…It’s the New Year

And ye, who have met with Adversity's blast,
And been bow'd to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass'd
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury -
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wishing all of you a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Iran on the path of "Liberty"

What might have started as an isolated protest has become a major and important revolution. Nearly six months have passed after the controversial, high-margin win of president Ahmendinejad in this years Iranian presidential elections. The system loyalists are thinking how long they can withstand the fierce persistance and defiance of the orninary people. Leaving all the state-imposed rules aside, iranians are sending out tweets,creating forum on facebook and orkut, posting videos on youtube. With prominent leaders such as Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohammad Khatami joining the rallies despite official warnings, and the rank and file willing to risk being beaten and arrested, the flames of revolt are clear. I was bit concerned coz two of my good friends are iranians and they are right in the center of action. Both are
students of fine arts and are actively participating in the protests.Most importantly the president is about to come to New york for the meeting of UN. This civic unrest and resistance from the inside has definitely shaken the hardline government. Ahmendinejad used the Jerusalem day to show off the stringent posture which is pretty synonymous with hardliners and most importantly he has openly declared that destroying Israel is the responsibility of all true Muslims.

Now the protests are clearly showing that general iranian public are not quite impressed with president's agenda. Ok! well iam sure there are many people amongst muslim population who want the destruction of Israel. But i seriously believe that the youth of both the countries dont care much about hardliners and softliners or Orthodox and Liberal. I have friends from both these countries and whatever interaction i have with them i can say that they want to move on.In my opinion Turkey is the ideal muslim country and other muslim countries can definately learn it from turkish people- they have been true to their religion and culture but they are also considered as a modern country with strong economy and good civic satisfaction. May be turkey is on the crossroads of Asia and Europe, so probably many people say that the european wind touches turkey as the morning breeze.Well , to be honest , that is not at all an excuse. The country is doing good and maintains healthy relation with almost all the countries. Turkish people don't have any major disputes with any nation and neither they have any political or economic instability. I wish the same for Iran..Maybe some day we can roam around "Tehran Bazar" and enjoy the hot "Shaawarma" and Lamb meat .

Amen!!!

Need some steel in the nerve

What's wong with the babus in MEA. Just today i read an article which quotes an highly placed MEA official that China should express "sympathy towards India and acknowledge india's global aspirations". What the fuck is wrong with these guys? Man this is what i called" Gandhian Side-effect". Guys in south block need to show some nerve and for god's sake stop acting like a pussy and shitting in the pants when you reply to some Chinese hegemony. Dont make India look so bad. India is surely small in geographical size than china..comparatively smaller defence force but it's also a great nation. We are the country which started one of the first proper civilisation..We discovered the essence of zero..we are the country which captivated every conquerer starting from Ghengis Khan to Modern British empire. It's the largest democracy and up coming economic and military giant. No country , even the whole G-7 consortium can deny the importance of "BRAND INDIA" and deny it's strategic importance.

we have enough achievements in our kitty to stand up and face other countries. So stop acknowledging the hegemony of china and make some strong statements. Don't stop the infrastructure works in leh.. militarize the whole area( remember what happened in 1962). Chinese 2nd artillery is already stationed in tibet . For those who don't know about chinese 2nd artillery division lemme tell u that it's the PLA's Nuclear force.And the only reason it has been stationed in Tibet is to Contain india. I will bring a new article about chinese military deployments and war plans but really it's high time now that our "leaders and Diplomats" stand up and show some grit.

United We Hope @ CopenHagen

The whole mankind is looking anxiously at the viking capital of the Scandinavia: Copenhagen. Heads of nations and delegates from both developed and developing world would be discussing the most important question of our decade: How to save earth? Negotiators have already come up with the few ideas like carbon credits, emission cut bonus etc. But still nations are resisting the idea and necessity of emission cut. why is that? Logically no one is wrong. A nation cannot survive without the indistries and industries cannot survive without fuel. That sounds easy but it's a very complex deadlock. I think this whole "HOPENHAGEN MOVEMENT" has become too much political.In my opinion the demand of this moment is innovation and creativity. If you ask your business corporations to stop using fossil fuel and follow strict environment norms than there are little chances that you will be able to sustain the high GDP growth.Compulsions won't work here. Of course it's a problem. Change will only happen if people really want that. But the course of actions are also important. As i said compulsions won't work so we will have to come up with something unique...something innovative..something creative...something logical....and something practical. Environmental dis balance is sure a big and complex problem...but it's also an opportunity. Oh yes! u read it right- OPPORTUNITY . How?? Well it depends on number of factors and answers could be more specific to a geographical location or the local environment.

Say for instance in INDIA,

It's a diverse country and is blessed with the full spectrum of terrain and associated ecosystems.

and Indian goverment has major players in almost every sphere of industry...goverment companies can actually take lead and bring up new inovations and campaigns which can be "branded" as "green". Indulge with private players and take extend the oppurtinities..for example encourae realtors to build eco freindly buildings which will will minimise the use of space conditioning and electricity. last season i saw some eco friendly designs under Hafeez Contractorwala label. Saw some eco fiendly campuses in Bangalore(Infosys) and kochi(Sutherland). One is in delhi also( the TERI campus). The campuses look cool and saves lotsa cash on ellectricity. Power companies like BSES, HP, IOL can also extend their envelope can look into renewable sources of energy like setting up windmil

ls in podecherry or kochi. The ccean winds and currents can supply unlimited power which can be stored in large capacitors and can be distributed under cheaper unit charges. Similarly Solar energy can be harnessed in rajasthan( deserts from udaipur to jaisalmer can be a good place). If my calculations are right that we can satisfy the electricity needs of not only rajasthan but can also be routed to punjab and gujrat to provide some additional power for agriculture and small industries respectively. This will also provide job opportunities and will ensure safety. The government agencies and companies can use this as an opportunity to revamp the brand image and lead a new movement. They can show that going green can yield reach dividends.

and ofcourse the creativity and innovation has to be in our personal lives also. Can start with small things like putiing up two dustbins in kitchen- Recyclable and Non-recyclable. A easy and rough way of checking your own personal carbon footprints and you know what ,you can actually earn from your green dustbin(recyclable one!!) last month i sold the garbage to kabariwala and earned good 175 bucks.My bother is changing garbages into art forms( he's kinda getting ideas from Disney's Art attack).that's with us. I know people have been doing many more cool and green things..

Lets Hope and try to create a green planet

Good luck to Copenhagen!!!

iPhone going Musical!!

The Web-o-sphere is almost buzzling with the i phone musical performance at University of Mich. One of my pal posted a media on facebook(who happens to be in UoM) and also John brownlee at the blog " Cult of Mac" could not take his eyes of the event. The article was really good and interesting. First of all cheers to John for writing a mag grade article. Georg Essl leads a group from University of mich on a music composition ride aboard apple's IPhone. and as a matter of fact Georg is a professor with the electrical engg department of UoM. Definately a revolutionary thing. I bet Steve Jobs must be having a shiny day. Well afterall his baby is getting all the media attention and that to without paying any promotional campaigns.I remember when iphone was first launched and the media hype around it. It didn't really penetrated well into most of the asian and european markets and drew lotsa criticism for the "all-aspect-exclusiveness" of this "revolutionary" gadget . Well clearly at first attempt iphone couldnot just satisfy those geeks and left people gasping for an "ultimate tech-orgasm" from Apple Inc.

Over the years things are getting easier for this petite gadget. Creativity in the form of unique inovations are pushing new boundaries. Over the years i have seen so many iphone apps which meet the eyes and mind equally. Apps like BDB, Urbanspoon , Woo, iPint are really amazing and make full use of creativity and technology. My personal fav is though the " YOU BOOZE, YOU LOSE" application. The application tells you how much was your consumption is in the past week, how much you have spent ,how much calories you gained and i hear that the latest version suggest effectve diet also.

I am sure that an music composition related app or an motion app would soon be coming but i have an advice for Steve Jobs..plz don't screw it up ..Take care of Context and Specificity.

So much for what???…A pic of mine on the plank

 

I remember that when i was in school or even in college my bi-yearly report card showed somewhere from 5-10 subjects. And now  it seems like there are infinite report cards with infinite parameters…..  Performance parameters, operational parameters, set target Vs Achieved target, Daily reports, Weekly reports, Monthly reports, Quarterly reports, Opportunities report, Quality report and many more…Reward and Recognition (R&R) is now an integral part of any “employee- centric” organization. Awards, certificates , gift hampers are kinda common with most of the organizations, one of the best is putting up a pic on the performance plank. Not many people achieve all their matrices and even less get to that pacman 5 position. And the best of them gets the opportunity to paste his/her pic on the plank. There’s obviously a sense of proud and superiority in that. But what’s the cost of all this. Sure ya! usual things- Hard work, Smart work. That’s kinda very generic reply. In IT industry , which i believe is much more competitive and ruthless than any other industry, performance is a multi dimensional and multi tier thing. Performance are important input during appraisals so it clearly has a long mark on the career. As someone wise once said that to get something you have to loose something. What m talking about???…well, 24 hours continuous shifts…lean and mean operational procedures(Six Sigma comes into play) and strict quality parameters, weekly performance calibration and reactive coaching.In situations like recession where the profit margins are less and the operation team tries to bridge the gab between actual revenue and target revenue, achieving the top tier performance is not by choice rather by compulsions. I have seen people getting into high stress level(including me)..I have seen people quitting the job…I have seen people breaking the organizational hierarchy and complaining about the “strict” work culture employed by their immediate supervisor(s) and almost in every case, this professional tremor reaches the personal life also. When operations gets squeezed almost half of the group exits the system either voluntarily or involuntarily, while the others make credible progress internally. You can say that it’s Charles Darwin’s classic theory of survival- Survival of fittest!!!

But still some people stick to it..why?? coz i think for people like me, there’s no other option. There so much on stake… But i feel that everyone should have something on his/her mind which is constant. Constant, as in, which is always in your mind..You know something that sort of can act like a continuous power supply and morale booster. At the end of the day when u see ur pic on the plank it surely gives that much needed satisfaction and peace. But to be honest it’s short lived. When u achieve that level ..u also create a benchmark for you. By default a operational manager always wants top performance, which is kinda very tough, and then it’s recession time…After u reach the plank ur target becomes wide like an ocean..it has an end but its not in ur sight.So the fight and struggle starts again…u know like an indian TV soap opera ……TO BE CONCLUDED…

Pujo, Mishti ar Bangla

Kali pujo(diwali ) marks the end of festivals in Bengal but as we bongs say “the feast must go on”. Bengal is known for it's knack for food and hospitality- two essential part of festivity. There's a whole variety of delicacies prepared during this time- both veg and non-veg. But its the sweets which are arguably the soul of the festive season. Bengal has its share of passions- Football, Politics, Poetry, Music, Fish, adda. But “Bengali” sweets surpasses the pleasure of all those taken together. Every state has it's variety of sweets but arguably bengal boasts the largest and most incredible variety of sweets. Every city in bengal has its famous sweet shops, every neighborhood has a moira that locals are proud of. Occasion or no occasion bongs eat sweets- many eat it daily as part of breakfast and certainly a sondesh or two after dinner (kinda happens in my home). I don't think any study has been done but am pretty sure that the annual consumption of sweets in bengal are way too high compared to rest of the states.

Bijoya just went by and I really like it in here. I actually like the concept- I mean besides the good wins the bad funda – people go visiting friends and relatives, do a bit of hugging, the mandatory touching of feets and then we get down to business. Plates of sweets and savouries are laid out on the dinner table- then visit someone else and eat “little” more. I have often wondered why we bongs are so fond of sweets. I suppose it has something to do with the arrival of portuguese in bengal in the 17^th century. It was some Portuguese colonist who introduced bengal to cottage cheese and then the moiras took over.

The most famous sweet maker of all time was Nobin Chandra Das. In the 1868 he famously created rossogolla, as we bongs fondly call it. Some 50 years after that his son K C Das created rossomalai or rasmalai. But while chhana may be the mainstay of bengali sweets , there are lot many sweets prepared from flour, rice powder(aatop chal), pressed rice, puffed rice, coconut, semolina, lentils and so on. Poush Parbon for instance is a festival dedicated to pithey , which are prepared with rice and its derivatives, flour, coconut, thickened milk and jaggery. Then of course there is the wonderful called notun gur – or date molasses. This is used to produce some of the best sweets I have ever had- sondesh, rossogolla and payesh and lets not forget the mishti doi, the much loved creamy and thickened sweet yoghurt that no celebration is complete without. As far as sweets are concerned innovation truly is rubbing shoulders with tradition. I love to eat jholbhora at Oh Calcutta – it has a hollow middle that's filled with molasses or rose essence. Most of the bengali sweets are prepared with cow's milk which is kinda easy on the stomach. In winters , eating a hot rossogolla out of kadhai is something close to nirvana.

The great thing about bengali sweets is that quite a few of the best known varieties are now available elsewhere in the country.

Angels And Demons: First Look

I enjoyed this sunday...Mostly because i watched the "much awaited " Ron Howard's Angels And Demons. Well first thing first , the movie didn't  justify with the original storyline. Many important scenes and incidents have been altered or removed. But the most imprtant thing is that this time the movie doesnot go head on head with catholic faiths and beliefs. Instead it's trilling stroy with huge entanglement of Papal History. Sacrilegious debunking of the New Testament is one thing which has been inherited from Dan Brown’s last novel. "Ah yes, Pope Pius IX's great castration," notes Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) as he's escorted through a gallery of officially mutilated statues. So begins the plot, which has this art-history boffin summoned by Vatican envoys in the midst of a grave succession crisis aka the Papal Conclave. The old pope is dead (murdered actually), and his four most likely replacements have been kidnapped and locked up somewhere underground. Meanwhile, a member of the Illuminati – feared age-old devotees of scientific truth – has gone to the considerable trouble of stealing a canister of explosive anti-matter from CERN in Geneva-Franco Border. Wherever it's been stashed, this will blow up at midnight, and take the Vatican with it. He is quickly embroiled in a race against time to find the four missing clerics before they are each branded with one of the elements – Earth, Air, Fire, Water – and subjected to a bespoke demise: the first corpse turns up stuffed with soil…the second one dies on St Peter’s Basil coz of puncture in the lungs…The third one is burned alive inside Bernini’s Chapel….But heroically Langdon  saves the fourth cardinal. Now i won’t disclose the Climax of the story – which is rather sudden and action filled.

But Talking about the historical facts and conclusions spread throughout the story – one thing is very clearly laid out – the involvement of renaissance artists in building the elegance of “Baroque” Vatican city,The center of Christendom and also conspiring against monopoly of Roman Catholic Church. I don’t remember any movie giving so detailed analysis of renaissance artists like Bernini, Michelangelo ,Galileo . While it’s important that most of these great minds used to work exclusively for the holy Church but they were also part of the secret organizations to promote their modern manifesto which challenges the atrocity,old beliefs and rules of the church. I think, controversies apart, the movie is kind of building awareness about that golden era of renaissance which started the propulsion of modern science and modern culture and society as whole.

River Retreat

Ganges river and Bay of Bengal are really important to my people.My home is at the southernmost point of Calcutta.This is the place where river meets the ocean.The terrain is mostly plain and moist hugged by lots of coconut and “supari” trees.It’s a beautiful place. Though Calcutta is a modern metropolis which is bustling with people my place , being the southern tip is relatively calm and restful. Today i would be sharing a wonderful travel destination which is around 1 hour drive from my home. The place is called Raichak and it’s where Ganga starts final leg of her grand journey. The river starts from the mountains of north india and spans the whole indian plain before meeting bay of bengal at the outskirts of calcutta.Ganga becomes so wide in raichak that big cargo ships and passenger ships use it as a transition route.If you start your journey from kolkata central try follwing the signboards for Ffort Radisson hotel, which meant taking a right turn at sarisa off the Diamond Harbour Road and then a left again onto the Raipur-Nurpur connector. The ffort radisson nestles behind a huge black gate to the left, some five minutes along.Just drive few more minutes and you will see the entrance for Gangakutir- Ambuja Realty’s Upmarket resort at raichak. The first thing you will notice as you enter the gate is a vista of the river over lily pond in full bloom. You look left and see a succession of tiled building connected to each other. As you will cross the centerway you will be able to see the infinity pool of constantly flowing water, which by a cunning trick of design appears to be seamlessly integrated with the river.You will find it hard to look away from this, but if you do you will be able to see the gracious buildings in wood and tiles with slopping roofs and wide varendas.The resort has been designed by some sri lankan designer and executed by both sri lankan and bengali workers.The tiny resort has been perfectly proportined- it has just 16 rooms in total and a suite. They used rural idioms and artifacts to decorate the rooms.That is really appreciable and it looks quite sophisticated. As i said the river is very wide at this point and this inlet chanel is the route for sea going ships. Small wooden boats try to catch fish throughout the day- somehow watching these activities throughout the day and evening, lying low in the pool with a drink is very relaxing. The small boats belong to fishermen who live in a nearby village. You can see small boats- both with sails and diesel powered engines with small lanterns on the bamboo sticks. If you wish you can hire one of these boats and can enjoy the river waves, although sometimes the river becomes violent during high tides.

Ganga Kutir positions itselfs as a place to rest and unwind and it lives up to that promise , beautifully.As it is the part of the same setup as that of radisson u can use it’s facilities like the radisson’s spa. If you have time and energy u can explore further and can visit bakkali,sunderbans,henry island and jambudwipa.

The food at ganga kutir is extremely good.The menu is short but well chosen and carefully prepared. There’s one problem though – the resto is open for fixed hours. So that means if you have spent too much time in pool and are late for lunch or dinner you will have to skip that altogether.However the resort staff is courteous enough to prepare and rustle up some light snacks for you.The rooms are quite spacious and as i mentioned tastefully done.Somehow i feel that they designed all the rooms to showcase the river- Big Bay windows(i plan to steal the idea for my own home), verandas with deck chairs overlooking the ganga from every room. Make sure you are sharing the room with someone you are pretty comfortable with , as the glassed-in bathrooms are  a little intimate(you can do lot of naughty things in there..trust me!).It’s more like a romatic gateway- take your loved one out and “bond” in a peaceful seclusion.- a rare commodity in our society of nosy people. Walk by the river at night or sit in the gazebo and count the stars and sip fine single malts.However don’t forget the insect repellent as the lap of nature in rural bengal usually includes a few creepy crawlies.Also wear covered shoes if you are walking by the river during night time.Ganga kutir’s best features are it’s ambience and setting, two things produced by intelligence and taste, and well worth the money.