Happy Friendship Day !!!

It was a boring afternoon on a gloomy rainy day in Mumbai. A little boy walked up by the sidewalk all alone and looked way too grumpy for his age. It so happened that his father had been transferred from a sleepy town in Kerala to the looming by-lanes & towering skyline of Mumbai. It was a new setting , not quite idyllic though, move over the kayaks & lagoons of Kerala :with new faces & new things to do. As he looked up at every skyscraper all he wanted to see was a glimpse of his best friends. Though his father had been transferred to Mumbai, it was the sum total of all those lovely experiences & friends that seemed to cast him & his cherished memories into a lullaby that his heart would meander as he waited by the signal to turn green, waiting to cross the street. Well there was one thing that united Mumbai & Kerala & that was water. For the same reason he was headed towards the Juhu Beach to re-live those memories of throwing water pebbles into the backwaters of Kerala with his group of friends.
An old man wearing a neat summer hat & an old English overcoat strutted along from the opposite end .With a royal demeanor he smoked his Bolivian cigar & dragged a few puffs into the polluted Mumbai air. There was a sense of haplessness, a feeling of missing something as his brow frowned as a car next to him honked at the other cars. He walked a heavy man, dragging his old shoulders which seemed to weigh him down.
Both the old man & this little boy walked on past the signal on to the breezy contours of Juhu and reached the famous Juhu Beach. The old man lived in a sea facing villa and dragged himself into his house and retired on a crouch, to read an old sports magazine as the evening sun was to set by the million hearts of Mumbai.
The little boy started looking for pebbles , reminiscent of a daily routine which he and his friends used to indulge in by sending sweet messages to the sea in the form of ripples, created by throwing his pebbles each one of it unique ;beating to the mystic rhythm of the sea. Alas the Juhu beach had a lot of thrown corn sticks, lots of coconut shells & more so many thrown away goods & the returns of a Mumbai man’s ablutions but no pebbles.
His endearing search landed him onto the veranda where the old man was relaxing puffing his cigar as he looked lonely. The little boy saw many pebbles on the loft encroaching the veranda. With anxious eyes his looked on at the old man, whether he could pick up those pebbles and throw them into the water.
The old man’s stern eye-brows and wrinkled brow looked looming, but for the old man there was some innocence in the boy that seemed to capture his attention. This boy reminded him of his son’s family and his beloved grandson whom he had left back in London and returned to his magical home in Mumbai, albeit alone but with satisfaction that his last would be where he hath stepped first.
There seemed to be some magic in the air, a connection as the sun gave way to the gloomy evening that the old man asked the little boy to come in. Each memory of his friends egging him on that much more to request the old man to pick up the pebbles. With a feeble voice this young boy asked the old man for water and as the old man went in to fetch a pale of water, this little boy mustered a lot of courage and picked up a few pebbles and put it into his pocket. He dint have the courage to ask the old man for pebbles and was scared by the thought of angering the old man . The weight of the pebbles had almost pulled the shorts of the little boy half down and he was finding it tough to hold onto his stock.
Out came the old man with a huge bucket & a glass of water. The litle boy’s shorts were almost on his knees. His cheeks turned red and he was scared of being caught.As he was about to run away ,the old man asked him to hold on .He requested the boy if he could do him a favour ,he asked him to fill in all the pebbles on to the bucket .The boy who was scared to death by now was left gasping for breath. He was wondering what the heck was happening.
The little boy veered to the old man and said sorry as he emptied the pebbles into bucket from his pocket. The old man said nothing & the little boy was almost shivering.He helped the old man to fill in all the pebbles into the bucket. The sun had fully set and with heartfelt memories he was to go back home ,when the old man asked him to help him on to the sea shore.
The little boy almost as if punished trotted and trudged as they reached the sea shore. The old man asked the little boy to pick the pebbles one by one and throw it into the ocean. On listening to this the little boy did a somersault in joy and jumped to no glory.
To this the old man exclaimed “ Son you remind me of my grandson, and every evening he and me used to throw a bunch of pebbles into the river thames in downtown London.”
Happy Friendship Day !!!! :)

5 June- World Environment Day (A Day to mark our ignorance to our Mother Earth)

Sponsors of the Sun,tyrannies of our trees,

Exhibits of carbon dioxide,depleters of the oxone layer,

Rigs of leaking oil,Smokers of their Lungs,

Poachers of our friends,Cullers of no-ones enemies,

Emitters of greenhouse gases,users of plastic bags,

Fetishes of insecticides & pesticides,

Hunters of fish,scullers of silk,

Tanners of leather & naive users of electricity.

For lovers of refridgerators & the coolers of airconditioning,

I am one of you in some way or the other,

But believe you me,there aint going to be no smoke,

For there aint going to be no fire, if we continue to smoke all the coal we have..

For Shimla is steaming at 34.5 degrees,

Delhi had the warmest night at 35.6 degrees just a couple of nights back,

1411 is just not about Aircell's campaign to increase its Markerting TRP's.

For I went to see ,but saw no tigers at Sariska.

Laila was always a mesmerizing girl and phet sounded like a sweet,

But it aint not sweet anymore,for this change is changing,

The very existence of our world,

For why dont we understand, The real evils of Global Warming,Its slow death my friends,

Yes it aint no swine flu,but that too will have a vaccine some day,this won't,

Nor is it the size of a meteor to get Superman into action,

It aint no cold blizzard to scare Steven Spielbergs Dinossaurs of Jurassic Park,

Banishing all into extinction,Nor is it parapazzi , nor is it so controversial that you and me sit over bytes captured by frenzied media,

For it was always about the survival of the fittest , that Darwin envisaged a world that became so powerful,as today,that we choose to see no further,

All that Nostradamous says may not come true, and no I am no soothsayer to predict anything, Astrology isnt one of my gifts either,but I do have a little common sense,

I know the weather out there is freaky,I know it will only get worse,

In the days to come,and times we live, You and me just choose to ignore the travails of slow death, For we may not feel it every day,

but Global Warming is a succer for sure,

As it creates this invisble vacuum, it is taking aways so much more,

A breath of fresh air,no not from perfum,the first non acid rain drop,

We may not get hurt physically,but slow but slowly we are all onto the path to slow death

For the sooth of the carbon soothsayers has even tarnished the immortal monument of love,

But we are but mortal beings with a life to nurture,

Today I say,I wake up to the freak weather around,Don't feel happy about rain in summer,

For rain is only mean't for the monsoons,Don't just heave a sigh of relief,

Dinosaurs may have done that, so powerful were they of that to ignore the dangers of blizzards, One day You may just have a mutant species making a movie, Called "The Earth Park" by some Spiegel Stevenberg of their species,

And yes you and me will just be pawns of their cinema,figments of their imagination,

For no one might know what happened,history tends to repeat itself,

Just that you don't want to be part of this.

Wake Up Earth,Our Time has come.

ConverGenX-How technology and lifestyles are converging in this GenX

World's Number 1 search engine Google along with Sony, Logitech & Intel unveiled its much discussed Television platform- Google TV
Through a single digital platform the viewer will have access to million television channels as well as acess to the world wide webthrough an Internet enabled TV Set to be manufactured by Sony.

Guess what this would do, while watching India Vs Pakistan,your friend from UK will ping you swearing at the loose shot played by Sehwag the ball before on your TV IM.While an advertisement commercial plays out ,you can just minimize that window and check your email sent to you by your boss
Or for all you know now you don't have to switch on your computer to webchat with your girlfriend.You could do it right while watching Federer take on Nadal in the french open final by simply attaching the logitech webcam over your TV.
Interesting !!! isnt it , but as far as I am concerned this is just the start of more.I envisage a day when such convergence will simply create a seamless yet invisible extension of your virtual self,of which you are an indispensible part already.

About a decade and a half back,I used to be mighty excited to see my dad get a small beep on the first of its kind Motorola Pager which was simply thrown out of gear by the first PCO Sized mobile phone which came with the facility to send a text message.For who thought that one day I would have access to my email on my mobile phone when a certain Research in Motion launched Push Email onits blackberry,the sole differentiator that made it the most widely accepted enterprise mobile phone.

Well if that was not enough just about 5 years ago,I never thought I would be able to watch live TV on my mobile phone,or read the economic times live on my mobile phone browser.If you thought owning an Apple Ipod to listen to your favourite track was being ubercool,there was more to come.For what came next was more than just a phone with an I and an ear for music,Apple's iphone which has revolutionalized the way we read the latest news ,or interact with our friends.What it also did is to create a ubiquitous integrated medium for listening to music,clicking photographs & interacting with friends right across theworld.With the skype phone I was able to make calls through my computer connected to the internet,sometimes for free ,sometimes for a paltry dollar a month.

While platforms,mediums & technologies are converging ,there was a inherent yet integrated need for the tech-savvy social human animal to collaborate, to reach out,to express himself -in short sociate(I am just coining a new term that means to socialize on the web)through facebook/orkut,blogs,twitter respectively.The very fact that even celebrities like SRK ,Sportstars like Sachin & Politicos like Shashi Tharoor realize that tweeting ontwitter gives his end consumer the chance of actually being directly connected to his idol on a platform that makes its money because more and more of the end consumers log-on.These idol's on the other hand get a chance of doing so much more with so less-making a cool political statement or simply tweeting about his like or dislike which can pulvarize public sentiment(talk about SRK pledging support to Pakistan for IPL that definitely had some irate shiv sainiks making it an issue being discussed daily on public platforms)
Has this social need proliferated these technological mediums or did these technological mediums proliferate these social needs is another hot topic to debate i.e I have an iphone so I can review themovie from my seat in the cinema hall or whether I buy an iphone because I want to review and tweet the movie review right from seat in the cinema hall.Together as these mediums proliferate each other, they both need each other so much so.
But what these needs and the technology to bolster these needs are doing is creating newer lines of businesses and newer channels of how businesses function.Earlier a company just used to have an advertisement about a car in a newspaper.Today the co has to have a page on facebook and it has to further build a base of fans to get the product more fans,,a publicist unveiling updates about the product tweeted hourly in less that 180 words.Its not surprising that if the digital advertising spend on marketing campaigns has already outdonetraditional advertising spends,specially more so for niche products with a specific target audience.

Going ahead I see a day -a new era of convergence blurring boundaries which have not even been imagined-lets look at a day when each one of us will have a unique identification across all mediums & technology.This day there would be no need for different credit cards,different email ids,different SIM Cards.Only one card for one identity.May be I could transfer money from my facebook account to my friends account.May be check email at the near-by ATM.Vodafone may tie up Skype to offer voice calls and transfer money from my ICICI Bank account instantaneously.For all you know ,my car may have the artificial intelligence to drive me to one of my favourite restaurants depending on which of those has a road with lesser traffic.Toll booths can act as payment points for my electricity bills.With the sheer number of Mc Donald /Pizza hut/Dominos outlets all together and a delivery infrastructure that guarantees delivery in 30 minutes I could call them up(text/email) to have my life saving medicines being delivered within 30 minutes.For the milkman can start delivering newspapers along with Milk-after all they both need is a hub early in the morning from where these noble men diverge to deliver our daily cup of tea and morning news in the form of spokes of the hubs.
Well I wonder why the dabawallahs of Mumbai have'nt started delivering couriers across the whole of India the sole reason being them frequenting so many offices traversing across one of most populous & crowded areas in the world.

But what this convergence might also do is invade that much more into your private lives.By quizzing "which car suits you best" on facebook and based on the sum total of the savings & current account in your bank you may be shown the advertisement of the same car on the ATM Screen when you go to withdraw money.Whats more at your favourite restaurant along with the bill you will get the new marketing booklet of that car.If thats not enough you may keep getting customer callsfrom the marketing re-presentative inviting you to a free test drive.
Don't be surprised if your favourite restaurant brings to you a customized A la Carte which only has extensions of those dishes/cusines which you prefer.No wonder you keep posting pictures and updates about every meal you had on facebook and twitter.

Well shopping malls may have a digital analyzer which scans a prospective client entering his shop.I really wonder why we don't have them yet.What these could do is scan you top to bottom and make inferences about your choice,your propensity to spend money and whether you will actually purchase anything.The brand of the shoes you wear,the brand of the watch you wear and the perfume you may carry may just indicate the shirt you are aboutto buy.
Catch you later, till convergence did us apart......

A salute and ode to Lalit Modi & DLF IPL 3- The Greatest Reality TV Show ever

"Swinging Fortunes,Entertainment,Politics,Adrenaline,Corruption,Glamour,Opportunity,Money "- I will run short of words and adjectives to describe the ingredients that sum up this years edition of DLF IPL 3. Yes Lalit Modi is corrupt but I am his big fan for other reasons.I am not saying be corrupt but I am saying not many could have achieved even 5 percent of what he has been able to do.Atleast here you have someone who can realize a part of his dreams.Corruption is just another modern day emotion as any. DLF IPL 3 has made it as the 6 th most expensive sports tournament in the world(fast climbing) and it is not played on the beaches of the French Rivieira or the chicanes of Monaco. Post India's independence it is for the first time that a sports moghul or the media czar in the form of Lalit Modi used the infamous "Divide & Rule" theory to create a Mumbai Indians , a Delhi Daredevils and a Chennai Super Kings and did he not make a match out of this.Move over marketing gurus like Prahlad Kakkar for Modi has changed the dynamcis of marketing.No wonder he is rated 19 by Businessweek on a list of powerful sports personalities. Packaging the regional essence of India with world class players who had reached the twilight threshold of their careers and looking for good pot of money across a window of 45 days- for what more could a retiring Mathew Hayden who spends the rest of the year snorkelling and cooking ask for. 11 is the number that actually dashes the hope of a half billion Indians right from the boulevards of Mumbai to the gallis of chunnabhatti, for it is only after trying so hard to make it to the national team that many of India's dreamy eyed are getting a chance to make some fame and get some adulation out of participation in IPL. For when a vastly illiterate village without electricity contributes to buy a television to watch Kamran Khan pull it off for the Royals we have Shane Watson who was born again post the first edition and has now has been awarded the best player award for team Australia. Taking a break from all the wild activities we have a certain x rated Shane Warne who reminds all again and again that he was "The best Australian Captain that never was". Robin Utthapa has not made it to the T20 World cup national side but has made a comeback of sorts and will sooner than later make it to the national side which was not possible without the DLF IPL 3 and the platform it gives young Indians to find their feet and knock of seniors who held the Indian colors firm for years and years to come. Move over Philip Kotler, you may have to include a chapter on in match marketing with a strategic time out designed to cash the advertising cows.Well rather than having a bald Virender Sehwag fighting it out with Gautam Gambhir over Karboon Mobile in a match of MI V CSK why not have an advertisement with a player who is playing live in the match.New phenomenon -what is the in match eyeball TRP for the product.What about companies who are working over time to make a pink ball visible on a dusky cricket pitch bound together by rich alluvial soil or for that matter meat is on the bottom of the "mongoose" bat. Bollywood actresses have often dreamed of making it to the Bond Movies but did you ever think that extra's from the same Bond Movies would be dancing aways to Bollywood music with Indian jhatka's aimed at eyeful and lustful Indian men in the form of cheerleaders wearing clothese customized to both western and Indian sensibilities. Whats more the deepika's and Katrina's have just got a new window of making money by being a poster pin girl for a IPL team.Its just not about cutting ribbons to a new showroon and bathing in the same photogenic foam for a new soap of a different color. Well the news channels may like to intice you by saying they are the first to break the news about tharoor-modi controversy .For them its not about Modi being corrupt or Tharoor being corrupt ,they just need more of these potboiler controversies to continue for days and weeks aided by increasing TRP's and a slow legal system of India. You now have prime time media presenters on every channel learning about cricket and ex-cricketers who have played 1 test match for India discussing strategies pre and post every IPL Match. The Government has finally woken up to corruption in IPL or am I twitching my ears.I think they have just woken up to a long number of zeros at the end of all the black money that classifies this corruption as the most corrupt for corruption is ubiquitous in India.What about dowry ridden Air India re-directing flights to charter IPL players. The opposition party just joined the party of long list of IPL Benefactors by making a statement about the corruption in IPL.Well its like simply joining the IPL Bandwagon for some sort of own benefit in one way or the other. Talking about benefits with Bollywood being forced to shut its shop of showcasing movies during the IPL what better to actually take a sabbatical during that time and actually get involved with this format.Heard SRK and Karan just hosted the first of its kind IPL Sahara Awards and saw pictures of Saif-Kareena enquiring about buying an IPL Team. As for the pubs and theatres mid night buffet arranged for a set of IPL Supporters and matches being telecast live in 3-D.Phew move over to a new "Avatar" of entertainment in cinema. Well MTV has taken a cue and launched IPL Parties for wannabe page 3 adolescents to hob-nob with neuve famed young Indian cricketers.What better way to tap the X Factor and tickle the sponsors a wee-bit more to plurge that much more money. Designers could not have asked for more after clothing "so less" for India's top models,they have a team of 11 players , a group of the boys next door, to dress and create a name for themselves. I do not know whether Twitter with below the line advertising pays Shashi Tharoor or no but it should sure thank Shashi Tharoor for being so media -saavvy and actually getting a huge number of Indians to join the twitter bandwagon. Well Ekta Kapoor may try telling a tell-tale a hundred ways but when Saurav Ganguly walks out to bat for Kolkatta Knight Riders the whole of Bengal just doesnt care for the soap opera on Star TV for the eden garden is reminiscent of the Collosseum where a certain Mr Russel crowe being crowned the gladiator for rising like a phoenix for Ganguly is no less of a bengali gladiator. Finally like any twisted tale,where there is a lady in the frame-thanks to Sunanda Pushkar that eventually the egos of business friends Modi and Tharoor clashed that the TRP's of DLF IPL has reached such heights that whether its on the field ,off the field its IPL everywhere. Lalit Modi may have to step down and BCCI may sideline him .But it was last year that only Lalit Modi who could shift the IPL to South Africa in record time and yet make it such a huge success. The BCCI were happy to make butter on Modi's shoulder then.The cash cow of the DLF IPL that Modi has been able to envisage and realize ,on which everyone from the sponsors to the cheerleaders to the superstars are milking money will be unique to him and for that I salute him. As Mumbai Indians vs Chennai Super Kings vie for supremacy in this clash of the titans in D Y Patil at Mumbai in a reality TV script which will unfold today evening with all the ingredients of DLF IPL Masala,I ask Kaun Banega Crorepati-may be Lalit Modi ko Lock kar diya jaye