Monday, March 22, 2010

Believe it or not!!

Talking about the time when I was 18. I was studying in Malegaon and had no clue what I will do in my life. I was so more stupid those days that I used to think that I will clear IIT-JEE by studying a book on Maths for 2 weeks.
Like every one else at that age, I too was carefree. I was more worried about girls I never talked to than my future. I used to go to a lot of palm readers with my mom. I liked going to them because none of them ever said anything bad about my future and my mom always believed in them. It used to make us happy at no expense.
One day, I came to know about my uncle who is very good at palm reading and I went to him almost immediately. I had nothing to loose going to him.

Palm reading went normal. Nothing unusual happened. He said all the things which were said my tens of others in Malegaon and Ahemdabad. But one thing stuck in my mind because of the way he said it. He said "Lakhi le, tu satyawees waras no thais tyare lamba samay maate America javanu thase". That is, "mark my words. At the age of 27, you will go to America for a long term".
The reason why this stuck in my mind was because he said it extremely confidently. Also because this was a precise prediction. It wasn't vague like "you will be a very successful person". He was precise with his prediction. Age, location and term. Everything was clear. I wanted to see how good is the astrology science and how good is my uncle in it. I said to myself, I will remember this and will verify.

Days passed by. I cleared my 12th with good percentage, had a very good four year term in engineering and started my job with Persistent System Pvt. Ltd. After few years, joined Amazon.com and things were smooth enough. But there was no chance for me to go to US because Amazon is not a service based company like Infosys or TCS and they always encouraged to import work as against exporting people.
Got married at the age of 26 and bought a house in Pune. I was all set to settle in Hyderabad for few years and then sometime go back to Pune to live in a house I have bought.

Things started changing. Amazon changed its policy a bit. My manager went to a different team in US and offered me a job in US. On the day when I turned 27, on my birthday, I gave my first interview for a position in US. Two months after that, I went for a VISA interview and a month after that, I flew to US.

I never thought I would go to US. No one in my family, including my wife, thought we would go to US. But, as they say, it was written. It was my destiny to come to US. Otherwise, how on earth my uncle knew about the exact time, age and location 10 years in advance?
My brain still can't accept astrology, but my heart has accepted it. May be I am not able to believe in it because I don't understand it. But there is something. It can't be just a co-incidence. Co-incidences can't be so accurate and definitely can't be predicted 10 years in advance!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Road Crossing

Driving car in India without swearing at pedestrians is next to impossible task.
And if anyone is able to achieve it, he or she has done more than what Obama has done to preserve peace in world. I bet even Gandhiji would have given piece of his mind had he driven cars in his lifetime.

More I drive my car, more I realize how senseless pedestrians (and two wheeler riders) are in India.
I have broadly categorized pedestrians in India into four categories. Have a look at the following graphic


1. Category RED - illiterate - people from villages:

People from this category are scared of vehicles and hence want to cross the road in minimum time. To do that, while crossing the road, they will run as fast and as straight as they can. And because they are scared of vehicles, they will always make sure that there are no vehicles close by before they start their sprint. Because of this, they are best road crosser and hardly irritates drivers. If you are driving cars, you will not even see these kind of people because they will never cross the road if you (a car) are around. You need to be on your building's terrace to see people of this category.


2. Category ORANGE - common man - middle class:
People like you and me. We want to follow road crossing rules but we also want to reach to our destination sooner than later. We start crossing the road walking straight and then, as soon as we realize that our destination is not exactly opposite to our starting point, we start walking diagonally. People from this category are irritating as they are on the road for a longer time which results in more confusion for drivers and more honking of horns. Also, the whole purpose of reaching to destination earlier is not achieved because they have to halt in between somewhere to let cars go by.


3. Category BLUE - educated class - upper middle, higher class:

People of this category are ALWAYS in hurry. They think that they are doing the most important work and everyone else's time is not as important as their own time. When they start crossing the road, they start in a straight line from source to destination (diagonal). They never care about traffic or anything else. They will raise one hand, assuming that vehicles have stopped they start walking. And if vehicles bang into them, they will start shouting and will scold you on how bad people are driving in India. How they have no respect for pedestrians. On road, these guys spend almost double the time spent by ORANGE category guys, blocking double the number of vehicles and increasing noise pollution to double of its value.

4. Category GREEN - educated class + (technology or children):
People from this category are most insensitive, ignorant and arrogant people. They are so busy that they will not even care for their own lives. These people are again higher class people having a need to be on mobile phones all the time. Or they are the moms with 1-3 kids and 5-6 shopping bags with them. They have learned so many things about everything else that they have forgotten how to cross the road. They never stop before starting to cross the road. But when they are on the road, they realize the traffic and they will come back. This continues till there is no enough traffic to bring them back. Think about the confusion they create for car drivers. They are crossing, they are not crossing.. what the hell? And usually when they come back, they will NOT turn around and then come back, they will still be facing at the other end but will start walking backwards!!

I hope people unlearn their "smartness" and stick to basics when they are crossing the road. While crossing roads, walk straight (perpendicular to road), fast and make sure there are no vehicles close by. Please do not talk on phone while crossing the road. Think twice before worrying about being late by 17.3 secs and before starting to walk diagonally; you are risking your own life.

Bringing more people in RED category will help us in achieving safe, stress free driving experience in India!

I will be glad if you share your experience with car driving in India.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

History repeats itself.. I hope!

One thing that amazes me about American cities (probably same is true with other developed countries as well) is city planning.
How amazingly well those cities are planned. They are planned in grid system and all road meet at right angles. It gives systematic expansion scope and better addressing. It also prevents ad-hoc development as each cell in grid can be marked for specific purpose. I really think it is a good planning system.

One more amazing thing I noticed this May when I visited Singapore. I went to a mall and started walking from shop 1. While walking along the shops and talking to my wife, I suddenly realized that we climbed two floors!! We were on second floor of the mall! I was pretty sure I never climbed any step, then how the hell we climbed two floors? We never used escalator or elevator as well.
I carefully looked at the path we were walking on and realized that it was actually a ramp. I was slightly inclined.. may be at few degrees. Because of that small inclination and circular track, a spiral path was formed and we climbed two floors without even realizing it. It is not just extremely helpful for old people or people with weak limbs, it also helps in saving energy. I saw very few people using escalator. That was indeed innovative!!

That made me think why no Indian ever thought about it? Why Indians are not as innovative!?

This misconception was cleared last week when I visited Jaipur. Jaipur is a capital city of state Rajasthan in India.
Jaipur is only second city after Taxila (also in India) which was planned as per grid system. In 1700s, when Jaipur was established, Sawai Jai Singh II planned city in grids. This was only second time any city was planned as per grid layout. Taxila planned in grid layout in India few thousand years ago.
So cities which we see in developed countries could actually be inspired by these great Indian cities. May be they learned from good Indian planning and implemented the same while they planned their cities like Singapore, San Fransisco, Seattle.
Same as this, spiral ramp to climb floors could have been inspired by Hawa Mahal in Jaipur (or Amber palace in Jaipur). This palace was built by Jaipur's prince in 1700s and had an inclined ramp to climb floors. This inclined ramp in Hawa Mahal was specially built to carry queens on wheel chair because it was almost impossible to them to walk after wearing jewelery weighing 20-30 kgs and saree weighing 5 kgs.

Singapore mall did a great job by imitating this inclined ramp from India but didn't do a perfect job. They missed to add "friction" factor on the ramp. In Hawa Mahal in Jaipur, to ensure people do not slip while walking, they have made ramp little rough to increase friction coefficient. :)

I hope Indians can pull their sleeves again and start ruling the world with innovation. I hope Indians become trend setter again. I hope history repeats itself!!

At least I am going to put efforts in making this a reality. You too, please do the same.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Newton's 3rd Law

Since my childhood, my elders have taught me to help others. Never say no and help if you can. I tried my best to follow that advice, but to be honest with myself, I could have done better.

When I was studying in Nasik, I met this guy who was (and still is) always willing to help others. He will just curse the guy who asked for help for the sake of doing it, and will still help. It doesn't matter if you ask for help for a water bottle or obtaining NOC from RTO office. He will always find some time from his schedule and make sure that the thing gets done.

But even after helping each of us for tons of time, he faced lot of problems in his personal life. Starting from his encounter with Mechanics, to his LG experience and his backache problem. He faced lots of problems in his life but kept his spirits high by saying "The Phoenix Will Rise".

This always made me wonder, why a series of bad things happend to the person who always helped others and was always there with friends whenever they needed him.
Last month, I got my answer!
Phoenix Has Finally Risen. :)

A Series of Fortunate Events happened in his life. He got a decent job, backache problem is 90% gone, is always surrounded by girls and has awesome friends like me!
This guy, a YD, electrical engineer and with no stable job last year went to USA on his current company's expense! How many people, you know, with this profile, went to US on company's expense.. specially those who are not in IT sector?

I think this has all happened to him because of all good things he has done for his friends. Because of all the blessings/good words given to him by his friends.
May be blessings are record of actions of a person in His book and once the book is filled for person X, person X will see the reaction and something great will happen to that person. Same applies to curses.

So thinking about it, blessings, curses are not just supersitious words. They are following Newton's thrid law of action/reaction. There is a science behind it.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

This is just one example I have stating here. There are tons of live examples I have which can prove this law even in human life.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Why I hate IPL

Don't take it otherwise, it is not the case that I just hate IPL. There are reasons why I hate IPL, there are reasons why I love IPL. Over the period of time, if there are changes in IPL's format, reasons why I hate IPL could be converted to reasons why I love IPL.

But right now, I am listing down all the reasons why I hate IPL:

1. T20 World Cup results: Whether Dhoni accepts it or not, to me, Indian players looked tired. It was very obvious from the way players like Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, Ishant Sharma played. Not only just on-field performance but serious injuries were caused to players like Virendra Sehwag too. We all know how desperately we missed Sehwag in the world cup. Zaheer Khan never looked 100% fit and performance in world cup matches says it all.

2. Foreign players are flourishing and Indians are not: While I am not totally against including foreign players in IPL, I don't like it when it affects Indian cricket adversely. During IPL, Indian players (specially icon players) were busy in shooting advertisements, press conferences, partying, Preity Zinta and did not practice. Whereas foreign players had no such distractions so they were only counting money and playing games and coming up with weaknesses of their opponents. Players who were trained in IPL like Bravo, Malinga, Dilshan played such an important role in their team's victory in T20 while none of the Indian IPL players showed any such remarkable feat.

3. Differences among Indian players keep on increasing: It is hurting when we see Indian players fight while playing IPL. After everything that has happened between Harbhajan and Sreesanth in IPL 1 or between Yuvi and Sreesanth in IPL 2, I think it will take really a long time for them to play as a team again. Does it not hurt mood in Indian dressing room? Does it not hurt performance of Indian team? I think it does.

4. Impartial behaviour: IPL 2 happened in SA and was a great success. BCCI really showed a great gesture by donating money to schools in SA. But my question is, when IPL 1 happened in India why no schools were given donation? Are Indians schools too rich to care of tens of lakhs of rupees? Is BCCI spending all that money in bribing Indian officials? If not to schools, I am sure BCCI can donate that money to other unfortunate sports in India. Just to take an example, Indian women's hockey team went to Australia without international quality gears. They had to buy better gears by their own money. Why can't BCCI help them? After all BCCI represents India in cricket.

5. No privilege to see our stars playing: Mohinder Amarnath raised a very good point in one of his interviews. Indian Premier League (IPL) is Indian league. Why on earth they played this Indian league in SA? Why Indians were taken away this privilege to watch their star players in action? IPL in England could have still made sense as following T20 worldcup was planned to be played in England only. But BCCI chose SA over England because England was "too expensive" option. Shows how only money factor is a decisive factor in BCCI decisions and how it doesn't plan at all for bigger tournaments like World T20 Cup!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Saving The Planet Earth

Considering the events that are happening in the world, we all should be very concerned about future of this planet. Well, don't know about others, but at least I am very concerned.

Everything that has happened in Gaza strip, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, America is very worrisome.

Something which is more worrisome is proceedings in Pakistan's Swat valley. Pakistan recently allowed Taliban to take control over Swat valley by passing sharia law. This is the worst way of "fighting terrorism". This is in fact encouraging terrorism. The message Pakistan is conveying is: If you want us to listen to you, start threatening people, start bombing towns and villages, create unrest and all your demands will be fulfilled.

Anyway, question is: why is Taliban doing what it is doing.
Well, if you ask me, their aim is to make the whole south Asia to adopt Islam.
Why they want south Asians to adopt Islam? They want more and more people to adopt Islam which will help their cause of ruling the world.

How can this madness be stopped? How can they be realized that everyone has their freedom of choosing their religion. How can they be realized that there is something more than religion in this world. Being is more important, existence is more important than ruling the world, than Islam (or any other religion), than power!
According to me, they can never realize this by meetings, talks, negotiations. They will realize this only when there will be a serious question mark on their existence.

According to me, only two countries can something about this madness. America and China. But unfortunately, both of these countries are looking at their selfish gains. They are hardly bothered about the situation and doing absolutely nothing about this. It is not the case that Pakistan and Pakistanis are loving it. There are suffering every bit as every one else. But poor public, they just can't do anything about it.

If people on earth can't/aren't doing anything about it, who can? ALIENS! Yes ALIENS!

Imagine there is a warning from the habitants of some other planet about destroying the planet earth!
Imagine a group of scientists coming up with some number of missiles, warriors, suicide bombers we will need to save the planet. Do you think terrorist groups like Taliban will volunteer to contribute? I think they will.

That will be the moment where whole world will sit together and think about the solution of defeating aliens while they attack us. That will be the moment of maximum unity earth will ever see.
For the first time America will not be worried about oil. Europe will not be worried about Euros. China will not be worried about exploiting India. India politicians will not be worried about their personal gains, Isreal will not be worried about Jews and Russia will not be worried about USA.
Each and every person from every corner of this planet will be readily available to fight against aliens to save their asses, to save their lives, to continue living.

Some secret society of world, with lot of power and money but with good intentions, should fake such a threat from aliens to unite the world. This is the only chance left with humans to unite.. otherwise we are heading towards WW III and end of humanity.

This will sound funny to you all but give it a thought. World is spending infinite amount of money for security. Some of it can be redirected to implement this idea. I think it is worth giving it a try!

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Small Excuse, Big Event

Pertaining Terrorist's carnage in Mumbai on 26/11/2008, why there was lack of security forces? Even though our police force, military and navy (only NSG was well-armed) didn't have ultra modern arms and ammunitions, they fought with terrorists.
Behavior of our politician, including CM and others ministers, was not seen at the site when forces were facing terrorists. After all was over on 29/11/2008, no volunteers, LIONS Club or any Rotarian were seen to help forces who were fighting with terrorists to clear death bodies and debris from there in.

As it was shown on TV by some of the channels, near about 35% of the security persons, police and NSG commandos are appointed for the security purpose of CM, ministers, MPs, MLAs as well as opposition party leaders, local or territorial party chair persons.
All the security should be abolished,not to provide any further security to above mentioned personalties. Lokmanya Tilak, Veer Savarkar, Mahatma Gandhi and many others didn't requir any security during those days. All were mixing with the people, on the contrary, they were fighting against British Empire. Our so called ministers are for the people, by the people and of the people then why they require security?
Why they do not allow our security forces to do their duties promptly and without any political pressure on them?

Ministers are for the farewell of common man, prajaa, AM ADAMI,why they afraid of them? Why they do not show that much courage and themselves say we do not want any security?
I have learned that one of our cricket captains is disappointed when his Z-PLUS security was removed. In lieu, he must say that he does not want any security. On the other hand I would say if at all these personalities need security, they have enough money to and can easily afford to appoint their own security persons. I do not remember whether little master or master blaster had ever asked for such type of security.
Let our police and military persons do their duties and provide security to AM ADAMI i.e. to Nation.

Our politician must learn a lesson from the small Israel in the Big World. Its great courage and big ambition of Patriotism. Do we not smell prompt revenge of NARIMAN HOUSE!!
I wish no Indian shall VOTE to the community of terrorists though terrorists have no Religion. Just to teach a lesson to our politicians!

--Batook