As long as there will be rain…

As long as there will be rain, there will be clear blue skies, moist brilliant earth, bringing freshness to life…

Time to shrugg off the old muck and dirt, a time rejoice in the freshness of life.

Being Opportunistic and Seeking Opportunities are two Different Things!

Opportunism is defined as a conscious policy and practice of taking selfish advantage of circumstances – with little regard for principles, or with what the consequences are for others. Opportunist actions are expedient actions guided primarily by self-interested motives. This should not be confused with seeking opportunities which involves searching for and taking up things based on your capacity and skill set knowing you can perform well.

Any living organism, by nature is designed to be opportunistic and this design fits in perfectly with the theory evolution and the survival of the fittest. It is absolutely safe to say that being Opportunistic is instinctive. But then, should you always follows your instincts and be an opportunistic? Well I am not sure of the answer but what I understand is that fortunately or unfortunately for us, we humans have a conscience strongly coupled to our instincts and there is a reason why we have been made in this fashion.

Adhering to principles can help you remain consistent but adherence to principles too tightly often causes you to fail and be blinded to the opportunities that exist. Trust me, it is Impossible to remain selfish and consistent at the same time. The boundary between legitimate self-interest and undesirable selfishness can be very difficult to define at times.

Life can be viewed as presenting an endless series of opportunities, but what defines you at the end of the day is the pattern of your responses to such opportunities.

Things will change…

Change is an inevitable part of our lives. It can be painful, exciting, dangerous, problematic, welcomed, non-welcomed, etc etc. I will run out of adjectives if I am asked to look back and define every life changing event in one single word. The thought of change itself has a considerable psychological impact on the mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse; to the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better; to the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exist to make things better.

However, the most astonishing aspect of change is how subtly it starts in sub-conscious part of the mind and changes your life before you have any realization of its effects. The only realization you have at times is a mere feeling of growing up and becoming your own self.

Life surprises you in more ways than you can simply imagine.

Look forward, not back

Its surprising how often we simply react to what someone else has said or done. Two people will often fall into a pattern of discourse that resembles a negotiation, but really has no such purpose whatsoever because neither party is seeking an agreement or trying to influnce the other in a positive manner. People disagree with each other over an issue, and the talk goes back and forth as though they were seeking an argument.

The truth however is that the argunent in such cases is being carried out merely as ritual or a past time. The focus in such arguments tends to be scoring point against the other or gathering evidence to confirm views about the other that have been long held and are not bound to change. Its a worthless and hopeless situation that many of us bring upon ourselves because we care more about our positions and ego that form part of our past rather than our interest that lies in future.

When you ask the question “Why?” the other side has behaved or is behaving in a particular fashion, you can choose to look back connect the dots and determine where things have come from as per your pre-detemined notion about the other. Or you can choose to look forward to understand where the other person would like to go and that might help you in better understanding the other side and have purposeful agreements.

(Excerpts taken from Roger Fisher & William Ury’s book ‘Getting to Yes’)

Don 2 Movie Review

(This one was typed out but never got published. So putting it up anyways)

Impressed! That was my first expression after watching Don 2. Going by the recent SRK flicks (read Ra.One) and the flicks in general churned out by Bollywood, this one stands apart and for a number of reasons. Like one of my friend said “Farhan Akhtar has created an angoor out of langoor (read SRK)”

The movie being a sequel to hugely popular Don which, being a remake of a classic movie Don by Amitabh Bachan, already had people expecting big from it. Thankfully the movie lived upto all the hype and expectations unlike the other srk flick.

The movie was not at all predictable and hence was engaging and kept you hooked on with a lot of twist and turns in the story line. The executions of screenplay was classy and reminded me of the Ocean 11 series of movies, though it had its share of a few glitches here and there, e.g. why would you hand over a fully loaded gun to the DON knowing he just attempted to rob the German Central bank. Nevertheless, the minor glitches can be omitted in light of the final finished product.

A dedicated para for SRK especially for this movie. I do not consider SRK a good actor, though he may be one of most popular ones out there. However, when you see SRK in DON2, you cannot help but be charmed by his villaingiri. His over acting has been strictly kept to bay, probably by the director Farhan Akhtar. His character is to exude class and finesse and srk has managed to do it, infact in a better way when compared to his earlier DON flick.

Conclusion: DON2 is a movie above the regular Bollywood standard. Being a sequel to an already popular movie it has lived up to the expectations. Hope to see many more good productions from F. Akhtar.

Having an Opinion matters

Yes, have learnt it the hard way. Having an opinion makes a big difference to the way you present and carry yourself among your peers. Often, I have noticed that not having an opinion or making no comment on a topic only lets the other to believe and think that you endorse a stance which is opposite to the one they have taken. Silence is often misinterpreted!

It doesn’t matter if you actually have an opinion which is different or opposing on the same set of facts. Opinions help seek new information and engage you in discussions where you end up discovering new perspectives in life. As long as you are willing and seen as someone who is interested in engaging constructive arguments and discussions you will be respected even for your negative opinions. Besides, talking and engaging in constructive arguments works like a therapy and has a lot of feel good factor attached to it, provided you don’t see it as a battle where one wins and the other looses. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Opinions are fragile and subjective beliefs of an individual which are results of emotions, desires and feelings affecting the interpretation of information and facts. It may be an unsubstantiated information and should not be confused with fact based beliefs. Knowing the facts and circumstances under which a person has formed his opinion can help learn a great deal about the person and the way he thinks and responds to situations. One should never therefore try to change or disrespect someone’s opinion outright for you might unknowingly disrespect and hurt his emotions and feelings and close all future doors of letting the person change his opinion and understanding. Opinions change only when the underlying feelings and emotions change, which may happen with time, or when the person goes through the different set of experiences.

Conclusion: Never cut yourself from experimentation. Its a popular saying that you should try everything atleast thrice; once for experiencing it, second time to understand it, and third to form your opinion whether you like it or not. Once you form an opinion, don’t get personally attached to it because you never know when you might want to change your opinion when there is a change of events in life. At that stage, you might find it difficult to let go of things because of the attached emotions and feelings.

Handicapped by Technology

Recently, I made a shift to a new work place and as part of the shift, I also had to move my bank accounts and other financials to State Bank of Travancore. Yes, that’s the bank my present firm works with. Being one of the oldest law firms in Mumbai (started in 1883) they are a bit traditional in their approach and its more than evident in everything that they do including the bank they transact with.

My previous bank was a swanky MNC bank which really did not like people coming to their branches for anything. They preferred for some reason to deal with customers through their phone banking and Internet banking channels and mind you, they did provide impeccable services through it.

Moving to SBT was like hitting the rewind button and moving back to my childhood days when Personal computers were a luxury and e-money was still a concept in science fiction. Unlike my previous bank, here I had to bang my head on the bank counters for even knowing my bank balance (something for which I depend on I-banking heavily). Yes, the only way I could initially know my balance was through old fashioned way of updating my pass book. Removing money meant signing a self check and standing in the que for the tellers desk! Imagine doing that every few days for your regular day to day expenses. The thought was unnerving and disturbing. However, the good side about this was that since it was so boring to make an old fashioned trip to the bank, I ended up using a lot less money then I would ideally have 🙂

After a long wait, I have finally received my ATM card and very soon, will receive my Internent banking details too. Sadly, I will still have to make a few rounds to the bank to get my transaction rights for the i-banking system. Yes, they don’t provide it by default because they don’t trust the system. I was almost about to faint when I heard this from the officer in the bank.

Neverthless, things are slowly returning back to normalcy. Atleast I now have my ATM card to acess my account anywhere I want. With persistence and paticience, one day I also hope to have my i-banking with transanction rights in place. Hope this turmoil ends soon.

No One Killed Jessica: Disappointing and short of Expectation #movie reivew

The Jessica Lal case has been one of the most sensational cases of recent time. It brought to light  major flaws in our judiciary and law & order machinery and at the same time, introduced this revolutionary concept of ‘Trial by Media’. Frankly, if it was not for media, the killer of Jessica Lal would have definitely gone scott free. Since media played such an important part in the case, a hindi feature film on the subject was a certainty.

Movies are fun, and they are also a very important tools to spread awareness. When first heard about the film No One Killed Jessica, I was glad that the movie on this subject was finally made. After all, it was necessary to bring the story to limelight because it involved some serious mockery of the system and abuse by the people in power and what better way than a three-hour main stream hindi movie to further ridicule them. However, the movie fell way short of my expectations and I think, for a lot of other people too. For a movie which is trying to recreate and spread awareness about a socially tragic event, it failed miserably in trying to get people connected with the plot on the emotional front.

Look at movies like ‘Wednesday’, Rang De Basanti, Peepli Live, Gangajal…these have been excellent in recreating real life events and having the audiences emotionally connect with it. Offcourse all of them have been made with some twist or the other from the really story, but even the twist was an improvisation over the real life plot and helped people in only connecting with it further. Sadly, even this was absent in NOKJ though they had nice twist added to the movie by showing it from the perspective of a successful journalist. Even Karan Johar with his nonsensical, highly fictional and artificial family sagas makes the audience feel connected to the movie (yes I felt i was SRK back in school when i saw Kuch Kuch Hota Hai :p) but the director and producers of NOKJ couldn’t recreate the agonising pain, frustration and feeling of helplessness that Jessica’s family went through during the entire ordeal.

Acting by Vidya Balan and Rani Mukherjee was average, though could have been better. The expressions lacked the depth and intensity which was required to match the plot of the movie. The only character you could connect well with is the inspector in-charge of the investigation. His helplessness could be very well felt during the few scenes that he has in the movie. The movie starts on a very slow note, drags along for the first  hours and then picks up speed in the second half but looses momentum in the final climax to provide that thought-provoking punch or take away home message or feeling. You are out of the movie hall and you can hardly feel that you witnessed a third person view of a very shockingly shameful incident of modern India.

Conclusion: I was much enraged and disgusted by reading about Jessica Lal case in the new paper than in the movie hall. The movie isn’t a shoddy product but not a classy one either to live upto the hype created for it.

Bidding Good Bye to a Great 2010 and Welcoming a New 2011

2010 is over and we move a year closer to 2012…the year of apocalypse as predicted by some! I aint sure what’s happening to the world in general but my world of bachelorhood may probably come to end by 2012 😦 Anyways, that’s a problem which is supposed to be handled by some future version of me and not me…so lets not worry about it right now.

2010 was a happening year. Lots of great and not so great things happened. Personal life went on a roller coaster ride, professional life took a climb up in the sky. It was a year of constant travelling, new gadgets acquisitions (blew up a lot of money on that), a bigger car, ownership of a 1Bhk apartment in South Mumbai :), making new friends and most importantly a year when I started blogging. It’s a very liberating experience and I am thoroughly enjoying every bit of it .

The year was also full of great learning experiences, coming to terms with reality and knowing how to keep a smiling face in times of disparity (the 3 idiot’s mantra ‘All is Well’ indeed works). Moving into 2011 my only prayer and hope would be that the momentum gathered in year 2010 continues.

Here’s wishing all my Readers, Friends, Family and Well Wishers a very HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR…Have a rocking 2011 and see ya Next Year 🙂

Its difficult to be 25 and single in gujju land.

On my trip to my native town Godhra after two years. It was a welcome break and vacation from the daily routines of Mumbai. The cold weather added to the fun. The fun however soon turned into an irritating experience.

Since I was meeting my folks after almost two years, most of them didn’t knew what was happening in my life. Every person I met whether my close relative or my relative’s friend or a complete stranger, had only one question to ask me. Have I got married? The immediate next question that followed my answer was, What’s your Age? The expressions that followed on people’s faces after my second answer varied from shock to surprised to amusement to seriousness. Half of them, ended up giving me some serious uncle/aunty type advice to which I had no option but to nod my head and bear the trauma. If there is one thing we Indians like giving too much for free, its ‘Advice’

It was like as if, it was a ‘Social Stigma’ here for a guy to be 25 and not married or even engaged! But the show stealer was one of my Dad’s friend. The question he asked left me literally left me stunned. ‘Are you divorced?’ I was like What the eF! (And he didn’t even have a daughter of a marraigable age to ask me this question).

The concept of marriage is seriously over rated here. I thought only girls had to face this problem in our society but no, Kalyug is here. The heat is turning on the guys now. It’ll definitely be a long time before I come and meet my folks again.