Four Cities in a Week

Exactly last Wednesday I left the campus at Ahmedabad after completing my exams and had spent the long weekend at my home at Hyderabad. Moved on to Delhi for my summer internship and from today I will be at Mumbai for my summer project for the next 8-9 weeks. I cannot recollect any other occasion in my life where I was at so many cities on a purpose and not on a holiday tour. By the way this is my first visit to Delhi and Mumbai.

Best facing Best

Browsing through and found this interesting piece a couple of weeks back but then waited for this date to post so as to make it more relevant-

Exactly two years back it happened - leading run scorer in tests faced a delivery from leading run wicket taker in test at Adelaide - yes you guessed it right - Brain Lara was leading run scorer who went past Allan Border in the same Adelaide test and he faced Shane Warne who was the leading wicket taker then. I don't know when it happened before that day. Some one said it happened after about 100 years - I have no records about that. However, I can see it happening again in next July-Aug when India tours Srilanka - hope fully our master blaster Sachin who I hope would surpass Brain Lara and face the spin wizard Murali who is a leading wicket taker now.

Don versus Don

While the campus is confluencing - I had an opportunity to watch a couple of movies from the LAN here - both happened to be Don, yeah the old one and the new one. Having not seen any movie since long time - I found both of them refreshing and entertaining. The first one was classic and Amitabh was too good in both the roles. I thought it would be difficult to resist Sharukh after seeing Amitabh - but to my surprise, the show here was run by Farhan Akthar - who managed to create interest by potraying the pseud image and the changed times - the global locations, hi-technology security devices, the diary was replaced by a small disk, police vans were replaced by helicopters and chartered flights and the list goes on. If the older version was all about showing emotions and anger, the newer one was all about displaying shrewdness. The director stuck to the original, scene to scene to begin with, but smartly hijacked the story in the second half. While, the original version followed the formula - Good wins over the Evil , the latest version chose to justify that "Don ko pakdna mushkil hi nahin naa mumkin hain"!!!

Whatmore ... what else?

BCCI looking beyond Whatmore - reads the headlines of today's newspaper. Now what else?

What is that we are primarily looking for?

No Indian Coach - we tried many in the past - lots of '-isms' (favoritism, egoism, criticism,...)

No English Coach - cannot think beyond the textbook - they are too orthodox

No Australian Coach - they are simply too good for us - we are not in a position to take it from them

No South African Coach - they are very much concerned about fitness

No Italian Coach - we don't have a sardar as captain (Just kidding!!!)

A school of thought proposes big names like - Viv Richards, Ranathunga, Brain Lara, Wasim Akram etc ... Please we are not looking for players to fill up the places we are looking for a coach, preferably a proven one. A great player necessarily need not be a great coach - we have already some tried big names like Kapil Dev. Another school says "We can run the show with a manager, bowling and fielding coaches. We just had a manager during 1983 world cup".

Looking at the recent past - We had a foreign coach for close to 8 years now. Ganguly - Wright Combo worked very well for us where as Chappell - Dravid combo could not achieve the needful - now let us leave out the reasons for some other day - of course the naming of the combo itself should tell it all - it never looked like Dravid - Chappell. It seemed like we need a coach who can work in the background and help the players using his keen eye - a technical facilitator . There were some stories, which said Ganguly could have been a better captain during the previous world cup but then it might have been a disaster as it might have resulted in high profile battle of egos between coach and captain. But now if we end up finding a coach who is comfortable with the back office role it might even result in a bigger trouble of both Dravid and the new coach shying away from the limelight. The story might just not end there.

Finally do we know what we want?

It looks like the BCCI and the selection committee has not done their ground work properly. They have given enough hints to media which made it look certain that Whatmore would be the successor of Mr.Chappell. It is the players who actually browsed through their network to find the potential candidates in terms of availability and interest and recommended the names to the committee. Its good that we are still having people like Graham Ford in the queue - Hopefully he occupies the hot seat. His style looks similar to that of John Wright and Dean Jones.It might just work for us!!!

Bulandh Bharat ... Naye Tasveer

Was browsing through and suddenly found this masterpiece - Old Ad of Bajaj .. with a tag line of Bulandh Bharat ki buland tasveer. It was very much refreshing to see it after a long long time.

The main idea of any ad is to leave the viewers with an impact. This one strikes the emotional chord perfectly resembling the Indian culture and the contemporary lifestyle. It made sure to convey that owning a Bajaj scooter is a mater of style and pride.

Bajaj 1989

Bajaj2000

Now I could not resist myself from checking the next edition of the commercial which came out in the early days of this century ... Those were the changing times ... with changing lifestyle ... culture ... trends … thoughts etc ... No more scooters ... it was all motorbikes ... Boxer, Legend, Caliber and Saffire. We were trying to accept this new changes without compromising on our roots and this fact was perfectly portrayed in this ad ... Naye Bharat - Naye tasveer still Bulandh buniyaad

Hmmm... Time for 'Hamara Bajaj' to come up a new ad with Platina, Discover, Eliminator and Pulsar..... Must be Interesting isn't it !!!

Earlier the better

Once there were three friends A,B and C.

A won a cash prize of Rs 100/- in a school competition at the age of 10 . He invested the money such that it earned him an interest of 18% per annum .B won a scholarship of Rs200/- at the age of 15 which he invested in the same way as A did. Five years later C invested Rs 400/- in the same fund as A and B did earlier. At the age of 60 all three decide to withdraw their investments . Any guesses on who got more returns? It should be C as his investment is 4 times to that of A's and twice of B's . But lets get in to mathematics.

Applying the 18% interest on the respective principles for the respective periods of investment we have the value of returns as follows

A - 392735.7

B - 343336.7

C - 300151.3

Surprised ... Yes A receives more returns...though his investment is the least!!!

Now Lets try to apply the same to our life.

Moral 1 : Earlier we pick up any habit--hobby--anything, better we will be at that. We might start to inculcate any habit at later stage of life with a greater intensity but still it might not help to that extent.

Moral 2 : Persistence is the key -- We will have to continue to pursue the habit--hobby . The amount would have not been so high if it was not invested for so long.

My First Last Day

Date : 18th May 2007 - Time : 6 PM ..... Nothing unusual about the date and time yet a feeling of nostalgia envelops me ..... Quickly checked the news ..... Bomb blast in oldcity ... Thats the matter of worry but my feeling is something beyond worry ...... India in control in the first Test match against Bangladesh .... Thats something expected and should not bother me ..... Then suddenly I saw my colleagues cluttering round a corner..... realised that its my last day at Wilco .... my journey with the company comes to end after 46 months ...... my colleagues were gearing up to bid me a farewell......I still remember the 10th of July 2003 when I was among the 3 students recruited at our college campus ..... smiling like a happy kid .... Life moved on ... The journey had provided me with various opportunities to gain knowledge, friends and lot more ...... Now its the time to say bye to all of them ..... The feeling was different ..... but then as some one said .... life is not about looking back but its all about going forward ..... when I think about it , it looks like the journey was all perfect and hence I have no regrets moving on to take up new challenges at WIMWI