India is Shining

Mukesh Ambani, the eldest of the Ambani brothers is the wealthiest person in the world. He has surpassed Bill Gates and the Mexican cellphone tycoon Carlos Slim Helu and the investment expert Warren Buffet while doing so.

Previously Mittal, the head of Arcelor Mittal was the wealthiest Indian in the planet.

But there are lot of differences between Mittal and Ambani. Mittal got most of his money through steel plants which were located outside India, on the other hand Ambani found wealth in India.

Even though lot of people cite the surge in Indian stock market and the appreciation of Indian rupee for the reason for Ambani to take the top spot, we have to realize an important thing.

There is a lot of money to be made in the Indian markets. Indians need not go to US to become rich.

The number of people with disposable income has indeed increased by many folds. When I was a school kid, a person who is earning around Rs 10000/- per month is considered to be a wealthy man. A bank clerk is supposed to be a top paying profession. Now the things have changed completely. There are 3 million IT professionals in our country and they are earning a lot. With IT, things like Cell phone and Oil have also seen a big boom. So indeed India is shining.

But still this boom has not affected the bulk of the population as still 70% of Indians are directly or indirectly associated with agriculture and the agriculture exports havent surged much in the recent years. Let us hope for a surge in agriculture production and another green revolution so that we can really say that India is indeed shining

Success!!!!!

Literally, when the goal is accomplished, then it is called as success, and a person with a history of success is termed successful.

Going with the literary definition, lets us consider the example of a beggar, who gets 100 rupees consistently every day. His aim is to get alms and he is consistently getting the same. Through the literary definition, he is infact successful.

But does the society accept him successful?

The answer is a big NO.

Here I come to the cream of this post which I have intended to write. I want to know what success mean in the eye of the society.

Every one wants to be successful and wants to be recognized as a successful person in the society too. If a college student wins the heart of the most beautiful girl in that college, he has succeeded in his aim of winning the girl’s heart and is also considered as a successful person by his fellow mates.

Now let us come to the basic question. How can we measure success in life? or framing the question in other words, how can we term a person to be a successful person?

The question is not as simple as it sounds. If we keep just money as the criteria for evaluation, then we will have to term Jesus Christ as unsuccessful. If we keep power as the criteria for evaluation, then socrates didnt have any power in the politics. Now wait a minute. Why am I saying that Jesus Christ and Socrates are successful? If I say that the answer as they made their names into history books, then what can I say about Adolf Hitler or Judas. They are clearly not successful in their life. Even though Hitler ruled almost one half of the world, no one calls him successful.

Lets Forget the historical personalities. Now in normal life, a software engineer is called as a successful person in his life. This is mainly due to the salary he is drawing from his company. Then think about a baron, who is a millionaire by birth. No one calls him successful if he is a lazy bum. Will any one call a son of, say Mukesh Ambani, if he ends up as a software engineer in Wipro?

Nobody does, and this question does gives an important answer.

The society is made up of lot of virtual levels. If you climb up to the next level in the society, then you are successful. Definitely the people who are in the level above you will not recognize your success. But the people who are in your or below your level will recognize you as a successful person.

Success is comparative.

So if a beggar gets a steady income by working as a night watchman, then he is a hero in his society.

You must be joking

Time: June 15th 2013.

“Three spectators are arrested for Racial Discrimination in Chinnaswamy stadium, Banglore. They were caught in the camera scratching their armpits in unison, which is found to be racially discriminating for the Pakistani players. The spectators were kept in Koramangala Police station and latter released on bail.”

With the pace Racial activists are acting, a news like this can occur in the near future. Seriously, I think soon in future, they will apply racism with everything, like Racist faculty who did racism by stopping a student just because he is taller than him,  or a Racist doctor who refused to touch the patient because the patient is not from the same sex.

The spectators who were caught doing Racial discrimination did that just because Symonds is from the opponent team. They would have done the same even if India is having white people instead of brown ones.

Now the biggest comedy is with the Afro-Americans of USA. There, calling a person Afro-Americans is not racism, but calling them Negro is. This leaves me thinking what would have happened if they have started calling those guys as Afro-Americans first.

The ‘n’ word

Visualize the kid telling Bruce Willis similar to that in Sixth sense

“I see nerd people. Walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re nerd.”

What a taboo about the word nerd. Most of the guys don’t want themselves to be called as nerd (palam in Tamil). I have seen some of my class mates who have done nothing other than studies in their BE days and have come outside the college to brag to other about how freaky they were and how they enjoyed the college life. If any one asks them what they mean as enjoyment, I bet you 5 rupees that they can’t come up even with a single incident.

So the main reason the ‘n’ word is a taboo is due to the fact that nerds are not supposed to have fun. They are not supposed to have any cool friends either. They are just supposed to adhere to the rules and not do anything funny. Having a girl friend is completely out of question.

But normally, I get very happy when some one calls me as nerd. My philosophy is that; consider you are going to get married. When your in-laws come enquiring about you, what will make them happy? If they come to know you as a person who is really calm, respects every one and studies well or as a person who is a wastrel, drinks a lot and have lot of problems everywhere? Yeah both are different ends of the spectrum and yeah, people like nerds.

For me, those good old days when my friends called me nerd are over. Its not that I have changed. It is all because of Einstein. In BE, I was one of the most studious person in my group and they still call me nerd. But after coming to IIT, I am no way near those guys who munch each and every line of the text books. So yeah nerd is relative.

My experiments with police station – Final Part

Yes my cell phone is ringing. And as timing has it, it was my mom. Great timing mom!!!

“Where are you now?” was the first sentence which my mom asked.

Has she known about it? I mean I am not a popular person whose arrest is telecasted in all the news channels. If she comes to know that I am in a police station through a news channel, how come there is no reporter near by here? But come on, she in no possibility can know that I am in a police station. This must be a regular chat from my mom. May be she is verifying whether I am in a cinema hall or in my room.

“In my room why?” I replied as confidently as possible.

“Just asking” and after that she went on talking about our family members and lot of other trivial issues. I was scared that if any police man sees me over phone, they may think that I am not giving proper respect which they deserve and they can thrash me like a street dog. So I tried to cut the call in a smooth way possible, but it seemed that there is no chance of making the conversation short.

So I clung on to the phone for a several anxious minutes waiting for my mom to end the call and at the same time hoping for escaping from the ever watch full eyes of the police men.

So after many anxious minutes, the call ended in the natural way possible and fortunately no police officer noticed me. The next call I made to my room mates and told them the state I am in, so that in case if some thing happens to me, they as true friends can come an save me. They as true friends asked what they can do. I added one plus one and thought that they can become the guardians for all of us and told them to come to the police station.

            In the mean time, one of our team mates tried their relative who is a wife of the brother of a police constable in Trissur (some 250 km from Trivandrum) for our recommendation. The constable talked with her for some time and confirmed her that he will handle the matter in the smoothest way possible. In the mean time, my friends arrived in the police station. I took these guys to the constable and asked for our release against the confirmatory sign of my room mates. Then the constable stated the next rule for release. That is the guardian has to be a permanent resident of the circle where the police station is. Great going guys!!! Now I have complete belief in our judiciary system.

            My room mate suggested me to get the help of our neighbor who told us that he is an inspector. He has even told us once that we can ask his help when ever required. This is the utmost important thing which can come up for us during our stay in Trivandrum. So I thought of asking his help. But none of our room mates have seen him in any police uniform. He can be revenue inspector too. Or even an inspector of public toilets in Trivandrum. He can be any one. We don’t know him that much. I even had a bad story about my friend who received 6 slaps in his right cheek and 5 slaps in his left one for telling a police inspector that his dad is an inspector, not in police department but in tax department. So to be in safer side, I told this new proposal to the mallu team mate of mine who did the most of the talking with the police guys. He came up with a better plan. He called the head of our client in Trivandrum and asked for his help. Our client head indeed came for our rescue and he called the police station and promised them that indeed our hero won’t run away from responsibility and that he will stay in Trivandrum till his judgment gets over. But there was a problem here too. Now there is not a single suspect but a lot of suspects. All those guys who were inside the police station were culprits and a case has been filed against all of us. Only at that time, I came to know that a case can be filed just by filling your name and address. But our client head was valiant and he promised to be the god father of all the people who were stationed there at that time.

            So with the promise of a guardian, who is a respected one, our chances seemed much promising. But the constable threw the next surprise at us.

This guy is really playing with us for sure. He said that as all of us are booked, all of us should go to the court and pay some fine. Man this is too much. For simple bumps of mine, followed by the finger pointing business of our hero, you can’t send an entire team to court. And above that, we need to pay a fine too.

            So second round negotiations started and the constable finally settled to make the case only on our hero and he made the inspector and sub inspector to agree to the same.

A public nuisance case was filled against our hero and he was told to go to a court and pay up the fine. Our hero readily agreed and we were happy just to leave that place.

 

So the next day as expected, our hero accepted all the fault of his and paid the fine. So the important thing to note is that not all the police men take bribe and if you get struck up with a police man who doesn’t have anything to do to spend his time, better run away from him. And the last but not the least, I have not used any names in this story.

 

PS: Two weeks after the situation took place; I and our hero were standing in a bus stop. A patrol car similar to what we saw in this story drove past us in a slow speed. Our hero took two steps back.

 

Thanks and apology: Thanks for our hero who let me to write this story and sorry for my mom and my sis for telling some thing over my web page rather than directly telling that to you.

My experiments with police station – III

Our hero was standing in the corner and he was still maintaining his composure and he was giving a look as if he doesn’t care a damn about anything that is going on around him. Hero’s have to look in that way rite? So after some 10 minutes of non stop pleading and cajoling, the sub inspector lessened his stance and he told us that he can’t do anything now and the inspector of the police station has to come as he can’t leave a suspect free just like that. When our hero did become a suspect? Never mind. Even Rajini, the super star of Tamil film industry has been a suspect in a lot of movies. So continuing with the story, the sub inspector told us that our hero is indeed arrested and he cant leave him without a local guardian promising that he will be responsible incase our hero escapes out of Kerala without attending the court.

            This is real scene baby!!! So now our hero is properly screwed. We started our quest of finding the person who can be our guardian. The mallus in our team mate told the inspector that they can be the guardian of our hero and they can indeed release our hero and that they will be responsible for his actions. Then the sub inspector told us the biggest joke I have ever heard in my life. He declared that we are all indeed arrested too.

            Man I just wanted to see the whole show for myself. I never wanted to get arrested. By the way I have seen in English movies that they will recite the verses “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.” Don’t start praising my memory power. I just copied that statement from some web page in the net. You never thought I can remember that much right?

            OK continuing forward in our story, I was really dumb founded on hearing that. I should remind you guys that I am the one who indeed started the whole confusion. So I am really entitled to get arrested. But come on guys, you can’t get arrested for a friendly bumps rite. So to increase our stupefaction, a constable who was sitting there, told us to fill in all of our names and addresses. The first person obviously was our hero, followed by a mallu team mate of ours who was doing most of the talking. Then our PL and other guys in our project who were inside the police station followed suit. I ran through the ranks and entered my name in the middle so that I will not be singled out in any permutations and combinations.

            I don’t need to tell you guys that instead of my first name which is not a common name, I wrote just my last two names which are so common that if you stand in the middle of the market and swear some bad word followed by my name, you will get properly beaten up. I even showed myself too nerdy to the constable and asked him even doubts while filling forms under the assumption that if I show them as a really innocent guy, they will let me go.

            At that time, I found the reality of the situation we are in. Most of the cops were sitting idle trying to spend their time in some thing worth while. So as we have got caught, definitely they will try to make the most of us. More over working in a night shift is a boring job rite.

            So after a wait of around 1 hr, the inspector of the police station finally arrived. Our sub inspector narrated the whole story once again to him. The inspector looked like a respectable person. And I was even hoping that he will let us go with a stern warning. But alas. He asked the sub inspector why he hasn’t slapped our hero after he has pointed his finger at him. Doomed. All dark thoughts were running in my mind. May be they will lock us up, strip us to the briefs and beat us black and blue. May be they will send us to jail for at least three months. Or may be my cell phone is ringing.

My experiments with police station – II

He called our hero stupid.
Stupid???!!!! How dare he call our hero stupid? Even his teachers, parents, friends hasn’t called him stupid. Not even when he flunked a record 7 subjects out of the possible 8 in a single semester. They only called him careless, irresponsible fellow, who is slow in understanding things and with a lesser memory power. They even called him useless guy but never as stupid. So our hero was grossly insulted by having some one call him as stupid. He wanted to fight back in the normal way which the heroes normally do in the movies when they are insulted in movies.

He wanted to give a Bruce lee kick directly to the chin of the sub inspector and smash his jaw off. He wanted to give a punch squarely across the face of sub inspector and again smash his jaw off. He wanted to give an elbow again at the face of sub inspector and again smash his jaw off. And he wanted to do all these three things at the same time.

But with monstrous self control, our hero did nothing and he controlled his senses and uttered a paltry “Mind your words” to the sub inspector. Even his self control can’t control him from pointing his index finger towards the sub inspector.

The sub inspector was dumb founded for a minute. He was not able to believe what is happening before his eyes. A man is pointing his fingers at him!!!!! . That’s it. End of the story. He wanted to do all the things our hero wanted to do, but on the hero. As lots of guys were surrounding him, he kept his anger in control and told him to get into the patrol car. Our hero was still composed and he coolly went and sat inside the patrol car. His bag was taken as evidence.

Then, he called the person who got hit and the person who hit him to get into the police van. Unfortunately, as I had a French beard, he identified me easily and he pointed his index finger at me and asked whether I am the person who gave bumps. I gave a look as if I don’t care and just stood there without saying anything. Fortunately he thought that I was not the one who gave bumps by looking at my innocent face (:D) and he started searching for the person who gave bumps in the crowd. In the mean time, the mallus in our team surrounded the jeep and they pleaded him to let him free. But our sub inspector was not to be moved and he took our hero directly to B-2 police station, the first police station where I went into.

Now I should take some time to explain the police force in India. They first do the action part and after that do the talking part and finally do the reasoning part. Once my friend, who is an Inspector’s son was buying black ticket in a theatre. A constable was on duty in that theatre and he caught him in action and he gave a hard slap to him, and asked him who he is. He told his name and told him that he is a son of an Inspector. Our constable asked him why he hasn’t told him before the slap.

So our hero is in a really grave situation now. We, his team mates made an action plan so that we can rescue our hero. The action plan is to go the police station, all of us together to prove our strength and to tell those cops that how much we like our hero and with united vigor, spirit and strength beg those cops to leave him free. Well we don’t have any other option rite.

So we went to the police station. The sub inspector was there and we again pleaded him to release our hero. All these things were happening inside the police station and I with some of my team mates were standing outside the same. I got really bored of missing all these actions and I boldly made one small step which the largest step is taken by me. I got into the police station to see what is going on inside.