Needed Blood Urgently?

Bharat Matrimony Enterprise has taken an initiative and has made an online database of blood donors across all over the India. You can find a donor near your place on their site Bharat blood Bank. In emergency anybody can approach these donors. Also you can register yourself with the site and can help in their noble initiative.

Secured Future?

A child from the very beginning is told that if you work hard today, will enjoy later in life. When he is in Xth standard, it is told that this is the most important exam of the life, work hard and do good in the exam. He works very hard and passes with flying colours. Now he is in XIIth standard, he finds it even more challenging stage in life. If he secures good marks now, then he is assured a secured future. So he completely indulges in the studies for this period. He burns midnight lamps, gets good marks and very relieved enters in the graduation. Similar thing happens here. Now the fight is to get the best of the jobs. He works very hard and get it. He thinks now the life is secure and enjoyable. But the story of work place is not much different. If in the beginning he does work hard and is able to impress his boss, then career prospects seem even brighter. He makes every effort to prove himself in the first few years of his career. He does over time, comes to office on weekends and holidays, make every effort to do more and more. Years pass, he is at senior position. Now he finds himself in even dire competition. He has to prove himself among equally talented colleagues, who in turn are also in the same pressure of proving themselves.

So the life goes on and the day never comes when he enjoys the life to its fullest. In the race of life to find pleasures, he finds pleasures always a step ahead. He tries even harder to catch them, but they move further ahead. The life goes on. At the end of the day he finds himself unhappy. He finds he has achieved a lot, but never got time to enjoy it. Now he realizes what he should have done, but the time is gone and he bids farewell with regret in mind.

In fact the mindset of work now and enjoy tomorrow is developed in the children by society form the very beginning. This is true that in the cut throat competition you have to work very hard to achieve your goal. But in all this we forget that life is not a goal, life is a journey. It doesn't matter how many goals you achieved, but how was your journey. We forget that in order to make tomorrow enjoyable we are wasting our today which could be enjoyed as well. This today is also equally important part of life as is tomorrow. Don't ignore it, and enjot in today. This way try to make your journey more enjoyable and fulfilling.

Indian "Herd Mentality"

Indian population has crossed over one billion and is estimated to surpass China by 2030, a UN report says [see here]. Infrastructure is already over burdened and seeing the current growth rate of population, condition is sure to get worse . We can see long queues of people at different places be it bus stands or railway booking counter or ration stores or say any public place. People here have become so habitual of waiting in queues that if they see a window with out any queue, they consider that window is not functional :-)

A similar happening I saw in our mess. Though it has not as much crowd as the places I mentioned above, but never the less people are habitual of these conditions. So what I noticed today afternoon at lunch time was that out of two counters for the self serving here one was having a queue of more than ten persons while other was empty. I could not understand the reason. But later I realized that probably the reason is people thought that other one is empty so its non functional. The reason sounds humourous but still seems very true. Have this thought ever come to your mind when you went to railway reservation counter and found it empty?

Towards Gift Economy

Gift Economy is term used for the economic system where people exchange goods and services like gifts. There is no so called agreement for the deals. Instead people work for mutual benefit.The system is reciprocal in nature, if you are doing good to some one and this is in the system then from some route you are destined to get paid back. It is not quite like conventional monetary economy where people buy goods and services for money. There money determines the fitness of individual, here nothing like fitness exists. In gift economy people do what they are best at, and co operate with others for the mutual good. Its not a one-one relationship, but an all-all relationship, where all work for good of all.

Internet is an excellent example of the gift economy. A tremendously big infrastructure is developed and maintained seemingly without any monetary intentions but for public good. There are many services being provided by different players like mailing, sharing , chatting etc free of cost. These services in turn are helping people to do things in better ways. People are working in open source domain. They are helping each other. The old term synergy comes very handy here. Its the synergy of people working in open source that pace of development in this domain has sky rocketed. With in a decade we can see it. Linux now seen as a potential threat to Windows is the best example.

Now look at the example of Google. Google has revolutionized the Internet. Google is ubiquitous in online world. They provide a whole lot of services for no cost to general people. They come up with a new product every month or two and distribute it free. The case of Sun microsystems is not much different. Take the instance of J2EE. It has provided the standard for providing enterprise services. Its also available for free. They have also made Solaris open source. Now every player in market is thinking in these terms. Standards are developed and are adhered to.

In day to day life we also see instances of gift economy. The relation between parents and children is one of these. Parents bring up their children and provide them education. These children later serve parents and others in society. This way the cycle goes on. Charitable trusts are also a good instance of it. People contribute there and people take their benefits.

Crux of the topic is instead of competition based systems where each player in the market is competing with others, and hence most of the time duplication of efforts happen, a more comprehensive co operative policy will do good, as seen in above examples. Many believe that in gift economy with out competition there will be no incentive for people to work hard. And slowly the performance will degrade. This may be true but for gift economy we require an educated and sensible society, which understands its responsibilities like in case of IT industry. And then we can see the magic of term "gift economy".

Tired of Bureaucratic hassles

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In India its common place for an ordinary citizen to get in the endless loop of bureaucratic procedures. Be it getting your passport, registering for electricity connection, your case in police station or say any public office. You are asked for bribe or are put on wait interminably.
If you have any such grievances related to any department of government, you can lodge your complain in the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances at http://darpg.nic.in/
The grievances received by the Department are forwarded to the concerned Ministries/Departments/State Governments/UTs, who are dealing with the substantive function linked with the grievance for redress under intimation to the complainant. The Department ‘takes up’ about 1000 grievances every year depending upon the seriousness of the grievance and follows them regularly till their final disposal. This enables the Department to evaluate the effectiveness of the grievance redress machinery of the concerned government agency. On the basis of the grievances received, Department identifies the problem areas in Government which are complaint-prone. These problem areas are then subjected to studies and remedial measures are suggested to the Department/Organisation concerned.

So from the next time you have any problem in government (mis)procedures, do complain. This can be your sheer contribution towards cleaning up the system.

What If !

Last semester I had a course in parallel algorithms. As usual the study started when it was inevitably. Yes, you guessed correctly, the night before exam. The exam was in the morning at 8:00. After dinner, when I started I got to know that course was not as small as I thought it to be. But I was determined. The idea was for a comlete night out. I made every effort to complete the course. But some topics were too good to understand in a single day :(. The time flied with out a hint, and the dark began to faint in sunlight as my hope to complete the course. I don't know after how many months I saw the dawn. After the best possible effort I managed to finish almost except for the two most abstruse sections (which were impossible that night). Now it was time to go on front, I got ready with my full arsenal (in my case that is only my pen with refill at the verge of getting empty ;) ).

Tired with the night out I picked up my bicycle and headed towards the examination hall, praying to God that I do not see those two sections in exam. I took seat in the last row of the examination hall. It was almost impossible for me to even sit as sleep was showing its vitality in fullest. I could feel there are two hemispheres in brain, which were colliding when I was moving my head. Then paper was distributed. My worst nightmare came true. There were four questions of 25 marks each. The first one was easy, and I guessed every one could do it. The second, oh my God! I never knew this was also in course :O . Then came the relief as the third question was one I prepared well. But the last and final was a blow as it was from one of the sections I left untouched. Now I counted I could attempt only 50 percent of the paper. As the grading is relative, I was sure to get worst as a person who knows only 50 percent is bound to get lower than that. I was sweating in theair conditioned room and wasted more than fifteen minutes just thinking about the grade I am going to get and the other students, who were filling the answer sheets like will never get chance to write in the life. I was cursing the teacher that in the whole course he didn't get any other question from so many sections I studied the whole night. The whole effort of the night was looking wasted.

As the time was moving, the pressure began to mount. Then a sudden thought came to my mind. What if the third question was from the second section I left. Oh my God! The thought itself scared me. That means I could attempt only 25 percent. And God knows how much I would get. Then I sighed with great relief. God is great, I said. I was totally calm now, in full control of my own. Then I took a deep breath and started writing. Attempted the two questions and left examination hall one hour earlier. I was content yet very tired. I immediately went to bed and had a good days sleep.

Next week the result came. I got slightly less than 50. I was even happier when I got to know that average is below me :) .

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Don't walk As if you rule the world...

But walk as if you don't care who rules the world...

That's called...

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Attitude in life!

Spiritual Quotient

Often people complain that they don't find happiness in their life, that life is always harsh to them, success is always a step ahead of them. The reality is that people in search of bigger happiness, ignore numerous small moments when they could enjoy. When you did last stop and noticed a beautiful red rose in your backyard, when you last felt calm after seeing a baby smiling, ever you noticed the beautiful clear sky, ever you appreciated the sound of rain drops, chirping of birds, smell of wet mud. The God has created such a beautiful world for us. We never find time to appreciate it.

Person should celebrate each and every occasion he can find to celebrate instead of waiting for birth days and promotion days. Instead of looking for other persons to cheer you, you try to become cause of others' joy. Make sure that any one who comes in your contact should feel happy and full of vitality, and be in company of such persons. This way ou will never feel dearth of happiness in life.

A trip to Khajuraho

Few months back, right after our mid sem exams we planned a days trip to Khajuraho. Tp kahjuraho its 5 hours journey here from Kanpur. We hired two cabs and were about 15 people. We atarted our journey at about 5:30 in the morning. It was still dark and foggy. The journey wa snot at all comfortable as the condition of road is terrible.
Khajuraho is a small town in MP famous for its temples. These temples are unique as they have sculptures of Kamasutra which is rare to find any where inthe world. Every year there are thousands of foreingn and Indian tourists coming to see the aesthetic beauty of Kahajuraho. On reaching the place every one was exausted by the long journey. The town itself is in very poor of the conditions, from no standards it can be called an international tourist destination. Every one was regretting the decision to go there.
Last hope was from the temple and it did not disappoint. The monument is more beautiful than we ever thought. The ambience there was so calm and soothing. The lush green lawns and a clear azure sky with a cool breeze took off all the tiredness. But the best part of temples are the sculptures carved on their walls. The sculptures are brilliant and demostrates Indian competence in art and engineering at that time. Eighty four positions of Kamasutra are sculpted on the walls of temple. Each and every corner is full of sculptures dieities, kings, animals. The main temple is called Laxman temple and there are numberof other equaly beautiful ones.
The monument is recently listed in the international heritage monument and is really worthy of it. A better maintenance and a complete makeover of the town is required to give the tourists a good experience.
more information about khajuraho can be found at http://www.liveindia.com/khajuraho/

This is my first post. After hearing so much about blogging and the platform these blog provides the people to share thoughts, I decided to plunge into the world of blogs. My basic aim is to organize and share my thoughts, at the same time to improve my written communication skills. This time I don't know what and how one should write in blogs. But I hope to be regular and I'll try to write one article daily in the blogspot. The topics I am interested are politics, science and technology, sprituality, movies and entertainment and in sports cricket and lawn tennis. So in future u can find articles related to these areas in my space.