Innocently Yours :)

Krithika and Raj invited us over dinner yesterday. There house is quite a distance from our apartment here and we had just finished our afternoon siesta. It was a really arduous task for us to break our slumber and press the gas! I had to plead with Sharmila to get up and after we sat in the car, the car took over and we were back to our standard bickerings :)..all harmless ;)
The drive seemed quite long, but after reaching out there, our stay surely seemed short! Cortesy little darling Saatvi and ofcourse Aditi, but Saatvi was the boisterous one and tingled many a nerve. Every few minutes with her taught me something new.

A few minutes into their house, I asked Saatvi if she could do hula hoops and she tried and tried and never gave up. Finally, she managed to hoop along for almost a minute :). Failure didn't daunt her, it only encoraged her to try once again!
She seemed exceedingly happy doing almost nothing, smiled around, bounced around, ran around and laughed, laughed and laughed...and here we are, "seeking happiness" when it can be so easily found around us, in small things, small nothings! World from a kids pigeon hole seemed so nice !

And then came her innocent candor, when she asked us "Do you have kids?". We were both startled and amused at that (atleast I was), but we knew that the intent behind the question was just new playmates for her :).

Kids as I see them are simple, innocent, uncomplicated, candid, inquisitive and above all happy! And, we adults are called grown-ups and all that we do is seek out happiness that seems to come so naturally to them :D

United in Diversity ?

Few countries in the world have such an ancient and diverse culture as India's. Stretching back in an unbroken sweep over 5000 years, India's culture has been enriched by successive waves of invasion and migration which were absorbed into the Indian way of life.

It is this variety which is a special hallmark of India. Its physical, religious and racial variety is as different as its linguistic diversity.

Modern India presents a picture of unity in diversity to which history provides no parallel. Good, great! Well, thats the best place to live in..atleast from what I said, it surely sounds like that. But, wait, we Indians are finding new ways of staying diverse and are unabashedly exhibiting it! If that's not enough, we have our politicians doing it for us. I don't know the educational qualifications of our politicians but their marketing arsenal seems to be pretty destructive. I majored in Marketing for my MBA and every class that I had taught me one thing.. "Create a need and then serve it!". Segmentation was the way to go! Well, our shameless politicians are following the book by the word. They surely are creating many segments in our population based on the "need" for new states, educational reservations, reservations in jobs, urban-rural divide and well they will come up with more (I must have missed some too). Was there a need? There wasn't any till these guys broke our tolerant mindset! And now, people cannot but stop thinking about this. Kudos to our politicians for being so successful!!!

As if all this was not enough, I saw something on TV that quite saddened me. We have a talent search competition called Indian Idol in India (similar to American Idol) and the winner this time was from "North-India". I never had this demarcation in my head but had to say this for the sad way that it ended this time. Karunya, the guy from South India inspite of obviously being much much more talented than Sandeep, the north-indian guy lost the show. In my wildest dreams, I wouldn't have dreamt that! But, people ruled otherwise. The percentage of people watching hindi programmes in South India is much lesser, but that shouldn't be a reason for the best talent losing. I had reports of Sandeep having better attitude and so winning the whole show, but from what I witnessed, I really didn't see much of a difference. Infact, when I heard him croon a few times, it reminded me of me and I am a very bad singer :). Poor Karunya had to forgo 1 crore, but that's just Karunya. If we do not find ways beating these thoughts and stay united as INDIANS, we are going to lose much much more!

Ga Ga GooGool !

Dreams make people larger than life. Some dreams change many lives. One such dream was born in 1996 and took shape in 1998. Then on, the world changed. World seemed a lot closer, information became a lot more accessible. I remember my good old altavista.com and askjeeves.com days when I used to search for hours(sometimes) and never got what I wanted in the first few clicks. A phenomenon called Google changed all that and more!

I have been silently following GooGools footsteps to see where it is headed and all I can see is that every twist and turn in it's path has offered new services most of which had not been dreamt about. If they were not new, there was something new about them. For instance, Gmail, a free mail service offered 1GB of free mail storage space when mail providers like Yahoo were charging $$ for just using 25MB?? Or say Google Search itself that got back relevant results in just a few seconds with no disrupting ads, pop-ups that I had to battle with! Every offering has been simple, sweet and different and it has pulled the market in it's direction too. Many companies seem to have big hearts now and realising the truth in "Service to manking is service to God!" and ofcourse service to their money coffers! A leader steers everybody, shows direction and that's what Google is!



Google recently entered the software applications market releasing a bunch of applications under the name of Google Pack, and is expected to enter into other internet services, including online word processing. With this purpose in mind, they acquired Writely and entered the ODF alliance. Let's see how Microsoft is going to react to this!

I can go GaGa over Google for a long long time, but I will end it here. My personal favorites in Google are the search engine, Gmail, Google Earth and Google Maps. I am sure you are saying "What the heck, why do I need to know?", but hey you are reading my Blogs and I couldn't resist from saying that ":D

I am sure we will all see "Google all around us" and Google will see "All around us". People in SFO will soon see Google in the Air :). Let's wait and watch for that next step, that next turn. For those enthusiasts who do not know where to look, Google Labs will be a great place to start!!

And...Before you say "GO GO --->", I end my Gaga over Googool here. AdioS!

Relationships, Temporary ?

Rowena, a friend/colleague of mine left our group to take up other opportunities and it suddenly seemed like a big change to me! She just sits right across and we exchange quite a few pleasantries every day. So, her exit all of a sudden breaks a rhythm I am "used" to. It looks like a permanent change but I know it will seem that way till I get used to a new tune.

Ever wondered how everything in life is so temporary ?
It seems permanent as long as it lasts! I have endured endless summers, prisoned winters :) (that almost how it feels) and they seemed never ending..

Arrgghh, I am going in circles here..I think temporary/permanent is how we see things! My friends will "always" be there for me. There will be personal, professional and geographical changes required in their lives (ofcourse mine too!!) that might bring in some distance. 'Seasonal changes' are permanent although seasons are not. I have this weird habit of correlating practical experiences in life to what I see in nature. Well, there are other weirder habits. I will probably mention that on a different day when I undergo a different experience.
For now, I will call it quits. It is Spring here but it almost seems like summer here in Dallas. Temperatures have been loitering around in the 90s and the 100s. Oops... there goes my theory about "seasonal changes" for a toss !!!

Well, what the heck!! Life itself is temporary!

Linked in ?

Well, not the best of topics to start a Blog with but then, I am a starter :). I have a long way to go before I really get "linked in"to this new culture. That's how I see it as, yes cultural..We never had the opportunity to express ourselves freely like this before. Expression was more a gift that belonged to the loquacious but not any longer! Freedom of expression is here for us to savor but at the same time it keeps us bound to our "dumb-machines"! Freedom with confinement, how does that sound !!

Now coming to what I wanted to talk about in this Blog...I am sure most of you are already linked to "LinkedIn". For those of you that this is still a mystery, LinkedIn is an amazing piece of software more conceptually than technologically! It helps a user develop and expand his professional network which in turn helps him enhance his career and discover inside connections. Well, that's what they say about themselves. To me, it meant a lot more. More than just a "professional network", it gave me the opportunity to connect back to people I had worked with a long time ago and with whom I had lost touch. Connecting to people is such a nice thing! It makes the world look a lot more secure, a lot smaller and our existence a lot bigger. That's what I see..Yes, SECURITY and an increased self-esteem. Linkedin is now a habit to me, an addiction ! I log onto this even before my e-mail. If you have not LinkedIn, you should!
Sharmila, my wife came over and asked me if this was what a Blog was meant for and I had no answer. Maybe it is, maybe it is not..who cares! I have my FREEDOM ;)