Bikhre Bimb - Scattered Hype

Movie goers are finally resorting to alternate ways of entertaiment (or shd i say alternate ways of spending money!). Plays are one of them.

Last weekend i stumbled upon a play by Girish Karnaad being staged at a local theater. Given to its hype, we realized that online tickets are sold out and the last hope is on-the-spot cancellations. With the enthu we had we were on the spot pretty early. Counter did open and people did cancel and on second attempt we had the tickets. So first hurdle crossed...

Stage setup looked immaculate. And the play began with a lady in green saari walking in. She turned out to be one of the best stage actors i had ever seen. But our plight began somewhere around 20mins from the start when we realized that she was the only one actor in the play! And the story line turned out to be really pathetic! I wonder how could Girish karnaad decide to write or direct such a thing! To be true i had headache for sometime. But anyways, as a true follower of plays i tried appreciating the work being done by lone lady.

Bikhre Bimb is something which is totally out of context. It never tries to touch upon something you can relate to. It just goes on to tell u what it wants without even caring for a moment that why would you listen to that! I would call it immature.

All in all, except of the performance of on and off stage artists, the play was a bore and its a complete no no for anyone.

But i would still keep going for plays because i love them. If not the story, the artists expression, their liveliness and compassion towards their work keeps it alive.

I Saw

I saw a Meteorite! Ya a real meteorite of 1400lbs! All these days i had just heard of things falling from sky but this one was a real proof. It had indeed fallen. Or atleast this is what London museum claims. They have many of such god sent solids...



I saw snow! Ya a real snow of 1 feet! I had seen snow before in USA but this was first time i saw it snowing. It was an awesome experience.


I saw a Mummy.. a real life! egyptian Mummy... it looks not exactly as it does in Mummy or Mummy Returns as it was just lying there fully strapped.. I saw the Mummy of cleopatra.. I still cant believe it that i saw a Mummy... A real Mummy!


I saw the tower bridge or london bridge as it is called... Ya the same.. London bridge is falling down.. falling down.. falling down..London bridge is falling down.. my fairlady. Or the bridge on which SRK ran to Kajol. The best part was that i cud see it twice and on my second attempt i saw it open and close to let a ship pass.


I saw the clothes of our hero Tipu Sultan which he wore for his last battle with British army. I had heard of this final fight and seen the place where it had happened on the trip to Mysore. Now his clothes are kept in one of the castles of Queen.. Windsor Castle. Though it appears odd to see it here but may be it's still safe because it is here.

And I saw 2 Indians, 3 Pakistanis, 1 Bangladeshi, 1 African living peacefully under same roof sharing same toilet for 3 months... Yours truly is one of them... :D

And yes, I saw London...

Era of No Tissue and Monetary easing

So the world is down. Tissues recently disappeared from my office though the CEO made a promise that no HCLite would be left behind in this turmoil. I salute him for this and for his hip shaking dance on bachna aye hasseno in the meet.But tissues did disappear...

When i started working in 2002, the IT sector was still grappling with millenium bubble burst and oldies had this tissue disappearing memories to share... I'm growing old and experienced.
For the newbies, the fact is that when an IT comp starts cost cutting, the first thing getting axed in tissue... Hankies in; tissues out...

Worldwide the interest rate are moving closer to zero in what is known as Quantitative monetary easing policy (pioneered by BO Japan i guess). How would u feel if u can buy a car or a home at closer to 0% interest (really around 2-3%) interest rate! But alas! for that to happen many other things need to fall including earning capability, rather employment... So as again supply demand rules.

Capitalism has been questioned this time. The sheer existence of paper money could be debated...It is being done so in Zimbabwe where inflation is more than some million %. Basically this no. is of no relevance as people do not want zimbabwe currency for exchange of good they have since the confidence in currency is lost. Are we headed back to historic Barter system? That makes me think what is it that i can recourse to under such circumustances... Go back to my ancestoral property and start sowing! Ok ok... i'm being too pessimistic... I did make some quick buck on my favourite relcom.. so may be i can be a day trader..

Catching up…

Being not in great health at times is good to catch up with friends, write and read. And I can’t ask for more if it happens over a weekend and when my boss is out of country :)

I just finished reading “The 3 mistakes of my life” this morning at 4am as I couldn’t stop once started. No doubt it’s a good and simple read. But I sincerely feel Chetan could have done better for his 3rd novel. Brida is my next one for now…

“The 3 mistakes…” novel reminds me of my birthday as it is a gift from my friend. Though I started reading it almost after 2 months of my bday, I was stuck on the first page (after the cover) which only had book’s title (when bought). My friend had penned bday greetings on it and the whole page now reads… Dear Gaurav… “The 3 mistakes of my life” Happy birth day… - . Hope it is unintentional. :P

Coming back to my bday (which was made special by Rajesh and a group of friends) I got my first car on that date. Yes, it was planned. It’s a major milestone for me as I always wished of owning a car as I grew up. Though the one I really looked keenly on the glossy pages of Times of India, long back, was Sonata but I can do with (m)i10 for now. It looks sexy and feels great to drive.

Taking note of other macroeconomic conditions there appears to be a bear bubble in the cap markets. Till Dec the market was always ready to go up by 500 points on very little good new and now it is just the otherwise. But wise should continue to invest on all these levels with 3 years perspective. Only caveat is … Don’t invest any money that you are going to need in next 3-5 years.

The IT industry along with the financial services sector looks down for now and more so the latter. IT players have been reacting with cheap gimmicks like retrenching 700 freshers, giving less than inflation hikes, cutting napkins, charging for tea and I guess the next one will be a charge for more than x no. of pees a day. I sense a cartel here. I feel there is a need to have a group of IT/ITeS employees like a labor union where one can raise voice and fight ever changing policies of these companies. This is a signature of maturing industry. This is not a leftist view but just a view. The industry is going through a rough phase and companies need to rationalize expenses and more so stop charging peanuts net margin’s to big clients. May be one can have cartel for this. Anyways, I feel that the mature companies will survive this phase and the scenario is good for industry overall as it has made us to re-think and grow above number-revenue linearity.

So that is it… I loved movie “Jaane Tu…” as it has Genelia of “Boys” fame. I remember to have watched “Boys” thrice in Tamil. Its songs are one of the best I’ve ever heard. It is music at the end… words hardly count…. Stay cosy!

Presentation Paradox

Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel prize winning expert in cognitive psychology, and his long timecolleague Amos Tversky designed the following simple, if somewhat dramatic test to show how achange of presentation can affect our decisions. Their test consists of presenting two variants ofa choice between two public health programmes that address a threat to the lives of 600 people.

The first variant is:
‘With programme A we know that 200 lives will be saved, whereas with programme B there is a one-third chanceof saving all 600 lives and a two-thirds chance of saving none.’

Kahneman and Tversky found that a clear majority of the people they presented with this choicepreferred A to B.

The second variant is:
With programme C we know that 400 lives will be lost, whereas with programme D there is a one-third chancethat none will die and a two-thirds chance that all 600 people will die.’

A majority of the people presented with this choice prefer D to C. Now, looking at the fourprogrammes, it becomes clear that, on the one hand, A and C are the same and, on the otherhand, C and D are also the same; the people saved in one presentation are the people not dyingin the other. So, whether one prefers A to B or the reverse, one ought express the same order ofpreference between C and D, and that is not the case with many of the people interviewed; thesepeople are violating the axiom of independence of choice.

Kahneman and Tversky (1979) developed a new theory to explain their findings. They suggestedthat people are generally risk averse when choosing between a sure gain and a chance of a largergain, but the same people may take a chance when forced to choose between a sure loss and onlya probability of a worse loss. The snag is that what appears as a sure gain or a sure loss is often aquestion of perspective that can be easily manipulated by the way a problem is presented.

Optical illusion eh! :) Be wary of your financial advisor!