Intelligentle

We have failed as a society. Damn it, we have failed as living creatures. Malayalis can bury their head in the sand and flash their golden HDI card, while accepting that we are a morally corrupt society. This might come as a surprise, but Madhu would have been beaten to death regardless of his tribal tag. A majority of Keralites find it amusing to pamper their fragile egos by putting their nose in to others business. Ocassionally, this ends up in mob/group violence. Trust me when I say this, we are a coward lot if not in a group. We are apathethic towards stronger enemies. However, when we have our chance, we pound upon the weaker prey, and even kill him. You would not belive when I say that it is difficult to go out with my wife in certain parts of my town (Kottayam) after 7 PM. Young boys would come and peep through the car window, 'ensuring' that nothing illicit is going on. Madhu's case was a tad bit different. He was poor, moreover he was hungry. He had soci...

India, behind its colorful veil of spirituality, scenic beauty and serene charm, has a darker shade of sadness. It pathetically fails to protect its future, the children. The data from National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) paints a rather disappointing picture with only a few states such as Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and New Delhi showing a positive deviation from the national average. While the national average of Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) stands at 40 (per 1000 live births), Madhya Pradesh and Assam fails to save 54  lives as of 2013. Kerala with its renowned, now declining, Kerala model of health care has an infant mortality rate of 12. This aforementioned numbers proves that with political will power, governance and personal health awareness we surely can save more lives every year. Even though we cite Kerala as an exception in this scenario there are states such as Punjab making good progress in this regard. These are the...

I am not a big fan of day-specific status updates or messages nowadays. However, I think this is a right opportunity to mull over the deeper connotations of independence and freedom. As a person who does not have any strong political inclination, I find it very difficult to express myself without being abused and being called anti-national. To be very honest, it HURTS. It is tough to explain your love for the country while a larger population believes that patriotism is blindly supporting a certain political party or its leader, building a temple, mosque or church somewhere or branding an entire population as traitors just because you do not have a strong hold there. While I personally believe that love for the mankind is the key factor that should keep us moving forward, let me make it clear, I do not entirely reject the notion of patriotism. You show your patriotism when you put an effort for the upliftment of the larger society you live in, it is when you pay taxes and hope...

"We are not giving you a new car, we are merely servicing it", was the response of one of those sincere service engineers when I pointed out the humongous service cost I had to incur after the last scheduled service. Besides questioning your intellect with such naive statements, they are also used to face the customer with any regret after doing a bad job. To put things in perspective, I shall provide a rough calculation of the maintenance cost incurred for my  Chevrolet Beat Diesel LS from the second year service: Year 2 service: 12000+ INR: T his includes a PCV valve replacement which was not included in the actual service manual. They told that they can alter the service manual without informing customers. Year 2.5 service: 6500 INR.  After one week of this service, a spring near/connected to the clutch was broken costing around 500 INR and I had to leave the vehicle for a day, causing me great inconvenience,  Both the front brakes jammed for no ap...

Its been a while, and if I am being completely honest with myself, its been quite a while. Oh, I have a valid excuse. I was busy trying to be a better person, so I could not write for almost a year. What?! Did I say a year? 12 months? 365 days? Well, almost that. So, am I a better person now? No, I don't think so. I am still trying to be one, though. However, I am happy that I was busy catching up with life. I learnt that the best way to be a better person, a better husband, a better dad or a better anyone is to be honest, more with yourself than with others. Digressing a bit, as many of you, I'm also a big fan of 'Joker' played by Heath Ledger. While catching up with the human being that I am, I realized that I am missing a bit of 'villanism' in me, the 'message sending' kinds is what I am talking about. I am in the mushy zone more of the time than in the 'tough'y zone,  Hey, that could be a problem for an aspiring villain, right?...

That's the problem with time, it's never enough. And you see, I have not written a blog post in the last 5 months, no kidding LAST. FIVE. MONTHS! In 2012 I wrote 25 blog posts, 2013 it was four and going by the trends, this year is no different. I started this blog to share my experiences and views, and also to enhance my writing skills. To be honest, I am not sure what happened over the last three year, but 24 hours were good enough for me. Now that I need to keep it going, both because of personal and professional reasons. I need to manage time in a better manner, I need to be a role model for my kid and above all, I need to chase my dreams with renewed spirit. Let this be a start, I shall be back with more interesting and refreshing thoughts. Hasta la vista.

I would not call 2013 eventful except that it ended with a big happiness. Otherwise, it was as normal as it could be. I don't mean to say that normal is bad, sometimes you just wish that you have a normal day, don't you? For me, normal is good, unless it's making me complacent. Learning was one of the better parts of 2013. As I say goodbye to my 20s, I'm realizing that I need many tweaks. Last year, I came across people who are genuinely concerned about this planet and its inhabitants. On the other hand, I also had to tolerate people who seriously take civility, and humanity, in general, for granted.  So 2013 was good to me, however somehow I feel that I have not done justice to myself during the year. During the next 365 days I will make every effort to make up for this. First and foremost, I will go after my dreams with renewed spirit Will finish everything that I start with better pace and precision Will try and be more compassionate about human relation...

So, you have gradated from that crème de la crème management school and all set to take over the world. Have you ever gave it a thought on what really matters? Is it knowledge, talent, smartness, networking skills or your live project experiences? None of this. Your attitude, that is what really matters, or so it has proven many a time. Who's the cat? Yes, you are. I started my career almost six years back, and I have had the privilege of working with a lot of respectable colleagues; respectable in terms of knowledge, managerial skills and networking skills. More importantly, they believed that mutual respect is the only way to have an inclusive workplace. Obviously, you do not have to worry about any of these, as you have that flashy academic tag around your neck and street smartness in your mind. Though I'm sure you must have picked up a lot from your alma mater, here is my 1.32 rupees (that roughly converts to 2 cents) on how to sound like a (pompous) leader eve...

Causation is a belief that events occur in predictable ways and that one event leads to another.[1] (Source: Wikipedia). As usual, I was going through a mid-week crisis this week. Sometimes I think I hate Wednesdays more than Mondays. I can explain why; a week feels like this for me: Monday, I start on a desert safari, by Tuesday I so want to go back home, on Wednesday my imaginary SUV breaks down in the desert. Rest of the two weekdays I desperately search for water until Saturday comes (the greener patch is still so far) and this repeats.  Good news; some time during this week's mid-week crisis, I logged on to my blogger account after almost three months. Considering that I wrote 25 blogposts in 2012, I figured that there is something seriously wrong or something extraordinarily right with my life.  I tried to put my hypothesis in to a research paper, starting with sending a questionnaire to myself with questions such as 'who am I?', 'what I do?...

We are almost done with a quarter of 2013, hard to believe, but as ' cliché ' says, time flies. However, talking like a true Indian, I feel that 'I have not done the needful' yet. Yes, I am bidding adieu to 2012 in March 2013, better late than never.  I should be grateful to 2012 for what it was to me. 2012 was generous, peaceful and moreover gentle when it came to 'surprises'. It was slow, kept a low profile and so, was beautiful and tranquil. 2012 was not a 'problem-free' year, but it threw comparatively lesser lemons at me to make pickle. was generous and peaceful.. So let me rewind and go through the major happenings of last year: Job : After a two-year long tenure with my last employer, I had to move on. The job was good in the beginning and I had the privilege to be a part of one the best teams I ever worked with. As with any other story, the good times did not last forever and I had to quit when the going became an improbability. My j...

Do you know what I hate most? Others dictating the terms of MY life, that's what. I am well convinced that I should abide to rules, laws and regulations, but within the limits of logic. However, what if someone says that I give your bread and (peanut) butter every month, hence you need to sleep in the office compound every night. That is something inadmissible. We all have commitments, obligations and responsibilities, but I believe that none of these should come in the way of free will. Every human being has choices, even with in the constraints imposed by the society. For instance, it's good to have acquaintances and spending time with them but it starts to interfere with free will when they force you to comply with their idea of fun and likewise. As I perceive* it, unless it is not causing any inconvenience to any other individual or group, it's a person's choice to live as s/he wants. By any professional or personal affiliation or attachment, free will cannot ...

Fellow men, I understand that some of us still have primitive instincts in our blood. But there's something which tell us that we came a long way from the age of hunting down and satiating our appetite; appetite for money, fame and sex. We are trying to form a civilized society, some of us are rich some are not, some are educated some are not. However, we know that our mother deserves respect and our sister needs care. So we know what is wrong and what is right, sometimes we just choose to be animals. For example, right now my brain is full of expletives and negative thoughts for the animals  who committed  this  heinous crime, just like any other middle class Indian. Deep inside me, a voice says that they must go through a life full of pain and sufferings, instead of letting them die fast by the way of capital punishment. But again, will that solve the problem forever. No? Will the aggression last forever? No. And am I able to provide a solution...

I have a personal policy which I always adhere to; never write when I'm angry, irritated or sad. Also, I try my level best not to talk when I am in any of the above moods. However, the attempt to not to talk when I'm in a bad temperament is in vain, almost always. When a conversational person goes mute, it gets noticed and then the questions follow. This ultimately leads to many more redundant verbal exchanges. The point is, when I write I try to ensure that the content has a positive tone to it. So, don't confuse the title with me being sad, I'm not. Over the last few months, I became a big fan of The Big Bang Theory and also became an admirer of Jim Parsons as an actor. And in one of the episodes, his character Sheldon Cooper says to Penny "One cries because one is sad. For example, I cry because others are stupid, and that makes me sad.". Digressing; though my IQ is nowhere near 187, I too occasionally encounter people who are too superior, in the...

He's a real nowhere man, Sitting in his Nowhere Land, Making all his nowhere plans for nobody. Miss the bus to nowhere.. Nowhere man is, primarily, a song by the The Beatles and ' isn't he a bit like you and me'?  Of course, we chase our sales targets, write that complicated code, write a brilliant article and conduct that huge successful event. Every single day we are in a rush to finish the tasks assigned to us and the laptop lid closes only when your eyes do. No, I am not preaching about the importance of slowing down again, you will know when you need to slowdown :) Today morning, as I was going through the tasks list for the day, I thought of figuring out where am I heading with my life. To be precise, it is more of an analysis on how am I faring on a scale of me 2008 to me 2012. I must admit that it was a little scary and disappointing at the same time. I am not positively (or negatively) aggressive about my life goals any more, I am just waiting for ...

Conflicts, they just don't leave us alone, do they? It doesn't even need another person for conflicts, for me it's mostly internal. Some times it might be the classic 'to be or not to be' and some other times it will be  more complicated 'what to be or what not be', of course with all other 'W's and one H in the line. And when it comes to right or wrong, we mostly use our own scale of relativity. The conflict is not as apparent as to join the darker side or to remain clean. Most of the times it is about how far we can go to the darker side. With his three movies on Batman, Nolan made me think about this a little deeper. Starting with a crime flooded city and its need for a redeemer, he takes us to endless mind games in the second movie. In the third story, it looked like an ultimate victory of good over bad but, interestingly, the conflict was between darkness and darkness. Bruce Wayne conquers his darkest fears to become Batman. He fights injus...

Life has completed another small circle after I ventured out of my state five years back for an MBA . It started from Pune, where I came across various permutations and combinations of human beings and that of tasty food. Then, like one of my old acquaintances (who was obsessed with alternate phrases and hashtags) might put it across, I had to shift my coordinates to N20.0014° N, 73.7869° E or Nashik as we call it. In between the shuttling between Nashik, Bangalore and Kerala , Bangalore became a second home. This followed by the wedlock and I shifted to Bangalore for my bread and (peanut) butter. Then one fine day, I was fed up of having peanut butter and looked out for a better meal. On a totally unrelated note, I ended up in a new job in Bangalore and my new team sits in Pune. Now I travel to Pune once in a while, completing another little circle drawn with my MBA as the centre. Though I do not get much time to explore the city, I enjoy these trips, because the...

August 13th, ,at around 9pm, I was on my way to meet my friends.  I was waiting at a traffic signal and someone behind hurled a rude 'hey' at me . I turned back and saw the 'hey source', a person in his late twenties, with a female pillion rider on an expensive bike, with an illegal, high intensity head lamp. I know, it's a lot of detailing, but it might help me going forward with this post. So, this person was trying to cut the signal and got stuck between my bike and a bus. I hate random 'heys' but I thought of understanding the motive behind that. I turned back and to my surprise, he asked me that if I am waiting for someone! Well, I could not think about anything other than the obvious and told him that I am waiting for the signal to turn green. Unintended humour I would call it, the perpetual law breaker and his pillion rider lady was laughing at me for my response, and asked me to move ahead. I did not, but he made his way through the non-existent ...

There are targets, objectives, goals, dreams and desires for each of us, but the end of the day (or life), who are we to decide on what should we have. Don't stop reading, I am not getting in to the intricacies of boring philosophy, again. I had plans to continue the momentum in terms of updating the blog posts in line with the frequency of June posts. However man proposes and he, later, disposes. July started in a calm note but by the end of it, my flight was going through a lot of turbulence. As luck would have it, those were just turbulences and not engine failures. Turbulences are good, they test the mettle of an aviator, but anything beyond that might be out of his/her control. And these little issues kept me off from 'Intelligentle', and from my perspective, it should not ideally be that way. Small issues should not keep me away from writing. In other words, though we hope for minimal testing times in our life, 'that' happens. And all we can hope is for l...

In my last blog post I tried to explain how difficult it is to drive on Bangalore roads, mostly because of the attitude of drivers and riders, along with the ongoing construction works. On the brighter side, I observe some sensibility is still prevailing among approximately 60% of private car owners and among 10% of the public transport vehicle drivers, which is a relief. However the root cause is lack of traffic awareness and taking safety on roads for granted. In simpler terms, a vehicle will not slow down at intersection thinking that the vehicle coming from the small road should slow down, and simultaneously the same thought process is happening with vehicle's driver coming from the small road too. Fortunate that we do not have accidents proportional to the number of fools on the road. One point I missed out when I was writing about the traffic problems turned out to be one of the most important issues, the kids. They just started living their life and they live according to...

Bangalore is a nice and beautiful city. Nice in terms of climate, facilities available, helpful people etc. But sadly Bangalore is nicer if you stay indoor most of the time. A huge percentage of the 'helpful people' I mentioned earlier, turn out to be the ultimate propagators of road rage when they drive or ride. They never stop, unless there is a train in their way (I doubt that too!), they drive at the maximum (im)possible speed, almost everywhere and above all they are totally ignorant about the fact that road is a public space. The below tips are derived from fellow drivers/riders on Bangalore roads and in no way I can relate to any of these. So, these tips are better implemented if you are all alone in a city and only if so. Road rage is the norm here.. Image courtesy: nareshtrao's photostream on Flickr Well, let us start from two-wheelers If you have a bike, no matter the lack of space, you should try and poke it through the last millimetre available. Rear ...