"Too Sulabh Shouchaalay"
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Sphere: Related Content
We have heard, seen, read about those innovative public toilets in Switzerland; that has an enclosure made of one-way glass, so that no one can see you doing your business but you could see them while you’re inside.
How about this one? I found this very innovative and cost effective open toilet on the busy Infantry road in Bangalore. The walls are neither made out of glass, bricks nor wood, but have no walls at all. I was shocked to see this rare scene just outside my office building on 30th of August 2007.The budding photographer in me couldn't stop taking picture of this rare incident....lemme explain in detail. A commode was placed on an uncovered manhole on the busy Infantry road. This definitely reflects the soiled infrastructure of the city. If this is the situation on the road which houses Police commissioner's office, Income taxes office and couple of media houses, it’s our foolishness to ask for a better infrastructure in the remote areas of the city which cries to death when it rains.
Coming back to the commode saga, I was wondering whether it’s a unique way of protesting against the open manholes, huge pits on the roads or was it just one of those broken useless stuff threw on the road by the sanitary shops in the area.
A day’s life of this commode came to an end when a speeding BMTC bus rammed it to pieces on the 31st of Aug, 2007. Hey Mr. Commode, may your soul rest in peace in the toilets of Switzerland!
How about this one? I found this very innovative and cost effective open toilet on the busy Infantry road in Bangalore. The walls are neither made out of glass, bricks nor wood, but have no walls at all. I was shocked to see this rare scene just outside my office building on 30th of August 2007.The budding photographer in me couldn't stop taking picture of this rare incident....lemme explain in detail. A commode was placed on an uncovered manhole on the busy Infantry road. This definitely reflects the soiled infrastructure of the city. If this is the situation on the road which houses Police commissioner's office, Income taxes office and couple of media houses, it’s our foolishness to ask for a better infrastructure in the remote areas of the city which cries to death when it rains.
Coming back to the commode saga, I was wondering whether it’s a unique way of protesting against the open manholes, huge pits on the roads or was it just one of those broken useless stuff threw on the road by the sanitary shops in the area.
A day’s life of this commode came to an end when a speeding BMTC bus rammed it to pieces on the 31st of Aug, 2007. Hey Mr. Commode, may your soul rest in peace in the toilets of Switzerland!
AUTORATURE - A vanishing art!
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Sphere: Related Content
Love them or loathe them, but you just cant ignore them.Nope, I am not talking about the Himesh Reshamiyas of the world, but a tiny yet ferocious automobile called Autorikshaws.Which are also popularly known as Rick,Auto,Rickshaw,Tuk Tuk, etc in different parts of the subcontinent. Auto drivers are peculiar and typical in nature depending upon the various locations they reside in India. An auto driver in Bangalore might just ignore you in the mornings as he might be busy reading Kannada dailies like Prajavani or Vijaya Karnataka or even Times of India in some cases, nevertheless Bangalore is the only place in India where you can find English speaking autowallas. An auto driver in Chennai ensures that he’ll atleast show some parts of Chennai before dropping you to your destination which apparently is just one road away from the place you had taken the rick (If you are new to Chennai). It’s a different story altogether with Bombay autowallahs, they are the most honest and customer friendly auto drivers I have come across amongst their counterparts in other cities.
Auto drivers are often portrayed negatively in most of the South Indian movies. Few exceptions I have come across are Rajanikanth’s Bhashaa in Tamil and Auto Raja starring Shankar Nag in Kannada. No wonder why we see Rajani’s photos in the auto stands of Tamilnadu and Shankar Nag’s in Karnataka. Auto rickshaws have found their fortunes in Hollywood too; there is a chasing scene in James Bond movie Octopussy in which Bond and a fellow M16 agent Vijay Amritraj elude villains while they are in an auto.
It will be incomplete if I don't mention the creativity of auto drivers, especially when my objective of writing this post is to emphasise and compile some of the interesting slogans on the auto rickshaws around.Since my childhood days, I have been enchanted by the ‘creative’, ‘emotional’, ‘funny’, ‘meaningless’ writings on the back of rickshaws on the Indian subcontinent. Thanks to those creative auto drivers. This unique art can be called as “AUTORATURE” (Auto+Literature), off course, term coined by me!
I feel this wonderful art work is ceasing to exist in some parts of the country. You can blame it either on authorities for restricting auto drivers from writing anything on the canopy or blame it on the greedy marketers like me who are trying to covert every bit of visible property as an advertising space in the name of ambient media.
I have compiled some of the slogans/writings I have found on the Autorickshaws in Bangalore and have also tried to give a rough translation of the same as most of them are in Kannada. I have also put in my comments in red.
- The new Indian. – (What’s your status? Old Indian or New Indian).
- Preethiyannu konda kolegaathi - Murderess who killed Love (Poor Devdas :( ).
- God is doing but somewhat wait – (Hey Shakespeare, can you can you come alive and explain this to us?).
- Dhoom 4 – (Ahead of yashRaj movies.But where is Dhoom 3??).
- Love is a sweet poison – (Thank god I am not diabetic).
- Trust a snake but not a woman – (Can we trust female snakes?).
- Don’t vary be happi – (Hey techies around, can you invent auto spell check in PAINT BRUSH too?).
- Duniya duddina mele preethi bhoomi mele - World rests on money yet love stays on earth.
- Thandeya nenapu, thaayiya aashirvaada – Dad’s memory, mother’s blessings.
- Small family, happy family – (how many small families do you have??Be specific).
- Don't pollute the air - (only autorckshaws are entitled to do so).
- Nagu yellarigagi, hrudaya obbaligagi - Smile for everyone, heart for only one (I believe he is yet to find his first love).
- Nothing can change my love for you - (Are you sure?).
- Mandyada gooli - The bull from Mandya (Beware..It can attack on any color)
- Manja SSLC, Mahesha P.U.C - (Ooops...higly educated family!)
- Masthigu kusthigu ready - Ready for both fun and fight (Local Munnabhai??)
I do try to add some more slogans as and when I get to see the new ones, also pls contribute if you come across anything interesting. (pradeepjayraj[at]gmail.com)
A bit of Gandhi in every father..
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Sphere: Related Content
It was sharp 6pm and I decided to step out of the office. I have been doing it for the last couple of weeks, post my realization that I too have a personal life and it has gone for a big toss. Initially my colleagues used to ask me whether I am on half a day leave, but they have stopped asking as it has become quite regular now. Once out of office, the biggest challenge in front of me was to plan my evening. I did call couple of my friends and tried planning for a movie, but in vein I got a sarcastic smile from them when I told them the name of the movie, Gandhi My father. By then I was quite sure that I am not going to get any company for this movie and headed towards Inox alone.For a change, I went out without having any pre conceived notion about the movie.I had avoided seeing trailers of this movie in television. For my surprise, this movie turned out to be one of the best emotional melodramas I have ever seen on the silver screen in the recent past. The critic in me was unable to find a single flaw in the movie. Be it the way the story has been narrated or the performance of each and every actor in the movie. Hats off to Anil Kapoor’s guts for taking such a risk in producing a movie on a character called Harilal Gandhi which is neither heard nor seen anywhere. The second person to be appreciated is director Feroze Abbas Khan; he has utilized his skills till the corner of his ability.Akshay Khanna’s acting as Harilal Gandhi is just mesmerizing. Nevertheless, the roles played by Dharshan Jariwal as Mahatma Gandhi and Shefali Shah as Kastur Ba is much appreciated.
Getting little deeper into the movie or rather into the story of Harilal Gandhi itself, I was asking myself a few hundred questions while trying to analyze who was responsible for the disastrous end of Harilal, the eldest son of Mahatma Gandhi. Is it Mahatma who was responsible or Harilal himself?
Recounting couple of incidents from the movie as a normal human being, I somehow felt Mahatma was somewhere responsible for the failure of his son. Despite of all his success as a peacemaker, campaigner, father of the nation, he failed at the task of being a good father for his eldest son.
Being an elder son in the family, Harilal had to sacrifice his studies as Mahatma was shuttling his family between South Africa and India. Though Harilal was very ambitious and wanted to become a barrister like his father, Mahatma never supported him. Be it when he failed to give his son a basic education or be it when he failed to recommend the scholarship to his son. Knowingly or unknowingly Mahatma used his son as a material of experimenting with his values and principles, especially when he provokes his son to go against the South African government’s racism policy though he knew it might jeopardize his son’s ambition of becoming a barrister.
If my objective is to prove Mahatma wrong I get countless examples from the story, but trying to do so, I will prove myself wrong
On the contrary, If you see the flip side of the story, it was Harilal who was responsible for his downfall. It’s very easy to become a victim of circumstances, as was the case with Harilal, and put the blame on someone else for your failures. He was never confident in his moves and was always insecure. After he moved back to India parting ways from his father his negative source of energy was much stronger than his ambitions. He was always scared that he’ll loose against his father. His failures were result of defocus and moving ahead in a wrong path. His whole objective was to win against his father and not to reach his destination. His unclear vision and insecure nature made him convert into Muslim and again when he failed to prove himself as an individual without the name of his father, when he failed to get the support from his new religion he gets reconverted into Hinduism. Though Harilal was always against his father, knowingly or unknowingly he used Mahatma’s name in each and every endeavors of his life.
If you get little deeper into the character of Mahatma, you’ll accept the fact that he was reacting to the circumstances and never forced his son to follow his principles. Instead of trying to exploit the family name in every possible way, Harilal should have been proud to be born in such a family, a family which believed a life of selfless devotion to the cause of freedom and equality, a father who was determined to get the nation back from the hands of English.
If you come out of the movie and see the families around, you see a bit of Gandhi in every father and a bit of Kastur Ba in every mother. A father son conflict is nothing new in the Indian context. Most of the time, like Mahatma and his son’s case, the conflict always revolves around ones career, failures and freedom and like Kastur ba; every mother constantly tries to reconcile father and son.
Coming back to the movie, it will be crime on the part of juries’ if it fails to win at least one Oscar.
Why Do You Want a Web Site?
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Sphere: Related Content
Its very imperative to have a website for any business today. I really don’t know how many of these small business houses, especially in India do some home work before making their site live. In most of the cases we limit our website to publish promoters photos and our contact details. I recently came across this very informative article by Ana Rincon, on the points we need to consider before we go live with website.You’ve decided that you need a Web site and you’re ready to move ahead and have it built. Whoa! Before you take that next step, take time to determine what you want your Web site to accomplish. Your answer will:
1)help determine the functionality and content needed on the site.
2)help you communicate with (and put limits on) your Web developers.
3)allow you to measure your results.
For example, you may decide that the primary purpose of your site is to drive customers to your brick-and-mortar storefront. You can accomplish this with a simple one-page site and smart use of online newsletters, coupons, and promotions.
If you are trying to build brand awareness, though, your site might need a much more substantial design, deeper content, and a well developed online advertising plan.
For a company that intends to make its living from online sales, then the usability of your Web catalog and shopping cart are vital.
You will want to spend more time and money choosing the right platform and software and developing the user interface.
Although a good Web consultant can help you determine your requirements, it’s a good idea to think them through before your first meeting. It’s hard for a developer to resist suggesting that you use the latest software package or high-tech gizmo on your site. Keeping your goals in mind during the development process will help you and your Web company focus on the most important elements of the site and spend less time and money on elements that won’t add substantially to the bottom line.
Remember that a Web site is a business tool, and like other business initiatives, it should be subject to measurement and analysis. Did it accomplish your intended purpose? Was it cost effective? What was your return on investment? Unless you are clear on your objectives from the start, it will be hard to determine the success of your site.
When friendship precedes love….
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Sphere: Related Content
After a long gap, ‘Eskimo in the Dessert’ is in a bulshitting mood on friendship/ relationship.Scenario 1
They were good friends for over 3 years, since their college days. There was hardly anything which they weren’t aware of each others lives. They were too attached to each other but none of them thought about marriage. Offlate he had a kind of fear of loosing her as she was getting lot of marriage alliances, she too was very enthu about meeting Mr. Right of her life. He couldn’t wait anymore, one fine day he proposed to her assuming she would accept it. It was too unexpected for him when she said ‘enough is enough’, we can’t be friends anymore as you have such a cheap thought about our relationship. There 3 year old friendship was ‘sacked’ without any notice period served!
Scenario 2
He proposed to her after being friends for few years, she never expected, neither she panicked, she brought some time from him to tell her consent . Few days later she made him realize why she can’t accept his proposal with valid reasons and also conveyed to him how they can still be good friends for life inspite of having such a thought in his mind. Since things were conveyed to him in a right and a practical way, it made him easy to remove any such feelings about her from his mind. Being a ‘good friend’ he helped her find her dream boy. Their friendship ruled even after their marriage.
Is it a universal law that people of opposite sex can’t be just good friends for life? Answer is both Yes and No. Like in love, here too most of them are too possessive about their friend. They feel jealous when either of them starts seeing somebody else. Like In most of the cases when they dream about their life partner, they always tend to compare them with their best friend and most of the time they are scared whether their Mr. /Ms Right will be as good as their ‘friend’. Though they always benchmark their dream partners with their so called good friends, though they understand each other so well, love never blossoms among them. Even though it does in some cases, its one sided.
Feelings apart, when one proposes, its moral responsibility of the other to take decision based on his/her priorities in life than letting emotions take over their decisions. Most of the time such proposals are accepted thinking the other person will feel hurt if I say no. One can never take their relationship to the next level when decisions are made based on their emotions. Even though your answer is no, you can still be a good friends for rest of the life, It’s all about conveying your decisions in a right manner. After all marriage is not the only solution to save the long lasting friendship…
Village, villagers and the metamorphosis
Friday, May 18, 2007
Sphere: Related Content
Circa 1980s:It was a perfect sunny day in the summers of late eighties.I was helping my dad in his farm as I always did during my summer vacations. I was bit over dressed for the job I was doing, wearing branded denims and T-shirt which made me look like an alien to our farm labours. My uncles in the neighboring plantations started calling me as a 'Modern farmer'.
Radio was the only gadget used in the farms in and around our village.Workers enjoyed listening to 'aakashvani' while working..(Hey, its not MNCs who introduced radios at work place..thanks to those visionary farmers who introduced them in the farms & plantations of southern Karnataka)
The only TV set in the village attracted a minimum of 200 people to watch 'Ramayana' on Sunday mornings.Yes, TV was one of the most luxurious product those days.A car parked in the entrance of the village would attract a minimum of 50 people (majority of them being kids). Few telephones in the village used to handle incoming calls for almost an entire village.
Circa 2007:
What a change...denims have become a dress code, people talk about Levis,Pepe,Killer..shades and caps are additions. Though iPods are visible here and there, radio still rocks in the fields and plantations.Cars can no more attract people unless a Ferrari or a Lamborghini is parked.Few people do possess plasma sets, large screen TV sets are quite common. Forget about landlines, every household has at least one cell phone and it has become a craze among youths in the village.My dad don't have to come home to inform my mother about no. of workers present in the filed, she is just a dial away for him..thanks to BSNL & Airtel. Rigtones are challenging the vocal abilities of the migrated birds in our plantations.
One good thing about this sea change is, I am no more an alien or a modern farmer as most of the people dress better than me in the village!
'My type of' Dissatisfaction..
Sphere: Related Content
.jpg){kind=spacer}
I guess..human beings are the most unsatisfied animal god has created.I often feel, god undoubtedly has a good sense of humor...and I believe he enjoys seeing people fail in their efforts while trying to find 'BETTER' and lands up loosing the 'GOOD' in hand.I have many incidents to recount, both in my personal as well as professional life.
Atleast 80% of my colleagues, ex colleagues, friends often make this statement "My ex company was better" and they make this statement even after joining the next company...and continue making such statements till they retire from the Nth company.
I have come across atleast 10 friends who have had dumped their BFs/GFs in search of the better ones, and landing up in a major SHIT after finding "The my type of girl/boy". I have always seen this bunch of people cursing their fate for loosing their so called EXs after sometimes. Atleast in the last 28 years I have not seen somebody who is unsatisfied with their parents.
This unsatisfied behaviour is just not restricted to love,lust and jobs, it has its presence in each and every aspects of our life. I often try and analyze to figure out why we human beings are so unsatisfied..but as someone rightly said, 'Stop analyzing life. Just live it. Analysis is what makes it complicated' I have just started accepting life as and how it comes.What makes me feel low about this human nature is, we often feel depressed when we fail in our attempts to fulfill our unsatisfied needs.As a result, we hurt people,we ignore loved ones, at times we behave like hooligans.
Donno from where I lifted this line, which helped me accept life in all hues and fragrances....
I have come across atleast 10 friends who have had dumped their BFs/GFs in search of the better ones, and landing up in a major SHIT after finding "The my type of girl/boy". I have always seen this bunch of people cursing their fate for loosing their so called EXs after sometimes. Atleast in the last 28 years I have not seen somebody who is unsatisfied with their parents.
This unsatisfied behaviour is just not restricted to love,lust and jobs, it has its presence in each and every aspects of our life. I often try and analyze to figure out why we human beings are so unsatisfied..but as someone rightly said, 'Stop analyzing life. Just live it. Analysis is what makes it complicated' I have just started accepting life as and how it comes.What makes me feel low about this human nature is, we often feel depressed when we fail in our attempts to fulfill our unsatisfied needs.As a result, we hurt people,we ignore loved ones, at times we behave like hooligans.
Donno from where I lifted this line, which helped me accept life in all hues and fragrances....
"The rains failed.Where 100 loads would be harvested, just half a load could be reaped. Robert H Schuller prayed, "Thank you lord for giving me back my seeds".He told his son, "Never look at what you have lost, look at what you are left with. Gratitude gives you the surviving power".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)