TGIF!

In every Ocean of difficulty, lies an Island of
opportunity.

I have just completed reading a Vikram Seth novel, a novel I started last week. The story is set in the formative years of India post Independence, and revolves around a Mother's search for a suitable boy for her daughter and along the way the stories of various families whose paths intersect. The book includes an enormous cast of characters but each of them are easliy distinguishable from each other The book is deftly written but very lengthy.

I was very impressed with the way Seth has gotten into the skin of each of his characters from toddlers to teenagers, from the middle aged to the old.. After reading the book I feel like I have gotten to know all the members of the various families so well. One difficulty I faced was properly understanding the 'Ghazals' even though the urdu poetry was translated. Some of his other works include 'Golden Gate' and 'An Equal Music'.

Seth now lives in Salisbury, England. He was born in Kokalta and interestingly the novel 'Suitable Boy' is set around the time he was born. Seth studied PPE(Politics, Philosophy and Economics) from Oxford and spent 11 years at Stanford and failed to get his Phd. He has just launched his 'Two Lives' published by Time Warner.

Great Minds Think Alike.. Or Do They?

Once when Gandhi visited Tagore's school at Santiniketan, a young woman got him to sign her autograph book.

Gandhi wrote: "Never make a promise in haste. Having once made it fulfill it at the cost of your life."

When Tagore saw this entry, he became agitated. He wrote in the same book a short poem in Bengali to the effect that no one can be made "a prisoner forever with a chain of clay."

He went on to conclude in English, possibly so that Gandhi could read it too, "Fling away your promise if it is found to be wrong."

Headliners & Legends!

"Mr. A takes center stage!"
Legendary film director Adoor Gopalakrishnan received the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke Award for the year 2004 from Indian President Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. The Dada Saheb Phalke is the most prestigious award for contribution to film making. Mr Adoor is the first living person to be awarded the Phalke award.


"Quake rocks PoK & J&K.. "
A girl holds her younger brother as they walk through a makeshift refugee camp in Muzaffarabad, eight days after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake shattered the region. Pakistan has said that the last week's earthquake have killed at least 38,000 and left 3.3 million people homeless.


"The name's Bond, James Bond"
Actor Daniel Craig is unveiled as the new James Bond 007, ahead of the forthcoming filming of the 21st installment in the series, Casino Royale, on the River Thames in east London. To date, six actors have been signed to portray 007(Double 'oh Seven) in the official series (in chronological order): Sean Connery ,George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton , Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig.
I still think Sean Connery is the best! A true legend!


"Deserved thee not.."
Saif Ali Khan receiving the National award for the best actor for his performance in "Hum Tum!" :(. His mother Sharmila, happened to be the chairman of the selection commitee!


"Daddy's day out!!"..
Rahul: "Guess what Andy? Its official, Im now Captain!"
Andy: "Yeah.. that bloke sucked! So will you.. Im gonna remove my shirt & celebrate.."
World XI bowler Andrew Flintoff, left, of England celebrates with teammate "Father & Captain" Rahul Dravid of India in their ICC Super Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground.


"Dada- Fall from grace.."
Prince of Kolkata, Sourav Chandidas Ganguly talks to the media after a morning workout at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Ganguly was removed from the Indian squad for the forthcoming one-day series against Sri Lanka and South Africa by Indian selectors.


"Boy Genius"
After launching "Two Lives" across India in four major cities, it was the final stop home that Vikram Seth must have loved most. The launch in Delhi, on Thursday evening, coincided with his mother Justice Leila Seth's 75th birthday. I have just started reading Seth's novel "A suitable boy". Im outa words to describe his genius!



"Legends unite.. For a cause.."
Acting legends Richard Gere and Kamal Hassan at a function called 'Atime for heroes' organised in association with the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS.


"INFOSYS-GOWDA SPAT.." <..continues.. <..Narayana Murthy, Chief Mentor- Infosys)
How we Indian citizen's respond to the spat....>







"One for a Billion"
Narain Karthikeyan of Jordan Toyota team (centre) poses during a team group photo session at Shanghai International Circuit in Shanghai. The second F1 Grand Prix of China took place at Shanghai.



"Less endorsements.. More wins please!!"
Sania Imran Mirza, the Indian tennis sensation at yet another product launch! I hope she continues to live up to her billing!



"How Jobless is Jobless"
Not Katrina Kaif, but the people who voted for "Blistex India's Most Beautiful Lips" award. And how jobless am I to post this!

Random thoughts.. contd

On the corruption index, India seems to have dropped two places to 86th most corrupt nation, whoa! Anyway, the article also says that Indians pay 210 billion in bribes every year!! and kerala is the least corrupt state in India, while Bihar the most corrupt. Corruption in India comes in different sizes, once there was a police officer who too Rs 5 from me cos I was driving without a license! and the best case was a friend of mine who paid 1 Rupee to a police guy in Kolkata to get off being charged for running a red light! Some of my friends have even paid Rs 1000 to get off being charged! At the higher end are politicians who make millions from tax payers money. An example is the construction of needless flyovers in chennai during the late 90's by the then mayor of the city- MK.Stalin, who got a fat cut from each one of those!

I missed the last episode of the apprentice but I checked out what went on from the nbc website, as expected the women lost, Toral was a Total disaster, and she was fired! Trump said he felt bad he had to fire someone that smart (A wharton graduate)! I feel there should be some kind of psychological screening before entry into prestigious B-Schools!

A list of funny and nice names I have come across-
'Apple' Paltrow (Funny) - Gwynyth Paltrow's daughter.
'Salma Hayek' (Nice) - Actress
'Murasoli' Maran (Funny) - Industrialist
'Vijay Mallya' (Nice) - Industrialist
'Mammooty' (Funny) - Actor
James 'Gandolfini' (Nice) - Actor
'Ho Chi Minh' (Funny) - Leader
'Augustine Cheung' (Nice) - A friend
'Kurian-Kurian Cherian' (Funny) - Doctor
'Abbas-Mustan' (Nice) - Directors
'Puli' (Funny) - A common name in South India
'Achamma' Puliyanthil (Funny) - A friend
'Alessandro Del-Piero' (Nice) - Soccer Star
'Raji Rajan' (Funny) - A friend
'JFK' (Nice) - Politician
'Murtaza Bhutto' (Funny) - Politician
'Ashwathaman Menon' (Nice) - Journalist
'Maman Matthew' (Funny) - Journalist

After a long time I burnt a music CD a couple of days back, cos I found it cumbersome to keep switching CD's which had my fav songs, so I burnt 3 CD's- 1. English, 1. Hindi and 1. Tamil, This gave me the freedom to play 3 CD's over and over again instead of playing over a dozen! And now I have given my iPod a break. Of late I've started downloading a lot of Indian MP3 but very rarely do I download English MP3, Why? cos Indian cyber laws are not very strict! and here they are not really bothered about Indian music anyway!! Man.. that makes me feel guilty!!

My favourite Brands..
Levi's Jeans
Starbucks Coffee
Apple
American Express
Google
Coke
Marlboro
IBM
Blackberry
Nike
Lockheed Martin
Boeing
Tommy Hilfiger
Sean John
Bose
Infosys
Heineken
Police
Booz Allen
Ben Sherman
GAP-Kids
Audi
Sony
Visa
GE
Roc-a-fella

A list of cities/countries that I have really enjoyed my stay at..
Chennai- India
Coimbatore- India
Goa- India
New York- U.S
Chicago- U.S
Boston- U.S
Philadelphia- U.S
Columbia- U.S
Arlington- U.S
Miami- U.S
Washington- U.S
Colombo- Sri Lanka
Neuralia- Sri Lanka
Male- Maldives
London - England
Manchester- England
Singapore- Singapore

Random Thoughts..

Its close to 2 a.m and here I am with so much work to do, yet doing nothing but writing a blog! My work is going haywire, I missed an important call today. I have to prepare to make up during another at 8 a.m tomorrow. Im looking at a modest target of 7 a.m so that Ill have atleast an hour for the 8 a.m call, I need to prepare cos I always goof up. But its already late and I doubt I'll make it. Nothing seems to be going my way!!

Now onto the subject of random thoughts- I was reminded of a famous tag line "The future is bright, the future is Orange" and my personal tag line now reads, "the future is blank, the future is black"

I feel like I've lost my mojo, I thought maybe if I re-started my excercise regime.. might be able to find it again. So I started that off- cos im paying a good price each month and atleast for that I decided to go, then I shaved and went for a haircut(after a long time.. ) It did some good, cos atleast I dint feel like a beggar, but im still searching...

There was a Nike ad campaign before the Copa America in 1999, it showed a football stadium on fire, but the football players still playing on.. and the ad ends with a line.. "The game must go on.. Nike.. Jus' Do It". So I tell myself "My future beckons.. so the game must go on!".

During a conference once, each one sitting in the room was asked what car they would like to own, most people responded with BMW, some with Acura and I responded saying an 'Audi', a voice from behind me asked me "A4?", the only model I was familiar with was the A4, cos I remember Ravi Shastri and Aravinda De Silva winning A4's for the Man of the Series awards at the world series and world cup respectively, so I said "A4" :).

At the same conference we were also asked what our favourite cuisine was, I said Afgan! cos I thought tandoori stuff is Afgan! I hope I am right!

Back in college days there were a number of clubs, for the first three years the most prominent of them was Dramatics, I always used to wonder how they come up with the ideas they ended up with cos none of the members seemed really creative.

Sometimes I look around to find a lot of ACDC's (Already Confused De-C) this is an abbr I coined so I hold the copyright! ACDC's are basically desi people with thick Indian accents, mostly middle aged or atleast nearing their 30's, who so badly want to be american and in the process they end up looking very cheap! They try hard to fake the accent and the lingo! Kyon? insecurity I guess! I dont intend to offend anyone, so in conclusion dont be fake!

I also got a request from a friend to fill up a loong 'get to know me' tag, so i thought Ill fill up what little I can, come back and do the rest later cos Im a little tired now.. Ill be back with more random thoughts..


1. FAVORITE BREAKFAST IS... Anything other than cereal!
2. THE MOVIES I'VE WATCHED MOST NUMBER OF TIMES ARE... Good Will Hunting, Company
3. LEAST FAVORITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL... Chem-Mystry!
4. SPEND MY LEISURE TIME . Sleeping, Driving around playing my fav music!
5. WORST SMELL? A Fart I guess!
6. IF I COULD HAVE ANY CAR IN THE WORLD,WHAT WOULD IT BE?... An Audi Baby!
7.FAVORITE COLOR/s? Gray! Blue.
8.FAVORITE MUSIC Bolton, Vandross, Rahman, Burman
9. IF I COULD REPEAT COLLEGE, I'D TAKE- Economics & Math!
10. THREE THINGS I CAN'T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT?... 1.My Wallet 2.My Cell Phone 3.My Car Keys.
11. FIRST THING I BOUGHT WITH MY FIRSTSALARY... Later!(Too late to think)
12. I'D LIKE TO BE REMEMBERED AS.. Raul!
13. SPECIALTY IN COOKING? Chicken!
14. PRESENT CRUSH? None.. maybe Kavya Madhavan!
15. FAVORITE HANG-OUT? "The Signature Room" in Chicago! & Four Seasons in Coimbatore!
16. BEST PLACE TO SHOP? Hechts!
17. FAVORITE PLACE IN YOUR HOUSE? Bedroom!
18. BEST GIFT YOU'VE GIVEN? A 'Love Actually' DVD!
19. WEIRDEST GIFT YOU RECEIVED? Later!
20. GIFT THAT YOU WANT TO RECEIVE AS OF THIS MOMENT? Some good sleep!
21. WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE BEST QUALITY OF THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? Talkative!
22. YAHOO OR HOTMAIL ? Hotmail!
23. LEFT OR RIGHT? Right Handed, Right Conservative ;)
24. BLACK OR WHITE? Black
25. BLACK OR BLUE PEN? Black
26. SANDALS OR SHOES? Sandals
27. COKE OR PEPSI? Coke!
28. LAST PERSON WHO MADE YOU LAUGH? Pars!(A friend)
29. LAST PERSON WHO MADE YOU BLUSH? Later!
30. THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED Laters!
31. SOMEONE TO BE WITH Laters!
32. CELPHONE UNIT Sony-Ericsson!
33. FAVORITE CHOCOLATE Toblerone!
34. FAVOURITE NOVEL Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less!
35. FAVOURITE ACTOR .. Denzel, Damon, Rajni, Mohanlal

Boy that was quick!!

Pick of the month..

The top five songs of the month are..

At 5. a time pass song- Aap ki kashish - Ashique Banaya Aapne
Himesh Reshammiya

At 4. is an old timer - Tumse Kitna Pyar hai- Company
Altaaf Raja/Snadeep Chowta

At 3. is a very catchy number- Oru maalai ilaveyil neram- Ghazni
Karthik/ Harris Jayaraj

At 2. by best rapper of all time - Gold Digger - Late Registration
Kanye West

And at 1. is my pick of the month by one of my fav bands- Wake me up when September ends
Green Day

September has ended.. Adios!

Top 10 Corporate leaders- 2005

I remember thinking about doing my MBA a couple of years back, my family still wants me to pursue an MBA, but I have given up on that- yes totally, unless I sit someday post quarter life crisis, and decide that I need to make more money, but that doesnt look like it will be a priority and taking up to books again is not exactly some thing I am motivated to do, though in recent times I have started reading extensively, though not on the technical or the fictional side, more into biographies, autobiographies and philosophy. It is one of the best ways to relieve oneself from stress at work and personal life.

Now coming to the elite list I intended to create, it is a list of the most prominent Indian leaders amd entreprenuers this year. I have not considered including the 'old horses' like Azim Premji, Narayana Murthy, Rahul Bajaj, etc.

10. Ram Shriram- Making the first cut at no.10 on the list is a venture capitalist and one of the earliest investors in Google, he is still a member of the Google board of Directors. Ram counselled Google’s founders during the earliest days and has a book titled “Ram’s Book of Mistakes”. Google follows Ram's advice of hiring only the best, and makes hiring decisions after a gruelling four hour interview. Ram believes in hiring only the A people, Someone asked a good question: How did Shriram decide who are so-called “A” people? and his response- Grooming is a part of it. “I try to find out who their mothers are,” he said. If they are raised well, they’re more likely to make good citizens, employees and entrepreneurs. Shriram went to Loyola college in Chennai and later to UMich at Ann Arbor for an MBA

9. Malvinder Singh- At no.9 is Malvinder Singh, the President Pharmaceuticals and Executive Director of Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited (RLL), India's largest pharmaceutical company that also ranks among the top ten generic players in the world. Malvinder Singh is the elder son of the iconic Parvinder Singh who turned Ranbaxy from a middling Indian company into a growing multinational giant. Ranbaxy is India's pharmaceuticals giant, with ambitions to be a global major. Given the nature of the pharmaceuticals market, much of the growth will come from abroad. Malvinder has an MBA from Fuqua at Duke.

8. Lakshmi Narayanan- Making the list at no.8 is the CEO and president of Cognizant, a New Jersey based consulting firm. Lakshmi began his career at Tata Consultancy Services, growing through the ranks from developer, to technologist, to program manager, to business leader. He was a regional head of Tata in India when he joined Cognizant as CTO. Lakshmi has an MBA from IISc Bangalore.

7. Dayanidhi Maran- At no.7 is a young Harvard graduate, Dayanidhi Maran, a successful businessman- formerly the head of SCV is currently the Union minister for Communications & Information Technology, he is part of the Ivy league trio with pivotal portfolios in the central ministry's cabinet, Palaniappan Chidambaram(FM) and Manmohan Singh(PM) are the other two.(btw Manmohan was conferred a doctorate by Harvard adding to his Oxford/Cambridge Phd's) Dayanidhi has been doing a phenomenonal job and India has been taking rapid strides in the already flourishing tech sector.

6. Nandhan Mohan- At no.6 on the list is the youngest of the Infosys co-founders, Nandan is presently the CEO of Infosys, took over from Narayanamurthy in 2001 and has been leading the Indian I.T giant very efficiently. The firm seems to be raking up profits quarter after quarter, beating its revenues by nearly 40% each quarter. Nandan got his bachelors from the Indian Institute of Technology.

5. Anil Ambani- The younger of the Ambani brothers, the business magnate with political influence edges out his brother to make the list. Anil is the chairman of Reliance Capital, Reliance Infocomm, and Reliance Energy. His more recent moves includes a stake at 'Adlabs films' and is set to invest 100 crores in entertainment, extending the reach of India's largest conglomerste into entertainment. Anil is a graduate from the Wharton business school.

4. Vinod Khosla- The man with the midas touch, considered one of the most successful and influential personalities in Silicon Valley. He was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems and is currently a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, where he has been since 1986. Khosla is an IIT/Carnegie/Stanford pass out.

3. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw- Making the list at no.3 is the only woman on the list, and among the few women who were shortlisted. She is the founder of the Biotech major Biocon's Indian arm. When Kiran founded the pioneering biotech company, no one would work for her. Today she's the richest woman in India. She has a B.S. in zoology at the University of Bangalore and an M.S. in brewing from Ballarat College in Australia.

2. Shiv Nadar- Forbes magazine describes Nadar as a self-made software billionaire. Shiv Nadar restructured his $907 million (revenues) HCL Group, India's leading IT group, which fell prey to the global tech spending slowdown. Merged all software business into flagship HCL Technologies in a bid to shore up its stock price, off nealry 30% last year. Diluted his stake in computer education firm NIIT, a declining business,while his firm invested in IT joint ventures with British Telecom, Jones Apparel Group and Deutsche Bank. Spends most of his time in California, drumming up business. Nadar has a Bachelors in Engineering from PSG tech

1. Lakshmi N. Mittal- Mittal has been the most dominant Indian entrepreneur this year and aptly is numero uno on the list. Lakshmi N. Mittal is the Chairman and CEO of Mittal Steel Company. He founded the company in 1976 and in about a decade, Lakshmi Mittal built Ispat International from a wire rod manufacturer in Indonesia to the fourth largest steel producer in the world, largely through a series of strategic acquisitions. Mittal has a Bachelors degree in Commerce from St. Xaviers Calcutta.

The list of the final 25 contenders :

Mukesh Ambani - Reliance Industries
Anil Ambani - Reliance Infocomm
Kumaramangalam Birla- Aditya Birla Group
Dipak Jain - Kellogg B-School, Dean
Vivek Paul - Ex -Wipro
Phaneesh Murthy - I-flex, Ex- Infosys
Lakshmi Narayanan- Cognizant
Shiv Nadar - HCL
Nandan Mohan - Infosys
Ram Shriram - Google
Gururaj Deshpande - Sycamore
Vinod Khosla - Ex - Sun
Arun Netravali - Ex - AT&T Bell Labs
S Ramodorai - TCS
Dayanidhi Maran - IT Minister
Kalanidhi Maran - Sun Network
Malvinder Singh - Ranbaxy
Lakshmi Mittal - Mittal Steel
Sabeer Bhatia - Sify- Ex-Hotmail
Krishnan Suthandhiran - Best Medical
Barath Desai - Syntel
Padmashree Warrior - Motorola
Kiran Mazumdar Shaw - Biocon India
Rajiv Bajaj - Bajaj Auto
Sunil Mittal - Bharti Telecom

The Apprentice 4 and more..

I feel like it has been ages since I last blogged, the last week wasnt particularly pleasant.
I sat at home sick and tired, watched a few movies and slept most of the time. I happened to watch the Apprentice on TV after a very long time, I remember watching every episode of the first season, but since then lack of time and my forgetfulness dint let me watch any of the episodes from the other 2 concluded seasons. The most prominent of the candidates on the Apprentice 4 is an Investment banker named Toral, a native of Philly and of Indian/Punjabi origin she attended the Wharton Business school at the University of Pennsylvania. At 29 she is the Vice President of a major Investment Bank in New York, She is a self made multi millionaire and an expert in closing multi millon dollar business deals. It is almost a certainity that she will not make it as the Apprentice as her aggressiveness is unbound and she is simply hated by her teammates. My pick is as the fourth Apprentice is Randal.

Now on to some of the movies I watched during my hiatus.
Parineeta- The celluloid version of a Sarath Chandra Chattopadhyay novel. Like his other novels such as Devdas, even this novel has had many adaptations and this is the 5th or 6th version. The last one I remember watching was with the legendary Meena Kumari and Ashok Kumar. The movie has been produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra who has made some good movies like 1942 a Love Story, Mission Kashmir.. etc. And after the super successful Munnabhai, VVC is back with Sanjay Dutt again playing the stellar role of Girish, the rest of the cast includes Saif Ali Khan as Shekar and a new face Vidya Balan as Lalitha. Lolita(Lalitha in Bengali) and Shekar fall in love before they know what the word means -- They share joys and sorrows through childhood and adolescence, and unknown to them the relationship of an unspoken right they hold over each other meta morphs into a love so intense, they can't even sense it coming. It takes an outsider, Girish, for them to discover that there's something between them that's bigger than both of them. Sans the climax the movie was pretty decent.

Ghazni- A story about a short term memory loss patient who hunts down his lover's killer with photographs, notes and tatoos, a rehash of the critically acclaimed hollywood flick 'Memento' starring Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss (Of the matrix fame). There have been many movies remade or inspired from hollywood, but most of them are simply cheap imitations, very few of them stand out like the famed 'Nayagan' (Inspired by Godfather and listed among Time magazines 100 greatest movies), 'Dalapathi' (Inspired by Mahabharath) and more recently Sarkar (Remake of The Godfather) All these movies were rehash's of preexisting concepts yet stood out because of a common link- great directors and great actors, Ghazni may not be on par with the ones listed above but wasnt a bad watch, because of good performances from the hero Surya as a business tycoon Sanjay and his lady love Asin as Kalpana and excellent music by Harris Jayaraj.

Crash- Several stories interweave during two days in Los Angeles involving a collection of inter-related characters: a black police detective with a drugged out mother and a thieving younger brother, two car thieves who are constantly theorizing on society and race, the distracted district attorney and his irritated and pampered wife, a racist veteran cop (caring for a sick father at home) who disgusts his more idealistic younger partner, a successful black Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with the racist cop, a Persian-immigrant father who buys a gun to protect his shop, a Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter who is afraid of bullets, and more. Overall a strong, provocative movie starring Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Brendon Fraser, Ludacris and a host of multiethnic characters.

Maria Full Of Grace- This is my first time, watching a Spanish movie, I guess theres a first time for everything, A story of a pregnant seventeen year old Columbian girl who decides to become a drug mule for the sake of money for her family. She is detained at the New York airport under the suspision of being a drug mule, later her urine samples reveal that she is pregnant and they are forced to abort the x-ray test that would reveal the drugs concealed in her stomach. These drug mules are expected to swallow anywhere between 60 and a 100 heroin capsules, each weighing 10gms, 4 cms long and 2 cms wide. If any one of these capsules break, it would result in the death of the person carrying it and on each flight to New York from Columbia, nearly half a dozen such mules are sent so that even if a few are caught, the others can still make it across. If they make it, they are paid $5000 which is supposed to be nearly 10 million in columbian currency. After the ordeal in which Maria loses her friend, she decides to stay back in the US for the sake of her child, as she does not want her child to grow up in Columbia. This movie is supposed to be based on a 1000 true stories and has won numerous awards including an Oscar nomination.

Now on to some news stories in the last month or so:

A massive quake in South Asia, hit Pakistan occupied Kashmir and parts of Jammu & Kashmir. the toll in PoK is nearly 40,000 while the toll in J&K is nearly about 1000.

GM's spinoff Delphi, an autmotive parts supplier has filed for bankruptcy, paralysing the giant automaker which is still liable for a host of payoffs that may account upto $11 bn since the spinoff had taken place less than 8 years back.

Apple has launched its latest iPod called the nano, the impossibly thin iPod can hold anywhere between 500 and a 1000 songs.

Conservative leader Angela Merkel is all set to become Germany's first female Chancellor.

I Hope to be back soon, and not take any more unexpected breaks, signing off with a nice quote.
"Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness."- The Architect of the Matrix