Random Thoughts

Inception

2010-08-01T06:58:00.000+03:00

Went to movie in AMC today, “Inception”, the much awaited movie for this summer. The movie was unique for many reasons; like the uniqueness of concept, idea of nested dreams, multidimensional platform of subconscious minds, complex plot directed in unique way. If Avatar was a visual sensation then Inception is a unique creation.

Inception is written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan and this film is inspired by the experience of lucid dreaming. Wikipedia defines “A lucid dream is a dream in which the sleeper is aware that he or she is dreaming. A lucid dreamer can actively participate in and manipulate imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can seem extremely real and vivid, depending on a person's level of self-awareness during the lucid dream”.

It is another way of challenging the concept “Are we real?” Matrix had the same idea – are we real or just an illusion. Some explain our world as a game of the Almighty, some interpret as Maya, it can even be described as complex chemical combination. But our existence can also be interpreted as multi-dimensional dream.

I came to know about this movie while discussing about the movie with one of my friends a week back. I didn’t know about the movie at that time. He told me the story was about the injection of a concept into another mind and nested dreams. Instantly I said -“Basically our state is the nth instance of someone’s dream”. He was flabbergasted and after watching the movie, I was found this was the conclusion of the movie.

Following are some of my observations.

It defined the concept of hypnotism, how one can inject one concept to others brain.
“Jato mat, tato path”- meaning - More the number of ideas, more the number of means to interpret our virtual reality thereby are emphasizing the integrity of the concept that nothing is absolute.
A small idea can lead to a big change, can change the human civilization, it can redefine history, change the path and make a permanent impact to society.
Finally, for a Global Hit – Keep one Indian and one Asian (Chinese / Japanese etc) actor or actress in the movie and thought-provoking movies like Inception will always be a Global Hit. This is going to be one of the successful movies of 2010.

Election 2009: West Bengal Analysis

2009-05-25T00:41:00.002+03:00

The Sunrise happened for the opposition when Biman Basu claimed the “Surjodoy(Sunrise) of Nandigram” and that to was ignited by the egotistic CM by bifurcating “Amra Ora” (We and They) and giving priority to “Party over State”. Though the left has done the same prioritization for decades, they became naked in Nandigram issue.

Nandigram cost a lot for the left in the 15th National Election. Not only the mandate of farmers, but also the minority (most of the victims were Muslims) vote bank shifted towards the TMC-INC for this issue. It was a blunder and opposition didn’t leave any stone unturned to capitalize the sensitive issue.

CPM tried to gain the reputation back with Tata in Singur. It was almost done, but at the final moment crazy Mamatadi intervened. Another mistake by Left was made there. They could have done some negotiation for the betterment of the state, but they allowed TMC to make a mess of the situation, so that people can blame them. This is what they did for decades; criticize center and do no work. This time they tried to do something, but as they don’t have the experience to do that they messed up.

These two phrases “Singur and Nandigram” wiped out the stable Left front from West Bengal. The main reason is the radical shift of party polarization in West Bengal. The Communist party was a party for the poor, farmers and intellectuals and now that portion is in favor of TMC. TMC tried in many ways to capture the vote bank of common people, first tying up with BJP. In 1999 election they did fairly well capturing 8 seats in National Election, most of them were the seats of Kolkata, but failed to get the rural and Muslim votes. Thus they switched the ally in the assembly election in 2001 and tied up with INC. They got few seats but not as much as they expected, so TMC turned to BJP again in the 14th National Election in 2004. It was a disaster and Mamata had to pay for her whimsical attitude. TMC has only 1 seat in Parliament (that to of Mamata) and in the 2006 assembly they performed poorly with BJP and came back to INC on 2009 National Election.

Despite the dilly dally TMC managed to have a clean sweep this time, young people are literally unhappy on Mamata for the Singur issue which hampered the industrialization process in WB, for which the state had pay and will have to pay a lot. But why people have given mandate for her?

Here goes my analysis.

1) The Minority Vote Bank: In the whole country the Muslim voters are shifted to Congress (INC) and in the state that has been aggravated by the Nandigram issue and the national report that shows the financial status of the minorities in WB are deplorable and worst in the whole country.
2) The Lower Cast votes: This vote bank shifted to INC-TMC. They placed couple of dalit candidates and managed to get a major portion of SC-ST votes.
3) Farmers and Lower class: They were the original CPM supporters, turned to TMC as CPM has gone for development and TMC occupied the vacant place with its agenda “Ma-Mati-Manus”. That is a major swing against CPM in this election due to erotic land accusation policy.
4) Urban Voters: The urban voters started shifting to Non-Left teams years before due to the poor development and Left policies. This election there was many factors against Lefts.
• They don’t want to be in the center but never leave a chance to embarrass the ruling party (Like they did with the Nuke deal).
• They ask vote against Congress and support congress in center.
• They had no agenda but tried to form third front with some selfish regional parties who have no principal and can do anything for their vested interested. Any rational voters will not vote for a Third Front where Mayabati was projected as PM.
• They always tried to put the communal forces (BJP) away which helped Congress to get more popularity as INC is better projected as secular party than any other regional parties.
• The arrogance and egotist attitude of the Lefts for their unprecedented enjoy of power without an opposition have become huge anti-incumbent factor this time which in turn helped the TMC-INC to swing the vote in their favor.
• People are not happy with the intellectual Politburo of Lefts and what they did with Somnath after the no-confidence motion against Congress and how they stopped Jyoti Basu not to be the PM in 1996. Left is still paying for their historical blunder and will continue to pay unless they change their mindset.

What will happen in near future.

TMC will have the Rail ministry and couple more small portfolios in the cabinet. They will try to do some visible development before the assembly election in 2011. They will continue with the agenda “Krishi bachiye Silpo chai” – Agriculture first then Industrialization. They will continue with INC in assembly and is they don’t score self negative goals, its just a matter of time Mamata will be next PM of WB.

Left will not go for any land accusation in next two years. They will play a safe game and will try to break the coalition of TMC and INC (though it will be hard as left is not required now in center and Mamata is getting good support from INC central leadership, specially Pranab Mukherjee is making a difference). Left will try to make maximum development in state and pass some policies for the minorities to regain the Muslim vote bank. They will also try to capture their rural base in panchayats level by some reformation in party level.

But despite that, it something magical does not happen, unequivocally TMC will come in power in State. But it is good for WB as both the parties will try to reform and the state will have actual development. Good for the ignorant Bengalis who will be given special attention.
The bad part will be the violence and riots. The CPM cadres will not allow the unprecedented supremacy of TMC-INC. At the cost of those innocent victims West Bengal will have the change in the political era in near future.

Slumdog Millionaire

2009-02-24T01:43:00.006+02:00

Do you believe “Gitanjali” was best creation of Rabindranath Tagore for which he got Nobel? I think there are quite a few master pieces written by Tagore, but Gitanjali wasn’t the only best.
But, none of us have any doubt about the Legendry Bengali poet, that he worth a Nobel. And he got it, so it is important that his work was recognized.

I think the same way when A. R. Rahman got the Oscar for “Jai Ho” song in “Slumdog Millionaire”. Rahman was exception in many of his creations, like the music in Roja, Bombay, Tu hi re, Dil se, Rang de Basanti, etc where few songs unequivocally enchanted millions of listeners. The combination of traditional and modern, North and South Indian mix, made Rahman a legend much before he has given music for “Jai Ho” lyric by Gulzer, who also grabbed a joint Oscar with Rahman.

Definitely they worth Oscar and they got it. We are proud of them. It’s a great moment for Indian film industry as the Slumdog team got 8 Oscar and 3 for Indians.
But this Oscar is for this year and only for Hollywood, so it is expected that his other songs were not eligible to be nominated, but I have seen many critics who are just criticizing without knowing the boundaries of Academy Award.
THE OSCAR WINNERS for this movie are... Best Picture: Producer Christian Colson for Slumdog Millionaire. “It has been collaboration between hundreds of people. All of us are here to share this moment. This was an extraordinary journey,” says the Slumdog... team.

Best Direction: Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire

Best Original Song: A R Rahman and Gulzar for ‘Jai Ho...’ (Slumdog Millionarie) The Indian music maestro, Rahman wooed the audience with ‘O Saya’ and ‘Jai Ho...’ the nominated songs from ‘Slumdog...’, as the nominees for Best Original Song were being announced.

Best Original Score: A R Rahman for Slumdog Millionaire . “I have nothing but my mother and she is there with me. I thank her for making me coming all this way with her blessings,” said a proud Rahman.

Best Film Editing: Chris Dickens for Slumdog Millionaire

Best Sound Mixing: Ian Tapp, Resul Pookutty and Richard Pryke for Slumdog Millionaire. “This is just not a sound award, but a history being handed over,” said Indian receiver Pookutty.

Best Cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle for Slumdog Millionaire

Best Adapted Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire. “The cast and crew of the film told me so much about India and writing,” said a proud Beaufoy.

By Movie 2009 Oscar Prize
Slumdog Millionaire - 8
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 3
Milk - 2
The Dark Knight - 2

But now almost in every site, in many blogs I have seen people questioning whether “Slumdog Millionaire” is worth winning 8 Oscar prize. Had it been an Indian production, would it been recognized like that? It achieved the excellence as it is a Hollywood production movie. I guess the critics are doing a big mistake here. Oscar is for Hollywood and apart from Hollywood movies, the only category where the other can compete is the best International Movie.

So, basically its giving a different message that, Bollywood movies are of excellent quality and widely acceptable. If a film like “Slumdog Millionaire” plotted on Mumbai with Indian values can crack so many Oscar, then it would have been miracle every year if all Bollywood movies can compete in all categories in Oscar.

Some critics have the concern of portraying Indian poverty and slums in this movie. But there are real facts. We can’t ignore the millions of common poor destitute who are struggling for both ends meat, working day in and day out to fulfill basic needs. We can’t hide them in the glamour of Bollywood films, neither should we hide it. . I liked the film and enjoyed every moment of it. The editing is excellent as the sequence of actions will never be boring to the viewers. I liked the concept in the film because I am firm believer of destiny.

In few site I have seen Western Goras are calling Deshi Indians as “Slumdog”. It may be because of jealousy or for the superiority complex. But this is also fact. In India we have at least 100(if not more) “Slumdog Millionaire” who started from scratch and now a millionaire, including many industrialists, like Dhirubhai Ambani, Ajim Premji, etc. Well, it may not be the fluke as shown in the movie, but in reality that can be possible.

Apart from Slumdog, Megan Mylan won Oscar for Smile Pinki on Best Documentary Short Subject Category, which is based on Benaras.

What’s goanna happen now? We will see many eminent directors and producers from Hollywood will come to India with some Asian plots. It will give a boost in Indian film industry. I can see another possibility, few Indian production houses will be launched in Hollywood. That will be a golden day for Indian film Industry when we will bag Oscars in all categories by our own production house as I believe films like “Tare Jameen Par” “Rang de Basanti” “Lage Raho Munnabhai” “Dil Chah Ta Hay” are far more better than this year best International Movie “Slumdog Millionaire”.
P.S : Pics are not captured by me :) LOL

The Making of "Kharagpur Online"

2009-01-14T20:10:00.009+02:00

It was one of my dreams to do something about Kharagpur. I thought either to publish a Photographic book or to write an epic (Bengali) on Kharagpur town. I went to Oxford Book stall couple of times to read and buy concepts on recent photographic books on Kolkata, went to a professor of kharagpur college, who is also a writer of Kharagpur history book. I promised him to give some of my photographs for his book but I couldn’t as I had to fly to US suddenly. I feel bad for it.

While blogging in 2007, I searched Kharagpur on Net. But I was disappointed by the result and thought to post Kharagpur Series in my personal blog. I started with this one. But this effort was not good enough to capture the wonderful city.

Last month I decided to launch a dedicated site for Kharagpur.As mentioned in this blogpost , I havnt got www.kharagpur.com domain and asked for suggestions and http://www.kharagpuronline.com/ was unanimous choice. Thus in the eve of New Year I decided to launch it through famous web hosting site “fatcow” and registered “KharagpurOnline” on 31st December 2008.

Now it was the time to design and shape this site. I am in blogsphere for couple of years, but I had no idead about website hosting. It was a challenge for me. I took help from couple of friends. Chaitree who launched http://www.chaitreebasak.com/ helped me a lot with the concept of dream weaver and html pages. Ananda was always a helping hand for me and this time it was not an exception. He helped me to install wordpress and with his valuable critics. Aritra took it one step ahead. He is the first registered author for this site and started writing in the Education category. Finally Pabitra took some amazing pictures of our town to enrich KharagpurOnline. My sincere thanks to Chaitree, Ananda, Aritra and Pabitra.

The design was a delicate issue. I was not happy with the free CSS templates as it is not interactive(or I havnt found a better one), neither I was interested to make it totally in Wordpress. In first week, I tried in many possible ways and after all permutations and combinations I merged these two concepts. First Page, Info Page and Contact page are in CSS and all rest topics (which I want to make interactive) are in Wordpress themes. This took out the overhead of complex file management in control panel and I can really focus on content. This merging concept has given me enough freedom to design in dream weaver as well as use wordpress to its fullest extent. It has given a flavor of a website as well as an interactive blog in a combined package. I am happy with this initial design and launched “KharagpurOnline” on 11th January 2009.
For site content, I approached couple of people to use their photos and videos. Some has given permission while others remained silent. Then people from kharagpur slowly involved with KharagpurOnline. We created a community in Orkut. Started promoting this site, gathered some information, and posted some photos. Our journey of KharagpurOnline started in this fashion.

Please visit this site and write your suggestions, comments, feedback.

Revisiting 2008

2009-01-02T00:11:00.005+02:00

Another year passed by. An eventful year for all of us, for the whole World. I have gone through a lot of different scenarios of life, but forgetting the bad one I want to proceed. I want to continue my journey towards my destiny. I want to come back in blogsphere. But my New Year resolution is to open a site for Kharagpur. KharagpurOnline.com will be live soon and throughout this year I want to make it a success.

I was in India beginning of this year and then moved to Chicago for 7 months. It was a memorable experience specially in my professional career. In true sense it was happening with a mixture of good and bad. Then I came back to India again for 2 months. My Bro get married and those days were something to cherish. At the end of the year I am back in US again, but in a different location, Longmont, a small city of Colorado which is surrounded by mountains.

Throughout the year the following external events impacted me immensely.

Global Economic Recession: The slowdown of 2007 has taken a shape of recession worldwide, specially in US. India was immensely impacted by the crash of share market. The Sensex has gone down by 60% in 2008. Many companies have become conservative in their business, because people across the World are panicked. Companies like Lemman Brothers, J P Morgan in US have been bank crafted. Many more big MNCs are in verge of bank crafty and huge job cut is going on every month. Not only financial, banking, infrastructure, retails markets, it impacted IT too. Many project has been withdrawn, many have been downsized. Some of my close friends are out of project. We lost a project to our competitors. People across the World are worried about their jobs and most importantly the speculation is this recession will take a form of huge depression in 2009.

Terror Attack in Taj Mumbai. Image source economist.com
Mumbai 26/11 Terror attack in Taj: In last few years Terrorism was always a menace. All countries tried to combat against those devils, but it came in new form every year. Terror attack in Taj was shocking. Those breathtaking hours were a horrible experience for the whole World. In last few years how many times we told its Pakistan behind every terror attack. Don’t the normal Pakistanis understand that its against their goodwill and against Islam!!! The claver boy Musharaf was able to fool the while brains of white house by his tricks, but it had to open someday. But now its tough to control the growing terrorist activities in Pak Land. Common people in India and across the World are living in danger and politicians hardly bother about taking some effective preventive measures and we elect them every time. Shame on us, Indians!!

Cricket 2008: This was a wonderful year of Cricket. The year started in disappointing way for Indians but in last part of the year Dhoni’s team did many magics, like beating Aussies and England in Test series, ODI series vs. England. But the main attraction of this year was IPL, 20-20 championship. I was in Eden Garden(Kolkata stadium) cheering for Kolkata Knight Riders. It was amazing experience. But the most happening part was retirement of two legendry cricketers; Sourav Ganguly (Our very own dada) and Anil Kumble. Both contributed to Indian cricket immensely. Dada was close to my heart, inspiration in many forms, and my passion for cricket. I will miss those days in future but at the same time I am glad that he took a majestic retirement from Cricket World.

Change of Power: Democrats are back in power after 10 years beating the Republicans in USA. Obama, won the election and become the first black President of USA. It will have many impacts on Indians and Indian politics. The nuclear deal is now a question, H1 cap will not be increased, and outsourcing will be impacted. But at the same time Obama claimed that India will be one of the best partners of USA. This will be interesting to watch how they manage it. Will it impact the Global economy!! Will we have much better relation with US!! Will we be able to combat terrorism jointly!!

There are few more incidents which I like to mention. The foolish WB political parties made mess on Tata Nano project in Singur after messing with Nandigram. The ruling party of our state withdrawn support from the National Govt for the Nuke deal, which is a funny mistake that one can ever do. I feel shame for this as I belong from that land. Indian shooter Bindra won Olympic gold and bronze medal by Indian boxers was a proud moment for Indians. Viswanathan Anand won World Chess championship. India sent first ever moon mission was successful. Chandrayaan-1 success makes India fifth to reach Lunar Orbit

I hope 2009 will be a different year, a successful year to all of us. Hope all of us will be successful in our own mission. Happy New Year.

Domain for Kharagpur

2008-12-30T23:34:00.001+02:00

KGP SERSA Stadium

Recently I tried to search my hometown in net and I was very disappointed by the results. There is no good site on this industrial town. To be precise I haven’t found any site only for Kharagpur. Thus I decided to launch a site on my home town.

I need a help regarding this. As I am going to open a site on Kharagpur, I need to buy a domain for that. The first domain I searched was kharagpur.com, which is already booked by some commercial agents and asking for $10,210. So obviously I need to search another domain. Kgp.com was my next one, which is also already taken. So I tried with many different options. These are the following which is available. I need to know which will be suitable and easy to remember and use. Please put your view in the comment section.

http://www.kgplive.com/
http://www.kgptoday.com/
http://www.kgptown.com/
http://www.thekharagpur.com/
http://www.kharagpurtown.com/
http://www.kharagpuronline.com/
http://www.kharagpurtoday.com/
http://www.kharagpurcity.com/
http://www.kgponline.com/
http://www.kharagpur.me/

My final choices are between 5 and 6 mostly, but still want to check your views. If you have any more idea about domain names or content, please share. Appreciate your comment and thoughts regarding this. Thanks in advance.

Finally Summer came

2008-06-10T00:39:00.000+03:00

And a new journey begins in Chicago, the windy city, where life is full of drama, activities and fun. The cityscape of Chicago is awesome. I have never seen before, not even in Europe.

The contrast of Lake Michigan with the High-rises amazed me. I took a few pics and the following is the superimposed of 2 of them. Summer made is more fascinating and it is the best time of the year to be here.

There are lots to see, many things to explore. I am enjoying the days with my project colleagues. They are cordial and friendly; I think I am lucky to be associated with a charming set or people. So my next few posts will be on Chicago. Enjoy the summer.

Spring?

2008-04-22T12:39:00.000+03:00

This winter is hard to pass by. Started in India few months back, followed by wet Easter in Chicago, and still waiting for a nice spring. Came back to India for a short period but missed the spring and feeling the scorching heat of early summer in my heart and soul. The melancholy tone of a solitary cuckoo is not enough, neither the blessings from rafalaki. Its all about global warming and globalization, impacted the weather and life immensely, but still hoping that the spring will come soon.

Hi Friends

2008-03-27T00:14:00.003+02:00

Thanks for all your comments during last few months, appreciate it. I am back, but very busy with new project, and will soon start blogging. Ups and downs are there in life and we move on, thus I moved to United states and will keep posting after few weeks.
It will be nice if you can drop a comment about what you special did new in last 3 months. Thanks again for your kind words.

Happy New Year 2008

2007-12-31T14:26:00.000+02:00

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year 2008 to all of you, Lets rock and have fun. Wish you all very successful and prosperous year and my best wishes to your family.

Apologies for not wishing you personally. Neither I will be able to check your blogs in near future. But I will come back. Need a break from blogosphere for some days/weeks. I will tell the reason after my come back. Don’t worry guys, I am fine.

Keep smiling and Take care
Pijush

PS: Couple of pics of last year in Syntagma Square – Greece where we started year 2007.

The Age I Wish To Go Back To Meme

2007-12-12T09:00:00.000+02:00

Niki-chan tagged me asking "The Age I Wish To Go Back To ". Thank You Niki chan.
I followed the way Niki-chan did. Going through my album of childhood and found many interesting moments.

My life was not always in positive tune. Like most of us there are many mistakes I did, but I am not going to think about those days. Being an optimistic guy I always looked forward. So, I want to go back only to my happy days.

Happiness comes in many forms. When I read a good book, it makes me happy. But if I talk about special moments I can remember many of them. The day we won the football tournament in University Hostel was special for me as I scored some unbelievable goals, the day I first flew to outside India (London) was very special for me as I explored another World that day, The day I got job was also special, Even the small events like Swarasati Puja was special to me as we used to celebrate it in our home every year in our childhood.

One of the days I often cherished was the day we won the Trophy for our school in class X. It was an inter-school essay competition and being the first and second boy of our class I and my brother participated in this one and won the trophy together. Bro won the best individual performance trophy. That day my parents were proud of us and we were in jubilant mood.

Me:Second from Left

But apart from these success stories another day we performed together in our Babuline Colony (Kharagpur), was a fascinating day to cherish. I want to go back to that day to act a drama in our children’s club - Ankur. I performed 3/4 dramas in my childhood, and believe me I was not good enough in acting. I was good in many things like sports and academics, but not in acting. Still I enjoyed it. The collective effort and performing in front of our elders was something I can not forget. Given the chance I want to do it again and want to go back at the age of 14, when I performed this drama(I was a farmer in this one) in our para along with my friends and bro.

What Age U Wish To Go Back ? You can pick the tag or post a comment :-)

Dadaaa. Dadaaaaaaaa

2007-12-11T15:45:00.000+02:00

I had written this post a year back And I got my no 10 on dada (Sourav Ganguly)

10) December 2007: A glorious double century in Bangalore followed by a magnificent century in Eden Garden, Kolkata and Man of the series against the arch-rival Pakistan to clinch the test series victory after 27 years in homeland.

Its just like a dream for me. The way he came back is awesome. He completed 1000 test runs in a calender year. He proved himself again. Dada is simply genius.

Dada is my hero. He impressed me many times. His reinvigorating fight back attitude and sheer mental strength rejuvenates me. I read his interviews when I feel low, I visit his site when I need inspiration, I truly admire him, love him from bottom of my heart.
He is the person for whom I loved cricket deeply, his exclusion (2005 from Indian cricket team) hurt me more than anything else, he is the reason I started hating cricket, and now he is the reason for my jubilant mood. Nothing can give me more pleasure than this man’s success, nothing can rejuvenate me than his character strength, nothing can make me proud than his victory.

I know there were many allegations against him and so as for his supporters. The Bong-connection factor was shown many times for our love to this great man. But now I should say, dada is not for Bengalis, he is the proud of India. In his bad days I was mentally with him, praying each and every moment for this living legend and I am concerned more than anything when he is under pressure. But today I am happy as my prince emerges triumphant.

Photo Source : Cricinfo
Sourav Ganguly is delighted after reaching a double-hundred, India v Pakistan, 3rd Test, Bangalore, 2nd day, December 9, 2007

And Back Again

2007-12-07T09:21:00.000+02:00

This is what came in our first Corporate newsletter(i-sdc wave) 5 years(2nd June 2002) back. I thought to share with some of you. This week I have got net connection in my home, so I am back again in blogosphere, will keep posting..

Pijush Ranjan Ghosh - our very own artist at i-SDC who unlike most of us has an uncanny taste of creativity, as he captures the beautiful wallpaper on his desktop, to paper. Pijush has sketched this from a beautiful 'Victoria Memorial' wallpaper on his desktop. Heard anything like this?

Click to enlarge and Have a nice weekend.. Njoy

Am I a Liar?

2007-11-27T14:25:00.000+02:00

My EQ is 153

50 or less: Thanks for answering honestly. Now get yourself a shrink, quick!
51-70: When it comes to understanding human emotions, you'd have better luck understanding Chinese.
71-90: You've got more emotional intelligence than the average frat boy. Barely.
91-110: You're average. It's easy to predict how you'll react to things. But anyone could have guessed that.
111-130: You usually have it going on emotionally, but roadblocks tend to land you on your butt.
131-150: You are remarkable when it comes to relating with others. Only the biggest losers get under your skin.
150+: Two possibilities - you've either out "Dr. Phil-ed" Dr. Phil... or you're a dirty liar.

What's Your EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient)?

Kolkata in Curfew

2007-11-22T17:17:00.000+02:00

Kolkata is again in problem, this time under communal fire. The AIMF (All India Minority Forum) is demanding cancellation of Visa of controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who is now in Kolkata. The other issue was Nandigram, where huge Muslims have been killed by cadres.

Definitely some opportunist political parties are playing important role in this kind of chaos, which turned out in a riot and RAF, Army called to control it followed by overnight curfew in sensitive areas.

Taslima left Bangladesh as many Muslim extremist parties threaded to kill the female writer for her criticism of Islam and now the same kind of threats are coming in India also, though I believe that it is purely a political issue now.

I have nothing more to say about it, but what I want to restore peace in my home town. I had to wait in the long traffic jam, but fortunately I came out in time. Others waited for hours and the whole Calcutta came to standstill, as the central part was blocked by the protesters. Many cars have been burnt and police was attacked, I am happy the way CM handled the situation, but not happy with the situation.

Pic Source: ABP news paper 22Nov

Celine's Tag

2007-11-20T10:08:00.000+02:00

Celine tagged me with some interesting questions and I loved answering them. Thanks Celine, here go my answers and a small painting in MS paint again :-)

Two names you go by (besides my given name Pijush):
1. Tony (my nickname)
2. Goba (in the blog world)
Two things you are wearing right now:
1. Dark Brown trousers (am at work)
2. White shirt with light color strips
Two longest car rides:
1. Athens to Delphi, and back (340 kms in a day)
2. Athens to Meteora, and return (850 kms in a day)

Two of your favorite things to do:
1. Traveling
2. Photography and Blogging

Two things you want very badly at the moment:
1. To get thinner and lose weight
2. To win couple of projects that I am bidding

Three animals you have or have had: (We had in our childhood)
1. Parrot
2. Chickens
3. Rabbits
Three Things you ate today:
1. Apple, Orange Juice (after dinner)
2. Rui Fish (In lunch)
3. Chilli Panir Role (yum)

Two things you are doing tomorrow:
1. Office (during the day)
2. To visit the construction of my new flat

Two favorite holidays:
1. Durga Puja and Deepavali (Undoubtedly this is dream time for most of the Indians)
2. Christmas (the favorite of many us as we have vacation and relaxed days in corporate world)

Two favorite beverages:
1. Coke (once a day)
2. Tea/Coffee (anytime)

Nandigram , The Hell

2007-11-14T11:04:00.000+02:00

After coming back to India, not only I have enjoyed cultural festivals in Bengal, but also went through regional shock, especially in my state, West Bengal.

Yes, I am talking about the infamous Nandigram Issue. In my post on 14^th March, I condemned the stand of the State Govt and now again they have implemented their unscrupulous idea by state sponsored terrorism.

Pic Source: ABP newspaper (Homeless Destitute of Nandigram)

Who is the state govt and how they are ruling?

CMP (Communist Party) is ruling the state of West Bengal for last 3 decades. They have complete capture on the villages of WB and there is almost no opposition in many parts of the state. Though the common people of the big town and Kolkata wanted change many times, but CPM managed to win by their organizational integrity in the sub-urban and rural areas.

What is this organizational integrity?

Today in WB, every organizations of the normal life, be it the educational institutions or the employee unions, are directly controlled by communalists. Not only this, CPM has their own Cadars (armed workers), who threatens the opponents.

And now they use the Police on their own purpose. The state security forces are manipulated by the whims of CPM.

How was the industrialization and development in last 30 years?

Absolutely nothing compared to the timeframe. Lefts (CPM) were against of the Capitalism, big industrializations, computerizations etc. They always fought for the rights of farmers and labors. They locked out many jute factories in the bank of Ganges. The snatched lands from Jamindars(Landlords) and dived into the common people (that’s the reason they have strong holds in villages).

Recently Thanks to Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee who has taken many initiatives for industrialization. Many of us have respect for him and we managed to form biggest industrial hub of eastern India, especially IT hub in Kolkata.

But, time has shown that he is not perfect leader. The egotistic leader has done massacre in Nandigram issue. The holocaust, the forcefully capture of the place created an environment of uncertainty across Nandigram.

But, what is Nandigram Issue?

Let me briefly describe the issue. In a move to form Chemical Hub in the state, CPM wanted to accusation of land in Nandigram in low price. The lands are fertile and thousands of families used to survive by cultivation. Show the protested, formed their community. But, on 14^th March, CPM wanted the accusations forcibly and Police fired on the common people, killed 14 local farmers.

After that heavy protest from the common people from different part of the state has taken the govt in back foot. They decided to build the chemical hub in other location. But, the egotistic govt wanted to take the revenge and attacked the general mass by armed caders, killing many of them and took control over the whole region. The press, opposition, media, central force have been stopped by CPM caders and turmoil reigned supreme in the province.

Lastly Chief minister told "They have paid back their own coins" - which is simply not acceptable in a democratic country. I hate this type of barbarism and revenged mentality.

Now what is the reaction of common people?

Common people across India condemned the brutal stand of the lefts, TMC called stick in WB and the whole state came to standstill. The cultural people of Kolkata, including famous media person, writers protested and they have been arrested for silent protest. Some TV channel has been threaten, CPM accused TMC(opposition party), TMC asked for CM’s resignation. BJP national leaders came and demanded Presidential rule in the state, intellectuals made protests and possession in Kolkata . CRPF(National force) has entered the site and took over control of the place.

What is my stand?

I want a change in the state govt. Lefts has done nothing significant in the state, the law-n-order, communication, infrastructure, environment is not suitable for proper industrialization and healthy life. They have got fairly enough time and now somebody else should get the chance to do something. CPM has deviated from their principle and communism is a flop theory. They have done many historical blunders, jeopardized the social system and now we desperately need a change. Let the common people arise awake and vote against the threats of bullets to overcome the political topsy-turvy.

10 Dreams TAG

2007-11-07T16:22:00.000+02:00

I haven’t post last one week as I was down by viral fever followed by hectic schedule. But now I am ok and ready to enjoy Deepavali. Its called the festival of lights, but here in Bengal we have a special religious occasion called Kali Puja.

Wish you all very happy Deepavali and Enjoy the festive occasion.

Not going into the details, I would again like to play the TAG game. This time I would like to pick other set of victims, for a brand new subject.

Subject: 10 things I want to do before I die (I listed down my top 10 desire one year back in this post).

For another reference see Ananda’s Top 10 list. (He came across this book "Unforgettable Things to do Before You Die")

This are just few dreams, so be honest and write whatever you like; you want to do irrespective of opportunities and possibilities. That’s what we had done.

I want to Tag

1) Sigma : I know you will pick it; eagerly waiting for you interesting post.

2) Cuckoo : Haha.. this is my turn now. I know how much busy you are, so not sure whether you will pick it.

3) Keshi : I read your post on 5 things you want to do if you are going to die in next 6 months, but now the span is not limited. Hope we will have something equally amusing posts.

4) Kalyan: Same for you, not sure whether you will have time in your busy schedule, still interested to know what you dream.

5) Backpakker : Your post will be obviously interesting, so tagging you.

6) Aditi : Hope you will pick this one and I think your dreams will be completely different than others.

7) Anyone who is interested, niki , indicaspecies , CHEWY , Amrita…. I know You all have nice dreams. so, share it with us. Hope you all will enjoy this Tag.

The Book Cover Tag

2007-10-30T12:36:00.000+02:00

I have been tagged first time for something in the blogosphere by Miss Cuckoo. The subject is Book-Cover Tag.
Rule (there is only one): Go to the advanced book search on Amazon, type your first name into the Title field, and post the most interesting/amusing cover that shows up.

I tried with my first name Pijush and as expected got no match. Pijush is a typical Sanskrit/Bengali word which means nectar or ambrosia (though I am not that juicy lol).
So I had to try with my blog nick name “Goba” and got couple of them. The first one was “The Goba of the Zambezi: Sex Roles, Economics, and Change by Chet S Lancaster”, which is associated with many amusing subjects, but not interesting enough to me.
The second one was "The Goba Name in History by Ancestry.com", which sounds ambiguous but bit interesting. In the book you'll find out about where people with the Goba last name originated. Waoww.. Goba is surname of many people that I didn’t know. Isnt it amusing !!

The Editorial Review of The Goba Name in History is given below.

The Goba Name in History is a customized book offering a unique blend of fascinating facts, statistics and commentary about the Goba name. The book is just one of an entire series of family name books in the Our Name in History collection. Each book in the collection is printed on demand and is compiled from hundreds of millions of records from the world's largest online resource of family history, Ancestry.com. This particular book follows the Goba family name through history and makes the perfect gift for your family members and anyone interested in the Goba name. In the book you'll find out about where people with the Goba last name originated. You may discover the countries and ports they left behind, the ships they sailed and more. You'll get a better idea of where people sharing the Goba name settled and where they may reside today in the United States, Canada, England and other countries. You'll get all this information and much more in your Goba family name book. If your last name is not Goba, then check out our collection of nearly 300,000 family name books to find other available names in the series.

I would like to tag..

1)Amrita – I know you will pick it and come up with something very interesting
2)Ananda – In Bengali your name own a big publication, I doubt what will be in English
3)backpakker – For sure you will find many books in your blog name, but not sure about your real name.
4)Celine – and indicaspecies Both the names are interesting. Looking for the search result.
5)CHEWY – Search for something amusing and share with us.
6)David – The search will be in Title field, otherwise you are the only person in the list who will have a perfect match with the full name in the author field.
7)Niki – I am sure that your search result must be intriguing and mischievous.
Eager to see a colorful sweet book covers.

Durga Puja - A Small Recap

2007-10-25T11:31:00.000+03:00

Finally Durga puja ended with expected grandeur and solemnity. Be it rich or poor, Hindu or non-Hindu, Bengali or non-Bengali, everyone enjoyed the festival here in Bengal. But the end of the festival has left me heavy hearted, thus not feeling to cherish these days. But still want to share some moments and shots that I have captured.

I haven’t been able to see many pandels and idols, but still have had nice time with family and friends. The best idol I have seen is the above one of Jagriti Sangha club of Garia, close to my flat. I like the fearlessness and reinvigorating face here.

Then comes the goddess of our apartment/flat. We the flat owners organize Durga puja in miniature and we spend most of the time here. Its our own puja, everything is done by us, starting from creative decorations to prepare the bhog (holly food).

The purohit (priest) are performing some rituals. This is called arati and the next one with some lamps are called Sandhi Puja, which happens between the third(Astami) and fourth(Nabami) day of the festival.

On last two days we went to Kharagpur from Kolkata and enjoyed the festival there. It was fascinating and real refreshing. I have not downloaded kgp pics yet, here go some of the pics of Garia(my locality in Kolkata).

This is one of the biggest festivals in India as well as in World (few hundred thousands pandals and idols are created and almost hundred million people are directly participate in this festival). If you are planning to come to Kolkata or Bengal, this is the right time of the year. The last day of the puja is called Dusshera, which is celebrated across all states in India.
Some of the perspectives are reflected in my cobloggers posts, so I want to mention some of them. Honorable mentions are listed below.
1) Amrita's Idol preparation post
2) Kalyan's Chants of Mahalaya Post (pre puja rituals)
3) Greatbong's sarcastic post on Pandel controversy
4) David's posts on Puja
5) Kalyan's Durga Puja post
6) Greatbong's The Magic of Maddox Square
6) Anada's Puja review

This puja where creativity wins over the rituals is wonderful occasion in many ways. The idols and pandels are only kept for four days, but for sure it leaves an ever-lasting effect to each and every viewer.
Here goes few slides of our apartment puja and of nearby locality.

Random strokes

2007-10-15T11:38:00.000+03:00

Found few minutes from my schedule and drew these two pics in MS paint with random strokes of mouse, Can you suggest some captions ?

Updated: 24th Oct 2007
Thanks everyone. I just picked up 10 captions from your comments I liked most .

Snake Demystified - Amrita
Electric Snake Dance – Chewy
The Invisible Snake Charmer and his Pet – Celine
Lines of fate - Bagpakker

Sky is the limit – Aditi
Flying Home – Amrita
Flight of Fantasy – Celine
Flight out of Greece- Chewy
Goba-chan flying home - Niki
"Athens' Smog" or "Καπνός της Αθήνα - Volodya

The Goba Returns

2007-10-11T16:23:00.000+03:00

You have heard of migratory birds. In winter they come to the warm wonderlands, they enjoy the charming weather. But they never forgot their roots, the fragrance of their own soil, and return after the winter. So as Goba, migrates often on request but never forgets to comeback to his motherland, the incredible India.

How it feels to leave the place where you are living for more than a year? Not really good, Goba misses many things of the wonderlands and sometime he becomes nostalgic. He misses the culture, people and specially the new friends he got here. He misses the weather, the rare natural beauties. He misses very small things like the smell of the office floor, the basketball in the workplace, the view from his window.

But how it feels to go back to hometown? Heart is thrilled and the mind is full of joy, especially when it is festival times in India. Durga puja was always the favourite occasion in Goba’s life; I guess it is same for most of the Bengalis. It takes him to the old days when small Goba used to visit at least 100 pandals during these three/four days every year. He was amazed to see the different pandels decorated with lights, coloured cloths/materials and in the middle the holly goddess “Ma Durga”. This festival is called “Durga Puja” which has a rich mythological history, mainly associated with Bengali culture though deeply influence almost all Indians (especially Dusshera occasion, the last day of the festival is celebrated across India).

And look at the coincidence, Goba is returning on the same day (17th Oct) the festival will start, the most desired festival. It takes him down the memory lane. He can recollect some memories when his family was living in a small railway quarter of Babuline in Kharagpur. There were grossly fifty small quarters and they used to organize one combined puja. A committee was formed every year for organising the festival. His father was very proactive and used to be a part of the committee. At the age of twelve he had written a poem in the souvenir of Babuline Puja Committee and his father wrote an editorial. It was a cultural bonanza, starting from forming structures to creative literature.

Thus Goba is exited and eager to go back to the home soil, close to the near and dears, friends and colleagues and of course to enjoy the festive mood.

PS: Durga puja is one of the biggest cultural festivals. It has a deep influence on the common Bengalis and Indians, they decorate their houses, buy new cloths prepare sweets, meet each other, and go out to see the idols. The crowed, the make-shift stalls, pandels, images/idols, decorations, crackers, lights, songs, and cultural programs everything makes it a perfect occasion to rejoice.

I will not be regular during next 2 weeks as I am leaving Greece for good. So little busy. Will keep posting after Durga Puja.

I have drawn the sketch in the first one in MS paint and pasted some pics captured by me 2 years back.

What I like most about Blogging.

2007-10-06T12:27:00.000+03:00

Blogging is like friend with whom I can talk always

Goba: Hi buddy, howz life.
P1: Hello Mate, I haven't heard you long.
Goba: Ya, I haven't had much of time recently, its almost the end of my assignment and bit busy as usual.
P1: Hmm, I can understand, though I am relatively free as the project is not in peak and Easters are coming. Bit of holiday mood here.
Goba: Waoww… that's nice, so enjoying spring. Here the autumn is not that bad. Nice weather nice colors, will soon post something in my blogs. Now I am enjoying blogging. You know I have many new friends here ..
If you don’t mind can I ask you something? I need to know what do you like most about blogging.

P1: Ya I have started to be a regular blogger. You know it's a nice world. But I am very new to this World and I really don’t know what to like most, but I like the creativity of bloggers, the innovative thinking on different topics I have never thought of.

Goba: Yes that really an interesting part of the story, but I would say this is not the reason I was blogging.

P1: You are right :-) You were blogging for many different reasons, to know some of it lets call P2.

{P2 joined the conference}

P2: Waoww.. I am lucky today. What for you have remembered me?

Goba: For a simple question on blogging. I guess you have few blogs now, what do you like most in blogging.

P2: What!! Blogging!! Its just another virtual world. N+1th illusory existence of Nth replica. To me this World is virtual; we think therefore we are, same for the blogs.

P1: oh mate, not again. Believe me the veil of illusion or Maya will be torn very soon once you will have some strict deadlines to meet. But I still believe the same philosophy.

P2: Ok friends, let me answer then. I think I like it as it is easy to share my photos and travel experiences. I am in the net for free and I have a space of my own. My friends and relatives can see them and in future I can cherish the memories. I write blog for me, and some of them are wired to others like this one. But still I want to write down my thoughts here as it may help me to understand the virtual life in future. That’s what I like most in Blogging.

Goba: Yaa, I forgot you believe you are in a illusory World now. Well now I can understand your explanation. But P1, I think your choice is now quite different?

P1: Yes buddy, I am now in a new World, A world full of color and friends, some of them are very good and slowly we are forming our family, It has no color, no boundary, no religion, no status. It is simply a community where everyone is free to express their views, there thoughts, their experiences and also can reciprocate or contradict others views. This Blogging World is amazing and that what I like most.

Goba: Waoww.. I also think the same, but since I am bit more mature I will say the essence of blogging is much deeper. The thirst for innovation, the desire to come up with nice stuff always haunts me. I feel rejuvenated after reading nice posts, after encountering awesome pictures and by the constructive criticism and comments. I found the medium to fulfill my future desires. That’s what I like most. Thanks for joining me for introspection and find out the answer.

{Goba was trying to talk with himself to find out the answer asked by David, P1 is his replica 6 months back and P2 one year back}

Gandhi Jayanti - Gandhiji's Birthday

2007-10-02T13:41:00.000+03:00

Today is 138th Birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of India. In this occasion I want to share one of my digital paintings I just finished (I used only few lines to draw the face, so easy to draw a great personality, which tells how simple he was) and his 10 quotes which made me thinking many times rather influenced me in many ways.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong

I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life. I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

Raghupati Raghaba Raja Ram, Patito Pabana Sita Ram
Iswar Allaha Tero Nam, Sabko Sammati de Bhagoban

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind

Hate the sin, love the sinner

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
You must be the change you want to see in the world

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

Guess the inner meaning I tried to illustrate in this painting?

Who was my best childhood friend?

2007-09-30T12:28:00.000+03:00

I wouldn’t have thought if not someone asked this. But thanks to David, who asked and confused me by this simple question.

I thought of the many different things.

Was it the nice ball that my uncle has given me? I was delighted after getting it and played many years with that football.

Was it the cricket bat my father gifted after passing class I? Not to mention cricket was and still very close to my heart. We couldn’t live without playing cricket, be it small or long, we had to play everyday.

Was it the sets of kites or the ducks in the ponds, I used to see by my window in leisure times?

Was it the solitary banana and papaya tree in our house? The fresh guava, coconut, palm, mango, jackfruit, and pineapple we used to get/stole from the neighbouring areas climbing the trees.

Was it my drawing board I used to paint anything and everything? Especially I used to draw sceneries.

Was it my mirror, where I used to check how much I had grown up and always feeling scared as I thought, I will die soon if I grow too much?

Was it my dairy, where I used to write some funny things, small poems, cricket scores and paste the paper cutting pics of sportsmen?

Or Was it my strange thoughts and imaginations? I was crazy sometime and behaved abnormally for these thoughts.

Or the imaginary structures we used to make with dirty clays and sands?

Or Was it the fairy tales of “Thakurmar Jhuli”/ “Gopal Bhar” / “Sujon Harobola” or “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata”, two of my favourite TV serials I used to see in my childhood.

I am totally puzzled. Ten choices, and I don’t know what my favourite thing was, whom I can call my best friend. Which is why, I took some time to answer this question.

I decided to think again on my childhood. Closed my eyes for five minutes and got the answer.

I can see, With Him, I am playing funny games like kith kith, Langra chor (have to touch other player by running in one leg), hide and seek, football and cricket, sometime customized TT and hockey in the adjacent areas of our house in Kharagpur. I was never alone. He was always with me, from the day my first cell formed, from the moment I landed in this earth. He accompanied me each and every moment in my childhood, starting from going school, to play in the evening, from stealing the mango pickle in kitchen, to study together, we were together even when we fell sick.
I really miss his presence now. He was my best friend and still he is and will be. I love him.
He is no one but my Twin Bro :-) my best childhood friend.

PS: Both the pics are drawn in MS paint, I was conscious while drawing the first one, so personally second one is better to me.

--------------------------------------------

Update on 01st Oct 4:00pm - This post is mentioned as one of the Top Posts Of The Day in Davids blog and another good news is, our project in Greece has gone live today successfully. So I am happy.

Chak De, Chak De and just Chak De

2007-09-25T16:57:00.001+03:00

The Chak De effect is still on.

Yesterday India won first Cricket World Cup Tewnty20 final in Johannesburg. It is a great moment for us Indians. I want to congratulate Dhoni and Indian team for a spirited and wonderful performance. Special thanks for defeating arch rival Pakistan two times in this tournament, both the time they kept their nerve cool in close nail biting contests. We are now the World Champion and nothing can make us happier than this.

Yes, I am happy, happy the way the boys fought, the way they kept their temperaments cool, demonstrated perfect attitude and gesture. I am happy with the captaincy of Dhoni, an honest and cool Captain. He apologises in front of media for his mistakes (done after first match), donate t-shirt to his fan(after final), and cheer up the weakest member of the playing eleven(Joginder Sharma). What more we can expect from a new young captain.

He is not rigid like the wall, not whimsical like mr chappal, not tensed like the pakis, not arrogant like the Freddies. I can remember those days when he used to come to Kharagpur to play small tournaments which was played with tennis balls. He came from a lower middle class family of Ranchi, Jharkhand. Jharkhand state is close to my home town Kharagpur and one of the local don (Ram Babu – who is now enjoying life time imprisonment) used to organize cricket tournaments at the time of Durga puja. Dhoni played one innings brilliantly and DRM (Devotional Railway Manager) promised him a group IV (lowest rank) railway job, his father is also a group IV railway worker. That small boy is now the leading the World champion team.
Thank You Dhoni. You are our ideal leader, inspiration for millions of youths.

Thanks to Yuvi (the most aggressive player of the tournament, six 6s in an over and fastest fifty, 2 MOM), RP (My man of the series – I don’t know how Afridi got it!!), Pathan (Hero of both the Pak match), Rohit (MOM against SA), Gambhir (highest scorer of final, second highest of the tournament), Uthappa (for 50 and bowl out pak in first match), Sreesanth ( for agressiveness and outstanding against Aussies), Joginder (for two great final overs), Viru, Bhajji for their mature guidance and whole team India (except Agarkar – who virtually turned India’s game to other side couple of times in this tournament). It was a dream journey for the young team. Thanks for entertaining us.

I thank Misbah-ul-Haq for being the tragic hero and making both the Indi-Pak game so close and exiting. He lost his nerve in the nail biting contest. My sincere sympathy is with him but not with Pakistan team, whose captain claims that “All Muslims of the World” are Pak supporter. Probably Shoaib Malik forgot the hero of the final is an Indian as well as from the same religion. I don’t know when they will grow up.

Even our Chak De hero Shahrukh Khan was there ( in New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg) who represent India and not any community. It is a matter of great coincidence or a deep influence or utter surprise I don’t no, Indian emerges triumphant in three major tournaments in last 2 month, Neheru Cup Football, Asia Cup Hockey and Now World Cup T20 Cricket, after the release of movie “Chak De India”. They simply outplayed opponents in these championships.

Prabhjot, Rajpal, Tirkey, Baichung, Pradeep, Subrata are our heroes and it’s the time to cheer for them. But I doubt how long they can keep their consistencies.

It is not possible that a movie will influence the performance of a team, but can motivate some players. Last year we came across same kind of situation when the student mob protested in the “Rang De” fashion against the Indian Govt for anti-reservation issue. Similarly there are discrete incidents where “Lage Raho” rejuvenated some of us for 'Gandhigiri'. But I think one movie can not change the society or nation or team drastically. What do you think?

PS: This pic is not taken by me. source: ABP news paper.

Couple of pics in MS Paint

2007-09-24T01:41:00.000+03:00

In a charming sea
Sailing a solitary boat
Like the flying birds, it is free.

The setting Sun
A lady is waiting in a rowing boat
Deeply embedded in nature with the melancholy tone

PS: Recently I am enjoying Microsoft Paint (Programs->Accessories-> Paint) like as the early days of my computer usage. Though I can not make the lines perfectly in paint (like the face of the lady in second pic) still enjoying it. Nature was always my favorite subject of painting in childhood. I guess the same thought is coming back again while using this tool.

And here goes the link with some more imaginations.

Piece of bread

2007-09-20T22:06:00.000+03:00

A small shop
Few items to buy
In hurry bread dropped

In the lane
The beggar sat on a corner
Next to a street dog, together

.....

The lad smiled
What a nice gesture
He must remember me for ever

PS: pic is drawn in MS Paint in 2 min, so bit of imperfection, Guess whom I tried to portray in the left one

Few more aspects of Blogging

2007-09-18T12:28:00.002+03:00

I discussed many features of blogging in my previous posts, and some of the interpretations have been agreed by other bloggers. Here I am writing about another interesting aspect of blogging - words used in comments and tagging, back linking.

Why choosing of words are delicate? It is sensitive because of the cultural difference and word interpretation by non-eng speaking bloggers.

We are not playing any world championship in blogoshpere, not competing to each other like liberal and conservatives. So, if you don’t like a blogger obviously you will not tag him/her and will not write abusive posts. Your rigidness can make you infamous, so everyone try to be polite in his or her blog.

But sometime it may happen that a comment, constructive criticism can be taken wrongly. Even a positive tagging can be inerpreted in different way. For an example I tagged one friend analyzing his/her blog “simple” .. and excellent. The word “Simple” created a mess and s/he interpreted it wrongly. I feel sorry for that. I like the blog and that the reason I tagged. This confusion happened because of language issue. I strongly feel if English is not your first language you have to be careful in choosing words. For an example last Friday I have seen one status message of one of my friend’s gtalk - “Again Friday”. It sounds like “oh no not again” – though what he meant was completely different. Basically he translated from his mother taungue and achieved this phrase.

But the most important thing is the cultural difference. Let me give an example, last year I wanted to invite one old colleague (she is older than my mom) in our house. We thought its better to go and knock her door, rather call her for dinner. That’s what we do in India, but not in Europe. Basically we disturbed her that we realized later, she felt offended and we apologized. There are many delicate examples like this where simplest behavior, small gesture matters most. These are nothing but cultural difference of different society.

Thus when you are commenting/replying any comment or tagging/back linking others its better to keep in mind about these factors. We have to appreciate each others culture. Words like thanks, nice weekend, Namaste matters. Try to reply the comments from other bloggers if s/he has given some elaborate feedback, coz s/he can expect your reaction against the comment. Even a small :-) smile can make us happy.

I have read some of the posts regarding Tagging. So we all know its importance and do not want to discuss it now. Similarly back linking is important (tagging a specific post is called back linking - You can track tagging or back linking by Technorati or by setting->comment->enable backlinks in blogger service). Don’t forget to back link if you are writing your post based on someone’s basic thoughts.

PS: this pic is the back view from our apartment.

Post of the Month : David's Tips for Free Writing.

2007-09-17T15:51:00.000+03:00

There are many aspects of blogging, one of them are obviously to enhance our writing skills, but if we get ready made tips in a series of posts, that’s really helpful. Yes, David Mcmahon a Melbourne based journalist, photographer and bestselling novelist, came up with a series of amazing posts in his blog for aspiring writers.

David emphasised in one the post that – “This series of posts is not just for people who are writing novels or other books. It is for writers of any description - essayists, those doing creative writing courses, or any of the many niches for writing, photography or blogging.”

He has discussed following topics in his blog so far. I find all of them extremely helpful, may be helpful for you also. I thank David for sharing so much valuable experience in free, helping and motivating others and cheering us constantly.

How Do I Get A Monopoly On Query Letters?,
So You Feel Like You’ve Hit A Brick Wall?,
Don't Drive Yourself Too Hard ,
Gotta Go With The Flow,
Let Me Help You With That Book You're Writing .

Here go some of the tips I liked most in his Telling Write From Wrong series.

“To those writing books or novels, my first piece of advice is to write a short synopsis. When I wrote my first novel, Vegemite Vindaloo, I started with great momentum. But I didn't write a synopsis, so I got derailed very quickly. I could not figure out where the plot was going.”

“First sentence ain't happenin'? No worries, just start with the first thought that comes into your head.”

“Recognise a moment of inspiration. Write it down. And when you are back at your computer, allow it to guide you. Sometimes these ideas ``write'' themselves, but sometimes they need a lot of sweat and toil to translate into words on a computer screen.”

“..there is no "correct" wordage on a daily basis. A steady output works for some people, while bursts of frenetic writing interspersed with several days away from the plot works for others. You write what you want to write, when you want to write.”

This is my choice for best post for the month of August-September 2007.

Hits and Comments in Blogs..

2007-09-13T15:14:00.000+03:00

How important is to read other blogs?

I will say, it is extremely important. Otherwise there is no meaning to be in blogosphere. I conducted a poll in this blog few weeks back and 85% of the voter claimed that they read more than 10 blogs per week. This is amazing.

Reading others blog is important because if you are not a good reader you can not be a good writer, something like, to be a good speaker, you must have to be a good listener. Another point is to know different dimensions and mindsets of bloggers. Believe me you will not be biased by other bloggers, you will learn a lot, will know many different things, like photography, innovative way of expressing yourself. It will basically widen your thoughts.

To read others blogs you can use Bloglines or subscriber or reader. I guess this is much better than blogrolling, as you will see the update instantaneously. You should not have to click manually to every blog.
But sometime blogrolling is good, to let others know about your choices, to access your favorite blogs directly.

What blogs to visit regularly is depends on you, but recently I found one funny thing, that most of the bloggers prefer to visit the blogs of opposite sex. Initially I thought it is my personal trend, but gradually discovered it’s a common trend. However there are exceptions. Just see your comments or last visited blogs, you will have an fair idea about it. In my case the proportion is 60:40 (sometime 70:30).

How important is to have comments and hits in your blog?

If your quality of blog is good, it is obvious that you will have huge no of hits. But its not going to happen in a day. You can track no of hits in many ways like feed burner, site meter.

Hits and comments are important for inspiration. One of my senior told me each of us needs a bit of motivation for next step, except few great men like Buddha. Thus every blogger is concerned about hits/comments and its trends. See the comment below from Chewy – (wrote to me against my last post)
"Some people try blogging because it's the "in thing" to do. Then they stop because they don't get any comments.I've learned that if I visit other people's blogs and leave a comment they will most likely return the visit and leave a message."

I have seen some blogs where there are huge no of hits but limited comments; it’s mainly because they don’t comment in other blogs. But commenting is very delicate matter in blogosphere. Comments like “Nice post”, “Thought Provoking Post” are not very interactive way of communication or putting your opinion. Try to write something elaborately about what you like and dislike. But I think its better not to write what you dislike strongly, because it can hurt the blog writer. We are in a digital community where everything is being judged by words and images. So try to encourage others and avoid putting hard and abusive comments. If you are a blogger never use anonymous coating.
Constructive criticism is most important thing in a comment. You must put your thoughts which reflect your personality. But many blogger can not accept it easily. It happened to me as well, I get bit depressed when I got poor rating in my pictures.But I still I like negative comments as it helps me to improve and it reinvigorates me.

You can have many hits from different types of Internet users, but very few of them will put comment. If the reader is not a blogger, he hardly gets interest to put comment. Thus even though you write well and don’t comment others, you are not going to have a proper reflection of your post. You may think this is superb, but most of the readers may not like it. I think a post without criticism means nothing. So if you feel to comment others post just write it, but never do it for shake of writing comment. I read almost all posts of my co-bloggers, but don’t comment in all.

Tagging and back linking are another interesting topic in blogging, I will write in another post.

PS: This pic is off the topic, of my niece (my sister's daughter) was taken when she was only 1 month old, now she is 3 months old. I am missing her.

What to post?

2007-09-10T15:50:00.001+03:00

I read many blogs in a week, now it has become much easier to use this one as I started reading them by Google reader (see this video if you are still not convinced to use any reader).

The natures of posts are really varied in nature, quality and representations. Most of the bloggers posts observations about their own life or things associated to them.

But I doubt how many of us are writing the sensitive issues of our mind? Aren’t we afraid to post controversial issues? Like political, religious, erotic topics ..
Well its up to you, what will you post, post any topic in which you are comfortable.

But in order to attract wider audience your posts have to be versatile or generic. If you are an Indian and mainly post on India always how a person from UK will feel interested in your blog. Its natural. The topic should be interesting, not always in a politician’s voice, like do this, we have to do that etc.

Look and feel and innovation matters. The layout have to be colorful, posts should have relevant pictures to attract readers. No one of us have enough time to read each and every line, unless it is interesting or nicely written.

But the question I face from new bloggers is what to post?

My answer will be post whatever you want. In my last post I talked about blogging in a theme of your interests. And it at least helped one person.
Its important what you want, more readers, more hits, more comments. Then think of the bigger audience, post on the hot and burning but interesting topics. But if you are free bird, just post whatever you feel, its your own domain and you have absolute freedom of expressing yourself.
But be careful as well.

Why Blogging?

2007-09-06T15:38:00.000+03:00

Because I want to blog, I want to make an identity, make a community, and share my thoughts and pics?

No, after certain point most of us blog because of our blogging syndrome.

We come here to write something, but at the end of the day end up in nothing. Because of work pressure, lack of innovation, not having good writing skills, not being able to put up the thoughts?

No. The main reason is we don’t know the reason why we are here. It has to be clear in bloggers’ mind.

Innovation does matter, but what matter most are the ideas. Ideas are basically thoughts of a particular direction; I mean to say of a particular topic or aim.

Skills and time are not big factors, you can accrue skills with time and you can always find time for your things of interests.

But if only blogging is your interest, you are gone. Soon you will suffer from blogging syndrome and haunt for topics.

Random thoughts can not keep your blog regular and ever lasting. It will die after few months/years unless you have extremely good skills. I am sorry for being harsh; I know how much we love our blogs, but this fact dear.

Then what can make your blog be exceptional, different from others?

One way is to attract your readers with some interesting tags. Keep a suspense tag which will invoke regularly and bloggers will come to your blog, just for it.

Another way is if you live with an idea and if your blog reflects that idea/dream then you are in the right track. The momentum, pace will come from your dreams. You should not have to haunt for subjects, because you know exactly why you are here.

Let’s come to some examples.
David’s Authorblog has many innovative tags to attract bloggers worldwide. Weekly blog rating (Aussiejourno's Weekly Blog Awards), Weekend Wandering, Post of the day etc. His blog will be ever green as he knows why he is in blogosphere (“Totally committed to encouraging excellence in others”).

There are many examples. Chewy, from Western Massachusetts, United States, just enjoys painting, this is her passion. And she knows why she is here.

Well, not everyone has a passion and that never means you should not blog. You can catch a theme of your interest. A good example if Niki’s blogs, a very simple but straight minded and excellent blog of an honest Japanese girl. The blog is nothing but her online dairy. So she enjoys every bit of it. It is important.

Blogging is a good addiction as long as you are enjoying it. Happy Blogging.

I donno what to answer

2007-09-02T23:25:00.000+03:00

Dear dada,

Thanks for sending it such a good gift in my 10th birthday. I like Harry Potter very much. I am very happy dada. Missed you a lot in my birthday party. You know, I got a video games set from papa. Mom prepared lot of sweets and dishes yesterday.

All my friends came in yesterday’s party except Rahaman. I missed him too. I want to go to his house just to know if everything is well, but mom is not allowing me. She is afraid that I will eat something bad in their house. You know beef is prohibited in our society. Papa told Cow is treated as our mother in our religion. In our house we have a picture of God Krishna who stands with a Cow. Mom worships him everyday. She tells cow gives us milk, cow is our mother. Then why others eat it? They should not.

But then why we eat mutton! Last time we went to Kalighat temple in Kolkata, I have seen hundreds of innocent goats for slaughter. I asked papa why we are killing them. Papa told it is religious practice. I don’t know what religion is. But if religion asks my father to kill any man, will he do the same.

In Bengali New Year my papa worships fishes and then mom cooked it. We love fishes. But if we worship, it is also god. Papa told we can eat it as it is allowed in Hindu religion and I have to follow the same as I am also a Hindu by birth. But I don’t know other religion. Why can’t I choose my religion? I will be biased if I follow one religion. I don’t know. I only wish Rahaman is well and will join me today in football match. I love him.

And dada Love you too.
Yours’ Papu.

Do you believe in ghosts?

2007-08-26T23:44:00.001+03:00

David asked: Do you believe in ghosts?

No David, I do not believe in Ghosts, but can not rule out the possibility of its existence, because I can not prove it.

As I have said many times that I believe this World is virtual and we are just part of the game. Well, I can not prove this one as well, but I can feel it by some patterns. Similarly the possibility of existence of a Ghosts World can not be overruled, more interestingly my sis believes in ghosts strongly.

I can share an incident we experienced last year. We went to our maternal uncle’s house where we were celebrating some festival of Hindu Goddess. It was close to the burning ghat (Samshan) of Kharagpur, where the dead bodies are burnt.
At the time of coming back, I told my sis about the place and she was somehow influenced by an uncanny feeling, her eyes were unnatural and her face was surrounded by a fear. She was terribly frightened. It was tough to come back home and the night was even more dangerous. In her hallucination she was watching a black woman in a while Shari and red sindur, who was threatening her constantly. She was crazy and my whole family was not able to control her.
I was also started to feel something, totally moved by the state of my sis. That day I realized that I can not overrule the possibility of a mysterious World.

If we think about the n-dimensional state of a certain point, then the same place can be used by many different things invisible to each other. The basic function of our brain is to feel what we can see, perceive. But there are obviously limitations of it, or in a better way we can say that the program installed in a game is for a specific World. So we can not feel the other World. But there can always be some overlapping of different worlds, may be this is the reason someone can feel or experience the Ghosts World.

If we think in different way, we have so many emotions, passions, thoughts, relations, desires in this World. It can not be vanished in a moment (after we die). Well it can not be proved by the law of conservation of energies, but many things can not be proved which we can not deny. So these can exists in any forms, may be in forms of ghosts.

I can not deny their existence, I can not prove, I can not overrule, but also I can not feel it. May be weak hearted people can feel it, I don’t know!! But I don’t believe Ghost; neither have I had any experience of it.

PS: David, here people often misspell my surname, which proves ghost exists :-)

This intriguing picture is a collage of Goddess Athena, Socrates and Acropolis in Night .

Updated with one story from Kalyan.

I was talking about the story, where Sarat chandra Chattopadhyay had a challenge with his friends that he will go to the cremation site(sasan) on a new moon night(amabasya) alone and prove to his friends that no ghosts exists. To prove that he has indeed visited there he will bury a stick in the ground given by his friends. On the faithful night in the midst of howling foxes and other night animals he went there as was agreed but he also being an human had certain fears or nervousness, so he was also in a hurry to bury the stick as agreed and run away quickly. In this hurriedness his dhoti got struck in the stick that he buried and for a moment he believed that there is a ghost and is pulling his dhoti, and so he fainted in the ground. In the morning his friends got worried and they ran to that place only to see that Sarat babu's dhoti has got struck in the ground stick and that made him faint in the ground, which he was thinking as the ghost.

Cats : India and Europe

2007-08-26T20:15:00.000+03:00

I have been to India last month . Whenever I visit my home soil, it gives me amazing feelings. The smallest things, tiniest creatures give me immense pleasure, I can feel the difference when I come back here in Europe. Its completely a different planet with strictly defined laws, different atmosphere of work, different life to lead.

I like the balance of both the life, which is why I usually spend half a year in India and other half in another countries (although now it has become one year in India and one year in other countries). The balance makes it more interesting, otherwise it would have been a boring life for me. But now I can not enjoy life in a place more than a year, which is definitely not good. I think this trend is now in my family, because we moved a lot in last 60 years, starting from Bangladesh(Dhaka) to Maharastra(Nagpur) and then back to Kharagpur(where I born) and now in Kolkata(where I live in India).

Coming back to the main discussion, I can feel a basic differences in every creature in Europe and in India. Let’s take an example of dogs. They are mainly domestic in Europe, trained and nurtured in proper way, thus they are well behaved, they don’t bite everyone, do not make chaos because the basic needs have been taken care. The situation is quite different in India.

See the cute sweet cats next to my doorsteps in Kharagpur. Their eyes are telling that they are hungry; they need little more love and foods. They were struggling for foods, but still not complaining as they have such a sweet heart. The most unfortunate part of the story is the small one died next day by a bit of a street dog.
Whereas the cats in Delphi, Greece are looking quite relaxed as they don’t have competitions for basic needs, having a small nap in a typical way. They look happier than the common people of poor countries.

I want to draw an analogy not only for dogs and cats, for people also. The basic atmosphere depends on the mentalities of common people. In India 50% people are poor, fight for the basic needs, for Food Shelter and cloths. They struggle to make both the ends meat. When I was standing in a traffic jam, a small boy came with a bouquet and I refused. Then I asked about the root, he happily guided me without any expectations. The smile was genuine which only can come from a lovely heart. I felt sorry for the kind hearted boy, who is struggling to survive; whereas the dogs in developed nations are leading much better life than them. This is the reason I hate pets.
Not everything is measured by self interests in India. A country with a beautiful heart is struggling to make both the ends meat, though many of them are happy.
The situation here is completely different. People can do whatever they want to, can play football for entire life, can focus on anything, because they are not afraid of basic needs. The health and education is also covered by the state, thus the environment is not so competitive (though we can see healthy competition in all environment) and the life is peaceful. They can focus on many different things in which the country can prosper, can write blogs for years, and can enjoy long vacations.
I strongly believe that mere charity can not solve this issue. I really don’t know how we can bridge the differences. A poor Indian can not afford to go to school while they fight for foods everyday, whereas if not they are properly educated the state is not going to improve.

100th POST

2007-08-21T15:43:00.000+03:00

I came to blog world around 6 months back and this is my post no 100 (total in 3 blogs, this one, Travel and Photo blog). It was not an outstanding show and I am not happy, mainly because of my writing skills (I still feel uncomfortable to write good English). Leaving apart the literature part there are many positive aspects also. I got some good blog friends like Kalyan, David, Cuckoo, Stacy, Mridula, Sigma, Niki, Celine, Ash, Backpakker.. and many more. It was totally a new world where I put up my emotions, feelings, experiences, travel, photos.

I have more than 1000 hits in my travel blog and in my profile, Random thoughts and Photo blog cumulatively have almost 1000 hits. Thought it is not big number, but still enough to motivate me for future posts. I have a plan to merge the last two into one blog.

I don’t have enough time to write many posts, as this is not my first or second priority. Family and career consume most of my time and hectic travelling is responsible too (in last one month I have been to Kolkata, Kharagpur, Delhi, Frankfurt and Athens). So, I think the quality of my blog can be improved in many ways.

I thought many time, why do I blog? Just to get my writing skill better or document my travel. No, mainly to share my views to everyone. I believe, blog reflects the personality of the writer, his way of thinking, looking to the World. It defines the individuality of a person, it expresses the original feelings. Yes, one blogger can hide his true feeling in one or two posts, but not in all. Thus blogging is nothing but personal satisfaction to a blogger.

In my blog World, couple of blogs are quite ahead of others. GreatBongs (Arnab) RTDM and David’s Authorblog. These blogs defined a separate community, brought a new definition to the blog World. So, I dont want to comment separately on them.

I would like to say about my first four Blog friends, Kalyan, Cuckoo, Mridula and Sigma.

Kalyan has a very nice blog with wonderful pictures and narrations. I have never seen such a young talented blogger (just to keep in mind that he is still a student) in the blog World. He writes in various topics, some well composed poems, and the most precious element in his blog is his excellent shots. His Calcutta blog is one of the best city blogs (according to me) and his travel experiences are really wonderful. The Calcutta blog is very close to my heart as it vividly reflects my home city. What I want to see in his blog is some short stories / descriptive emotional writing.

Cuckoo, one of the dazzling sensations of Indian blog sphere has impressed me, influenced my thought many time. The young lady is bit commanding sometime (cry man cry), but she simply rocks in her nest. Once I start reading her post I cant stop unless it ends. Its hard to found such a free flow of emotions. The most interesting part of her blog is the conversations in the comments. Her poems are really excellent. What I want to see is some better pictures in her travel blog.

Mridula, I should thank you for bringing me in Blog World. Her blog is awarded best Travel blog award last year in Indibloggies. She has a very typical way of writing. Once she completes a trip she starts posting with a photo and a brief description of the place, slowly reveals the photos and finally comes up with excellent narrations. What I want to see in her blog is a well defined index of all places she covered.

Sigma, another IT guy like me, bit techy and often busy in project work, but still find sometime to share his thoughts in his blog. The speciality of his writing is the emotional touch and unanswerable questions. His travel memoirs is also interesting, specially the photos. What I wanted to see in his blog is some colourful posts in various topics in regular intervals.

Thanks all my blog friends to encourage me and share your thoughts in my blog. I thank couple of my close real life friends Ananda and Kuntal for their honest feedback on my posts.

Please drop your suggestion/comment on my blogs here.

A warm welcome to ICL

2007-08-21T12:22:00.000+03:00

The Indian Cricket League, a desi version of Kerry Packer’s tremendously successful World Series Championships, is the brainchild of Subhash Chandra of the Zee Group. It is designed as a series of tournaments in India with a mix of domestic and foreign players. It is expected to kick-off in November-December with Twenty20 tournament.
I am very happy that we got a new cricket authority parallel to BCCI, who are going to start first professional cricket league in India. Indian Cricket League unveils its cricketers yesterday, which includes many promising young cricketers.
Kapil Dev, the Chairman of Indian Cricket League (ICL) ckaimed that India’s most promising players are part of ICL, however I do feel its not Indian, rather ICL got best Pak Cricketers, Imran Farhat , Inzamam-Ul-Haq , Mohammad Yousuf , Abdul Razzaq. PCB is now in danger and they threatened their players that they will not be picked up in National squad. Some international big shots like Brian Lara, Lance Klusener have already made contract and many more are going to join soon.

This is mainly a business driven approach and will be functioning in city format. They have a big plan ahead and planning to make a new Indian Team in future, may organize some World Cup even. If they manage the show well, ICC may also recognise it and then ICL will be a part of existing international cricketing arena.

I am not discussing the vested monitory interests for Subhash Chandra and Zee group, but feeling exited as this is the first professional approach in our country, where cricket is a religion. BCCI for long 75 years has done nothing for it, no basic infrastructure, no improvement on the quality of game. The so called team India (rather we should say Team BCCI, as BCCI is a private governing body and not a part of Govt of India) is performing poorly recent times. We need to have an infrastructure where more and more cricketers can play, can make career, can earn money. I always thought that in a country of 1.2 Billion people we should have more opportunity for good cricket. I thought of promoting zonal cricket in a professional way(so that it also merge with the international cricket). But BCCI has done nothing like that. In avg one International match in Eden Garden per year is not enough; people never get tickets though they are ready to pay. It’s the so called monopoly of BCCI, which is why Indian cricket has suffered a lot.

Keeping all these factors in mind, I should say it is a great move by Zee, and it will foster the game, cricketers and entertain viewers. So ICL heartiest welcome from my side.

Danish Newspaper Cartoon

2007-08-16T09:28:00.000+03:00

In continuation of my MF Hussein's painting posts, I am posting two photos published in Danish Newspaper on 2005, caused Islamic resentment worldwide. I am not justifying anything, only putting up some facts.

These cartoons of Mohammad published in Jyland Posten and then circulated in many countries, I guess the revolt had made it more popular. I donno whether that was the intention of MF Hussein while painting Hindu Goddess.

2007-08-16T09:02:00.000+03:00

Be a judge yourself of Hussain's paintings below.

Goddess Durga in sexual union with Tiger	Prophet's Daughter Fatima fully clothed
Goddess Lakshmi naked on Shree Ganesh's head	M.F. Hussain's Mother fully clothed
Naked Saraswati	Mother Teresa fully clothed
Naked Shri Parvati	Hussain's Daughter well clothed
Naked Draupadi .	Well clothed Muslim Lady.
Naked Lord Hanuman and Goddess Sita sitting on thigh of Ravana	Muslim poets Faiz, Galib are shown well-clothed
Full Clad Muslim King and naked Hindu Brahmin. The above painting clearly indicates Hussain's tendency to paint any Hindu as naked and thus his hatred.	Naked Bharatmata - Hussain has shown naked woman with names of states written on different parts of her body. He has used Ashok Chakra, Tri-colour in the painting. By doing this he has violated law & hurt National Pride of Indians. Both these things should be of grave concern to every Indian irrespective of his religion.
Out of the four leaders M. Gandhi is decapitated and Hitler is naked. Hussain hates Hitler and has said in an interview 8 years ago that he has depicted Hitler naked to humiliate him and as he deserves it ! How come Hitler's nudity cause humiliation when in Hussain's own statement nudity in art depicts purity and is in fact an honour ! This shows Hussain's perversion and hypocrisy.

Religious Paintings ; Some thoughts

2007-08-15T23:37:00.000+03:00

Today is 60th Independence Day of India. Coincidentally its national holiday here in Greece, for orthodox Christian religious day. So, it I enjoyed the whole day with a good food, TV, Internet and a long drive to Rafina beach. It was a fantastic day.

I got a mail on M.F. Hussein’s paintings from one of my friends and it made me thinking little bit so just posted the following post. By religion I am a Hindu, but hardly follow any rituals. I am proud to be associated with the age-old heritage of Hinduism; religion is something which gives me an identity, which makes me open to the World to accept others, to understand the divine of humanity. I truly accept every race, religion and go to Church, Gurudwara, Temples and all possible religious places, like to participate in many different religious festivals. My concept of God completely varies from all religion (matches somehow with Islam but I hardly got the freedom to participate with them).

Religion is something which will not make be confined, will not restrict me from doing something, will not cause others problem, and will not make be violent, aggressive. I eat beef, which is prohibited in Hinduism. But I do it as I think there is nothing illogical (if we cook it properly). With change of time the ritual changes, the religion takes a new shape, but the basic remains same. Religion teaches us to live in harmony, to love each other.

Then one may ask why I have done the post on Hussein. Its only to put up his thoughts. I don’t want to comment on these pictures, I posted them as it was sent in mail. But there are some definite thought of perversion and these creation will definitely hurt many Hindus. MF Hussein is a great painter, but biased somehow. I have no problem to accept these creative paintings, but majority of Indians really feel ashamed of it.

In my next post I will try to put up something controversial, what if it has been done with Islam. How would they react? But I will not explain the differences, as I am not here to judge anyone; I am only posting the facts.

"The Road to pSingularity” by Dr. Prithwis Mukerjee

2007-08-08T11:09:00.000+03:00

Recently I have gone though an excellent book of different dimensions - “The Road to pSingularity” by Dr. Prithwis Mukerjee, a Imagineer per-excellence, director of a Big Global IT firm in Kolkata.
Yesterday I got to know that the book is available in paperback version also.

Readers who are going through this blog first time, may have some problem to understand the inherent meanings of this concept of Singularity and may find some new terms like MMORPG and Second Life. But if you read the whole book thoroughly, you can understand it for sure. It is very well written with natural examples and real life feelings. The basic fact is the concept of singularity can only be understood better if one can feel it. I was in a seminar last year and was totally moved by the concept of Singularity/Vedanta/Second life. I felt I was living in a virtual world and that feeling existed almost half a year. It was an amazing experience, whenever, wherever I am going was feeling everything virtual, starting from the place, people to destiny. To me it is another game, someone is playing and I still believe in this concept. I documented some of my feelings in this blog.

Coming back to the book, it is illustrated with very creative thoughts and personal real life feelings. The innovative concept of living in YantraJaal is connected with Vedanta and Matrix. The author articulated that, It is all Maya (in Deccan Herald) and we are living our Nth life in this virtual world, whom we called Earth. Definitely a slow and through reading of this thought provoking book will take you to different dimensions.

You can read the full book online at HERE OR can BUY the paperback edition at HERE.

Before reading, I will recommend to see this video first. Pls send the your review to the Author.

Guess who?

2007-07-19T16:12:00.000+03:00

I am busy, so got disconnected from my Blog World, will come back by 1st Aug, meantime guess who are they in the above picture.

And finally back, thanks for your comments, the correct guess is from Nanditha Prabhu , the above pic is of me and my twin brother Pabitra - when we were three years old (current pic below).

Pijush & Pabitra

Kharagpur : Nomenclature

2007-07-10T12:54:00.000+03:00

Collage of pics taken by me, click to enlarge

Not enough good articles we have on Kharagpur in internet, not even good books in English. So I thought to start my Kharagpur series in this blog. It will mostly contain historic and cultural information of my home town, a city of more than 100 years but a place of thousands of years.

The name of every place has its own meaning, so the word Kharagpur should have something; however there is no literary meaning of the word ‘kharagpur’ in Bengali dictionary. Thus this must have been inherited from some themes, subjects.

From my childhood I knew that Kharagpur is named after the old Khargeswar temple. But recently I was reading a book where it claims that Khargeswar temple was founded 400 years back, but Kharagpur exists from the age of Mahabhat. So, definitely the so called nomenclature history is not true, rather the fact is on the other way around.

Regarding this matter thorough research has done by Shyamapada Bhowmik in his book Kharagpur: Itihas O Sanskriti.

“One of the popular hearsay is the place is named after the king of Bishnupur,
Khargamalla at 841AD. But that time Kharagpur was ruled by Bengal King Devpal
(810-850), an emperor per-excellence of Pal dynasty, whose far-flung kingdom was
extended from Bramhaputra to Sindhu River and even in south India, which means
almost the whole India was under him. So it is most unlikely that the place will
be named after some other King. Thus this is again a rumor.”

If we split the word in two parts Kharag – Pur , then we have separate meaning. The literal meaning from the Samsad Dictionary are given below.

Kharag –n, a large falchion for immolating beasts; a large falchion; the horny
appendage on the nose of the rhinoceros.

Pur –n, a house, an abode, a city, a town, a village.

The combination gives a meaning of the word --- “A place inhabited with armed (with scimitar or sword or falchion) people”.

This meaning can be accepted as no other logic can prove the nomenclature of the place.

Indian Road & Traffic : Some Observations

2007-07-09T11:29:00.001+03:00

Some of my current observations regarding Indian Road/Traffic condition are listed below.

1. Some of the roads are one-way in morning and two-ways in afternoon.
2. Some of them are closed for contractions for months, which create massive chaos.
3. There are hardly any provisions of street lights in National highways; however huge toll fees are collected in many places. Highway should be of three lanes either way, but max it is of two lanes.
4. After the rain the pits and holes are often created in the big roads.
5. Sometime the drives in normal roads are compared to some fun rides, car damage and punctures are very usual things.
6. In the streets of city, there is hardly any lane concept; cars are choosing the virtual lanes randomly at their wishes.
7. Sometime traffic lights are not functioning; in most of the cases traffic signals are not present in major crossings.
8. Directions and information are almost not maintained; even the exits from city, the directions to airport/stations are not there which is absolutely solicited.
9. Very few flyovers compare to the demands.
10. The road conditions in the countryside are even worse, narrow and peach less.

And some facts.

1. Five out of seven recent deaths of IBM India employees caused due to road accidents.
2. On the way from Khragpur to Kolkata(130 km) on 03.07.2007, I have seen four massive accidents, where the vehicle lost control either because of rainy weather, or drove mistakenly.
3. It was a horrible experience for me as the visibility was very poor in night and the massive downpour or rain made it rather difficult to see what next after 5 meters. I was scared by the tempestuous wind above a semicircular bridge, where I almost couldn’t see the edges of the bridge. Fortunately I survived but the absences of street light always foster the probability of accidents.
4. However I reached Kolkata safely, I found it not safe for driving, not because of the reckless drivers, but for water bogged poor state of the roads after the rain, which looked like virtual canals.
5. Everyday in road accident at least few people dies in Kolkata, one of the recent victims is grand father of my friend, passed away couple of months back after being shoved by an small vehement auto riksa. Sahib Singh Verma, ex Delhi CM died in accident recently. Hundreds of accidents take place everyday across India, and thousands more survives luckily or by intuitions of the drivers.

The situations are really horrible. But is it really because of the deplorable road conditions? No. Here go some more observations.

1. Even though some roads have lane concepts (by white markers) people used to drive in the middle of it, to take the advantages of both lanes.
2. Every one is in rush in the city and not ready to leave space for anyone. “Blow Horn” if you want to pass someone in India, in contrary developed countries are minimizing the use of horn.
3. Traffic rules are not that strong in case of accidents and defaulters. Manipulations are encouraged by traffic police to violate rules. Poor qualities of materials are used for the road constructions, again the tenders/contracts system are under the vicious circle of corruption.
4. Process and rules are made to be broken, that’s the mentality of maximum public taxi/auto/truck drivers. They are not educated enough to follow the traffic rules. Even the common people cross the road anywhere they want.
5. Foremost there is lack of projection from state govts, which is clearly proved by the statistics that only 8% of the whole are roads in kolkata which is much much less than the standards.

So basically the problem is in out characters, attitudes. The infrastructure and facilities can not change the country unless the people change. The same person drives his car differently in Europe/US and in India. In fact I do the same sometime, because I am an Indian, a typical Indian!!

Visibility in daytime

Genographic Project Update III

2007-06-25T16:23:00.000+03:00

I have already written my understanding about the Genographic Project. Do not get confused by the word Genographic, DNA, Chromosome etc; rather read this one just as a discovery information, then it may be interesting.

I was reading an article in internet from the site of Genographic project, and came to know some interesting facts about human migration and thought sharing here.

Scientists agree that all humans share a common ancestry in Africa. Much less well understood is how the human race migrated from Africa and became so diverse. So far we know from the evidence of fossil and genetic data that human race was originated in Africa couple of hundred thousand years ago, few thousand individuals in Africa to six and half billion today all over the World.
The genographic project, which helps in analysis of DNA to track the ancestry roots have already reveled some interesting facts. Some of them I have mentioned in first post.

Here goes the analysis of DNA of an US born anthropologist Dr Spencer Well who is heading the project. He has common Y chromosome haplotype or set of linked markers that’s found through Southern England. If we go little bit further back, his ancestors were living down in Spain. This is during the worst part of the last ice age; that means 15000 years ago. If we go back to 35000 years ago, his ancestors were in Central Asia, and before that at around 40-45,000 years back they lived in Middle East; as part of second migration out of Africa; they were back n Africa along with everybody else, around 50,000 years ago.

As far the project can tell about two migrations from Africa, the second one was the major one we just discussed, was through Middle East around 45,000 years ago.

The first one took place probably around 50-55,000 years ago that took a southern coastal rout, so along with the south cost of Asia, southern India and ended up in Australia. Isn’t it amazing!!

This document has opened up some more information to me. I discussed that the ancestry root can be traced by Y chromosome, but for female I didn’t have any clue, but came to know about Mitochondrial DNA; what I still don’t know is how we can trace with this DNA, still searching for answers.

If you have a vision, stick to it - Part III

2007-06-19T15:49:00.000+03:00

Last week, I came across many different personalities and all of them unequivocally expressed same thought, in different forms. First, an American country manager, the Global account executive of Vodaphone account of our firm, but very friendly in nature. He invited me for a surprise dinner and it was my pleasure to attend a casual dinner with a senior director of US, where we discussed limited necessary business topics and more about general objectives. What impressed me more about him is his focus to work and adherence to objectives. He has given some example in his twenty years of professional career, where he simply focused to get the job done. According to him, we are here to perform certain tasks and it’s obvious that many problems will arise before completion. We have to complete it in a proper way, following the guidelines and overcome all hurdles by means of our constant endeavors. Yah! It sounds simple, though this is the fundamental aspect to be succeeded, that most of us do not follow, or try to follow and give up in certain point of time. A failure in any form is comparable to a small death. The constant effort, focus of objective, the fight for every inch, the adherence to goal, and the continuous battle to the objective makes the very difference between success and failure, living and dead.
Now comes the question of objectives, how to determine and what to do? The set of objectives are determined by the vision of each individual. Well, I am not going to deliver a small lecture on how to objectives and vision, but want to tell about two Indians I met in flight while coming back to India. Both of them are from AP (HYD based) and incredibly focused in their vision. The first gentleman (sorry I can not tell the name/company name as I haven’t sought permission beforehand) was seating next to me and is in IT industry for last 10 years. Ten years is a long time, but very short compare to what he has done so far. After completion of his BE and MBA from Hyderabad, he went to US and worked in IT, opened a firm, learnt latest technologies, trained people and developed a firm of 80 consultants only within a span of four years, then got a good offer and sold the firm in million dollars. It was impressive, but what stunned me was his next innings. In last five years he has built one ERP software product development with the help of 30 consultants. He finally launched it this year and implemented in some small medium scale industries. This is completely unbelievable and just a dream for me. This is just not possible without vision. He is not from IIMs/IITs, but a man with a vision, where degree, Institutes hardly matters. Education is the basic step which only can give a start up. Rest on the will and effort and of course on the Vision. Vision is something in which we can see the futuristic realistic dream and which can be attained by the successful execution of a set of objectives in a definite timeframe.

Now the question comes, what should be one’s vision? How to determine what to do? These questions has wonderfully answered by another US-UK based businessman, another entrepreneur originally from AP and harvesting his dreams. I encountered him in Mumbai Airport. He is a man with definite projection of his vision, where he wants to see himself after 5/10/20/lifetime. What impressed me most was his understanding of Vision, in short and long run. He emphasized that everyone should jot down what you really want to do, even if it is about taking care of your parents or writing a book. Most of the young graduates always ask what they should do, but it has to be decided by every individual, what he like to be, his vision, his path.
He told, in an engineering college three hundred students were asked to write about their vision in after thirty years, and only three of them were able to write. The interesting observation after thirty years is those three people are earning eighty five percent of the total of all students. It’s nothing but because of planned traversal in a particular trajectory. Vision comes from dream, Visions gives us the path of traversal. But we may have many contradictory paths of interests, which one to choose? Obviously we should follow the most important dream of our life, which is worth, which is closely associated with our soul, of which we are capable. It reminded me the words from Carlos Castaneda---“My friend, you know for me and for you and perhaps for everyone there is a path, a path that has heart, there we have to travel, looking, looking breathlessly.”

While most of us are busy in apprehending what we should do, some of us are really making their dreams a reality. The recent trend of entrepreneurships by Indians in US market has changed my notion about us, Indians. We can do things, can achieve the pick in every field, and may be we will achieve it one day. I don’t feel comfortable to criticize my country in everything, because the words are not going to deliver changes. Important to me is what each of us are delivering to change the so called shabby image of Mother India.
Finally on Sunday evening, I was watching IFEA awards. The concluding words were from the Winner of Filmfare Best Actor Award - Hrithik Roshan. He reiterated the same voice “Nothing is impossible, believe me nothing is impossible”. Impossible means – I am possible. It’s just a mental barrier makes our tasks sometime harder, remove it, and feel free …

End of Greece ???

2007-06-12T18:10:00.001+03:00

Is it because I don’t like Athens, for its scorching heat, traffic congestion, unclean appearance, dense buildings and language problem; NO, this is not the reason.

Is it because I am bit scared of the illegal immigrants of Omonia, who don’t care about anything and busy in robbing, rape, black marketing, and made the deshi market a hell, OR of the Pakistani who caught me one day in the street, and asked why I am not Muslim, explained why should I accept Islam, who emphasized being a civilized and educated person, how can I be a Hindu who follows stupid rituals. NO, this is not the reason.

Is it because I am homesick and cant live without my family, missing my town and surroundings desperately, or enough of Europe, my long stay in Greece made me sick; NO, this is not the reason.

Is it because of my poor performance, or we lost the project or the local managers gone crazy and decided to spent rest of the summer in Aegean beaches with beautiful babes, go live should have been delayed. NO, this is not the case.

Is it because some urgent issue happened in my family OR I am feeling sick OR the water is not good enough for my hairs. NO, this is not the case.

The reason being the stupidity of Greece Immigration who refused my extension of my Work Permit and more idiots is the local employer who made a mess of it. As a sweet consequence I have to leave Greece forever, for which I was not ready. But again this is the part of our professional life and I now ready to go. It was a great stay and I enjoyed every bit of it, starting from the mountainous Delphi to seaside driveway of Sunion, volcanic Santorini to historic Marathon, bluish Mediterranean to greenish Poros and enchanting Aegina, colourful Corinth to ancient Acropolis, new capital Athens to old capital Nafplio. I must say the work life balance was excellent here and I will miss many more things, so now feeling nostalgic.
No more emotional talk and I have to pack my bags (as of now 16 bags have been packed and still going) to catch the flight to Kolkata.

I really don’t know whether I will come back, but what really bothering me is the abrupt end of the assignment. I have closed many things during last three days. Packing, Cargo, Bank, Apartment, Handover of my work, reapplying Work Permit …. All in three days. The uncertainty of my work permit is still there. That’s the reason I am not happy.

The only happy part is going back to my own country :-)

One more form of Indian Corruption

2007-06-06T12:44:00.000+03:00

Its very Important … for the person traveling abroad… Read this carefully ….

Be Careful at the Indian Airports, This is a well organized conspiracy by Indian Immigration, Police, Customs and Air India staff with networking at all the Indian International Airports. Be careful when ever you give your passport to Immigration/ Customs/Air India staff. The pass port can be easily tampered and can create trouble to you. They have found easy way of making money from NRIs. This is the way it works:

At the time of the passenger's departure, if the passenger is not looking at the officer while he is stamping the exit, the officer very cleverly tears away one of the page from the passport. When the passenger leaves the immigration counter, the case is reported on his computer terminal with full details. Now all over India they have got full details of the passenger with Red Flag flashing on the Passport number entered by the departure immigration officer. They have made their money by doing above. On arrival next time, he is interrogated. Subject to the passenger's period of stay abroad, his income and standing etc., the price to get rid of the problem is settled by the Police and Immigration people. If someone argues, his future is spoiled because there are always some innocent fellows who think the honesty is the basis of getting justice in India ...

Please advises every passenger to be careful at the airport. Whenever they hand over the passport to the counters of Air India, or immigration or the customs, they must be vigilant, should not remove eyes from the passport even if the officer in front tries to divert their attention. Also, please pass this information to all friends, media men and important politicians. Every month 20-30 cases are happening all over India to rob the NRIs the minute he lands. Similar case has happened with Aramco's Arifuddin. He was traveling with his family. They had six passports. They got the visa of America and decided to go via Hyderabad from Jeddah. They reached Hyderabad. Stayed about a month and left for the States. When they reached the States, the page of the American visa on his wife's passport was missing. At the time of departure from Hyderabad it was there, the whole family had to return to Hyderabad helplessly. On arrival at Bombay back, they were caught by the police and now it is over 2 months, they are running after the Police, Immigration officers and the Courts. On going in to details with him, he found out the following: One cannot imagine, neither can believe, that the Indian Immigration dept can play such a nasty game to harass the innocent passengers.

All the passengers traveling to & fro India via Bombay and Hyderabad must be aware of this conspiracy. Every month 15 to 20 cases are taking place, at each mentioned airport, of holding the passengers in the crime of tearing away the passport pages. On interviewing some of them, none of them was aware of what had happened. They don't know why, when and who tore away the page from the middle of the passport. One can imagine the sufferings of such people at the hands of the immigration, police and the court procedures in India after that. The number of cases is increasing in the last 2-3 years. People who are arriving at the immigration, they are questioned and their passports are being held and they have to go in interrogation. Obviously, the conspiracy started about 2 to 3 years ago, now the results are coming. Some of the Air India counter staff too is involved in this conspiracy.

Agression and Compromise

2007-05-31T14:43:00.000+03:00

One of the recent feedbacks I have got from my European colleagues is, I am not that aggressive and that allows others to take additional advantage on me. Too nice is not good enough. Someone can dominate, misuse sometime. But truly speaking I do not want be aggressive because I get arrogant and rough when I am angry. In past, there were innumerous incidents when I lost control in anger and that cost me a lot.

Typical characteristic of a common Indian is to make compromise and I am not exceptional. I have got a fact that India had not invaded any country in last thousand years. We have always defended foreign attacks. This is simply amazing. The perseverance and heritage that Indian Culture has gained in thousands of year is unequivocally appreciated. Being an integral part of that civilization obviously my nature is influenced by it. Compromises give lot of satisfaction and stabilization. It gives me immense pleasure and self satisfaction, when someone is happy for my compromise and some problem is solved for our understandings. Compromise sometime results in devotion and sacrifice, whereas aggression often comes closer to selfishness.

But if one is never aggressive and always compromises he is WRONG sometime. The proper balance of aggression and patience is important. Anger is bad, but if it is in right time, with proper magnitude and well directed, then it is better than anything else. It can drive many things, can solve many issues.

In this regard I want to talk about two Indian personalities. First one, Mahatma Gandhi, who introduced Satyagraha, was an emblem of compromise. He has shown the way of showing aggression in a controlled passion. It’s not always compromising and sacrificing, but also putting up the relevant issues to the British Govt and took necessary actions for Independence.

Another example is Sonia Gandhi (unfortunately I dont like her). Being a non Indian (in the sense she can’t speak any Indian Language and not exposed to Indian Culture, she left India once after her marriage with Rajeev Gandhi, for not liking the country, may be this is the reason I do not like her) she can never be the Prime minister of the nation. She is aggressive but the devotion she has shown by refusing the post of PrimeMinisterShip was really praiseworthy. She has own the heart of millions and has became an admirable person in India.

Mahatma was by nature a person of sacrifice, has shown how controlled aggression can result in Independence, where as Sonia is an aggressive political leader, has shown how devotions can melt the bitterness of billions of Indians. Thus, it is important to have a proper balance of Aggression and Compromise in order to achieve the equilibrium in all aspect. We can say it as a controlled aggression, which means control over aggression to me.

The Genographic Project -II (Male carries the Ancestry)

2007-05-30T10:56:00.000+03:00

We are still living is a male dominated society, where the Surname of male is still used as Family name.
Specially in India, we have some common believes that women are responsible for giving birth male child and only the male child can carry the ancestry.
The first one is definitely a misconception. We knew from the school that the sex of the child is determined by the father. Here is a small revision.
Male contains X and Y Chromosomes; Female contains X and X. So for a son the Y chromosome has to come from the Father.
But it is true that the family characteristics propagate through males. So “male child can carry the ancestry” is not a misconception. See the flowing explanations.
I have found the following 4 slides in http://www.dnaancestryproject.com/ ; where it tells

“A male inherits his Y-Chromosome directly from his father. The Y-Chromosome
that a male receives from his father is very special because it holds a lot of
valuable information about his ancestry. This is because the Y-Chromosome is
passed down along the male line, relatively unchanged from generation to
generation. A forefather will pass his Y-Chromosome down to all of his sons, and
they will then pass it down to all of their sons, and so on throughout the
generations along the male line. Thus, males who are descendents of the same
line will have the same or nearly identical Y-Chromosomes.”

"When a Y-Chromosome genealogy test is performed, the laboratory examines
specific regions (markers) along the Y-Chromosome called "hypervariable"
regions. Hypervariable regions are areas within the Y-Chromosome that may differ
greatly between different family lines. The type of hypervariable region which
is studied in Y-Chromosome testing is called STR markers (stands for "Short
Tandem Repeat" markers). STR markers are regions of the Y-Chromosome where small chunks of the DNA are repeated over and over again. The number of times that these small chunks of DNA repeat themselves in the Y-Chromosome is variable amongst different family lines."

So, we can conclude that the unique ancestral traits are carried only by the male members because, all males with the same ancestors will have the same or similar Y DNA markers. For the female it gets overlapped with many different genes from mother sides.

After going through these slides, the basic question that came to my mind is if human is originated from single person, then the Y pattern (ATGC base patterns) will be same for all male in this world, which is not.

There are 2 possibilities. The first one if the initial set of Homo sapiens originated in different parts, who had different Y chromosomes. But still this one is not that convincing because as a consequence large section of human has to contain same Y patterns, which is not the reality.

Second possibility that came in my mind is Mutation (the abrupt change of Gene orientation of a species due to some external factors). This is the case probably, for details I have to dig more into the subject and will keep you updated.

The Genographic Project - I (Sample DNA of 2 Indians)

2007-05-29T17:31:00.000+03:00

I really don’t know why India and Pakistan fight between each other, why we pretend Africa is backward in terms of civilization, I wonder why we conclude the white are more civilized than black? Science proved everything wrong by virtue of innovative researches and experiments.
Yes, a stunning result from The Genographic Project revealed many mysteries’ of human migration. It’s a joint venture of IBM and National Geographic and the project is still going on. Being an Indian I first checked the result of the Geographic projection of IBM India Country General Manager(from AP, ancestors from Tamil Nadu)

"Shanker’s DNA matches that of Haplogroup R1A, a group that scientists believe
probably formed in what is now Pakistan and northern India about 30,000 years
ago. About 20 percent of the men in India are in Haplogroup R1A.
But Shanker probably has many distant relations in Europe as well. For example, R1A is the predominate type of DNA found in Poland. Geneticists believe that the group spread westward from India in an arc that went through central Asia to Russia and as far west as eastern Germany."

Isn’t it stunning!! My belief was that the David civilization was hardly affected by the Aryans and they are the natives of India, confined in the southern territory. I was wrong.

Another well known truth is that the first human was originated in Africa, all of our grand grand ……..grand father (we call him Adam) was from this poorest ebony continent, and when I see read that article, I feel sorry for all the bloody wars, racism, cast, creed, religion and all possible man made divisions. Under one umbrella we all are living and our source is same.

I guess I am talking hypothetical. Lets come back to the reality with some more details of Geographic project, where the family tree DNA testing results in charting the genetic lineage.

"By unlocking DNA, you can find out very interesting information about your
personal migration pattern over the last tens-of-thousands of years," says
Greenspan.
It’s called "The Genographic Project," and the theory behind the
DNA testing is that we all share a common ancestor who lived in Africa 120,000
years ago.
Sixty thousand years ago, our ancestors began migrating to the
Middle East, India, Asia and Northern Europe. With each move, mutations occurred
in the DNA and each mutation is associated with a place and time in history.
That's the crucial link scientists need to be able to tell where you came from.

I found it really interesting, the mind boggling results has answers many questions of human civilization and yet to explore the minute details and intricacies of human migrations.
Lets take an example of another Indian, Aseem Adhav working in IBM US.

"Born and raised in India, Aseem Adhav discovered his DNA places him in
haplogroup R (M173). This lineage first appeared about 35,000 years ago and
probably arose among migrant hunters from central Asia who moved west and then
east. This was the first large scale settlement of Europe by modern humans. This
group was responsible for the famous cave paintings in Lascaux and Chauvet and
may have hastened the disappearance of the Neanderthals by out-competing that
species for resources."

Again I am taken aback. According to my knowledge the European civilization(Greek 3000BC) was more ancient than the Indian one(2500BC). However the first human civilization(70000BC) was originated in Africa, the Mother Nation. Well, its the necessity, weather, circumstances, history, nature and interests made each of the country, civilizations so different, but the basic of every human is identical.

The ambitious five year program by National Geographic and IBM is now in middle and way to go to explore the mysteries, how we have traversed many different paths in different time line and shaped our civilization. I will come up with more details in subsequent posts and lets see whether this project can reveal the secret fact - Laden is a remote brother of Bush.

------x-----

PS: I am only proving the information available in Net which is not confidential. The picture is taken by me in Helsingor Castle, Denmark.

The Nostradamus Code: World War III

2007-05-23T12:07:00.000+03:00

It is always interesting to read something about the future, especially the complex word puzzle constructed by Nostradamus. Many different people has interpreted it in different way and tried to formulate the prediction. Thousands of Internet sites and books are available in different languages. The first one I read was few years back after WTC attack, which claims the prediction was done by Nostradamus with specific date and place. Well, when I read the original version, it’s quite vague and many things can be interpreted from it. One of the funny interpretations is that, after third and final World War, the only country which will exist, is India.

Couple of years back (I can not recall the date) one of the Nostradamus book was very famous in US, where his words has been interpreted like the catastrophe will happen on that date and that’s the end of this civilization. There have also been several well-known internet hoaxes which created trouble in different countries.

The latest one is World War III. It came in form of Book recently, though we are listening from the very first year of 21st century. This book The Nostradamus Code: World War III by Dr. Michael Rathford (who cracked The Nostradamus Code using cutting-edge data mining techniques) claims the same story about a devastating warfare between Christ and Antichrists. This War will start from this year and will be more devastating than any other War world has ever seen. Nuclear weapon will be used by Middle East Leader.

This book claims

During a period of continuing unrest, the leader of a Middle Eastern
country will be able to obtain a nuclear weapon. He will go to the greatest
lengths over the smallest things and will not hesitate to use the weapon because
of his obsessions with deadly warfare. The people he is warring against
retaliate with a nuclear weapon. The country has a coast on the
Mediterranean.

Well its really pointing on the A conflict between the US and Iran, but I guess this Nostradamus interpretations are broadcasted only when we can see the possibilities or the incident already has taken place. Our curiosity and uncertainties of future are making Nostradamus hero of the World as long as something really devastating happens.

Google - The great innovation

2007-05-23T11:34:00.000+03:00

Apple tops the Business Week-Boston Consulting Group’s list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies for the third year in a row while Google maintained it second position (Topped as employer). The Apple iPod -- which has become a cliché of innovation -- evolved from playing songs to displaying pictures to running video, even as it became lighter and thinner. I use an ipod which is excellent and I do feel Apple deserve to be one of the leading innovators. Considering the evolution of ipods in recent years Apple topped the list.

But if we consider 21st Century (last few years); I will say Google is my choice for Most Innovative Company. One can very well ask why? What special about it. Google has a good search engine, but it was designed long back in last years 20th Century. And services like Email, Blog etc are provided by innumerous service providers.

I was introduced to the real world of Google on 2005 and its long 2 years I am using many different services of it, some of which are completely innovative and I was not expected it. It surprised me by modest graphics, robust integration between different services and constant upgradations.

Before that I used to have some Yahoo account and thought its good enough for sending and receiving mails and in some cases Yahoo chat was also good. So I was reluctant to have another Google mail and initially though what’s special about it. But found it much better than any other service providers after few months of use. Though one of my project senior still thinks Yahoo is better :-)

The Google service which impacted me

1. Google Maps and Google Earth: This is the first online map of Kolkata I have seen. There was before some maps but not so clear and detailed; rather scanned copies. It’s under development and yet to cover the small towns and villages. However Google Earth is a fascinating innovation which enables me to find all homes I stayed in the Globe so far starting from Kharagpur Railway Quarter to Henrik Ibsen Vej, Copenhagen.
2. Gmail is very special because of its orientations. Gtalk is embedded and the chained reply messages (mails) are kept in a same folder, which helps to find any message easily. In addition, if it is a group mail, separate colours for different users makes the look and feel really good.
3. Blog: Its just a dream for me. In childhood my dream was to make some dairy kind of thing with my pictures and associated descriptions. I never have though about such an excellent tool which not only make help me to maintain digital dairy, but also can help me to get connected with a cultured global community.
4. Picasa: I just love it, wonderful tool from Google. Its free. I didn’t know I have so many pictures in my Laptop before I installed it. I can mail, blog, print, exports from Picasa. But I use it for changing the look and feel of my pictures. I cant leave without it.
5. Google Docs: Helps me to keep some of my documents online. The important feature is one can convert the doc to pdf from this tool, can make direct blog posting and save draft as well.
6. Picasa Web: For online web album. Public/Private/Protected(Specific users) options are always there, like in blog and docs.
7. There are certain tools which I use, like Google Home page www.google.co.in/ig to customize home page with my favorite links and sites. Google reader keeps track of site browsing, note keeps history etc.
8. And of course Google Search. The most efficient and user friendly search. Any specific search can be carried out through it, like blog or book or image search.
9. Clear voice talk Google talk has helped me to save some money. I usually call my family and friends through this if we both have net connection. I like the graphics and hide/block nature of Gtalk.
10. Of course there are services like Orkut - interactive service (I do not use for specific reason) impacted millions of young Indians of late. Finally I like the Google integration of all services through one ID, some of which I have explained below.
Integration points

#Blogger user id has changed to Gmail ID, basically Gmail Id is the single user name for all services to track all activities

#Gtalk is embedded in Gmail and Gtalk chat history can be saved in Gmail
#Opened any document with Google Doc – the document will automatically be a part of Google docs and spreadsheet.
#The photos shared by Gtalk is saved in local disc and automatically recognised by Picasa
#Pictures can be uploaded in Picasa Web Album through Picasa
#Blog, Mail, export facility is also available in Picasa
#Blog pictures are automatically included in picasa web
#Blogpost can be done from the Google documents and spreadsheets directly
#Blog comments are directly connected to Gmail
#Googla Map and Google Earth has been combined for different views
#All possible specific searches have been kept like Book,Map,Blog etc

"Don't Be Evil" phylosophy of Google is also praise worthy, who never claims money for additional services, provide enough spaces which increases with time and usage. Google has singular focus on users. Even one can earn money by his blog with relevant ads from Google AdSense.

The history of Google is based on innovative research of Sergey Brin, Larry E. Page, (Co-Founder, and now Google President) who still admit that the best innovation happens only under time pressure and employee friendly work atmosphere. That’s why every Google employee gets 15% of their paid work hours to invest in their hobbies/ subject of interest which makes an employee friendly atmosphere and in turn helps to create innovative ideas in employee’s mind. Thus Google is my choice for most innovative company.

What does Innovation means to me?

2007-05-22T20:57:00.000+03:00

In general:
ØA method which is not conventional
ØA thinking which has not been thought before
ØA concept to make a thinks better
ØA tool which will ease our work

In details (few examples):
ØInnovation never means discovery (something is there and we have found it), rather innovation is something which is out of the common pattern and beyond the obvious things.
ØLike a new method of having most employee satisfaction in an Industry is an innovation, such as interactive wiki.
ØInnovation is something which opens a new dimension in our thought, like the second life, it gives a new concept for creating the Universe.
ØThe concepts can be in packing a material, or searching the knowledge documents, if it is a new concept it is innovation
ØObviously a new tool is an innovation, such as Tsunami detector devise

Personality and Charisma

2007-05-20T22:03:00.000+03:00

One of our desires is to be popular and to be center of attraction of a huge mass. I guess its driven by lot of parameters and constraints, which mostly dependent on our personality and charisma.
I was discussing about Charisma and Personality with one of my close friend come colleagues, Ananda and reached a conclusion that it’s a great mystery, why we like someone and why people’s choice differs. I have put some thought in the weekend regarding it.

I initially thought about some common points. We like them who are flexible, open and kind hearted, nice in behavior and talking. Successful or highly educated personalities are also popular. May be celebrities are well accepted to common people, sometime the senior managers can influence the common workers and someone who has deep thinking can attracts others. I like someone thinking in my way and concerned about my identity.

But I was wrong, as I can site numerous so called controversial personality people follows. Osama Bin Laden, Parveg Musharof, Sourav Gangly, Mahatma Gandhi are some kind of personalities whom either you like or dislike, you just can’t ignore them.

Recently one experiment in Japan has proved that will power of human can influence the movement of water in a glass. Similarly one man can also influence others. Let’s take an example of Vivekananda. Once he told that he can drink the whole sea in his hands, he can demolish mountain by virtue of his will power (“Ami gonduse somudra pan koribo, amar iccha matro porbot churno hoiya jaibe”). Being a simple monk, he mesmerized, rather hypnotized everybody in the parliament of religion.

Human being is a charged particle; the orientation is controlled by the human brain. The atomic charge flow and orientation in human body is called Sarbionetics. The will power is the method of orientations. More we have better we can control the action of the external world. One can increase his will power through controlled and continuous practice of certain subjectivity (like religious meditation, believing and thinking particular subject, which leads to some action) or objectivity (Certain Objectives of life, like corporate objective, personal objective). This power provides us huge determination and confidence, which enables us to form our personality. The extreme state of applying will power is hypnotism, by which one not only can attract others, but also can influence and control them.

But it can also happen that ones atomic orientation is automatically inherited by birth and his personality and appearance is attractive. We can call it in born Charisma.
The will power orient atomic particles of human body in particular fashion so that it can attracts everything of outer world. The attraction is nothing but the charged particles of one’s try to orient (or charge) the loosely coupled particles of others, through his action, personality and speeches. The charged body of that person creates such an ambience which automatically attracts others who are less charged or in the lighter version. But this charged personality can be influenced by someone, who is charged in the higher level.
This attraction is not only being done by physical or personal appearance, but also by speeches, writings, appearance in television, and all possible sense organs.

I should not use the word attraction, rather it’s affecting others which results in acceptance or disliking. The affect is also dependent on the nature of people, like the orientation of charge of a Muslim fanatic is oriented in such a way that it gets always affected by the words of Osama Bin Laden where as if someone is thinking deeper in same direction of mine, I appreciate his personality.

If one has a vision, he has to stick to it - Part II

2007-05-02T16:06:00.000+03:00

If one has a vision, he has to stick to it - Part 1

2007-03-16T14:58:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, 14th of March, what happened to Nandigram is awful. 14 people (officially) have been died in violence with State Police Authority and hundreds are injured, a brutal holocaust by the state govt. The Left Govt lead by CPM wanted to acquire the land of the farmers to build a hub for Chemical Hub. Left govt is ensuring that there will be no stone unturned for the Industrialization in West Bengal.
The police succeeded in entering Nandigram, which villagers opposed to land acquisition had turned into a no-entry zone for the administration for over two months, but left deep bloodstains on the chief minister’s industrialization campaign. This is not the first time, had happened before in Nandigram and in Singur. More than 10 people died in different sporadic conflicts in West Bengal, for the industrialization process, and Left govt is now pretty aggressive for there move to convert the land of cultivation to industry.
I do support the initiative for Industrialization by chief minister Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. The former chief minister, Mr. Jyoti Basu, had done nothing for the state, rather ruined the existing industries by labor movements. After the decades of trade union politics and labor strike, lock outs, now the govt has realized the importance of Industry. CPM has realized that Communalism is a vague concept, especially in third world country. Must have to grow in terms of Capitalism and then the standard of overall state will grow.
The eminent economists like Amartya Sen had emphasized on the fact that there is no way to eradicate poverty other than fast economic (industrial) growth. By cultivation we can not be a leading state of the World. But, definitely there should be one stop point for aggression. To me there is no meaning to make a blood-shed and violence.
This is the futility of aggression. Budda is focused to his goal for making an Industrial State, and his sheer determination is resulting into unwanted aggression. Sometime it seems to me as egotistic, and for sure there is no room for it in democracy. He himself has condemned that incident “Some people died and that’s unfortunate”, but in the back of the mind he is persistent on the thought that if one has a vision, he has to stick to it, irrespective of people’s feeling.

Indian TV Serials

2007-02-23T08:58:00.000+02:00

Now a days TV serials in STAR, ZEE, Sony are very popular in India. It’s not a second grade acting business anymore, rather now it is as gorgeous as cinemas.
I am watching more than a dozen serials for last few months in TV and really like some of them.
I prefer to see Star Plus serials because of the grandeurs and directions, but Zee and Sony provide various tests of serials.

But the best 3 TV serials I have seen so far are all in DD1, the national TV channel. The best one so far is MAHABHARATA. I can remember those days, when the whole India used to watch this serial, holding all their work. Television was just started entering in middleclass house that time. B R Chopra was excellent in directing the serial and this is best Indian serial so far. It was far better than the slow Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana.

Malgudi Days and Swaviman are another two favorites. Shobhaa de’s Swaviman is first TV serial, which expressed the high society on India. Asutosh Rana and Manoj Vajpayee were major actors in this serial. After this, they got better chances in Cinema.
Malgudi Days was based on Twentieth-Century Classics by R. K. Narayan (Author), exquisite representation of ground reality of India. The child character, Swami, was smart and impressed me a lot in my childhood.
Some of the favorite serials in my childhood were Ham Hindustani, Bagle ki Duniya, Mungeri Lal ke Hasin Swapne, Fauji(Shah Rukh Khan’s debut: He started his career in 1988 by appearing in the television series Fauji playing the role of Commando Abhimanyu Rai. He then played a minor role in the serial Circus), Santi etc.

Slowly the changes happened in Indian TV serials. From short story based or one episode based serials it evolved as a continuous story line, which last as long as viewers want it and ends soon the demand is less. Ekta Kapur’s K series serials are the pioneers in this serial era. The most demanding one were “Kyunki Saas bhi Kabhi Bahu thi”, “Kahani Ghar Ghar ki”. Some more are “Kahi to hoga”, “Kasauti”, “Kumkum”, “Karam Apna Apna” etc all in Star Plus.

Sudeshna Roy, a bengali serial director told that the channels are only doing their job. To speak of the K-serials, I’d say that Ekta Kapoor is a very successful women who has started a completely new genre. And you are bound to be copied when you show the road to success. I have no issues with it, since what matters is not the makeup or the melodrama, but the charm of the storyline and the way it’s being narrated.

New generation of Indian Serials are mostly based on Leading Female Characters of Elite business families. Be it Tulsi, Parvati, Kosis, Prerna, Kumkum, Gauri, Priyanka (Virasat), respectively. These characters are the main force to drive the continuous story line. These are no where related to normal Indian middleclass society. The family dramas are sometime so much exaggerated that often it loses the credibility of the viewers.

But the central characters are ideal and framing the mindsets of common Indian, remembering our traditional values in the age of Globalization and shaping today’s Indian families to some extent. I like some of them specially their unique way of handling situation at the time of family crisis.

In Zee TV and Sony, we have some serials with village life and middle class background, but the driving factor is always Family Drama influenced by high class. Jab Love Huya, Durgesnandini, are these types. True high class dramas are in Kasam Se, Sath Fere, Banu May Teri Dulhan, Kulbadhu, Baidehi where again Bani, Saloni, Biddya, Niyati and Baidehi are playing the central women characters respectively. The storylines are something that some evil characters want to make mess and after a long struggle some good character or the central character get win over the evil.

My best serial now is CID (detective serial) and I like history based TV serials, like Ravana and Prithiraj Chauhan.

Love affair, Family Drama and conflicts, Fight with villains etc were the common traits in Indian Movies few years back. Probably Indian people like this kind of story line. We are so engrossed in different struggles of daily life, which we want to avoid the reality in TV or cinema and like to see our fantasies in the form of entertainment.
But since TV serials are now more focused on this kind of storyline, our film directors can go for different one.

I sometime think that it is waste of time to watch these kinds of serials. The nature of serials widely varies from country to country. General Indian does not like the serials like Bay Watch, Street Hulk. Every society has its taste and keeping it in mind the directors produces these serials. Some of them like “Kyunki Saas bhi Kabhi Bahu thi”, “Kahanni Ghar Ghar kii” is continuing for more than 5 years on public demand. So, in these TV serials we can find the reflection of our society somehow, the respects for relation, the cultural values, social occasions, religious bonding etc are reflected in different story line. With the huge demand, its now became a mature industry and big shots of Bollywoods do not hesitate to be a part of it.

Why we are living ?

2007-02-12T11:59:00.000+02:00

We are living definitely because of some objectives. Objectives of life changes with time and so as the meaning of life. Objectives are not same for all of us. It depends on priorities and values of the individuals.

Why we are living ? This is not a specific questions as it is driven by time and many external factors. Sometime we loose our meaning of life, sometime we have many of them at a time. I have undergone different scenarios and situations. So, my objectives of life change with the time line . Here are 10 of them.

1. Living just for I have to live – I don’t have any objective or I haven’t thought about it

2. Living for enjoyment as this life is for enjoying different tests and to earn lot of money

3. Living for execution of certain objectives, to meet my goals, these goals are variable and I revisit it regularly, modify these with time and circumstances

4. Living for seeing different countries, meet different people and explore adventurous places

5. Living for my family and parents as I love them most

6. Live to be famous – in any way

7. Living for my country/religion/community – to contribute and enhance one of it as living is just believing some specific idealism – and to be adhered with it

8. Live to complete my path, be a good student, be a successful person, good family man, and transfer the knowledge to predecessors

9. Live to accrue knowledge, contribute to specific research, society and as a whole the whole human civilization in general

10. Live to rule, to beat, to compete, to win by any means. Because winning means living, rest are as good as dead.

What is your objective of life? Please put a comment.

IT : Sona Badhano Nordoma

2007-01-19T13:33:00.000+02:00

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgzqq5dw_10cj5zn2

This is an article in leading Bengali news paper Anandabazar patrika regarding IT industry in kolkata.

Its says : IT industry is not for good students. May be, the average salary and abroad scope is better, but not good enough to consume the talent pool of Bengal. Its not like a rocket science or hify technology, just a white colour consulting job. Body shopping is nothing but playing with a person, selling him to customers. IT as a whole brought some equality in educated society.

My Comments: I don't agree with all points, rather disagree major points. May be general people do not have enough idea about our industry and nature of job. Its not that easy like a call center job, neither monotonous like govt jobs(like officers or teachers). Regarding value addition, I must say IT consultants are the ambassador of today's India to the World, contributing hugely in economic growth, creating more job and is playing an important role for the betterment of the society.

I have a discussion with Ananda Niyogi and here is our common understanding :

Before writing this idealistic stuff, the writer should have known the reality. We agree that some of the operating jobs in service industry is so simple that it can be done by a 12 pass student, but there are some developments, which probably can no one do, not even the IITians in general.

Regarding the talent flow coming to IT from different streams, whether it is science or engineering - in our opinion, only about 5% are actually brilliant - and by brilliant i mean creative, not gaatu (studious) brilliant. It varies in percentage, may be more in IITs and less in social science, but we must have to admit that not everybody is genius and JEE rank never proves it. Brilliant 5% never comes in this industry - they used to go for masters in US, or do research in their streams. Average engineer finally lands a job, mainly in IT irrespective of departments.

We agree that IT is more of a service industry now and even companies like IBM, SAP, Accenture are trying to do service works to different clients along with the Indian giants TCS, Wipro, Infy. now let me take you back 10 years. Average JU Engineers used to try for a job in IPCL / BPCL and govt sector or like L&T or something like that in private sector, with hardcore industry ; whereas, a simple graduate, 10 yrs ago - what does he do? Sit in rock for gossips and try for miscellaneous job...like salesman, medical representative / govt clerk (if he gets lucky). Now, JU engineer also in IBM...BA pass also in IBM (if not at least in IBM Daksh). So this is what people call - value for merit.

IPCL / BPCL / L&T / TATA / ITC - whatever, by doing a traditional job - where average JU engineers actually adding a lot of value to society? Where they doing normal repetitive jobs, how much scope did he have to think independently? After few years they became manager, same as in IT. We became manager and handle our teams. So where is the difference? Is it a brain drain!! We don’t think so, as in IT there is at least some innovating brain storming work.

So, if now a simple graduate works for call centre, what is our problem? Society is improving as there are more jobs, people are getting richer, the average expenditure has gone up and industry is growing with the market. Eventually our economy is going up. India had 3.5% GDP growth rate in 1990, whereas today it has 10% GDP growth rate. With the growing economy more jobs will be created. It’s a cycle. So it is definitely a value addition to society.

Now, let’s discuss personal growth. Barring 5% (`appx) brilliant talent pool, the existing resources have many more things to achieve, which we can not do in hardcore jobs or in govt sectors. At the age of 28 you are sitting in a foreign location where people respect you for your skill & knowledge, and you are giving presentation, selling ideas, negotiating and so on. We are quite mature as because we had that exposure at a young age. We may not be doing rocket science - but we r not sitting in a IPCL Plant control room and monitoring the control screen as well, however there are scopes for doing more complex works in different technologies of computer science.

At this age, one is leading 10/20/30 people (all of them are consultants) - which other industry can give me that scope. May be the social status is not like teachers or doctors, but satisfaction level is very high if you are good performer, so talent matters. It’s not like all small boxes looking like same :-)

We may not have people touching my feet at like doctors, but we feel proud when we stand in front of 50 people from 10 countries and deliver a presentation. When they listen to us, when we connect with them, when we can convince them - that gives us a kick. we are ambassador of today's India.
Regarding the body shopping, if Beckham,Ronaldo can be hired and rented to some clubs from the original one, what is the problem with us? If we are selling our knowledge and gaining more knowledge by a contract of body shopping, then I must say that it’s good learning opportunity for young IT consultants as well as a golden opportunity to make money.

The writer must have to realize that computer is not a mechanical device with gives output just by pressing some keys; neither is it a robot that instructs us. For a normal engineer, definitely it is a dream job as the salary is high, onsite opportunity is better, one can use his innovative skills, the value for talent and knowledge is there, the challenge is there, the growth is immense what more do we expect from an Industry? The final proof is that in kolkata lot more people have jobs and that is the bottom-line.
---------------------
Kuntal(Dey) , Amritava(Bubai), Aritra(Santu) thanks for your comment. Appreciate your thoughts.
What do you think, please put a comment.

10 External events in 2006 which made me thinking

2007-01-01T15:33:00.001+02:00

External events mean incidents out of my personal life (like Getting married, Visiting Acropolis, Highway accident, Stuck in a water bogged road in sector V, watching phantom in Samshan). The following 10 events are those, which either I liked or disliked, but I couldn't stop thinking in 2006.

1. Indian Movies in 2006:

This is an excellent year of Indian movies. Starting from Rang de Basanti to Kabul Express it’s a golden journey of Indian films. The quality-theme-story-representation-cinematography-music-acting were really praiseworthy. Probably the film industry has reinvigorated by the moral and public boost. Let’s take top 5 one by one which I liked most. I like Kris (first Superman of Indian film) and Omkara, especially their songs-music.

Lage Raho MunnaBhai – One exquisite representation of Gandhigiri (the concept of Gandhi). How effective the concept in today’s world? For the answer one must has to see this film. Currently, the draft is being done in UN and probably no film can be better than this for Oscar in today’s world.
Its not only me, who has been impacted by this movie; but also a huge Indian population has voted Munnabhai as their hero. Today NDTV declared Munnabhai (Sanjay Dutt) as the Indian of the year 2006 for his acting in this movie. Sanjay also claimed that this movie has changed his life. Thus one can estimate how much impact this movie has made to the World.

Rang de Basanti – India’s nomination for Oscar. The best movie I have ever seen in terms of the enthusiasm and idolism. The concept of taking ownership for changing the society has shown beautifully. I like the music and acting, especially Amir.

Corporate – Concept wise the best movie for Corporate World. Being a corporate I liked it very much, specially acting of Bipasa and obviously the story.

Fanna – The delicate touch of anti terrorism, slow but bold. Straight message to the audience and people of Kashmir, but turned out bit controversial after release.

Gangstar – Mumbai under world story, but nice representation.

These movies made me thinking because of their uniqueness. Undoubtedly the Indian society is rejuvenated by some of the concepts like Corporate and Rang de. The Pepsi-Cola scandal and reservation protest issue in 2006 have happened after Corporate and Rang de’s release. The rapidly changing and diversity of Indian society is truly captured in some of the movies like Fir herapheri, 36 Chaina Town, GoalMall, Khosla se Khosla. Some more movies I could not see are Kavi Albida Na Kahena, Don, Dhum2, Umraojan, Guru, O lamhe, Sikhar, Apna Swapna Money Money, Jane Man, Bibaha etc (sorry if I forgot any good one).

2. MMORPG
2006 was a Golden year for MMORPG software developments. The concept of Massively Multiuser Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) has influenced me a lot in this year. I don’t like playing computer games, but what I found amazing is the concept of virtual world. Lets be more precise, in a innovation training I got this concept through one game, Second life.
Ø Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.

Ø It gives me an idea that the GOD of this world is nothing but another person or a character of a game, who created the Universe in the Time space, and loaded a code in the DNA of living organism so that the game is self evolving and always changeable. The God is also not real, somebody is also playing with him not in Time space, not in broadband world, may be in some other medium. Basically it gives me a concept of Nth life and Second life is N+1th life.

This concept made me thinking like nothing. I was in that state for more than 2 months and every thinking and actions were driven by it. The World seems virtual to me.

3. Terrorism:
Series of terrorist attacks have been taken place in this year. I am listing down some of them so far I can remember -
· Mumbai(India) train blast by Pakistan terrorist group – 209 died in 7 continuous blasts, which hampered the Indo-Pak relationship
· Iraq – continuous ethnic violence is probably the worst of this year. Saddam executed, thousands of common people died every month and the situation is going worse day by day.
· Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Palestine is shameful. Being a responsible nation they act as terrorist and US interference in Iraq is also of the same category.
· Terror of Tamil Guerrillas in Lanka is again started this year after 2 years of cease fire.
· Kashmir – a land of terror has witnessed many militant attacks.
· Al-Qaeda’s threat to US and air-strike planning in UK has been handled extremely well by the British Intelligence Burro.
· Comment of pope to Muslim community, Danish Cartoons of Prophet Mohammad and world wide protests of Muslims is also extreme examples of religious conflicts

Terrorism has taken a different shape in 2006. It had created its global identity in 9/11/2001, but during these years it has grown drastically due to some political mistakes of countries like US-UK-Israel-Pakistan. The sporadic conflicts in Kashmir, brutal genocide in Lebanon-Afghanistan-Iraq-Palestine, ethnic violence in Iraq between Sea and Sunnis and finally the execution of Saddam, religious fanaticism of Muslims-Pope have made this year a dark year in our civilization. That made me thinking more deeply about the mentality of militants and created a quest for roots of terrorism.

4. Polarization of Global Political Scenario in 2006:
The ever-changing political situation of the World, the hanker for power of US, the vested interested for oil, North Korea’s empowerment by Nukes and threats from countries like Iran have made the scenario worse. Bipolar power, US Ally and Muslim World has made me thinking because the world is more unsafe now and we can smell the beginning of third world war if things keep moving in same way. Nuclear power in unsafe hands (be it Iran-Pak or Israel) can turn off the global civilization anytime.

5. Global Warming:

This year, The Earth's temperature has climbed to levels not seen in thousands of years, warming that has begun to affect plants and animals, researchers report in 26Sep issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Earth has been warming at a rate of 0.36 degree Fahrenheit (0.2 Celsius) per decade for the last 30 years, according to the research team led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

In fact we all can feel the weather of Earth is changing drastically, the concept of wet Christmas in Greece is now in memories, and the average temperature of Kolkata (India) has gone up. There is no specific rainy season. This is because of Global pollution, deforestation and taking nature in human hand, shaping it with our wish. I am more concern because of ``If further global warming reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know. The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about three million years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today,'' Hansen said.

6. Kiran Desai’s Booker and Dr. Muhammad Yunus Nobel

Some individual achievements have inspired me a lot in 2006.
Kiran Desai’s novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize
I have not gone through the book “The Inheritance of Loss”, but the tenacity and perseverance the writer has shown while writing the classic is really encouraging. She took long 7 years to come up with an excellent book. I like this approach of writing a good book, rather writing 100 ordinary books.

In 2006, Yunus and the bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below." What I like is the vision and long term contribution of him. That’s why it made me thinking.

7. Zidane’s Headbutt

It was World Cup final between France and Italy. My favorite Zidane was excellent throughout the tournament. He was just looking for a breakthrough and trying hard, but was not able to crack Italian defense. Finally he broke down by one irritating comment of Materazzi (Italian defender) and openly headed him down off the ball, in field. He have been shown red card in his last International match and France lost. This incident is really unfortunate and made me thinking because this gives an idea that no one is perfect in this World, not even the creator, the Almighty. However Zidane won the best footballer award in World Cup.

8. Return of Sourav Ganguly in Indian Cricket Team

This is a dream for me. Being a die-heart fan of Sourav dada, I burst into tears when he called back in Indian Team. I truly admire our Maharaja. He is an emblem of will power, a pioneer of Indian Cricket, a god gifted personality. When the biggest Sourav’s fan stopped thinking about his return and future, he kept faith on himself, kept on doing his job and proved himself. It’s a strenuous and long battle which he has own and I respect him for this. He made unbeaten half century in his return and contributed in India’s historic test winning in South Africa.
I enjoyed one 434 run chaise by SA against Aus in one day International match in march 2006.
Leander Paes and Jaspal Rana each won couple of Gold medals in Doha Asian games 2006. Its may be inspiration to sporting individuals. Paes being the most successful player of India in terms of medal haunting, Rana again proved rowing is best sport of India in terms of global success. But I am sorry to say we are lagging behind in collective team games and national sport procedure is degrading day by day. Cricket and Hokey is prime example. This is a dark year for Indian hokey, as they failed poorly in World Cup as well as in Asian games (first time in the history they failed to qualify for semis).

9. Indian Politics in 2006:

Indian Political leaders – a shame on democracy? – But definitely an imprint for Global Peace. Indian Politics either I like or hate; I can’t ignore it being an Indian. 2006 Indian political scenario made me thinking because of my concern on future India. The list of events so far I can remember is jotting down.

Immature death of Promod Mahajon and Anil Biswas – two unfortunate incidents
Mamata’s 25 day hunger-strike for industrialization in Singur and Poor handling of CPM – a worst possible show of West Bengal’s image
CPM’s stand in Indian politics is unfortunate. Being in the centre they oppose issues, but can not take any responsibilities by joining the ministry.
Life time imprisonment of central minister Sibu Soren in the charge of killing his political opposition
Manu Sharma – the son of state minister – the killer of Jesika Lal, finally proved guilty and going to face life time imprisonment.
Lalu escaped from chara ghotala again – but the most positive thing amidst the corruption and hankering after power is, Lalu has proved his leadership after resulting in a massive profit in Indian Railways. Being a Central Minister of Rail, Laluji has unequivocally brought a new era in Railways by implementing some strategies. He is My Political Hero of this year along with Mr. Pranab Mukherjee.
Mr. Pranab Mukherjee – the foreign minister of India has represented India in UN and explicitly stated India’s stand. He handled the delicate issue with Chaina is much better way.
Corruption and Charges is increasing in Indian Democracy. Natawar charged for Oil corruption - Jaswant Sing’s baseless comment – different alligations and cases have taken faith from Democracy
Most importantly the sanction of 50% reservation is highly debating. Our political leader should understand the only way to bring justice and make equal right to the minority can never be done by reservations to higher educations and jobs. The true benefit that can be done by providing free education for them, supporting the poor and not the casts. If reservation can not turn India in 50 years, probably it can never result in positive way.
At the same time the feelings of the general students and majorities should be taken into consideration. The Muslim politics not only hurting Hindus, but also not helping the Muslims in India. All policies and strategies for Vote bank and to retain power. Probably democracy can not solve all the problems and these are the shortfalls of democracy.
But irrespective of all these dirty political games in India, all parties are united to global peace and solidarity. They keep same stand on Kashmir, Iraq, against US and Pak. That’s why India is responsible Global Power.

10. Nuke Deal and Boosting Indian Economy in 2006

India’s greatest political achievement of 2006 is the Nuclear Deal with US and obviously the rapidly growing GDP and Industry is helping Indian Economy. The sky rising indexes in share market and unbelievable growth of Indian firms are creating their global identities. It made me thinking because I am a part of it. I feel happy to be a part of Indian IT Industry and hope in next few years it will take a major Global Market.

IT industry in Kolkata, India

2006-11-21T12:40:00.001+02:00

With sky rise building and blue glasses, glowing lights and nice cubicles in AC, client meeting and con calls, onshore and offshore support, the IT industry is undoubtedly the main haunting job for the young graduate engineers. The revolution in technology and the ever-growing demand of resources worldwide, IT industry in India is growing intrinsically, especially in Bengal. I can very well remember the days 6 or 7 years back, when small IT companies are slowing expending their wings in Calcutta, starting the outsourcing and support projects in sector V, Salt Lake. It has changed quite rapidly during last few years, and taking a shape of a stable industry, maturing and stabilizing with the warmth of globalization.

It’s very different from the normal core industries, the hardcore job and doing the repetitive work by managing stuffs. However the real life challenge and understanding the business, gaining industry knowledge is always there in core industry. Some of the Business Functional Consultants in IT industry has valuable domain experience in core industry. But still I think the nature of job and growth is quite different in IT industry as of now. The Growth is not position wise, rather to know the bigger world, to know how different industry works in various countries, automate them through IT and harvesting different knowledge in SAP, JAVA, Oracle, Microsoft Tech and thousands of different of new products and packages and languages. The growth in terms of designing a Interface for particular customer, programming in a modular and efficient way, and supporting them to meet ever changing customer need to automate their business. Obviously one can feel that he is living in a global village, by providing solution to customer to enhance their business through his consulting skills. So in IT one is directly connected to the rest of the world, contributing to the Global Information Technology revolution "To leverage information, knowledge and technology to enhance human endeavor."

Thus for an Engineer with good aptitude and a sense of computer programming is quite suitable candidate in today’s IT industry, good communication skills being an additional advantage. To be an onshore client facing consultant, one should have very basic knowledge of the technology and obviously be a good communication skill to make better relationship with the customer, to understand their needs and fulfill the demands accordingly to provide highest client satisfaction. One can leverage his skills with his growth in the industry and be a better communicator once the opportunities come. So, all together this is a good learning curve for a freshers as well as for the lateral entries.

Another better aspect is to know the world, crossing the boundaries, working together with people from different countries, in different languages and technologies. This obviously gives a better idea about the work culture, work environment of different society and form a broader mindset for the Consultants. IT has made the World a Global Village and design-support IT from remote location makes us feeling locally global.

Once I was going thorough an article on reverse colonization. In past the western invaders had made their colony across the world, especially in the third world countries, ruled for the centuries. It’s their Power and aggression led them to rule other part of the world including India. But with the innovation of IT Industry, now it’s a reverse colonization, Indians are moving across the Globe to implement and design the IT infrastructure of different industry across the Globe, including fortune 500 companies.
Slowly the centre of gravity of the Silicon Valley is moving from US to India and this is not only because of low cost, but also for the high efficiency of Indian IT professionals enriched with updated skill set. It is a slow revolution in our country, including China. Our knowledgebase, awareness and availability of resources can make potential growth in near future.

The improving points :

Product Industry: In big Indian firm, we usually do package oriented work and hardly few of them are working to develop new software products. In fact looking into the current market all the products are either US or Europe based, and Indian IT consultants are learning it, using it, and implementing it by configurations or customizations (writing some additional programs). So, even though we are working, the main profit share is going to the companies who have product copy write.

Long term vision: Most of the small and mediem IT firms and IT consyltants do not have long term vision for growth. Even though we plan for it, there is not much of execution and tracking for meeting our deadlines. Its now a responsibility of every IT consultants to plan for themselves as well as for their organization to excel Indian IT industry.

Current market share: May be we are earning good amount of money for "IT outsourcing to India", our country is much behind in terms of Global Market Share. This is not even 5% of todays IT World. This needs improvement, so that huge resource pool and skilled labour in India is properly utilized to earn more global market profit.

The Government policy: Some of our politicians have opposed the growth of IT industry in different way, be it calling Bandh, or being indifferent to the future growth. Even now current govt is encouraging the controversial 50% reservation in leading engineering and IT colleges. But politicians hardly have any time to think of policies regarding IT growth.