Happy New Year 2006

Hi all...

Wishing you Happy and Prosperious Year 2006

Enjoy...

Prakash, Shyam and Me @ Tavant on 30 Dec 2005 

Sony, Prakash and Shyam at Roper Bay 

Sony @ work station 

Shyam @ Tavant 30 Dec 2005 

Me @ office 

Prakash 2005 Last day @ office 

Japanese IQ Test

This is a hard one, but fun! Good luck!!!

Click on link then click on blue circle
http://freeweb.siol.net/danej/riverIQGame.swf

This is going to do your head in, but it can be done. Apparently,this is an IQ test given to job applicants in Japan:
"Everybody has to cross the river"
The following rules apply:
-Only 2 persons on the raft at a time
-The father cannot stay with any of the daughters without their mother's presence
-The mother cannot stay with any of the sons without their father's presence
-The thief (striped shirt) cannot stay with any family member if the policeman is not there
-Only the Father, the Mother and the Policeman know how to operatetheraft .
-To start click on the big blue circle on the right.-To move the people click on them.
-To move the raft click on the pole on the opposite side of the river.

Bangalore Attack

Suicide bombers threaten major attacks in Bangalore
Suicide bombers threatened in letters sent to local media that they would target a top politician and launch attacks against New Year's revellers in the city of Bangalore, police said on Friday. A letter from a previously unknown group outlining the threatened attacks in Bangalore was faxed to several newspapers late on Thursday, the director-general of police, BS Sial, said. "It will be the most coordinated attack the country has ever seen," television channel CNN-IBN quoted the letter, written in English, as saying. Six attackers will trigger explosions including, "two human bombs to target the state chief minister," Moin-ud-Din of the Al-Jehadi group said, according to the report."Newspapers have received the letter late last night, and we are trying to find out if it is a hoax. But we will not take any chances," said Sial, without giving further details. The letters were sent a day after gunmen opened fire on Wednesday outside a prestigious science institute in Bangalore, killing a retired professor and wounding four others.
Police set up barricades, patrolled streets and continued to search cars at checkpoints on Friday across the city, hunting for the attackers, Sial said. Police suspect LeT terrorists to be behind Wednesday's attack, but no group has claimed responsibility.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1585732,0008.htm
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=60656

Staying alive in a Software job

Harshad Oak -
Harshad Oak is the founder of Rightrix Solutions and the author of the three books Oracle JDeveloper 10g: Empowering J2EE Development, Pro Jakarta Commons and Java 2 Enterprise Edition 1.4 (J2EE 1.4) Bible He can be reached at harshad at rightrix dot com

Before I started working for myself, I spent some years in some of the top IT companies in India and still have many friends working in various software companies. I wrote a blog Recruiting like crazy, about the same time last year about how Indian companies are recruiting like there's no tomorrow and the possible consequences. However I was avoiding writing this particular piece as it seems like an unpatriotic thing to do, to tell the world how bad the working conditions in software companies in India have become. And there's always the risk of excerpts being used out of context to bash up IT in India.
I am now writing this because I just keep hearing horror tales from the industry and it doesn't seem like anything is being done in the matter, so I thought I will do my bit and write.
First and foremost, before stereotypes about India kick in, I would like to clarify that I am not saying that Indian software companies are sweat shops where employees aren't being paid and made to work in cramped uncomfortable places. The pay in software companies is very good as compared to other industries in India and the work places are generally well furnished and plush offices. India being a strong democracy, freedom of expression is alive and well and Indians are free to express their opinions and voice their concerns. Yet, I say that the software industry is exploiting its employees.
IT work culture in India is totally messed up and has now started harming the work culture of the nation as a whole. Working 12+ hours a day and 6 or even 7 days a week is more the rule than the exception.
Consequences:
* A majority of IT people suffer from health problems.As most of the IT workforce is still very young, the problem isn't very obvious today but it will hit with unbearable ferocity when these youngsters get to their 40s.
* Stress levels are unbelievable high. Stress management is a cover topic in magazines and newspapers and workshops on the subject are regularly overbooked.
* Most IT people have hardly any social / family life to talk of.
* As IT folk are rich by Indian standards, they try to buy their way out of their troubles and have incurred huge debts by buying expensive houses, gizmos and fancy cars.
Plush offices, fat salaries and latest gizmos can give you happiness only if you have a life in the first place.
The reason I feel this culture has emerged, is the servile attitude of the companies. Here's a tip for any company in the west planning to outsource to India. If you feel that a project can be completed in 6 weeks by 4 people, always demand that it be completed in 2 weeks by 3 people.
Guess what, most Indian companies will agree. The project will then be hyped up as an "extremely critical" one and the 3 unfortunate souls allocated to it will get very close to meeting the almighty by the time they deliver the project in 2 weeks. Surprisingly, they will deliver in 2-3 weeks, get bashed up for any delays and the company will soon boast about how they deliver good quality in reasonable time and cost. Has anyone in India ever worked on a project that wasn't "extremely critical"?
I was once at a session where a top boss of one of India's biggest IT firms was asked a question about what was so special about their company and his answer was that we are the "Yes" people with the "We Can Do It " attitude. It is all very well for the top boss to say "We Can Do It ".. what about the project teams who wish to say "Please....We Can't Do It " to the unreasonable timelines...I was tempted to ask "What death benefits does your company offer to the teams that get killed in the process?". I sure was ashamed to see that a fellow Indian was openly boasting about the fact that he and his company had no backbone. The art of saying No or negotiating reasonable time frames for the team is very conspicuous by its absence. Outsourcing customers more often than not simply walk all over Indian software companies. The outsourcer surely cannot be blamed as it is right for him to demand good quality in the least cost and time. Exhaustion = Zero Innovation
* How many Indians in India are thought leaders in their software segment? - Very few
* How much software innovation happens in India? - Minimal
* Considering that thousands of Indians in India use Open Source software, how many actually contribute? - Very few
Surprisingly, put the same Indian in a company "in" the US and he suddenly becomes innovative and a thought leader in his field. The reason is simple, the only thing an exhausted body and mind can do well, is sleep. zzzzzz
I can pretty much bet on it that we will never see innovation from any of 10000+ person code factories in India.
If you are someone sitting in the US, UK... and wondering why the employees can't stand up, that's the most interesting part of the story.
The Problem
The software professional Indian is today making more money in a month than what his parents might have made in an year. Very often a 21 year old newbie software developer makes more money than his/her 55 year old father working in an old world business. Most of these youngsters are well aware of this gap and so work under an impression that they are being paid an unreasonable amount of money. They naturally equate unreasonable money with unreasonable amount of work.
Another important factor is this whole bubble that an IT person lives in.. An IT professional walks with a halo around his or her head. They are the Cool, Rich Gen Next .. the Intelligentsia of the New World... they travel all over the world, vacation at exotic locations abroad, talk "american", are more familiar of the geography of the USA than that of India and yes of course, they are the hottest things in the Wedding Market!!!
This I feel is the core problem because if employees felt they were being exploited, things would change.
I speak about this to some of my friends and the answer is generally "Hey Harshad, what you say is correct and we sure are suffering, but why do you think we are being paid this much money? It's not for 40 hours but for 80 hours a week. And anyway what choice do we have? It's the same everywhere."
So can we make things change? Is there a way to try and stop an entire generation of educated Indians from ending up with "no life". Solutions
1) Never complement someone for staying till midnight or working 7 days a week.
Recently, in an awards ceremony at a software company, the manager handing over the "employee of the month" award said something like "It's unbelievable how hard he works. When I come to office early, I see him working, when I leave office late, I still see him working".. These sort of comments can kill the morale of every employee trying to do good work in an 8hr day.
Companies need to stop hiding behind the excuse that the time difference between India and the west is the reason why people need to stay in office for 14 hours a day. Staying late should be a negative thing that should work against an employee in his appraisals. Never complement someone for staying till midnight or working 7 days a week .
2) Estimates:
If time estimates go wrong, the company should be willing to take a hit and not force the employee to work crazy hours to bail projects out of trouble. This will ensure that the estimates made for the next project are more real and not just what the customer has asked for.
3) Employee organizations / forums
NASSCOM (National Association for Software and Services Companies) and CSI (Computer Society Of India) are perhaps the only two well known software associations in India and both I feel have failed the software employee. I do not recall any action from these organizations to try and improve the working conditions of software employees. This has to change.
I am not in favor of forming trade unions for software people, as trade unions in India have traditionally been more effective at ruining businesses and making employees inefficient than getting employees their rights and helping business do well. So existing bodies like NASSCOM should create and popularize employee welfare cells at a state / regional level and these cells should work only for employee welfare and not be puppets in the hands of the companies.
If the industry does not itself create proper forums for employee welfare, it's likely that the government / trade unions will interfere and mess up India's sunshine industry.
4) Narayan Murthys please stand up
Top bosses of companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, etc. need to send the message loud and clear to their company and to other companies listening at national IT events that employee welfare is really their top concern and having good working culture and conditions is a priority. Employee welfare here does not mean giving the employee the salary he/she dreams of.
Last word
I am sure some of my thoughts come from the fact that I too worked in such an environment for a few years and perhaps I haven't got over the frustrations I experienced back then.
So think about my views with a pinch of salt but do think about it. And if you have an opinion on this issue, don't forget to add a comment to this article. --

BPO rape, murder clouds Bangalore

BANGALORE, DECEMBER 16: The rape and murder of a call centre employee, a 24-year-old woman, by a person pretending to be the late night driver of her company transport has sent a chill down the spine of the BPO industry in Bangalore.
On December 13, newly wed Pratibha, an employee of HP Globalsoft, located at the Electronics City, went missing. She was picked up at 1.50 am (for her 2.30 am shift) from her residence at Kumaraswamy Layout, nearly 25 km from her office, by a driver claiming to be a substitute. On Friday morning, after the police tracked down the driver using Pratibha’s cell phone records they found her body dumped in a grove on the outskirts of Bangalore.
Police investigations have revealed that the 28-year-old accused Shivakumar, one of 60 drivers from SRS Transport which services HP Globalsoft, called Pratibha on her mobile phone on the evening of December 13 to tell her that he would be coming to pick her up in place of her regular driver Jagadish.
An unsuspecting Pratibha agreed and was seen off by her mother-in-law boarding the vehicle driven by Shivakumar. Minutes later Pratibha’s regular vehicle arrived at her home and found that she had already been picked up. When the regular driver, Jagadish, called Pratibha on her cell phone to verify, she informed him that she had already been picked up and handed the cell phone to Shivakumar who told Jagadish that he had been asked to pick up Pratibha.
Jagadish informed the time office at HP that Pratibha had been picked up by vehicle number 405 the number provided by Shivakumar. According to statements given to the police by Shivakumar, since his nabbing on Thursday night, he took Pratibha to a desolate place on the Kanakapura Road, leading out of Bangalore, raped her at knife-point, and killed her.
Prathiba who got married in February this year had been employed with HP Globalsoft for the past six months.
From Shivakumar’s mobile phone records, the police have found that he had also called two other girls the same night with the same story. The girls, however, refused to board his vehicle after they reportedly checked with the company and found that no replacement was being sent.
Unfortunately, it seems like this girl was completely unsuspecting of the trap she had fallen into, said deputy commissioner of police Alok Kumar. Shivakumar, in his statement to the police, has reportedly said that he committed the crime because he had not had sex since his wife’s pregnancy. This has been a most unfortunate incident. It has nothing to do with the company. It is a stray, one-off incident. We are trying to strengthen the security for our employees in consultation with the police, said HP Globalsoft’s CEO Som Mittal.

Interaction- B' Gates and N' Murthy

We been to Palace Ground, Bangalore to attend the launch of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 by BILL GATES. It was really a great event to see the great man in front of us. Also i did catch the interaction with Mr. Bill and Narayana Murthy by Prannoy Roy in NDTV. The later event was as follows.( as forwarded by a friend)

Amity Business SchoolSYNOPSIS OF DISCUSSIONSBETWEENBILL GATESCHAIRMAN, MICROSOFT CORPORATION&NARAYANA MURTHYCHIEF MENTOR, INFOSYSINTERVIEWEDBYPRANNOY ROYNDTVDECEMBER 7, 2005TAJ PALACE, NEW DELHIAmity Business School

PRANNOY ROY : To me and many of us at TiE, it is a special moment. We have with us together two icons of our times - Mr. Bill Gates and Mr. Narayana Murthy. Both iconic entrepreneurs, but in fact both much more than that. As you look into their livesthere are so many similarities. Like both started life as hardcore software guys. Mr. Bill Gates wrote the basic compiler and Mr. Murthy, in the early 70s, also wrote the first basic compiler. Both today have given up being CEOs and taken a step back to help with the bigger kind of picture with bigger vision. Both of them have superb right hand people i.e: Steve Ballmer and Nandan Nilekani. Both have huge businesses but even larger social goals with larger hearts. Both have wives, Melinda and Sudha, who infact are even more committed to changing society, to philanthropy and charity. As icons they have to resisttremendous pressures, sometimes to enter politics. Both remarkable men, that come once in a lifetime, once in a generation. Both used to travel economy class, some say they were stingy, for some it is about principles. If it is stingy, certainly it is not visible in their charity. Ironically both are voracious readers, books are their passion. One major similarity - both really believe in spreading wealth among their employees through ESOPs but now both have stopped that and the list of their similarities is endless.
PRANNOY ROY : What are the defining moments in your life?
BILL GATES : Certainly the opportunity to use a computer at young age, I was only 13 at that time and I was 16 when I first understood the magic of chips with double power every two years. The school teacher asked me to teach computer to the class. That was when I got fascinated and completely immersed. My decision to leave school and start a company, that’s a nice milestone since it worked. In my case I thought the time was very important to get in and be the very first. So this chip computer comes out and I decided to go to Paul Allen and provide the software for the very first personal computer, whichagain was incredibly limited. The willingness to take the risk before anybody else was doing it, I think that was a big help to us. My parents thought that I was going on leave and will come back as the company will not succeed, even Harvard was nice enough to say that I could come back and even today they are willing to take me back.
NARAYANA MURTHY : There have been atleast three defining moments in my life. First when I was incarcenated in Bulgaria, a communist country and without food and water for 96 hours. Later I decided that I don’t want to be a part of this system and I will go back to India to pursue entrepreneurship and create wealth legally and ethically. Second was in 1990, we had started the company in 1981. It didn’t progress because there was so much of friction in business in India. There was an offer from somebody to acquire us for $1mn, from this offer six of my group members got excited but towards the end I decided that I am not going to sell it off. Amity Business School Third was frankly getting listed on NASDAQ. In fact it was a small step for NASDAQ but a giant leap for Infosys and Indian software industry. I would say that these were the three defining moments in my life.
PRANNOY ROY : How do you keep yourself motivated to work on and on and on?
BILL GATES : I love my work, I get to work with smart people and it’s a field that’s constantly changing. Every couple of year’s people say that a new company will throw you out of the business and we get to show people “not this time”. My vision was not about sales or profits but it was about this computer, what it could do and we don’t have that computer yet. We cannot talk to the machine and it cannot talk to us and we are still looking for that computer. I have a dream of having a computer in every home, in every desk. We are not even half way in achieving that goal, here in India we are scratching the surface. So there is still lot of work to be done as there is no finish line anywhere near.
NARAYANA MURTHY : Most passionate people in the world are held by larger goals. At Infosys, we have a vision to become a globally respected organization, not only in India but also in US, Japan, Germany, Australia UK and that’s still a long marathon. Maybe 10,000 or 12,000 Infosysians have already made some money but there are 30,000 other Infosysians who still have to make that kind of money and it is our responsibility to give our best, our commitment to make sure that they and future Infosysians can make money.
PRANNOY ROY : Both of you started ESOPs and both of you have given it up. Why?
BILL GATES : Microsoft shared more wealth than any other company has in the history of capitalism. If you get to a point where industry is so hot, it almost hyped then you start to get deviations that not only go up but they also fluctuate, so to pass the risk of those market conditions on to the employees may not be right. But we are actually into shares now where you get your salary and shares of stock and so we cut the variance down and so the predictability is much greater and still plenty of personal wealth. We are still sharing the wealth but in a different way and it wasn’t to do anything with the newaccounting principles.
NARAYANA MURTHY : I always believed that leadership does not succeed in a vacuum, you need people who are smarter than you, who have same or higher level of passion and energy. If you want to bring those people on board then you need someequitable paradigm and that is why Infosys adopted the ESOPs model. We suspended it because we have to expense it out according to US regulations and then we realized that it is not the best model for us anymore. And then as it was pointed out, we made an analysis and found that by creating a paper or variable performance model, we will be able to provide a decent compensation for all. Amity Business School
PRANNOY ROY : India has got a new energy with Democracy as its foundation.
People have started questioning. Is democracy important in taking businessdecisions?
BILL GATES : Democracy means right way of looking at resources. It is the real commitment to the future. It is a must and we, US, stand for it.
NARAYANA MURTHY : We value knowledge as the most intangible asset. However, the important question now is, Is it really paying? There has to be a greater premium on time. We waste lot much of it in discussions. One of my friends from Harvard aptly quoted, Two of my greatest challenges are – How to get my Japanese students to speak up and Indian students to shut up”. We have to come to conclusion out of discussions and get to execution.
PRANNOY ROY : Does a anti-American wave affect you? Lack of US sensitivity in handling international affairs to the world issues affects your relationships with your partners.
BILL GATES : The world depends on the US to do certain things right whether it is funding science or whether setting a good example for free trade. I won’t say we lost business or have some impact it is because of the US politics. Everybody resents the most successful country and everybody loves the most successful country. It is all the love-hate relationship. In the US there are mixed feelings about what they think the US is doing good and not doing well. It is for the world to understand the benefits of free trade system. The US should be imitated by others. The way we run our university system should be learnt by everyone. We stand for – Be good in every way, innovation in products, markets, etc. People talk of India versus China, why not India plus China. India should learn from China and China should learn from India. I am proponent of the combined best practices of India, China and the US.
PRANNOY ROY : Does the use of force by US in international affairs worry you?
BILL GATES : It is best to use when the stake is very dramatic. Even in US, people say we need more evidence (in Iraq issue) but then for us it is good, for it is for the democracy.
PRANNOY ROY : Is it love-hate relationship? Even we say “Yankee go home, but take me with you
NARAYANA MURTHY : I am unabashed admirer of US for their openness. I don’t know of any other society as open as the US. It is for us to work harder to convince the US people, decision makers, law makers, that there is good value for them (in Amity Business School outsourcing). If there is an outcry, dissatisfaction, I see it as our failure. ‘The day you say market is wrong, you are finished’, this should be learnt by US.
PRANNOY ROY : Now we will take some of the questions from the audience.
A1. My question is for Mr. Narayana Murthy. What challenges are faced by large and small companies in attracting, keeping and retaining best talent?
NARAYANA MURTHY : It is all about creating the dream and vision and articulating that everybody is able to take the rainbow and put in pocket. It is all about making sure that people will get their value, people will automatically come to you.
A2. My question is for Mr. Bill Gates. After the internet, what technology will take the world now?
BILL GATES : We need to get a device which will get us value at the low cost. Like speech recognition, mapping devices etc. I see natural interface technology as the important area that shall dominate the sphere.
A3. My question is for Mr. Bill Gates. What human qualities are important for success?
BILL GATES : You need passion, intelligence and some kind of integrity to understand what your limits are. Very strong combination of all the three shall help to achieve success.
A4. My question is for Mr. Narayana Murthy. Very large companies are created in US. What do we need to do to have the same in India?
NARAYANA MURTHY : We need a more competitive market. Corporations have to realize the importance of innovation, good venture capital system, environment that enhances the quality of education system that focuses on problem solving and good set of mentoring who will take care of entrepreneurs’ linkages with the requisite networks.
BILL GATES : We always talk big companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, etc. We don’t think of numerous companies that fail. It is all market economy that survives.
A5. My question is for Mr. Bill Gates. What is the fundamental difference between managing a startup and a large corporation?
BILL GATES : The leadership styles are quite different. When the companies grow, you acquire skill sets, create a system, take a step back, monitor the people and manage the managers. Amity Business School
PRANNOY ROY : The last question - Will you ever enter into politics?
BILL GATES : No
NARAYANA MURTHY : No
PRANNOY ROY: Thank you very much.
Compiled by: Dr. Sanjeev Prashar - Associate Professor – Marketing, AmityBusiness School

Deserve Befor You Desire

Excerpts from an HR article in THE ACHIEVER- Round-Table
The grass isn't always greener on the other side!! Move from one job to another, but only for the right reasons. It's yet another day at office. As I logged on to the marketing and advertising sites for the latest updates, as usual, I found the headlines dominated by 'who's' moving from one company to another after a short stint', and I wondered, why are so many people leaving one job for another? Is it passé now to work with just one company for a sufficiently long period?
Whenever I ask this question to people who leave a company, the answers I get
are: "Oh, I am getting a 200% hike in salary"; "Well I am jumping three levels in my designation"; "Well they are going to send me abroad in six months".
Then, I look around at all the people who are considered successful today and who have reached the top - be it a media agency, an advertising agency or a company. I find that most of these people are the ones who stuck to the company, ground their heels and worked their way to the top. And, as I look around for people who change their jobs constantly, I find they have stagnated at some level, in obscurity.
In this absolute ruthless, dynamic and competitive environment, there are still no - short cuts to success or to making money. The only thing that continues to pay, as earlier is loyalty and hard work. Yes, it pays!
Sometimes, immediately, sometimes after a lot of time. But, it does pay.
Does this mean that one should stick to an organization and wait for the golden moment? Of course not. After, a long stint, there always comes a time for moving in most organisations, but it is important to move for the right reasons, rather than the superficial ones, like money, designation or oversees trip.
Remember, no company recruits for charity. More often than not, when you are offered an unseemly hike in salary or designation that is disproportionate to what the company offers it current employees, there is always an unseemly bait attached. The result? You will, in the long term have reached the same level or may be lower levels than what you would have in your current company.
A lot of people leave their organisations because they are 'unhappy'. What is this so called unhappiness? I have been working for donkey years and there has never been a day when I am not unhappy about something in my work environment - boss, rude colleagues, fussy clients etc.
Unhappiness in at work place, to a large extent, is transient. If you look hard enough, there is always something to be unhappy about. But, more importantly, do I come to work to be "happy" in the truest sense? If I think hard, the answer is "No". Happiness is something you find with family, friends, may be a close circle of colleagues who have become friends. What you come to work for is to earn, build a reputation, satisfy your ambitions, be appreciated for your work ethics, face challenges and get the job done.
So, the next time you are tempered to move on, ask yourself why are you moving and what are you moving into?
Some questions are:
* Am I ready and capable of handling the new responsibility? If yes, what could be the possible reasons my current company has not offered me the same responsibility? * Who are the people who currently handle this responsibility in the current and new company? Am I good as the best among them? * As the new job offer has a different profile, why have I not given the current company the option to offer me this profile? * Why is the new company offering the new job? Do they want me for my skills, or is that ulterior motive?
An honest answer to these will eventually decide where you go in your career
- to the top of the pile in the long term (at the cost of short - term
blips) or to become another average employee who gets lost with the time in wilderness?
"DESERVE BEFORE YOU DESIRE"

Quote from a GE Executive
"Every day for the last four months I have been hiring. I come to office each day, hassle my recruitment team, agencies and consultancies for resumes, perform interviews, negotiate salaries and make offers. It's amazing to see how people negotiate for salaries and perks, no one asks anything anymore about what the job entails, what they can contribute, or how they can grow and realize their dreams here.
It's about pay, and people are eagerly willing to display unbridled stupidity in managing their careers by focusing incessantly on money. Heck, the time it takes to finalize an offer nowadays, I could send out an offer letter, go have several children, watch them grow, put them through school and then head back to office, the candidate is likely to have finished negotiating his pay and ready to join.
This is all fine and dandy; it's a hyper-inflationary job market. What's disturbing is the not-so-new trend of IT jobs flying out of India. I hear an 850-seater call center has decided to move out of India due to attrition and increasing costs. Hell, my own company has pushed out 100 jobs out of India into Eastern Europe, and I was part of that decision. We need to wake up and smell the stink of the decay we are creating all around us in the IT job market. Year-on-year end people here expect nothing less than 30 to 45% salary increases, where as the average salary hike in the US per year is 3% and Eastern Europe is 4%.
I could go on and on about the quality of the flotsam and jetsam that washes on to my desk in response to job ads, but we all know it. Sometimes it takes as many as 40+ interviews to close one position. Sad part? The bozos still think they are worth it.
At this rate IT India better ensure they have transferable skills, because in a couple of years from now they will not have jobs to feed their money-frenzied lifestyles.
Let's do justice to the lessons the dotcom tried to teach us, what goes up must come down."

Apartment Pooja

Sunday, 11 Decmber was a milestone in our life. The 'pooja' and Griha Pravesha (House warming) of our new flat was due this day. Ganapathy pooja started at 5 am, long for an hour and Griha Pravesha at 9:15 am. Our parents only attended the ceremony. My college mate Anoop also done pooja same day same time, both apartments in same building. We are planning to move in to new place by January.

Congratulations to Anoop, our families and me!!!

We decided to do the pooja now even tough we will be moving in January only as next one month time is not good for auspicious event like house warming.

KBC Claims Pati !

New Delhi-
The tremendously popular TV game show,"Kaun Banega Crore Pati" claimed its victim in the capital. Mrs Neelam Arora, utterly disgusted with her husband's inability to answer the simplest of questions, divorced him immediately after the end of the show. The entire event has shaken the capital to the core and has left the local populace in a state of daze. Mrs Neelam Arora, when contacted, was all fire and fury. "How can you stay married to a dumb brick who cannot answer even the first 1000 Rupees question? Even a 6 year old can answer such questions, but my husband, I mean, my ex-husband *%$#@&*(unprintable) couldn't do it.
That's why; I called a lawyer immediately and filed divorce papers." She also added that all her friends and relatives supported her move. She also dismissed the suggestion that her husband, for motives best known to him, could have deliberately flunked the question. Mr. Pankaj Arora, a property dealer in one of the colonies of East Delhi, was happy when he got the news from the Star TV network that he had got selected, one among millions, for participating in the popular show and he considered himself lucky to be so chosen. He was also told to bring his wife along to the studios at Mumbai where the game shows were to be hosted by Mr Amitabh Bachhan. Winning a crore was hardly in the mind of Mr Arora and all Mr Pankaj Arora wanted to do there was to gape at his idol and may be he thought he could try to sell him a few of the plots of his clients to Amitabh at a small tidy margin. But Mrs Arora was made of sterner stuff.
Mrs Neelam Arora, ever the ambitious wife, now took charge of her indolent husband. She hired the best tutor from Sachdev Tutorials, made him learn all the countries and capitals in the world, currencies of different countries, names of different states, rivers, towns in the country etc. After 3 weeks of gruelling schedule of cramming, Mr Arora and Mrs Arora confidently embarked on their journey to Mumbai, little knowing that the game show was to change their lives forever. Mr Arora was one among the 10 hopefuls selected for the 'fastest finger first' event.
Amitabh appeared in flesh and blood and Mr Pankaj Arora, whose lifetime ambition, was to see his childhood hero in person, felt a sense of fulfillment and pressed some buttons in a hurry. Mr Arora couldn't believe it! Mrs Neelam Arora felt like a mother whose favourite kid had won the best baby show. Not only had he given correct answers, but he had done so even before others could begin!
There was a hubbub around the auditorium as Mr Pankaj Arora gingerly took the seat from Amitabh for everyone was convinced that history was going to be made that day. There was suspense in the air and the audience could sense money floating all around them. Amitabh Bachhan started the show by smiling benignly at the nervous Mr Arora, the kind of smile he would give to a ABCL investor, clapped his hands and read out the question. "Mr Pankaj Arora, yehi hai aap ka pehla sawaal. Who wrote 'Valmiki Ramayan'? The choices are A. Tulsidas B. Ramanand Sagar C. B R Chopra D. Valmiki?" Mr Pankaj Arora very promptly said, "Ramanand Sagar!". He had not forgotten the days when he used to get up early on Sundays solely to watch the epic. Amitabh again smiled the benign smile, cajoled him to use his lifeline, audience poll etc., but Mr Pankaj Arora, like a true blue property dealer, didn't budge from his position. He later told everyone sobbingly that he wanted to preserve the lifelines for using them after touching the 25 lac mark Amitabh commiserated with him and told a shocked Mr Arora that his answer was wrong. The pin-drop silence that followed immediately was only to be broken by loud angry shriek from a female, that evidently from a female, who had been done in by her husband.
She shouted immediately, "Is there a lawyer in the house?".
Before the pandemonium that broke out could settle in, Mr Arora and Mrs Arora had parted ways as husband and wife. This event has caused great sensation among the community of TV viewers and the effect has been electric among the chronic followers of this game show. Whether this 'wife-divorcing-husband -for-flunking-the-first- question' event, will drive away all husbands from the show or pull them with magnetic attraction to the greatest TV game show ever, only time alone can tell

A Quick Home Visit

We went home last week. I had not planned the journey in advance and had a tough time to get the tickets. We had to attend a marriage function at Trivandrum, which we decided to make it last minute. My colleague Pradeep helped me in getting a ticket for Friday evening. I was in search of ticket from Thursday evening through agents and friends end up in hearing all buses are full. But luckily got 2 tickets.
The journey was hectic. The bus met with an accident at 3 am at Palghat. The bus should be at a speed of 70-80 KM/hour hit an auto rikshaw, which quickly entered the main road in front of the bus from a side road. Even though the driver tried to save the bus by quickly steering to right side of the road that did not help. The guys in auto were taken into hospital; the police arrived and cleared the road after 10-15 minutes.
We reached brides house by noon, three hours late. It was a nice time meeting relatives and of course the wedding ceremony. We left to home on Sunday after noon. Stayed home for a day. It's a very special feeling being at home with parents. I went to temple on Monday morning, usual routine whenever i go home. I met couple of my school friends. That was a nostalgic moment hearing from them after quite some time. We stared to Bangalore on Monday evening and reached here on Tuesday morning.

The trip was good though the journey was hectic.

Back in work...going on....