Whatever...

What defines you?  Your job? Career? But that is a 20th century invention. People did not have 'careers' before that and still lived happy life! Your kids? Spouse? Parents? Family? They are important! But does your happiness define what they think of you? That is difficult to control. Are you always going to try and please them to maintain an 'image'? Your friends? What kind of friends? Those who like you? love you? speak their minds or dont speak at all? Who will back you up even if you have done something wrong?  Neighbours? Colleagues? They are integral to your life but you will keep changing. What do they mean then? Your hobbies? Would you do them if no one appreciated you for them? What defines you is  - how you would treat others if you had nothing to do with them - what you would do if no one was looking - would you do something if it did not pay you

I have been living in a city for more than 10 years now. Before that, I have lived in a village in Goa, India. The total population of my village was less than five thousand. Whereas, since 2004, I have lived in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune & now Hyderabad. Being raised in a village, I have always had difficulty liking a city. In fact, the first time I visited a house on 14th Floor in Mumbai, I got a very weird feeling. It is a perspective I had never had in my village! Since then, I have tried to blend in, albeit forcefully. Over the last decade, having lived across cities, with all the constraints of a family man, I have zeroed in on 3 main issues that stare us in the face. And these issues have remediation (if not to resolve, at least ease it) at individual level. We need not wait for the government to do anything. I have already started doing my bit. This post is only for setting the context on each of these issues. I will dedicate another post individually to how I am trying...

Yes! Having settled the matter there, let us move forward with some rant since this is a blog... There are a lot of religious places that are banning women from entering. This includes temples, mosques and not sure if also a few churches. In retaliation, women and feminists are going all crazy calling it their fundamental right, challenging the diktat in court etc. I have a different view point on this and may sound crazy to a few, but since you are reading till now, go on further... Practicing your religion is your fundamental right, not going to a specific building. So just chuck it and practice your religion somewhere else. Just like if you want to gulp a few drinks but are not allowed in a specific bar because of dress code, you don't go to the judiciary or stage a protest!!?? You just go to the theka, get some daaru home and get high.  Why do you desperately want to go to a place that does not want you? Would you visit a jewellery shop or saari shop if they ill treat...

Liberalization, represented by Pepsico, entered our lives with this slogan in 1998. And since then it has held and grown it's roots through our existence. Everybody who was yet to take up a job in the 90's is today possessed with the 'need' for more. Mind it, it's not wanting more of everything but needing it! Today the careers we all are into are mostly driven by this need for more. More speed in cars, computers and phones, more return on investment, more homes to live, more luxury, more health care and what not. If you take a ratio of everything that is more today to what the same parameter was 20 years ago, the result will almost be infinity! But does all of this come for free? How come all of us are inclined to believe that this 'infinite' amount of 'progress' has come with no cost at all. In fact most of these things have become cheaper than they were 20 years ago. Isn't that hard to believe and against the order of nature? In my opinion,...

I have been working for 11 years now. The first 2 years I spent in a bank. Doing trade finance operations. I used computer like a took back then. I used it to do my job faster and better. Circa 2006, I moved into I.T. Consulting because it was 'the place to be'.  Since then, my life has changed a lot. From being a people person who liked to go out and meet people, I have become a laptop & smart phone person. Having spent close to a decade in IT, I have started believing that a person can achieve a lot and 'get things done'  through just a laptop and a data connection. Well, guess what, I AM WRONG! This feeling has been fuelled further by all the on line utilities like paying bills, bank transactions, shopping, ticket booking and what not. You can even get entertained (or so you think) in front of the laptop! You almost feel like you can live your entire life in front of the laptop and not regret it at all. I don't mean to blame my job entirely for it, si...

I have spent last few weeks trying to make choices between health, children's education, career choices, safe & secure environment for kids, time with parents and most importantly - money. People who have witnessed my dilemma have told me I am too emotional, not ambitious enough, 'wasting my talent' and what not! At the same time, I have also seen people of my age and caliber make the same choices with ease. So, I got thinking. What is it that helps them make these decisions? After a lot of deliberation, I think it is money. I have grown up in a household that places minimal emphasis on money. My father once told me that money will help me survive but it's my passion that will help me have a life. So, money has been no more than a tool! In fact so much was my self gratification that I even looked down upon people as 'money-minded'. My definition of such people was - people who would make decisions purely based on monetary gain. While, I made my decisio...

So, the world is a global village! Stuff and people moves across continent in days if not hours. Information travels in milliseconds and technology changes every hour. So when someone wears a fine pair of snickers, they don't really care if it was manufactured in a sweatshop in Bangladesh in totally inhuman working conditions. They just buy them in an air conditioned shop (or better still, on line from the comfort of the couch). Everyone is in for a 'good deal'. The person who has provided us with the product or service is in some far away land majority of the time. This has made us all ungrateful. If the Internet  Now, Imagine a world about 50 years ago. People cared more than they do now. Because everyone who catered to you, lived around you. It was a more human world.People cared about other people. Your tailor mattered to you. Even if you had a fight with him, he was still part of your village and your world. So was the carpenter, the mail man, the farmer ...every...

There comes a point in life where you start questioning everything. Call it mid life crisis or whatever you may, you want to know stuff, want to be more rooted and productive in every possible way. I have been living a pretty much a procrastinator's life all along. Looking for some greater good to happen.  But today is the day. I was going through this website - www.storyofstuff.com   . It's not the first time I have come across this thought process. I have read about frugal living ( www.raptitude.com ), met a few people who believe & practise sustainable development/ livelihood. I have read books, attended seminars and thought I'd done my bit. But I always thought that it was some sort of a fad. I hadn't bought the idea completely. But today, I am sold on it! I begin today by not using the air conditioner. I usually sleep in an air conditioned room; Telling myself that keeping it on for a couple of hours is not going to cause much harm! But today onward, I sw...