About MNIK, V-Day

[Warning: This Post may contain Spoilers regarding MNIK]

I should have made the yesterday's post today, because the movie was so inspiring about some of my thoughts. The thought about the role of religion and how religion should be considered really is something worth a thought. To be frank, I went to the movie expecting a negative review as a post because of all the hype around. But then it did impress me. After all it was at least a bit serious movie, the kind I like, because it had a great message to convey, the fact that 'Muslim!= Terrorist'. Maybe some things were a bit too unrealistic, but then movie had a theme around it and it was a very nice experience and that is what you have to expect from a commercial Indian movie. The Characters in the movie are really touching and well executed. It also pointed out ways in which inequality and enmity between the races and humans still exist widely in this world. The way the movie was presented was good and is worth watching. It also vaguely portrays the effect of money on the relationship as well as on the love between humans. Where there is only a little bit of money, a lot of love is always there. The 'Wilhemina' episode did really point out this. All the love and nice relationship exists when there is very less money. Yup I am coming to an old quote... "Money is the Root of All evil." I love to criticise rich people when i am not that rich. But then I have felt it if you have a lot of money, You always will get distracted. There was some created jokes also, but for me it seemed out of place. Still I am so happy that I got a chance to see the movie this week, or else it would have ended up in the long list of I would like to see movies :)

Regarding the V-day, though i don't like it because it is a one of the highly hyped marketed day and because i don't have someone to spend it with, it might be a good thing to happen for a lot of people around the world especially for those who don't get time for expressing love in their busy life. But as a person who is against the people who make money out of the world like the card manufacturer's which has a board "Today is .......... Day. Wish your ....................... on this day with a Gift/ Card from Us" almost every day. I think they are the people who think how humanity should work. Why should everyone profess love on Feb. 14. What is so great about the day? According to the Greeting Card Association 25% of the cards sent in a year are for valentine.(Information Courtesy: http://www.theholidayspot.com/valentine/history_of_valentine.htm) So they are the one's who need to celebrate. I believe in Love.. true love.. not a joke. And i believe if two people love eachother enough they can celebrate every day in their life. They'll never need a valentine's day. But then every body will tell "True Love" is a myth. But i believe in it until proven wrong. Let us see. Marketting people are making money out of of people in many ways. That is what I hate about living in the globalised world. Everything is money and there is not much time for money becoming a religion. Even Human lives have no value compared to money. There can be a better life in this world. But for the world to change it should change from inside but if we think let others change first and prove successful, then only i'll change, you'll never succeed in changing the world. There are two ways one can end up if you try to change the world. Either as a nice person or as a crazy person. If you don't like what i said, i'm quite happy to end up as the crazy person..... ;) ;)

 

Signing off once Again,

Daniel (Thakkudu)

About God, Religion and Indian Democracy

[Authenticity of some of the Data I used are questionable and might be a mistake from my side. Please do point out if anything like that comes to notice]

You might be wondering in the eve of Valentine's Day, didn't I get a nice topic? I said that because even I am wondering why am I blogging about this on this eve. But then I do not believe in Valentine's Day. Why do you need a day to celebrate if you are in love? Every day of your life can be celebrated. May be I don't have a lover is the reason I am thinking so because it seems everybody is celebrating it. The media is celebrating it, a lot of people are buying millions of cards and gifts. Still me who is jealous all the lovers of the world is thinking, it is just somebody making profit from the whole world. It is just a fact that there are a lot of days which cover up most of a year. I can even ask who said new year begins on January 1 and how January 1 different from any other day in the year except for the people who market and make money out of it. But then I am wandering of the topic. Just ignore it as a mumblings of jealous guy on the eve of the V-Day. Lets come back to the topic. Each word was chosen for a reason. All these words were put across my mind in the last two days and i do have something to mumble about it. :)

Let us take the first word, God. The obvious question is that do i believe in God. The answer is a Yes and a No. How can i say that is a valid doubt. I would like to mention that i am a bit agnostic. I know that was a bit obvious. But i do believe something that controls the world. May be it is what is called fate. I was always fascinated with science, but i have realised that science have a long way ahead before it can define the force that defined the small probability that led to 6 billion human beings with intelligent brains and a countless other organisms from a chemical solution. I had become a fan of science when I read through Stephen Hawkings' Literature and GUT. But then soon after I realised even GUT was just a myth. It was an impossibility, There were some things beyond the four forces of Physics. Another thing was that i ended up in a better life than my past. Life is fun once again and i started believing some things will happen good in life to everyone. I started believing in my destiny. That was a change in my life. I would never again deny the existence of God, unless i get enough proof. I hope that is what i have tell about the three letter word "God", the name man gave to the force that rules a lot of probabilities. But still that doesn't make me believe any of the millions of Gods i see around living in India, why?

Thus I come to the next word, Religion: Religion was created by humans as the old famous lyrics say "Manushyan Mathangale Shristichu, Mathangal Daivangale Shristichu...". I don't believe in any of the religions. Religions were created by the old thinkers so that layman lives properly, the holy books should be read as an instruction set to live properly, the morals to be followed in human life explained through fables and stories. The problem with the world is that it either makes the thinkers holy and sacred or leave them as ignored beings. To be frank i believe in the Quran concept of Jesus than the Bible version of it. Jesus was a thinker and prophet. The Bible is a collection of glorified stories about him. This looks like the familiar Da Vinci Code concept, eh? The Hindu Mythology has millions of Gods but still there are situations in which The Thrimoorthies cannot do anything and leave it to fate. The blind belief in the religion is the problem. It should be considered as just a guide. Religious extremism is a bane to the whole world. I hate the way extreme religious spirit is used wrongly. The religion has been used as a tool to create enemity between the people which it was supposed to unite. None of the religions tell about anything other than loving the others. Still they come up with ways of killing people in the name of religion. I am not proposing anything here. I am just quoting a lot of people who understood this and have fought for this like Sree Narayana Guru. But now even the followers of the same person is becoming really . The people who understood religion never wanted a religious bias. It is quoted regarding the partition of India that "The irreligious Jinnah wanted a religious state, and Gandhi who was wholly religious, wanted a secular state." Religion is set of restrictions for the people so that they don't cross their moral limits. It was devised so that if people won't understand by preaching, let them be afraid. But everybody takes it as "The Book" of Living. It should never be like that. :(

India is world's largest democracy and i would mention one of the worst. Mahatma Gandhi had a great vision about India and so when India was partitioned he was hurt. I guess seeing the current state of India, I feel Godse just did something good to him. It would have just had a lot more of pain if he had to live more. Likewise Dr. B R Ambedkar had a great idea when he wrote down the constitution of India. If he see the way it is being used he'll kill himself. He had a vision which is now distorted. All the loopholes in the constitution are properly misused. India is divided into a lot of way, religiously, language-wise. The Unity-in-Diversity is like the strength of Indian Cricket Team, It is just in paper. The fate of Indian Hockey team which earned a lot of honours compared to Indian cricket team provides the importance of money in India. The Hockey doesn't make money, so it is not promoted (Surprisingly the world cup is being promoted by its main sponsor Hero Honda considerably), whereas BCCI which has money enough to buy-off ICC rules and keeps generating money. Indian Politics is essentially the game which the rich Indian people play on others. The rich gets richer and the poor keep getting poorer. And the salaried middle class pays a quarter of their income as IT in order to pay off the Members they have elected who very comfortably and silently increase their salaries and perks when they needed by themselves. I am not telling that India is not getting better at all. But it is getting better much slower than it should. I hope it'll get better as it gets more educated and politics gets more sensible.

 

Signing off

 

Daniel.... :)

...About the Media Infested, Senseless & Stupid Life

To describe the world i live in by the above adjectives may be considered as an arrogant outlook, but let it be. My Outlook may be a bit different from yours, and i would describe it in my way only because that essentially is the purpose of this blog. For every adjective i have mentioned above i have my own reasons. I will explain it along the post.

So the first doubt should be why did i consider this beautiful world infested by the Media?

I am in support of the fact that media is good as a tool for passing the information. But the competition in between news agencies has already grown to a great and unhealthy level. There are question you can ask me like "Why am i so bothered about the media now?" or " Where did i get so bothered about the unhealthy competition?". I am no saint in anyway. I'm telling that i had to experience it twice in the matter of days. If first one was not that serious, the next one bothered me a lot. The first one happened last week when the veteran Malyalama actor "Cochin Haneefa" died. All the Malayalam newspapers websites screamed "Cochin Haneefa passed away" by noon it even gave a time of death, later they corrected, he was critical. The second news was today. I wake up in the morning and when i switch on the news channel, The news was flashing "Hero Honda buys out Kings XI Punjab". It even mentioned that it was bought for $260 mn. And in the evening i have news channels screaming quotes From Preity Zinta "We havn't even thought of selling Kings XI Punjab" and Hero Honda "We are Main sponsors of Delhi Daredevils and associate sponsors of IPL3, We haven't even thought of buying Kings XI Punjab" So where did all the news came from? I had also heard that Reliance & Sahara was planning to buy the EPL Club "Liverpool" and soon i saw a quote from Ambani denying the possibility. Is it that the news channels just takes up any rumour and spreads it because it will be sensational? I guess the bigger problem is if one channel reports about an incident, the other channels don't want to be left out and starts flashing the news even without confirming it and soon follows an "avanlanche". Now the field of IT is so developed that if you want it you can make a rumour you can spread it very easily. As an example you can search Bill gates' daughter on images.google.com. (Thanks to my friend who pointed out the thing though i didn't accept the truth when he said it ;) ), Nowadays even I am sure every news channel has one reporter each glued on to all the other news channels as well as twitter so that if they flash anything relevant, they start flashing it on their own channel. I hope this has got you some idea about why i think media is too much nowadays.

The next adjective is Essentially Senseless & stupid.

When i talk about the sense of the people, the older generations had much more. Should i say sense or love for society, i am confused because though there is some relation, the general world has already forgotten it. Living in this world is now for every individual a thought about self-survival. It is just the survival of the rich. The world is after money. Nobody is caring about the society and environment except for the fame that comes with it. Hardly you can find a true dedicated person to the world. Every man (i guess that includes me.. that is unless u consider me an animal) is caring about self. Then comes money and family. At the last and of least concern is the society and the world. It is funny that the existence of self is more important than the world itself which is an essential thing for the self to exist. Stupid is this world that runs after all kinds of luxury. The Life in earth is no more interesting. Those who have money has power to control the people who are in power and those who have power controls the world just considering their own good. Indian Democracy is in the limit of senselessness, The soul of Ambedkar should be thinking why i wrote the constitution up like that. Whatever was nicely suggested was never taken into consideration. The schedule cast and tribes were supposed to be removed after 10 yrs, but never because it'll result in loss of votes. Then the democracy is like being sensible and supporting the people who elected you. Now the democracy has ended up as blind party politics. If the opposing party brings up an idea, even though it is good oppose, and if it is from our side, support unconditionally. This should change. What happened in Kerala in terms of SmartCity and Expressway is the perfect example of lame politics of Indian Democracy. India can be saved only by a sensible military rule and abolishment of cast based reservation. Aren't we ashamed to be secular and giving caste based reservation? Shouldn't we go to Income based reservation if needed. That too based some more better scales to find the income. I think that not many people know that the bill to increase the wages of MP's (overheard somewhere, not sure of sources) was passed in both houses of the parliament even without any discussion. (It'll the only bill that can achieve that feat).

And to everyone who is thinking "I cannot change the world singlehandedly by just thinking the right way".... One person changing , will have more contribution than a thousand people who doubt whether i can change something that is wrong" and one more thing to the same group.... "Many Drops make an Ocean, but only if drops decide to condense rather than being water vapour" . It's a bad way of putting it.. But i feel i have made myself clear...

 

Signing off.....

Daniel Paul(Thakkudu)

After Five Months and Six Weeks @ The Land of Nizamz.............

While I got my own net connection after about 5 months and 6 weeks i have realised that i have never blogged at all for that much time. Not that i was a great blogger before. But usually while living on the internet i did blogging was an escape or just a timepass. Only thing was i was proud of my blogging was when i was invited into the Ragam '09 Blog by a sister who did actually read my post about Ragam. There was no limit to my happiness then. After all college as well as Ragam had always been my passion and i was happy about being a part of it. After passing out of college somehow after deciding i was better off without spending one more year at college, life had a lot of things happening.

Life was fun. Not just fun, had a lot of experience altogether. The first thing i did after passing out essentially was the trip to dennis's home. Only thing that made me sad during that trip is that i didn't have a piece of land in the beautiful Coorg. Little did i realise there will be never a trip like that ever again in my life. Then things were happening at so fast a pace. Soon after the trip got over i got a certificate that i had written my last exam two months before i passed out from college. Then the next thing on agenda was the trip to rajadhani, Delhi. I can only thank NTPC, my parents who were interested in me joining a Navaratna(or is it Mahanavaratna, who cares) PSU and my lady luck who makes me pass through the cut-off's of most objective type exams ,for getting a chance to see Delhi. May be it is not a big thing, but still for an Indian who had not travelled for more than 12hrs at a stretch before and never travelled north beyond Goa, it was a good experience. The first day enjoyed a day at NTPC Hostel, it was fun. Then after a disappointing day just like what usually happens when i appear for an interview after the test, i went to my seniors at NOIDA. And the next day i roamed through the Rajdhani and found it a beautiful place and worth seeing and enjoying. But i had to leave it too early. I didn't get enough time to enjoy the full beauty of it. Decided sometime else i will go at see it again and on the next morning i am on train back.

When i reached, i had ten days left before leaving to The Land of Nizamz. Now the problem for me was i was feeling too much Indian. Not that i have not been passionate about Mother India before, but now i was supposed to join a new American company which i had not much idea about in 10 days. In the meantime i applied for a Passport which i didn't apply because I had two date of births on record, like many people else and also because i didn't want my hostel address on the address column of my passport. The results of NTPC were promised on the day i was supposed to come on the day i was to join my company and i had no guarantee to let off the company. So i decide i will go to Hyderabad anyway and wait for results if i came out successful by any chance. I will pay a visit to Hyderabad as well before the not so adventurous life at NTPC, else i will go on normal and join the company. But i was praying to God,inwhich i didn't much believe in as always, to give me NTPC, because i always knew what was happening there, whereas the American Company was like voyaging into an uncharted territory. Only thing nice i felt was the great interview i had attended by the Managing Director.

Thus on July 14^th i reach the beautiful land of Hyderabad, tired of the sickening train journey that started on 13^th noon to 14^th noon, i reach Hyderabad. Thanks to the punctuality of the PSU in publishing its results, i joined my company, FMC Technologies India Pvt Ltd. Then from july 15^th, 15 days of my training, began. It was fun, the collection of 22 grads handpicked was good. In the fifteen days, a good group of friends was formed. The group became more closely knit day by day and as days passed i was too confused again. A question formed in my mind, "What if I get NTPC?", three things stood against me continuing at FMC. One was My passion for India, another was my parents wish to join the whatever ratna NTPC and the distance from the Good Ol' God's own country. But my prayers did change, once again i didn't want to take a decision, i didn't want NTPC. Life at company was too much fun. May be the novelty to corporate world for all of us who formed the main part of company, May be the close friendship that formed from the first day they send us on a Hyderabad tour for a day rather than start working on the first day . The company started and i started learning a lot of things. When i mention that in the first three weeks through a set of powerpoint presentations and discussions, i had learned a lot more engineering stuff than i had learned at college, everybody will say of we too as if it is a good joke. But i'm telling this from the bottom of my heart. Except for the fact i was learning a lot of things, it had the feel of college.

This is the problem, i thought the what to post to begin my life back in the blogosphere, i did want it to make it this big , but i won't prevent myself from putting a big post up because i am feeling like when i post it let it be king size.

Thus starts my corporate life. Life was a lot different what i had expected and i was enjoying it. First two and a half months of the corporate life did end up waiting for the project that was assigned from the people who was supposed to make the project ready for us and i end up learning a lot of things here and there and i was more like worthy of being called and engineer. In between i was so happy, when the NTPC results came and i realised NTPC would take you through offline only if you either have high positioned people to recommend or huge graduation marks(neither of which I had) as always that happens from the side of a PSU.I had also realised after living a tourist destination like the beautiful God's own country, only quality that can make Hyderabad interesting was enjoying the museums which i didn't have. In that time through weekends and wasting quite a lot of money we had seen through almost everything that was worth seeing in Hyderabad and now had the idea that unlike what others felt By that time came up a long expected party, The convocation, most of my friends have had their first steps in the corporate world and we were gonna meet for the first time after that at the place where we all spend 4 important years of our lives and we were gonna be seeing APJ Abdul Kalam as well. It was fun like we all expected and lived a beautiful couple of days back at college.

Then as I get back, the much expected project is there and though i end up facing a huge project though not as great as expected still I had no skill sets to get bored of doing and acquiring a new skill set was adventure and i loved it especially when it is a software. So we started on a project and project moved on, i understood that it was getting bored as i learned more and work was getting repetitive. But envy at better projects that others had was quite natural as a human being, but still i was enjoying the company as well as my location that had me at the centre of south india having everywhere except kerala and home in south india at an easily reachable distance and i managed a trip to Bangalore which had already become the main establishment of my friends.

And another trip home during X-mas was the last happening in the year 2009 as the company party that was supposed to end the year had to be postponed due to a hartal due to the telengana issue, something that made me tell almost everyone who i talked to from outside Hyderabad that "There are two hyderabads in AP. One which was burning with Telgana issue and one which was peaceful also known as Hitech city where nobody cared about Telegana. " Considering another thing, the hartal we had during the death of YSR which made us so grateful about the fact that we can cook, the effect of telegana hartal was nothing. Nothing had happened except for me losing some bucks on booking a ticket for the movie "Paa" on the day telegana was on fire.

Now the new year was born without much special incidents, It was just another normal "ok" day at office, that afternoon i climbed on a bus to Pune since i didn't wanna miss my friends on the first weekend of the year and had a great time out there. The next weekend was eventful since we had the company party. It was really enjoyable and fun. The weekends of this year all were so marvellous till date. I will end this post by just giving the six weeks of fun. After the first two weekends i had a wonderful life at Pune. The next weekend, i ended up making my first investment. The next weekend after a long time was a meeting of colleagues. We ended up seeing the Picture that might have earned maximum percentage profit w.r.t its Budget, "Paranormal Activities". But the Horror movie ended up as a comedy spoof. We all agreed it was a nice concept and style of taking a horror movie. Making people feel it as real like "The Blair Witch Project". But our hang-out was too good. Since my flat-mates were at different parts of earth, in the four days including 60^th anniversary of Indian Republic, i ended up having fun with my own cooking experiments and a lot of classic movies.

The next weekend was always special, since it celebrated the black day for earth and the 23^rd anniversary of a disaster called my birthday. I had fun like anything else, I enjoyed a gr8 Sunday with lots of food and enjoyment. Hanged out with my college friends once again but this time in the land of nizamz. The places like CityCenter, Oottupura, KFC, HRC, GVK 1 was enjoyed like never before. The next(this) weekend ended up as a movie+hangout with colleagues again. This time we came to the movie "armored". It was a good movie to watch it was a different kind of movie altogether. With the starcast it was expected to be a great heist movie once again and ended up the whole of movie had everyone in like negative roles. Another noticeable thing in the movie was that there was not a female actor in the movie except for the one old lady who came to split the lead from his brother and had just one scene. It was altogether a different one. Like just another "A" rated Hollywood movie, it had nothing not even some hard violence that is there compared to many movies that if made in India escape with an "U/A" censorboard certificate and another hangout with colleagues ended up as a nice outing as well...

So this will be good enough i guess, enough for people to read about Hyderabad and comment. I welcome comments and suggestions about this blog and post. Not making you bored anymore since Word says i have written 2000 words.

Signing off......

Daniel (Thakkudu)