Thoughts of a thoughtless mind

A friend just alerted me with "I’ve just closed my “LinkedIn” account. They just made billions with the IPO and, oddly, have offered none of it to me — even though I’ve provided them with the information they need for free. So, until they offer some profit-sharing, I’ve closed that account. I just feel so…exploited".

He sounded like a Karl Marx.

I just extended that to the various things i do and thought how it would look like in the commercial world or the space of capital markets.

I closed all my Google accounts because the stock is perpetually on a rise - i thought the company's top, middle and bottomlines all improved  because of my using of various Google services -  the perennial searching i do (sometimes even to spell my own name correctly), the various mail accounts i have, the tonnes of photos and documents that lie embedded without a second re-look in its servers.. the list is bottomless

I stopped using car because it resulted in every ancillary and allied services making money without anyone caring to share the revenues, stopped wearing clothes for similar reasons, stopped eating for very same reasons and finally stopped doing anything and everything for want of proper revenue sharing model with me - which enabled everyone to make a spread out of my consumption while i remained poorer by that much of margin. And all i ended up was sitting in a corner of a room - without anything on and without anyone bothering to notice me - let alone talk or feed. 

I broke my resolve which wasnt even worth a day's length.

BTW - the poverty line has been described as something lying around Rs 20.  Many years ago when i used to manage some branch of a bank, i used to think of the various social Govt sponsored schemes "why are they doing all this to bring people above poverty line. Simply push the poverty line lower and it solves all problems even before they are addressed". Much the same after 20 years.

Sunday, Terrible Sunday

Uff - What a day!!

I told myself 'don't get upset with people or situations. They are powerless without your reactions'.

As if i didn't have enough on hand, Wickram Butt's 'Haunted' came to see me. Didn't the pervert have a different name to call the ghost - the wickedram should consider himself lucky he got away with such a mean act.  Not to speak of the subtle attempts at voyeurism. Where is that superhuman third umpire i described some pages ago!!

 Whenever i see a Iyer in life i will remember this terrible movie and would do my small service to humanity by requesting the Iyer to watch this movie and take his ire out in whatever way he wants to.

Nature's Simple Rule

80% or more of time to build and
20% or less to destroy.

The wise man goes beserk

"The road to success is always under construction" again that familiar voice. Yes, the wise man took his position just behind me and wanted to continue with yet another of his evening lectures when  I interrupted 'why sir, again our civil engineers at work? why don't they give it to the private sector'.  With a smile that was a warning to me, the wise man said 'you dont know what life is. Life is full of uncertainity. It means missing expected things and facing unexpected things'. 

I said i could not agree more.  In order to please him i said 'Uncertainity is full of my life and the synonym for missing is expectations in my life'. I thought such a sob story will make him move over to more important topics like IPL, O's popularity rating (i am these days extremely careful and just say O, rather than suffering a slip of tongue), the five-days-in-a-row repeat of Rahulji's weak attack, the twists to 2Gs and above all the big boredom of watching any news channel in india (you can watch on Monday morning and then on Friday evening - you would not miss anything). 

But the wiseman was in no mood to relent and instead asked me what would i do if i knew the world was coming to an end soon. The wicked me asked 'how soon sir?'.  He ignored me like a dirt or bufallo's back and continued ' Each person around you is going to hurt you at some point of time. It is on you to decide what is important, the pain or the person'.  It clearly appeared to me that he has gone through a book of quotations and was trying to weave together a philosophical discourse with interconnected quotes. And found in me a gullible listener.

I explained how each of us has learnt to hurt and exploit the otherin life. And when it comes to progress i am so selfless that i allow only my shadow to be ahead of me. Same with everyone.  And there ended a session which deprived me of what the book of quotations said about various aspects of human behaviour.

Mumbai - that ultimate city

Inspite of living in Mumbai for a full four years, i never ventured into travelling in a local train and i must admit i missed something precious in life for an experience.  Only local train commuters in Mumbai will know how helpful their co-travellers try to be......  

This one is a forwarded piece - a 'real' story and you wouldn't fail to laugh

Last week, a hapless victim fell prey to the over enthusiastic Bombay's local train commuters.

Our hero, a man from Pune, wanted to go to Matunga, but as luck and trains would have it, boarded a fast train not halting at his destination. He panicked on realising his mistake but by then the local had started moving. On seeing his plight, a sympathetic co-passenger decided to come to his rescue.

It seemed that he had been commuting by that particular train (6:03pm Kasara Fast) for the past 6 years and had noticed that the train always slowed down just before Matunga station and crawled at a snail's pace while passing through it. He told the man to jump out of the running train as it slowed down and that with a little bit of fleet-footedness, he would make it safely on terra firma. However, knowing the man's inexperience, he added some words of caution:

"Keep running the moment you jump or you'll fall. Just keep running." He stressed the word "running" lest the man not know the laws of motion. The train did slow down just before Matunga station and at the prompting of his mentor, our hero jumped out of the train and started running as if all hell had broken loose.

What he didn't realise, of course, was that he was running parallel to the train instead of running away from it. Meanwhile, the train slowed down further, so that the man was running faster than the train. In the process, he reached the door of the next compartment and the footboard commuters there pulled him in thinking he was trying to board the train! To his agony, the train picked up speed and sped past Matunga and his new co-passengers started to congratulate him on how lucky he had been, until he told them that they had actually undone what he had done with great difficulty.

Those standing at the door of his "ex-compartment" had witnessed the whole drama and just couldn't stop laughing at the poor man's situation, while he grinned sheepishly!! !

Ae dil..

hai mushkil  jeena yahaan,

Zara hatke, zara bachke,

yeh hai Bambai meri jaan

Loaded House

Forget astrology. 

This is a matter of interest to even a student of astronomy. A loaded house. These are rare occurrences - Five planets in close conjunction and one of the nodes not too far away..  Wow!!

Soothsayer's Revellery

I dont know why but it is completely a trader's mindset that dominates my psyche or approach to life. To me it is more important to be correct than being succesful.

A couple of days ago my crystall ball alerted me about the likelihood of some unpleasant events from the 11th and this morning i get to read this in media..

Italians will on Wednesday flee Rome over fears a giant earthquake is coming following a seismologist's 1915 prediction that "the big one" will strike on May 11, 2011.

Italy was never in my horizon of focus. I was more trained on Taurus rising people and countries. Will wait and see over the next few days.   

Someone asked me why all my astrological statements are either forewarning a disaster or negative. Well, he is right. We humans dont normally think of that weird character under a banyan tree with a magnifying glass in his hand and looking around for distressed people, unless we reach a boiling-point in our life. My Professor used to tell me man seeks divine intervention or astrological advice only when he is in trouble. I have never folded my hands in prayers in front of a deity when my investments are deep in the money, while i am on religious pilgrimage when it is bonus time!!

 

Taurus Rising

The planetary positioning in the coming days is quite interesting. Jupiter transits into Mars later today - (for those following Lahiri Ayanamsa / Systems Approach). This heralds better times for Aries, Leo and Libra ascendants. Jupiter is a slow moving planet and therefore the benefits could be felt over a year's period.

What is however more significant about the next few days' transitory influences is that 5 planets occupy Aries - which could be somewhat distressful for Taurus, Virgo and Scorpio ascendants.

Especially for Taurus rising people and countries.

India is Taurus rising at 7 degrees - the next ten days could be somewhat stressful in the areas of financial markets and relationships . A nearly similar combination occurred in May 2000, a year known more for the dot-com bubble to hit its worst point in that March.  To recall  an event for the Indian markets, the central bank intervened on the foreign exchange markets and announced moves to stabilize the INR in May 2000 after the currency hit a record low against the U.S. dollar.

This time around the planetary positioning is bit different with all three 'dusthanas' linked in one way or the other for Taurus rising. In astrological parlance, the areas that get affected during such a combination of transits are financial markets, mishaps, external debt or war related fears and mis-appropriation of wealth. For India in particular, the impact to Mercury (ruler of entertainment, speculation, communication, IT) could be cause for worry .. Another scandal related to one of the Gs? (i meant 1, 2 or 3G). Avoid travel.

As i firmly believe, Guru's transit (that is Jupiter's) is always noteworthy.

All IMHO.

A beautiful mind

I think the most beautiful mind is the one that is endowed with  limitless power to imagine and create.  There are examples galore for creativity, but i am always stunned by the violin duo Ganesh & Kumaresh. The other area of visible creativity in our day to day life is the advertising world. How beautiful some ads are. The best ones hardly speak.  The one below is pretty old - must have been in circulation for easily a decade now - but i am happy to see it any number of times.

A Norway for Every Mother

The caption could amuse you. I wanted to say "Norway, the best place for Sons" but then how else do i salute that supreme phenomenon called Mother and which other occasion could be better than the second Sunday of every May or thereabouts..

Well, its the same me who said sometime back why do we need an occasion to salute a mother, dad, wife, brother, sister, lover, enemy, traitor...the list is long.

Norway has been ranked as the best place for mothers by a US based organisation. The survey for 2011, which is released around early May every year,  has ranked Norway the best place in the world to be a mom, where maternal and child mortality rates are low, women's life expectancy and years in school are high, and the average maternity leave is about one year. Australia and Iceland are among the top three. Afghanistan and a few african countries form the bottom league.  US is at 31, largely because of higher maternal mortality rate - reportedly the higheset among developed countries.

India at the 73rd place doesn't do its cultural heritage any proud. Our professed respect for womanhood and therefore motherhood is somewhere lost so as to keep us way behind many progressive 'thinkers' - goes to prove scientific progress and respect for values can coexist.

I have generally considered myself blessed but somewhat less fortunate in life. If i count my blessings and delve deeper,  one of the main reasons for being eternally blessed and being not too unlucky is the presence of a great mother in my life. Every mother is great, no doubt. You need to see this one - its differently special.

Second Hand Books

When was the first time that i bought a new book from the shelf?

I hardly remember. School and University was on scholarship, which included books and food. So no question of buying a text book. Either because people  must have taken me for a voracious reader or  they must have considered me ill-read in need of some good books to read - i ended up over the years with a decent collection of books.

But  when did i buy the first new book.

During the early eighties when i used to come to Bangalore for my school vacation, i first picked up a Hadley Chase book for Re 0.75 in Majestic, Bangalore, from the platform.  This was my first purchase of a book. With hardly any money  in my pocket. the choice to buy was restricted to anything that was cheapest , yet good for my taste .While reading was a religious hobby, i had not been a serious buyer ever. But a compulsive borrower.

Soon i made it a habit of buying books on platform. I hated the glossy showcased book stores and considered them veritable sources of irritants, created and funded by the affluent public to highlight how poor i was and how unaffordable the good books were (a schoolboy's frustrations are always weird).

The book i remember most from my platform collection is RK Narayan's English Teacher. The book must have changed atleast a hundred hands before being dumped into a second-hand seller's warehouse as i could see a dog's collar almost in every page. Since i had heard so much about this one, i bought it for a little over 1.00 Rupee. It has been my most cherished purchase ever.

In the next few years, my collection swell to over a hundred. books.  Sometimes i would buy a book clearly knowing i would never open the pages, but i wanted to demonstrate my interests in everything that mattered.

And when i found my first job and left my home-town i left these books behind (i thought i would be rich enough soon to buy fresh from the press) and carried only the English Teacher with me. I also made a note of Mysore Publications, which was the indian franchisee probably for all of RKN's reprints. And thought of going all the way to Mysore to buy all his writings (if possible even a royalty).

But habits die hard. Neither i bought all his books nor i graduated into buying books from book-stores. The joys of buying a second hand book  from a platform vendor was too good to be discarded.  

Even today i buy second hand books. It has got nothing to do with affordability. Nor is it an outcome of  my philosophy in life about reading. 

In recent years, i have even started buying books sold in traffic signals and pavements, that are new and obviously pirated ones.  I, perhaps, dont see in piracy a serious crime.  I believe imitation is the best form of admiration. Equally believe that the inventors of copying machine and other similar gadgets found in their invention a karmic contribution to the world of reproduction chain.  Therefore, all that i need is fodder for my reading needs and it hardly matters who serves that.

Update: I have still not bought my first new book from a Higgin Botham's or Crossword. My wife does.