Advertisements, human emotions and the deeper connect

What is the single most strategic element for a product's marketing? You guessed it right - it's advertising. While advertising per se has many manifestations, of late, it's the TV commercials and videos that has caught my attention - for an interesting reason. And yes, this post is about that very reason that triggered my curiosity on the subject. Want to know the reason? Read on!

For the sake of brevity, I'll focus only on the TV commercials (or TVC as they are usually referred to) and also some videos that we come across in the Internet. Traditionally, advertising has been mostly about the product itself. This is how an ad used to be (and mostly is) - a person or a group of people talking about the product, more specifically, they try to address a problem in their daily life using the product and how wonderfully it solves the problem at hand. Now, this is very valid case and I think it's usually the concept that comes to the person creating(for the lack of a better term) the advertisement. The purpose of the advertisement - advertising the product - is achieved and everyone's happy. Only that no 'connection' is made with the consumer in this case. It's more like a superficial campaigning that fails to make a deeper impression on the consumer. Until now.

More and more companies these days are trying to focus on that 'deeper impression' or the 'human connection' through their video commercials. In fact, the focus of these companies has somewhat shifted from the 'product' to the 'user' and from 'item' to 'brand'. This is a huge shift in the way content is produced and the way it's actually consumed by the consumer. There's an underlying message in each of such commercials - something deeper than their products per se  - and this 'something' is trying to make that 'deeper impression' in the minds of the people. Perhaps, companies now want to associate themselves and their brand with something more abstract, something more than just the products they create.

Let's take a simple and very familiar example to illustrate the point I'm trying to make here - Apple and Samsung. Again, this example is not meant as a direct comparison of the commercials of the two companies - they're totally right in their respective positions and contexts. While Samsung's commercials are focused more on the product it self, Apple's commercials focus on the 'user'. One of their commercials is about all the wonderful things people can do - and nothing else. Their product is just an enabler - at least that's what is the underlying message in their commercial. In fact, most of the ads from Apple are in that direction. What is it that Apple is trying to do here? They want to make a deeper connection with it's consumers, an impression at a 'sub-conscious' level that is more permanent than talking about any one product.

Our Indian companies are no exception - consider Airtel. I think they are one of the early adopters of such paradigm with their 'smartphone network', 'express yourself', 'one touch internet' campaigns. Again, it's not the product that's the hero here, it's the human emotions that take the center stage and Airtel is just an enabler. Same is the case with the latest TVC of Hyundai in which a father brings home his wife for his son - it's not the car that matters, it's the enabler.

What is in it from all this to us? I believe it's a very powerful indicator of the way human emotions can be tapped to make a lasting impression on a brand. Rest will follow. I guess my idea is clear to the budding entrepreneurs :-) 

For the curious, here're the links to the commercials I mentioned in the post:

Apple:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGtP6ZQ6Lt8

Airtel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw1P2hnJLdg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U55oYqhgT4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XseTNOFEE2A

Hyundai:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNJiBlc-JYA

Dove:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=litXW91UauE

Lifebuoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF7oU_YSbBQ

P&G:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkrAKpimxYQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57e4t-fhXDs

2012 - an year of change

It's that time of the year when I look back at the year that has passed and the experiences it has brought about in my life. Moreover it's been a while since I sat down to write some thing, so I think this is the best opportunity. Though this post does not serve to provide any interesting lessons per se, I believe we learn something from the experiences of others. With this note, I welcome you to the last post of the year.

2012 - what an year it has been for me! Now it might sound not so realistic when I say that I had a hunch about this year before it started. I had a feeling that this year would be an year of change in my life. In fact, I wanted a change in my life - professionally in particular. I had been fed up with the way things were going on in my professional life - not good work to start with. I felt I was losing control of my path and where I wanted to go. By the end of 2011, it became very clear to me that I had to change something - either my work or work place. I started taking baby steps in that direction and the fruits were to be borne only in the new year. Frustrated by the events, I even started looking outside for work. I went for an interview and a candidate there asked me where I was from. When I told my company, he asked "Why did you come from there?" That question sparked something in me - it made me think about my choice of changing the company. I started thinking and analyzing the reason for such decision. After some thinking, I realized that it was not the company per se, it was just my surroundings. So I applied for a change within my company. After a couple of months, I saw the first change in the year - change of my work area. Now it didn't entirely change the shape of the things, but I was hopeful. Of change. I did not know that life had some more plans for me in the store.

On the personal side, things were slowly taking shape. It was time when I felt ready for the next big thing in my life - marriage. And my consent kicked off the events at my home in full pace. Alliances started coming in. By almost mid year, I chose my partner for life - Swathi. It's a different feeling when you decide to get married - especially an arranged one. Both of us did not know much about each other. So we became friends, good friends, and now I can say that there's no better change in my life than her. We got engaged in August and this was the start of many more memorable events to come.

And life was not done yet! Never did I realize that there was much more change to come. On the professional side, after I changed my dept, I got a rare opportunity - to work on something very interesting. But as with all things in life, it did not come for free - it was a challenge in itself - something I had not taken ever since I graduated. Now when you are given such a good opportunity, there's a mix of emotions that occur in us - excitement, joy, anxiety and most of all - fear. I can say that I had all of them with fear factor being a bit more. But it was such a good opportunity that I would be really foolish to miss it. And so I decided - yes! I will do it! I had no idea of the challenges that lay ahead - I only knew that I had to do it - just to check my guts. But there was a twist here too - I had to change my dept again for the new assignment. Now this was getting way above my head!! So I did what I thought was best - accept it! So that was one more change.

The next one and a half month was sweating time at work. The good thing about this assignment is the freedom it gave me to adapt myself to work and give my best. You know, that 'aha!' moment in life. It happened to me when I was doing my internship and this time it's the same but with double the fun and thrill. The joy of learning something new in a very short span of time is really awesome! It just pushes you to your limits of cognitive activity - and I love it!!! And so after 45 days, we achieved a mile stone. And it was well rewarded :) None of this would have happened if it were not because of my coach (boss) - a very big thank you Peter :)

Am I done ? No, some thing more amazing was yet to come - my wedding. This is so far been the best experience in my life. Now I can write a whole blog post about the wedding per se, but for now, suffice it to say that it was an experience that I cannot describe in words. Life after wedding - it's a change in itself :) The joy of having someone in your life with whom you can be yourself - amazing! You feel that you just can't have enough of it :)

Well, now as the year ends, all I can think of is the wonderful journey I went through over the past 12 months - thank you God for blessing me with such a ride - it sure was absolute fun :) 

I hope your life also had a lot of stories in these 12 months. I would really love to hear them!!

Merry Christmas and Wish you all a very happy new year !

God Bless!! Cheers!!!

Toys are us

Does the title ring any bells?  Yes, it sounds similar to an American retail store exclusively for toys (http://www.toysrus.com). But this post is not about that store or its counter parts. Rather, it's about what they sell - toys :) Sound fun? read on!


Back when we were kids, I am sure, all of us would have had toys - big, small, noisy, stuffy, glowy, scary, cute, guess I lost you.. :)  There was an amazing sense of joy and happiness in being with them. Remember how we used to have them next to us in the bed? That fantastic feeling when your super hero saved the world from the wild and ferocious mammals and dinosaurs? Priceless! Or when your cute little Barbie was awarded the beauty pageant? A very proud moment indeed, right!! And long before you actually became an engineer and built stuff, your structural marvels won the best design award. Now that's definitely an achievement!!!


But then, as it should have been, growth happened. We all became old, studied hard, became the able sons and daughters ready to take on the world with skills and talent. Priorities changed and soon, our super heroes and best friends reached the corners of the shelves, waiting to be called for and cuddled. Watches, wallets, perfumes and yeah the jewellery de-throwned our little heroes and princesses, leaving them to dust. 'We need to grow up', you might say, but I don't think the kid in us should. Why, you ask?


There's a book that I read some time ago, 'The Present' by Spencer Johnson in which he asks as to remind ourselves of our childhood, the days when we were the best, the amount of confidence we had, the fearlessness in order to rejuvenate ourselves with energy. I believe it's certainly true of all of us, a lot of problems can be overcome that way. Now I am not saying we should be childish in our daily lives, but a little bit of kiddish ideas do help :)


Curiosity. The one factor which has enabled the humans to achieve so much - technological advancements, human well being, revolutionary inventions and innovations. The seeds of which were sown early in our childhood. The eternal curiosity that kept us awake till late nights tinkering with that new toy gifted by dad figuring out how it works :) As we have grown, I personally feel many of us have lost that streak of curiosity that is one of the foundations of joy and excitement. A lot of times, we take things for granted which if avoided by curiosity can keep us on the edge of excitement. After all, there's so much this world has to offer us, right!


Long ago when I was a kid, there was an ad by Nokia which featured adults engrossed in playing games in their mobile phones. It even featured Mr. Bill Clinton (if I remember correctly) sitting at a lake side his trousers rolled up, playing a game on his Nokia mobile like a child. At the end of the ad, there was a statement "There's a child in everyone of us eager to play. That's why we've put them in our phones too". Now though it's a marketing trick by Nokia, what they did mention in their quote is true. There definitely is a child in everyone of us, waiting to come out and play!


Let's be curious again, let's become a child again :)

tuesdays with Morrie

It's not often that you come across a book that touches you to the very core of your self. The one book which forces you to think and act upon later. I am really glad to say that today, after a long time, I read one such book - 'tuesdays with Morrie' by Mitch Albom. The first such book was 'The Monk who sold his Ferrari' by Robin Sharma. This post is not a comprehensive review of that book per se, but I wanted to share my thoughts on it and some other things too.


To start off, this book is the dialog between a teacher and a student. What's so special or interesting about this dialog is its timing. It happens during the last days in the life of the teacher. This might remind us of similar works by Randy Pausch and may be even Steve Jobs. But what is truly captivating about this book is the point of focus, the central theme around which the whole dialog proceeds. Given the timing of the dialog, as you might have guessed it, this whole dialog revolves around the concept of death. Sounds dramatic, right? 


If you have heard of the Stanford Commencement speech by Steve Jobs in 2005, Steve Jobs talks about death as one of his stories. He also mentions all his realizations related to death as a result of his close encounter with it. Now imagine the realizations of a person who knows he is going to die in a few months. This book talks about all such little nuggets of wisdom in very simple and elegant words. If you are wondering about the topics he chose to talk about, don't push yourself much, they are the most fundamental concepts we all struggle to find answers to - regrets, money, forgiveness, love, family, emotions, etc.


As you read the book further, a kind of feeling starts slowly in your mind which basically says 'hey, I've come across this stuff before in our scriptures'. Yes, interestingly, all of the points of wisdom which Morrie talks in the book are present in our scriptures, vedas, upanishads etc. and I myself have heard/read about them a lot of times. The point is, the words in this book, for some reason went deep into me than anything else earlier. Eventually, I got this question - why is the wisdom in our books not so simple? If the whole point of having wisdom is to enlighten others and help them make their lives better, why not present it in a simple way?A lot of texts on spirituality and wisdom that I have come across are either too abstract or too complicated. May be I have not come across a correct book yet, or may be I am being too judgmental. If someone has some books in mind, please let me know, I'll be really thankful to you.


Speaking of thanks, I express my heartfelt thanks to my friend Ramya for pointing me to this book.


Good day and happy reading!


Some more sources of such wisdom:
Tiny Buddha
Zen Habits

Never too late

It's already Jan 15th, half way into the first month of a new year, and I have still not told myself the story of the last year. Yes, for some unknown reason, I have gotten into this habit of blogging about the past year on new years eve. This time it was different. I did not blog about the last year. Or, let's say I couldn't. Not that the thought did not pass by mind; but I was caught up in some other thoughts, about the future, stemmed from some things in the last year. There were things that I had to change, and I was trying to figure out how.


Thinking about the last year, 2011, has nothing particularly interesting per se, but it gave me experiences which were exciting and not so. All I remember now are just a few glimpses. Time really flies by, doesn't it?


As every new year, 2011 did bring with it new avenues for growth and development. On a professional front, I worked on something which went into a product which people would use, which would make their lives better. No, this is not something from a Philips ad saying to make lives better. I've always wanted to work on things which would impact people's lives directly, and I could live up to my beliefs this time. It was an extremely interesting period; I learned a lot about work and the professional world. The smile and pride I saw in my father's eyes the day I showed my work is something that I would never forget. And I met some really nice people I would be friends with for a really long time. I had my first international trip, and am really thankful to my team lead for giving me this opportunity.


On a personal front, some things did not work out as expected, and I felt really bad for that. Hope things get better.


So, what am I expecting this year? Call it gut feel or hunch, I believe this year's going to bring some change in my life. Or, may be I should work for that. Oh yeah, my new year resolution: "accept life as it comes, just be ready".

Why we should read a lot

Thinking about reading books?

When I asked this question to myself, I paused for a moment and thought about reading itself and realized that there is lot more to reading than just books. This post is an attempt to understand this 'reading' a bit further and thus learn how we can benefit from it in our daily lives. Shall we?

The first thing that comes to our mind when we think about reading is books followed by news papers, magazines and so on. But what we forget often is that we read a lot more than just books or news papers. We read incidents, experiences, people and their behavior, environment and a lot more. It is interesting to note that we actually derive a lot of knowledge through these instruments of information. Of course reading here means not just reading some text, but understanding and interpreting them. I hope you get what I am trying to say here.

So now that we have a broader understanding of reading itself, let us see why we should read a lot more than we normally do. Don't worry, I will not ask you to become a full time researcher :-)

One of the main benefits of reading a lot is a better comprehension. To understand this, it is necessary to understand how we understand things in our daily life. Usually we learn a lot of new things by relating them to the things which we already understand. This means that every new learning about a subject actually corresponds to an understanding of it in relation to something which we already understand plus a little extra which we do not know yet. This can be called as incremental learning. It actually helps us a lot to make sense of a lot of new things which we encounter in our daily lives. We might not realize this, but this is what we do most of the times. Don't believe me? Try looking into how you understand some thing new this time. This is not to say that we learn 'all' of the things in a similar way. We do learn some 'ground truths' which form the base for all our further learning. One good example in our daily life is how we learn to use new gadgets. Once we use a phone or a software, we get a broad understanding of its behavior and the next time we have to use a new phone or software, we realize that we already know a little bit to get started. Make sense?

So how does reading more help us in this regard? Well, by reading more on varied subjects we increase our overall perception of things and our mind tries to form relationships which might not be very obvious. This helps in reducing the amount of that 'extra' information that I mentioned in the earlier paragraph we need to know to understand some thing. This in turn means that we can now make sense of things in a more easy way. The example I mentioned in the earlier paragraph can be used here also to understand better. So what I am trying to say here is that we need to consciously read things beyond just casual encounters with them to understand the new ones better.

I will end this post by talking about one more area of benefit - problem solving. In our daily life we do a lot of problem solving without even realizing it. A lot of the times, we hear people suggesting how to solve problems. Some of them say that we need to look at them from a different perspective. I feel that most of the times we are stuck with our existing knowledge. It is at this time that a diverse knowledge helps us. By reading a lot more on varied and diverse subjects and environments, our perception is increased a diverse way. It is with this knowledge that we can try to solve the problems in an innovative way. Steve Jobs once mentioned that we need to have a lot of varied and diversified experiences in our lives to come up with innovative ideas. I believe he meant that we need to have a diversified knowledge and not to get stuck in the silos.

So are we reading enough? :-)

iPhone and the hype factor

Over the past few months, any person who is remotely in touch with the tech news has definitely heard or seen something about the next iPhone. Yeah, I myself am super excited about it. Or am I really? This is a thought lurking around in my mind for some time now. So as usual, I thought it over, and here are some of my reasons.


I love reading news about new technology, and I'm sure there's nothing more circulating than the news about the new iPhone. Yeah, as the day approaches, at least one article pops up in the media. Guesses, guesses and guesses. iPhone5, iPhone4s, iPhone4G and so on. This sort of hype is definitely good and keeps the readers interested - for a while. And then it gets irritating. To the point that you don't care about them anymore. So why, especially in the case of iPhone[5/4S/4G] is this hype less interesting? Well I believe its because of the following reasons.


First of all, what makes a product super cool? Hardware along with the software, right? In the current case of next gen iPhone, the software to be bundled has already been announced. So half the suspense is uncovered. Or, in my opinion, most of the suspense. Why? Because in today's ever changing market of hardware, its the software that comes along that creates the 'wow' factor. Not clear? Lets see. According to the stories, the next iPhone would probably feature better processor, better camera, bigger screen, thinner form factor, etc. all of which are currently available in the market. So yeah, frankly, there's nothing new. But yeah, again, its the software in synergy with the hardware that creates wonders. Now this, in my opinion, is what Apple holds for its users in the next release of their iPhone. So there are just a few pieces left to finish the amazing Apple puzzle for the next phone.


Now, may be I'm a little over thinking, but hey its Apple - they can come up with something radically different, and I'm definitely looking forward for the event.

One subject at a time

I am poor at Math. Not that I did not like that subject, but its just that there were other factors that did not make me incline toward Math. But hey, this post is not about Math per se or about my interests in academics. This is a post about some thoughts which I think could have been the reason why we do not excel at some subjects.


To start off, I agree that there are a lot of things that contribute toward excellence in a particular subject. First and foremost being the interest in that subject itself; and not to forget the passion we show toward learning that subject. But could there be other reasons which would prevent us from excelling at a subject? What if we do have the interest but still do not get to pursue it more rigorously? Pondering on this thought led me into a different direction and gave me a whole new perspective into our learning process itself.


Let me start in the reverse chronological order. As we grow up and pursue our higher studies (e.g. Masters and PhD), we narrow our focus to a few subjects, mostly one. Now there's a slight clarification that I consider important to make - 'subject' here means a whole different area of learning such as Computer Science, Biology, Psychology, etc. and not the sub divisions within them viz. Databases, Operating Systems, Cognitive Psychology, etc. So, as we study these subjects in more detail, what we are actually doing is dedicating our time almost entirely on that one subject. This in turn leads to mastery in that subject eventually. This can be refined to the sub divisions of a subject too. This is not a theory I made up myself, you can find it by going through the lives of great achievers.


Now lets get a bit younger, shall we? Back to our pre-university or +2 classes. What was the number of different 'subject's we studied then? 5? 6? How hard was it for you to juggle among those subjects? Definitely not an easy task, right? Its justified to say that not all of us can excel at all the subjects given all this juggling to be done. I'm not making an excuse here for not becoming good at any particular subject, but its just the fact that we need to give a thought about. I would not bother going to much younger classes where we had almost like 6-7 subjects - all demanding equal attention.


No, I am not pointing to any glitches/faults in our education system. Our education system is a very good one, and I believe there are reasons why we had so many subjects. One might say that it was to give an idea into different avenues which we could explore later on in your life. But my point is, why don't we focus early on in our education more or rather entirely on one particular subject like we do later? Of course this might not be a good idea at all, let alone a perfect one. I am not even proposing this should be put into action. Imagine the prospects of this thought taking shape - we can learn all we want about a subject to our heart's content. But what if you get bored of it? you might ask. Well, that's what hobbies are for :)


What do you say? One subject at a time.

Feeling of loss

It's been a long time since I wrote up something here and what better than writing about the most authentic, common feeling we all have - loss. By the way, a little foreword before I start: this post has nothing to do with my current state of mind or heart or what ever. So take out any thoughts about that and enjoy the post :)


To start off, of late I have been reading a lot of books on human behavior, behavioral economics, human psychology - no deep stuff, just the daily life activities and incidents which have been studied by eminent people in a more scientific way. I will list down some of the books at the end of this post so you can have a share of the excitement :)


'We humans are basically loss averse' - this is a common conclusion that you will come across in most of the books on human behavior. Yes, we do not like loss, considering loss of any thing and in any magnitude. This is something we face so often in our daily life that we often neglect this as a feeling sometimes. Just check how many times you get that feeling tomorrow and I am sure you'll be surprised yourself. One of the best examples is buying a costly phone. You know that it'll be well worth the price, but you still hesitate to buy it because you are worried about the cost - which is basically worry about loss of money. What's your story?


So like any scientific study, psychologists and behavioral economists have tried to analyze this feeling in much detail. The following text talks about some broad conclusions they came up with.


First and the most common thing they attribute the genesis of this feeling of loss is the feeling of ownership( the feeling of something belonging to me/ feeling of mine). Yes, it is the very feeling which makes us happy about anything in our lives. Don't believe me? Try recollecting things you really like in your life, and you will find your ownership of those things in varying proportions. When we are in ownership of things, we feel in control. Once we lose the ownership, the feeling of loss starts slowly. The more you think of it, the deeper it grows. Loss of time is a related thought. Now this is just one side of a coin.


Somewhat related to this feeling of ownership is the feeling of love. We fall in love all the time with something we own, and that's very natural of us. Over a period of time, as love grows and matures, our bonding with things/beings increases, naturally again. And then the inevitable happens, and then enters our old 'feeling' - loss. As you would have guessed, the magnitude of this feeling of loss is almost directly proportional to the magnitude of our feeling of love toward that object, sometime its even non-linear ;)


There is one more factor which I feel could be one of the causes of this feeling. These days our information consists of a lot of motivational talk, how to be successful, hopeful, stay positive, etc. Though this is good, I feel it is also inculcating the feeling of loss inherently and indirectly within us. Today's competition is yet another factor affecting our daily decisions. Combine this with all the background voice of 'self-help', a small failure can lead to huge feeling of loss - enough to take lives.


So what is the solution, you ask? It's something which we have to come up with. One solution which is often prescribed is the concept of detachment. Difficult to achieve or even follow, we are humans after all right ;) But yes, this seems to be the proven way of mitigating ourselves from the feelings of loss. It is often asked to be rational to the situations, but I've found it to be easier said than done. So yeah, you now have the formula for success, hopefully :)


So in the end, am I saying that this feeling is bad? Something which we have to overcome? Absolutely not!!! This is one of the most natural feelings among others. Rationally speaking, what you have lost is lost, there's no point in brooding over it. All I say is just observe and analyze this feeling more, you might explore a lot more of yourself :)


Happy feeling :)


Following is the list of books I read over the past few months:

1. Nudge by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler 
2. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
3. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
4. The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
5. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
6. The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely

2010 - an year

Its been a long time since I wrote my last post, and I think it was a review of the year - 2009. Well, this time, nothing was really so exciting when compared to 2009, but I think its a good thing to look back at things and learn something from them.

So 2010 started off with some usual idiotic New Year hype stuff at home (I don't understand why people 'celebrate' one more year). So essentially, my first day of 2010 was partially sleep deprived. But overall it went well since I got to meet my best friend after a long time. Later in the second month, after a couple of trials and journeys I got my Driving License (I know its not a big deal, nevertheless a 'yay' for that!).

The third month brought some unexpected changes to my work place - serial resignations from my team mates. I had no idea why they quit all at once, but I was later enlightened by my ex-colleague. But otherwise things went smooth. Had to learn things which were totally unrelated to my past study and work, but it was OK. I guess I did a good job of it - so they say. Somehow my work was not continuous, I had to wait for different things and reasons.

Then there was a not-so-good time. I had two accidents in the span of 24 hours - a bike and an office bus. And then TECh Days happened. This gave me an opportunity to give my first Tech talk at the office, it was just awesome!

After that, life was pretty much plain, nothing really interesting happened. Hope this year brings new opportunities.

Wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year, have fun, stay safe.

2009 – the year that was

As another year comes to an end trying to inscribe the good memories and farewell the not-so-good ones it gave along the way, I wanted to sit back and ponder upon what really happened in a 365 year journey(well almost). And as I started to gather some thoughts from my poor memory, I realized that this was not just an year, it was an experience that I would never forget in my life; for I learnt some of the most important lessons in life…

Work, pain, joy
My new years, unlike others’, are generally not so enthusiastic; but this was different. I was going to my first job (well Internship technically)! After 23 years, I would be landing in a company! The very thought of it filled my New Year day with all the enthu and zeal. Yeah, I did my internship at Motorola India Research Labs, Bangalore. It was at this place that I had my first experiences of a ‘real corporate world’. “They say you never forget your first job”. Well after hearing this in one of my favorite TV series, I thought it doesn’t sound so real. But, this job remains to be my ever lasting memory. Ofcourse it was not all roses; I had to learn something totally out of my knowledge, had to work with some very annoying devices, had to code in C (I used to loathe working in it earlier); but like they say, the more you run away from something, the more of it you get. 6 months of all the effort was made an ease, thanks to my mentor and the team. I also witnessed a harsh reality of professional life – job termination, how companies ruthlessly fire people in the name of cost cutting.

Life outside college
Almost every time I met some senior at college, they used to say that life is good as long as you are in the safe hands of college (and hostel tooJ). We thought – heck, we’ll have money, no assignments and tests and a whole lot of freedom. But little did we realize that those assignments were far better to tackle than the outside world, accepting the fact in a hard way; as always, life teaches you in a hard way! Some of my woes were solved since I stayed at my cousin’s place but that made way for a different problem – commutation. With 6 buses a day to change and 4 hrs to spend in transit, that was one helluva ride. But in a way that taught me to be more attentive and punctual.

Joy, fate and luck
It was all good until the completion of internship. We had a great reason to celebrate as we would be getting our M.Tech degree after 2 years of hardwork. But the bigger reason to worry about was our job. Thanks to the economic recession, we saw the worst campus placement ever in the history of our college. It was something we never expected. Despite of all the brand name and degree, we had to remain jobless for a very long time. It was during this time that I experienced my first ‘joblessness’. Everywhere I went, people were cursing the IT industry and offering free and completely unsolicited advices to join banks, power plants, what not. Damn! Some of the brightest minds had to struggle a lot to end in a job, let alone a ‘decent-pay’ job. After four months of waiting I finally got into a company. Those four months made me realize the single most important factor in success – luck. You just have to give in to it.

Even now it’s not so rosy life for some of my friends, but we all have started to accept the hard realities of life. Bill Gates once mentioned ‘Life is not fair. Get used to it’. And this year has taught me the same in more ways than one…

Minimizing dependency

There is a design pattern that we learnt recently which says exactly the same. Yeah it is of course in the realm of objects and classes, here I am trying to convey the same in the more complex domain of we human beings…I don’t understand why certain principles and rules that fit with other objects(physical) just don’t get along well with humans…this also assures me that we are special J. Enough of beating around the bush, come to the point!!!...right? Yup, gotcha! So what I was saying is that we need to minimize our dependencies in our lives. I know this is a pretty bold statement to make and even harder to follow in real life, but hey, we all can give it a try right?

Philosophers always say that our life, as a human, is very intricate web of objects, people, emotions, thoughts with ‘dependency’ among these being a very important gel that binds them together. Now though it makes our life simple in most aspects (e.g. being dependent on nature for sustenance), it so happens that sometimes, we end up wasting a whole lot of time and effort depending on other things (esp. people) to happen. One very simple case is a situation in which you depend on some other person to help you out and due to some reason, he doesn’t stand up to his word or he delays things. In this case, in all the possibility you could have saved all that time waiting for that person by working on things yourself.

But sometimes, you can’t even avoid such situations. You just have to wait and wait until things turn up and you get your work done. Most of the times, we blame it on our fate and ill-luck and unfortunately we don’t have much control over them. Some situations though can be handled by us. The only mantra that I observed to make this work is to work out things ourselves, if we can do that; and do them as early as possible. I know there are hardly any situations where you can do this, but there are such ones for certain and it is upto our attention to notice such cases and save our ‘precious’ time. After all, time is money ;)

For now, I am dwelling on the Design Patterns…

Expecting to not expect

Yeah, you read it right…never expect anything. Be it from work, people or even life. Now you might think this guy is being a real pessimist, but hold on…I assure you that by the time you reach the end of this post, you will realize what I am trying to convey and some of you might even agree with my words. Coming back to what I was saying, yeah, never expect anything…good or bad. The reason why I am saying this again and again is that lately I have realized that our expectations might not turn out to be ‘real’ in the ‘real’ world. And most of the times, we are left with grief and endless thoughts about what went wrong…where did it go wrong…etc…etc.

Back in my school days, we had a lesson that conveyed the same meaning, in an amusing way, albeit with a positive spirit. The author had, through some his real-life experiences, conveyed a very simple mantra for a happy living… “Always expect the contrary of what you really want in your life to happen”. I don’t remember how happy it made the life of others, but I surely got some good scoldings from my parents for talking ‘negative’ things. But now I realized that better don’t expect anything at all…for your own good J. And by the way, this is what even our Gita says J … ‘the cause of all sadness is your interest in things (or rather, expectations on things, life, luck, people)’

Sometimes its so annoying that what we expect not to happen does let alone something good…I guess fate has its own way of teaching the same principle. I myself have gone through so many of themL. Out of my experiences, I have realized that its not right for us to expect something. Do something because you like to do it…don’t expect the result; love somebody because you love him/her…don’t expect any reciprocation. Instead, I think its good to have confidence in what we do and hope for the best.

After all this long lecture on expectations, I still feel how difficult it is for us to not ‘expect’ something. So am I expecting anything(or nothing?)…well, I am one like you J

P.S: Thanks to my friend for his caption which stirred my thoughts to write this post.

Is genius congenital?

Human body has fascinated humans ever since the human race has begun to understand things. Everyday, we observe things, we learn a lot of them but never do we realize the immense potential locked in us. Starting from this post, I would like to share some of my thoughts on this wonderful system which I have tried to acquire from various resources. However, the master, "Brain" remains my favorite pick; and so I started off with the "Master" himself - Human Brain.

 

Yes...Is genius congenital? Well, many of us have been (or would be sooner or later be) confronted by this very question. And most of the times, we do shrug off our shoulders by considering the answer to be YES. Well that is true, but surprisingly, not always. So the answer to the big question is 'Yes and No'. Looks controversial? Well yes, it is. And that has always been in the world of the most beautiful and intricate system in this world - Our Human Body.

 

Whenever we see a person outperforming others in a radical way, we often resort to a simple and obvious conclusion - "He is a genius by birth". But even seldom do we think about other reasons such as why is he like that? What made him achieve that incredible feat? Was he practicing that trick all along? Is he good at other things as well? Or most profoundly, is he a real genius? These were some of the questions lurking around in my mind as well over a period of time. Recently, I have had the opportunity to watch some really good videos on human mind and its power and also the hot topic of this post - genius itself! Here are some of the interesting and even mind-boggling findings about our mind...

 

Our mind is the most complex organ of our body. With over some millions nerve cells or neurons and other tiny tissues and organs and weighing just about a kilogram, our brain sits on top of the body controlling everything that's going on in it. It’s a known fact that it’s the connections among the neurons that decide our all our thought processes, including intelligence and memory. Now what is that that differentiates the infrastructure of a brain of a genius and an average person? Well, to some of the people, its pretty much hardwired by birth...which gives them the name congenital geniuses. But most of the geniuses have hardwired their brain to behave more intelligently at their will and wish. Yes, it is true. Everybody even you and I can create such masterminds. What we don’t know is that this is actually possible.

 

Susan Polgar is a Grandmaster in chess game. But it’s quite interesting to know that she was just an ordinary girl like any other in her childhood. It was her father's psychiatric experiment that turned her into a chess genius. No it’s not about giving some shocks or anything. Years of hard work, dedication, passion and desire have literally hardwired her once-normal brain into a genius. Can you imagine a 14 year girl to actually study thousands of books and understand millions of chess games? Susan did. Now she can beat a world champion at chess in 60 seconds...yes literally 60 seconds. Now this level of intelligence is not something she got by birth. Her desire, passion, hard work paved way to some really mind-boggling results.

 

Our society is full of such examples. In fact according to a survey, there are more such custom tailored brained people than the actual congenital geniuses - musicians, dancers, scientists, businessmen and many more. If you study about them, you will find that despite being amazingly good at some things, they are not quite good at other things, which might come as a surprise. Is a person who is extremely good at dance equally good at mathematics? Well not often. Reason...it’s not only the genius, but also the knowledge.

 

'Practice makes a man perfect'... now a cliché, is extremely important and can become a single most powerful tool to attain the mastery or genius. While some people have the knack of cracking the problems like cutting a cake, some people solve it quite diligently and based on what they have learnt with their experience. Doing something repeatedly actually hardwires the nerves in the brain with that task and after some time, you need not even think of how to do it. This is what exactly happens when you learn a bi-cycle or reach your home through a complicated path even after a long and tiresome day and never forget that path.

 

Now is there any limitation to this 'hardwiring' process? Or is there any 'threshold'? Well, NO. The mind's capacity is unlimited. Actually, the more you utilize it, the more powerful it becomes, just like any other muscle in our body. All it needs (physically) is good food, fresh air and good rest. And when it doesn't get these, don’t worry, it knows how to take care of that...something which is not under your control after some limit. But, yes it needs practice; and not just some random practice, but a highly systematic one. That's why our parents insist on having a timetable, keeping surroundings clean, and being disciplined.

 

We all have some amount of genius inside us, buried deep within. Only some of us dig that out and reap the benefits. Most sadly, the very thought that 'we don’t have it' almost always holds us back from achieving the impossible. The moment we break that barrier, every one of us can become the super-genius.

A day to remember...

23:59:59 14th August, 2007

"Hurray!!!We submitted the first assignment in IIITB!" yelled one of my friends with joy.

Yes! it was definitely an achievement in itself for us. It was not any where close to what our country had achieved 60 years ago but it definitely was. And that became a stepping stone for all the achievements that would come our way later in our lives...

00:00:00 15th August, 2008

One more year of Independence and one more moment of achievement. This Independence Day is definetely one of the most memorable days ever in the history of our country. The reason - we have with us the person who brought us a Gold Medal in a Singles Event in Indian Olympics history for the first time. Well this was of course one of the many other achievements made by our country in the past one year.

The yester year witnessed some of the grand achievements and also some gruesome incidents. With the Ambanis and the Mittals making their way into the list of richest people in the World, India is now the place for Billionaires and the World is looking for more...Yes, the 'more' here includes IT, Nuclear Power, Education, Economy and many other key areas and arenas used to judge the progress of the nation. Last year saw the rise of the Rupee and fall of the boom of IT - a major setback for the Indian IT companies, resulting in the lay-off of the employees. Nevertheless, a considerable amount of growth was witnessed in many industry segments.

If that was what the past had for us, what does the future hold for us? A new ray of hope, a vision for growth, a potential for development. Yes! the future promises to be better than ever - only if we tap all the aforementioned ingredients for success. We are more powerful than ever, poised for a sustained growth. We encapsulate in us the enormous amount of energy required to turn the heads of the world and look up to us.

So our action plan? Get started on personal improvement first, which would initiate a chain reaction in million others which would eventually trigger the ultimate course of action for National development.

Our mantra - "Arise, awake and stop not until the goal is reached"

Jai Hind!!!

A 'time'less world...

I got up today morning and tried to find out the time - but wait! where's the time? There's no watch. I turned on my lappy to appease my tension for knowing time, and No! there's no display of time in it either!!!I tried to ask my friends, all of them have no idea of time. For a moment,my tension levels increased, at a speed I never experienced before. Suddenly everything seemed so confusing, I felt I am lost with no idea of when to brush my teeth, when to have bath, breakfast, college, assignments - oh no!!! what's happening to me?

Slowly, with despair, I got my self refreshed. And as the day cleared, a strange feeling started to creep within me. Was it shock? or tension? or fear? NO! it was something else - it was joy,happyness,freedom,hope - all mixed up together - giving me a feeling so amazing, I started loving it. But why this strange feeling at such a strange point of time? I tried to think over and voila! I think I got the answer - yes! It was due to 'time'. I dont have 'time' anymore...Yippie!!! So no more deadlines, no more haunting dates, times of submissions!!! Oh God! Is this true? Am I really relieved of 'time'? can't believe it.I dont need to rush my self through my daily chores, I do not need to worry about other's timelines. All of a sudden, the whole world seemed to be so beautiful - I feel I am liberated from the chains of 'time'.

Now that I got my answer, I started doing things at my own pace, with all the time I ever needed. I tried to read newspaper, then I went into my garden and watered the plans - oh! how peaceful it is to be with nature! I watched my favorite movies, went to the market and on the way back I saw kids playing on the street happily, college students competing among themselves
to impress a local beauty, the busy businessmen aah! where was I all these days? Was I lost in 'time'? Yes may be!!! I had my lunch, slept to the pleasure of my eye got up and went for a walk...beautiful evening. Lost in myself I had my dinner and was watching my favorite movie...

"Get up you lazy fellow!!!" yelled my friend,"Did you submit the assignment due today?"

"OOh!! I...I just dozed off finishing that!"

'what a beautiful dream'. I got up and started to fight myself against 'Time'

Are you 'Socially Network'ed?

Hello! This is Rakesh again with a new post and this time its about the common thing we all know and come across in our daily 'Net' lives. Please leave your comments after reading it.


Digital age is what can be used as an apt term to describe the current scenario of the world. With eeverything from eating to washing clothes to work now becoming 'Digital', there's hardly anything left that is 'traditional'. Coming to think of it, I feel though the 'Digital Age' and the pervasion of computers in everyone's life has done good, there has been a feeling of disruption of personal life and relationships. It is not uncommon these days to come across a person engrosed in working on his laptop even in his leisure time rather than going out and meeting his kith and kin.


Over a last few years, there's been a new trend shaping up among the 'Digitizens' - as we may call them - which is 'Social Networking'. What is this? It is basically a network of people comnected to each other on wire - or Internet as we popularly know it. these people are geographically diversified, they are of different ages, classes of life, and lifestyle. It all started when websites like 'Orkut', 'Facebook', 'iBibo' etc came into light and brought about the change in people.


But the question to think about is "Is 'Social Networking' really useful?". Well, I feel 'yes'. The reason - we being so busy in our daily lives, can't go out and meet everybody personally. Thanks to Internet and Social Networking sites, you can connect and to any person, view their profile, share pictures, videos and what not! I have come across cases where a whole new relationship was born just out of 'Orkut'ing.


But that is not all. As every coin has two sides, this social networking has also a dark side to it. The prolific penetration of these web sites has actually increased the number of 'Computer Addicts'. I have personally seen the profiles of people with more than 15,000 scraps in Orkut. That is a real big number...right? Moreover, there are so many fake profiles to lure the gullible people and thus only increasing the security threat. And there's always a 'Porn' effect out there!


There are quite a number of variety social networking sites depending on their purpose/function. There are generic social networking sites such as 'Orkut', Facebook', 'iBibo', 'BharatStudent' etc. and 'LinkedIn' for Professionals, and there are other sites which help to share the 'downloads' they have made, 'softwares' they have, sites for uniting the family members, and there are sites to form groups to actually 'fight'...ummmm ;) The bottom line - there's something for everone.


Over the centuries, mankind has evolved, survived and flourished due to one reason - communication. The new concept of 'Social Networking' in the 'Digital Age' has definetely brought out a new dimension of communication - thus leading towards betterment of society and mankind.


So the question remains "Are you 'Social Network' ed?"

Watch your words...

View my page on IIITB

Watch your words...

Hello all, thanks for reading this little attempt at expressing my thoughts about this topic “Watch your words”. Before starting my story about words, I would like to thank Rakesh for inspiring me to start writing blogs, Sagar for the same and Dada(Ravi Shankar) for keeping me on my toes all the time(he used to say “You will always be thinking and you will never write anything”).Thanks guys


Well let me come directly to the subject now, “Words”. Now if you were wondering about the title and trying to make any “intelligent” guesses about the content of the blog, let me inform you before hand, this is not any tutorial on learning vocabulary or such stuff – I strongly feel that the people who are reading this post have a decent vocabulary,right?


So still trying to figure what this is all about? Let me make your life a bit simpler. This “short” post on “words” is just a collection of thoughts and feelings which I had in me for a long time, which I wanted to share with others. Now why only “words” and not anything else on the face of earth? Well, I would say that everything on the face of earth boils down to “words” finally when you start communicating about. So instead of writing about dreamy things like “Love,Family,Relationships,etc.”, I decided on writing about the “words” themselves.


I believe in the power of “words” strongly. The reason being that they are so powerful, they can create and destroy whole worlds altogether! They are ubiquitous and are of course the basic building blocks of any human language. Words are the most powerful way to express our feelings, anytime and everytime. They can be used in a most intelligent way to get things done(what all managers do exactly!), in difficult situations to negotiate, to make relationships and sometimes even break one.


I was going through an article recently which was about personal management in which I came across a section which described the potential of words. It essentially said that every word we speak has a definite effect on what we experience in our lives. It may look strange how words can have such effect. But did you ever realize or notice the feelings of the other people when you talk to them lovingly or may be even rudely? Well in the former case, it’s the words which build the bonds and in the latter case, break them. We might not realize the influence of words on others easily, but the moment we try to, I think this world would be a better place to live.


Ok, enough of lecture, but is it enough to use words as often as we can just because they have influence on others? No way!!! It’s the right word at the right time that would have the most impact on others. To quote a simple example, lets assume you see a beautiful girl. What’s the first word that strikes your mind? Beautiful? Well to say it does to about 60~70% of us. And if suppose you want to describe the girl to your friend. Did you ever know that there is something in English called degree of expression and if you followed that, you would have a tremendous impact? Continuing our previous example, imagine describing the girl as “Gorgeous” or “Stunning” or “charming” or “gracious”. Each of these words has a different degree of expression and they are meant to be used for different occasions. For that matter, the whole point of having synonyms in English language is just that – express your feelings at the “word’s” best. So the next time you use any word, try to experiment with new ones – ones that would have a major impact on others because in today’s world, no one has time to listen to same old words all the time. The essence – “Right word at right time will take you to the right place and at a right pace”.


After having seen the greatness of the words on the positive side, lets flip the coin. As I said, words have influence on others and believe me, they have their darkest and dreadliest influence if used in offending others. Well, we all offend others but we also offend others unknowingly, where the words play the spoilplay. Our intentions might be benevolent, but words do have their chance. And we can see these incidents happen in our life almost daily. If feelings are the flames, words are like fuel to these and you know the end result. But all this could be avoided if they can be used as water, instead of flames…its all in us.


There was a recent commercial on TV which had the caption “Barriers break if only we speak” and how true it is…had it not been because of the great “words”.

Well, I think I ate a lot of time by now, so I sincerely suggest you to get back to work and remember “Watch your words…”