So finally Its Congress

I was following the Elections 2009 closely and was expecting to see some change this time specially wanted to see some change in the people getting elected but was sad to see the same old gang getting elected in center and the states, So what happened to all the Jago Vote karro campaign . Well its all done and the People of India have given thier choice this time almost unanimoulsy . I am not a Congressman well to think of it i am not a BJP fan too but I am a proliterate who wants India to achieve its stature in the International community, so who ever it is whatever party is elected I am an Indian who wants to see India powerful and responsible . There were many parallel things going around while the elections going on , First was Sri Lanka issue . then it was the emergence of Fundamentalist rising in Pakistan , then it was Indo American alliance .I wanted to see the GenX politicos the Deora,Pilot,Ghandi, future genrations comming in lime light take charge and handle some important portfolios . Why cannot Congress give these newbies some cabinet berths and see how they handle them thus empowering the youth and the oldies standing by them with full support, Its just the first round of swearing in happening so we can speculate for sometime till Sonia Mam decides and let the motely crew bring some changes in this country, what will happen they will fail the first time so did the last Home Minister after spending his entire life time in Poliitcs .
One good outcome from this election is the demise of "Politics of Region " and "Politics of Caste" and finally comming to 2 Party system .
Its a wait and watch for next 5 years .........

26th April Straits Cafe Santana Row

Straits at Santana Row is always our favorite and i guess the feel of Santana Row is also a major factor in the restaurant's in and around the Row. In fact we like almost all the food joints there and its rarely a disappointment when we go there..
It was Straits this time and as usual the place was bustling with activity. We got a table for two and its kind of a funny sitting arrangement all the couples are given a table for two near the bar. Its sitting too close to the other folks around you so we changed the table and got a bigger one facing the kitchen.
I was tired from the hectic week and wanted to chill so i wanted a fresh fruit drink and ordered a Mojito and the lady ordered some soup which was really sad .
Then for the main course it was usual chicken for me and the fish for the lady....
Couple of Mojito and a good dinner is all it takes for a man to unwind and recharge for the next week...

Americanization of Cricket

I started following the 2nd season of IPL and am really amazed by what the IPL has done to cricket. I call it "Americanization of Cricket" in the sense that what the American sports have achieved in last 50 years we can do it in next 10 years. The teams, the drafting of players ,fantasy picks, Will this improve the game or the athleticism of the players or will we reach the same stage like what the NCAA vs. NBA has reached,There are a lot of basketball fans out there who think that the players in the NCAA play the game with no big deals hanging over their head as compared to the ones who play in NBA.

Its really sad to see the lonely cheerleaders cheering after every boundary,loud music after every ball , but again all these are personal opinions and there will be lot of us who think otherwise. The interesting part is that the idea is brilliant and has opened a new industry ,We in India needed some kind of sports entertainment and IPL fills the vaccum.Indians like cricket and movies and IPL has blended both , so there will be a time when we will decide how to spend a friday night either watch a Shahrukh Priety movie or see thier teams fight it out in a 20-20

Circa 2020 bunch of people hanging in an cafe watching a IPL cricket match ,some of them betting on a player and the enthusiasm in the air is moderate as compared to a Ranji Trophy match were the entire nation is glued to the TV and know that each player is playing the game not for any Shahrukh or Priety Zinta to make some money but for the pure love of cricket.

19th April Our first night out ... Chillis

Today is Sunday 19th of April , my mom is taking care of my 9 month old son and i had this urge to go out on a dinner with my wife , just me and my wife no friends no family just us .After my son was born me and my wife rarely went out and i decided that from now on till we have help we will go out on dinners on Sunday nights .My wife a gastronome like my self but superior to me would choose restaurants and we will make these Sunday's treat as a special ones, to relax and retrospect on the entire week.
It was already 9 Pm and we were desperate to go to a nice place to sit down and eat , there was a new fusion restaurant called Fuzio opened near our home in Fremont . We went inside and were disappointed to hear that they do not have set timings and close the restaurant when there is no one coming . We then went out and searched for a good place and all of them were closed , finally there was a Chillis open near our home and we decided to make it there
The Cheeseburger was too big and not very good but the beer was good and to end it in a bang we ordered the Marble cake and the Ice cream.
Well I was happy that we started the tradition and hopefully will continue till my parents are around......

A Communiqué to the Indian Manager

The most overt quality in any Indian Manager is the omni present one of bieng a micro manager. Now I have seen a lot of Indian Managers and when i say that i actually mean it , if any person of Indian origin with the managers designation comes close to me they cannot escape from my microscopic evaluation of their managerial qualities,Ok that was streching it a bit but serioulsy this thought keeps comming to me and i cerebrate in my spare time, Especially in Bay Area i rarely see Indians with true manageral skills , and I am sure not an authority on Managerial Behaviour but lets think for a moment who is a true manager , he is the one who gets things done, delegates tasks , keeps his timelines in order and inspires a bit , has a bigger picture of the ecosystem, thats all ..

Now let me defend the Indian Manager , how can you stop a person from rolling up his sleeve and resolving an important issue when he or she knows that they can and have done it in past life , and something in them tells them to do it again without bothering about the delegation , now this keeps getting interesting and as you can see i am trying to base my theory on age the old Reductio Ad Absurdum method and prove that the true reason behind the problem of micromanagement is the journey of these people from bieng a foot soldier to becoming a general.One more factor contributing to this issue is the exertion of the first generation immigrants to substantiate their caliber although this fades with time but this quality fused with the rising through ranks makes a potent combination.


So all i am saying is that its not an Indian trait but a general human tendency of going in the trenches when you have risen up in ranks.But we cannot justify this flaw by saying that its because of the journey . Each one rises up in the corporate culture , all we have to do is retrospect each time we rise , take some points ,imbibe them in ourselves and move on.

Micromanagement is just one of the qualities which surfaces and shows up frequently in the Indian Manager , and i am sure that the Indian Manager excels in the rest of the mangerial qualities like ,Knowledge,Commitment,Discipline,Focus....

Heros Moments

I want to write about the hero's moments its about all the moments in our mundane life of middle class lives working all day long and taking care of our families and just bieng there for the family.Tell me what happened where did we go wrong what is it that keeps us moving and going ahead , remember all the times in your life where you feel like a hero may it be a small thing or a big achievement , its all about bieng a hero.

You can be a paralegal working on a case and you are the least important in the hierarchy but you come up with some idea and it blows everyone out and you are the hero for just a moment

You are a doctor in the ER its your first year you are just a newbie and you come up with some crazy idea and it works

You are a just a clerk in some office and there is a big issue going on and you stand up and say its simple and tell your idea and it works

I want to iterate that its us that make the world move ,its us the insignificant, the small, the forgotten ones , the dont matter ones , the least important ones , the minutely small people that make the world move,the underdogs , the weak, its us who move the world ,the proliterates,the ones with the virtue ,the ones with the consiconce , the ones with morals , the ones wi

Life after learning the "Art of Living"

My journey with Art of Living foundation started a couple of years back ,As usual like a immigrant worker from India in the USA i was under a lot of work related stress and on a routine physical i was detected with border line type 2 diabetes , a severe condition of Hypo hypothyroidism and some issues with my chlorestral . I was just 30 and this news shook me up . I had to change my lifestyle my food habits and had to learn some way to handle my stress. There i was contemplating to try out anything possible to take care of this condition.

Apparently I had done a meditation course back in the day it is called Vipassana and it was free , I did that course after coming out of college my basic pretense of doing that course was to test my self on complete abstinence rather than learning any meditation practices , its a 10 day in house course at a nearby Ashram and i completed it and came out of the course feeling good that i made it. That was all to it and never did anything for following up .

My wife did the SSY Sidhha Samadhi Yog course by Rishi Prabahakar when she was in school it was a course where they were taught to switch from a problem state to a no problem state, interestingly there was a guest teacher by name Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of Art of Living foundation and the guest teacher spent a day with all the students of that course. My wife always felt presence of divinity when she was around Guru Ji and she later went on to do a AOL part one course .

For some time after our marriage we use to be at logger heads on the topic of Mediation courses as she use to be from the "art of living" and i from Vipasanna, neither of us had been actively involved in these organizations .In my defense i was of a school of thought where these courses should not be paid and as this art was taught freely over generations in India there is no reason for Art of Living to charge exorbitant amount where as the Vipassana did not charge a single dime and at Vipassanna the entire 10 day course was free of charge , the students were asked to donate voluntarily . This diatribe went on for a couple of years me still standing against the commercialization of the free techniques taught from ages and my wife selling the idea that the foundation was doing big things with the money that was received from the courses from running camps in the prisons to helping out the third world countries with the basic necessities and i still remember making fun of her on all those issues.

So here i was with all my conditions and really scared in life wanting to deal with the health issues and again my wife was there trying to sell me the idea that i should go for a part one course but i was contemplating weather this will be beneficial or should i get back to vipassana . One thing was sure in my mind that i have to do something about the stress management and i knew from the bottom of my heart that all the issues were related to stress . I feel lucky that my prognosis was correct.(not that i did any kind of cross referencing or getting a second opinion)

So after a lot of thinking about spending the money or not , i finally decided that i will go ahead and do the course and as an person from Indian ethnicity i had some kind of faith in these traditional ways ...

2088 Walsh Ave , Santa Clara 6 PM i showed up for part one course there were a bunch of Indians there and all were eagerly waiting for the course to begin ....

5 days went by and it was the end of the course , trust me there was no enlightenment not that i was expecting any , thinking from my capitalistic hat on i was thinking that if everyone had to spend just 300 $ for getting enlightened it was an easy task to stop all the violence in the world.

It was a wonderful time all five days went by easily and thus i was inducted in the beautiful world of ART OF LIVING...

So everyone out there go and try out this art , we have been taught Math, Science ,Commerce but no one bothered to teach us the ART OF LIVING

Slumdog - Hip or just plain Hype

After a lot of resistance , i finally rented Slumdog Millionaire, the movie was good but i still cannot see what the hype is all about ? Should i be fascinated about the screenplay , the story idea ? Yes I am in awe of the idea that the kid relates to all the questions in the contest with his real life experiences and AR Rahman has done it again and this time with just one song.
But sadly that experience ends there .

Here are a few issues i am struggling with ......
What is intriguing is that all the well played moves by the PR department and sudden explosion of media publicity is done all the wonders.
Now there are a couple of ways to look at this situation , the first and foremost is kind of a trite ,banal question about representation , Out of hundreds of movies released in India each year ,what kind of movie gets to represent the Indian ethos?

In spite of the fact that 80% of India lives in villages and me being an Indian has to be cognizant of the hygienic conditions,poverty there is some thing inside telling me that the USP of this film was the depiction of poverty ,corruption,underbelly of Mumbai and not the lovely story idea.

My point is that anyone can make a movie about rampant violence in African countries, epidemic in Ethiopia, crime in inner cities of America, but the real beauty of film making lies in telling the stories without accentuating the sad reality.

BacK from India

Came back from the customary year end India trip , its a strange feeling when we are back specially for people like me who have this perennial question of settling down lingering in the mind.These days when i go to India i feel like a detective trying to find out truth about things in India, I keep thinking, can we come back ? will we be beaming with joy when we come back or are we happy in the US.
The highlight of my visit was my sisters car driver was the one giving me a lecture while driving the car he was like Sir come back to India , what is there in America , its only money no happiness. Those couple of lines from the driver sent my thought process in a different tangent , i was thinking about this guy who barely makes his two ends meet and would qualify as poor person in India was telling me about the Western society and was asking me to come back to India to take care of my aging parents.
Its always interesting to hear the rationale of people on the topic of expats returning home , there was a time when everyone was asking me to come back to India and would almost read out excerpts from the books like "It happened in India" and India Unbound books . But this time when the same topics started the general mood was hang in there in the US