Sexual harassment - the other side

One of the main reasons that make a professional stay in the same job is the notice period that he will have to serve if he opts to quit. Imagine sitting in your desk imagining about your next job when you're asked to work on some boring project. I believe every company has such projects exclusively reserved for those employees serving their notice period. Such projects typically require as much effort as a yukozona or a sumo wrestler would require crushing a mosquito to death. But if you're bent upon stretching it to 30 days, you could make use of an illiterate blind guy without his 2 limbs to work on the coding part.

But then every thing has its own benefits. Shouldn't we be eternal optimists? An optimist is a person who likes the donut for its smell and taste while a pessimist looks at the hole in it. The guy in American Pie, who put the innocent donut to good use, must be an opportunist.

Lets get back to the issue on hand.

There are many ways to get out of the company soon. Some of them are
1. Damaging company's resource(s).
Although this might seem to be the easiest way out, it has its own repercussions. You might get into legal issues or if you had damaged some sensitive server, you could be 'treated' by the company employed goondas.

2. Email the CEO telling him that he doesn't have the balls to fire you.
Again, a very effective method to make a quick exit. The CEO would certainly fire you to show his authority over you. But the problem is that you'd soon become the laughing stock of the entire company. The news will reach the other companies (courtesy: Free pool). The CEO will invariably point you as an example when he talks to new recruits.

3. You can be highly unproductive.
Imagine you're given a dead line tomorrow and you go to your Project Manager and coolly ask him/her to go with you for a cup of tea. Although a lot of guys have been show the door for doing it, you stand the risk of being sent to training sessions for attitude change! The chances are more if you work for big companies where employees are transported into the company using trucks. Worse still, what would you do if your PM agrees to go with you for a cup of tea ;)

Sexual harassment, therefore, seems to be the only way to a safe and quick exit. Its one method that's hassle free and time tested. Perhaps, Phaneesh murthy only wanted to join Iflex a little early. But then, what if the person whom you harass sexually co-operates! Isn't it a win-win situation anyway ?;)

Café au lait

Perhaps there is no other beverage equivalent to a hot cup of steaming madras filter coffee (pronounced in most homes here as kaapi). I haven’t tried marijuana yet, and am not planning to.

An average madrasi wakes up listening to MS subbalakshmi’s Suprabharatham and sits to read the morning daily with a hot cup of coffee by his side. It feels like your sleepy senses are hit by a base ball bat with every sip of this divine drink.

Among other uses, coffee has certain medicinal values as well. It is the best download accelerator ever invented by man. The tenth minute after drinking a cuppa coffee, you’d find yourself in Mother Nature’s lap answering her call promptly. Many people believe that this property of coffee is the reason behind naming the programming language JAVA (JAVA in Hebrew means coffee). Haven’t you heard people saying that JAVA scares the shit out of them?

Although not proven, coffee increases your will power and determination. There are references to prove that the Iron man of India, Sardar vallabhai patel, drank two cups of it every day. Patel was once arguing in the court when the news of the sudden demise of his wife reached him. He maintained his cool and continued with the case. An ordinary soul wouldn’t have been able to contain the excitement and joy and must have started celebrating thereby attracting the contempt of the court.

Instant coffee is another variety which can be used alternately for hair dyeing. Prolonged consumption of it turns your hair white. Jokes apart, we must restrict ourselves to not more than two cups of coffee per day. The ‘cups’ you get in coffee day or other such places fall under a differenet category called bathtubs. A cup is strictly any vessel that can hold not more than 250 ml of liquid and doesn’t pose a threat for anyone to trip and fall into it.

Testimonials – Let’s mean them

Online communities such as Orkut lets you find friends. You’ll love these portals more if your ‘here for:’ section says ‘women (dating)’. Most women post their photos posing sideways to the camera. Incidentally, this is the same crowd that complains that men don’t look at their eyes while speaking.

Among innumerable ways of winning a women’s heart, such as buying jewellery by burning one’s pocket to the other cost effective ways such as writing poems which involves using a lot of grey cells, Testimonials seem to be a better option. It also saves you from entering the elite club of ‘worst pick up lines’. Tell a woman that she’s got a beautiful smile and she’ll respond to you, or at least you can expect a scrap in return.

But what does one mean by a thousand watt smile? I didn’t know that you could measure the wattage of a smile. I know that a woman’s smile is powerful, but didn’t quite think it had a S.I unit.

A testimonial is expressing admiration or appreciation of a person. It has to be earned, not gifted. I find every third person a ‘genius’, every second ‘a really cool guy’, and almost everyone ‘smart, talented and lively’ - no wonder India is churning out entrepreneurs in a hurry.

Mr. ‘cool guy’, in reality could be a person who would pee in his pants when the exam results come out, and the ‘lively’ character could be someone who would brush his teeth once a week to save himself from the tiring exercise of brushing everyday. What can I say about those ‘...I am sure he’ll be a rocket scientist in life’? Let’s hope to see such bright young men as the future presidents of India like kalam.
Most of us become generous while writing somebody’s testimonial – it’s after all a bunch of words isn’t it?

Hard pressed for time

Once a person is gainfully employed, he/she has to forget about personal life for sometime. But ‘sometime’ can extend up to well over a few years, and in some cases up to the age of 58. Things that were once taken for granted during college days, such as jogging along the shores of marina, reading newspaper after lunch and falling asleep, hanging out with friends, chatting for long hours over phone have all come under ‘things to do’ in the personal reminder.

Working for long hours should not be a problem to a bachelor, but I find my seniors (who’re married) working for the same number of hours. Of course, one’s wanting to go early largely depends on his/her spouse back home. They probably find work more interesting. There’s one more problem in being a programmer...err don’t call them problems, they’re issues. Programming is like women, elusive when you go behind but when you stop caring, comes back to give you a nudge.

Weekend is a paradox; because the weeks don’t end (but hey! Do you find a school of fish carry books along?). I find myself working for some dead line or the other. Dead lines give you turbulent sleeps, perhaps that’s why they are called so. Never mind, we Indians carry a lot of burden on our shoulders at young ages, may be that’s why India’s hope for an Olympic gold lies in weight lifting.

When it’s not your day

when it’s not your day, you’ll helplessly watch a meek mouse shaking its bum against your face. I had a similar experience a few days back. Luckily no rodent was involved.

How do you feel when you find 5 minutes before a party that you do not have the right clothes to wear? Someone who is as close as the (only) husband of your mom picks up a random sample from a heap of clothes and convinces you about its aptness for the occasion. Never believe any ‘honest’ opinions of people involved in the business of convincing others. Diplomats are people who tell you such things about hell that you’ll actually look forward to making a trip there on a tourist visa.

Finally at the party, I discovered much to my dismay that I was wearing mismatched clothes. Some young cute females shook hands with me. I am sure they got reminded of the clown outside amusement parks.

As if this was not enough, I was asked to welcome people at the party. The problem in inviting people to your party is simple. You’ll have to lie. I found myself welcoming everyone with a broad smile and a “we’re so honoured with your presence” when actually I would be happy if I don’t meet a few of them again.

By the way, I lost my cell phone in the midst of all this. I was caught between searching for my indispensable hand held device and wearing a false smile in inviting people. When I found time to search for it, I searched every nook and corner. I found that the loo doesn’t have a clean commode. But my cell phone was never to be seen. I called up the service provider’s number to know what I can do best given the predicament. I had to go through this.

* Kindly press 1 for Tamil, 2 for Hindi, 3 for English
* 1 if you’re a hutch subscriber, 2 it you’re not.
* Your 10 digit number
* You’ve entered 9884125315
* press 1 to confirm
* press 2 to reject
* press 1 to know information about offices, 2 for Uk services, 3 for information of products and services, 4 for information on offices, 0 to go back ….

…And I decided that I can live without my cell phone.

P.S :I didn't know where to fit this in. Every Ganesha idol sees atleast 10,000 homes before it is bundled and gifted the 10,001 th time.

A Software engineer's life

If all the world is a stage, where is the audience?
If all of us are programmers, where are the users?

I joined a software firm on (9/05/2005) - ah finally there is a place that'll show the doj of my first job :)

We had to go through a lot of training, and I can tell you that software development is not among the most interesting things to do on earth - think of writing documentation for things you otherwise considered as paraphernalia.

Software jargons are important to software development - that's the general consensus. Usage of words such as SAP, iRR, CASE, Rational Robot etc increases your credibility in the organisation. When such words are presented to a fresher, it feels like one is hit by a tsunami without a forewarning.

Idea: We can store all these abbreviations with their expansions into a common database. Call it the Storage of Highlycomplex words in Information Technology, in short SHIT.

The Air conditioner in our training room is set to a temperature which could be used to preserve canned fish- It’s freezing. Every one hour I use the loo. A connection from all our tummies could possibly solve chennai’s water crisis.

The lecturers go on and on with their slides like one of those prime time tele-serials (the mega serials). One would find them saying the same thing after waking up from a small nap. We would almost develop snow around our nose by the end of a session because of the cold. In one of these days, infact, ice cubes were reported in the toilet after I used it.

I must mention about the chicks in here. They’re all awesome. Women of today are bold. They stand up to things, or atleast they make things stand up ;) They serve as room heaters preventing this place from turning into ice age.

When I come out of my office, the hot weather soothes me. Fellas why do you complain about chennai’s weather?

My child hood days - a retrospect

I remember the great times i had with my lil friend Rayudu (he must've grown now) . My dad was posted in Andhra in a remote town called Gudur for about six years. He decided that it was time i went to a school, though i'd ve loved to play on my mom's lap for a few more years.I was put into the only "English" medium school - the Rose flower English medium school. I was among a few privileged children that wore trousers to school- the others wore nothing.

Gudur was famous for its lemon export business. The roads would be filled with hay and lemons, and i'd pick up a few lemons on the way back home and proudly give it to my mom to be used in cooking.

As soon as i get back home, i'd run to play with my dear friend rayudu. He didn't do any schooling, because i think his parents couldn't afford it. We always preferred the road to play for it had a nice hay cushion on it. We'd jump off the sunshade on to a heap of sand, aim stones at the pigs and frighten them away, and would sincerely imitate all their actions.

For some reason, the pigs looked more contented when they were in the drainage,and we always wanted to jump into it like them. Rayudu had done it many times though, but the thought of my mom holding a cane prevented me from joining the adventure.

My mom must have found it difficult to identify her son among a group of pigs but luckily i wore a shirt. rayudu's mom could never find him. Sundays were special to us because it meant more time together playing. We used to play the whole day unmindful to the burning heat. We used to collect burnt beedis (cigarettes) because we were fascinated by the smoke that came out of nostrils when people smoked it. I wanted to know if i was capable of producing brilliant white smoke myself but i was caught in the heroic act by my mom and punished badly :( ouch

My dad got his transfer orders in 1991 to madras. I remember it well because he used to tell me about some Gulf war and show me pictures, as if i understood. My mom was jubiliant, because she was happy in taking her son to a new city which had better schools. What she did not realise was that her son would be missing his best friend.

I am sure rayudu will not read this post. He must be working in his fields or perhaps has found a job somewhere to support his family, but i miss all good times i had with him. The thoughts however will stay with me forever.

Crazy definitions

Do you need to be told what the word ‘maintenance’ means? Most of us know it is ‘maintaining’ something. If you are not that sure about the meaning you can look it up in a dictionary. This is how my Total quality management book defines it.

“Maintenance is defined as the management, control, execution and quality
assurance of activities which ensure the achievement of optimum availability and
performance of a plant in order to meet business objectives.”

That’s an assortment of a bunch of management words. If that’s not enough this is how they define ‘planning’

“ ..the process of deciding on objectives of the organisation, on
changes on these objectives, on the resource used to attain these objectives and
on the policies that are to govern the acquisition, use and disposition of these
resources.”

The following is to be read only if the reader happens to be God. No cheating!!

Note: Dear god, have mercy on me and give me a pass mark in this exam. I admit I have written it badly but I CANNOT mug up these definitions again.

The Indian Matrimonial scenario

God knows why the MNC’s are interested in finding a good alliance for our Indian bachelors and damsels. My instant messenger proudly flashed “Preeti singh 26 executive” I clicked on the link which lead me to a page containing a list of profiles proudly put up. Don’t ask my why a 21 yr old guy needs to check matrimonial websites, isn’t it better than staring the roof, especially when it’s raining outside?

All the profiles had the three words in common – fair, slim and beautiful. It’s not a mystery why India bags so many Miss Universe titles –isn’t India full of fair, slim, and beautiful women ;) but, I had a rude shock when I checked out the photos though. I found that the write ups didn’t quite match up with the photos:) –never mind if priyanka chopra can be a Miss universe why not anyone else?

Coming back err coming to the point for the first time, I found that all of them knew whom they wanted to marry, their requirements were clear cut –just that it appeared a little unacceptable to me. One of them wanted an engineer working at LA; another wanted only an MBA. A big shock awaited me when one of the profiles invited prospective grooms only from London. I was of the opinion that marriage is a union of two hearts, looks like it’s that of two professions. My neighbour said (and she exists in reality) that these were the ‘pointers’ to a good man. So from when did the pointers to a good man such as honesty, sincerity, modesty, chivalry, hardworking etc change to MBA, B.E, M.S, and PhD?

sequel to the one below.

It’s been raining quite heavily for the last two days in Chennai; I think the rain god has answered my poems ;) I was told that my post on poetry caused a lot of stir and discomfort to a few, I’d be happy if my readers appreciate the humour in my posts. If you don’t find it funny though, you are allowed to use at your discretion the Alt+F4 keys (it might not work if you’re running a win98, so try Ctrl, Alt, Del).

Poetry - let me teach you.

For some strange reason, I am interested in poetry these days. Among other things, Men should learn cooking and poetry - Kitchen is the shortest way to bedroom and I think poetry comes next. I am aware that the art of writing poems is confined to people who would look at an apple and say

A worm in an apple might seem bad
But half a worm in an apple is really sad!

The odds were against me when I decided to become a poet; like everyone else I would grab the apple and devour it when I see it. Poetry would be the last thing to come to my mind.
I checked out websites that encourage young ‘poets’. This is what a buff had written about love

I love you with a permanence
That endures the passing years.
I love you with a joyfulness
That subdues all doubts and fears.
I love you with an honesty
That was born within my heart.
I love you with the calm belief
...

I badly need the rules to write a poem. I thought the last word of each line must rhyme with the pervious one, but since that lousy thing had qualified, I propose the following as my poem.

FOR i = 1 TO n
FOR k = i TO n
IF (a(i) > a(k)) THEN SWAP a(i), a(k)
NEXT k

FOR j = 1 TO n
PRINT a(j)
NEXT j

Next i

The above one has three words per line, it’s got a perfect meaning to convey (sorts numbers). It’s well structured. Since I’ve graduated to the status of an established poet, here’s my advice to the budding ones.

1. Write an essay about anything you feel like.
2. Transfer it to your computer.
3. Press the enter key at every third or fourth word.
4. You have a good poem.
5. Upload it to poetry.com and call yourself a poet.

40+

Are you 40 yrs or older? Don’t read this post, you may not like it. Why are 40+ oldies so rigid in their thinking? They’ve a set regime in life which will NOT be broken for any reason. The following is how a 40+ will handle different situations.


Student: Madam, I got the print out. It looks neat.
40+: No, write it into an observation, draw figures, get my signature and I will affix the wax seal.

Shopkeeper: …but sir, this computer is very fast and costs you slightly more than what you ask for.
40+: No. Give me X486 with a black n white monitor and a dot matrix printer. You cannot cheat me.

Wife: Honey I am feeling romantic.
40+: Hey! How come? It’s not night yet.

Godly woes

“Alas I am here. Wake up; your prayers have been answered. I am here not just to honour your prayers, but also to tell you what I feel about my devotees who go overboard at times. I chose you because you are the only rational soul I could find.

Firstly, why on earth do people swarm on Saturdays to see me? I might not have a family, but I need the weekends for myself. How could Saturday, which comes every week on a Christian calendar, be of any relevance to a Hindu like me? Why cant people regulate themselves? It doesn’t make sense to block the traffic and cause inconvenience to others.


Who spread the malicious rumour that I like butter? I detest it. I hate people applying a big ball of butter on my mouth especially when the butter smells cheap. Most of it is anyway taken away by the priests, and I am left with a thin layer of butter around my mouth, which only invites flies and mosquitoes. I hate to see my already swollen mouth grow further in size with mosquito bites.

...and why do my followers adorn me with vada mala? No one, not even God, can gobble up more than a dozen vadas, however tasty they are. Since I am old now, I have to worry about Gastro problems. Kindly ask men to regulate themselves- be it devotion, love, work or any other activity for moderation is the mantra for happy life."

As told by Jai Veer Hanuman in my dreams.

Swami Vivekananda's Words of Wisdom

• Mere external appearance or a person’s speech or mannerisms are only fringes of one’s personality.
• Don’t become happy with pleasurable events, and miserable with adverse circumstances.
• Go on doing good, thinking holy thoughts continuously, which is the only way to suppress base impressions.
• The personality of a man is two-thirds while his intellect, and his words are but one-third.
• Pleasure is not the Goal of man, but knowledge.
• Don’t desire, for what you desire you get, and with it comes terrible bondage.
• Each time we suppress hatred, or a feeling of anger. It is so much good energy stored up in our favour; that piece of energy will be converted into higher powers.
• Fight on bravely! Life is short! Give it up to a great cause.
• When we are alone responsible, then we shall rise to our highest and best.
• He, who always speculates as to what awaits him in future, accomplishes nothing whatsoever.
• The man who works through freedom and love for work cares nothing for results.
• We shall find that helping others is only helping ourselves; the sun takes up water from the ocean, to return it in showers.
• Unselfishness will bring success; the degree of unselfishness marks the degree of success everywhere.
• Feel, my children feel; feel for the poor, the ignorant, the downtrodden; feel till the heart stops and the brain reels and you think you will go mad.
• Cowards never win victories.
• Weak men, when they lose everything and feel themselves weak, try all sorts of uncanny methods of making money, and come to astrology.
• When you came to this world, the world rejoiced and you cried; now live your life doing such acts that when you leave this world, the world will cry for you and you will leave it laughing.
• The great benefit in this life is struggle. If there is any road to Heaven, it is through Hell.
• Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life -think of it, dream of it, and live on that idea.
• Regular breathing puts the body in a harmonious condition; it improves your concentration.
• When you have acquired the feeling of non-attachment, there will then be neither good nor evil to you. It is only selfishness that causes the difference between good and evil.
  --------- Swami Vivekananda

Graphs

How do you feel when your project reviewer listens to your lecture for half-an hour and says “Yawn..So where are the graphs to prove it?” Most of them are unmindful of the amount of hard-work that had gone into your project. They certainly don’t understand that not all projects need graphs.

ALL THEY NEED IS SOME SQUIGGLY CURVES WITH X AND Y AXES.

Such people care more for the letter than for the spirit of rules n regulations. I am not going to crib about it anyway. If all they want is a graph, so be it. I have presented some readymade graphs that can be conveniently added to your project – you don’t need to pay royalty to me. ;)




And don’t forget to add some nice symbols like dy/dx or O(n logn).Such things add to the ‘value’ of your project!

Long live our education system.

There’s a lot of difference between reading a novel and an article in Economic Times. “What’s the similarity?” You might ask- I don’t know, but there are lots of differences. I can turn the pages of a novel really fast and impress the chick opposite, if any that is, and still not feel guilty of pretending. If the novel happens to be a Sidney Sheldon, your job only becomes easy- you know the story already!

I was confronted with jargons like “equity market”, “VAT”, “Capital returns” and I found it guilty to assume meanings -Equity sounds like Kitty, so it must be a market that sells pussies, cats I mean. VAT is it VAT 69? Does that ring bells with you?

I therefore called my friend, a commerce graduate, to clear my doubts. The following is what he had to say.

“Equity is like a hmmm…sort of you know what I mean, it’s a kind of a ..And
hey can I call you later? Someone is at the door.”

..And someone said this for VAT –

“VAT helps the government a lot. It has been implemented in a lot of
countries world wide. It helps avoid black money.”

That’s the sort of reply you expect out of a politician, not from a student of economics!
Having successfully tarnished them, what would I say if a plebeian wanted to know what a microprocessor is?

“It’s a kind of electronic device which helps us to do a lot of stuff in your
computer. its made up of lots of electronic circuits.. hey are you free this
evening? Let’s play cricket.”

Isn’t it a case of the pot calling the kettle black? Long live our education system.

The three phases

There are three phases to any role that’s played in a bollywood movie; the rules are made especially stringent if it’s an Akshay Kumar starrer. Here are a few samples.

a. The mother
#1 The caring mother (until her Police officer husband is shot by the villains)
#2 The hardworking widow (after his death)
#3 Photo on the wall.


b. The beautiful sister

#1 The playful chirpy girl.
#2 Falls in love with a bad guy.
#3 Raped and killed (usually the lengthiest scene in the movie).


c. The Heroine

#1 A Social worker/college student.
#2 Falls in love with the hero (charachterised by songs at unwanted times).
#3 Marries the hero (in case of availability of another heroine, refer b.#3)


...and the formula continues to create sensational hits.

Private companies - real good service.

But for the sweet voice of a chick at the other end, I wouldn’t have called the customer service again. I was to prepare notes for my lecture that day and off went my cable modem. The cute female (she must be) at the other end, whose voice flowed down live a river with flamboyant English assured me of service within 3 hours. I waited like Bashmasura who got seduced by mohini avatar. The asura at least danced with mohini before he was killed but I sat in my dingy room waiting for some help to come; none came.

Whoever feels that the private companies offer a better service hasn’t understood the definition properly. Employing a preposterous woman in the customer service centre does not solve any problem. It adds to the woes!

It hurts, as a computer engineer, to listen to ‘suggestions’ like

a. “Turn off and then turn on your system” (to repair a modem!!!)

b. “Click on the button called the start button at the left hand bottom corner…”

c. “You see, the computer might be affected by something called viruses” (a bigger plural?)

d. “…go to run and type “c:\”, do you want me to spell it?”

e. “Yes. I know you need to check your email, you can do it in a place called browsing centre near your house.”

My Autobiography – How I don’t want it to be.

Another 40 years left in my life if accidents, cancer, and diabetics don’t play a spoil sport. How do I want my life to be? The options to choose from are too many – Management studies, M.S, journalism and medicine. Although becoming a doctor after an under-graduation in engineering might look insane, it is not impossible; all it takes is an admission into a Patna university.

All of us (rich/poor/dark/fair/ugly/sane/insane) have to go through this crucial phase of selecting a career path. Instead of breaking one’s head with the options, it would be better to employ a different method of selection. Just think of what you don’t want to be in life. It’s that simple!

The following is how I don’t want my autobiography to read

Autobiography of VIKRAMAN VASUDEVAN (1983-2043)

Chap1: Childhood days

Chap2: Adolescence and running behind women (without much success)

Chap3: undergrad days and the fun associated with it.

Chap4: The dream job and marriage (shh! Running behind women secretively)

Chap5: My First child - a successful marriage indeed!

Chap6: Oh my god! My child walks, a moment of ecstasy.

Chap7: YES. I got him admitted into the best school.

Chap8: My child runs behind women- nostalgia!

Chap9: Retirement life with a cane chair and Hindu crossword.

God, can I have fast growing facial hair?

I added the seventh can of Gillette shaving cream to my cupboard. You guessed it right; it was a gift from someone who came from the US. Why do people invariably gift us with Shaving creams? Do people in the US shave 5 times a day that they think we must follow it here? Or may be it is because they think we don’t have such ‘sophisticated’ things in India. We may not be ‘cultured’ enough to use a toilet paper, but we certainly use shaving gels.

Let me see how I can finish those seven cans soon…

#1 They can be used as a substitute for fresh cream on birthday cakes.

#2 Dissolve it in water and use it for white washing the walls.

#3 Fill the centre of a biscuit after eating the cream off.

#4 The not so potent men can fake an…well it has a lot of other uses.

The unsung heroes – DYFI and SFI

I persuaded myself really hard before I took the final decision to leave to cuddalore to help the tsunami victims. I called up AID-India many times to find out about my vaccination, food, accommodation and bugged them with every other possible question. I felt proud of myself and the feeling of becoming another mahatma was on the rise, only until I reached the place.

The volunteers of DYFI (democratic youth federation of India) blew the feeling that was budding in me. These guys have been working in the camps for over a month now without any remuneration. Some of them are on a loss of pay and the others are on a long leave.

Whenever I got an opportunity to talk to the volunteers (mostly at night), I tried to reason the force that drove them this far. I had a good chat with Mr. Sudhakaran (joint-secretary) while we were on our way to Chidambaram to buy note books for the kids. He is an ITI degree holder who had many offers from dubai and Saudi which he refused; he believes in working for the people.

Mr.vanchinathan (in-charge of the camp) narrated an incident in which moved me very much. Hundreds of unemployed youth gathered in an open ground hoping to be selected into the military for 180 vacant posts, some of them were engineers and science graduates. The crowd which became unmanageable was lathi-charged which left many wounded. Those who were selected had the shock of their life when they came to know what they were selected for- they were to be the barbers in the military camps. Mr. Vanchi felt the need for an organisation which would back the unemployed youth in the country against such insults.

DYFI and SFI (student federation of India) are the real heroes doing real work for tsunami relief. This post will therefore not contain any photos, showing me playing with children or doing some relief work.

God’s own country – The people

Visit kerala and you’ll find out the limitations of your vocabulary (applicable even to the Brits). This is perhaps the only place where Mother Nature remains in her pristine self. The lofty Western Ghats, cool weather, lush green tea plantations, streets filled with the aroma of spices and the beautiful women make the place a heaven on earth.

As I got down from the train I saw a woman in salwar kameez with her thuppata struggling to cover her curvature walking towards me and I knew I was in kerala. We had that ‘inevitable' collision that sent both of us a few yards away, having lived majority of my life in Chennai I was expecting some nasty comment or atleast a cold stare. I was surprised when she smiled and said “I am sorry”. No, she actually said “I am Sooory” (Punch on the ‘O’ when you’re in kerala).

There needn’t be temples when people worship their work; Kerala is not crowded with temples that fight for survival in every nook and corner. The people of kerala are very practical (should the credit go to communism?). YOU DON’T FIND A BEGGAR IN THAT STATE. Against a common notion, the keralites are not cunning but in fact very helpful.

Should all Indians have the same attitude; India will certainly be a better place to live in.