February 2010

There were 5 posts published in February 2010.

Two Teams, 13 Days, and Totally Opposite Results

India and SA - Top 2 in ICC Rankings

South African cricket team is on tour to India these days. This included a 2 test series which just concluded 1-1. South Africa won the first test by an innings and 6 runs, threatening India’s number 1 position in the ICC rankings. But India came back strongly in the second test to defeat South Africa by an even bigger innings margin, thus retaining their ranking at the top of the table. My point is how can two teams playing cricket with the same players, under same conditions and within 3 days of each other, produce totally opposite results in the two matches. And this had happened many times before and continue to happen in bilateral series, two matches held closely bringing very contrasting results.

So what factors decide which team wins a game. The team composition and the form of the players, the ground and pitch conditions, the home-away factor or is just about the team who handles the pressure and the mind game better. In the aforementioned India-SA series, the players were same, their form could not have changed much in 3 days, the conditions at both the venues were very similar, Graeme Smith (SA’s captain) won the toss in both the matches and batted first, but the results were exactly opposite. Or is it just some strategies that decide the outcome of the match depending on whether they work on that specific day or not.

South Africa totally batted India out in the first test and were looking to do so again in the second test, when Zaheer and Harbhajan got some quick wickets in the third session of the first day. Was it Harbhajan who did something different, or were the African batsmen overconfident after the huge win in the first test? Or was it just luck that Harbhajan’s tricks worked that day and not in the first test. But that this session was the difference between the two test matches is sure, and had SA managed to bat in the 3rd session like they had done earlier, India would have been no more in the number one position.

You might say India adopted, created new strategies to get the SA batsmen after the first test debacle, and they work. Agreed, players make strategies, learn from their mistakes, and Indians must have done so after the first test. But what I am contesting is the totally different results. If SA would have one the first match by 100 runs and India the second one by 150 runs, it would have been ok. When the top two teams fight, you expect close matches and close results. But you don’t expect a innings defeat to either side in two matches being played. An innings defeat means one team’s total domination over the other, and skills / talent to get such domination cannot change over 3 days.

If skills, talents, players, strategies were not the reason for these two opposite results, what were? Does it only boil down to pressure in the end? Does how a team handles the pressure of a game, how it copes with the various ups and downs during the match decide the fate of the match? Is it only the ability to cope over pressure that make some players and teams click on one day and flop on another? In the end it seems cricket still remains a game which is played in the mind as much as it is played on the field.

Sometimes things go as planned, but the biggest test of players and a team comes when it faces a tough opposition and when your plans don’t work. You might have the best batsmen in the world, but if it your bad day, you can lose your tail in less than 50 runs, as has happened so many times with India. You might have one of the best captains and some good positive players, but how you react to your lows will decide whether you win or lose a match. “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for” — very rightly said by John A. Shedd and the same looks true for players and teams, if you are never tested, you will never know how good you are.

So the recent series showed that the Indian team is not just number one by fluke, and it has the talent and skills to bounce back and turn things around. That is the stuff of champions, and I am proud that I can call my team that 🙂

An Open Letter to Shiv Sena

My Name is Khan

A MNIK poster on the roads

This is an open letter to the so called protector of Marathi rights, the Shiv Sena. For those who don’t know, Shiv Sena is a major political party in Maharashtra headed by Bal Thackeray, and fights elections normally in an alliance with the BJP. The letter starts below –

Dear Shiv Sena Members,

First of all, congratulations of being a responsible political party in Maharashtra who thinks that blocking the release of a Shah Rukh Khan movie is more important than working on other civic management issues in Maharashtra and Mumbai. These other “less” important issues like lack of safe drinking water which results in diseases like diarrhea, cholera which in turn leads to high infant mortality rates.

Mumbai, where most of you Shiv Sainiks work, is a city of 14 million people but over 60% of them live in slums. And the slum population is still increasing every year. There are traffic problems, lack of housing, poor water and power distribution system, and yet you attack Shah Rukh, Mukesh Ambani and Sachin Tendulkar for saying the obvious. And remember, every time you protest / attack, you are wasting money paid as tax by your own Mumbaikars!!

Only if you remember these are the same people who have brought pride to Mumbai and to India for the last many decades and continue to do so. You ask Shah Rukh Khan to go to Pakistan for supporting Pakistan players, yet your supremo Bal Thackeray invites Javed Miandad at his house. You blame Sachin Tendulkar for saying he plays for India and he is an Indian first, but have forgotten the fame Sachin has brought to Mumbai, India and Indian Cricket. You attack Mukesh Ambani for saying Mumbai is for all Indians, when most of Ambani’s (and Mumbai’s) business comes from all over India.

When India’s constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech and expression to every Indian, who are you to consider yourself above it? You lost in the last assembly elections, and I hope you don’t think tactics like this would make you win the next one. And if you have to protest, what happened to the idea of peaceful protests? Where did you get the idea that disrupting public life, resorting to violence and attacking prominent personalities will do you any good.

Or maybe you are just in a race with MNS to grab the “most headlines in newspapers” award. Because you feel your own Mumbaikars don’t know what film to go watch, and what all you do is more important than the farmer suicides which are happening in rural Maharashtra unabated. Or maybe it is just frustration at continuously losing elections in Maharashtra that you choose to participate in a headline grabbing race with MNS.

Instead of doing all this stupid stuff, when will you wake up to what Mumbai actually needs. What about protesting for wider roads, an efficient rail system, and sufficient power and water supply? Why don’t you spend time with the youth of Mumbai training them, educating them, and make them more competitive to stand national and global competition? Why not be responsible for a change and go out and meet farmers in rural areas and understand their problems and search for solutions?

I think it is time for you to ponder over what you have been doing and what your city and state needs. Participate in active discussions in the assembly instead of disrupting assembly sessions or remaining absent. Being a responsible opposition party only can help you win the elections next time, and it’s high time you realized that!!

A Nightout at Office – The midnight of 30-31 May 08

Out of the few night-outs I have had in office, this one was special. Well, technically it was not a night out as we left back around 2 am, but the experience was unforgettable and as I have videos to back it up, so I decided to write about it.

It was 30th May 2008 and posting forms work was in full-swing. The 3 of them (Neha, Poorva and Gunjan) decided to work late. I was not in any mood to stay the whole night in office so we decided that we will complete our work and leave by 12 midnight. So, they all started work and I started watching a movie so that it would be over by 12.

Toy Story is a good movie, and it is fun to watch when people around you are working hard and trying to concentrate. The movie got over at 12 and as expected their work as not over yet and they decided to burn the whole night coding. That was too much for me and I decided that its time for some fun now… 🙂

But I didn’t knew what was in store for me that day (or night). I was attacked, I had to attack back (only in self-defence) and there were people who did the job of “Aag me Ghee Daalne Ka“. The below video clearly demonstrate how 2 people are talked up to actually start up a fight.

Now, before you watch the videos, some points to note. Firstly, the commentary might make me look like the biggest culprit because it is done by the “Aag me Ghee Daalne Wali“. Secondly, we will come back to this point later.

So here goes the first video, the Fire Igniter

Some people just need a reason to attack, verbally or physically, and she is one of that kind. The below video will demonstrate how was I attacked and I had to run all over the office for my survival to stay dry. Not all are lucky though, and I was drenched.

So the second video goes below!! Holi Hai!!!

People who know me knows that I am the seedha saadha saint guy but when troubled, you are asking for trouble, big trouble 🙂 So I acted, only in self-defence, and this was the second point to note which I left for later above. The below video captures some part of it where I attacked but fails to capture when 3 dangerous gals attacked me back and the whole cafeteria was flooded. So here goes my small attack :-

By this time, it was around 1 am and we realised it was the office (not some playground) and there were CCTV s installed (god knows whether they were working or not, hopefully not!!). So we thought what might be in store for us the next day as the security guard has taken a couple of rounds around the area and we pretended as if nothing has happened. But the wet floor and carpets were testimony to what we had done.

So the cleanup act started. Me, Poorva and Gunjan started the cleanup act, using newspapers and tissue papers to soak the waters from wherever possible. Neha, as usually lazy, was only filming the whole process rather than helping us out. Well, that was also necessary and I am really grateful she took these videos that day!! So here goes the Cleanup Act :

As people say, strange situations can lead to unknown capabilities being discovered in human beings. And that night we got the proof. Poorva had a tremendous ability to clean things up, even use a pocha (sweeping cloth) in the process. As her coding, her ability to finish any task to perfection was clearly evident here. Here goes the video as a proof. Don’t go at everybody laughing at her, because every wise and great man was once laughed at!! I hope the same goes true for ladies as well!!

To know what happened to those Posting Forms for which they have worked so hard, they finally went live on 20th August, the below image is one from that day showing the tremendous multi-tasking abilities of the Ghee Specialist.

Your comments are welcome!! And I am missing those days… There are many other stories but there are no videos to support me, and my scars have also healed, so lets end here.

White Space in our lives – Need and Importance

White Space is a commonly used term in the industry I work in, the Internet industry. White Space is the space that is left between text and images on a web page. It is often said that the more white space you have, the more prominent your text becomes. For example, Google.com has a lot of white space while Naukri.com has a drought of it….

Looking at life and ourselves, I want to apply the “White Space” principle in our daily lives too. We live in a world where we strive to be busy. Workaholic people, who spend 12-15 hours at the workplace are celebrated like martyrs in our society. Being busy has become a parameter for measuring success. We have filled up our lives with friends, work, projects, dreams, aspirations, and so on. When we pack our calendar from 8AM to 6PM, more often than not we will find no time for lunch, or re-group your desk, or reply to a mail from an old friend…

Applying the “White Space” principle to our lives, we need to realise the two kinds of white space that we find in our lives. One is which we don’t choose. Like time spent when traveling to work, waiting outside the client’s office for a meeting or waiting for your turn in a queue. We get this white space daily in our lives and more often than not we don’t make use of it and just let it go by. The other kind of “White Space” is what we decide to put into our lives. Taking some time off for ourselves just after getting up from bed, taking a few planning breaks in between, or a introspection break at the end of the day will not only help us relax and plan our lives better, it makes room for people and things that really matter.

Coming back to first kind of white space, I always try to make proper of whatever white space I get in my routine. If I am stuck in a traffic jam, I normally take out a book or article (which I always carry) and read some pages. It could be anything from business to jokes. If waiting for somebody for a meeting, I sometime just sit back with my eyes closed for 5 minutes which believe me, can really help focus better afterward. We will always get these unexpected white spaces in our lives daily and rather than being frustrated and honking on the roads, we can take this time to relax and rejuvenate for the rest of the day. Make use of this break by turning it into an energy booster, not an energy drainer.

The second kind of white space comes when you keep a little more breathing time in your calendar. Giving our self even a few minutes of breathing time everyday can make a huge impact in our lives. Begin small. Take 10 minutes out for yourselves every morning. Try to visualize your day ahead and how you plan to go about it. What tasks you want to be over by the end of the day? Or just do some breathing exercises and prepare yourselves for the day. During the day, take time between meetings. Go for a walk, and connect with your body, your breath and nature. It might be difficult at first, but we need to let go of the feeling that everything needs to be done right now. This way of thinking is embedded in our society and is very unproductive.

The point is to slow down and reconnect with yourself. How many times have you been too busy with your day-to-day schedule that you don’t even have time to think what you are doing? Learn to say “NO” to unimportant things, don’t try to “fill” time by doing something, just sit back and relax for a while. Try sometime to put your head in your mother’s lap for 10 minutes and relax. It feels great. Now remember the last time you did this!! Ever since I started taking time out for myself, I am feeling more rejuvenated and fresh. My anxiety and resentment are gone, I know what is happening with my life, and I am able to contribute more to those really close friends and family, as they are the ones who really matter.

Choices, Decisions and Consequences

Choices, Decisions and Choices

Each decision leads to a new path

Every morning we wake up unknown of what lie ahead of us. All of us have different choices in front of us whenever we are at a decision making point in our lives, and we live with the consequences of those decisions for the rest of our lives. In geometry, a path is a collection of line segments between some points with each point giving a new direction to the path. Similarly, our life is a sequence of decisions taken at certain intervals of time. At each decision making point, we have choices, and these decisions give a new direction to our life. (To see how I make my decisions using a theory called The Best and Worst Case tactic)

I totally believe in the choices, decisions and consequences theory. Everybody’s life is governed by the choices we make. I don’t believe in destiny, luck or fate. Though I believe that there are somethings above our control, we can always control how we react to unknown and sudden situations or turns of life. At every point, whether we have walked there or whether it has been thrust upon us, we have to make a choice and live with the consequences.

When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice – William James

Many of us just go through life, only a few of us actually “live” it. Which route to take on way to work? Procrastinate, or get busy with that important project? Whether it is a small step as what to eat for dinner or a major step as which college to choose, we always have many choices in front of us. Few things in life are free. We reap what we sow. I find that the quality of my life improves when I ‘act‘ and give conscious thought to my choices and decisions. I feel more in control of my life, more optimistic, and I tend to make ‘better‘ choices and decisions.

Each decision could be termed as the beginning of a new path in our life. We chose a new path when we make a decision. I have made some decisions I am not proud of and I have to live with the consequences. I have no one to blame but myself for them. Similarly, there are some decisions for which I am really glad. The choices I make set the direction my life will take. Earlier, I used to blame others or luck or fate if something did not went the way I expected. But the earlier we realise the truth the better it is.

With decisions comes consequences. Good or bad experiences are basically a result of whether we got what we were expecting or not. It is important to be mature enough to take full responsibility for our actions. As we all love to take the credit for a job well done, there is no shame in accepting the blame for a mistake. I believe there are no mistakes, only lessons to be learnt from them. A “mistake” should not be treated with negativity, it is actually something good. A mistake can show you what you did wrong, and how to avoid it the next time. A mistake is only a lesson, it improves your chances of success the next time. So we must forget the mistakes, remember the lessons and move on with life.

The sooner we realise this, the sooner we will be able to make better decisions and treat each failure as a stepping stone, not as a stumbling block. Nobody has ever made all the right choices, and you will also make mistakes as you go along the path of life. But the only thing important is to make better choices each time, hope for the best, and take your lessons from any mistakes you have committed. More the mistakes you make, the more learned and experience you become. I would like to end with a popular quote from Tallulah Bankhead –

If I had my life to live again. I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner!