To the new and anxious beginnings

Life has given me ample opportunities to start afresh. I have lived in many different places- geographically and socially. Village, tier 3 town, tier 2 town, metro. 2 national colleges, 5 companies in 5 different cities. My each world hardly overlapped each other.

I could start afresh every time. I could be a different person. I could change my habits, personalities, traits, friends and and enemies. The possibilities have been immense. And for a long time I enjoyed this. Moving to new worlds with little or no baggage of past. This was awesome.

But then COVID came. Now worlds have been separated not by choice but by force. Connections are broken and lost. Gossiping with friends over dinner or meeting relatives or even attending festivals and functions seem to be century old thing.

So in this situation when I got a new job opportunity, the challenge is not one-dimensional. I am losing my past connections, without creating any new ones. My world is being swallowed by a black hole. All that is around is emptiness. Emptiness/Loneliness creates a new level of anxiety and uncertainty. This impacts both my mental well being and my job performance at new place.

Now I feel switching was never easy. But new beginnings made it worthwhile. COVID has spoiled best of both worlds- old and new. I wonder how long we can last without real human connections. I am hating COVID more and more everyday.

Hope the things normalize before my professional and personal lives suffer irrecoverably. #Hope

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss

-Rudyard Kipling

If, by Rudyard Kipling

New World Order of Intellectualism

A lot of my friends and intellectuals seem to be feeling devastated and shocked by the recent results in India, Britain, US, Europe… across the globe. They wonder how they could be so wrong, how people could not see the writing on the wall which stares into their soul round the clock. Why people cannot see where they are headed? Why they are hell bent on following the pied piper?

But I wonder if the world has been any different ever.

We had saints and sages who preached us to cut on materialism and seek a better version of ourselves. But we ignored them outrightly… in their face. We had leaders and thinkers telling us how colonialism or slavery is wrong. But the people had to go to wars to get convinced.

Why it should be any different now? Democracy, by design, is to be ruled by the masses- who will never be on board with higher ideologies. And there is no point in blaming them. They have to fight the battle of the survival. They are the inertia of the civilization. While thinkers may feel frustrated for not being able to propel this in right direction, they must also be thankful for this inertia when it does not get swayed in wrong direction by Hitlers and Co.

Only saving grace, in old times, was that the people acknowledged that even if such philosophy did not suit their daily lives, they respected the philosophy and the philosophers. But now anybody who thinks differently will be mocked. Social media has made this so easy and even appealing. The boundaries between harmless humor, sarcasm, mockery and insanely insults have vanished. Simply because the tolerance levels of everybody (towards such instances) is different. I may find some thoughts funny; you may those offensive. You may find something funny which I find offensive. Impersonal communication media removes any feedback signals to hold back and be decent. So we both will share our “jokes” to fall to a common low land.

While this all may be hurtful, this is not the scariest part. Remember when Socrates had to drink poison, or when Galileo was burned? Those were the acts of the Center of Powers. So, these guys managed to stay in the hearts of the people even centuries after their death. We learned their teachings and benefited greatly. Imagine philosophy without contributions of Socrates and his disciples or physics without inputs of Galileo.
But now such acts are by “People who have fallen to this common philosophical low land”. So, there will be no revivals, no memories, no learnings. The thinkers will die an unknown death. Their works will suffer worse fate than those who suffered at the hands of medieval Europe Church. We will enter into a new Dark Age… waiting for someone to ruffle through history… for someone to bring another Renaissance.

This will feel like death of civilizations and democracy. But that’s how democracy truly dies- Not by the oppressive rulers but by the thundering sound of clapping.

Odd-Even in Delhi

So today was the first day for Delhites to follow the odd-even formula for private cars. [See Appendix at bottom]

There has been said a lot for and against the initiative. Sadly, the tussle at Delhi between the state and the center (and their very organised and blind followers) colors every topic into something totally different.

Skipping that part, I will come to the point.

The pollution is REAL. So real that it can wipe out life, as we know it, from this planet. Sea levels are rising, glaciers are melting, climate change is unpredictable, non-renewable sources are depleting and renewable tech is nowhere close to fill the gap.

So get off the unicorn guys and deal with it. Is odd-even sufficient to control pollution? Hell no.

As per this graph vehicles contribute at most roughly 8%-10% to pollution. There share in more dangerous type of pollution like NOx and CO is definitely much higher, but this scheme of cars will cut at most 3%-4% overall, 12%-15% NOx and 25%-30% of CO emissions. And that is nowhere enough. The obvious question is, is it worth the pain then? Scroll 6-8 lines above and re-read- WE MAY LOSE THE PLANET. This is war guys. So every bit is worth the effort.

This scheme touches the common man. And it gets them into discussion on pollution, thus having a more responsible society. And then, we can work on more areas like Cleaner construction tech, the dust particles.

So this is a war guys. Delhi, you have got a govt that is trying (ignore the drama); please support this as you did today. You can set the example for the country and even for the world.

Another thing I would like to talk about- the commutation is not a stand alone process, there is an eco-system around it.

The offices who do not stick to uniform work hours and thus making car-pooling a pain in neck, the schools who try to run only big buses (or only on selected routes), the auto-rickshaws who do not use meter. There is an entire ecosystem around it and everybody needs to do their bit.

Offices and corporates, you can afford to be more streamlined. Please check your working hours, create a discipline in the system. Schools you should be next, I think the limit of distance should already have made it easier for you. But try another mile.

Govt, you have been working on disciplining autos, but this is required even more now. And buses, we need buses, luxury buses; comfortable, safe, easily accessible.

And engineers, boy we need you! We desperately need cleaner construction tech. Can we assemble pieces outside city and transport them? Can we cut down on construction time? We really really need to solve this.

Again, all the best Delhites. May we all be victors.

Appendix

One India

India should seem a “ridiculous” country to large part of world. So many language, so many cultures, so many religions- what makes us one? Sadly even we forget the answer most of the items.

KBC has managed to grow into emotional space without being ridiculously dramatic contrary to most of the reality show. Latest KBC ad- Bang On!

 

Google’s attempt to show portfolio

Advantages of being an online company has an other side as well. For example, Microsoft could bundle new products with other popular ones to launch (IE, Office…). This Google could and can never achieve.
As a result it still remains primarily a search (and adwords) company to consumers. Here is a beautiful attempt to show off its complete portfolio…

Indian Badminton League marketing

Sports leagues in India is not a very old concept. Football leagues have been around for quite some time, but it was only IPL which really set things in a new standards.

IPL; amongst other things; translated cricket which essentially was almost a day long game to fit in fast paced life. IBL – Indian Badminton League- is following next. Now, Badminton is a shorter game. An hour or two at max. Will they be able to hold attention? Badminton, after all, has not been very popular for very long. But with the rise of Saina Nehwal, Kashyap, Sindhu etc, the game has been gaining popularity. So, how much success it will see? Well, only time will tell.

But then falling on the comparison, IPL’s marketing campaigns (who can forget Manoranjan ka baap) had attracted plenty of eyeballs, and IBL seems to be lagging on it. It begins on 14th of August 2013, but only a week back the league has come up with ad campaign.

New 5 star ad

Ramesh and Suresh- the twin brothers have been icon for Cadbury’s 5 star for really long. The ad had stuck at the point of getting the Patloon smaller by one “bilang”. Something had to follow… and finally here it is-

So, how is it? My take- the ad does not have the intensity. It does not build on the previous message- “Khaiye aur Kho Jaiye”. It has new message- “It is even softer now”. (Which does not come across very nicely either.)

But the earlier ad talked about an experience point- why would Cadbury go back to physical attributes? And in case the message has been changed, why they need to carry forward the characters?