Train-ing guide!

There is no experience quite like travelling in a Mumbai Local. Given that an average Mumbai dweller spends one-eighth of his/her day travelling from one corner of Mumbai to another, many a tasks are fitted to fill in those 4 odd hours. Many a things that form the book definition of a wholesome life which us original modern, non-city dwellers do not bother much about, creep into the life of anyone who has spent about 2-3 odd years in Mumbai. It’s contagious…and it varies with age…ranging from the extremes of chopping vegetables, mugging up for exams, catching up with loved ones on phone, chatting, knitting sweaters for kids in colder lands, praying, reading or saying grace…trains are a haven of all elements of a life well lived. Every little moment accommodates every little nuance which matters in a daily checklist of a ‘responsible’ citizen…

What I love the best about my train journeys, especially if I am standing (which is the case more often than not) is peeping into & reading open pages of the novels which my co-travelers are going through. My daily dosage of reading surely gets done along with giving enough foliage to my imagination thanks to chapters from fiction novels which begin out of nowhere (like scenes from a play) & end unceremoniously when one of us gets down at the next station! Spirituality is taken care of with chapters of Art of living staring at my face…it is indeed a wholesome train-ing experience in the train!

It is great to see a novel unfold in its most cathartic moment, as if that is where it all begun & I fight the urge to snatch the book to flip back the pages to check the context of it all! I put imaginary faces to names, imaginary settings & if I really like what I read, I strain to check out the names of the books on the covers & along the upper page margins! I make it a point not to be noticed as I read up pages after pages, more often than not way faster than the original reader…

(What really surprises me is the affinity of a slightly elder age group of women lapping up chapters off Mills & Boons in the train! I must admit, it’s my maiden brush with M&B as well, so I too sort of qualify to be a vicarious elderly reader J )

Someday I am sure I am going to get a feeling of déjà vu in the middle of many a book…but until then, I guess it’s going good!!!

**Image picked from the internet**

A Rainy Mumbai Evening...

It was a rainy Mumbai evening. As the local train laboured itself into the station, a whole lot of people, in varying stages of being dunked by the Almighty lunged themselves towards it, in full faith that the one before & the one after them in the melee would ensure that they get in. As the train started to move away from the platform the tensed muscles eased a little & the ‘inmates’ started to settle in.


Understandably, the doors & windows were fastened lest the rain water gets in. It was very hot & musty as the drenched brushed against those who were lucky enough to save themselves from getting wet in the rain.


I looked up as a drop of cold water plopped on my hand from a bystander’s umbrella. She smiled to me & I smiled back – it will get better at the next major station.


The in-train announcement confirmed that we were approaching & the heavy iron doors were pushed open to a welcoming gush of breeze & a mass exodus of people. The breeze brought along with itself, a shower of tiny droplets & 3 little street urchins – 2 little boys & a little girl.


One of the co passengers was quick to ask them to alight – but to no avail. One of the boys, only marginally elder to the other two, dangled on the pole at the compartment door for a few seconds, & the train was moving again. He made the two little ones perch safely at the door itself & placed a huge poly-bag between them and the exit steps. A little while hence, the two were fighting over a snakes & ladders board they had fished out of the bag.


The erstwhile co-passenger, who was intent on shooing the kids away, stood smiling as they asked the elder kid to arbitrate which snake was bigger in length. To my surprise, they were comparing the difference in the numbers at the head & tail of the snake instead of the visible length. Maybe, something in the free education scheme was actually going right.


Oblivious to us all, the kids in their tattered clothes & shoeless feet sat counting numbers from 1 to 100 on the metal board. I sat there & wondered at their gleeful innocence even as the winds lashed in with fistfuls of mirth.

By an Ant...

Shoes on the dance floor,
Strapped & tied...

Shoes on the dance floor,
narrow & wide...

Shoes on the dance floor,
Of the groom & the bride...

Shoes on the dance floor,
On the middle & the side...

Shoes on the dance floor,
As they moved in stride...

Stomped on me, n hence I died :P

जीवन

ये जीवन कहाँ से कहाँ चला जाता है ||

कभी यूँ ही सन्नाटे में , दूर से कुछ आवाजें आती हैं

जैसे कानों में भर के , यादें ऐसे इठलाती हैं

नन्ही सी धूप किरण जैसे , दूर से एक खुशबू लेकर

मेरे घर में पर्दों से लुका छुपी खेलती ,

यूँ ही बिखर जाती है

कोई आहट , किसी बीते हुए पल की ,

कभी हसाती है , कभी रुलाती है ...

ये जीवन कहाँ से कहाँ चला जाता है ...||

My experiments with Tech...

I am a technology illiterate & not immensely proud of it. I would have been over 21 years of age when I first learnt how to switch on a laptop! The first words I typed on the keyboard was – “OK” – after having spent over a minute trying to figure out where the two alphabets were placed on the keyboard.

I never formatted presentations & reports all of my 1st two trimesters at college. I had groupies who would do that while I sat next to them either dictating or just giving them company while they aligned the document & made it presentable (but for you, my horrid grades would have been worse) Summer placements took me to IBM and there I learnt that there exists something known as a Master slide & watermark! If I look at the presentation I made back then, (I get scared) my belief that there are people & companies that look beyond the cosmetic gets strengthened.

I came back to year two with new found power-point skills & started at MS office with a vengeance! Just then I was introduced to windows 07 & the new awakened curiosity bug took me to the world of page settings, smart art etc; It was a good ride.

I joined work at a conglomerate. With over a hundred companies to boast of, I was sure I would be pretty away from all things geeky. Soon I found myself in an atmosphere powered by Seibel, with Ajax, portals, click streams, data churning in the air which reeked strongly of automobiles. It was here I understood the importance of making a single slide with multi messages using ‘custom animation’ in the presentation. I honed my PPT skills to almost a PhD level here given my reporting managers fondness for presentations. (I must mention here, that all reporting managers like presentations, I will like them too!) The presentation I put together here is (one that can make my jaws drop in amazement) one I am myself immensely proud of.

By now I had ‘mastered’ the ‘Art of the fancy’. And with my new-found qualification under my belt, I sped off to a hard core engineering project which required me to have some knowledge of the ground realities & engineering basics (in hindsight, bursts out laughing) Needless to say, my ‘tech skills’ held me in poor stead here as the need was for the ‘correct tech skills’ For a moment I thought I understood why more people opted for IT as a discipline. I survived.

I moved on to an utterly non geeky world of agriculture where tradition required me to write the proper English, use the proper font, write the proper mails & use the right templates. My non-geeky & relaxed self loved it here! But I learnt the nuances of propriety. I put my ppt skills to good use here & explored hitherto unknown arenas & uses of the Web. Webinars, video conferences, tele presence were becoming commonplace. I felt like how the pickle must feel lying in the jar, marinating in the ingredients put around it.

Next came the visit to an era in time 50 years behind ours. I was in a rural set up, drinking well water, sitting on the roadside, when under-the-tree was the ‘coolest’ place to hang out in. The place did not have even a cyber café & kids ran behind a one-off running vehicle on the road randomly giggling & enjoying themselves. Life was simple & easy, yet difficult.

The project period passed & I was over an year in work-life, all set to join an old manufacturing company which would help me get an ‘on-ground’ understanding & help ‘get the hands dirty’. Alas, that was not to be. I joined the Telecommunication sector!

Its been doing me good to ask random questions on and off. I have handled quite a few things tech. And I have concluded that the lesser one knows the better it is for the self & for the companies one works at.

All these years interspersed with SAS, Seibel, Ajax, 3G, HSDPA, HSUPA, CHS, Switches & not to forget MS office have still not convinced me that I understand anything remotely technical, IT or geeky. However, I do spend larger hours on the internet than ever before. One think that Google did for me is helping me think lesser, what fB did for me to help me meet ‘friends’ after over eternity. I don’t know if that is good. I still don’t know whether tech includes engineering, MS office, jazzy system languages or network operations. What I do know, is that I can be excused – I admit, “I am a tech illiterate.”

The Cow...

[Essay Start]

A cow is a big white animal. It eats a lot of grass and also eats the newspapers I give it. It is always chewing when it is not eating, like the way I eat chewing gum with my friends after school every day. It sometimes sleeps standing. Cow is a very quiet animal and does not talk as much as Fluffy does.

Fluffy barks at cows all the time. He is afraid of their long tail. The tail of the cow has hair on one end, like the end of grandma’s braid. It swishes it all the time to shoo away flies. It has paws that make sounds like my teachers shoes when she walks. The cow has two big horns. The cow sits anywhere not bothered by our car coming towards it. No one asks it to get up.

A cow also gives us milk. People in my village pray to the cow.

[End]

Adventures of Sem - Part IV

Sem was a nice boy. Nice boys, for the uninitiated, are guys, a majority of whose friends, advisors, advised, buddies are girls, but who, somehow, do not have a girlfriend. They are invited to most of the weekend get-tos, with or without shopping involved, go to most ball parties, accompanied or accompanying and have a ton of buddies, girlfriends, their boyfriends and sometimes even their children included. Sometimes, they can even be found buying stuffed toys for girls ranging from grannies to babies, and their friends term them as nice, albeit a lil too nice to torture with a relationship.

Coming back to where we left our friend, he slept that night on his bean bag, only to be rudely woken up on the Monday morning by his cuckoo doorbell. He opened his eyes just in time to see the cuckoo rush back to the secret cubicle after coo-ing twice! Had he not hated his landlady for it…but stopped after he figured out how fond his niece, who used to visit him sometimes, was of that silly bird. He smiled at the bell and involuntarily shrugged his shoulders. By the time he reached the door, his ‘guest’ had left leaving a rolled up newspaper bill tucked at his door handle.

He picked up the scroll unfolded it and read the amount. Promptly he separated Rs 500 to hand over to the guard on his way to work. He was fond of Chotte, the guard and his affections (In this case) were reciprocated. His shirts (all branded) home sweets share on Diwali, etc went to Chotte who in turn dint mind paying Sem’s bills in time.

Sem washed, dressed, dabbed on some cologne & was all set (with his gelled spiky hair) to reach work. He liked to drive to work & claimed he hadn’t set foot in a local more than 4 times in his lifetime (that too in opposite traffic direction, mind it) A couple of years at work had helped him afford a brand new steel grey car!

He settled his glares and started to reverse his car. It was then that he saw her again…even as she passed by, right there, in front of his car…and confused as he was, he honked the car horn, not once, but twice in succession. The annoying echo filled the parking!

She turned around and glared at him. He was sure he saw her mumble something under her breath… “Why are girls so difficult…?” he sighed

Adventures of Sem - Part III

A stray feather floated lazily in front of his eyes. For an instance he thought of Forrest Gump, his mind tore him quickly to the thought of pigeons…aarghh! He looked helplessly at the slightly ajar window, which he cud not close without removing the cable wire that was too short to enter from any other crevice in the wall. Annoyed he pushed the sliding window open (with a thud) and with an expression just short of a Red Indian, readied himself, with a broom!


Hardly had he jumped out that he spotted a pair of curious eyes staring at him. Guess he had been too loud in his expression of anger. He felt slightly flushed. Settled the invisible stray hair strand atop his head, realized the very next moment his hands were soiled, n grinned sheepishly. He had studied in a guy’s college all through, he wasn’t, ahem, used to ‘attention’.


He dint dare look in that direction again. Quickly stepped back in n peeped out from behind the curtain. He caught a glimpse of her just leaving her balcony. “Duh”, said he, “who cares?”


As for the nest, it survived. We are sure the unborn chicken embryos chuckled at Sem when he flushed. They were egg-witness to the instant transition in his demeanor. The MBA had gone for a hike!


Sem went back to the newspaper and dumped himself on his bean bag. He wasn’t really reading. He found himself smiling to himself. “Gosh!” he needed some coffee…black, without a touch of milk, just as he liked it. He spent the remaining day drowned in the sitcom he so adored. He covered a couple of seasons for the nth time. The thought of the pair of eyes dint cross him even once again. It was a lazy weekend and it was just one more week before he left for his trekking trip next week.

Adventures of Sem - Part II

HE smiled at the beam of the morning sun that entered his room, tiny dust particles moving around in a cacaphony. It was a nice start of a weekend, jogging, he could always resume. He played with the dust particles for some time, before the MBA reminded him that there were no commensurate results to be achieved by the action. Shaken to reality, he left his cozy bed.

Sem had lived alone ever since he got this job in this respected conglomerate. After dabbling in finance, marketing & strategy, he had finally settled in this job in a respected company where he could pursue his dreams of M&A (the calling of the royal blood was hard to ignore) His childhood had been untouched & uneventful – basic , if we may call it that and it showed in the way he was. As a child he had been ‘ordinarily bright’ (as everyone of the clan was supposed to be) The court elders thought he was just the same as everyone else born in the era…hopes so trashed, they decided to call him ‘the same’ aptly shortened to Sem in the coming future to save the kingdom’s royal ink.

Walking up to the kitchen, Sem opened the window wide…a stench greeted him marking the freshly cleaned…err…remains of the pigeons. He closed it. He peeped to see where the eggs used to be, them realised there was no nest. Good riddance, shrieked the MBA, Sem, we think, missed them. Both however, promptly fixed up some toasts & brewed some black coffee and he sat downt to devour them. He flipped channel after channel scooting over the reality shows of the world, and finally put up some random music channel & buried himself in the morning’s ET.

He thought he could still hear some commotion outside. He reluctantly pulled aside the curtain and peeped out…

Adventures of Sem - Part I

(This story is purely a work of fiction. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely a coincidence. The author shall not be liable for any repurcussions of such similarity whatsoever)

Once upon a time in Mumbai, lived a boy called Sem (pronounced as same). Sem, an MBA by qualification had always wanted to do something profound for his countrymen through mergers & acquisitions. Now that the era of kings & their kingsmen was long gone, he could do little to have a “yudhh” with a “sena” to win a territory, so the pigeons, which he had reared since childhood (training them as his secret messengers) were of not much use to him. Given their free time, the pigeons, perched in his hearth & home, procreated & recreated. Therefore, Sem was surrounded with pigeons day in & day out.

The era of the kings had long gone, the newer generations of pigeons used to huddle together in evenings & make grumbling sounds at the loss of luxuries’ tales that their grannys told them. After a point in time, Sem started to get annoyed. Slowly his despication grew as he began to notice the mess created by his noisy disciples. The volcano would one day erupt. Sem was seething inside...!

One day, when Sem opened the window to take in a breath of fresh air, a hush of wings fluttered past his face. Irritated, Sem had barely got over the assault when he noticed… Lo n behold... “two dandis” and three eggs lying on them!

Sem & the MBA in him went into deep thoughtful discussion! What poverty, Sem said..., what real estate cost escalations, the MBA argued…Sem’s heart went out to them…the MBA in him delegated the clearing of them slums to the bai.

The next morning, Sem got up late, not disturbed by the grumbling pigeons at 4 am. He had missed his jogging routine. Little did he know that over the next three months he will put on all the weight he had lost thanks to getting up early and jogging...!

Monkey Bird...or vice versa!

एक सुबह को एक पेड़ पे, नन्ही चिडिया आई! 

पास बैठ के बन्दर के उसने तान लगायी!

 

सुबह भोर की नई किरण में, बन्दर उठ बैठा अब... 

देख के गाती चिडिया को, बोला वो उससे अब... 

 

"चिडिया रानी, मैं सोया था, नज़र न तुमको आया? 

अभी अभी मैं सोया था...और तुमने आ जगाया...:("

 

"रात को एक्स्ट्रा क्लास लगी थी, 3-hour session था... 

इसीलिए मैं आज सुबह से सोने में मगन था!!!" 

 

चिडिया बोली, " Sorry Monkey, I went to the gym...

Why else you think, (O monkey)...Im so slim n trim!!!"

Aint no swot!

""There's the tension and there’s the fear,

The panic, the worry, the untold fear,

The clock is ticking, it’s almost time…

I’ll surely flunk this exam of mine!!!"

But what am I doing? I am writing. What am I not doing? I am not solving the problem.

To be honest, the ordeal began some 3 months ago (Three months is such a convenient duration…fits both work & Trimesters in college) I had a problem; I had a solution in mind. Two months later, today came. And, I have the problem, I have the solution.

Once upon a time, I was a bright student! I used to spend reasonable hours studying! So what if they were not course books that I read? At least I had an objective…3-4 novels a week was good enough. After all I would have anyways forgotten whatever I did study beforehand. Of course…otherwise wud I not remember what I studied for my smaller unit tests when I went to write my finals? Sometime in those days, a unique theory entered my mind…that all chapters should be put to music! :D No one forgets songs completely; I don’t! But then, as one of my tiny friends aptly put it, philosophers who are broke cannot sell their philosophy…so the mug up that of others for survival (in exams)

School education is a unique experience! The bliss however is tarnished & marred by the unkindly lashes of expectations! Expectations to do well in exams, maintain a high score if already achieved, attain the cut off score to get into a univ of choice, & personal ambitions. The evils of competition & comparison also pop their meddling heads. Alas, children aren’t selfless. Another unique phenomenon is that by the time one is past an exam (even the one which he/she barely managed to pass) the exam looks so crazily simple. I for instance never knew that the sentences I used to read in standard II would become paragraphs in IIIrd, Chapters in IVth & subjects in VIIIth. (YES, I browsed through my univ scores a while back & wondered why I dint get an A+ in everything… :| :|) There was a thing we read about the Peter Principle…or was it Paul? Anyways, it said, everyone rises to their level of incompetence! The first time I read it, I identified with it!!! :D I knew I was there! But then, college selections happened. So I told myself maybe I was there now & not then when I thought previously I was…Alas, then happened placements, & finally 6 months into the job I think I am “there” now ! It’s nice to be lazy actually…even if u flunk or get a bad grade…you can argue you aren’t dumb, I dint study & still I scored better than X % of the dweebs&swot Inc.  :) :) :)!!!

I am too lazy to complete this now…I am…ahem…BUSY…!

Mathemagics!

I have always loved Mathematics. Mathematics, in turn, has always hated me.

It started somewhere in Junior school, somehow of all marks in my report card & of all test-copies that were to be signed by parents, it was the maths column/copy I hated the most, & my father waited the most for. I was a scorer in Science, Economics & English & my eagerness for the English grammer & literature test copies was matched by my papa’s for my maths one. I remember fervently praying before I even opened my copy…even as I type this, I can feel the flexible copy between my fingers…I can smell it K

My earliest introduction to the subject dates back to those dumb(YES DUMB) dodging exercises in school. For the unenlightened, dodging was an exercise to rewards the magus   of the batch…those who by-hearted the multiplication tables n puked the answer as soon as the “13*9” escaped the teachers mouth… There was no time for the 9*3, carrying over the two n adding it to 9*1…I hated dodging…I dint have a choice L

After these pre schooling years, Mathematics graduated to another level. The next memory I have is of HCF & LCM (HAHA :D) I always forgot which one is which… & resultantly, many a times calculated HCF correctly for LCM problems & vice versa. They said I was careless…I wasn’t. Even in grammar I could not tell past perfect from present participle…but I got those correct. Unfair again…I dint have a choice L

Then arrived unitary method, time & work, percentages & linear equations!!! I loved them. They made sense to me! And papa was happy with the scores. Come standard 8^th & the choices I did not earlier have started to show. I did not like the teachers I got & they helped kill the remaining interest I had in the subject. I liked geometry & algebra, I did geometry & algebra. Period. Needless to say, my basics got all ruined by the time I reached standard 10^th. Lemme digress a bit here & discuss about my reading habits. I was a voracious reader (once upon a time) & comics of the like of chacha chaudary were never a part of my life, except in the early years of school life when socializing meant eating mango bite hiding one’s face during a class & exchanging comics. So things like “chacha chaudhary ka dimag computer se bhi tez chalta hai”, “saabu Jupiter ka niwasi hai”  were not hot favourites with me. Anyways, coming back to the topic, it was during my standard 10^th board exams that ghosts from the childhood came to haunt me. And what better time to choose than when I was sitting struggling with my exam paper. For a moment I felt everything was going darker… “din me tare…” situation from those comics came alive in front of my eyes. I went blank…!

I was surprised when I reached a decent score (even half convinced my paper got mixed with someone else’s!)  Anyways, being left ‘starry eyed’ shook me bad. I decided to make scores even with mathematics J I took up maths in 12^th. As they say history repeats itself. Horrible teachers, topped with focus on engineering competitive exam levels shook my confidence yet again. I even copied homework once from a classmates notebook L

Have you ever heard of guardian angels? No? I saw one! Two months before my exams began, a lady who just shifted in my neighbourhood decided to teach me of her own accord. I distinctly remember…she had asked me, “How do u like Vectors, should we start there?”,and I had replied,  “I do not know Vectors, you can start wherever…”  She wasn’t startled. She taught me. And for the first time in my life, Time fell short for answering that standard 12^th paper. I was happy J

I also continued with Mathematics in my graduation (thanks to that teacher) liked it, & moved on. Then XLRI happened…& QE happened alongside it L The teacher was a fine one, he loved his subject, appreciated it, but I lost it someplace, & never caught up…I was wrong, I never raised a hand to say I don’t know. Mansij taught me, those were the first night outs in my life…crazeee…Mansij, Karishma & me, huddled in our room… (No. 310) solving solved examples :D: D Now when I think of it, I can’t help grinning!!! Life is funny!!!

Why am I going on & on about Mathematics & I today? I was trying to solve an equation :P after an hour’s struggle I figured what variable was wrong where…& I thanked my stars I never wanted to be an engineer! One of my dear friends has a set of fancy statements he makes two among those are: “You would have made a good engineer”… “Mathematics is beautiful…its like economics”  I can only (stage)manage some expression before I purge the first statement from out of my head…as for the second is concerned, I don’t agree! (We can discuss this maybe if u happen to read this!)

Now I don’t know how to end this long account. Maybe I can quote another instance that just struck me! :D

Once, I got so enthusiastic about solving fraction addition, subtraction & division, that I solved all division questions like the addition one’s (you know, took a common denominator & all) Gosh! I hope my employer does not read this :D :D :D

The Predicament of a soul who loved Momos & hated Momo(tadi)!

up soon...!

Developmental Politiconomics

Once upon a time on a tree there lived a squirrel. 

Us gilahri ke ghar pe sab kuch tha, bas ek inverter ki kami thi. Load shedding se pareshaan ho ke usne pichle hi saal apna electricity connection katva diya tha & apne padosi bandaron ki tarah raat bhar illegally bijli ke liye taar lagati thi. Aise me ek generator ya inverter bad investment hi tha uske liye! Pichle kuch mahino se TV pe nuclear deal ke baare me sun sun ke uske to kaan hi pak gaye the. Uske favorite 'India TV' ne bhi apne regular honi-anhoni series ke beech me is news ke pop up dene shuru kar diye the. Gilahri ko ye bilkul bhi pasand nahi tha...afterall un serials se dukhi hue logon ki kahaniyan likh ke hi to vo apni rozi-roti chala rahi thi!!! Magar kal ab kitty party me usne Mrs' Bandar ko kehte hue suna ki nuclear power ke use se bijli sasti & consistent ho sakti hai, to uske mann me laddoo phootne lage. Cylinder ka kharcha, geyser ki electricity consumption, sabhi kuch sasta ho sakta hai, & vo bhi legally!!!

Tabhi uske dimag me chamka...zaroor in politicians ka vested interest hoga isme...nahi to aaj achanak unse logon ka bhala kaise ho gaya? Gehri soch me pad gayi gilahri...tabhi ekdum se phone baja...doosri or koi bol raha tha, "Madam, I am calling from O*&^(*^ bank...would you like to apply for a credit card?" Jawaab diye bina hi phone rakh diya usne & apne kaam pe lag gayi. Article ka topic tha..."Kyunki Government bhi kabhi bhala karti hai kya?"

 Raging hit hua vo...madam ko best journalist of the year ka khitaab & opposition ko ladne ka mudda mila! Sabka bhala hi hua in a way...!!! Chalti rahi ladai & ghar ghar me bijli aa gayi. Technically vo idea ke against nahi thi....Par politics hai bhai...baakiyon ka bhi to khayaal rakhna padta hai na...

A Khagan...posthumously...

Sometimes I wonder if it was good to be Chengiz Khan...so many little kids study of him ages afterwards! But what do they not read? Here is what I never knew about him till a day ago...

• Chengiz Khan was born Temüjin, meaning ironworker around 1162. The Secret History of the Mongols says that Temüjin was born with a blood clot grasped in his fist, an indication in the traditional Mongolian folklore that he was destined to become a great leader.
  
• No Accurate portrait exists saying how he looked.Persian historian Rashid al-Din recorded in his "Chronicles" that the legendary "glittering" ancestor of Genghis was tall, long-bearded, red-haired, and green-eyed.
  
• Religiously, he was very tolerant.Equality among religions & assured equal social status to women was the order of the day.
  
• As he defeated rival tribes, he didn't drive away enemy soldiers and abandon the rest. Instead he took the conquered tribe under his protection and integrated its members into his own tribe. However he was not tolerant of people who ditched their armies to join his. He used to get them procecuted, loyalty to him, was a great virtue.
  
• He would even have his mother adopt orphans from the conquered tribe, bringing them into his family. 
  
• These political innovations inspired great loyalty among the conquered people, making Temüjin stronger with each victory
  
• He was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia at a location unknown...special efforts were made to ensure that his grave is not discovered...rivers were diverted, trees planted, horses made to run over the place n what not!!!
  
• The Mongol Empire did not emphasize the importance of ethnicity and race in the administrative realm, instead adopting an approach grounded in meritocracy.
  
• The exception was the role of Genghis Khan and his family. The Mongol Empire was one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse empires in history, as befitted its size.
  

Good points all...well most...he was'nt so bad a general afterall! Strangely, I never knew of all these till date...my history books painted a gory picture of him in my mind! 

History, to carry the thought forward, is an adaptation of facts tinted by the eye of the historian. Only Winners get to write it ... wonder why they dont need to put disclaimers under what they write.

Step Aside, lest I push you...

The average office goers today spend a minimum of 10 hours at their workplace; sometimes even more than that. This is the age of competition & success-stories. Boys & girls, graduates, Post graduates, MBA’s, MBBS…running day in & day out in pursuit of being better than themselves (or sadly sometimes, better than their peers) at their work place, in their worldly possessions & even when it comes to weekend partying venues to beat the work blues! There is an amazing ‘stickiness’ to the phenomena. It clings on even more fastidiously more one tries to move away from it.

People study for jobs & run helter-skelter one week before placements looking for answers as to why they chose to go in for an MBA. Cooked, marinated, stewed answers are then served on platters…fresh flavours intact & 10 people successfully sit in front of the same panel answering the same question packaged in a different set of words. At least some degree of personalization is maintained!

Someone once rightly told me…go & speak there what you think, I won’t give you a readymade answer. It sounded very mean then, but come to look at it…if my prospective employer does not respect me for what I am, should I be working for him in the first place? Believe me, the attitude helps.

In whatever way…everyone ends up in the rat-race. You ahead of me, I of X and so on…& yes, rest assured, ultimately the rat wins! Was thinking on all these lines, maybe lack of interesting work has made a thinker out of me, when it struck me…Boys & Girls, all of us who have just started working, at least majority of those who I know, go back to cooked food back at our places of residence (no, I won’t call it home) Be it the guest house, the hotel, the ubiquitous dabba-walla. One barely has time to eat before one hits bed…obviously the long phone calls & the chat sessions are not counted. Contrast this with our childhood, when our parents were home by 5, helped with our homework, made sure our uniforms were proper before we went to school, saw our test papers, and had meals with us.

Was misplaced in a party of fresh teen girls this time when I went home…almost choked of the smell of generation gap that was rising mingled with the fumes from the sizzlers…I realized I was growing up…I cannot make a value judgment on that group of kids. But yes, the world changes every few years…maybe in the years to come the rat race is gonna burrow its way down under the age ladder…where little girls and boys will stand competing with each other in issues of social intelligence & maturity. I hope I am wrong. Maybe innocence is harder to lose…

In Search of a disCERNing audience?

India is a land of colours. The red, the yellow, the blue, the green...and many million others that are formed from the same. Ours is a land of contrasts...mountains & seas, deserts & glaciers, the rich & the poor, the educated & the illiterate...the list goes on & on. We are a free country, we have freedom to think; & then to apply the self same thought to action as we deem fit (in most cases)

What happens when, in a country like ours, the set of people who consider themselves literate start out to make a living off (fooling) those who are not? It is then that channels like India TV are born.

Today's newspaper reads:
"The ministry(I&B) has issued advisories to India TV and Aaj Tak for spreading "misinformation, fear and horror" among people. It has advised the channels to exercise restraint in presenting issues."

So?

At the most, the channel will broadcast a public apology(though I have serious doubts it would) But what shall that bring back?

• Will it return the peace of mind of the millions who were glued to the single television screen in the village for the whole day?
• Will it make up for the fear in the innocent eyes of little children who did not even know what doomsday meant until a day ago?

• Will it bring back the life of the Std III dropout who ended her life as she could not bear to wait for her 'moment of death'

Shall we really call her naive? Was she stupid? Or is this media ruthless?
Is it really possible for anyone to say, "Sorry! I wont kill you ever again?"

...

I am afraid No. Sometimes, it just gets too late. We take a lot of time in laughing away the funny headlines day after day, till one day, these devils mistake the discount on part of the educated as acceptance. Its high time they get an answer...a public apology cannot bring dead to life...