The new kidnappers,

Ban now is the in his supreme state. He is jobless and is thinking about moving towards some freelance writing, He has no job in hand, Has saved some 3- lakhs. And wants to live off that for the coming one or two years,

 

He says searching for a job is more painful in todays conditions than ever before, There are more horrors to see than you can survive .So lets stay quite at home a much needed sabbatical  .
The prices are cheap and things will become good and when the sunny days are back he will come out in the open and shout for a job and there it goes, he will be placed,

 

With 4 years of experience under his belt already and some savings to go by I think he will survive. Especially now that we will go back to Agartala, the small town in the northeast, where spending slows to negative , once you are with your parents.

I know this decision is possible for the youth who are still out of loans and have their parents earning and they are pretty comfortably placed.

According to Ban this is not the right time for higher studies as the competition there will be elusive and the best will be fighting to get in, So he does not want to scathe himself there either. With salaries coming down and the educational institutions hiking their fees to 7 figures, it is becoming clear that the once chosen field of merit the brandmark of the hardworking poor mans midnight oil burning toil is now the pet of the rich .

 

In cities like Kolkata where even a year back some engineering college fees were less than 500 rs a year some engineering colleges are charging 6-10 lakhs for the same. What kind of joke is that on the face of the poor in India,

Forget the poor, the middle class employee whose only savings are now peanuts for his sons education, The son that cannot take care of him, neither by will nor by merit.

 

Sorry to say , today very few people in India will go into commitments like that. I don’t know whether 40 K for entry to a Montessori is the biggest joke of this nation or not but I feel bad for myself,

 

“If there is a living hell , it is in the minds of the corrupt politicians of today “

 

A corrupt politician in the western world deprives people from some extra luxury , some kind of development project which is good to have but can be done without

 

but the corrupt politician in India,robs us of our lives,

It makes me ponder whether the human conscience in a matter of study only in the school books of class 7

I

 

Pranab Jee says we will make it 7 next quarter

I know, if you were to ask a middle class average employee that today we are sitting on GDP numbers like 5.3 percent according to the 3^rd quarter results and soon we will hit 7 as per the result of the 4^th comes out, the obvious answer that you will get will be either a burp or a fart so as to say in the least complicated of ways,

 

 

I don’t know, why these numbers are so significant and thrusted upon the common man so very often , while he is fighting or haggling with his every day life,

The slumdogs are every where, and if asked about it no one will deny that there existence is in any more flowery than the dog itself. There are more problems that come due to financial issues other than the denial of some materialistic demands, There are health issues, there are constant struggles on  the conscience to stay in the moral path,

A relatively well to do person may not decide to go on the path of immorality if compelled.

Today , in Karan Thapars, show, we are resounding something which resemble a MBA class in MDI Gurgaon, where numbers matter and  they have their living going or to say the pot boiling by doing some kind of A.C. Nielsen  survey here in India and have some political agenda going, but to the common man there is just no respite.

 

 

Estranged couples in US now stay together

Well,

a couple in US , who were pretty much on the verge of divorce, today are staying together. 37 % of the divorce lawyers in US today say that it is time we add divorces to the list of casualties of this recessions

These are bad times,

in the last three days I had three pretty big bunch of bad news. Yes I am a software engineer and I stay happy I my bosses in US stay happy and they kept me happy for  long time. It was the new youth of India with money  in their pockets, The world saluted them for their show off skills , regular US visits and foreign trips, there was hardly anybody who wanted to become an IAS officer or a civil engineer. There was this IT wave and now as the days have passed I see there are millions of graduates in India who are going to pass out in 2009 June, since all the CSE seats were filled up way back in 2005.

 

 

Day before yesterday , RBS which used to stay in the top ten usually in the world bank list, revealed their annual cumulative loss to about 55 Bn dollars, and then yesterday it was time for GM to show about 30 BN dollars.

Also amongst them somewhere was the news of Japanese economy shrinking to about 12.5 % in the last year, You know what that means, That means that one out of eight people you knew who were working is now standing outside searching for a job. One out of eight factories shut down , one out of eight industries completely in the void.

 

There are a large number of problems today that show that, we the underdeveloped nation should not and cannot dream of good days for long unless we know of the root cause for the same and the very nature of the success. Today I can see very well that till 2011 we will be in the shady days. Yes for too long the IT engineers have basked in the glory of the west and today it is time we take their bad times with some amount of sensibility.

 

 

Well,coming back to the point of divorces, there was this piece of news article from CNN IBN . Estranged couples who just cannot afford to stay separate as the housing in no more affordable even though prices are hitting their rock bottom.  They simply cannot take the risk any more. The couples have decided to stay under the same roof, Who knows, unemployment and more time together might make the long lost love come back .

This is what explains less number of divorces in India till today , Since thee major part of India lives in the age old cultural jails and it is difficult for the wives to even get hold of some sympathy  in dire circumstances.

 

Anyway I was never a supporter of forced marriages and I am actually contradicting myself in supporting the Indian marriage system.  

Some cool quotes

In three words I can summarize life “ It goes on”

 

And one more

 

“don’t ask life why me? say try me?”

-

 

 

Got hold of somethign funny today

http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/

 

 

 

Also , there is something that is for adults, and it is called the Trojan sports,

Wow, you see the dude do a hold just on this totempole.

Yup right there, a whole 53 kilo dame.

 

It goes

http://www.trojangames.co.uk/

 

Man, there is some awful shit going one.

 

 

 

mediocrity

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men, have mediocrity thrust upon them

 

To start with, I always believed that great things will happen if you are hard working and give your best  .Slowly I have realized that with all the hours that I have , even if I put up my best fight I am not able to make time for more . And this is the gap that is causing me to slow down in life

 

yes I am better off than many others , but there are times where I feel that I am inadequate, I have no control over the fact that my brain has limitations and that is where all the pain triggers, The fact that I am mediocre, the very fact that there are limits to my ways of thinking and somehow I am at that verge where I know that right beside there lies the key to so many problems in life somehow I find a small block.

 

I find it choking at times and feel that even after reading so many agony aunties write about bringing the best out of you , the best in you in times of depressions, I have this problem of visibility and knowledge of seeing some of the best take the cake in my mode of life.

Somehow there is something missing and they are the grey matter that makes me different from another person.

 

I move in a circle that is doing great in life , even I am not a non entity here but there is a need to do more and that is not happening amidst all the ruckus , noise and pain .

 

 

The great recession is here .

Well, there are ups and downs in everyones lives,  as the saying goes, you are better prepared for tough times if you have seen some tough days in your past too.

This time around the problem is that we are seeing it collectively as the bad times are here. Managers fear no more that he might lose a potential good employee, there are millions waiting outside to beat you at your best skills .

IT is one field where the employees are scared to their pants as they know that they have become too complacent and don’t have any real world skills anymore,

They cannot even merely think about running a pan ki dukan if asked for. May be they will but all are in a state of dilemma.

 

Today I asked a friend ,whether he was willing to get into studies now after 4 years of hard work. Most feel that this is a glass ceiling here and we are not able to make any movement here or there. Most the startup modes where companies had a good vertical ladder and people could make moves up the ladder with their talents are soon starting to resemble any government office where you don’t know when your promotion is in the line. Whether there is a lot of apple polishing going on or whether the ability to stand on your own with sheer merit still stands as strong as it used to be.

 

I have heard complaints for many of my friends about many service sector companies in India like TCS and Infosys where the structures are so solidly defined that many of their employees especially the senior ones are now stuck invariably to their one position that they hold. And they are in no position to make any horizontal move or to leave their comfort.

 

This unchartered Indian middle class that thinks that it should and must enjoy the privileges that the middle class in US enjoys  or atlest their counterparts ( especially the Indians in US ) enjoys. Slowly the concept of making it to some prestigious club, having a 3 balcony flat , at costs beyond 50 lakhs, having 7 figure cars to talk of is something that is becoming the Indian dream of any Indian IT engineer.

IT believe that the goals are a bit unrealistic and are not to be achieved in this country  .

There are a lot of basic and fundamental changes that needs  to be done before we can demand such a lifestyle from our own country

 

 

One whole day of sleeping

 Blogging after a long time. Last year I was blogging almost 50 blogs a months. Now that it is one of those times of the century which people will remember as the great depression of the 21^st century , we are getting down to hard work and no blogging,  as if it was a  better situation earlier,

 

A recent email chain proclaimed that in a recent matrimonial a Malyali girl asked specifically that she did not want to marry a man from the IT industry,

Yup this industry has sucked in more useless Indians than before. Moreover, Indians with no access to private life and no will either have already eaten their ways into the American corporate ladder and the situation is getting worse with each passing day.

The Indian management considers it pretty normal to ask its employees work on weekends, holidays,  and no private life at all.This is the beginning of those days, when people coming to the IT industry will not know how much is enough. I have seen the best of the minds in the country suffering traumatic time in the industry. It is high time for people in this industry to make moves to other sectors. In the past I have written about the futility if the IT industry unless the main pillars of the economy like automobiles, agriculture , aviation, commerce they work.

So with no skill set other than to sit in your cubicle and produce some code, the industry is flooded with fresh blood every year,

In the past in the years 2004-2005 when the IT boom had returned, it was getting increasingly unclear as to what the future of other jobs were but IT looked like a solid place to stay and most of the engineering colleges in south had the IT and CSE dept full till their brinks.

 

The result is the increasing number of unemployed and people ready to work for peanuts in this country. All employees in and around the industry know that the skill set he may be irreplaceable but there their hundreds waiting outside to enter this industry in hopes that they will be able to meet their goals of foreign travel, better life and match a lifestyle of that of their seniors who entered the industry in way back 1995 – 1998. They were the ones who really reaped the benefits of the industry. People who had a salary of  50K in the year 2000- 2002 had a great time with prices of flats within reasonable prices like  600 -900 rs per sq feet even in reachable places in Hyderabad and Bangalore. Today the scene is so bad that people within the industry are completely confused whether they are in the right track or not. With job losses and fear among the employees making everyday life difficult the situation is very uncomfortable.

 

This year 2009, june we will have millions of those students who joined the 2005 Engineering classes will be coming out asking for a job. Some will get jobs, some will step in to MBA as if two more years of shed.  And the rest will decide to go back to their shanty towns and get their dads business going as normal

 

 

 

 

The new face of the old India

For quite some time now we the new Indians are fighting over the fact “whether or not to choose a foreign country to stay”

Numerous books and articles have been written. Numerous anecdotes, movies and stories are there which support both sides of the theory,

 

One movie recently called the Slumdog Millionaire, raised some concern among people with no other interest other than some quick prints in news media. The hoopla was about the name Slum DOG, well, I know of people in Slums who happily term their own lives as slums and accept it. They never complain, since who cares.

They will be rather happy to be given 10 rupees to shut the **** off whenever required.

 

The movie has one sentence that really surmises it all. You want to see India , then that is it. I don’t know about the others, but I personally believe that the movie will not get an Oscar, It has a happy ending, but there was agony written all over it since the clock started ticking for these guys,

I am no critic, and neither will I be a good one If I have to present a case as such, but India as a country was gifted by the gods in terms of contrast in climate, geographical conditions .

 

If anyone were to read me here properly, what I mean is that , What USA offers today to the world with its concretized cities and manicured outskirts was ages back incomprehensible to the human mind . During those times, a country like India provided better opportunities, When foreigners from harsh climates  and uncivilized brutal savagery came to this country, they smelled something different.

Wow, this provides better opportunities, Lets settle here.

 

In todays world, that same post of being the heaven on earth is held by America. The name that actually, gives hope to many Indians that somehow , by some hook or by some crook, once I am there , it settles my score with god.

 

I was once termed a loser for looking down on my country. But I was never able to explain myself that it is out of love I deny ducth patriotism that has started to take root in our country’s youth.

 

Could not see Federer cry today

God knows,

why it happened this way,

Sometimes you feel that yes there are gods in this planet and they exists and yes atleast some are able to fight their fights the mans way and have it make them reach greatness all the way ,

 

But somehow,today that feeling was lost, I just could not manage to look at Roger go cry.

I now know the importance of not crying in front of your children, or lets say your students, that way you destroy the idea of greatness,

 

Well, Fedex has no idea what I think or a man like me even can exist, But somehow, I feel connected . I don’t watch Tennis that much ,neither in the last few years of his reign did I falter to keep the news channels on whenever he won.

The Rolex add is a such a personification of the greatness that he is.

 

Now when people are making choices between Rafa and Fedex, I still am of the thought that greatness doesn’t have to lose and go,

there comes a time in every greats life when is not compared but he simply leaves,

 

Bradman did in his time, Jordan did multiple times, Muhammad Ali had his own exit, but not this way Fedex, you need to prove anything any more

 

 

 

Writing starts back in 2009

                Today is a very sad day ,

It is a Sunday , and the 1^st of February , Met a very old friend. But was not in my elements,

Roger Federer is down, back comes Nadal

 

Somehow behind that quiet exterior, I think Federer has a fire hoing up , he was actually, put to

no test in the last few years,

Now he is seeing the real danger in Nadal, Today he was losing his calm all throughout the game,
he my idol the quiet guys is all down at this moment.

I am not sure what to write and the fiery of thoughts that visit me all the time as I sit here in this plain

room thinking about the living gods of our times,

Seldom do you see Heroes, Yes Sourav Ganguly was one, Michael Jordan definitely a number one in world

sports history, but still many call it a conspiracy theory with what he did, to make go as big as possible

in the world of history,

 

a huge publicity stunt, but whatever the world comes to Fedex is not is in all his elements, and the talent in him

has to outgrow the softness and the malleability that he has put to himself, the rust is not doing him any good,

he needs to shed that off , and the sooner the better,

 

he will be in top form given the age for another 3 years at max and that I think should prove to all the greatness in him

 

He has it in him to put down the firewall like Nadal , and he can do it we all know. I know to prove your greatness you have

to come through great failures, and I just hope that this is one of those times, when the great Fedex will be down for sometime

before he finally comes back to reclaim his position.

 

God, why could I not grow into anything like a tennis player. They are the real heroes