The Road less travelled

One of my fav poems.

Neo.

The broken Window…We can mend it.

Let’s start from the point where I left. We can, by a conscious effort, contribute towards sociable society. It’s not only by dumping garbage in bins and respecting public places but by thinking innovatively and most important from others’ perspective. Some background before I share my anecdote.

My previous office was at the top floor (6th floor) and situated in those classy archaic buildings of the pre independence era. Due to this, the lifts are old and quite slow as compared to the latest high-speed lifts. It takes some time for you to reach the top floor as well as to come down. In the morning rush hour, when most of the times I am late to the office, I have to spent 5 more minutes for the lift to arrive and then some more time to go up. Also due to the slow speed and the limited carrying capacity of the lifts, there is quite a queue in the morning to go to the floors.

One fine day, I entered the lift and pushed the 6th floor button. As soon as the lift left the ground floor, an elderly looking man came forward and pushed the ground floor button. I looked at him inquisitively and he was ready to explain. He reasoned that after reaching the top floor, the lift will go straight down to the ground floor. Otherwise, the lift would have remained at the same floor and will only move if somebody calls for it. His simple logic was that, in morning the traffic is upwards – people need to go to their office floors; the lift will be directed straight to the ground floor once it reaches the top floor. This will eliminate the waiting time for the lift at the ground floor – howsoever small.

He said that this is one of the small way in which we can give back to the society and indirectly help others. His idea might not sound great but his intentions were. Intentions which were pure and didn’t demand a thankful note from the beneficiary of his act nor an acknowledgement of his small grateful deed. Infact, it would hardly be noticed.

I was touched by the incident and afterwards every time I entered the lift I made it a point to direct the lift unconsciously.

We can bring in change if we each of us can touch at most one life. What we need is the will and some tinge of creative thinking.

(If you are still reading and are willing to put good to the society, I would urge to share any of your suggestions/ways in which we can bring change.)

Indian Government Blocks Blogs - Outrageous

Indian government has given an directive to almost all the ISPs to ban particular blogs ,supposedly hate blogs. This has ended up in blocking the entire domain. Any body login on to the blog will get a " Timed Out" error message.

Surprisingly, I can still post and publish!!!!!!! And as we have heard since time beginning - "Where there is a will there is a way" - we can very well circumvent this ban.
Just go to http://www.shysurfer.com/ and type the blog address which is www.viralshah.blogspot.com and voila!!!!!!!

Lets hope the govt gets sane and stop this policing which has misfired big time.

Waiting for my blog to be up
Neo.

Bombay Rocks - This Time Resistance not Resilience.

Bombay rocks once again. And this time it’s been hit where it hurts the most. The blasts occurred between 6 and 6.30 pm in Mumbai. Latest estimates indicate 180+ dead, with several hundred injured, most of them are critical. Train services were shut down and local telephone lines jammed. The day may have ended, but the trauma has just begun. “Gory” has a new meaning today. This word has come out of my old fat dictionary on to the railway tracks and station.

Yesterday again, we saw helping hands in form of common citizens and not authorities. We again saw commoners going out of their way to help people reach their homes safely and rushing the injured to the hospitals. How can I forget that these are the same mumbaikars who gave a helping hand during the last year floods or the more recent last week downpour. Always showing their solidarity when it matters. And did I hear somebody calling us rude? And after seeing and experiencing our spirit, I am proud that we are rude. Yes, we are rude because we don’t wait for exchanging gratitude while we are busy helping the distressed. Yes, we are rude because we don’t serve the needy only when they politely plead. Yes, we are rude because we believe in helping selflessly with out being rewarded with a dose of courtesy. We are happy to be called a helping city rather than a courteous city.

And now when the city is grappling back to normalcy, we are again proud of the great spirit of Mumbai. I totally agree on the resilience of mumbaikars and have been an avid advocate of the same. But am I happy about us being up and running today. The answer is a shocking – “NO”. Not that we should be sitting home and fearing the bloody terrorists. That would mean an easy victory for them. But somewhere down the heart, I feel that our spirit is taken for granted. Its been almost assumed by the authorities that we will bear the brunt of any and every thing and almost from the next day we will be happily back to work and keep on filling their coffers.

Last year floods were something waiting to happen but the authorities were caught unaware. This year also all the promises of taking preventive action were broken with a small downpour on last Tuesday. At all times we have been back to our toes in less than 24 hours and this is what makes us easy targets. Our resilience is being used against us for the authorities to be complacent. But we should put our foot down and draw a line somewhere. If we can be resilient, we can also be resistant. And its time, we show our RESISTANCE.

The Broken Window….............

One more of a routine day and I board the train to my office. My ears get hooked to a conversation between two Gujarati guys. It’s a typical discussion on India bashing. Cries about lack of facilities and basic amenities. Also on the attitude of Indians regarding cleanliness, politeness and overall civic sense. But the irony of their whole discussion was that they themselves were using abusive language while occasionally giving relief to their mouths by spitting the toxic pan masala/zarda on the tracks.

This is not a rare phenomenon as we all indulge in this kind of hypocrisy. We all shout our lungs out that the country is going nowhere. It’s the typical Indian portrayed perfectly in “Rang de Basanti”. This reminds me of an excellent article written by our president Mr. APJ Kalam - wherein he has the vision of making India a superpower by 2020.He argues that we all appreciate how clean other countries are and takes a case in point of Singapore, where you are heavily fined on throwing rubbish or spitting on the streets. But nobody is happy about fines when it comes to India. He also points that the same Indians, who have been to the “clean” countries, indulge in littering once they return.

After much thought on finding the reasons as to why this happens, I stumbled upon a likely answer. Some months back I was reading “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell wherein he has explained the concept of “Broken window”. It’s a simple concept of people throwing stones at a broken window just because no one cares to mend it. The same applies to littering. We won’t hesitate to litter at places which are already littered. The problem will be eased - not solved, if the places littered, are cleaned spick and span every time they are abused. The developed countries are kept clean and this to an extent discourages others to litter around. Of course civic sense is something which needs to be aroused in each and every citizen.

Coming back to the focal point of writing this post. One of my ex-boss used to give us a very sane advice. He used to tell us that we should not approach him with only problems but instead recommended us to think through the problem, try to figure out a solution before approaching him. In his own words, “Don’t come with problems, come with solutions.” Though, at that time, I rubbished this as just another management gyan – but now seem to appreciate it.
Will like to share an experience about how we can contribute, howsoever small, towards making a better society but break ke baad ;) - i.e. in the next post.........

The Philosophy of Stock Market

Got this mail - good logic.

smiles,
Viral

Once upon a time, in a village a man appeared who announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for Rs. 10. The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys went out in the forest and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at 10 and as supply started to diminish and villagers started to stop their effort he announced that now he would buy at 20 rupees. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms

The offer rate increased to 25 and the supply of monkeys became so that it was an effort to even see a monkey let alone catch it.

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at 50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business his assistant would now buy on behalf of the man.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at 35 and when the man comes back, you can sell it to him for 50.

The villager squeezed up with all their saving to buy the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!!!!!!!!!