby bus stop. It discharged a few passengers but not many boarded it. When it started pulling away, it was more than half empty. A guy carrying a heavy office bag came rushing along. He waved both his hands to stop the bus. I am sure the driver saw him but didn’t bother to stop. The guy ended up waiting at the bus stop for the next bus.

When I got into the bus, R.K. Laxman’s celebrated Common Man kept popping into my mind. I guess in India, the Common Man is becoming more Common day by day.

P.S. Why was Rahul Gandhi being flown by an IAF pilot? I thought IAF was responsible for country’s defense. But then I could be wrong because in this country only politicians are allowed to be right. Hats off to the IAF pilot for “standing his ground”!

Food for thought.....

Life can be stress-free and happier if we remember one simple thing.....

We cannot have all that we desire but time will give us all that we deserve

There is one thing that never fails to surprise me. No matter how comfortable our lives are, we almost always find something to gripe about. I was suffering through a hacking dry cough a couple of months back. I stuck to my decision of not taking any antibiotics for as long as I could before I gave in. They failed to cure it. Homeopathy was equally ineffective. A visit to a chest specialist resulted in the diagnosis that it was caused by pollution. The remedy was neither very expensive nor particularly inconvenient – a couple of pills and an inhaler for a few days. But that was enough to make me complain 'why me?'.

And today morning I read an article about VonHippel-Lindau syndrome. I read about how rare it is and how those who are afflicted with it are fighting back. The same newspaper carried another article about Mark Inglis who is living life to the fullest despite being a double leg amputee. I can't express in words how ashamed I felt of myself and my constant griping.

Funny thing called 'Life' always has a few lessons in Perspective tucked up its sleeve. Thank God for that!

I don't get it. Whichever way I look at it, I just plain don't get it. When the so-called 'law-makers' of this country can spend majority of the monsoon-session hours arguing with each other and coming to blows, then that's acceptable. That's not at all considered to be a mockery of the democratic system even if they are doing it at a time when the economy is floundering. But if someone decides to raise voice against corruption using cartoons then that's branded as an insult of national symbols? What in the hell is wrong with these people? They are worried about national symbols when each and every one of the states is plagued with one problem or another? They are worried about national symbols when the decisions that are for the good of the country are being delayed forever? They are worried about national symbols when the rich are getting richer and the poor are being pushed deeper into poverty?

There is a lot that is rotten in the state of India.

As part of my duties as the Delivery Head, I am present when candidates are being interviewed for the positions of a software developer. Though I come from a Java background, the company that I am working for currently has all development in .Net. That means I don't generally venture into technical questions except for basic OOPS stuff. And yet, surprisingly, I find that the candidates who claim to be very good developers are often at the deep end when it comes to the fundamentals. Some cannot give a whole picture of the project that they have worked on except for their own contribution. Some are clueless as to how the project is going to help the end client. And some are over-confident to the point of sounding arrogant.

Last week I dealt with one such developer who answered my questions as if he was doing me a favor by providing answers to the questions that I in my ignorance wasn't capable of finding on my own. And then, at the end of the interview, he had the cheek to ask me for feedback. I almost heard myself say 'You are very confident - because you gave even the wrong answers very confidently.'. But I held back out of sheer politeness.

Looking back, I think I need not have been so polite.