Narcissism...eh?

Narcissism is a state where the person is self obsessed.. Its a state where he is hopelessly in love with his own self.. Some people may call it an exaggerated form of self centredness, others may term it as an egotistical projection.. Whatever it is, the story behind it is quite fascinating and makes for an interesting read...

Narcissus or Narkissos (Greek: Νάρκισσος) in Greek mythology was a hero from the territory of Thespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. In the various stories he is exceptionally cruel, in that he disdains those who love him. As divine punishment he falls in love with a reflection in a pool, not realizing it was his own, and somehow dies out of frustration. Several versions of his myth have survived...


"Narcissism" is one of my favorite words.. I might have repeated this story about a thousand times in NITR, and outside.. Though, not entirely common, there might be narcissists thriving in different parts of the world..

Till I find one. I am happy to look at myself in the mirror..

My heart goes clickety click...

The world has become more techno savvy, than could have ever been imagined.. As, a small boy I had always been fascinated by computers. It was something really fascinating,to learn about new things, online gaming, blogging, how I could access information to the reviews of the movies I wanted to watch, to some cool puzzles and quizzes online etc.

So, I was really elated when I got my first computer. I loved my computer with its 3 kg. (I actually weighed it!!!) Microtek monitor ( complete with the sound system embedded in it, a technical wonder as my vendor put it), the logitech mouse, and the maple keyboard. It had a HDD of 20 GB ( the max. config. at that time), and boasted a RAM of 128 KB... Wow, my dream machine!!!!

But, the world progressed and things changed.. I came to realize that the 20 GB wasn't enoough after all, as it could'nt store my collection of movies, softwares and bhai's games ... Computer prices also plummeted rapidly, making it possible for people to actually go for it.. A change had started, the era of "Information Revolution"...

And, so it all began .. from finding the right products to the right package (ahem, the matrimonials..), from finding the best deals on travels and bookings, to booking movie tickets online.. If you were on it, you had the access to all these functions in a jiffy... The net had revolutionized the way people made their purchases and bought things ( although, this effect is still catching up in India)... But, then with other things , even this had a flip side!!!

Now, you might ask, that being a techie how can you be skeptical of the whole internet revolution?? But, then, when I am not wholly discounting the fact that the Internet thingy has actually done wonders, it is not without its repercussions... I'll tell you, because I have experienced it...

In a small town XXX where I was vacationing, I met this person.. He was about the same age as my father, perhaps a little young or so.. I was researching the effects of the WWW for the college mag, and had been to the local dailies for their feedback. I met this guy by pure chance, or were we destined to meet.. He somehow came to know about this project of mine, and voluntarily stepped in for an interview...

This man was a bank employee, an accountant. His math skill were good, and he was able to communicate well. His job involved him to keep accounts in the local branch, of an estd. bank there.. His only vice, he was not computer literate...

Going by his account, he told me that he had a difficult childhood, spent most of his time on the street...Anyways, he taught himself some basic Mathematics and English as a servant for a rich person in the township.. After a while, owing to his sincerity and hard work, his master referred him to this bank, where he found a job as an accountant.. He was very happy that day, he told me... At last, he had found a real job, whereby he could use his skills to the fullest..

But then, this happiness was short lived.. The IT revolution heralded a new change, and suddenly it became imperative for him to know computers.. He was in a fix. With great difficulty, and practically no help at all, he had come to this position. And, now suddenly he was told that his skills were not upto the mark and he needed to find another job.. He became jobless once again.

I asked him that with some help and money earned from the job, he could have taught himself some basic computers also, as with english and maths.. He smirked. The course fee was bundled in a package, and was very high.. He had familial obligations too, his daughter being of marriagable age..

And so, after filling my notes with 30 pages, declaring the advent of computers in India, as a period of optimism and growth, this 20 liner interview with this person changed it all...
The computer revolution might be great for the developed nations, but not so much for our country still..

Think about what the "Walmart" factor, would do for the local grocery store..The one on the corner you visited on those lazy sunday mornings, where you bargained and fought with the sabziwallah... Reliance fresh clashes with the grocery stores in Ranchi were in the news for a while... The "Big Bazaar" type retail concept has somewhat blended with the local business but, this might become lopsided, if Walmart comes in...

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes..

An aphorism, and how true..

How many people can you find who would own up to their mistakes openly, and try to improve themselves without an excuse??

Believe me, you have heard it in the movies many a times and in your Moral Science classes and subsequent lectures by the many impressionable people in your lives.. But, the truth is this.. It is even harder than you might think to accept your misgivings, and move forward..
It is hard, indeed, to fight your inner demons. Once you have done it though, it feels really light, as if a great burden has been lifted.

You might blame your mistakes on somebody else, or hide it under the garb of "Experience". Either way, you put an additional burden on your conscience, and mind it ... it is "heavy"..

To make the world happy...

Its so hard to please everybody. If you talk a lot, it is that your loquacity will be treated as showing off knowledge.. On the contrary, if you are silent you might be accused of being overtly self centric...

So, it finally rounds of that you do what pleases you the most.. For making the whole world happy, is very difficult.. Even if you succeeded in this mission, you will end up making one person unhappy... YOURSELF!!!

Epigram...

A blog post by Nobel prize winning economist, Jason Krugman... on the present world situation..


Was I Unfair?

A reader writes in to complain about today’s column, in which I compared the supposedly productive activities of financial wizards to the sleight-of-hand of stage magicians.

As a magician, he resents being compared to investment bankers.

Exuberance, happiness!!!

What is the state of happiness?? Is it that I am relaxing on my bed and listening to Pink Floyd's "Shine on you crazy diamond", or is it all about that ice cream at Nirula's. The definition of happiness varies from person to person. A perfectly blissful state can never be defined or achieved for it is unattainable..

Happiness lives to the point you jump to that next state of happiness. You crave for the next big thing in your life and forget about the things you have at present. It is good one might enquire, as it is good for your own development that you keep on improving and craving for more and more....
This cycle goes on and when you think you have had enough of this game of "Pursuit of HappYness", you are old and you fret about this state and think of the good old days...

If you enjoy too much, you get sick of it all and you try t question the purpose of your life?? So, then the question, what makes us happy or what wil eventually make us happy?? I've tried to ask myself time and again this.. Sometimes, I'm very happy just to relax and listen to a book, but once it finishes I think it might have been utilised in doing something better..Ditto with movies..

What would really make me happy is satisfaction .. Satisfaction of the fact that I tried my best, to tell myself that I couldnt have multitasked with the work that I had...For others, it may be true love.. Never been in that state before...

For,
" If you fall in a well, theres a rope
But, if you fall in LOVE, theres no hope "

Sw. Engineer...

The typical software engineer is a boring species. He has a fixed time table type of life where he has to leave home by 8.30 am sharp. He has to get up early, very much like school and he swears by his alarm clock. Depending on the fact that whether he lives with his family, he might also get a kick in his butt or a splash of water on his face from his mother... Ahh, the school life comes alive...

He may also carry a tiffin to school, err office like when he was a kid. For not so lucky ones, one might be expected to eat at the canteen, but only during the one hour recess.. He might be scolded by the boss for not doing his homework properly, that might affect his grades in the next term...

Finally, if he has been a good boy, treated his teachers with respect, he will not get a detention..Ahh, a very lucky day indeed, as it means he can go to his home happily in the white school bus...Yipeee!!!!

World Peace..

We recently visited the Baha'i temple for World Peace, The Lotus temple at New Delhi. It was a nice trip and we loved the whole feeling of it all. One of the rare things that I saw, that people from all walks of life, including from different religions came to the temple to pray for world peace.

The lotus shaped temple was a majestic view. There were water pools besides the temple, that made it look as if this giant lotus of a structure was actually floating in water ( top view, too much of ED in the first year have got us imagining).

The interior of the temple was huge, and there were arrangements for sitting where people can sit and devote time for world peace. Before entering the temple, everyone was urged to keep silent when inside the temple, as a way of praying. I thought this as a great way of praying, as silence has a great calming effect on the mind and the soul.

We loved the whole experience, as it was really very quite, so much different from the traffic outside. Once in a while, you could hear the kids crying,which broke our meditation and made us come back into the real world once again. I think they could have done by restricting kids below a particular age, but then, the temple for world peace is open to all religions, and on a after thought this restriction is what they don't believe in.

Anyways, the whole experience made me think about an important aspect from a new angle : What if there were no religion in the first place? Why cannot we have more such temples for world peace, because that is what we want ultimately : peace for all and love for mankind.

Faith is a good thing, but my experiences tell me that extreme faith and love for one's religion has always created enmity between two groups of people. When a child comes into this world, he does not know from which faith he hails. He is gradually inducted into his religion, and he grows up taking those value systems. What if he is taught that his religion is world peace and that his own moral duty is to remove the suffering of this world by means of erasing poverty, sickness and all the vagaries of the world in his own capacity. I think he will turn out to be better, he will not discriminate ...

The world needs more such centres for peace, as it is the ultimate goal for humankind. Isn't it?

Life Chess Analogy!!

Life's a game of chess... You have to be alert at all times and make the right moves.. Even persons, small by means of rank and priority may become match winners, mere pawns have the capability to rise to important positions...

The king is castled and protected whereas the pawns fight to protect him... The whole board contains equal spaces for whites and blacks, the way it is meant to be in real life!!!
After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box.

Finally, as with life, the woman - the queen in the game holds the most powers!!!

Justifications and Explanations!!!

A man is justifiable for his actions. He is answerable to himself for his doings, and only to his own self does he own those explanations. He is not answerable to any moral police or any third force for what he does and thinks..

His views are his own and he has to be respected for holding them until and unless his views don't go against the very moral fabric of society or against the whims of any other man in the world.

A man, can be called a "man" truly when he can stand by his thoughts and actions and refute any claims on his independence to think, to act and to be what a man really aspires to be - an " Individual"....

Musings!!!

Feel like ....

the prisoner in Anton Chekhov's "The Bet" who has chosen solitary confinement for 20 years in an abandoned cell with nothing but books!!!!!

Trying to enjoy life the "Bookish" way...

Cheers!!

prodigy vs. prodigal

According to the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary:

prodigy : someone having the gift, or a very great ability which shows itself as a child.

prodigal: wasteful of money, tending to spend large amounts of money without thinking about the future.

Words so similar to look at, but yet so far.. maybe like countries seperated by the International Date Line, so close but having a time lapse of a day between them.

Just a thought,
What if the prodigy turned prodigal?

the "F" in my life.. part 1

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Finance...How it all began??

Well, I have literally lived with this term during my time at NITR. The love for the subject came to me as a young kid, when I used to hear my family (esp. Papa) talking about it all the time. My first impression of the whole thing was why to worry and discuss something so much ? Later, as time passed, I also came under its influence, or rather "sucked in"..

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"Bulls" Vs. the "Bears"

I always took the subject very lightly and used to poke fun at people who lost money at the markets, saying that they could have held on to their investments. I was of the belief that nobody having a little patience could have ever lost money on the markets. This was proved wrong one fine day, rather a very "thought provoking" day for me. My whole view about the markets was changed that day. The day as many of you might be aware was the "Black Friday", when the stock index fell to its single biggest loss on a single day. This unfortunate day for the markets also happened to be the day when I had to "step in" and prove pa wrong that all this market hoopla is shit.

The stock was HZL which saw its biggest dip on that day. Also, my long standing view about the "regaining markets" and stuff was shattered completely as that stock took nearly a year to recover. The money in question was Rs. 70,000, my whole tution fees for four years at the institute.

From that day, I pledged never too take this subject lightly. Also, I had a greater respect for the markets and it was not all childs play after all. A sad day but a day that was going to teach me a lot in the longer run.


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" The son matures"

As years passed my "brain grew" [ :) , literally] and so did my understanding. I read a lot of finance material and read about the biographies of the seven greatest business men of India ( a book gifted to me by Nani).

I cannot recall the name of the book now, but it was a green colored book, and the cover work had the authors photograph. It detailed the lives of the great business leaders and the small nitty gritties of their lives. The reasons for all those decisions they took, the way they looked at things, their perception etc. I finished that big fat green book in two days, I had no idea how those two days passed.

My first year in the insti as a junior was a year where we had limited scope to organise business events, as there was no major funding and for the primary reason that such an event had not been organised before. Anyways, as a fresher, I participated in the media campaigning game called " Market Share" whereby we had to advertise a product "Head and Shoulders Pink". The other teams had "H n S Blue" and "H n S green". I was really disappointed at first with the color which we had got as part of a draw. Pink was "feminine", representing "fairer sex" ( in our insti though, it was the guys who were the fairer sex - based on findings by your truly and now available as a research paper) . How to convince the audience to go for "Pink " was the big question???

Pink is a color that irks male respect. Wearing pink is also treated as a crime and in a place like our "insti", you might get raped (literally) for endorsing the color.So, in a place like NITR where the majority of the public were guys (around 90 p.c., the reservation for girls was lifted the previous year by the orissa govt. after the college was converted from REC to NIT), how to sell such a pinky??

<< Contd in the next post , too much of typing !!!!!

rohit

Prime Time Crime!!!

The city of Delhi has always been infamous amongst all metros, for having the highest rates of crime against women. So when the news of the murder of an Operations Manager of a leading IT firm based in Noida, Jayeeta Ghosh broke out, it was not new for a city that had seen so much crime.

However, in this crime the motive was theft and not sexual assualt, which makes this case all the more bizarre. In the past too, cases of murder for a small sum of Rs. 5000 have come in. Now this is shocking and this is what needs to be dealt with at the earliest. Imagine people being killed for such a small amount of money.

According to the latest census, there are about 40 p.c. people below the poverty line. What does this imply? 40 p.c. of the people in India have the potential to be the next face of terror in the country.

Something to think about...

RohitL.

Here comes the Nano!!!

" Waiting for this car is like waiting for a pretty woman. it should not be delayed otherwise the woman might get fat and old"
- Ratan Tata , on the Nano

A few Good Men - Movie Review

A few good men ia a movie you'd like if you are into crisp debating. The movie revolves around the American army base in Guantanam Bay in Cuba, and how two officers are caught up in the middle of a murder while trying to deliver "Code Red" on the orders of a superior high command.

The movie is interesting from the start and I very much like the parts played by Tom Cruise and Demi Moore. Although a glamorous star like Demi Moore, really makes you expect some skin show, but there is none , as the script does'nt demand it. All the actors play their part brilliantly, but Jack Nichlolson deserves a special mention as the arrogant BOSS..

All in all, an entertaining film..

The Truman SHow - Movie Review

The Truman Show - A TRUe movie.....

Well, we all have had doses of reality TV in our lives in some form or the other. Take this reality bite - what if your whole life from the moment when you were born was taped and shown to the rest of the world, and each person in the world you were living with are all cast members for a famous reality TV series??? Well that is happening, and whats more its been telecast LIVE on your TV sets 24X7...

Well, the Truman Show is the king of all reality TV, no scripts , no actors... real person, with real lines and a nondescript life can be the talk of millions of viewers around the world. An amazing watch. Jim Carrey at his usual best.

The concept amazes me. A must see movie..

tumi kothaii?? aami office....

ya, its true...
im in office..almost always...i sit there..
it is not my second home, but i am always there...

you can find me there sitting like an owl, gazing at the monitor...

is this how am I supposed to pass my living days.. The day draws near when the insti calls me...those days pass by like a flashback in a movie...why didnt I realize their importance when i had them...

why??

Long time!!!

Its been a long time since I have written something. This LONG time has been a significant time in my life, whereby I have made foreign trips , achieved what I desired and made some very good friends.

The time has given me an insight into the life I lead and how I would have loved to lead it. It is still difficult however, though, since I still think something is missing from my life. There is an incompleteness about things around me. Sleeping, I am soundly, but still when I wake up, I question myself, is this how I want things to be??