We are like this only!

A Mumphaliwala (person selling roasted peanuts) used to go around the neighbourhood in my childhood selling roasted peanuts in cones made of old newspapers along with a minuscule pack of salt. He had to shell out a few extra packs of salt as freebies to keep his consumer content coming back.

Someone enlightened me quite early that “Maximum Retail Price” was the highest price at which that product could be sold and the aim should be bring it down from there. But the customer was not the king when I was a kid and the shopkeeper charged the MRP. I am talking of the seventies when availability was limited choices did not exist and Bajaj Cheetak scooter used to have 15 years waiting.

But haggling and bargaining was the order of the day for everything that did not have MRP printed on it. The common man had a sense of victory being able to knock down the asking price. The victory lap would however be short-lived with the neighbours announcement that his second cousin has brought the same stuff for 8 rupees less.

But today the customer is the king and one can easily cut a deal even while buying a refrigerators or a television set. Kolkata they say is the most (in) famous when it comes to this skill, where a street vendor like the phuchkawala (panipoorie seller) is not spared by a well versed Kolkata shopper. He cannot escape without giving that free dry poorie, locally known as churmur at the end of each session.

But his is not about Kolkata, this is us from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. We, the Indians, love to haggle and take immense pride in what we do. We all know a uncle or aunt or a neighbour who has earned the honour of being the best negotiator in this respect.

If you thought this is limited to street vendors and the shopkeepers, my friend, you are grossly mistaken! Leading architectural practices, I have witnessed, bear the brunt of this extraordinary “little extra” phenomena. In the nineties, we were working on design for high rises on Barakhamba road and other places around Lutyens Delhi.

While preparing designs for those multi-storey towers, the firm also had to provide some services as extras. Trust me, I am serious! It was an extension to his farmhouse or an additional floor to her bungalow or something similar.

We used to wonder if the surgeons faced similar situation whereby a patient says “I shall have my heart operated, but you have to operate my knee cap for free!” 

But, we are like this only!

Maya, The Illusion - We Earn But Never Spend

There was repeated outage of the internet signal and I kept watching those irritating circles on my screen every time the system tried to retrieve information for me. I became philosophical as I was forced to ask myself the what if question. 

Does everything that we believe to be our own, belong to us or its all Maya, an illusion?

All documents, important project information, communication and testimonies received through emails are not ours but captives in the servers belonging to Microsoft, Yahoo, Google or some other service provider. Without a proper connection I don’t even stand a chance of viewing them.

We work tirelessly and what remains of our hard earned money are nothing but numerals in our bank accounts, other financial institutions, stock exchange or maybe a builder who has agreed to deliver a pricey bit of real estate. Probably you would never dwell there as it’s your second, third or nth such property.

The valuables acquired over a lifetime are stashed away in the lockers of a bank or a security service provider. You will visit those only a couple of times a year. Even that access to the locker could be denied for a slight mismatch of the signature.

Our family is without doubt ours but they are too far away from where we now live and work. We are with them only a couple of times every year, while our children prepare to flies away looking for better prospects. We do everything within our limits to make this a reality.

We struggle and waste lot of our energy for achieving things that we either do not use or we do not require. The following are a few striking examples:

We aspire for high end hand phone and 70% of the functions are useless to most of us.

70% of the features of our cars are not needed and we can only drive at 50% of the maximum speed.

We dream of a luxurious villa and 70% of the space will not be occupied.

As we peep into the wardrobe we discover that 70% of the clothes are not worn.

We have a collection of watches and 70% of them have run out of battery

Sadly we work hard to save money all our life and 70% of that is left behind for other people to use.

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a Present for us to open and relish.

So need to understand what is “Maya” and what is reality to start living our life for today. Let’s thrive to achieve only what we need and anything more is a bonus. We not have to be a perfectionist to enjoy what we have today. 

 

Ministry set to announce new TV broadcast rights deal, believed to be worth about $2 billion

My Faking News

NEW DELHI: Information and broadcasting (I&B) minister is likely to take a view on the contentious issue of whether to proceed with monetising the crime investigations in the country though selling of broadcasting rights of all information related to the case.

The high cost involved in the case of Sheena Bora murder including air travel of her un-extended family has been an eye opener. The ruling party has agreed to bring a bill in the parliament to allow provision for self-financing of such investigations.  A well-informed source in the ministry said that many options has been considered and zeroed down on auctioning of the broadcasting rights.

Sources say the Government is ready with a draft on One Crime One Sponsorship (OCOS) scheme in addition to annual broadcasting rights. These could be rolled out as early as January 2016 to take advantage of the usual high crime rates during the New Year revelations.

A general consensus exists on this among the politicians in principle including those who never had any principle. The politicians seem to have agreed to end this injustice where the government spends all the money to carry out the investigations while the media makes the money. “Humko to kya milta hai? Babajee ka thullu!” exasperated one of the senior leaders.

Sources said that the decision would depend on government's view on "economics of offence''. 

A police sources has also informed “we are holding back on taking action on numerous other cases dating back to 2013, till the government finalise the broadcasting rights issue.”

Stars TV, is believed to be aggressively lobbying to win the broadcasting rights that is expected to start in 2016 and run for at least five years. The deal, which also includes internet and mobile rights, was valued at Rs 13340 crores (approximately $2 billion) by some experts.

Although the parliament has to formally ratify this, there has been high level of enthusiasm amongst the lawmakers. Senior leader, Mr. Hardik Kumar, commented “ Humra rajya ko sabse zyada munafa hoga...aur is amdani se ...hum pichrapan bhi hata payenge!”. 

A Wolf In The Sky

I was coming back home yesterday. I looked up at the sky and thought I spotted an animal up there. Felt an irresistible urge to stop for a photo shoot. .. and so did I.

Not sure what it was, I consulted my daughter and she said, "It is a wolf. It has pointy ears, two hands and fur like a wolf."

How can someone question such conviction!

P.S. : Pareidolia is the psychological phenomenon where people see familiar patterns—like faces or creatures—in vague stimuli such as cloud formations.

This explains why: our brains are wired to recognise familiar shapes in random, abstract patterns like wispy cloud edges.

An Encounter With Spelling Alphabets

We were final year students at one of oldest Engineering Colleges of India, near Calcutta and two of us joined our first job as undergraduate trainee in a company in New Delhi by the name of DCS (name changed). This was formed by borrowing the first alphabets from surnames of three partners (Dhawan, Chopra and Sharma) and the firm specialized in Master planning and landscape architecture.

We as Bongs, an identity we discovered for the first time after reaching Delhi, grew up with the notion that corruption was rampant in Delhi and any other Indian cities outside the boundary of Bengal. Consequently we too were suspicious about all activities going around us both inside and outside our offices. One evening my friend came back home bewildered.  

After a bit of persuasion he confided in us and disclosed what found out by chance. “Our firm is running a racket and have multiple operations under the same name” he said softly. We were all ears to him as he continued, “I heard with my own ears when the secretary was telling someone over the phone that the name DCS stood for DELTA, CHARLIE and SIERRA”.

What ensued was pure entertainment to say the least.

These are actually called spelling alphabets or NATO phonetic alphabets.  26 code words in the NATO phonetic alphabet are assigned to the 26 letters of the English alphabet in alphabetical order as follows: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. NATO phonetic alphabet

SUNSTRUCK

I looked at the Sun while returning home this afternoon and found it setting. It looked lovely. I pulled up the car to the side and took a couple of pictures. I thought I was Sun-struck!

Despair: Silly me! I thought I invented the term Sun-struck. I imagined myself at the threshold of gaining fame and prosperity for being able to use my fertile mind in successfully remixing the word Moonstruck.

Reasons: I looked up in the dictionary and lo, it enlightened me that this exists in full glory. It refers to someone who is affected or touched by the sun. Incidently it has been in use since 1794.

Conclusion: Inventing something is becoming increasingly difficult, 'am say!!!... but we can discover something new in our world every moment. 

 

Space, The Final Frontier .... errr ... Resting Place

Image Source

It’s good to learn a new odd thing every now and then. Today I learnt about “Space Burial”. Space burial refers to exactly what its literal meaning is. The cremated remains are carried out to the outer space into the orbit of earth, or other planetary system or maybe into the deep space.

But don’t worry, these won’t be scattered into the space to add up to the space debris but they stay sealed within their space vehicle till it reaches its final extra terrestrial destination. More information are available in the wiki site wiki/Space_burial

Private companies such as Celestis, Inc. and Elysium Space offer space burial services. I have found out that the cost starts from around $2000, which is actually quite a small price to pay for being able to flirt with the stars. This is an option, I would not mind considering when time comes for my final destination.

The website of Celestis celestis.com declared that there are two missions scheduled for this year. One can take the advantage of either The Tribute Flight, scheduled for launch on November 5, 2015 from New Mexico's Spaceport America, or The Heritage Flight, scheduled for launch in the 4th quarter of 2015 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Elysium Space elysiumspace.com provides three space burial service options. The plans are “Shooting star memorial” for remaining in the earth’s orbit, “Lunar memorial” to remain in the moon’s surface and “Milky way memorial” to travel to the deep space.

 Interestingly one of the first person to be buried in the space happens to be Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek. I found this quite symbolic. Following are some statistics, sourced from wiki site, about the missions undertaken till date.