A holy man and his disciple were about to cross a riverbed when they noticed a young woman at the opposite bank hesitatingly trying to cross it. The holy man crossed the riverbed without a moment’s hesitation, lifted the woman and carried her safely across to the other bank.

The disciple was puzzled at the action of the holy man - who had taken a vow of chastity. After waiting for 3-4 days he couldn’t contain his curiosity anymore and asked the holy man about it.

The holy man replied “I left that woman at the bank long time back. You seem to be still carrying her in your mind”!

Just when I thought I was getting a grip on the acronyms like CRR, ECB, Repo and LIBOR I came across this priceless gem in today’s Economic Times (page 16):

According to the SEBI circular, the exposure margin for gross open positions in single stock futures and gross open short positions in stock options will now be the higher of 10% or 1.5 times the standard deviation – an indicator of volatility in a stock – in the notional value of the positions.

Notice that the explanation is provided only for the term - standard deviation – which is commonly known anyways. :-)

Trust the banks to come up with ads calculated to tug at your heartstrings. The latest in the series of such cute-as-a-button ads is from Union Bank.

A little girl with an angelic face comes crying into the room of her elder brother. The reason – she has just lost a tooth. Her brother drops the work he is doing to tell her that she is lucky to have lost a tooth. When she stops crying – eyes wide with wonder – he explains that if planted it will give her a tooth of gold.

Then we see the child stopping in a school yard as she spots a tooth lying about on the ground next to two kids locked in a fight. She picks it up and deposits it in a box. Next she invades a set of dentures soaking in a bowl of water. Even the skeleton in the classroom doesn’t escape her attention.

Her brother sees her planting the whole set in the ground and asks her why she is doing it. Watch the ad to listen to what she says to him!

A cute ad that gels well with its tagline - “Your dreams are not yours alone” :-)

Little Sonu lost his fight with life after spending 4 days at the bottom of the borewell. And now the blame game has begun. There cannot be a difference of opinion that the people who dug the borewell and left it open are the primary culprits. But what maddens me most in such instances is that the parents of such children don’t get reprimanded solely because they are the victims in these situations. Wasn’t it sheer callousness not to keep an eye on a 2-year old? I refuse to accept the much-touted excuse that they were poor and probably had to give more attention to earning their bread-and-butter than to their child. Because my hard cold answer to this excuse is that if earning their bread-and-butter is more important then they should not have thought about having a child. It’s simple really – you don’t have a right to be a parent if you cannot look after your child and ensure his/her safety. Sadly, no one thinks along these lines.

It’s clear that no lessons were learnt from the “Prince” episode so I guess it’s hopeless to expect that any concrete measures will be taken to avoid the repeatition of this sad incident. As I have said before on this blog, not much premium is placed on human lives. Afterall, we seem to be having about a billion of them :-(

Jaago re

Wanna vote but don't know how to go about registering yourself? Here's the site to help you with it - http://jaagore.com/. Go register and make sure you can vote. After all, it's your birthright :-)

Yeh Hum Naheen

I was overjoyed when I read about this site in the newspaper. Finally, someone is taking steps to slap across the ugly face of terrorism. :-) Kudos to you guys!

Puzzled? Go check http://www.yehhumnaheen.org/

I hope and pray that Muslims all over the world join hands with these people who have stood up against a handful few who believe in holding the world ransom to their pathetic and cowardly acts.

Against the growing incidences of terrorism against Christians in India, I believe we Hindus should also come forward to raise our voice.

Join hands guys, that's the only way to pull back our world from the brink of destruction!

In a desperate move to set the cash registers ringing Bollywood now seems to be turning to the remakes of yesteryear’s hits. We had Sholay and Umrao Jaan and now we will have Karz.

I gasped for air when I heard that Himesh Reshammiya is playing the protagonist – played by Rishi Kapoor originally. I remember watching the original on TV and it had amused me no end to watch today’s Mrs. Tina Ambani gyrating to the tunes of “Om Shanti Om” – in her much slimmer avatar of course! But the title tune was decidedly haunting and remains my favorite to this day.

And as if the horror of Himesh Reshammiya visiting planet earth twice isn’t bone-chilling enough, it has been this time decided to remain faithful (!) to the American movie that the original Karz was based on - The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. So now HimeshBhai’s leading lady in the second life (played originally by Tina Munim) is the daughter of his heartthrob in his first life – Kamini (played originally by Simi Garewal). I wonder how the Indian audience is going to take it.

I just hope that this Karz doesn’t land producer Bhushan Kumar in Karz up to his neck :-) As far as I am concerned, the day this movie gets released I will get a DVD of the Rishi Kapoor starrer and watch it with popcorn :-)

I was still reeling from the shocking news of the remake of Karz (now starring Himesh Reshammiya) when I received another bombshell – Abhimaan (originally with Amitabh and Jaya Bachhan) is going to be remade with Abhishek and Aishwariya.

Now I agree that Amitabh wasn’t quite convincing as the arrogant dashing singer but somehow he managed it. Jaya Bachhan on the other hand was as sweet as they make them as the village girl who firmly believes that when one sings for one’s own happiness the result is always melodious.

I stretched my imagination to its limits but I couldn’t visualize either Abhishek - with his wooden expression - belting out “meet na mila re man ka” or Aishwariya as a coy village girl playing with her pitcher singing “Nadiya kinare”.

Someone, please make it unlawful to remake old classics! :-)