Mind u Read

A nod from the Oscars is a sure shot ticket for any film to achieve celluloid immortality and this year the big winner is the unassuming film ‘The Artist’, a well deserved winner grabbing the coveted Best Picture, Best Director and the Best Actor awards along with a few other awards. Not able to contain my excitement I managed to catch the film playing on a big screen nearby. Not a single word was spoken in the movie yet by the time I came out of the auditorium a thousand words filled my mind. Interestingly, the storyline of the movie can be summed up in one line; in fact it can fit into one tweet of less than 140 characters. I doubt if any other movie in recent times has such a simple story. ‘A superstar of the silent film era fades away from public memory as the advent of talkies makes him redundant.’ This one line story set in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s has a theme that keeps recurring throughout human history, especially relevant to us in current t...

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the following word? BUSINESS MAN That was a question I asked on my Facebook Page couple of days back. The people that follow my page belong to multiple demographics and since there is no right or wrong answer for this question the answers were many, ranging from Dhirubhai, Ambanis, Profits, Gujjus, Suits, Money, Cheat, Trade, Profit, Loss, etc, etc. Most of the answers were universal and could be understood by everyone but there were a couple of answers that I am sure baffled the rest of the people and made no sense whatsoever. The answers were Puri Jagannath & Mahesh Babu. Now who the hell are Puri Jagannath and Mahesh Babu and what do they have to do with the word Business Man? Ask any Telugu person worldwide or anyone living in Andhra Pradesh; he or she would instantly identify the names and chances are, before this weekend ends would have at least tried to watch the latest Telugu flick relea...

First things first, how does the Government tackle the ongoing fast by Anna Hazare which has now turned into a full blown revolution since the tone has changed to "it is now or never." A quick solution:                                       Going by my experience in project management and looking at how great organisations expand and implement new ideas, especially in situations where everyone thinks their solution is the right one, this is what the Government needs to do. Implement the Jan Lokpal Bill proposed by the Civil Society with immediate effect but with a condition. The condition being, it will be a limited beta release as they say in software terminology, the same that even Google is doing right now with its new social networking toy, Google Plus. Release the bill but implement it only on...

We often hear the term ‘A to Z’, but in case of the movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD), the term ‘Z to A’ is more apt. When we teach kids we start with the letter ‘A’ but when we attempt to teach adults, the same theory needs to be reversed; instead of starting at ‘A’ we need to begin at ‘Z’ and turn the clock backwards. Wait a second, what does teaching have to do anything with this movie? Isn’t it a fun road trip movie with 3 guys in search of a Hangover in Spain? I have heard few people remark that ZNMD is nothing but a promotional video for Spain tourism. It would be a pity if the movie reaches the cult status it is heading towards in the same league of a Dil Chahta Hai, Rang De Basanti, Rock On and 3 Idiots and people think it is because of Spain or the extremely good looking and talented cast or the tomatoes. I am sure many of you have better reasons for liking this film, I have mine too. I shall not talk of Spain but try to preach my point of view especially since ZNMD...

"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people" Twitter discusses all of the above and more We have all heard the famous line above and I am sure most of you agree with it. Now let’s try and apply the same logic to people on Twitter. The results are quite startling or obvious depending on how well you have been following trending topics on Twitter. Let me start from the end, I shall try to speak of people, then events and then ideas in the hope that my post goes from small to great! :)

Osama bin Laden and Mahatma Gandhi are two people that lie at the extreme ends of the human spectrum; yet they share in common with each other more than anyone can probably imagine. If there is good in this world then there has to be evil; if there is God then there has to be Satan; for every positive there has to be a negative force somewhere, such has been the nature of this world and Osama and the Mahatma fit the bill perfectly. At the outset let me make it clear that my post is not about taking a stand or making judgements on the individuals I mention here because history has a very biased way of treating its heroes and villains, only the winners usually get to narrate their side of the story.   For all the good that Gandhi has done, finally he met his end because someone pumped a bullet into his heart and on that same note we have an Osama who has people willing to take a bullet to fulfil his ideology. Who can say for sure that one is right and the other is not. Having sa...

The word ‘Clueless Nation’ might look like a bizarre term to use when the whole nation including myself are yet to overcome the euphoria of becoming the world champions of ODI cricket; this victory is like an intoxicating drug that has given us a high. Though I doubt if any one of us has given any thought as to what we are going to do once the hangover is over; we are totally clueless! All I can think of is a void except for the winning team members whose coffers are going to get bigger and themselves richer. It is not like this victory is going to open the floodgates to a million other aspiring young cricketers akin to what Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai did to aspiring models by winning Miss Universe and Miss World titles; cricket is already a very popular sport in India and IPL has only reinforced the lucrative nature of this sport. We have a tendency to whip up things into a state of orgasm but seldom do anything (re)productive with it! We did the same thing few months back whe...

The earth is a huge, gigantic aeroplane on a journey to an unknown destination. Think about it, the earth is constantly rotating and revolving, never taking rest even for a single day. It’s like a flight on an unending journey; constantly on the move. Have you ever wondered what we are doing here? I wonder too and realise we are all part of the same journey. Where is it heading? We don’t know. How has the journey been so far? Well, let’s see...

Ten years have passed and ten million things have changed in our lives since the beginning of the new millennium. This post is my humble attempt to capture some of the changes that our world has undergone in the last 10 years. I also request you to consider this post like one of those chain mails where the mail is incomplete without your comments on it. Please feel free to add to the list. Note: Most of the things on this list are so simple that one might think why I mention them in the first place. But let me remind you my friend, the 90’s and the decades before them never had any of the simple things we enjoy today and take for granted.

On 26th January 1950 India became a republic and the constitution was drafted to govern the country. The constitution is nothing but a detailed terms & conditions agreement that tells us how to behave as citizens of this nation and how the country needs to be governed. It is another matter that none of us have ever read a single line from that constitution just like we do with every other terms & conditions agreement. It has been 61 years since these terms & conditions have been defined and very few changes have been made to that document over the years. However the world that we live in has continuously and constantly changed bringing in a tectonic shift in lifestyles and mindsets that are far beyond the comprehension of the people who drafted the constitution decades ago. I wonder if it is fair enough to stick to a constitution that is definitely outdated and has proved beyond doubt to be a failure. The emergence of the politician as the flag bearer and representative...

WikiLeaks has been creating a major furore worldwide with its release of sensitive documents. In their latest release they finally manage to trace the origins of the popularity of Rajinikanth jokes on internet. The startling fact in their report is the secret connection between Christmas and Rajinikanth jokes. Read the full story below. It was the last day of August 2010 when a very bizarre worldwide trending topic appeared on Twitter. The topic was MERRY CHRISTMAS. People wondered why everyone was wishing each other Merry Christmas four months in advance. At the same time Kartik Dayanand who goes by the id @KartikDayanand on Twitter tried to find out the reason. In a matter of minutes he figured out who initiated this crazy trend and shared his findings with the world in the tweet below.

Couple of months back I wrote a blog post called  “The Future of War: A Digital Doomsday”  where I mention that future wars would be fought in the clouds and giant corporations would try to eat each other, in the process only one of them emerging the clear winner. It already looks like Facebook has laid out the framework for its next assault and the first major casualty would be Twitter, followed by Google. One would be mistaken to think it is better technology that is driving Facebook but the fact is, the roots of the future success of Facebook lie in the very nature of human behavior. I will speak in great detail about that in my next post but in this post I would like to specifically talk of how Twitter is on its path to annihilation because of Facebook, and why it is very important for Facebook to do what Twitter does currently.