Hunger

The photo is the “Pulitzer Prize” winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan Famine.The picture depicts stricken child crawling towards an United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.

The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat him. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken.

Three months later he committed suicide due to depression.

http://www.worldsfamousphotos.com/stricken-child-crawling-towards-a-food-camp-1993.html

I received this photograph in a forwarded email sometime back. I wanted to show it to somebody, but couldn’t find it in my hard-drive or in my inbox, so I googled it out. There are quite a few copies of it on the internet, this is the link to one of them.

Everybody of is debating on the page about what is wrong with the system, what needs to be done, what are the duties of the world bodies, rich people who don’t do enough charity and who knows what not. But I want to ask these people, “Did any of you ensure that YOU don’t waste any food?” If you do it & further ensure that everyone you know also doesn't waste any food, in the long run the Aggregate Demand is going to come down drastically. If everybody who eats decides to purchase only that much that he sincerely wants to eat and doesn’t waste any food, this is going to save the life of a significant number of people every year who die of hunger; one way or the other.

“Lofty ideals” you’ll say. I know that charity begins at home, so I’ve made every effort to ensure that I don’t waste any food and also try and ensure that everybody I know doesn’t disrespect or waste food in any way whatsoever.

I’m not asking you to give me blood, time, devotion or absolutely anything at all. All I’m asking is for you to promise me that you’ll not waste any food, ask for only that much that you’re going to eat and make sure that everybody in you share a table with, does the same. This is the least you can do to (literally) save the world.

I may not be alive to see the day when nobody dies of petty reasons. Nevertheless, I would still want that day to arrive. Hope that it arrives soon & further hope that you have a positive part to play in it.

Hasmukh :)

Acclivity

And once more, the Dr. Vikram Sarabhai founded Indian Space Research Organization has done it. On April 28, 2008; I was watching the Loksabha Channel (due to lack of entertainment avenues), waiting for the Question Hour (for those Indians who don’t know, kindly surrender your passports).

The session began with the speaker of the house (Mr. Somnath Chatterjee) addressing the house of the proud achievement which our country accomplished. I am surprised that any major newspaper has not covered it in a big way. Apparently, they were all too busy covering Harbhajan & Sreesanth and the controversy that surrounds.

This fateful day, ISRO executed another satellite launch. Just that this time it was the first of its kind in the world. With the PSLV C-9, the launch vehicle put in orbit a group of 10 satellites simultaneously. Quite something, huh!?

I know some wouldn’t share my pride, but I’ll do what I’ve managed to do almost always: Damn All. And if you don’t want to be damned, you might as well bask in the glory of being an Indian.

Hasmukh :)

__________

P.S.: I see some of the newspapers have reported it, but then tell me honestly; how many of you do read them, eh!?

Power

OK, first and foremost: this hasn't got anything to do with the world power balance, I'm too slaphappy a man to care about the likes.

The power-balance stands disturbed today. Ever since November 8th, 1993 (my younger sister's birth) the power balance in our home has been tilting in her favour. I've had numerous friends ask me about why do I treat my sibling sister so nicely. All that, just changed today.

I've come back home after a long long time, needless to say parents are showering me with affection, the focus of which for the past 15 years had been her, of which for the past 2 years, she was the exclusive one! Now she is just another desperate teen of today. Again needless to say she that throws a lot of tantrums. In one of those many today, I found that she had crossed the limits and had hidden something very personal & sentimental to me... All I did was just take her laptop, change the status of my user to "administrator" & that of all other users to that of "limited user" and then password protect all her files so that only I could access it. I then handed over the laptop as if nothing had happened.

In a matter of seconds, the gargantuan monster I'd anticipated was facing me; only for me to tell her: "What you've seen is not even a fraction of what I can do. Simply because I chose not to, doesn't mean that I CAN NOT make life miserable for you. Now, I'm going out for a few minutes; when I return, I better find things as they were, or they shall be worse for you!" A few minutes later, I recieved a phone call converying successful restoration of my possessions. Of course the war doesn't end there; but then what chance does Pakistan have against India when India declares war (provided India has the political will of course, eh!?)

For a lion who has been vegetarian all its life; this is like savouring the most exquisite venison. Now I understand what joys I've missed all these years & further doubt if the vegan in me shall ever stand resurrected again. But it's definitely not me who's complaining!

Hasmukh :)

Bored

Yeah, that's what I am at the moment...Bored! The studies of this lifetime seem to be over as of now & the next phase of the donkeys' work has not begun yet. So this is the gap between the "Brahmacharyaashram" & the "Gruhasthaashram". Having got nothing to do but to watch movies, enjoy TV & read books; not to mention eat, drink & sleep; I'm getting bugged.

But then, I want to get so bored of getting bored, that I never want to be bored again! So that when the time comes to work, I should not think about how I want free time to do this or that (because I'd've already done it!) though I could certainly use 5-day-weeks. Reports coming in from the un/fortunate souls who have joined their jobs, if are anything to go by, say that its a much more brutal world out there than I'm fantasizing about. That judgement is to be brought a stay order upon right now though.

So much for my boredom, huh!? And just by the way, Mr. Jim Davis; I don't give a damn about your Intellectual Property Rights...

Hasmukh :)

Time out, officially!

There have been times when I came back to hostel from my home & the first thing I do in the morning would be to brush my teeth. But the reasons would be marginally more than habit, hygiene, & worries of increments in dental insurance premia. I would look at the sun in from the window adjoining the basin-mirrors in the hostel bathrooms, and think how the sun would have risen back home and wonder how I’d be home again one day.

Tonight the ball is in another court & it is not going to bounce back. A few hours from now, when the sun would rise, I wouldn’t be able to see it while brushing my teeth…because there is no window besides the wash-basin mirror out here. Times have changed. The reality is that I’m finally home now, and I’d never ever be back at my hostel again… :’(

Using Gujarati (which my friends have got sickeningly used to back at the hostel):

Badho adhaar chhe ena jati veLa na jova par,
Milan maathi nathi maLta mahobbatt na puravao...

(It all depends on the way they see on the parting-note,
The proofs of affection lie not in the times of reunions…)

I bade my last good-byes of various sorts when I got separated from my just-friends, more-than-friend-friends, hi5-friends & so on…

…one, quite silent, because we both knew what was in each others hearts.

…one, mockingly humorous, because our hometown is the same and we shall meet in a matter of days.

…one, where my friend hugged (or crushed?) me tight and we told how we both will miss each other big-time.

…one, just after I felt I had comforted & hugged her, wishing her better times in both the immediate and distant future.

…one, when he hugged me tight time & again, crying like a baby again and again and again and again and again and again.

…one, just a normal casual good-bye, wishing that she be able to squeeze the maximum amount of money out of ICFAI-Hyderabad (a dream come true).

…one, which accompanied me from my room to the main gate, found me conveyance, and kept on standing and waving till the horizons.

…one, highly surprising; when I was sitting in a 7-seater’s convertible rear, she seated in the front seat of a Toyota Qualis coming right behind me on the road & I realized just in time to recognize her and give a flying kiss, only to find her hiding her face in bashfulness.

…and then there were some friends, whom I didn’t feel the need to hug & wish good-bye, because deep down in my heart, I knew that come-what-may, these people will hunt me down from burning hell and give me a moment of heaven by gracing me with their mere presence.

I’m not brooding over the past. Nor am I crying about not being able to live it again. But I still feel sad… & I want to cry because something is with me no more. Just like the time I cried after arriving for the first time in hostel after leaving my home. I know that I left the campus with more happy memories than anybody I know; the need arising here to say that I left with not a quarter, not a third, not a half, but at least hundred times more happy memories than sad ones!

I also encountered police check post during my way from campus to the city (which we’d managed to do without for almost two years now). I also had a close brushing encounter with my dissertation guide, whom I’d told I’d left the campus about a day ago to do away with my presentation early. And all the way home, I sung our farewell song (it is in my Orkut videos) to myself, in a desperate attempt of self-soothing.

It’s 4:40 in the morning (in true MBA style, you’d think) (mind you, the blog may sport a different time due to time-zone differences) & I feel that right now I’m a lot relaxed vis-à-vis how I was when I started typing this manuscript; hoping for good times ahead…

Hasmukh :)

Flames

Have you ever been tempted by somebody cooking Mediterranean food, gently pouring exquisite red wine in a pan and heating it so that it catches fire and shows some of the most enticing colours; colours such that you feel like you want to dissolve in them for the rest of your mortal life?? The only thing that would hamper you from living this fantasy is probably the absence of such conditions in the first place in a day to day life. Well…meet someone who just overcame that barrier and found a way to enjoy the same feeling in a normal Indian kitchen!!!

Actually it’s just that I’ve been trying my hand at cooking lately. My journey in the kitchen dates back to the times when I was about 9 years old when I had my first encounters of the fiery kind. My hunger had driven me into the kitchen and like many other fellow Indians, my cooking started with the good old Maggie 2-minute noodles to satiate my writhing guts. The war on terror (of hunger) has continued unabated since then, just like its namesake; with no hope of a truce in the foreseeable future. 13 years old and I baked my first pizza. (Not joking at all…though it was more of Indian food than Italian & the recipe included some bread, capsicum, tomatoes, onions, cheese & of course ketchup; which due to lack of a better noun would be called a pizza.) Later at the age of 14, I successfully made my first cup of tea without using any clay or a potter’s wheel. Just like the hero grows up in a 1980s Bollywood movie, my cooking continued with stupendous pace with me learning to make laddoos, coffee, shakes, curries & earning a perfect 10 at the age of 20 to make my first chapatti which was just-the-right-thickness, just-the-right-softness, just-right-grilled…and behold thy breath; A PERFECT CIRCLE! (Though this was just a prototype and mass production would take a long long while…& efficiency, another 3 millennia.) Today I learnt to successfully make much-better-than-just-edible dal & rice. And this is where I found the treasures of the kind known only to Mediterranean chefs, (except for all those who also happen to be in direct contact with fire.)

Place: Kitchen at my home
Preparation: “Tadka” for my dal

I started heating the oil and put some “sarso” in it. My hunt for some of the other exquisite ingredients (read Asafetida/ “Hing”) took me longer than anticipated and when I returned victorious to my workstation, as if out of nowhere, I was greeted by the sight of a three coloured flame in the “tadke ka katora”, just like we learnt in our 6th grade text-book!!! And as the towering inferno went higher & higher, and for a cross-section in time, I could unravel the mystery of what would be the feeling of burning the house down!

Thankfully the size of the inferno towered to just about 7” and the fire department’s services were not availed. Much needless to say that I managed to escape without a scratch or a burn (actually I didn’t runaway...to quote from the poem Casabianca, “The boy stood on the burning deck!”). The tadka was then remade by my very educated mother who just showed how to make a proper tadka, (can’t one see anything else except the cliché nine planets?) And when I started boiling it, I put a few “Aritha”s (used to treat hair) instead of “Kokam” (an ingredient that gives tang); identified the error & corrected within a response time of less than 58 million nano-seconds. For the record, the dal was highly delicious & I savoured it with my mother & sister. Hope that in the times to come, I manage to cook up something as delicious everyday with as much fun as today and lesser danger...

Hasmukh :)

Time out

As they say...well, there've been a host of quotations about endings & friends & changes & the likes in my G-talk friend's list, but it’s simply much more harder than this to digest the fact that the wonderful journey of MBA has ended. The exams ended today & I spent my evening photographing the campus...I'm uploading the favourite one below (& for those who don't get it; its a view of the acad-bloc's main entrance, the haziness signifies a nostalgic feeling to me):

And with this, 0nce again the time of changes has come knocking on my doorstep. It was not so long ago that I left the comforts of my home and came to a totally new place. But the thing that hurt the most was to leave my family.

Segue to being gregarious has been a hard one and still incomplete, but I must say that I’ve made considerable progress & that I’m no more a rock island. Some of my friends will never believe this, let alone agreeing to it; so I’d just leave it aside.

But the shock of shocks came to me when I realized just how much I’d changed…when I was studying for my penultimate exam and I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d do without any of my new family members around.

I’d ping for old question papers of OOB and have a group-discussion on IPMsg about “Chameli Ki Shaadi”, just to realize how I’d miss searching, sharing, transferring and chatting in groups. I’d go to the men’s room to realize how important a part the mens’ rooms play as a socializing site in the hostel. And when I’d return back to my book, I’d open it to find that I’m going crazy at 5:00 A.M. in the morning & I hadn’t read a word, just due to my mind racing all the time about my new fear…

Thankfully, I am in a much better shape (not physically of course), now that I can watch movies and play games on LAN. But this too shall be a thing of the past soon. Tell me, all you unfortunate souls (because you selected the papers in such a way that your exams get over a day after mine; and the electives are just too heavy to be tackled bye post-placement-4th-sem-MBA mood) who took up FRM (Financial Risk Management), RMB (Risk Management in Banks) & the likes as electives, is there any way you can "manage" this risk of losing friends & relationships? Again, like at countless other times, my B.A. roots have shown me the way...

Not forever does the bulbul sing

In balmy shades of bowers,

Not forever lasts the spring

Nor ever blossom flowers.

Not forever reigneth joy,

Sets the sun on days of bliss,

Friendships not forever last,

They know not life, who know not this.

---from 'A Train To Pakistan'
by Khushwant Singh

Hasmukh :)

Letter to Santa

Dear Santa,

I am a 22 years old kid. And I still believe that you are real & are watching whatever I'm doing; maybe by some other name, in some other form. As a child, I learnt that it is wrong to hurt or cause pain or grief to someone. Today, I've committed that sin again & the child inside me is weeping of guilty conscience.

Her name is Aishwarya Rai (name changed for the sake of secrecy). She is a good fast friend of mine. She was a bit upset today. I wanted to just make her happy, but just the moment I started talking to her, tears welled up in her eyes and there was nothing I could do. I had only her best interest at heart, just wanted to cheer her up or lighten her heart.

But would it matter?
Can you please forgive me??
Will my guilt suffice for my punishment???

Thanking you...

Hasmukh :'(

TaleSpin

Here is trying to make some sense out of sensex. Read it & you thought, “Big deal, just remove the ‘x’”! Well, I too wish it were that simple…but then I wouldn’t get paid for that! The point is to just see how things have changed in the recent past.

Have you ever thought why do engineers make some of the biggest investment big-shots? Because they understand the Laws of Physics very well and they know, "What goes up, has to come down!"

The entire financial community is crying about the sub-prime crisis hitting all the markets everywhere in the world. Yesterday, India joined the bandwagon fulltime. Though there were a few ups & downs time and again, this was something which was not expected. After the crisis hit, the BSE Sensex had crossed the magical 20,000 figure a number of times and managed to stay there for a while too, but the ultimate logic won yesterday. To simplify it and put it in nursery rhymes’ fashion (…after all, I'm still in a school; so what if they call it a 'B-School' eh?):

Dow came down and broke its crown,

And we (Sensex) came tumbling after!

Just yesterday, an unlucky bunch of MBAs who were studying portfolio management (imagine doing that after getting placed and it being the last semester, haven't they got guts??) discussing about the fall of the markets and were saying "That's it, it can't go beyond 17,000". As per the breaking news, Sensex closed today at 16,729.94!

Just then, I thought of having some fun with these numbers. After all, I’ve done my majors in Finance/Banking and these numbers have been the things that quite a few of my nights have revolved around... (Don't imagine me doing 'it' to a zero, they were those infernal assignments...) So I just thought about having some fun with them for a change & came up with something interesting:

The closing value of BSE Sensex as on 27-Aug-97 (about 11 years ago from today) was 4,097.56; the fall in Sensex in the last bear trend starting from 11-Jan-08 (which has completed 11 days today) is 4,097.51!!!

All data collected from http://finance.yahoo.com/;

All the values considered are adjusted closing quotes of the day;

Today's Sensex closing quote being 16,729.94.

And it doesn't end here, instead it keeps getting better (or worse?)! What do you think the market regulators can do about this?? There were times, just in not-so-distant-past, that a statement from the government's inner circles could considerably increase the subscription percentage of IPOs. And Mr. Arun Shourie would be quoted in papers the next day saying, “A frown from the market regulator is enough to pep up the market!" with a deadly style only a moustache bearer clad in a safari suit can wield...

(visit http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2004/feb/27ipo.htm)

I bet that today Mr. Reddy, Mr. Damodaran and all their allies would be frowning a million times and still not help a thing; I wonder where have their powers gone since Liberalisation took place!? Are they in the coat pocket of Mr. Ben Bernanke which is being dry-cleaned by close associates of Mr. Mervyn King in a posh laundry in Paris? Or has it been bangalored to money-launderers back home???

Think about it...

Hasmukh :)

2 little mice

How many times has it happened to you that some song/dialogue/quotation fits your mood and you think you should've said it?? It was one of those countless times when I was watching the movie "Catch me if you can", I noticed that a few lines just perfectly described the conditions I was in.....and I quote:

"Two little mice fell into a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up & drowned. The second mouse, he wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard, that he eventually churned that cream into butter & crawled out. Gentlemen, as at this moment; I am that second mouse!"

Hasmukh :)

_________
P.S.: I got my first job through a campus placement (after a very long & at times intense waiting) on 'day 55' (Novemeber 23rd, 2007).