Why is Obama Good for the World

Imagine when you were a kid.....running around the folks of your family in the backyard of your home.

Now imagine this: Everybody in your family was white except you. You were black!

Obama had a unique problem.

Being black in America is very different from being black anywhere else. It has very different connotation and an overwhelming load of baggage associated with it. The best way for any black kid to deal with it is to have a cushion of black family which can completely absorb and distill his or her apprehensions about society.

Obama never had this luxury. He never really understood why things were the way they were.

All he could do was play basketball and smoke pot to appear as tough as any other black kid.

Fortunately or Unfortunately, he wasn't really good with the ball or pot or the girls.

Later in his life, he travelled to Kenya to discover his own roots. Reminds me so much of the epic stories of Abdul Kalam traveling to meet a Monk to understand why he could not become a pilot and Steve Jobs hiking across Himalayas with a dollar in pocket to discover the purpose of life. Somehow, great minds think alike and i wonder how!

Great leaders are born when extraordinary self inquiry results in a mental framework where they finally realign the inner self with the outer. Most of the times, it is a great thing to do.

So, Obama was born and the whole world is now waiting to see what does it really mean for the planet.

Whites in Texas, Blacks in New York, Africans in Kenya and Mullahs in Afghanistan may have a thing or more to worry less about. Hillary and McCain have everything to worry about.

Hopefully, this relief will last for more than a single term of US presidency.

Harvard Law is surely an interesting program. I Like.

A long turn

At the end of the tunnel
Distant from the far
The page turned

A squirrel walked up

It said:
"How are you?
"Want some tea?"

I replied
"Why not?"
"It smells good here already!"

Surface

Much awaited Surface was recently launched at AT&T stores. One of the few microsoft products which may make life a little easy.

But, now it is almost proverbial that Microsoft stands for unreliability. Surface can very well turn out to be an ugly face! If you are a regular user of office 2007, you know what i mean.

The worst thing that can happen is at a Vegas poker table. Imagine the system going down right on the brink of you winning a million dollar pot!!

You can run but cannot hide from Microsoft.

We need more of you Google. You ain't doing enough.

Not Yet.

Harold, Kumar and Global Food Crisis!

George Bush finally nailed it last week. He now has an answer to the conundrum of raising food prices. It is the dark, thin Indians who are causing the mess! All this outsourcing and other diseases have put enough money into their pockets. Voila!

As Indians eat more rasgullahs and jilebis , the fat fagots in Texas need to shell out a few extra dollars for a bag of rice. Is it a case of shortage? No! It is just plain increase in prices.







Harold and Kumar know better. They smoked pot with the master. Kumar also knows the burden of having to live up to the legacy of a father, successful or not.

All that pot blinds ones eyes to the ethanol being grown on rice fields.

Or may be, it is the burgers of white castle who are the real culprits.

Paradox of Venice

many long walks
slow but sharp turns

the big man
entered the church with his head down

the little fellow on the shoulder
stopped giggling

there were blood stains
and wild whispers

the eyes looked up
it was hard to say

who looked bigger - the roof or the chair?

altitude
was incomprehensible
emotion was
well, dried

folded papers and torn wallet
that's all was left

where did he come from
where was he to go

whispers got louder

eyes closed

the last i saw
the kid was giggling

i am not there
yet, i am there

it is a paradox
- and, it is not.

O negative

How strange is the fact that inspite of being termed negative, O -ve humans can donate to anybody but can receive only from an other O -ve?

Is giving to everybody not positive enough to account for the negativity of not taking from anybody?

Who has the authority to change the names of blood groups?

Food for thought

If in an infinite chain of things, a few links can be explained, by the same method all can be explained!

-Vivekananda

Jihad

Ali bin Abu-Talib, the first Imam of Islam said this about Jihad:

"Jihad is divided into four branches: to persuade people to be obedient to Allah; to prohibit them from sin and vice; to struggle (in the cause of Allah) sincerely and firmly on all occasions and to detest the vicious. Whoever persuades people to obey the orders of Allah provides strength to the believers; whoever dissuades them from vices and sins humiliates the unbelievers; whoever struggles on all occasions discharges all his obligations and whoever detests the vicious only for the sake of Allah, then Allah will take revenge on his enemies and will be pleased with Him on the Day of Judgement!"


I will wear Denims for my day of judgement. What will you wear?

OLPC

"One laptop per child"

If you have not heard of this already, you do now! A brain child of Nicholas Negroponte, the program plans to donate a laptop to every child who needs it. Some versions of these laptops have in-built hand-driven mechanical generators of electricity!! These low-cost laptops have amazing design features which can create envy in any product designer. They are network enabled and an entire village can be potentially made digitally alive through sponsored satellite-driven infrastructure.

There are pros and cons and there are social challenges in the process. But, the fact is that all kids have the propensity to imagine the impossible. Every kid has fearless dreams and ambitions. Giving them a laptop may be the smallest help you can offer to help them be where they belong!




http://laptopfoundation.org/

Dark Matter

Stretching across 270 million light years. Three times larger than any other know structure and 3000 times larger than our galaxy. Just filaments and sheets.

Dark matter. Invisible. The only way you can detect the presence is to check if anything in the vicinity is affected. How i wish i was there instead of here. May be i am really there and not here.

Amidst the mildly squeaky noise of the little birds, the first ray of sunlight from the window pierced my eyelids and forced me to stop the line of thought.

Should i be glad it is sunshine and not the dark matter i live with?

Or may be it's just the window i should close.

Path

Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.


The real question is: Does creativity help you to withdraw from the world or re-enter it?

Analyst Life Crisis

1. Is the intellectual slavery worth it?
2. Does my social life exist?
3. Where’s the remote?
4. Would I be happier doing “what I love”?
5. What do I love?
6. Analysts are the only people who can one day become rich Partners
7. Do I need to upgrade my socks?
8. Things are probably far worse back in India
9. What I do is exciting
10. Life without clean roads … life on Mumbai public transportation … shudder
11. Will a 250K$* MBA be of any use?
12. If I make less money I might deflate


* Estimate includes pay loss


Five years down the line, I want to re-visit this list. Am sure the list will not be any shorter but i hope it stays as interesting.

Is Borat stupid or wise?

"There is my neighbor Nusultan Tuliakbay, he's pain in my *******. I get a window from a glass, he must get a window from a glass. I get a step, he must get a step. I get a clock radio...he cannot afford. Great success!"


I think wise.

:)

Looking Good

It is often said that wars happen because of clash of cultures. Because people don't know the folks across oceans or land masses. Men fight to eliminate other men, ignorant of the fact that they both need each other. Women fight too, but they don't often take part in the wars as much as they cause them.

If you look at it closely (but not close enough), men wage wars all the time. Any economic function we are part of requires us to out-beat and often kill opponents in a surreal way. If your company's value proposition is to be the market leader in some vague paradigm, it essentially means that the company wants to make several smaller companies go bankrupt. It is as much a war as anything else. So, why is a big fuss made out of the so called wars? May be because of the graphics involved. You know, red and other colors. Not to mention the sound. I would love to see a silent war before I die. I just can't bear to imagine the noise that is associated with a typical war. It's high time technologists focus on building weapons which don't make any sound and kill the victim before he knows he got hit. Mankind certainly deserves a nobler death than getting shattered by mortar shells.

Strangest part of the wars often is that nobody knows who the real enemy is. It is often a country or a militant group which is an enemy but nobody really knows what they are fighting against. For a recent example, Americans thought they were fighting Iraq. Well, Iraq still exists and people often get confused why does it still exist if everybody agrees that the war was won. The real problem was that Saddam Hussain got killed by the time most people realized there was a war. Talking about Iraq war, a recently published book called "Curveball" argues that it was a taxi driver of Iraq living in Germany who caused all the mess. It is a pretty interesting tale but as useless as most other interesting tales. Things which are useful are often not interesting. Do you remember the "boring" spectacled girl from kindergarten who always gave you her notes when you needed to "use" them?

So, why do men wage wars? Historically, they did so for wealth, wine and women. Alexandar waged several wars and so did Ghazni. They did so because they knew of nothing else to do. They wanted glory and power. Did they get what they needed at the end? Yes, but the only catch was that their needs changed. It took Uncle Bob around 2000 years to figure out the cleanest way to attain glory and power. He chose to call it Capitalism while he was picking his nose in a bathtub.

What's all this got to do with looking good? War is not a topic which fits under a title like "looking good". Yeah, but only if wars could have looked good, I wouldn't be such a worried man. Blood hurts. And so do all the other things you don't want but happen to you.

Zero

Indians are driven by numbers. Life has never been the same for us ever since Aryabhatta invented the zero. Not less than 3-4 lakhs of math and engineering graduates are churned out of colleges whenever someone sneezes in palem. It is just but a small proof of the structure of an average Indian brain which has more mathematics in it than neurons. Ever heard of the story of the grand father of a friend who never went to school but could multiply two 4 digit numbers before the calculator does it? Well, it could very well be the gift of your own grand father!


So, what does this innate love for numbers really mean? It is statistically proven somewhere in madagaskar that people who are really good at math are not really good at sex. Ah, it may just be a forceful agenda of the west. (You know, "They" always want to bully "Us") It's no real secret that an average american has lesser abilities with numbers than Andrew. By the way, Andrew is the name of the monkey of my Norwegian friend. No, Andrew is not the pet. It is the petter, if thats even a word! Well, who really cares what statistical research really proves? They even proved that cigarette is harmful. Come on, are you kidding? There are lies, more lies and then there are statistics.


Actually, there is a bigger point i need to make. It is not about zero but it is definitely about India. It is about our statistics in the game we all love. Cricket in India is bigger than football in UK or basketball in US. It is the sport which makes a 80 year old jump out of his deathbed. So, what do statistics say?

Country Win % in Test Matches Till Date
Australia 46.6%
England 34.7%
SouthAfrica 33.6%
WIndies 32.3%
Pakistan 30.7%

Source: Cricinfo


Well, India is not in top five. Even Srilanka is ahead of us. Only Newzealand, Bangaldesh and Zimbambwe are behind us.

Yes, Love is Blind!

Breeze

He dreams. Walks long into the night. Wind blowing at 45 degrees to his face. He sees smoke erupt from behind the trees. He choses to walk away. Light scares him. Darkness is his abode. Silence breaks into two. One part leaves his shadow empty.

He is wide awake. Walks down the street in the snow. Wind chill blowing straight into his face. He hears shouts from inside a house. He choses to walk away. Noise scares him. Good mood is his abode. All of a sudden, he slips and the ipod breaks into two. One part leaves the other empty.

4 AM

A duck is staring at the sky
It wants a last cup of coffee
Or a golden key to unlock the air
It wants to listen
See what is missing and put it back there!

May be it's not the key and the coffee,
All it really needs is
a

hello!

Kabul Express

A movie released in 2006 based on an Indian journalist duo's adventure in Afghanistan. A very tightly knit screenplay which leaves no room for the audience to catch a breath. The actor who played the Pakistani army officer turned taliban terrorist is the best part of the movie. Having said that, it is impossible to imagine the movie without the silly humor of Arshad Warsi. A strongly recommended watch for people who want do a quick 101 course on the reality of life of Afghans.

My favorite dialogue of the movie:

Pakistani/Talib Terrorist: "Hum to kabse keh rahe hain, Madhuri Dixit do aur Kashmir Lo"
Indian Journalist: (breaks into laughter) .."arey woh toh shaadi karke america chali gayi"
Pakistani/Talib: "hmm...yahi hota hai....humara jo bhi acha hota hai woh ghoom fir ke wahin chala jata hai"

Truth and Silence

Aldous Huxley said this in 1959...

"And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing … a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods."


Heard of the Outsourcing? Yeah, Aldous also said this about opinion-building...

"Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations."


Strange how human thoughts at certain part of space and time can very well be iconic reflections on some state of affairs they were never part of!