World of Abhijeet Awasthi

Things getting clearer

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:11:21 GMT

Now finally things are getting clearer ...
Finally after lot of deliberations I m goin' to take finance as my specialization , there was no doubt right from the start neways bt u see the mind is fickle :)
so wht are the things i m interested in :

Corporate Finance I suppose, Investment Banking is a close second but then these are on the wishlists of every one here.
IB is more glamorous but CorpFin is more satisfying but both are stimulating at the same time.
I really dont mind wasting sm of my initial time doing hardcore analytics . Applying all the models and theories. Building basics is necessary :).
What about other options ???
Marketing seems to me a gas balloon.....
everything chalta hai , can prove nething by saying consumer wants this
.Fin has concreteness abt it , u get tangible results and you dont have the liberty of being right all the time.

Nothing much to do today :-)

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 20:20:39 GMT

I am back after a quick trip to home... there are some problems there which I hope will get resolve in near future.
Well hope is the only thing which keeps u goin in the testing times , I hope therfore I will ....
Coming back to hostel is like a retreat from all those outside tensions , being cocoooned , that is a great feeling I tell u. So wht do i do today as I am free.
REad newspapers ... perhaps bt then i m not feeling like it.
REad a book ... perhaps bt no fun in them too
So go to blog n share things with frends , that's cool n doable too. Apart frm home one more thing which is lurkin in mind right now is the TRIP to LADAKKH.
As the feb will come to a close excitement is sure to rise after all u dont go to ladakkh every day:) well on a personal front i m not those adventure types bt i do like to experiment.
One more thing which i want to write is that wenever i m bloggin i get a sense of deja' vu. Why i dont know may b in teh previous lifes also i wrote blogs ( given my age that's quite impossible though)
So signing off right now on a ladakkh note ie a high note :)
Abhijeet.... seeya
we shud keep meeting what say

New Year

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 20:57:29 GMT

Lot of time has passed since I last wrote something on this blog, really lot of time. I vow to be regular going forward. But the reasons were simply beyond my control. A strenous killing schedule and my energies being diverted to writing the official SP blog were the primary reasons.
So 2006 has come to an end, an eventful year in every right. I reached an MBA school , the calling came true. My insecurities and ignorance was exposed !!! and I came out tougher to deal with all of it.
The last day of the year being a holiday I spent it doing the stuff which I enjoy the most that is reading n watching movie.
I m reading right now a book named Liar's Poker which is abt the life of investment bankers and takes a dig at them. Then i spent time completing one business plan. Around 7 pm I started for the eventful night ahead.
I have just returned from the New Year's party and what a party it was ... but there is no reprieve forthcoming tomorrow is a day full of classes. Markstrat game classes in which the profs will try to teach us unsuccessfully the nitty grittys of marketing and I will sleep as usual.
About the party tonite . It was a really great experience. Before the party we went to a concert in Andheri Sports Complex, watched Priyanka Chopra and Shahid Kapoor perform. In short thoroughly enjoyed. After that came back to a dance party in our beloved Bistro but my mind as usual went on to the philosophical moorings of life.
Why am I here and what will happen next , these are few questions which I generally find very good .
In the long run only if u r doing a job which is according to ur liking n u marry a girl of ur liking u will b happy . These two bcoz they form the foundation of every other decision of urs. I also thought abt the kind of bonds i am makin here, how sustainable these relationships will be. The answer to this is that I really doubt that these will b very sustainable. Once u r out of sight u r out of mind no rocket science in that but no mourning the rules of life . Positive side is the quality time we all spent together, livin in the moment that's the mantra.
The New Year has started n new resolutions are to b taken. My vow is to get rid of my time mismanagement habits. Let's see how successful I get but this is a wish n a vow at the same time.

First break : time to regroup Part 2

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:33:19 GMT

So what all were the important subjects I learnt ...

Quantitative methods : a course on statistical techniques

Financial mgmt: how to read balance sheet and how to analyse company statements. From where in the markets can company source the funds needed to run the business? and how it plans to repay them ?

How to ascertain that the company is making sound investments decisions? and a lil bit of consulting i.e. making people think that they have a problem and in ways to resolve those problems.

MacroEco: A dicey issue .... but in these months I have learnt to cope up with it.

Digressing a bit , just yesterday I was going through the top B school rankings for india. SP was 8th but was pretty low on intellectual capacity. This made me wonder how this dismal state can be changed? I propose we should start or launch a site known as SPINFOLINE. Here we should upload all the papers which have been submitted to the faculties. Regular updation with the help of faculty remarks and the consequent batches taking them as a research base can add to them. This will ensure that we have some genuine research output in few years time.

Collaborate to dominate: Collaboration is new mantra. One cant go alone if he doesnt believe in collaboration and coordination.

First break : time to regroup part1

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:18:54 GMT

Ohh god 4 months have passed ... and i hv become 1/6 th of MBA grad.

And all this without m knowing anything , journey these four months have been like running from here to there and there to here ...

So what have been the achievements? academically nothing it seems , i have been hovering in the last 20's consistently , many tried to match my consistency but they were no good. They got marks somewhere and had to concede defeat.

So now do i know that what this MBA education is all about ??? what those numbers quoted as salary figures really signify? Is this overhyped over sensationalized thing worth investing ur time and money?

The answers to these questions have become pretty clear in these months and i will say that this clarity is also because of the two years which i spent in HSBC prior to college.

So before answering these questions one more important question comes to my mind which is : what will you call a successful life? this is because your every successive step will be graded based on that answer. If you really value money and will say that nothing else motivates me than MBA is preferrrably not the place for you. Dont get fooled by the astronomical sums which newspapers quote, be realistic. Those fools dont even know what things they are talking about. So money shouldnt be the reason.

For me its love of knowledge. It was the joy of doing something which was new , which was meaningful. Being somebody important rather than a piece in an eternal chain. If you r like me then MBA is for you. Enough of boasting lets keep it for sometime later.

An average person's guide to crack CAT

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 17:40:56 GMT

Today sitting comfortably in my hostel room with my back saddled in a cushioned chair I want to open some secrets.

What are those secrets and are they related or detrimental to my position right now. Are they confessional in nature or they will unveil somebody else's dirty secrets.

No they are nothing like that , simple and purely reflectional in nature these accounts dont hurt anybody. By these accounts I want to help some hapless souls who are toiling day and night these days. So what I want to tell? I want to accept that even though sitting pretty in one of the best B School's in India, I am a pretty average person that too when you stretch the definition of average extensively on the lower side.

So what is the message.... if I can do it then you also can.

Lets talk of all the things which are common for all of us and happen to all of us during preperation for CAT( nebody denying them is telling a lie.. be assured of that).

Anxious , desperate nights, bouts of self disbelief, thoughts of leaving it all and running away , these all are same for us. So what makes the difference. Let's see...

September has just started and keeping the dirty brouhaha over the reservations aside world is more or less the same. Third sunday of november is still the D Day. I guess lots of things will be made or broken during these 2 months as they are most crucial in terms of preperation.So how to utilize them most effectively.

1) Prepare a schedule and stick to it come what may. OK ok you have heard it lots of time, nothing new in it. Remember in life, the most hazardous habit is doing things at the spur of the moment without giving them proper thought. If you study in discontinous manner, regularly on and off, it is surely bound to hurt. CAT is not only test of your knowledge it also tests your sincerity. So follow the schedule religiously. Office outing can wait, midnight strolls with girlfriend can also wait for these 2 months.

2)Cover your weakness, play on your strength. Oft repeated but difficult to follow advice. CAT requires you to show your competency across all the sections so you cant afford to leave any topic entirely. Going by the last year's experience the choices in terms of chosing questions is getting restricted. Have a dispassionate and rational estimate of your strengths and weaknesses and decide accordingly. Remember everyone is going through the same emotions ,so never lose heart. Just be organised, it will help you even more when you are in the college.

3)Dont give extra importance to the SIM CAT's rankings. I realize people will tell you that the ranks in the test actually translate into calls. But this is an event which can happen or not happen with equal probability. So till the last day try to learn the maximum out of each test. Take them in proper manner , extensively exhaustively analyse them.This is very very important.

4)Read a lot. You will say we know that. Ok boss but reading pertinent and pointed stuff is very important. Dont bog down yourself with too much information. Daily dose of HINDU and ET will suffice , give them at the max one and half hours daily. Write what you dont understand and revisit them periodically.

5)Be cool dont treat it as a matter of life and death. Remember life is long and beautiful, an exam cant decide about your worth in the world. CAT is just an important event meant to be treated with sincerity and honesty. I can assure you that honesty pays.

We see that everything boils down in the end to being honest about your efforts. Easy to say but difficult to follow. I remember when last year one of my seniors gave me these words of wisdom which sailed me through.

Enough of preaching .... I cant sit at a place for so long. So bye for now.

Munich

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 15:20:59 GMT

Steven Spielberg ......

Sometimes down the future people will like to remember these times as the time when Speilberg was making movies. He never disappoints and comes back to you everytime more potent than ever.

Munich a movie made on the backdrop of killing of Israeli athletes in munich olympic village in 1972. But that incident and the incidents thereafter are just the facade. Spielberg thought goes much beyond that. He explores and questions the basic human behavior and then without passing a judgement on right and wrong lets the audiences intellect to decide and derive the meaning.

Movie traces the story Eric Bana playing the undercover operative of Mossad. He with the team of five men is assigned a job of exterminating the key people of Black September group. They perform their jobs effciently but slowly and slowly become aware of the fruitlessness of the whole exercise. The movie captures the human emotions of anguish and despair poignantly and thrives on the dilemma of the protagonist.

In the end a thoroughly captivating experience, 2 hrs worth investing.

Highly recommended.

The week that was

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 18:50:23 GMT

Sometimes I feel a deep need to reflect and that urge is invariably strong on wednesday nights as thursday is our holiday at SPJAIN. I want to reflect about all the things right from what I did in the last week to why I am on this holy earth.

Hindsight is a very deceptive phenomenon , everyone is wiser in hindsight :) I am no exception. After every quiz I think that I could have done the answer in different manner and got some marks.

Last week was a loaded like anything but interesting too on some counts. The great Sango taught us how to tear a balance sheet apart and try looking right through it. I try to think in the analytical fashion which he urges us to do but given the limited intellectual capital which I possess I prefer to keep it for pressing future needs. We also had a theatre workshop to sensitise the management grads toward the fine points of theatre and to make them appreciate the managerial aspects involved in theatre. The whole exercise in the end boiled down to typical gay stuff which gave some of the participants masquerading as sth else to show their true colors.It was a great learning exercise also where I saw my friends devicing some of the most innovative ways to sleep during the workshop.

In the operations we have to device an operational plan for launching a "laundry service" in the city. Next in line must be related with the design and maintenance of some undergarment factory, ummmm interesting. Neways the prospect of designing a whole service from the location to employee compensation looks great and thoroughly consuming. Nothing more satisfying then a job well done well lets see how well it comes out.

On a different note , our beloved great Prof SD is hell bent on daily surprise quizzes essentially robbing them off their surprise value. I dont feel any flutter in stomach while writing them nowadays, neither do I feel while the results are announced as from the last three ones I have been in the leftmost portion of the normal distribution touching negative 3 sigma.

Its difficult to pass time in class as my fav pastime ie watching girls has become very jaded becoz after a point they all look so much the same .....big yawn. I m very soon going to propound a theory on " Diminishing marginal value of the visual appeal of girls wrt time". Intense research is going on right now.

So the week that was, was all gas and gay lets see what the next one has in store.

Looking Back the office days

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 17:51:31 GMT

Hi lot of time has passed after joining college, office seems like a distant past.

Ya distant it is. Today I would like to analyze the kind of relationship I had with people there. Was it formal, was it official, was it the way I imagined it or was it the way I never imagined it.

Basically with any kind of relationship the biggest mistake what u can do is of expectations. Expecting that somebody will remember you even when you are out of sight. This is a highly foolish kind of expectation. The basic law dictates that memory is a very fickle thing and it is directly proportional to the physical presence and the usage quotient. The second parameter plays more important part. At this point we can also analyze the concepts of self image and esteem but that will be a very digressional exercise.

When I was in college the friendships I made, I assumed them to last for life and same happened in office scenario also. But things dont work that way and then in retrospect analyzing your feelings at that time for all the people make u blush with embarassment. This is an issue of cognitive dissonance , the harsh distinction between imagination and reality. You believe a thoroughly temprory relationship to be a life long friendship. But then what is life long anyways.

So people in office who delete my mails after seeing my name in the sender's column are behaving on expected lines may be I can behave expectedly also, by not sending the mails :)

Omkara

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 19:36:56 GMT

Some things belie your expectations , some exceed that, some concoct a promise but dont deliver.

Then there is a category which takes u by surprise.

OMKARA belongs to the last one.

A typical rural milieu , the gangwar for political power going on.

Hero rises to save his fair damsel. But he is not perfect he listens to others too much , he thinks too much and that's his cardinal folly.

Between these three lines lies a very persuasive tale of human psyche, its base emotions and play of divine in form of this movie. Vishal Bhardwaj has proven that Maqbool was not an exception. He handles this subject deftly and poignantly. Ajay proves his efficiency , Kareena keeps her promise , Viveik makes the numbers but the surprise package of the movie is Saif . He simply rocks . The wily , jealous lieutenant plays part to perfection.Hats off ... is he the same Saif who used to play second fiddle to everyone jus few years back.

Now enough praise some minor hiccups also... end doesnt live up to the expectations but then that is what Shakespere wanted , so we cant argue.

Highly recommendable just go and watch it ...

First theory of future ECONOMIST

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:43:28 GMT

The life is short and time flows , both these in combination give u an impression that things dont happen in present either they have happened earlier or they are yet to happen.

Last 25 days I have been experiencing this strange feeling with " zero understanding of subjects as fact of past" and " below average marks as reality of future", the present was just a transition.

After all this philosophical moorings let's talk about some economic fundas which I came to learn .

First : The supply of good girls in MBA college is highly inelastic . Here "good" is subjected to Consumer behavior which we all know is highly volatile.Based on this I propose my first theory:

THEORY OF CONTRADICTION : Good girls are contradictory goods because they can be highly differentiated and entirely homogenous at the same place and at the same time. So at the same time can exist a condition of scarcity and over production of good girls in the market.

In the college again

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:55:42 GMT

So after a gap of 2 yrs I m back in college pursuing a long cherished dream . This time round I m older , wiser , fatter .... so what's the point , the point is that this is the time to make it all count.

Classes started and the subs are nice n I get to study my personal fav which is economics. Studying the behavior of man and then theorising about the action he might perform and in anticipation of that action putting up ur act.Economics is more then the various curves , it is in every thing we do. Why we take coffee one day to tea and why we will eat chocolate doughnut to macaroni pav the other day , it all involves economics.

Learnt abt this demand and supply thing also its not as simple as it seems . Why r millions starving when excess production is problem of many, why this mkt doesnt enter with its " hand of god " and corrects it . Basically what we have to understand is that in real world 2+2 dont make 4 , actually they dont make nething bcoz everything is relative .

So that's the finding for today will be coming back as I find more things :)

Back after the break!!!

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:06:53 GMT

So I m writing after a long long break. Many movies gone and no review , many issues gone n no comment , that's not me surely. So what happenned ?
Yaar u wont believe I m joining an mba program that too frm a coveted insti. That hangover persisted too long and hence this break. But now im back to my old wicked ways of harming humanity by my literary diarrohea.
First things first, all these days I was reading a lot . There was one book which I finished just now and I will strongly recommend that . It is " The Undercover Economist" by Tim Hardford . I will be analysing the books contents in future and will also be adding my 2 cents of advice.
Other book was "Google Story" about the rise of google. Im fan of google to say the least ( but I find this msn spaces better :-) than that blogspot ) .
So as my mba story unfolds I plan to pen it down and hope some interesting observations come out of it .
Signing out for now .....

Gangster A Love Story

Sun, 07 May 2006 08:05:53 GMT

Cast : Kangna ,Shiny ,Emraan

Director : Anurag Basu

After a tiresome job of getting up early on a sunday morning and then rushing to the theater to catch a discounted morning show now it feels the effort has gone waste.

Story though different with lot of tales and lot of twists was full of glaring loop holes .
Not dwelling much further let us first analyze the settings :
Seoul as a backdrop , an alcoholic female lead , a hit hindi singer in Korean bar with lot of korean conossieurs , a ganster on run and a SuperCop with a mandate to wipe out anybody . The scene was ripe for lot of drama but ....
Drama turned into melodrama as Kanchan the debutante female lead let horses of her hoarse voice on the audience. With all her alcoholic sobs amplified in dolby, listeners were hard pressed for moments of relief.

Emraan did all the things in which he is efficient ( He is maintaining a strike rate of 100 , I tell you ....) and counted for few whistles from firstbenchers who were incidentally lastbenchers also as only one row was filled.

Shiny was correctly provided with no dialogues at all . He used his eyes amply though , a sure high point of the movie.
The problem with the movie was a stuborn disregard for subtlety . The disjointed plots were connected to shock and then left loose again. I will conclude my lengthy analysis because I am still feeling the emotional trauma of Kangana but in monetary terms .

The Third Vote : Grand Finale

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 10:16:54 GMT

The day of election was here and as soon as the first rays of morning sun entered our home my brother said or shouted ( choose the plausible one ) ..."CHALO MUMMY" . Mom starting with her morning chores was in no mood to oblige and brother got his morning doze which quelled his enthusiasm atleast for a while . I sensed the ripple effect and deserted him in this hour of need.
By 11 am Mom was finished wth her work and we started our long walk to freedom which ended 200 mtrs away in a community school hosting the extravaganza.
The atmosphere was lively there chaotic to be more correct. Peoples of questionable credentials were present in large supply probably to make some last minute amends to the fortunes of their political 'Aakas' . The queues were long and vociferous , Mom almost changed her mind to vote seeing the long queue outside the booth.
But with us there that was not a possibility , we were holding her one hand each . My brother clinging to it with all his vitality . Risk was too much , distractions might make her change mind.
I was also keeping a studious eye on the ongoing carnival.
At last ,standing for an hour in the quenching heat, we were the next to go in. I glanced at Big Brother with a smile . He did the obvious gave me the signal that dont celebrate prematurely.
Election staff inside was puzzled to see two young voters coming in , old enough to have their mind but too young to vote nonetheless.
The officer handed the ballot to my mom and showed her the way to a small cube where fate of democracy was to be decided. We , brothers , followed in to witness the historic moment.
There were plenty f options to choose from but my mother vindicated my brother;s conviction and stamped on Mr Malhotra's "troublesome" lock . We had done it , there were tears in my eyes. Wecame out and the ballot was inserted in the box.
Me and Brother then offered our hand to be dotted by ink , my brother as a token of his unwavering support and me as a believer in logic of transitivity.
The results were scheduled to come out in a week's time , with the government's machinery chugging along slowly collecting the mandate across the state. I loved this period of anxiety and expectations . In my all productive mind I had already charted how I would take my next strides in politics but kept all those plans to myself only. On other hand my brother was scaling new heights of popularity in his class. With a small dot on his finger becoming the centre of attraction and making all the girls swoon over him.
Mrs Malhotra was on leave and my brother feared that her vacation might outlive the mark.
9:00 am , counting of votes started.Leaders and trailers from each place were having their respected names splashed on the TV screen. But Mr Malhotra's name was no where in sight. We started to see something fishy in this , after such a rock solid support he can neither deserve nor affor to loose.
Resluts were out in the evening . Mr Malhotra was conspicuously absent from both winners and losers. His name was not there in the list who lost their bail amount.
Young , juvenile hearts of we the brothers sank collectively. My walk to freedom had been abruptly curtailed by a grand design against democracy.
I felt sorrow , pain , disillusionment and went to sleep , feeling tomorrow will bring some respite . How wrong I was.
Next morning the news paper came and I was the one to get hold of it first. Last night the sleep was hard to come in the expectation of a good news , a miracle like re-election , president rule , war ...sth atleast.
My eyes glanced over the paper and stopped on a list where the votes tally of all the contesting candidates was given. My heart skipped a beat and my gaze tilited slowly and slowly to assimilate the result stats. NO1 ..... Votes:.... .NO2..... Votes:....continued till eternity then suddenly No 31 Mr Rajeev Malhotra , below him a black horizontal line indicating the end of the list . And now the most important point Mr Malhotra vital stats :- Rank 31 Total votes polled in favour :3.
Gosh ! I said.
My brother also saw the list and rued the announcement of victory he made in his class few days back.The impending wrath of Mrs Malhotra and thought of consequent "setbacks" weighed heavily on his mind.But all said and done he was solely responsible for 33.33% of Mr Malhotra's political base. I tried to sell him this point but was unaware that he already had searched the reasons for this debacle. Which offcourse given his knack of straight and pointed thinking boiled down to inefficiency and ineptitude of the lower rung comrades of his mission ( There were not many in that list just one ...). The amends cant be made in the results but punitive actions can be taken so they will be taken.
THAT DAY NIGHT CAME EARLY AND ABRUPTLY AND STARS TWINKLED WITH ALL THERE STRENGTH NOT FOR EVERYBODY BUT FOR ONE SPECIAL ONE.

Darna Zaroori Hai

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 09:10:10 GMT

Cast : Amitabh Bachchan , Anil Kapoor, Arjun Rampal ....... the list is endless.

Director : RGV , Chekravarthy , Sajid Khan .....who remembers the rest .

Guys , Guys , Guys now comes the verdict ... and the verdict : It is a fabulous , fantastic , mindboggling movie coming out of FACTORY stable after a very very long time.

Film starts with a bang . Manoj Pahwa enacts a character true to him in the first story. With bouts of laughter he walks his way in and out of a cemetry on Friday the 13th . We follow him in and then .....

We see an aging professer in the next story , his student is aghast at his unprofessor like antics . So what do they discover in the end.....

Then comes a man who has to call a mechanic on a eerie night and he meets an odd couple who are dead by turns . And what does the audience do, they revel in his desperations , find out for urself how he manages his way out.

Then comes a sex-starved husband eyeing his workaholic wife on a dreamy sunday afternoon . Their flight of fancy is cut short by an intruder and there lives will be changed forever....

Now it is the turn of taking shots at some creative people. A director en route to write story for his new film meets a girl , who will become part of his story and he will become of her .....

Then comes the last one to shiver you out of your souls .... about a bodyless soul wandering on the highway . Never sure who will be the next vehicle for her persuits.

The connecting thread of all the stories though loose and cliched is not a spoiler atleast . You can bear it and enjoy the rest .

So go on and enjoy the rest and the sleeplessness after it .....

Basic Instinct 2

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 08:39:52 GMT

Cast : Sharon Stone , Excuse me who is the hero.....

Talking about the original Basic Instinct , to be very clear it is one movie which has grown on the combined consciousness of the masses and has almost provided an altogether different meaning to phrase Basic Instinct. As of now whenever this phrase is uttered , rather than thinking of any biological connotation we start dreaming about Stone crossing her legs. As the first was released at a time when the Indian audiences were largely oblivious to American hot spices and their only reprieve was the local Video Cassete Librarywallah who was benevolent enough to lend underage kids something of their liking.

Now coming on heels of such a movie the sequel is grossly unsatisfying . Sharon Stone is past her prime to command any antics which she promises throughout the movie as the constantly conspiring Catherine Trimmel . David Morrissey playing the part of Dr Michael Glass is thoroughly cluless throughtout the movie , good going for a pshychoanalyst . Last but not the least the scenes for which Indian audiences are thronging to theaters are not there . I am not aware if this is the masteract of our own censorboard or the director's insipidness has also seeped in here . Well I suppose to find out the truth we have to make round of the benevolent neighborhood CDWallah . I am not ready to go through that ordeal again and if u are , do it at your own peril.

The Aviator an Analysis

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 19:45:52 GMT

Right now I just finished watching The Aviator .
Had heard about it earlier but was completely bowled over by it today.
Now let us do some psychological analysis of the movie leaving aside the usual jargon of criticism.
I am not aware of the reality of the character played by Leonardo that is Howard Hughes but found him an exceedingly likeable personality with all his share of human follies and ups and downs . He charms his way fumbling.
Let's talk more about the things for which the man stood for .
I am always engrossed by this thought that what kind of a man are they who drive this world.There are few men who are born to change the order of the world and rest are born to follow .This urge to follow is not about the level of intellect but it is about the urge to follow the conventions. See around urself , how are few things deemed good and few are perennially bad . Some things must be done always in a way, as they are told . Our mind is conditioned to some beliefs which through a passage of time we start taking as truth . Following them we become devoid of free will which is the essence of being human.
The virtue of thinking out of box is told but the virtue of thinking different is seldom preached . Failure is taken as an infinitely sinful crime and not trying is worshipped as prudency .That's where people like Howard Hughes come into picture who defy convention . They break boundaries. They fail , they win but most importantly they try.
Similar was the case in the famous book Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach where the author by virtue of an allegory tells you to reach your boundaries and breach them and experience the world far away.
According to me that world far away can be experienced even now if you let yourself believe in the existence of such parallel worlds and parallel universes.

Think something new , think something different , defy conventions , defy the order or make change the order. That's the order of the day , perhaps.

What am I reading right now

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 15:49:35 GMT

Gosh making or destroying software is a tiring job but I have perfected it with panache. But in the meantime I also devote myself to my second love READING .

Right now I have my hands on the book called When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein .

Its a book about rise and fall of a hedge fund in the mid ninties which shook the base of American Capital markets. The racy account goes well with the journalistic profile of the author.

I have not read the complete stuff but so far so good , engrossing characters and the fast turn of events are making it a unputdownable but I put it down neways after reading 10 pages on stretch.

Being Cyrus

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 06:56:48 GMT

Cast : Saif Ali Khan, Nasseruddin Shah, Dimple Kapadia, Manoj Pahwa

Some movies have to be seen to believe how good they are . Being Cyrus falls in that category , the layers of the story peel off slowly and slowly and every time you see something more interesting coming your way.

Suave and polished Cyrus follows his soul into Dinshaw Sethna's dilapidated house in Panchgani.

"Every happy family is happy in the same way, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own." - Leo Tolstoy says in Anna Karenina. Sethna's are its perfect example and Cyrus is there to exploit their special way.

Good screenplay , good dialogues and perfect casting make the movie a treat to watch. Saif , Naseer , Boman sparkle in this dark tale of wit. Direction of the debutante Homi Adjania is neat.

But the surprise package of movie enters just before the intermission . Navneet Bubbly (Manoj Pahwa) , the neighbourhood cop who is all out to rid world of the crime or crime of the world , all in same breath . He and his assistant Thambe tickle your " disallocated " funny bone right down to the pelvic region. Pahwa who has been hugely popular as Bhatia in TV serial Office Office is the pitch perfect with all of his nuanced , subtle and understated dialogues.

Go, watch and fall in love with Sethna family and with their secrets , that's my advice.

PS : At the end of the game both the King and the pawn go into the same box.( Loved this quote and its use in the story)

Blog list: Slog the blog

Sat, 13 May 2006 10:37:33 GMT

Slog the blog

harshalKatre
really want to get lost , lose ur way here
Rashmi Bansal
Get to know the real ideas
Rohan Shah
This cool guy has made a cool place to be. Calm and simple
Sameer Walzade
this handsome hunk writes handsomely

Book List: Books : A cut above all

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 09:18:07 GMT

Books : A cut above all

Carl Sagan: Cosmos
Understand the Science of existence
Dominique Lappierre,Larry Collins: Freedom at Midnight
Chilling , racy and amazing
William L. Simon, Jeffrey S. Young: iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business
The meteoric rise and fall and the rollercoaster of the one and only rock star of this texh age
Salman Rushdie: The Midnight's Children
Magic realism at its best
Thomas Friedman: The World is flat
Roger Lowenstein: When Genius Failed
The tough facts of that elusive world where millions are made and lost in a jiffy

Custom List: Jus came to my mind

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 13:55:34 GMT

Jus came to my mind

Understanding Your Finances
Plan ur own Finances
Google Code Jam
the ultimate coding competition
Swaminomics
for all those sunday TOI buffs
Learn to INVEST
Everything u wanted to know about investing
Calling the YOUTH'S
This magazine explores the youth world

Custom List: Entertainers

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 16:22:17 GMT

Entertainers

Swades,We the People
A gem
Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander
relive the school days
Ramdhari Singh Dinkar
read how the genius writes
P G Wodehouse
Tickle ur funny bone
The Wonder Years
See ur life on tele , its really awsome stuff
Malgudi Days
RK narayan writes with elan and the mood of the sleepy Malgudi is captured well in the serial , probably one of the best to be aired on Doordarshan