Not a hardscrabble any more

Other day I was talking to Adi, one of my American team mate, and she told me that she is planning to put some money in the stocks of Indian companies. This may seem like a normal conversation to most of you, but for me, being a conscious Indian myself, it meant more. Not long ago, may be in early 90s, India was not considered even near to be a big player on opera of world politics. Though, I was not very mature to understand the politics at that time but I was bright enough to notice some patterns. Soviets were on a decline and being a close friend of USSR, India was bound to take some toll. On the other side Pakistan, a known rival of India, was expected to do well thanks to their close proximity to USA. And then there was China, who do not need any recognition and who did not like to see India grow. These factors made India to be weakest in south Asia. But there are only external factors.

Internal situation was no better. Political scene was very unstable. We had seen many government changes in a very short span in late 80s. Infrastructure was as bad as one might think of, good roads were absent and electricity was barely enough to light your houses when night falls. To fetch water people had to cover few miles. Not many jobs to offer to young graduates. Also, for astonishment of most, I don't consider the social infrastructure of India as a strong one. There are moral and values, all right. We respect our elders, all right. We don't have many divorces, all right. But frankly these factors have very little to offer towards the economy and growth of the nation. The way I see the social infrastructure of India, we have corruption deep down in the roots of bureaucracy. Crime graph was showing an uptrend and at least I used to feel unsafe - especially after incident of 6th December.

If you consider all these, the situation was nothing but admonishing. Future looked bleak and smart people were expected to fly out of the country to safe places such as USA or UK. And yes, we faced brain drains. We saw brilliant minds groomed through the infrastructure and money of India only to see them absconding the nation when time came to deliver. I don't blame them for the reasons I explained above. It was only a smart thing to do and you bet - there were smart.

How glad am I when I see our achievements in past ten years with all the adversities. We are growing by every year and more international recognition is being offered. I would say at last - I am proud to be an Indin.

I love Scott Adams

It's no secret. I am in love with Scott Adams and I don't mind to turn into a heterosexual to prove my point. Okay! A little overboard. I have half finished reading "Dilbert Future", which happens to be my 5th Adam's, and again I can't stop giggling and laughing and muttering on every single page. On a serious note, I am no expert of books and not eligible to write a proper review. But then if Scott Adams can write a book then I can review it.

Dilbert future has to be worst Adams book by far. But still it's very amusing and very involving. It is no match to other Adam's work "Dilbert Principle" or "Seven years of highly defective People", but still it looks good. In a nut shell, Adam is predicting future on various aspect such as technology, human relationship, democracy etc etc. Brilliance of him is that he never gives you a feeling that he is serious about any of the word he has to say in his book. His personal goal from this book as it seems:

If something comes out as total rubbish: Hey! I was just kidding or what you are expecting from a Cartoonist.

But If something comes good, picked by some high profile B School then: Hey! What do you all think of me - a cartoonist? Well, news flash, I am more than cartoons.

Anyway, I don't want to discuss more on what was his intention for writing this book besides making money.

Coming back to book, cartoons are not as funny as I expect from Adams. But content is all right. In fact cartoons are so low that I do not feel to flip pages and read the cartoons first as I did with other Adam's books (Yes! his cartoons are great in other books). The new word carved by this master mind for this book is : "In-duh-viduals". These are supposedly idiots who are in abundance on this planet. If you want to know more on Induhvidual then I would recommend to get a copy of this book from library.

There are various one liners as you would expect from Adams. My favorite line from the book is - " You can never underestimate the stupidity of induhvidual". There is one more “When it comes to voting, I am barely smart enough to know that I am a total idiot." There are few more but I am sure you will find out those when you will have a copy of "Dilbert Future" in your hands.

Me and blog are not like peas and carrots

To be very frank with you, I don't even know if I entirely understand what a blog is for. I also write a personal diary and, and for that matter, blog is a thing most closely resembles to a personal diary. However, I consider blog to be more versatile and more useful and a more powerful mean of expressing one's emotions and felling. This comparison may look very weird to most but this blog thing as as whole is a little weird. Isn't it? Yes, weird - because I don't know why some would even write something which might not be read by anyone else but some close friends may be. I guess I will find out very soon myself.

As far as I am concerned, idea of my personal blog started making any sense to me after I came to know that some of friends have their own blog. So here I am, trying my own hands on keyboard and writing what you call a blog and I call my "psychic rubbish which occurs to me on every Sunday evening(normally)".

I guess this is all for my first few rubbishes. I know that I can write few more or may be lot more, depends on how much I like it. But for now, let's go back to bucks vs bulls and hope bulls may snap 6 matches loosing streak.