What if your very life was fixed ?

It's a very difficult thing to engage yourself in compiling and then eventually writing down a blog post, especially when the post is destined for a blog that is somewhat deserted. However, the feeling, the compulsion and the force are sometimes so incessant that they cannot be kept at abeyance and you eventually articulate your ideas and emotions. This blog post is perhaps a manifestation of that same conglomerate of thoughts that have bothered me for the past few days. First, it was the arrest of Sanjay Dutt which once again drove me to contemplate on the cycles of glory and tribulation which are such an inherent part of nearly every man's life, no matter how big he may be. And then, it was the arrest of our erstwhile Railways Minister's nephew that eventually surfaced the underpinnings of a giant business empire based out of ostensible lobbying and use of power. And eventually, it was the expose of the spot fixing fiasco which has ever since being devouring quite a lot of convicts every single day. All in all, it was just a matter of a day for these men. For Sunjay Dutt, it was the day when the Supreme Court delivered its final judgment, for the Railway Minister's nephew, it was that one particular day when a trail led CBI to him and for the ones indulged in spot fixing, it was about that day when the police found some solid proof to charge the culpable. It was just a matter of a day and all these men who were once surrounded by glitter and sumptuous wealth and recognition, were instantly sent to the gallows of tribulation and plight. I want to ask this question, what if the very lives of these men were fixed well in advance ?

I'm not pointing towards the possible involvement of a personnel whose position and vested powers made him so immaculate that he could have single handedly asked others to act at his behest and captivate these men. I'm also not talking about the considerations of righteousness which dictate terms about how a breach of morals and ethics is bound to get you punished sooner or later. What I am talking about is that of all the possibilities of these men finding a way to escape the wrath of our inadvertently captive judiciary, why was it that these men who were so very ingenious, still couldn't find a way to save themselves. A detailed analysis may reveal certain flaws or certain prejudices that cost them dearly at the end. However, on a more larger scale, this has got to do with the all powerful and the magnanimous entity called fate or destiny, as and what you may like to call it.

What if irrespective of what we do and how we do it, a substantial part of the outcome was always predetermined ? What if irrespective of how much we talk of restructuring and revamping our destiny, the transformation in itself was predestined to take place ? What if the struggle we brag about was also something already carved over the blueprint of our future. In short, what if most of our lives are already fixed ? One may arrive at the conclusion that the term "fixed" is used here to highlight the prevalent notorious cult, but it's not. "Fixed" has been used to draw a correspondence on how much of our eventual future path appears to be random and yet it was not random. There was a part of it, perhaps, which we could have molded and yet there was a considerable portion that was not malleable. That portion was intriguing and befuddling but it was not our perspicaciousness which made it to be that way, it was the manifestation of what was supposed to happen to us.

So much of iniquity resides in our lives that we eventually crumble down under the bedrock of egregiousness and yet someday, there arrives some event or something else which literally diverts the course of our life. What once appeared ludicrously quixotic, now becomes the luscious reality. What once appeared the most grotesque of possibilities, now takes you to the pinnacle of your life. You did change and walked through the most tormenting of phases in the most nonchalant of ways, but your circumstances too changed accordingly and half of the parameters in your circumstances were never in your control. What would you call this eventual sync between your arriving at some juncture and the circumstances getting ripe. You may call it luck, or a coincidence or even a fluke, but you still cannot disparage its prescience.

Now the final question. Who fixed this life of yours ? Truth be told, at least you yourself weren't the complete curator for what eventually ensued. Yes, you fought through the tides, strove through the tatters, and triumphed through the vicissitudes but still, you were not the one who can be solely heralded as the master of your fate. In fact all that you believed to have done to change your fate was simply a part of your fate itself. You were born as an indigent, you crib about the impecuniousness, you talk about how you resorted to sheer penchant for success and resorted to immense frugality, and how you eventually overcame the blunt of what you were born with. But what if all of this was scripted many years in advance, what if all these brilliant battles, these ephemeral stints of gleam and glory, these boisterous sprees and this eventual opulence, were all destined to come to you ? You can choose to agree with it, or walk away from it, but you still cannot disavow it because it itself is imbibed in you and you yourself are imbibed in its shell. What if your very life was fixed ?

The girls with the curls.

Ever since I've acquired the conscience needed to distinguish different looks from each other, I've developed this proclivity of being attracted towards girls with the curls. I am never able to fathom the veracity of this attraction but it has always been with me. In one way or the other, I can safely say that curls, according to me, are the natural way for girls to style their hair. However, as I retrospect, it can be linked to specific instances where girls with curls succeeded in impressing me. Be it a crush way back in standard 5 or be it the burgeoning affection felt just a few years back, all these girls had curls in common. So just like it is with every other boy of my age, even I've envisaged the portrait of a girl who for me would serve as the quintessential  beauty. And not surprisingly, this girl too had curls to her kitty.

So as it turns out, curls are what a girl needs to have in her quiver to you know, engross me. Having said that curls, according to me, can also be used by girls to leave a statement. Maintaining curls may be a predicament in itself but curly hair have a symbolism and a cult about them. Be it the curls that last from the top to bottom, or be it the natural curls or be it the curls that are done at the ends of the braids. Curls are the epitome of enigma. With curls, her hair will not only look more fluffy and say ,bouncy, it will also foster an air of intrigue around her personality. One thing is that curls are the exact opposite of orthodoxy. So when you flaunt curls, you are obviously making your presence felt in the cohort of the style frenzy. But, the other more important thing is that curls have always been associated with certain priced women.

When Preity Zinta entered Bollywood, one of her usps was her dimples, which till date no other actress could beat. But her other and more flummoxing strength, was her curls. That was explicitly mentioned in star magazines so it signifies that curls, are very attractive indeed. Apart from making a girl look unorthodox, curls also make a girl look luscious. The kind of manner in which curls tangle with each other, they also seem to entangle and evangelize the viewer. Curls do that because they seem to bring an amount of opulence with them. They kind of make their presence felt amongst the clutter of other multitude of styles. Why curls have this propensity, it's a little hard to tell, but curls have been very successful in this avenue.

Now, it's time to look at the other aspect which makes curls so very coveted, shall I say. If a girl poses in curls, it kind of refrains her appearance from asserting anything. It simply means that she is a mystery that is yet to be solved, or a cryptex that is yet to be unlocked. Just like the curls are tangled and are assuming wayward directions amongst themselves, the girl who dons curls, has a free flow in her life but there is a mystery about her looks. It becomes a little hard to acquaint yourself with what she feels about you and what she hides in herself. It becomes even more troublesome to question this kind of a girl because her looks in themselves seem to be posing a plethora of questions. To cut a long story short, girls in curls can be as befuddling as a girl can ever get. Kangna Ranaut, for as long as she garnered her natural curls, identifies with this prospect.

             

                                        

And last, but not the least, curls are about pure class. Someone once told me that curls are not commonplace because 1, not everyone is able to keep them and 2, they don't look apposite on everyone. Hence, curls are for the chosen girls or it's more about how certain girls choose curls above everything else, to mesmerize everyone. Hence once a girl chooses curls, she inculcates an element of rarity in her persona. One straight indication from this is that she prices herself, which is quite as good but she also openly declares her mission to look awesome. It will take some perspicaciousness to grasp this one but it actually means that the girl is now ready to open the floodgates and let her gorgeousness fill the sea of eternity. She is no longer ready to stay bound to the paltry forces of convention, but she wants to let herself come out. Kate Winslet's looks from Titanic are a perfect example of what I was trying to elucidate.

So, as it turns out, I don't know that much about styles or hairstyles, for that matter. But since in case of girls, boys shall be the judge, a girl in curls can easily make her exquisiteness felt in a single appearance. In one way or the other, the curls speak for her and articulate her emotions better than her words, if there were to be any. So for me, curls should be the ramp-ready hair style for any girl. Now leaving it to the experts in hair care to tell you more about the various hairstyles.

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Love(✘)..Money(✘)..Fame(✘)..Music(✓)

Music is that eternal force that extends beyond the bounds of logic, and beyond the realm of the usual. Never in my life have I met a person who doesn't like music at all. Irrespective of who you are and what you do, you always have that willingness to listen to some tracks, that craving for that genre. That's perhaps the magic which this element of our existence is capable of producing. Going by mythology, it's said that the first sounds in the entire universe were the ones that came from Shiva's Damroo, that the Ragas when sung by the erudite veterans were capable of producing rainfalls, and even till date, the Sufis are capable of producing that mellifluous eternal bliss which makes the listeners feel a step closer to perpetuity. Such is the power of music, such is the strength in its quiver. So as I write this, I tried to contemplate how much an impact music has brought to my life, and I ended up with stuff that can fill tomes.

Even though my parents and my elder brother always recalled the incident of me shaking my body on Chitrahaar songs when I was a mere year old, the first time I realized the mighty prowess of music was when I noticed some of the most pedagogical teachers from my 3rd standard tapping their feet as a group of 5th standard students performed on They don't really care about us by Michael Jackson. The dance was of course woefully bad, but the heavy beats coming out of the speakers brought even the most improbable of candidates into action. And even though I was listening to this song for the first time in 98', even I couldn't refrain from doing a move or two. Since then, I developed this habit of listening to songs of this genre. The beats, the dynamo, the freshness soothed my ears more than anything else. There was a time when my family members got fed up because every single time I got the remote, I would switch to mtv. And then slowly and slowly, it became an inveterate habit. I started liking songs from all genres and beats was all that I looked for.

Then came my standard 11 and standard 12 where I took medicine and engineering even after knowing that I'm gonna mess things up big time. There was school, there was coaching, there were weekly tests in the line up to the coveted medical and engineering entrances and amidst all this, I was supposed to study 7-8 hours a day. I, for me being a very indolent and sedentary kind of a guy, wasn't very apposite for this torture. Initially I managed to steer my way trying to divert my attention from all other things and made an honest attempt on studying. But some sound from the outside or some random thought would always break the flow. And then I tried it. I closed my room, and played a cd containing some pure theme songs on the player and attempted to study again. And for the first time in my life, I was able to study in continuity for more than an hour. That was a breakthrough.Music indeed can act as a sole barrier between you and the outside world.

A few years later, my passion for music and the hardwired desire in my brain to have more of it, rescued me yet again. I had gained a lot of weight and it was high time that I adopted some form of exercise. Went to the gym and all that I could savor that day was agony and abrogation for the routine I was asked to follow. I didn't go there again. Tried jogging, but left it due to lack of interest. People mocked at me that even for my fitness, I needed something which would amuse me. They said such a thing won't exist. But destiny wanted it to be otherwise. I cleaned up my bicycle which was untouched for about 3-4 years. I got it setup again and tried some cycling the next morning. It didn't work out. One, the neurotic impulses weren't helping and two, it was so trite. Next day,I tried to accompany my music player in the entourage. And although I was expecting it to be ineffectual, it worked. I was so much drowned in the atmosphere created by those captivating rhythms and beats that I kept cycling even though my limbs were paining. I cycled for about 30 minutes, a record by my standards. And since that day, I've been cycling for an hour or so in every 3-4 days.If it wasn't for the music, those plethora of scenic attractions and that motivating cohort of some gorgeous girls jogging at the same time, wouldn't have by alone sufficed to keep me tied to this regime. At times when I put in fresh collections of music on my music player, I cycle for about 20-30 minutes extra and I still feel that I want more. Such is the magic of this force.

My love for blogging was enough to bring me to an indiblogger meet but it was more about my love for music that brought me to the HP Connected Music Indiblogger meet. I went there and what ensued was exactly what I envisaged.The meet took place in the most luscious of places I visited, of late.The Hilton Garden Inn at Gurgaon. There was fanaticism, there was activity, there were bloggers, there was some awesome food for gourmands like me, and most importantly, there was music. The meet was centered around HP's groundbreaking app which would allow users to stay connected with their music all the time. The app had an exorbitant collection of songs courtesy of it working in partnership with Hungama.com and Universal Music, but it also had the most lucid and yet the most effective of user interfaces one is likely to witness. The demonstration of the app was coupled with the personnel from HP playing some of the crowd's favorite songs. The moment they played classics like Linkin Park and Sonu Nigam, the crowd jolted into action. We just couldn't stay on our feet, could we ? Not to forget, the very first song to be played right at the commencement of the event was one which no one can ever deny listening to - We Will Rock You. And although the beats and guitar were played in the background, it was Indiblogger's next door caveman who sung the revered lines for us.It was a spectacle to watch. Every one sung in sync.Prateek was rocking, as always.

As the events of the meet unfolded, we were more and more engrossed. There were blogger introductions where bloggers were asked to do some spooky musical thing after completing their intros. Some were asked to rock their heads, some were asked to pop up their famous dialogs. All in all, it was a good way to celebrate the spirit of that meet. Then there were other competitions where some bloggers won hp freebies for having the capability of remembering details of 10 new bloggers they met at the event and some bloggers won freebies for wearing a particular attire. HP goodies were distributed as if there was no tomorrow. Throughout the event, the Indiblogger twitter Indistream was flooded with tweets. Most of these were directed towards the happenings of the event and a substantial chunk was targeted towards the #HPConnectedMusic tweet competition where all the bloggers were asked to tweet their favorite songs. And would you believe it, two bloggers won 2 brand new hp laptops because their favorite songs coincided with some songs that were stored in a surreptitious place. They were ecstatic and the place got berserk. Everyone seemed to be congratulating the two lucky ones and every other blogger marveled at the exhilarating show which hp had put up with Indiblogger and Hilton. We concluded with distribution of more freebies(headphones of all kinds) and the usual Indiblogger tees. Then it was the time for picture sessions so as to ensure we had a reminiscent of the awesome time we all had at the meet. As it seemed, we were so many that no camera in the world was capable of capturing all our emotions in a single shot.But as a glutton, I've gotta admit that the food was too good to eat in healthy quantities.

As it turns out, music will continue to enlighten my life like it has always done. Whenever I've got a little bit of a mess to solve, I resort to music, consort to its beats to get me out of the heap. And like it has always been, music remains my best source of entertainment. Every single time we have a new metal or rock track doing rounds of the world,I get enthralled by it and make no delay in subscribing to its efficacy.Once I disbelieved that fallacy of me dancing to the beats as a one year old, but today when I see my 15  months old nephew doing the same, I succumb to that realization. Perhaps music is the only force that unifies us. For songs like Kolaveri Di and Oppa Ganagnam Style which had a native language but had the most scintillating of music,it was initially a surprise for everyone around the world how their popularity skyrocketed. Have seen the two songs being played in punjabi,gujrati and all sorts of weddings. Have seen unaware people initially mocking the dj for playing them and then thumping on their beats. Music, as it turns out, doesn't need a particular language to promulgate its purpose, the purpose is embellished in the music itself. I don't have a particular genre that I would love or a genre that I would despise, it's just the love of music which makes me submit to any and every song that gets my senses alive, any and every song that gets me ticking. Music has a life of its own and maybe this app by hp will help us in getting closer to our music.

This post is my entry to Indiblogger's HP Connected Music Experience supported by HP Connected Music .

A future full of energy, A future full of light

A few months back I got a rare chance to visit my native town near Patna in Bihar. Courtesy of this being a visit that was made after a whopping gap of 9 years, I couldn't help but feel flummoxed at all that caught my eye. There were certain stereotypes and certain predispositions which I had associated with my native place. These developed partially due to the reminiscents from the last visit and partly due to media reports that always promulgated the plight of the state. However, just as the media seems to be changing its stand and prejudices towards the state, so has the state transformed in what was unimaginable at one point of time.

The state has progressed and the progress has been exorbitant. What was once a small town that seemed so very secluded, has now become a hub of commercial activity.There are roads and highways that seem to be extending till eternity, connecting even the most remotest of places. And then there is a newly found prosperity which flourished as the natives of the place got a chance to capitalize on their talents and their expertise. What was once a place where people resided mainly in slums has now become a place with a pleasant visage of the newly built houses and the associated public infrastructure to supplement the development. So much for the progress but yet there is something which will take at least another decade to resolve - the Electricity Crisis !

When I roamed around the streets of the town during the day, bemused by the changes I noticed, I was really delighted to know that progress and true progress has actually touched this state. But as the clock struck 7 in the evening, darkness seemed to amass the whole area into its cloak. Not even a single source of light was there to be seen till people took out their torches, emergency lights and the evergreen candles. I waited for the power to come back. Having stayed in different metros, I knew power cuts are an inevitability but power almost always came back in a maximum span of an hour or two. But this time, the scene was different. The power came back only at 3 PM, the next day. And as if to add further woes to the tribulation, the voltage supplied was incapable of running almost any appliance - even an incandescent bulb ! It was the summers and I was almost soaked in sweat. I inquired a few  of my relatives about what happens when someone actually needs power in a town like this. They understood my predicament and told that even their need of power was desperate but asked me to stay patient till their time comes. I was rather bewildered. I was wondering if there was a pattern about the power cuts and perhaps this locality would get its chunk of workable power, sooner or latter.

In the evening, even the voltage that we got, was gone. I was angry. But then was the time for "our time" to come. There was a small cart attached to a mini truck and a humongous generator was being unloaded from it. In a matter of minutes, the original lines of power in our house were conjoined to the generator's output and every single appliance in the house commenced operation. I was somewhat perplexed and asked one of my cousins that what was the need of bringing a 20 KVA generator for a mere power cut. He replied that there are no mere power cuts and told me that every single time power went, it came back properly after 2-3 days at least.20 KVA generators are needed because the families are big and so is the consumption. That was the explication behind renting a generator during the meanwhile. I delved a little more into what my native members considered a blabber and too mainstream to talk on, but yet I continued. They told me that there were a few generator operators operating throughout that town and in case of a prolonged power cut like that, which is a frequent thing and happens once in every 10-15 days, they would lent the generators on a first come first serve basis. These local operators had 10-15 such generators and they would deploy all of them during these power cuts.I then inquired a little more about the pricing of the service and the utilization of the equipment. What I found formed the germ of an Idea. An Idea that may someday turn into a business.

I was stunned to know that the operating margin in this pied sized business is very high. The neighborhood was opulent enough to spend that extra chunk of money for the comfort of getting a power supply for all those 3-4 days when the power wasn't available. The system ran in a smooth flow of steps. The power cuts are more or less periodic and follow a set pattern. Every area in the town experiences a scarcity on fixed days of a month, with 1-2 days of margin. Hence the people would start booking the generators a good 3-4 days before such a power cut was either anticipated or scheduled to take place. The local papers in most cases were a step ahead in pronouncing the occurrence of the cut a good week in advance. Hence by the time the cut actually happens, the slots of all generators are already booked. Some people tend to book the generators for as long as the power cut lasts. Hence they pay a fixed amount and keep the generator in their premises as long as the power does not come back properly. The other scheme is that one can book the generator on a finite time basis where you initially book it for a day or two and then rebook it in case power doesn't come back within the stipulated time. Both schemes have pros and cons.The first scheme may make you shed a little more in case the power came back too early and the second scheme is such designed that the per day amount is much more and in the event of say a 3 day power cut, the second scheme will cost you around 15 percent more than the first one. Most of the people go with the first scheme. When I visited the town, the owners charged 1500 rupees for that first scheme. The average power cut duration is three days and hence the average turns out to be 500. The second scheme costs around 600 rupees per day.The rates seemed good to me as long as I didn't find out the missing link behind the gargantuan profit margins - you've got to buy your own fuel.

I was initially standing near the scene observing the generator being set up but then I saw one person from the family paying these people in advance for the diesel cans they brought. I was stunned to see the profit model. These generators were around 10 years old and yet the owner reaped in as much as 550 Rupees per day on an average without having to pay anything for the fuel. Considering the fact that these operators operate in a small loop of areas, all plagued with the power shortage, and subsequently deploy every generator at least 5-6 times every month, this would mean that every generator stays deployed for around 15-20 days every month, on an average. This would mean every generator earns around 550 * 20 = 11000 Rupees every month. There are 15 such generators with the owner whom we lent from and that owner would earn 11000 * 15 = 165000 per month just out of circulation of these generators. Assuming that the 3 people who transfer the generator get about 10000 per month, and considering a 20000 expenditure on transport and other inadvertent sources, there is a rock solid monthly profit of 115000. I surfed on the net to find out that such generators cost around 30000 and considering that one buys them in bulk, one can get them at around 25000. Hence 15 generators would cost 25000*15 = 375000. Given the rate at which profits are coming, the recovery would be made in 4 months and after that, the owner gets pure income of over a lac rupees a month. This, according to me, was the very reason that such a business sustained for such a long time.

I then took a few hours off to acquaint myself with the vicissitudes of the power situation in my town and nearby towns and connected villages. I found out that these places get power from the same grid and they get the power that is leftover after the main towns have consumed a substantial chunk of it. Hence, these towns always run with dwindling power supplies. I then looked at the prospects and found out that these places would get proper power in 4-5 years time when a proposed grid starts supplying more power to the state. However, it will take around a decade for the power situation to come to a stable state of affairs as the demand has also been increasing all the time.Moreover, I also tried to find out why these people don't buy their own generators. I found that people don't want to run into the trouble of maintaining a 30000 Rupee machine and one more thing is that the town has just two petrol pumps. Hence, one has to travel 20-25 Kilometers to buy the diesel, which these operators supplied with the rented generator at no extra cost.And the most encouraging thing about this business is that there are at least a score of towns similar to mine, all in close vicinity, which have this similar pattern of power cuts.

So it was then when it struck in my mind. For me always having a craving for management and entrepreneurship, I started seeing this as a strong and a very potential area for starting a business. I saw this opportunity because the existing ways in which this system is being handled has some inherent flaws. One, the rates being charged are too high. One reason for this is the monopoly that has crept in with just a few owners operating in the realm and all of them following the same pricing structure. As it turns out, even a per day cost of around 300 Rupees is enough to get a recovery in 10-12 months. Even after scaling down the base rate to such an extent, one would get a good enough profit. But what I intend to do in order to increase the profits, is to increase the running time of every generator. By making a network of a large number of generators, and having more men to transfer them and covering more and more nearby areas, one can get a utilization of 23-25 days per month. The concerned areas don't fall short of power all at the same time.They fall short in a criss cross pattern. Hence, by covering more and more areas, the utilization of generators would only increase. It's true that transportation cost too would increase, but the heavy profit margin in one single extra transaction negates that escalation. The generators are rock solid machines and would be at ease even if they are run for 365 days a year. The second change I intend to bring is a more structured and variable pricing. Instead of asking for the same cost on zero power and less power days, I intend to ask less for less power days. This would make the perspective customers think once about shelling just that little extra money for that extra comfort of getting usable power.In a nutshell, my business plan is about utilizing every single generator in the best possible way. The men employed in the business would not be just a means of transporting a generator. They would be the ones who would be the local contact person to book one in case of need. They all have to be connected with each other at each and every point of time. They all have to be aware of the status of a generator at each and every point of time. This is where the need of automation comes in. This is where Microsoft Office 365 comes into the picture.

As I envisage, one can start this network with 2-3 towns and 20-30 generators. But with time, this business can grow up to 20-30 towns with at least 500 generators. And given the opulence and the enormous need of power, even this big a network will not suffice, thereby inducing more flux of growth. The extremely low pricing will act as an added impetus. Hence to manage such a large network of generators with just 1-2 personnel managing every 10-20 generators in a business zone, all these personnel in all these zones will have to stay connected to the surrounding business zones. Some areas will at times need more generators and some areas will at time need less. This is where the need of proper booking and record keeping comes in. By using a consummate product like Excel and Word, this can be done with ease. And the sharing facilities of sharepoint, render it almost a child's play for all these zones to stay acquainted with the upcoming demand of generators in the nearby zones. Hence, at every point of time, there would be excel sheets and word documents maintained for every generator and every zone, and these would be accessible to all the men on field. When there's a need for a new generator, the sheets for generators will come handy to find out which ones are free. And the sheets of zones would be used to transport generators at the right time and to see if a nearby area is falling short or has a surplus of generators for the upcoming days. The situation will be extremely dynamic and without sharepoint and simple yet powerful tools like MS Excel and Word, this wouldn't be possible.

Then comes the second aspect of my business - communication. With IM features,Online meetings and voice calling provided by Lync,it would cater to all the communication needs at just the initial cost. Comparing this with using face to face communication and normal cellphone calling, the hold on costs would be considerable. One thing is that face to face meetings in such a business would serve only as much of purpose as an online meeting through Lync.And at the same time, Lync would save the personnel from mustering at a point and save their cost of commute, thereby saving substantially and yet ensuing the communications with efficacy at a very low cost.

Third important aspect of my business would be the infrastructure.Courtesy of these towns being in an area where electricity in itself is the problem, a network of pcs can never even be thought of. However, the mobile networks in these areas are good and support data transfer and even 3G. Hence, the field men of my business would be using tabs with 3G connections. Hence we can either use Webapps on our tabs which would allow us to use office products online through our browsers or we can actually save the office suite on the tabs because Office 365 can run on virtually any platform and any architecture.This would go a long way in narrowing our responsibilities and the circle of considerations while putting the initial setup.  All that we'll be needing would be tabs with an internet connection and all of our data would be stored in a cloud whose security,maintenance and accessibility would be ensured by Microsoft. Hence for a business which is so niche, Office 365 would go a big way in parrying all the infrastructure related burden away from us. The field men would use the Excel,Word and other products of the office suite as and when they need and would stay connected through Lync. And all our data would be available to us as and where we like. And not to forget, the sharepoint would allow multiple field men to make changes to the documents simultaneously, which is the heart of the dynamicity of this business.

All in all, in the beginning, this would be a small business with very little accountability and management. However, as the business would cross the 30-40 towns barrier, there would be a need of bringing a dedicated small management and making the task somewhat easier for the field men. Since these towns are not erudite and apposite for having a management set up on their own, the management and the hierarchical responsibilities would be setup in a remote place. Hence the model would work with the field men booking generators and supplying generators but the management, working from some other place, deciding which generators from one zone to be supplied to some other zone. But even after this restructuring, the same Office 365 suite will suffice for all the needs. The field men would still work with the same tabs.Now, the field men would create and edit the booking documents and sheets and upload them on cloud, from where the remote management can make modifications at the same time and would access these documents to create the utilization charts of generators. Different members of the management would then work on these utilization charts simultaneously, courtesy of cloud and sharepoint, and would generate supply charts that the field men would view on the cloud and would supply the generators accordingly. And the fact that Office 365 obviates any client platform dependency makes the task of putting up the management infrastructure task all the more easy. Like always, the management and the field men can use the single Lync to connect among themselves and connect with each other, thereby handling all communication needs of even this scaled up business.

With time, the business may expand to more areas of Bihar and to more areas of states with a similar predicament. Hence the same model would be replicated with management remaining the same but new field teams being constituted in these areas. Hence more and more connectedness would be needed amongst all these units and Office 365 will take care of that for us. As the business will grow, so will the management. And then we would have the need of our own email to make actions more informed and more accountable. With Outlook in Office 365, we will get an email service with our own domain name and with 25GB of inbox space per user. Hardly would any user need anymore than that. And with time, as our business expands, we'll be needing to go global so as to attract more and more venture capitalists and prospective investors whose investments will help us in expanding our models. This is where the need of having an online portfolio on a website comes in. Office 365 allows us to create websites with ease and also gives us the option of hosting them our own domains. Hence Office 365 will take care of these two additions.

With time, we will also be propelled to have more things shared between the management and the field sites. In case of such a restructuring, the Team sites feature would come handy. For our being a business where awareness of each other's tasks and outputs is of the paramount importance, team sites would help the entities share each and every sort of information, be it calendars,reports and would also keep all of them in sync. As the model would be transported to other places, some kind of training may have to be imparted to the new members of the organization. Lync would once again come at our disposal with its rich set of interfaces. The trainees could be trained online through conferences and through world class presentations which PowerPoint now has a reputation of helping in. All in all, virtually everything in my business could be managed through Office 365.

Coming to the more abstract picture, by going for Office 365 instead of a mere automation alongwith separate processes for communication, we'll not only be incorporating all units into one single conglomerate but we'll also be making every one's task simpler.Moreover, Office365 ensures a 99.9 percent uptime and is also very scalable. Since our business is something which will stay more or less the same with just the scale being extended at every conjecture, Office 365 seems to be the most apposite way of handling all the operations. It's reliable, administration is very simple and for a location like this, seems to be the perfect candidate.When 10 years down the line, these towns start getting ample of power on their own, we'll move into new avenues. During those times, villages would be facing the same problems in which they would be having power but only intermittently. We may be needed to shift our operations from one area to another but the intrigue of cloud services provided by Office 365 would make sure that the management still works from the same place, hence helping us substantially. I plan to do this business not to reap in huge benefits but to bring some more happiness in the lives of those who are our sojourns in our journey. I dream of a future that is full of energy, I dream of a future that us full of light.

In order to know more about Office 365, please visit this link.       
                                             
                                                       http://www.office365.in/

The cult that overtook us

There was a time in India, perhaps in the late 90's and the early 2000's, when contemporary rituals and credos started dominating over the pre-existent ones.This move coincided with the event of the youth taking over the old in terms of dictating demographics and with communities intermingling more and more with each other. The conventional world was sent into a diaspora with the youth no longer paying obeisance to the well established moral conduct and started creating a culture of its own. One that could appropriately be described as a cult, courtesy of it being at loggerheads with what was once assumed to be our way of living. With time, the cult established and was promulgated courtesy of a humongous crowd willing to follow it. This cult comprised of wearing a pair of jeans that looked like a gunny bag, wearing colorful bands on wrists, coining up jargon more erudite to describe the modern lifestyle and even the pejorative terms and profane suppositions were revised to be adapted to the modern era. In short, we as the youth, were successful in doing what we were supposed to do. To throw out the obsolete system of conduct and to bring in a new one that was found more apposite. And with time, this system took over us.

The reason why I say this is that I sense a kind of liability towards being frivolous in some people. And other people tend to be serious because they believe that if their level of humor or charm cannot cross the threshold, they may be deemed unfit for their respective cohort. The kind of clauses that have been tacitly inculcated in our modern code of conduct demand us to be different and peculiar. Being the obvious is no longer going to fetch you the loyalty of your group. If you are merely good at your academics, you're too conventional. If you're a rockstar who is also good at a sport, you're a heartthrob. In this way, the usual beliefs and stereotypes get vested in our conscience as well. Henceforth, in every walk of your life, you develop certain apprehensions about the mannerism in which you ought to do your thing.This even gets manifested in our professional ethics and our work life as well. Doing something good at your work is considered okay but going beyond that and making a superficial and superfluous addition would be considered as an adage no matter how futile it actually was. In this way, life transcended the usual and being beyond the usual became our ultimate goal.

With time, even our subconscience succumbed to our dispositions which were veiled within us but which made their presence conspicuous. The trepidation of not being able to look in accordance with the doctrines and not being able to act at the behest of the newly setup traditions overtook any impulse of doing something good just because the thing did not seem to do much different or the thing was seemingly not going to produce the scintilla which your inner-self always craved for. You did not want it for yourself but for your paltry presence.A sedentary lifestyle would triumph if it seemed cool but an active lifestyle wouldn't if it seemed jaded and juice less. Hence the establishments became so deeply imbibed that ignoring them was no longer considered a viable option.

Now, you only had two ways to sustain. Either do something intriguing and become a part of the coveted and esteemed cohort that is at the center stage of any avenue or become what a substantial chunk of any group resorts to, being the obvious, being the spectator. And as this trend swept in, massive participation or gross participation in groups ceased to exist with only a few chosen ones, the ones who were different and the ones who palpably epitomized the values that set for ourselves, became the forerunners and the flag bearers of the social groups. It was not iniquity but inequity because of the fact that the morbid transformation was done by due permission of the ones who were transformed. And hence that phase when everyone seemed to be the involved in a social group, was officially over. Irrespective of how woefully humorous a guy would be, if he is more humorous than the others, he becomes the group's blue-eyed boy. And irrespective of how humorous a usual member of the group may be, if he wasn't the group's blue-eyed boy, he would continue to be the majority. This rule evolved with time and now a new member of the group was allowed to replace the existing blue-eyed boy just because his level of proficiency and his efficacy for what he was the blue-eyed boy, had severely plummeted. And hence the group gets its new blue-eyed boy but the group never becomes a group in the conventional sense because the members never desired it to be one. It wasn't admissible as per their norms.

And now, the same culture that once promoted being different, is deterring people from doing different things or from getting involved in avenues which are usually considered to be the forte of those who are presciently different. A very recent example of this was our April fools' celebrations. There was a time when everyone used to have a glow and an emanating mischievousness on their face throughout the day. Perhaps all of them were fooled and all of them also succeeded in fooling.But alas, today, we just had  people who were so impressed and awestruck by the ways in which they were initially fooled that they no longer had the courage to fool anyone because they saw the level of fooling falling below the bar. Hence there were a very few people who gathered the courage to fool people because they had confidence in their ways but the rest of them chose to be made fools because they did not see any risks in doing that. Making an attempt of fooling someone and conjuring a woeful failure in that attempt deterred most of them from executing their plans. And hence the April fools' day passed like it was just another day. If it was 1998, you would have walked with a multitude of memories to store forever, but yesterday, people walked back with plans they never executed. Hence the same culture, the same cult we once created, has now overtaken us. It has restricted our interactions and ways of interaction on social platforms, and it has made you give a serious thought to this post without being able to figure out that this post in itself was an attempt to fool you ! Happy April fools' day. Sorry, couldn't get the time to post this yesterday. 

1984 by George Orwell:Manifestations in our Era I

There are times when your association with a book does not end up with the mere act of reading the final word. In fact, the book has already left such a deep imprint on your conscience that you can no longer fathom a renegade against the ideas or excerpts presented in it. Such is the case with George Orwell's 1984. The book was written in 1949 as an expression of the author's supposed prophecy about how an envisaged state of Oceania would look in 1984. The book talks about a strictly controlled regime, Oligarchy as the only political ideology , filthy lifestyles with procurement of desiderata being the primordial aim of life, false and specious claims made by the government, curbing of public thought and apostasy to not just the extent of spoken word but even to the public thought, total monitoring of all aspects of life, and the ever watching face of the Big Brother. If you ever wondered what could be the ostensible source of the concept used by reality shows like Big Brother and Bigg Boss, it was this book and its verses. Just like the cameras of BB house always stalked the participants and tracked every activity, the telescreens of Orwell's 1984 tracked every movement and every aspect of the citizens of the state of Oceania. And just as a poster sized eye of Bigg Boss or Big Brother seems to follow you wherever you roam in the house, the ever watching face in Big Brother's life size cutout seems to be following you everywhere with its heretical quote "Big Brother is watching you". If the book in itself inspired a complete cohort of reality shows which subsequently turned out to be so successful, I was wondering if there are many more manifestations in our current lives which apparently are veiled from our eyes. This series of posts is devoted to that intent.

The ever watching face of the Big Brother is nothing but an articulately captured face of the man who is the leader of the party that rules over Oceania. The face can be found on walls of the house, corridors of the residential as well as official buildings, corners and conspicuous points on streets and almost on every space that meets the eye. The picture could also be found on the currency notes of Oceania. The face and the associated quote is not just an ostentatious way of flaunting the face of the leader but a way of asserting their leadership and their prowess by virtue of using a very niche form of symbolism. The face is put everywhere and rules are setup against those who try to remove it or torn it. This makes sure that irrespective of where you go and what you do, you'll have a cutout of Big Brother observing you. The cutout is just an assertive entity which comes with telescreens which are comparatively paltry in number and can actually notice your activity unlike the face of the Big Brother that is just a piece of canvas or paper. However, the two combine to create a sort of trepidation that shrivels through the conscientiousness of the citizen in a way that vests the orthodoxies of the rule and the regime in his/her mind. The two form a kind of amalgamation to ensure that the public stays extremely wary about the consequences of going against the government ruling the state. The face may not observe you but the telescreens could. There were also certain concealed microphones whose presence or absence you could never be sure of. Hence the kind of effect produced through this was very humongous in magnitude. Every citizen of Oceania would have to think an umpteen number of times because of being in the notion of being heard or seen. The face of the Big Brother issuing the continuous uninterrupted warning just compounded the feeling of getting caught. It was all about using symbolism as an effective way of asserting your presence in a seemingly comprehensible way.

Its very perspicuous to find out a trend of modern rule where that heterodoxy is being vested. Ever watched a movie where the room of a police station or the office of a top notch government official was shown. You can easily spot photographs of certain leaders hanging of the walls. Some of these photographs belong to Gandhi or Ambedkar or Bose and there's nothing wrong with it because these virtuoso had a very relevant role to play in our independence and their thoughts ought to be promulgated by virtue of such presentations. What is peculiar are the photos of Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi, for that matter. These individuals had no role to play in the independence of the nation and they were politicians in every regard and elected just like the other politicians. Hence irrespective of how much they did for the nation, these offices and the associated personnel must have had no compulsion on their own to put pictures of them on their walls. This could have come out either of sycophancy or adulation of leaders who belonged to the same political outfit, or out of a tacit mandate of putting pictures as instructed. In fact the trend could date back to the first elected government when photographs of a ruling leader or of a leader whose party is still ruling were for the first time put on walls. The trend strengthened and got somewhat fortified during and after the emergency when even the movie makers made every possible attempt to capture this connotation by deliberately placing cameras in a way that makes sure that these pictures could be seen.This was once again nothing but a mere way of asserting authority over those who are supposed to be the tier two of a hierarchy that was headed by the leaders whose pictures were concerned.Symbolism can be powerful ! It was so effective that during the emergency when the number of pictures put on the walls of the offices increased manifold, the proficiency and the throughput of the officials too increased considerably. This was done not at the behest of respect for the leaders but at the behest of the dread exerted by their virtual presence in their rooms.

This philosophy has now extended beyond the mere confinement of pictures and has spread over to statues and naming of public conveniences. This is particularly prevalent specially in UP. The leader who wins elections erects her effigies all over an area that runs for acres and acres, and renames most of the educational  institutions and important flyovers and buildings after her or after the man who contrived the ideology of her party. When the other party which is at loggerheads with this one comes into power, it demolishes these same statues,renames the same buildings after their own leaders and the cycle keeps going on and on. The parties wouldn't have indulged into this fracas if they held any skepticism about its efficacy, but the very fact that they spend a substantial chunk of their capital on it shows how big an impact it has on the naive and gullible lot of destitute and indigent voters who see upon these as their messiahs. Such is the power of symbolism and such is the applicability and the veracity of methods and modes that Orwell neatly described in a book that is so far from our reality and yet deeply imbibed in it.

Do pour in your thoughts and comments and remember, "Big Brother is watching you".

Paranormal Activity IV: The Befallen Anathema

It's often felt that a total servitude to your passion and your eagerness can promptly result in the biggest of your achievements or the biggest of your discoveries. It has been a good 12 years since the below mentioned series of events was witnessed by me and a few more chaps of mine, but the sequence is as fresh as it was when we chose to be audacious to a force whose very presence we suspected. This is related to an ages old anathema whose promulgation and whose denouncements,although I was never sure of their authenticity and never will be, once gallored.

I was in my sixth standard when these peculiar and inexplicable events unfolded. There was a very ridden and unorganized kind of pasture near the far boundary of my school's premises. This boundary was kept reserved for prospective construction and expansion activities in the future. Although there was a well built wall guiding this boundary, there were a few gaps and conspicuous crevices here and there.Now coming to the curse. A few friends of mine had always told me tales of a witch who probably resided in that portion of land when there was nothing build around it. It was said that the witch had probably killed a few boys and she herself got eliminated in either this same process or some other ominous procedure which was to follow. Nothing was ever claimed about the bodies of the boys but it was said that the witch was sealed in a clad and was buried nearby. It was also said that the witch had an anathema associated with her afterlife confinement. This much was the version of the story that I got from quite a varied lot of sources that comprised primarily of friends from my own class and a few seniors.Irrespective of how varied their versions were, most of them shared a mention of the witch.

I was pretty much certain for the larger part that these rumors and fables are nothing but stories cooked up entirely out of the imagination of kids who've grown up watching TV programs of similar flavor. But I always had a sense of inquisitiveness associated with this pagan belief. For around the first 3 years at the school, I or any of my fellow mates never made any attempt to check the veracity of this story. Perhaps all of us held skepticism about this being a story purely cooked up by the other and none of us was really in a position to find the root of it. But then came a time when out of nowhere we, as a group of around 20 students, decided to devote all of our games and extra activities periods in expediting this stretch which though was just a few meters from the main building, was still somewhat hidden because of the overgrown belt of bushes.

We just used to delve into this stretch with our sticks and stones. We dug out some soil, found out some old receipt books of the school of which some dated back to around 1987(2000 was the year when we did this), and found some old notebooks and torn apart practical files which ones again dated back to the early 90's. We sort of started to feel a sense of intrigue by finding things that in someway manifested a very different timeline. We also found a few Cosco tennis balls which perhaps came there as a result of cricket shots being hit with a larger magnitude of force than required. These balls seemed to us as a kind of reward for our hard work. We kept excavating the area and we had even formed a well formed path using sticks and strings to mark the way that we would use when we would come back the next time. For about a month or so, this area engrossed our awe and amazement as we did something very different from what the rest of the school did in the sports periods. We were at the same time wary of not getting caught for coming into an area that was tacitly prohibited. And then came the time!

When we were on the verge of stopping this never ending exercise and were probably spending our last handful of days in the marked territory, we were to witness a spectacle which is somewhat difficult to explain. One day, when we were digging around the very wall that guarded the school, we found the bone that perhaps seemed to be either the neck bone of a small animal or a reminiscent of the toe bone or some other complex bone of perhaps some larger animal. We were not very sure about it. Then after a day or two, we found a group of ants carrying another portion of some bone, which certainly seemed to be that of a chicken.The ants carried it to the other end of the wall through a hole. The sight somewhat amassed all of us near itself. As we all tried to garner the intricacies of the scene, an unusual kind of cacophonous tone started coming from an electricity or phone pole that was situated adjacent to the wall. This kind of tone was often reproducible by dialing a particular number on the PSTN landline networks but never before had any of us seen any telephone or electricity(we were so scared that we could not even notice what pole it is !)pole emitting this kind of tone.We simply ran away from the place, frightened out and trembling out of trepidation.

Never again in my conscience was I going to make an attempt of excavating that territory again.Although the thought of going back again and finding out the nature of that pole did captivate us, we never really had the courage to go back. However, a few days after this supposed tryst ended, a swimming pool was proposed to be built around that area. The whole portion of land which was once a subject of our fear, was now occupied by machinery and hutches of men who were to complete the structure.Nothing peculiar happened during the course of the construction and the swimming pool was built on time. The boundaries of the school were accordingly adjusted and what was once a barren and rarely visited land, was now turned into a spectacle and a place with a large footfall. As people started visiting the pool, so did I and all others who were a part of that expedition cohort. Nothing unusual or grizzly ever happened during our stay. However, one could always sense a very admonishing silence around the place but this could always have been attributed to the high rising walls which possibly insulated the pool from outside.Nothing unusual  happened with the pool except for a case or two of amateurs nearly drowning themselves by mistakenly going in the deep area and then later on getting saved by the vigil and valorous instructors. But as such, nothing different or vague ever happened with it.

There was one thing though that always stayed with the area and with the everlasting horizons that extended beyond the boundary of the school. As the pool was completed, the total school boundary got a revamp. As a result, the bushes were all cleared up and the whole scene from across the far end of the school and in fact a few good meters beyond it was now clearly visible from even the windows of our class.Hence, the area that was once visible only by subsiding the bushes and physically entering the territory was now very much visible even from a distance. As our classes went on, I always stopped to take note of a person who always donned white overalls and who almost always seemed to be standing near one of the poles,which ostensibly belonged to the same series as the one which emitted a sound, and then would go away after some stipulated time. This always happened in the morning. As my classroom shifted to the dorsal side of the school, I was no longer in a position of taking a note of this man's presence. Then a few years later, once again my classroom was shifted to the frontal side. This time,the man's regime seemed to have changed as he no longer stood near the pole. But one day, when the clouds were pouring heavily, an extremely sharp short circuit seemed to have trickled that pole. The light and the sound were sharp enough to let me know that these poles were a part of an electric transmission. Hence what I witnessed years ago was an electronic pole emitting a kind of tone which one gets by dialing some code number on landline telephone. That was enough to let me know of what the sight wanted to convey. There may be a force whose veracity may be very very specious and apocryphal and yet as long as you don't have enough evidence to outright deny it, you're not supposed to titillate it !