Musings...

I was watching a spider running away in the bathroom since water was coming near it; I then wondered, how does one organism learn from another? Is it like the story (or experiment) of 100 monkeys where 100 monkey learns and the same automatically spreads to others? Like are today's generation smart/have wide exposure due to reason of critical mass? or is it something else altogether? Are city animals smarter than jungle animals? or is just that organisms develop learning based on a combination of environment, heredity and own skills? Or is it nothing other than an intelligent power be it God or consciousness or Power (to avoid controversies) permeates everything which learns from circumstance or events and becomes the intelligence it is? Or does the Power becomes the way it is to match the requirement of the environment? Would Gandhi have become a leader he was had he never returned to India? Would Einstein have formulated the theory of relativity if he was encouraged in the class?...

Just imagine if we never had the concept of age? and lets further imagine that we didn't break our lives into ages? Of course the flip side is we won't able to celebrate birthdays but we can always get around it by celebrating anytime any day? Anyhow this thought came up when one of my nieces and I were chatting and she had gone to a party and someone raised this issue feeling old. But do think over... do we actually feel old? Doesn't the thought occur only when someone says it? Don't many of us have the feeling of always wanting to be young? There are only two issues to the thought of age - firstly that physically we are not able to do certain things and secondly when society looks askance if an old person gets married to a young person saying "think of your age before marrying, he/she is young enough to be your daughter/son" this again comes out of the multiple barriers/categorisation that we keep putting - which paradoxically comes out of our need to s...

"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. " so says Marcel Proust a French writer. Today i was watching an interesting episode from a serial "one life to love" - NDTV - They come with very good themes on living our lives fully and one of the persons who really lived such a life so it is said is Leonardo da Vinci who wrote or practiced so many aspects of the world be it art or even medicine. Our lives have become so fast that we have no attention to the process and set our sights only on goal. This is so be it in office where only goal matters; when we eat, we are busy watching TV or rushing to finish, when we travel to our workplace or home, the attention is to reach not the process; Have we lost the ability to enjoy beauty of the present? Imagine eating a luscious mango - can we enjoy its fragrance, its flavour, its color, its taste, its soft feeling and the sound of our teeth biting into its soft flesh? In short can we pay...

Bono lead singer of U2 as quoted in Rolling Stone "I used to think that one day I'll be able to resolve the different drives I have in different directions, the tensions between the different people I am. Now I realise that is who I am. I do feel that I'm getting closer to the song in my head. I wasn't looking for grace. But luckily grace was looking for me." When I read this, I immediately felt in kinship with him; all my life i feel like doing multiple and different things, I have worked on multiple functions, studied in many schools; I have even dabled in many learnings like learning to play guitar and key board, to dance, to act, learn video editing. Not only that, I also want to be in multiple sports, do multiple functions, listen to many kind of music, read all sorts of books, There are so many things I want to do in this world; perhaps explore live in many facets. Unlike Bono, I still don't know what or where i am getting closer to but like him I am st...

Today was a nice engaging day; Skyz and lokhandwala resident association had planned a 5 and 3 km competition the money which went towards community development. There were so many participants - guessed about 400 plus. It was sponsored by some corporates including Centurion Bank of Punjab. The event was starred with some celebs including Uday and Sujata Pawar (badminton couple), Karan (tennis) and bollywood/tellywood of course - can you have an event without bollywood being present? Rakhi sawant and Abhishek (not Bachan) and Negi of the chakde fame. The flag was waved off at about 8.02 and the event started. We ran from lokhandwala near joggers park, went down main lokhandwala road , turned towards the circle, went towards four bangalows and retuned via indian oil nagar. It was inspiring to see so many people run including senior citizens; i was particularly inspired to see people of 40 plus running; i managed to cross the second one but the first one kept his distance and was much be...

The last two days were quite nice in terms of my marathon practice. The first was on this Saturday (6th Oct, 07); I woke up (had to literally push myself as i am primarily a night person) and left home(Lokhandwala Mhada, Andheri Bombay) at 5.40 AM; and glory of glories, I reached CCI (near Marine Lines, Bombay) at 6.15 AM (just 35 minutes). It was a lovely drive even with some traffic around; I stopped at Bandra as there was a crowd of muslim devotees engaged in their morning prayer who were disturbed my some mentally challenged woman ( i think); I passed via Shivaji park and it was wonderful to see lots of people on the road engaged busily in walking or running. I drove further to marine drive where it was equally lovely to see the sea, the sun about to rise and it was almose daylight and the groups of many persons running or walking energetically on the road adjacent to the sea. I waited for Dr Rajat from Bangalore with who I was to run this Saturday; He had already started with his...

When one thinks of invention, our mind immediately goes to something complex like a scientist sitting in a lab researching on a new medicine or an IT professional planning on a new product that business requires. But what about the millions of small inventions that are being created daily on a minute to minute basis by lacs and crores of people across the world. What about the common idli ( a south indian fast food speciality) that can be created in minutes or the concept of marriage, the concept of sister and brothers that seem so natural that we take it for granted! Or using washing machine to make lassi, the many inventions such as languages, creating of NGO (though why they are called non governmental organisations instead of organisations for social causes)? Is urdu nothing but some language shown in a mirror and used to write as a secret code? Was Rakhi ( the indian practise of a sister tying rakhi on a brother's wrist) created to protect the sister by the brother or a ploy b...

Is there any difference between invention and discovery? Invention is suppose to be something new that one has created and discovery is uncovering something that exists right? In what way is invention of electric bulb different from Einstein formulating theory of relativity or someone uncovering (not discovering) an obscure temple in a remote cornet of the world or perhaps under the sea? Is discovery supposed to be of things that are existing, known to people or entities that are close to where they live and not published? Isnt it arrogance to say that Columbus discovered America when there were native "Red Indians" (again arrongance to call them Red Indians) living there for many years? And inventions? How did Einstein formulate the theory of relativity or Newton to formulate gravity? Didnt they suddenly get a flash (which meant that some existing ideas flashed into their mind) and then they formulated it? And Edison, didnt he get an idea of bulb (externally if I may say so)...

Running & keeping fit apart from eating fresh food are some of the few pursuits that I have consistently pursued for the last ten years. Running probably needs a lot more physical and mental stamina since one battles with oneself and there is no competitor to beat. It is not easy to get someone to run with you unless you are in a locality where there are lots of runners. Things are changing in India, at least it is more published and I noticed that there are quite a few runners at Shivaji Park ( Dadar , Bombay) and Marine Drive. Bangalore is very active and i receive lots of information on weekly runs. I started quite small about 5 years back (running that is )when I ran my first long distance (about 4 kms ); that gave me the courage (?) to run 7 kms the next year in the annual Stanchart marathon event. Not looking back, I attempted the next jump to 21 kms and have been running consistently for the last three years. Running marathon needs lots of patience, mental toughness an...

Climb training for corporate challenge CHANDREYEE CHATTERJEE Malli Mastan Babu atop Mount Kilimanjaro After scaling the seven highest peaks in seven continents in record time, IIT and IIM alumnus Malli Mastan Babu has taken the first step towards using treks and expeditions to offer leadership training to corporate executives. The 33-year-old recently led an expedition to Uhuru (Mount Kilimanjaro), the highest peak in ...

Hearts beat for India, five head honchos unfurl Tricolour on Mt Kilimanjaro Pune-based management trainer conceived the exercise that combined patriotism with management lessons Sunanda Mehta Pune, August 21: If Kavita Gadgil, founder of Abhijeet Air Safety Foundation, unfurled a replica of the first tricolour hoisted by freedom fighter Madame Bhikaiji Cama in Stuttgart University, Germany this Independence Day to commemorate 60 years of Independence, five head honchos from Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore and Nellore climbed up the snow-covered Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to do the same on August 15. The feat was no ordinary achievement. For, barring one, none of the climbers were professional mountaineers for whom the only peaks till now were the kinds that displayed their company’s performance chart. Yet, in Tanzania they battled icy winds and inhospitable terrain as a part of Reach for the Sky expedition that aimed at reaching Kilimanjaro, rated...

This is a true story of a team of five that successfully attained summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro on the historic day of 15 th August, a special date for India; and that too against odds that would have not been easy for professional mountaineers. Look at the odds against this small group of not so young mountaineers in their late 40s except for the team leader, the able and professional mountaineer Malli Mastan Babu who has the distinction of being the fasters 7 seven summiter in the world http://www.1stindian7summits.com/default.html. The team had no prior mountaineering experience It chose the second toughest of the three main routes to reach the summit The average fitness of the team was very low To compound that the team for the first time joined on the 8 th August to begin the trek It further decided to stopover by sleeping in a crator that is not normally done by most people (in fact many people descending after the summit mentioned that the spot was very cold ...

Greek Complexity: The fusion of customer data, e-commerce and offline shopping : "Apr 01, 2005"

I was chatting with my friend the other day and she was feeling miserable as she didnt know what do with her life...she wanted to quit her work and then again got scared about what she will do whole day..so i asked her.. why do u want to quit? she said that she was bored... and as usual i asked the next question.. why are you bored and the predictable answer.. she doesnt enjoy her work.. and that started me thinking on our predictable way of thinking. If A then B where the event A happens leading to event B e.g. i dont enjoy my work hence i am bored or i eat at the roadside stall and got sick or i do hard work hence i am successful or the clouds are heavy hence rain falls.. in all these examples, we start from an event leading to another event i.e. we start from the past and extrapolate to present or future.. Suppose we think in a different way... Rain has to fall hence cloud becomes heavy.. i hv to be successful hence i work hard or my friend has to shift to another job hence she...

I had gone to my sister's birthday party and I was chatting with her and nephew when the topic of investment came up; like all people these days, my nephew also wants to go the easy and quick way to become rich.. so invest in stock market! thats when i told him about the Abhimanyu principle.. Whats equally perhaps more important in stock market is to know when to exit and more important, actually exit. My sister asked, whats abhimanyu principle and how is this connected to stock market? I referred to the story in mahabharata where abhimanyu the famous son of Arjuna could enter the army formation but didnt know how to escape from that and got killed... and it struck me thats true about a lot of things in everyone's life.. we are educated and taught how to enter something buy very rarely how to exit from that... this is very true in stock market.. reams are written about how to enter.. buy very few people are prepared psychologically and practically to exit from stock.. mutual...

The other day i was chatting with a friend of mine and she sounded quite upset about how her boyfriend was treating her.. and the topic veered to the aspect of the degree of control we have over life. so when i told her that we have no control over at all over life, she said.. so i should just sit and do nothing? if everything is controlled, if every script of my action or happening in my life is pre-written at my birth, why should i even do anything? that set me thinking and i wondered.. how do i resolve this? she was right in her thinking.. if everthing is pre-written, i have no role and i could just keep quite and do nothing.. if however, i have control over my life, i can and must do something that will change my life and hence it is not pre-written... I was quite puzzled about the whole thing till one day when i was driving home, a possible answer struck me... there was a group of vehicles going in front of me... very slowly.. so i could say everything is prewritten and move slo...

The other day, I was to travel by bus and saw a bus at the signal; when i asked the conductor if I could get in, he said sure and i got in. After a few minutes, another person got in without asking the conductor; the conductor was furious and shouted at him and told him to get off and go to a bus stop. This set me thinking.. why did the conductor let me in politely and shouted at another person...was it bcoz i respected him... or was i flowing with nature... Chinese use the flow method very effectively in home planning "feng shui"; it is also successfully used in martial arts Akido where one uses the opponent's power against him/her.. and i pondered.. how does this happen, can i make it happen or should i flow with it? Great examples of being with flow is that of great musicians or cricketer .. in fact anyone who excels in what he or she does..all of them mysteriously are in a profession where they are excellent.. probably bcoz they are in flow with nature.. how did it...

Most things in life are not like just two sides of a coin, black and white.. firstly when there are two sides to a situation or a coin, it is easy to understand.. but the reality is that there are multiple things to view anything in this world but we see them through our eyes and most troubles in life happen bcoz of this jaundiced view.. we see an event and think we know everything about it...like i was returning from work and saw the car in front of me driving very slowly.. i was very irritated and went on honking... its only when the car in front of me took a right that i realised that there was a small dog in front of the car very scard ..not knowing where to go... we are quick to pass judgements on others without having any clue as to why they behave the way they do..this was well illustrated by a doctor who happened to be a gyanecologist.. i was chatting with him when the topic of Cesarean birth came up.. and i opened my big mouth and said.. these doctors are always like this.. d...

I was wondering about war. Why do people fight? what are the benefits? interestingly war has led to lots of development in the world... be it in internet or landing on the moon, sports or martial arts or hacking and when i say war i include competition in that as competition itself in a way is minor form of war..after all i want to be better than someone else..war is a lot more stronger thats all.. and due to war or competition, the world as a whole has benefited... look how instictively we are competitive... i may driving on the road at a sedate speed.. moment there is someone driving faster, i will instinctively drive fast...not only that.. a person cycling will try and beat a car... and that set me thinking .. this kind of competition or sports or war probably happens intensifies within a specie specially when that specie thinks that it is better than any other specie.. like human beings.. a human being wont be as good or as efficient when fighting with lion .. coz the human will...

It was the first time i was flying; i dont remember to where and it set me thinking about Einstein's time-space concept.. interesting and so applicable to life. The aeroplane was quite high and we were over the clouds; it was almost as if i was on top of himalayas; the clouds looked like snow. what i could see among the spaces between clouds was even more interesting; earth looked picturesque, the whole city moved in a flash;whole city was smaller than my nail..the nearer i am space objects, bigger they appear and the more they seem to affect me. in fact when i am very close to an object, they looked jagged and when i am far away, very smooth; similar things happen to sound.. closer i am to sound, higher the decibel and farther away, softer it is.. and same thing with people.. the closer one is to people, the more one notices the negative things about them and farther one goes, the nice thing.. and equally interestingly the same thing applies to time.. closer one is to an event, ...