The Lucky Charm

I was reading this book ‘The Zoya factor’ in which the Indian Cricket team is convinced that the protagonist Zoya is a lucky charm for them. Every time she has breakfast with the team they win and every time she does not have a breakfast they lose.

Celebrities from showbiz, sports personalities to politicians are well known to subscribe to good luck charms. Just to name a few

Sallu and his Blue Sapphire bracelet’s popularity is very well-known

Ekta Kapoor(and previously Karan Johar) and obsession with letter K

Emraan Hashmi the lucky charm for music and songs in his movies

Brad Pitt and Shark-tooth necklace

Cameroon Diaz and her anti-ageing necklace

Jennifer Love Hewitt and the lucky seed

Schumacher and his blue and gold amulet

Obsession with lucky charm is not just limited to celebrities alone. Even the ordinary folk like us do various things to woo Lady Luck. And the most common is putting your right foot forward when you enter. I know of a friend who always wore red dress for any exam. It is usually something that you wear or carrying articles gifted by somebody or blessed by somebody. Sometimes it is a small ritual like writing ‘Om Ganapati Namah’ on the answer sheet in your exam or kissing the racquet before the match starts. At times you discover it when something goes really well and at other times it is suggested by friends,seer or a well-wisher. But the bottom line is to believe that it will work and it will!!! This is not restricted to any geography or race or religion or whatever. It is a human trait.

If having lucky charm is so human how can I be immune to it. I had a stint with the lucky charms too. In my college days I had a feng-shui bracelet which I believed brought me good luck and it did. Everytime I wore it to the class I had a blast. And then waiting for that somebody to wish me luck for my paper so that I would do well in my exams. I had this salwar suit and it used to rain whenever I wore that no matter what season!!!

My stint did not last for long though. My bracelet soon became old and faded and my equation with that somebody changed. I am still the same. Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose but I could never understand what was with the charms that helped me so much. I don’t know if they actually work or it is just the confidence they give you that helps. But they do!!! It may simply be a superstition. It may work just because of the confidence that it gives you or it may be an excuse for losing or just human insecurity at work. If later is the case, no wonder the showbiz swears by lucky charms. The stakes are too high and so is the insecurity. Whatever be the reason the trend is here to stay.

According to The Economic Times, the astrology market in India is estimated at around Rs 250 crores. Throw in elements like vaastu, feng shui, and mantras, and it amounts to a whopping Rs 800 crores! And do we need to ask why?

I was reading this book ‘The Zoya factor’ in which the Indian Cricket team is convinced that the protagonist Zoya is a lucky charm for them. Every time she has breakfast with the team they win and every time she does not have a breakfast they lose. And she gets an official invitation to all-expenses-paid travel with the Indian Cricket team to Australia for world cup matches so that she could have breakfast with the team. Makes for an interesting read(@Pallavi: thanks for recommending the book).

Celebrities from showbiz, sports  to politics are well known to subscribe to good luck charms. Just to name a few

• Sallu and his Blue Sapphire bracelet’s popularity is growing everyday
• Ekta Kapoor(and previously Karan Johar) and obsession with letter K
• Emraan Hashmi the lucky charm for music and songs in his movies
• Brad Pitt and Shark-tooth necklace
• Cameroon Diaz and her anti-ageing necklace
• Jennifer Love Hewitt and the lucky seed
• Schumacher and his blue and gold amulet

Obsession with lucky charm is not just limited to celebrities alone. Even the ordinary folk like us do various things to woo Lady Luck. And the most common is putting your right foot forward when you enter. I know of a friend who always wore red dress for any exam. It is usually something that you wear or carrying articles gifted by somebody or blessed by somebody. Sometimes it is a small ritual like writing ‘Om Ganapati Namah’ on the answer sheet in your exam or kissing the racquet before the match starts. At times you discover it when something goes really well and at other times it is suggested by friends,seer or a well-wisher. But the bottom line is to believe that it will work and it will!!! This obsession is not restricted to any geography or race or religion or whatever. It is a human trait known to found in people  across the globe.

If having lucky charm is so human how can I be immune to it. I had a stint with the lucky charms too. In my college days I had a feng-shui bracelet which I believed brought me good luck and it did. Everytime I wore it to the class I had a blast. And then waiting for that somebody to wish me luck for my paper so that I would do well in my exams. I also had this salwar suit and it used to rain whenever I wore that no matter what season!!!

My stint did not last for long though. My bracelet soon became old and faded and my equation with that somebody changed. I am still the same. Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose but I could never understand what was with the charms that helped me so much. I don’t know if they actually work or it is just the confidence they give you that helps. But they do!!! It may simply be a superstition. It may work just because of the confidence that it gives you or it may be an excuse for losing or just human insecurity at work. If later is the case, no wonder the showbiz swears by lucky charms. The stakes are too high and so is the insecurity. Whatever be the reason the trend is here to stay.

According to The Economic Times, the astrology market in India is estimated at around Rs 250 crores. Throw in elements like vaastu, feng shui, and mantras, and it amounts to a whopping Rs 800 crores! And do we need to ask why?

 

I’m back….

Hello everybody,

I’m back after a long hiatus. The reasons for that vary from plain laziness to lack of connectivity. And sometimes because  I couldn’t come up with any logical end to my almost complete posts.

Sorry for not having posted anything since so long. But I promise to come up with some nice(readable i mean) posts very soon. I hope you will continue reading my posts like before and of course post your comments

 

What a waste!!!

There was one story that our physics sir at school would love to narrate.

There was this waterfall in Mysore and everybody admired it. Poets wrote pages on the beauty of the Kaveri river. But there was one man who saw it and exclaimed “What a waste!!!”  That was Sir. M Visvesvaraya. He said that because he saw the potential hydro energy being wasted and untapped.

He went on to become the chief Engineer of the Krishna Raja Sagar(KRS) dam, Mysore built in  1924. This dam remains an engineering marvel and one of the popular tourist attractions till date. It was the first dam to be built with ’surkhi’  a mixture of limestone and brick powder instead of cement. He built many dams later which are still functional.

He also honoured with the Bharat Ratna for his contributions. It happens to be his birthday today(the 15th of September) that we celebrate as “Engineers Day” as a tribute to the engineering wizard.

Let us hope he inspires lot more engineers to acheive greater heights and come up with more viable and cost-effective solutions for the problems of the real world.

Happy Engineers Day!!! to all the engineers out there…

 

09/09/09

Hey guys, its a special day 09/09/09. Last 09/09/09 would have been 9th sept. 1909. A thousand years Aren’t we lucky to witness this? Yeh!!! lets celebrate

What have you planned for this auspicious day?  I am so sad I am not getting married today , no movie of mine is releasing today It is not even my birth day today sob, sob,sob…

But wait last year didn’t we witness 08/08/08 and next year we will witness 10/10/10 and a year after that 11/11/11 and 12/12/12 a year after that. Sorry no 13th month. And what about the 20 in 2009. Nobody is bothered about that. Probably that is unlucky

Well, for me it is yet another day in my office and at home. I am celebrating the day anyway. Life is meant to celebrate no matter what is the date What say???

 

Trust

You see THAT girl, yeah her.
She seems so invincible right.
but just touch her & she’ll flinch.
She has secrets & she trusts no one.
she’s the perfect example of betrayal.
cause everyone she trusted, broke her

- xanga

 

Standing on Giant shoulders

“If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of

giants” — Isaac Newton

At no other point of time would these humble words of a genuis mind

be more relevant than now. If the new generation boasts of acheiving

greater heights it is not because we are the most intelligent

generation but simply better equipped than our predecents. All the

acheivements that we have acheived till now are because we don’t

have to reinvent the wheel. It is already there we just have to use

it and build on it.

I realise this everytime I use technology as an aid. And what better

example than a google search. Anything under the sun and even beyond

the sun is available here. For example, if you forget some command,

searching for it wasn’t so easy. You needed to know where to find

it. If it is a book, is it a part of the library, is it available

currently. Or ask some resource person / expert/ peer. Esp. if it is

learning a new technology attend classes for it, travel half the

world to attend conferences or training sessions. Buy related books

and required equipment. Programs written in low level languages and

compilers took long to execute any program. Any error costed lots of

valuable time and money. All this was a costly affair.

Now it is just a matter of seconds. Type anything that might be

relevant to the command and lo! you have the thousands of pages

throughout the world giving you the answer. Visit any forum and you

have all the expertise dished out to you, that too for free. You

don’t have to waste your time and money doing the same mistakes that

somebody has already done. Just a PC and an Internet connection and

you have the world at your disposal. It is difficult to even imagine

a life without these facilities in our life. So if you are getting

things done in a record time. If you are able to produce excellent

results from a project. You also have somebody else to be thanked

other than yourself.

“If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” — Isaac Newton

At no other point of time would these humble words of a genuis mind be more relevant than now. If the new generation boasts of acheiving greater heights it is not because we are the most intelligent generation but simply because we are better equipped than our predecents. All the acheivements that we have acheived till now are because we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It is already there we just have to use it and build on it.

I realise this everytime I use technology as an aid. And what better example than a google search. Anything under the sun and even beyond the sun is available here. For example, if you forget some command, searching for it wasn’t so easy. You needed to know where to find it. If it is a book, is it a part of the library, is it available currently. Or ask some resource person / expert/ peer. Esp. if it is learning a new technology attend classes for it, travel half the world to attend conferences or training sessions. Buy related books and required equipment. Programs written in low level languages and compilers took long to execute any program. Any error costed lots of valuable time and money. All this was a costly affair.

Now it is just a matter of seconds. Type anything that might be relevant to the command and lo! you have the thousands of pages throughout the world giving you the answer. Visit any forum and you have all the expertise dished out to you, that too for free. You don’t have to waste your time and money doing the same mistakes that somebody has already done. Just a PC and an Internet connection and you have the world at your disposal. It is difficult to even imagine a life without these facilities in our life. So if you are getting things done in a record time. If you are able to produce excellent  results from a project. You also have somebody else to be thanked other than yourself.

This is just one example related to programming world but the same holds for all the other fields. Faster information dissemination, the way we  communicate and the ultra modern ubiquitous technology has enabled the modern day human beings much beyond our imagination and simply changed the way we live. Let us toast the technology and all those who made a better life possible.

This post was a part of my drafts from a long time. Since today is the 40th birthday of the Internet, so I thought this would be the best time to post this . 40 yrs ago on 2nd Sept 1969, the first test packets were exchanged on two computers in University of California. This eventually led to the birth of the Internet and the rest as they say is history.

 

Lalbaugcharaja

Lalbaugcharaja is the Mumbais favorite Ganapati. Year after year devotees throng to get a glimpse of the huge Ganapati idol

in Lalbaug,Mumbai. Witnessing a darshan queue as long as 4-5 km is not unusual. It is believed that by praying to the

Lalbaugcha Raja one’s wishes will be fulfilled. The main attraction here is a golden crown of two kg, golden bracelets and

other gold ornaments.

This year we thought of going to lalbaug to see the Ganapati and chose to go in the night to avoid the crowd. We reached

the Ganapati at 11 in the night expecting to back within an hour only to find a long queue. It took us a good twenty-five

minutes to find the end of the queue where we could join. Looking at the length of the queue it looked as if was impossible

to get the darshan before 5:00 in the morning.

There are two queues

1. Mukhadarshan — You can see the idol from a distance

2. Darshan — Where you get to go near the Stage

We joined the first. I was told for the later one had to stand in the queue for around 22 hrs before getting the darshan.

Even before I saw the Ganapati I was amazed, amazed at the crowd that had gathered there. One could hardly feel it was 12

or 1:00 in the night. The place was crowded with all kinds of people including kids. It was nothing

less of a mela(a fair).Apart from people selling photos of Lalbaugcharaja, flowers and coconut to offer the god, there were

lots of people selling vada pav,dosa, chips,cold-drinks and everything you could think of in a fun fair. All these were

open(and crowded) even at 2:00 in the night!!!

We were lucky that the queue moved pretty fast. The organisers and the police had taken enough measures to handle the

crowd. We finally got the darshan at 1:45 am and it was awesome. Though I didn’t expect the line to end that far from the

idol, it was a great experience. It was indeed a treat watching the Lalbaugcharaja and an awesome Vada pav after that

makes all the effort worth it. We did also visit some other Ganapati mandals after that. But the award goes to the Mumbai

spirit and the people coz if it was not for the watch that I was wearing I would have hardly realised that I was roaming

around at that ungodly hours in the night

Lalbaugcharaja

Lalbaugcharaja is the Mumbais favorite Ganapati. Year after year devotees throng to get a glimpse of the huge Ganapati idol in Lalbaug,Mumbai. Witnessing a darshan queue as long as 4-5 km is not unusual. It is believed that by praying to the Lalbaugcha Raja one’s wishes will be fulfilled. The main attraction here is a golden crown of two kg, golden bracelets and other gold ornaments.

This year we thought of going to lalbaug to see the Ganapati and chose to go in the night to avoid the crowd. We reached the Ganapati at 11 in the night expecting to back within an hour only to find a long queue. It took us a good twenty-five minutes to find the end of the queue where we could join. Looking at the length of the queue it looked as if was impossible to get the darshan before 5:00 in the morning.

There are two queues

1. Mukhadarshan — You can see the idol from a distance

2. Darshan — Where you get to go near the Stage

We joined the first. I was told for the later one had to stand in the queue for around 22 hrs before getting the darshan. Even before I saw the Ganapati I was amazed, amazed at the crowd that had gathered there. One could hardly feel it was nearly twelve in the night. The place was crowded with all kinds of people including kids. It was nothing less of a mela(a fair). Apart from people selling photos of Lalbaugcharaja, flowers and coconut to offer the god, there were lots of people selling vada pav,dosa, chips,cold-drinks and everything you could think of in a fun fair. All these were open(and crowded) even at 2:00 in the night!!!

We were lucky that the queue moved pretty fast. The organisers and the police had taken enough measures to handle the crowd. We finally got the darshan at 1:45 am and it was awesome. Though I didn’t expect the darshan to be that far from the idol, it was a great experience. It was indeed a treat watching the Lalbaugcharaja and an awesome Vada pav after that makes all the effort worth it. We did also visit some other Ganapati mandals before reaching home at 6:00 in the morning and I loved them too. But if there is an award that must go to the Mumbai spirit and the people coz if it was not for the watch that I was wearing I would have hardly realised that I was roaming around at that ungodly hours in the night.

 

Swine Flu Scare

Everybody loves talking about the hype that media creates for issues not very significant. The recent one being Swine Flu. So obviously most of them feel it need not be heeded. Just another piece of news. Everybody is wearing a mask for protection(atleast in Mumbai and Pune). It is the other thing most of them are aware they do not help the uninfected ones. If a mask was all it required to stop the pandemic from spreading, it wouldn’t  have been a global issue by now.

Masked crowd are thronging Malls and other public places. The Swine flu threat is for real guys. Wake up. It has already resulted in casualty. What are people expecting? Probably they are waiting for some more numbers so that they can believe.

People need to understand. If the disease spreads we don’t have enough infrastructure and resources to diagnose let alone treat. There is no point in closing down schools,colleges and multiplexes if people continue do not co-operate.

 

Impossible-Quiz.com

Impossible-Quiz.com – The Impossible Quiz

 

Education Bill passed

Parliament has adopted ‘The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2009,’ which envisages free and compulsory education to children in the 6-14 age group.

That is some great news. Education is a great leveler and this bill was long awaited.  Now let us hope that this is implemented properly and translates into an educated and enlightened India.

It was also great to know that the bill also seeks to do away with the practice of schools taking capitation fees before admission and subjecting the child or parents to any screening procedure and I hope they do away with unwanted reservations. We also need to wait and see what would be the medium of instruction and how do they bring the kids to school whose parents just refuse to send their kids to school. Also the funds and infrastructure required for the project are huge.