Na Tum Jano Na Hum

Why is there music in the air?
why is there music in the skies?
why is there music in my heart?
you don't know, nor i
you don't know, nor i

Why this change of season?
why this change of heart?
why does one fall in love?
you don't know, nor i

you don't know, nor i

This ecstasy, this loneliness,
who clouds my imagination?
the wet wet season,
the desires of youth
where is love leading me?
why dont I see anything?
why am I intoxicated?
why do i love this feeling?
you don't know, nor i
you don't know, nor i

 

The new feeling hurts
sometimes it burns my heart
A new fragrant desire
at heart, I am faithful
why do your eyes hold each other.
why is this happening to us
why are we together
you don't know, nor i
you don't know, nor i

 

[+] Original songs hindi  lyrics is here

[+] Song picturisation is too cute. Enjoy it here

[-]  Discliamer: I am not the author of original hindi version or its english translation.

[+] I loooove this song. Hearing it continously for nth time from morning. Not at all cloyed by its sweetness. Now become evangelist to spread the magic of this song. Entertainment guaranteed. Enjoy

[+] Lucky Ali voice, Music, or Lyrics. Don't know which is best? Jadoo

 

Read more!

Life full of Inspirations!

Corporate world - We never know what is the other side of the person who is sitting next to us. As mentioned before, we get inspired by them more and more. Money becomes just a part of life when we see these. As we grow older these thoughts are more frequent. Thats true. Am also growing up. This blogpost is after my visit to Ananya trust, in Bangalore. Inspirational idols as perceived by me: [+] Dr.Shashi Rao. Veteran in non-formal education. Started Ananya trust in 1999 for children from economically under privileged children. Now on its 8th year, Ananya trains 60+ kids. These kids stay with them during weekdays and return back home on weekends to their parents. The kids come from varied backgrounds but experienced similar unfortunate experiences like pathetic childhood, poor family, drunken or irresponsible father, disintegrated family, disdained and hated by the formal education system. Ananya trains them in life skills. The way of their teach is quite different- fun filled and experience driven learning. Based on age and inclination to academics, Ananya groups them and train them in basic education. Science, Maths, Social Science, English, Hindi, Kannada are introduced to them in a fun-filled way. Kids can choose the subjects they want to learn. During our schoolhood, we would have loved few subjects, liked few more and hated a host of subjects. But here scenario is quite different. All kids undoubtedly love all subjects! Because of hours of hardwork, the faculties in ananya put in preparing for the best way to drive home the basics. [+] Mr.Uddhav (dunno his second name). He is an IIT gradaute who chose to work with Ananya as a permanent faculty after his MTech. Surprised to see people who throw away their high paying jobs to work for life's beautiful challenges like this. [+] The Great Govindraju. Ananya's first student. Its brand ambassador who has influential network to spread word about Ananya among kids of his same background. His nature as explained by Dr.Shashi is highly inspirational. Natural leader, and captain of students' union of Ananya. Plays hockey extremely well, has lots of energy and creativity. Got host of fan followers too in the school. Earlier, he had made a battery operated fan from rags that he picked up and had designed his own FM radio. During their Honnemardu trip, a group of kids travelled in a coracle to reach the Island in the middle. After hours of rowing, they reached nowhere. Coracle is a circular boat where rowing has to be in uniform to move forward or backward. Otherwise coracle will go on revolving itself. Few kids got panicked and that worsened the situation further. Our hero Govindraju tried his best to cheer up kids to row in unison. Atlast, he thrown away his row and said " I am not going to help you all. We will stop rowing". That anger from their leader triggered the kids and all suddenly started rowing in unison afterwards. Later he cheered and guided them to the island. [+] Vishal Talreja. Founder Director of Dream A Dream. He and his group of friends dedicated their entire life for the noble cause of serving back the society. Had written enough about DaD before too. Some more new information: when started DaD had plans to work with terminally ill children, started programs with Freedom Foundation. Later they diversified to cater needs of economically under privileged kids too. Now DaD is a big organisation running a lot of parallel programs throughout the year. Vishal is an Ashoka Fellowship holder. Apt word will be social entrepreneur. Recently he had been selected to attend a Waldzell Meeting at the Melk Abbey in Austria. Its a meeting the dwells into the subject of "The challenge of change - Can the individual change the world?". 12 young people from across the world are selected every year to be the Architects of the Future and this year, he has been selected as one of the participants. The most interesting thing about the meeting is that it has speakers of the likes of Paulo Coelho (The author of The Alchemist) and Isabel Alende (Author of The House of The Spirits). [+] More photos taken in Ananya trip. [+] Few more video clips too. Football game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfuXMPtDUKA Art work of kids. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUYiNpYWJxk Dance by Jayanth.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OmnEFlR2oM

Read more!

Don't misuse media power!

Media has enormous power over people. But this is clear case of media blowing up a stupid issue. NDTV correspondent stationed at PM's residence reported at 8:45 PM on 27th July, that there was "A security breach in PM's house". NDTV started airing the related developments till people got pissed off with whole episode and shutdown the TV. Initially, me and my fren got enthused on hearing those catchy headlines at 9 PM news. The news was: Two girls and a guy drove in till second gate of PM's residence without prior appointment. The reporter argued that no one should be allowed to enter that zone without prior appointment or ID card. If SPG frisks and pisses off these reporters daily with their detailed secuiruty checks, even if media persons carry a valid ID card from the government, "How can they allow those guys in sonata?"

Yeah, there was a lapse in security, but definitely it is not a big issue to blow up and sensitise. They have wasted a helluva lot of airtime in broadcasting the video clips and interview with the girl on the car repeatedly. Later, some retired SPG person came on air in NDTV to confirm that this is a secuirty breach. Bargha datt was sent to place of incident in that late night to collect more info. Some more reporters put in action to contact PMO. Besides the whole 10 PM news time, was wasted in speaking about this issue again and again. NDTV tried to track those youngsters later in that midnight. What not? All sort of idiotic coverage over an useless issue. Isn't it a height of stupidity?? Folks, stop misusing media power.

Read more!

Corporate Competition and A Product Launch!

Apple computers reinvented itself through i-pod. From sagging revenue, Steve jobs showed a remarkable turnaround in Apple computers. I-pod symbolises a gadget can create it's own market. Nobody would have thought about the market of personal media players till then. Now everybody jumps in to say I want a pie in it. After I-pod' phenomenal success, samsung came with Yep, Flextronics has Hip and host of electronics giants has their PMP. The best i-pod can cost me more dosh than buying a great television set for home. Besides I-pod comes with a tiny display, plays only audio and can't receive any broadcasted audio or video signal. Don't you think it is dumb gadget? But it is selling like a hot fudge. Believe me, its USP stand on simple belief, that it is my own media player.

Apple's I-pod success envy Samsung a lot. Samsung last year publicly vowed to take away Apple's top spot in music players by 2007. This year, the South Korea-based company will kick off that effort with a slew of products and large ad campaigns, Peter Weedfald, senior vice president of consumer electronics for Samsung's North American division, said during an interview last week at the Consumer Electronics Show. "What's the difference between how they have gone to market and how we have gone to market? It's real simple. They spent $165 million last year to advertise Apple MP3 products. We spent $1 million," Weedfald said. "We are going to break the code. In 2006, we are going to over-invest in advertising and marketing around these really hot, new digital video and digital audio products, and we will spend tens of millions of dollars."

 

Internet moguls spoke about Video-On-Demand for long time. Now technlogy become matured enough to cater to this market. Google announced video store in CES 2006, which is a convergene of entertainment media like sony, CBS, NBA with Google. Watch the video of Larry page explaining what is google video store all about here.  You can understand how casual a product launch can go. Their business tagline is: 'You have the show "Desperate Housewives," and you spend maybe a million to produce one episode. That thing is going to sit on a shelf for a year or two until it goes into syndication or DVD. What if the next day, Mr. ABC, after you've made money on advertising, I could take the fresh lettuce of content and sell it the next day for $1.99 and give you back $1.50?' And someone at ABC says...'That's a good idea."

 

Read more!

101 - Not just kids, We too got graduated!

With 3 sessions and endless hours of emails and homework, our workshop on teaching basics of computer to kids got completed today. We trained 10 kids from Ananya, a NGO in Bangalore. In three sessions (101) we covered computer basics, Ms paint usage, file, folders, Ms Word usage and basics of ever-attractive Internet. With this training, those kids got gradauted to next level. These sessions drained us both physically and emotionally. Now "We can sleep for lifetime", as quoted by my friend. Worked with a lovely team, Tanu, Bhavya, Ranganath, Jason and Devendra (You can see them in action in the photos in my flickr album). Vishal and Shwetha are our team leaders for the whole workshop and our saviors too when we faced trouble in explaining difficult computer concepts to kids. In retrospective (even though all sessions were tiring) we all are emotionally satisfied that we could help a bit in Dream A Dream's grand vision of imparting life skills to these special kids. A word about those kids, they all hated and run away formal style of education at some point of time in their life or devoid of that. Ananya trains them in life skills in a more informal way. DaD works with Ananya in computer training. Manjunath, Shekar, Priya, Charanraj, Murali, Dinesh, Suresh, Bannapa, Shobana and Jayanth. (Wow, I could able to recollect all their names!) We won't forget these little friends for life time. These kids are very shrewd and intelligent. One instance, during last session, Vishal gave a difficult challenge to Murali to get back his attention from games. Vishal typed few words, decorated them with wordarts, added bullets and numbering, changed the font color and sizes and asked Murali to do the same in a different word document. Murali selected the line from this document, copied it and pasted it in his document, said "Uncle, give me a tough question, this is very easy!".

Got few video clips of kids. Fun, frolic and banterings...

Read more!

Are Internet service providers blocking blogs?

I couldn't stop laughing at this act of stupidity by few ISPs. If it is under directive of any government, it is highly condemnable. I was able to access my blog till today afternoon. Later in the day, any access to blogspot goes into timed out mode.

 

[+] Rediff story on this.

[+] Sticky blog update on this issue from http://www.withinandwithout.com/?p=854 and desipundit

[+] If you can't access my blog, use the http://www.pkblogs.com and tweak the link accordingly. or via proxy (http://www.hidemyass.com/), and see if you can access.

[-]  When I try to access my blogspot directly, here is the message i get.

The connection has timed out   

Try Again.

 

Update on 21 July 2006, 6 PM

Hurray! The blockade is out!   Now blogs are back in full swing.

 

Read more!

Lovely drop in Proverbial Ocean - Part II

Hi folks, I like to introduce the co-author for these stories. EmptyMind. She is my best friend. If you like these stories, now you know whom to appreciate! ;) If you haven't read the chapter -1, click here

Chapter 2 : On Sunday

Vasanth was unable to believe his luck. Inspite of German loosing the match, his proposal has been accepted. Now his mind was racing.. "When am I going to meet her next? How happy can our lives be? How did she manage to keep a blank face after seeing the SMS?"etc etc. All he could think of at that moment was the song "Ragasiyamanadhu kadal".

Now to Janu. She in her thoughts: "Why the hell did he tell me after all these years? I don't have time now. I gotto rush. Does he really know me after 10yrs? Yeah. Agreed I love him but am not sure if I am worth such a nice guy. Will my parents agree? Will his parents agree? Was I fast enough in telling a yes… but you know its OK. I love him so agreed. Nothing wrong in telling the truth. Atleast I made him happy for few minutes." etc etc.  All she could think of at that moment was the lines from song Etho ondru " Antha theivam unnai kakka thinam thozhuven thavaramal".

Janu was denying for her wedding at home for the past few years hoping Vasanth to propose her. Finally she gave up on this and blamed her luck and agreed to her parents to start looking for a guy. The proposals started coming and now this came suddenly. GOD sometimes, these guys are really really slow in doing things.

Time to know about the family of both these.

As I told before, Vasanth believes he is born to lead a majestic life. He has never been denied of whatever he wanted in his life. He could get everything easily and has never seen the "other side" of life. Everything will happen normally. According to him, his parents will not deny this either. Basically, nothing much to tell… He is a person born without a spoon ofcourse and was gifted with a silver spoon.

This Janu, has never seen anything that is "Normal" in her life. As mentioned before, for her life is a dream. She had to fight really hard to get even her smallest of all wishes to be fulfilled. The only faith in her life is GOD. Inspite, of all these things she has made every other person feel she is the luckiest soul on this earth and many were even jealous of her. At times, she used to laugh to herself thinking of these. People speak of multiple personality and it's really true in her scenario. One for her first circle of friends, One for everyone else and One for her family.

Thank God. It became Sunday evening. They had to catch the train and thanks to the people whoever had cancelled their tickets. The tickets were confirmed and they got 2 comfortable berths. The train was also empty when they boarded from their village. It gets filled after 3-4 hrs of journey in the next station only. So enough time for them to talk too… The train started and they both in full smiles.

As always, Janu started speaking with her great questions:

J:  So what SMS did you send me?

V: You read and replied right?

J: Yeah… but tell me na?

V: OK..I love you. Now what?

J: When did you start thinking of this? Started getting this feeling?

V: Long time back.. thought of telling you and told now.

Like this on and on the conversation continued between these two for looooooooooooong hours till the people came. Nothing serious was discussed or spoken and both were in their own dreams. Expecting everything to move smoothly. Thinking of how to start telling people at home and how to convince each. Discussing seemed really easy to them. Looks like, they have never seen a love marriage in their life.

Falling in Love with a person is difficult. After that, getting the courage and telling it to that person.. life is gone! And finally it getting acknowledged and accepted nothing more to beat it. It has happened in both their lives… What more is needed atleast to have some fun between them???

                                                - To be continued

 

Read more!

Chaos, Infrastructure and Jehad.

While we were in dandy of football worldcup, lot of interesting happenings around us in India. In Bangalore, the new chief minister makes right noise to give an air of optimism in infrastructure-plagued IT capital. Last week, the long awaited the airport road flyover in Domlur was opened to public traffic. Unfortunately it took more time than kannagi statue to get back to its place in chennai- Marina. Infrastructure projects in Bangalore need to be added to the long list of projects that are guided by chaos theory. I found the the chaos theory by James Gleick an interesting read. Recently writer sujatha used deep simplicity principle in his short story in a tamil magazine. "A butterfly flipping its wings in Ghana can cause a cyclone in India!". Can't get what this marketing statement means. In our world, no action is independent, all happenings are guided by complex non-linear equations. I am always in the last row gang who convinently dream, if our maths teacher try to teach us linear equations. In contrary to the general belief, Non-linear equations are simple in structure, but can result in millions of solutions. The stock market prediction comes first in explaining the chaos theory. Next is weather prediction. However we try to predict the monsoon in a year, the weatherman invariably end up with wrong numbers. A simple and repetitive phenomenon like monsoon in India has a big list of probable causes. During my training in ISRO, a scientist in meterology department in ahmedabad tried hard to drive the point that monsoon prediction is not an easy job. But in the end, the session ended with humorous question "Will we ever predict monsoons correctly?". No matter how much ever we plan, how much funds we allocate, the infrastructure projects in bangalore always has millions of reason to stop proceeding.

 

Mumbaikar's solidarity in fight against terrorism is worth a laud. But there are some friends like vatsan who consider all this solidarity business are not worth it. Mumbai is an active city, it will come back to normal even after a bad disaster. Yet it is unarguable truth that mumbai train blast brought all Indians together in a consensus against terrorism and pakisan's role in terrorism. Al-qaeda started operations in Jammu and Kashmir officially and it become significant because it coincided with mumbai train blasts. We have a long way to go in solving the problems with pakistan, but an amicable solution to all the problems including the big K kashmir has to be arrived at. Otherwise these jobless terrorists are going to kill more common people in the name of Jehad.

 

 

 

Read more!

Lovely drop in Proverbial Ocean -I

Prologue: This is my first attempt to pen a short story. I am ardent fan of writer Sujatha and Crazy Mohan dramas. The name of my Hero is Vasanth (legendary Vasanth from Ganesh-Vasanth stories) and heroine name gonna be Janaki, Janu (ofocurse lead character in crazy Mohan's drama). Life looks simple and enjoyable in both their writings.

Chapter 1- Ten Days Before

Vasanth – Our hero. He's a lover boy. Very soft spoken and good natured. Has absolutely nothing to worry about. For him, life is simple. He will run 1000 miles away from arguments and debates. USP, ofocurse his smile. Believes that he is born to lead a majestic life.
Janu – Our heroine. Rettai val- double naughty girl of this generation. Argue with her, you know who gonna run. For her, life is dream. She will run 1000 miles towards arguments and debates. Many times argues just for the heck of it. Believes she is born to make everyone around her happy.
What is in store for them, working in the same town like Bangalore away from home…continue reading this story

Vasanth was looking tensed and was hurrying at office. He has a train to catch in another 2hrs and he's still at office. Finally he manages to escape from there and reaches home in his tiger (bike), packs his stuff and reaches the station. A nice girl comes and smiles and him and says our ticket is not yet confirmed. Now who is this? Janu. "WOW" what interesting news to hear at the end of the day after all the traffic jams and without coffee for the past 4hrs! And Vasanth was not even sure if she was joking or serious. So he goes checks his ticket status in reservation chart- waiting list. "Come on- how can they can do this to me?" His hometown is such a small town, didn't deserve a fully booked train is his theory. What to do? "So are we traveling tonight?"- Janu. "Yeah, I am supposed to travel tonight, but after I asked you to book tickets for us, I should have got clue that we gonna reach home only if we walk"- Vasanth. Ohh yeah, I forgot to say you something important: Vasanth and Janu are friends for long time ;) They hail from same town.

Finally, they make up their mind to travel by bus and realized both are not carrying money with them. What a co-incidence both to be in trouble. In the Bangalore traffic, they had to run from one corner to the other to find a working ATM which also has cash and come back to the bus stop. By then, lucky those… all the comfortable busses got filled up. Someone was generous enough to offer them a ticket in a "deluxe" bus. That bus is too good to be comfortable. It has seats with straight back - some yoga master should have spent hours in its ergonomic design- how to make people sit straight and lose their sleep. You and I would have cribbed to travel for 15 hours in that "deluxe" bus (!). But did our fellows complain, No. never. They don't even have time to think about it - shouting, laughing, and arguing about everything under the sun in this world. Vasanth always had crush on her, never had time and mood to tell her that. Now you know what gonna come if he got enough time for talk with her. Vasanth was waiting that the bus starts and he can get to at least give her hints on this. The bus starts and our girl is more interested in the movie played in the bus than the chat. So our hero just decides and starts enjoying that with her.

"Hey Janu, I love you. Wish we lead our life together. Think and tell me later". Simple, isn't it? Yeah Vasanth can't pack much more in his simple sms proposal in his simple phone in early morning. After he sent the sms, tick, tick, tick.....clock took time to even strike one second. You should love a girl to understand how slow time will pass in such decisive moments. Now over to Janu, what is she doing? She was happily sleeping in bus. How on the world will she know that Vasanth sent her such sms? Time went on; vansath woke up after hot morning sun kissed him good morning. Janu is already on her phone talking to some one chatting about something. "God, has she seen my message?" she was blank. She just continued speaking the same way to him. Now Vasanth was really worried if the message reached her or not. They boarded off the bus after reaching their hometown and they are on their way to their respective home. A day passed off. Vasanth slept off for the whole day, he didn't even have time to think about what gonna be the reaction from her. Two hot matches on same day: England takes on Portugal, Brazil fights with France in quarterfinal rounds in FIFA world cup finals 2006. In the first match, Rooney was sent out with red cards, Vasanth is shouting here as if referee gonna hear him. You can be sure how he would have felt bad when England finally lost the match in penalty shootout. Next day morning, he woke up to hear Brazil too lost their match against France. Gosh, what a bad day it gonna be?!

In that sullen mood on Sunday morning, he was driving his car. Beep, Beep. What's that? Another sms. Yeah. "Hi, I want you to know that I too love you. But before anything we need to talk", now this message came from Janu. Hurray. Hurray. Hurray. You guessed right: She too had the crush on him for long time. If God had run something similar to orkut, he would have told about each other's crush to other, sometimes orkut is better than god ;)

- To be continued

Read more!

"Corporate" Movie Review

 The worst movie ever I had seen in recent times. My rating is Avoidable. It went on like a hindi mega serial. Director often comes in the middle and says what's the moral of the story. Aging Kay Kay Menon is another negative. Bipasha is the sole attraction in the movie, otherwise people would have thrashed it as a  low rated movie. In one scene, Bipasha goes on to copy trade secrets from her enemy's computer. It is nothing but copying of few files to USB memory stick. But I dunno what director thought about the scene, he had shown it with a stupid graphics as if it is a countdown for rocket launch. All computer users/software engineers can have haughty laugh in that scene. The graphics given by windows to symbolise file copying is better than all this idiotic graphics :) The story didn't leave any recent news: mint based softdrink, retailers fight, pesticides in colas, PSU disinvestment, a stupid politician and a finance minister, FDI investments in India, Business leader awards for the year, what not? Allen solly and Lenova wasted their money by sponsoring dresses and computers respectively in the movie. The movie is worse than a business based tele serial, sick. Better don't even go near the cinema. Because of noisy re-recording, it isn't worth to be classified as going-to-movie-to-talk-with-girl-fren type of movies.

Read more!

Thanks A Million. Training started well

Yesterday our workshop in Dream A Dream Computer program started well. A good start is job half done. I should thank all of you who contributed to my presentation, it's a collective team work indeed. Vishal, Madan, EmptyMind, Ranjith, NagaVijay and host of other frens refined the presentation to make it a small bite for those kids to easily assimilate. The ice breaker session was with playing of a smal video clip from Finding Nemo movie, gave us the blitzkreig start. I could not have asked for more concentration from kids after that. Till then, it was a noisy scene of kids shouting all around and with that video playing, all got into pin drop silence, not just kids, but all my frens and volunteers in the workshop too. Then we started explaining them that those pictures in that animated video was made in computer similar to how we draw in paper, and hence the importance of paint as an application. I didn't drive home that point very well, but my team lead in this work Vishal came to our rescue. He is brilliant in explaining stuffs to kids, he did it very neatly. Repetitive yet subtle way of teaching is important. 

 

Before starting the paint, We asked the kids to come to white board and draw their favotire picture. Priya, a 8 year old kid in the group came first, drew the picture of Nemo, the fish. It was with so much details; believe me, not even the aquiline in body of fish was missed. She was explaining the various parts of the fish to her fellow mates. Amazing kid. Training went as planned, couldn't cover the most parts of the presentation. Making kid to do what we want is time consuming and my initial presentation would have taken days to complete :-). We went with drawing a simple picture in the paint, smiley picture and colored it. Two kids were experts among them, after finishing their exercise in the PC, went on to explain how to draw in Laptop with that touchpad mouse. Kids are quick learners indeed, we should be confident in introducing something new to them always. Another important stuff is to plan the whole session in kid's level. Plan it well and should be down to earth. It took almost an hour to train them in drawing simple picture, saving their file, close the application and open the file again. Followed it with one more video observatory quiz to get back their attention. The big exercise was to draw a house with squares, rectangle and color it. One hilarious moment : one kid drew a house with two windows, but both the windows were colored differently. My team mate asked the kid for the reason of two color window, he said "Aunty, one window is closed, another is open, and the second color you are seeing is the color of the inner room". Amazing creativity, isn't it?

 

The basic value with which we went for training are

[+] We should nurture kid's creativity throughout the training and shouldnt curtail it with any force

[+] The best teacher for kids are themselves. When a group of kids see an energetic kid, they all get that energy and enthusiasm. So try to involve kids in teaching their fellow mates. 

 

Hope we stood with that values till the end. Earlier, my fren started with Introduction to computers, that was the first session. She is brilliant in quizzing the kids and keep their attention. Few kids in the group knew what computer is before itself and rest all were beginners. The mouse trainer game (the link is http://www.rekenwonder.com/mousetrainer.htm )helped in training those kids with left click, right click, double click, drag and drop. Started with keyboard training too in the first session. All went well, and now we all are looking forward for next weekend to be with the kids again. Lovely weekend, we couldn't ask for better day than this. Thanks a million to Dream A Dream!

 

Read more!