Few inspirational quotes by Abraham Lincoln

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

A feeling of safety

A feeling of safety is more than it shows explicitly. A feeling of safety is a feeling of freedom. Freedom not just to travel alone and at anytime of the day, but also a feeling of being your own person. A feeling of being a wanderer when you want to be one. A feeling of looking the way you want and dressing up the way you want. Not being afraid of being noticed in an unpleasant way. Being adventurous when your spirit demands so.

Having lived with a feeling of safety in a way described above grants you another freedom. A freedom to freely shape your personality which is only possible when you not under pressure of doing things which are good for safety and may or may not be good for overall development.


In a nutshell, being safe is fundamental to being able to listen to your spirit and live a free life without the devil of fear clutching you.

The next goal

Happiness is something we all yearn for and believe that reaching our next goal will provide us with that. In the quest for the victory that we desire the most at that moment, we tend to ignore a lot in our lives. As if, once we reach that goal, everything else will fall into place by itself.

Yet, most wonderful things are discovered while we are still yearning for our wins. Profound lessons come to us during this journey, which we sometimes do not realize at that point of time.

When we reach the goal expecting to live happily ever after, another quest, another search, another journey begins.

Our lives may not be so much judged by the amount of happiness we are able to claim by these victories, but more so, by what we make of ourselves in the pursuit of happYness.

Happy Women's Day

Happy Women's Day.

It is a day of celebration, but more than that it is a day to think of ways that will take us forward together through this journey of life without gender bias and towards the time when we will no longer need a Women's day.

It has been heartening to see in recent times men providing support on women's issues. Celebrities like Aamir Khan and Farhan Akhtar are known for their work on satyamev jayate and the MARD initiative. This is also a day for appreciating them and all those men who support women unconditionally in their daily lives.

Women are known to perform their duties diligently; today is a day for them to take out time to think of ways to exercise their rights with equal fervor!

Something New each day of the year!!

A new year has begun and yet everything else seems old. Why not do something new in the new year. A new adventure, a new venture, a new thrill, a new challenge.

How about doing one thing which is new in a particular day, every day. Won't it add vibrancy to the otherwise usual day??

That one new thing could be a new piece of writing, reading a new book/article [reading is a great hobby as its easy to read something new everytime], cooking something new, visiting an unexplored place or a restaurant, being part of a new group, trying a newer and smarter way of communicating, a new way of dressing, a new dance step, a new word, a new song/poem, or a new tweet[if nothing else counts as new ;-)]. The list is endless and you can add more to it suiting your interests and hobbies...

Now I click the "publish" button and here goes on my blog my first contribution to the "Something New" initiative of the year !!

Who is responsible for Road Accidents

A proposal for a law is underway that a senior citizens of the country above a cut off age of 72 years will not be issued driving license. The step has been taken presumably to reduce road accidents.
So there are people who seriously think that old people are responsible for road accidents to a great extent. But what do all other citizens of the country think- Who is responsible for the road accidents in India?
· Is it not the teenager or youngster in early 20s, whose only ambition on road is to break his own record with regards to the timing taken to reach the destination.

The de-stressing distractions

The work pressure in IT companies is not un-heard of by most people.
These companies usually block social networking sites to enable people to work more effectively, this way the companies can also save their bandwidth spent on non-official work.

But the truth is that if we don't give-in completely to these distractions, we can in-fact improve our productivity by using them along with the work. That is what I felt when I was working from home on Saturday. Because none of the sites were blocked from home, I was able to catch up on few tweets on twitter, few blogposts, few updates on facebook in between my work. And without the suffering caused by slow web access via GPRS.

Which helped me in not getting stressed. 

Monday Morning Blues

Garfield- Mondays

This phrase is nothing new. Every Monday morning most of us experience and keep hearing about this from all around us.

A recurring phenomena, repeats once every week for all who work on weekdays.

Yet we have not been able to devise a solution around it.

Organizations need to get more creative and think of ways to help people ward off Monday morning blues as soon as they reach for work. An example is organizing half-an-hour session every Monday morning to fill employees with enthusiasm for the ensuing week.

Else they'll keep following the trend of ranting about Morning Morning blues every monday morning, at least till noon.

Random

I like the sound of the word random. This word has a unique identity of its own as its identity is not dependent on any precedent.

Recently when I had to spend an hour in a waiting zone, I started fiddling with my mobile, that is when I came across these random shots taken in the past one year.

 

Monkeys making merry on the roadside. They still enjoy anywhere, anytime while we humans have... evolved.

	The rose speaks silently of love, in a language known only to the heart.
    

Anti-fashion diary of a corporate professional

There is something I can never come to terms with - Why do men have it so easy when it comes to dressing up when women have to spend endless hours for the same?

No hair straightening, no curls, minimal cosmetics, their clothes are much easier to select, and shoes too. And to make things worse, they have numerous pockets in their attire, they don't need to block their hands with purse or a mobile phone or burden their shoulders with a bag. Not much effort is usually required by them in terms of grooming, when compared with women.

Of late, men are also showing eagerness to ride the beauty bandwagon and are embracing new beauty treatments and going in for manscaping, but that trend has not caught up much outside entertainment industry.

Women in the fashion and entertainment fields keep adopting new fashion trends. And the ones leading a corporate life with hardly any time at their disposal get stuck in this trap. Not because of any compulsion, but owing to the fact that there is  more than just a bit of fashionista in everyone, which raises its hood every now and then asking for fulfilment. 

The end result makes it really interesting.  More the effort spent, more is the discomfort; as if the sole aim for putting in so much effort was discomfort.

Giving the impression of being comfortable with self-induced discomfort increases the hotness quotient, I guess.

The Intangibles

Intangibles are what make life complete. Yet I find myself running after tangibles, as necessary evils in this world. I sometimes feel the sole purpose of tangibles is to keep us away from the bliss we can experience from the Intangibles.  Life keeps testing our committment to the intangibles.

Work manages to give us a routine. And hence gives a reason to  think of ways to break the routine, which in turn gives enjoyment. My only complain with routine is that it takes far too many hours which hardly leaves any time to connect with the intangibles in my daily life. 

A dimensionally opposite fact is that in order to derive pleasure from intangibles, one should have satisfactory level of tangibles in life.

My facebook jungle

This is what facebook has become of late. This was not where it started from...

It started with a group of friends bored from Orkut wanting to discover another meeting place.
Slowly everyone seemed to be on Facebook - Colleagues, relatives - the kind of species that were not found on any social networking site earlier , started creeping into my Facebook account.

My timeline/newsfeed now has totally new type of posts - a joke every few minutes, old film songs from youtube, quotes the kind usually found on greeting cards, to name just a few. And few among these new friends, like to recollect their old memories by posting black n white snaps of their get-togethers - nice but only for them who are involved.
In other words, my timeline is completely hijacked by these new inhabitants and while checking my account, I can almost always hear the chorus from the song "I'm always on facebook..." dedicated to my new friends.

Few kiddos who happen to be relatives wanted to create a family tree, showing me as a relation. Family tree - on facebook? Why on earth would I want to do that?

Then there are those colleagues, with whom conversation had never gone beyond the work at hand, suddenly want to make a peep into my social networking account.

And what are you supposed to do when a barely acquainted friend of a contact pokes you. Should you poke right back? What would that imply?

Earlier, social networking in the virtual world, used to be a getaway from routine, mainly for connnecting with friends in different parts of the world. And what I came here for just gets lost within all the clutter.

Facebook has come up with categorization of friends and customization of news feed and must say that's a brilliant step taken by Team Facebook, that provides a solution to ignore those so called friends whose posts and opinions barely interest you.

Yes, it still has all the elements it started off with -- updates from friends, their opinions, pics, ... but all that now needs to be located among the so called weeds in the jungle.

Bombay Collage

The book-marked experience!

Of late, there have been many discussions around a shift in book reading trend from paper books towards electronic media. The ease and comfort of carrying electronic media around with us is a definite plus, yet, it differs largely on experience front when compared with paper books. For one, the reader is deprived of the smell of unread book when reading from a soft copy.

There's another thing which I got reminded of when I picked up a partially read book and discovered a bookmark inside. No, I do not mean the bookmark in the web browser, to which we are more accustomed to nowdays. I am talking about the real thing, the tangible bookmark which in this case was encrusted with dried rose petals and leaves.Sometimes, a sophisticated luxury item is not able to please as much as something trivial like a bookmark.

The shift towards electronic media seems inevitable. Yet, we may be leaving behind the joy of gifting bookmarks to friends, with beautiful friendship quotes inscribed on them, or metallic gold plated bookmarks gifted on special days. These bookmarks elevate book-reading experience just by their presence in a book, and sighting them in a book at a later time is delightful,  like receiving a surprise bonus.

 

Book Review: Fate Fraud and a Friday Wedding

Fate Fraud and a Friday Wedding, a book written by a debutante writer Bhavna Rai, is about people whose lives did not turn out to be as desired by them, but leads them to discover a new meaning in their lives.

The story mainly revolves around the lives of six young people - a software geek, a girl belonging to a rich family, another software professional, who has been staying in USA but has to relocate to India to be with his parents, his American girlfriend and 2 other professionals working at a BPO (Business Process Outsourcing ) company.

It is interesting to see how the lives of all these seemingly distant characters turn out to be intertwined together. The author's vast experience in the field of Information Technology (IT) has enabled her to weave the story in the backdrop of IT and ITes (Information Technology Enabled Services) industry. The way the management of the software firms strategize in the wake of recession and follow up on their plans has been captured beautifully.

The highlight of this book is the smooth flow of events which are every bit engrossing. Reading through the fast-paced story, it didn't seem like the work of the first time writer. The characters are very well defined and even if some characters seem a bit geeky, the story is told in a lucid style. There are no non-required lengthy descriptions of characters or events and hence no wasting of reader’s time. It also has lots of interesting drama thrown in and never a dull moment. A bit more effort though could have gone into editing in the language department.


I liked the way the author has captured the thought process of the young generation and how they handle conundrums that ensue when it comes to making important decisions in their lives.

All in all, an easy reading and a completely engrossing book from cover to cover which tells the story of urbane youth woven around an intelligent plot!

Moonstruck

The moon's form was making rapid changes during the total lunar eclipse.It is not often in recent times that we spend time gazing at Moon for so long. In doing so during lunar eclipse I rediscovered the beauty of the Moon. It was not just me, but people around the world were getting fascinated with changing forms of Moon. Amidst all this I was thinking about how the presence of Moon makes a difference to our lives.

To me moonlight represents peace, and complements Sun by providing moments of solace after a tiring day in the Sun.

It epitomizes love and beauty despite all the spots on it's surface.

It was being eclipsed this week by the earth, but it's beauty did not fade a bit in the process. It stood as elegant as ever, telling us in it's own unique way that even while fading one can manage to look elegant.

It also gives a hope that fading due to an eclipse is a temporary phase, once it is over, the world will yet again witness it's brightness.

It's ever changing form portrays in a mysterious way, the ever changing - waxing and waning phases of life.

The calmness and serenity in the atmosphere in it's presence gives a feeling of divine power, which is further enhanced by it's white color which stands for purity.

And undoubtedly, the sight of a full moon is a sight to behold! In words of the renowned poet John Keats:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'


Here are few pictures of Moon taken during Total Lunar Eclipse on 15th-16th Jun ' 2011.

Super Kings of Cricket

Writing this after getting a High from the incredible win by CSK in the playoff! The resilience which this team has shown throughout the tournament surely makes it stand apart from the rest. And What makes this team do that is that every player in the team is a match winner by himself.

We know that every cricketer has a bad day, but a well-placed team like CSK is one which survives despite that. CSK is one team where seemingly ordinary players do extraordinary things, on days when it is needed the most!

They have some of the best talent around, especially with Stephen Fleming as their coach and Dhoni as their captain they have 50% of work already done for them.

These are few highlights of CSK team in IPL4 for they'll be remembered for:

IPL4 : Consolidation

IPL(Indian Premier League) T20 has provided a platform for India to look at cricket in a new light. It is a platform where new talent is being discovered, not just batsmen and bowlers but also people who can captain well. A captain or a skipper has a position in cricket, and especially in T20 cricket, where he can make decisions which may ultimately lead a team to victory or failure.
A senior player who is brilliant in batting /bowling/wicket keeping and fielding is generally picked up as a captain. However, besides having a thorough knowledge of his sport and being in good form himself it is imperative that the captain has the ability to take decisions in favor of his team, take responsibility for taking his team towards victory and keep motivational levels of the team high. And in cases where these qualities are not inherent, the captain should ask for classroom training to understand how to develop of skills related to motivation and influencing team members.

Mobile Phones and Driving

I often see cars wavering on the roads of Delhi. It is easy to judge that the driver must be holding a mobile phone engaged in an engrossing conversation.

Once in a while they get caught by the traffic police. However a mere fine does not deter them from taking calls again using their handsets while driving.

Traffic police can practice a little creativity by handing over bluetooth headsets to the culprits and charge them heavily for the same. This may not resolve the problem but likely to help reduce the effect.

A Day of Bliss

A day when u can wake up late

A day to laze in the sun

A day spent with unmade self

A day when mirror scares

A day of catching up on movies

and enjoy good reading

No exercise routines or diets to care for

A day of no emails to answer

and thus no heated mail exchanges to respond to

When chats and social networking make their way

into a day of nothingness

into a day of bliss !!