BRAToSPHERE

Author: Bharat Jhurani

  • Shower up!

    Happy Diwali folks. I know it is too late, and inspite of all the promises during the launch, I have not updated for sometime now. Well, I was on a holiday, and I strongly have a clear work life balance. Phew!

    Also have been travelling, across south india of late. Nothing close to the travel that I did during induction into my job, but more or less there. In the last one month I have been to Chennai, Cochin, back to Bangalore and then to Hubli. Then again to Bangalore, to vizag and then back to Bangalore. A recent trip to a sea, and back again to Hubli. Well, I don’t think I should  b counting Bangalore to Hubli trip as travelling. It is more like a weekly thing of late.

    Cleanliness is next to godliness and no doubt in that. But well,  while travelling randomly at places, you do tend to compromise on one thing – BATHING. There are times when you don’t be able to find a proper place to take a shower for the day. There are other days when you just don’t have the required change of clean clothes, so why bath at all. Well, most of the times plain simple you just don’t feel like bathing.

    Well, anyone who has been in a B-School campus for two years, and especially if your campus was located in the northern part of the country, has sure gone through days of this ordeal. No bath. It is plain simple damn so cold. And well, “I have come to the B-School to get a fat package, not to take a bath in the well maintained bathrooms“.

    A typical morning in a B-School.

    7:45AM: Neighbour ( if you are in good terms with him/her) wakes you up for the class at 8. You mentally calculate, and say to yourself,” chuck the bath!”, and sleep again. See the bath is the first thing to be foregone!!!

    After chucking the other important ablutions too, you finally wake up at 7:57AM for the class at 8. Pop in a ciggie into the mouth, and jog to the class. The ciggie acts like a mouth freshener early in the morning, and a good recharge too. Well, the tobacco smells better than the early morning mouth odour.

    Well, that takes care of oral odour, what about the body odour? Deodarants. AXE in fact even had an event once in campus, distributing free samples to everyone. Rightly targeted audience I would say.

    Now, I have been using these smart phones too much of late, and wondered how would it be having an IPhone app to help the same. Well, there is an app even to calculate the tip to be given after a meal in a restaurant. So, “Should you Shower?” app would be very popular am sure. What exactly would it look like?

    IPhone Shower App
    Iphone App

    Any takers???

  • Heart vs. Mind

    This quintessential fight between the heart and the mind keeps happening all the time. I am sure each on of us regularly face this dilemma, and come to a standstill where we have to select a path. And that, as iterated in the previous post, leads to confusion. Opportunity??

    It’s typical in our society to feel a conflict between what we want to do (our heart) and what we feel is practical (our mind). We end up living  a good part of our lives doing things that we don’t really like or enjoy. We do and say things that we think are cool, and would help us “fit in” into this artificial sphere formed by the society. We try keeping ourselves contended in our mind, and never realize that it is the heart that needs to be contented.

    This does cause heartaches at every point in our lives, but we just get used to it and move one. What would have happened if we had rather listened to the heart in that critical confusing moment? We might have not been this rich, this comfortable, might not be having these luxuries, might be. But then, we would have been much much more happier. And who knows, following your heart, no matter how impractical it might seem, might lead to never foreseen opportunities, and new avenues. A more content life!

    Is my heart at fault? Are my feelings just silly and frivolous? Or maybe it’s my mind that’s to blame. It seems like it’s always coming up with conflicting messages anyway.

    I remember seeing a poster in a book shop in vizag when I was young – “ choose a career in something you enjoy, and you will never ever have to work a single day in your life!”.

    How many of us actually be able to do it? The conformist society comes in place,  and camouflages the entire thought process. The security, risk averseness, secure life, etc all these come into picture leaving the dreams on a standstill and keeping them on hold, most of the times forever.

    What does one do in such a dilemma? Whose side does one take in such situations – Heart or Mind?

    Heart vs. Mind?

    A perfect analogy to this heart mind thing would be this. Imagine yourself as this young 28 something guy, who wants to ( heart calling) get married to this good looking simple girl, and has been pursuing her leaving his flirtatious behaviour behind. Now, in this pursuit, where he starts thinking if he would actually get the simple girl ever, there is this awesomely good looking super hotel seductress( read mind) who shows herself. This simple guy is now getting attracted to the deep cleavages( read benefits in a secure manner) and is drifting towards her, forgetting that his heart still wants to be with the simple girl. The simple girl would be a better deal, but right now the seductress has much more to offer! But.. But.. The true love, the heart, still stays with the simple girl!

    What do you do? Simple girl? or Seductress??

  • Sexy smart phone users

    The usage of smart phones in the country has gone up manifold, and more and more people everyday are getting hooked to it. The strange urge to check your mail, FB, twitter updates every two minutes, and your phone beeping every moment has captured the young and the old alike in the country.

    India, on the back of scorching pace of mobile subscribers growth has taken the second place amongst all the countries for mobile requests that came to admob network. Although U.S is far far ahead accounting for more than half of request, India has garnered close to 6% (more than 800 million) of all requests.( source: http://trak.in/tags/business/2010/04/08/india-mobile-internet-traffic-smartphones/)

    As per this Forrester report, 2010 is going to be the year of the Smartphone. A couple of years back, or even maybe a year back, the smartphone revolution was primarily driven by the corporate users and not the normal junta( mango people!). Now, with the prices going down, and more choices available, the consumer segment has also embraced this new fad. ( A big opportunity for everyone in the mobile arena!)

    Till last year maybe, most of us used to wait for our company to give us a blackberry, and we would be happy with our nokia’s till then. “Blackberry was a company given device, used only for official purposes” was the normal impression. Not any more. Everybody, with a smartphone in mind, is seriously considering a blackberry. ( I bough the curve last December!)

    Till maybe last year, smartphones were more of a status symbol; but now they have become a must-have product for most.

    On the lighter side, an interesting study was commissioned recently by a popular dating site correlating the number of sexual partners and smart phone usage.

    sex | Smart Phone

    (ref. : http://mashable.com/2010/08/10/iphone-sex-okcupid/)

    Am sure, Uday has a big component to the iphone graph( the one in blue!) going up so high!

    Conclusion: Look for a cute iPhone owner to get lucky with!!

    Reading the data in a different way ( damn my MBA!), it can also be concluded that iPhone owners might simply be more prone to exaggerate.

  • Confusion | Opportunity

    In the Midst of Confusion Lies Opportunity

    This is a famous saying, but how true is it? before we get into that, let us delve into the basics – why do we get confused?

    We are majorly confused when we can see two or more probable destinations, and are in a position to take any one of them. This decision making is what leads to confusion.

    Why am I talking about confusion right now? Coz,  I am majorly confused. I have been doing everything till date in a conformist way, most of the times, and this has got sufficient returns, again the conformist way. Now I think is the time, that I should jump out, in the open, do things that I have always wanted to do, and test the untested waters. Well, yes there is this possibility of falling flat, straight on the face, and this particular aspect of life is called risk taking. ( “Risk to spider man bhi leta hai.. mein to sirf ek salesman hun!”) The point is that, will I have this any longer.

    The other option, is to keep doing the conformal things, in the routine manner that I have been following religiously. In other words, follow the herd, and strive for the best and get the conformal returns( which , are not really less by any standards!). Now is this what I want to do?

    This dilemma of the heart or the mind is quintessential, and has probably been there since human existence. I am once again facing this dilemma. Heart or mind?

    While discussing the same with one of my friend, I realized that the Chinese have the same sign for confusion and opportunity.

    Confusion | Opportunity
    Confusion | Opportunity

    Now how much are these two linked? I would say completely. Confusion, as discussed above, arises out of indecisiveness,  among options, and therein lies the  opportunity.

    Whenever you are confused, just treat it like an opportunity, and, as I always suggest, follow the heart, and you would prevail.

  • We are like that only!

    Now, with the new revamped blog, er! Sphere! I promise to blog more frequently, and what better way to start this off than ranting about the way we are. We Indians are!

    • A homemaker lady would  fight to save a few rupees arguing with the neighboring vegetable vendors over the price of a potato, or a tomato. At the same time, the same lady would also fight in restaurants, to pay. When she along with a group of friends go to a restaurant, after the routine regular shopping outings, each of the ladies would go for the bill vying to pay it.
    • Everything in our country takes just one minute, or so we are told. No matter when you give your vehicle for service, go back to the mechanic at the schedule pick up time, and he would be like, “one minute sir! Abhi ho jaega!”. No prizes for guessing, it would take atleast an hour more.
    • Remember storing all the small items at some place at your home.  Every Indian home has the huge space built atop the cupboards exactly for that. Everything that is plastic ( be it glasses, cups, or even plastic covers that come free after shopping in a super market), we store them religiously. At the same time, we try covering up everything possible in the same plastics. The table top, the TV, fridge, even the study table, everything needs to be covered up in some plastic cover.
    • Well, cricket is religion. The easiest way to start a conversation with somebody Indian is to discuss the highest number of runs scored by God! We do take cricket seriously. Infact, a bit too seriously, so much, that it is declared a holiday when there is a cricket match happening. Now you know why IPL was scheduled in the evening, IST. No, not for the convenience. More to avoid people getting fake stomach aches, and fake grandma’s from dying during the day!
    • One thing is taken even more seriously than cricket – MOVIES. This phenomena is much much more in the southern part of the country, where movies are a religion, and the actors, Gods. People die buying tickets for their idols first day morning show. Queues start two days in advance before the tickets start selling. And full length fights occur in case of anybody demeaning any star. Well, my engineering college was shut for a week, during my second year, just because someone had abused a popular( really!) actor by naming his Counter Strike avatar after the famous Balayya.
    • Inspite of the technology advancing so much, and electric rice cookers and microwaves becoming very much affordable by everyone, we still need pressure cookers. Well, along with the pressure cookers we better ensure that we also have smoke alarms!
    • Ever eaten in Andhra Pradesh. Okay, Andhra happens to be the chilli capital of the country, with red chillis being an important crop. That does not mean all food is substituted by red chillies. We inevitably end up eating more spice than food, and this is true across the country. Even more stranger is having more food than the plate can hold!

    Dosa
    Indian Dosa
    • One very important things that stands true is the ability( rather inability) to say NO. not many of can very easily say NO to anything. More peculiar about this is the way we say NO. We shake our head left and right. Well, we also say YES in the same way – Shake our head left and right!

    WE ARE LIKE THAT ONLY, and this has no bearing with Rama Bijapurkar!

    p.s.: this post is inspired from this video by trueroots WE ARE LIKE THAT ONLY!