Getting back to life...

me wrapping up my fourth visit to Hyderabad (not a very pleasant one though, when compared to the prvs 3 trips within 2 months)... gotta catch a taxi to airport now. Have a beautiful eveng, while i take myself sometime off (have got a precious weeknd ahead) to just sit back and feel lite and good about my life.

India Win T20

India Dazzles at the world stage beating arch rivals Pakisthan in the finals to win the first edition of T20 World Cup. India outplayed Eng, South Africa, Australia, Pakisthan enroute to its magnificient victory. Its a Hit!! Is it Twenty20 or Tonic20 for World Cricket. This format of the game has become a huge rage across the world esp in the Asian countries. Dhoni also sees it "T20 will become huge in India". He also said it was completely a team effort by India in this tournament -

If you analyze, the captain and the vice-captain haven't done anything in this tournament. Players who were granted with responsibility delivered out there in the field. There isn't a single batsman who didn't score runs in the tournament. Similarly, there isn't a bowler who hasn't delivered the goods. The efforts in the outfield were tremendous. It was a team effort. Yuvraj, of course was brilliant and so was RP Singh. Irfan Pathan and Harbhajan Singh have made good comebacks to the side. I think everyone in the side was special and the best part was that players lived up to the expectations of the team.

Chak De India....

A team is as strong as its weakest link. And everyone thought India's bowling was its weakest link at the World T20 2007, being held in South Africa. Yesterday was the time to rubbish all these critics as India stormed into semi-finals beating SA. Team India did everything right yesterday, it showed fantastic courage and team spirit. Ravi shastri, lauding India's youngsters said in the post match commentary "The fearlessness of Success-not-being-touched made them triumph". When we become experienced and don't taste success for a while, it gets on us. We tend to become negetive in our approach. But for these young guns like Rohit Sharma, Uthappa, RP Singh etc, there was no fear. Thats what youth brings into Cricket, fearlessness! Talent, team spirit, energy, effort.. everything was on display at Durban yesterday under the lights, as they knocked South Africa out of the competition.

"We are currently playing the Chak De! India song in the dressing room; the boys are dancing to it. Later we will go out for dinner and celebrate with wine and champagne" the jubilent Team manager Lalchand Rajput said, as India celebrated its tremendous victory.

>>Chak De India... Sometimes Winning is Everything! <<


FYI.. Chak De was premiered at Infy, Hyd last week. That evening was fun, around 150-200 infoscions shouting on top of the voices cheering Preethi Sabarwal and her team :)

Time is of Essence

Indo-US Nuclear Deal

The operationalisation of the nuclear deal is getting into the crucial stage as both US and India work non-stop to make it a reality. While US is taking things up with the 45-nation NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group) to get the necessary changes in the guidelines allowing the supplies to India as per the 123 agreement. India on the other hand has its Atomic Energy Commission chief and India's top nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar at the 51st General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, working to get an India-specific safeguard pact with IAEA which is required to proceed on the N-deal signed by India and US. The concern and the eagerness by the US adminstration to see it through (both at NSG and IAEA) was clearly on display when the US Ambassador David Mulford, addressing the fourth Indo-US Economic Summit said "Now, we must take the last steps. Time is of essence".

It turns 25.... :-)

Its easy to get lost in this (Digital) world.. the place where we make friends, talk, share with people whom we wouldn have even met. Yet when someone sends a casual smiley to us, we respond in the same casual manner. They may be sitting in some remote part of the world, yet some of them form a close circle of frends and people who share the common interests, views and likings. Yes, a lot of social networking sites and chat rooms have mushroomed over the years which never make u feel alone on this lonely planet. So, if you are one of those net animals, glued to the web chatting, browsing, blogging.. here is something i wud like to share with you all. It has become the most commonly used lingo across the net world, and it turns 25 years today. Its the smiley :-) ...

The creator of the original the emoticons :-) and :-( , with a specific suggestion that they be used to express emotion, was Scott Fahlman. Below is the text of his original proposal, posted to the Carnegie Mellon University computer science general board on 19 September 1982.

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use

:-(

Click here for a compiled list of netlingo emoticons... an interesting list actually. Many of them are really quite thoughtful.

Hey Ram!!

All of a sudden... cricket, bollywood, abhiash, Indo-US nuclear deal.. all of that have taken a back seat in the Indian media. Lord Ram and religious sentiments are doing the rounds everywhere. Triggered by the blunderous affidavit filed by the UPA govt to the SC, stating "There is no proof that Lord Ram existed". I mean what is that the govt wants, to prove Lord Ram lived and walked on this earth once upon a time?? Questioning Ram is like questioning the religious believes and fundamentals of Hinduism! Well, the UPA govt was caught on the wrong side of all this, when they thot they could get way such a remark, and get a go ahead on one of the ambitious projects of modern India, the "Sethusamudram Project". Its a canal project very simlar to Suez canal, not as big though, but the intentions are quite the same, to reduce the travel time and the cost involved in the transhipment of goods. Its almost a battle of Science v/s Religious belief now. Scientists asking the religious leaders to prove that Ram was infact a real person, and not just a fictious charector in the "story" Ramayan, who built the bridge of rocks to cross the ocean to Lanka. What are the scientists looking for here?? any agreements or treaties signed by Ram.. bones or any other bodily remains of the Lord (something like searching for a dinasour skull or something???!!!) .. this is insane!! Scientists are awestruck by the magnificient creation of this world by the God, they are yet to understand the very basics of nature and science, the formation of universe, the human body, many unanswered questions related to diseases, genes, evolution etc. More time should be spent by them on these than to raise such insane questions. Great brains doesnt mean one can start questioning God!! Well, they have said it all in there, and we are seeing it happening.

Denying Ram is denying India. Read on, this is a powerful article by Tarun Vijay on Refiff.com

On 17 July, the Supreme Court asked the government to explain why the Ram Sethu, also known as Adam’s Bridge, cannot be declared a national monument. Union minister for shipping, road transport and highways T.R. Baalu, refused to even comment on this. All this even when we have an alternative route to the canal construction, which would keep the religious interests and the modern day needs intact. As a part of the National Democratic Alliance govt in 2002, defence minister George Fernandes had approved an alternative route that experts now say is less expensive, has lower environmental risks and does not require breaking down the Ram Sethu. Then why do we need all this now!!??.. Hey Ram!!

Speaking Tree - Move With The Flow, Learn To Let Go - Sept 13, 2007

We tend to cling to every object in our lives. We hold on to our profession, relationship or possession as if our entire world depends on them. We are so busy clinging to our own lives, that we have forgotten to live with the flow. We are afraid to move ahead, afraid to let go. Life in essence is like an unobstructed, unrestrained, uncontrolled flow of a river. Life flows at its own pace and the ultimate source of all our pain and sufferings is our tendency to cling to and obstruct the flow.

Professional life stagnates, relationships are broken, possessions are lost; all because we refused to let go when we were actually required to let things take their own course. Why do we cling? We cling because change scares us; we cling because we are afraid to face the unknown, to face challenges; we cling because we feel secure if the status quo is maintained; we cling because we refuse to believe that life can never be static; because we refuse to accept the transience of everything; we believe that everything is in our hands. We do not have enough faith in life and that higher force which is omnipotent and omnipresent. In the chaos of existence, we have lost touch with our higher self. Most of us lead a life which is similar to that of a child who is lost in a crowd, separated from his guardians. He has nobody to place his faith on. He is afraid, insecure, suspicious about everyone and everything. We live under the false illusion of having everything under our control. The spirit of getting things done becomes a problem when we continue to cling on even after we have exhorted all our efforts. We are overwhelmed by a sense of despair and disillusion when things move beyond our control. It is at this stage we need to learn to let go. Several times relationships are broken just because we tried too hard to make them work. We didn't give the breathing space they required to grow. We didn't let go and let them take their own course. Professionally or personally, once all the efforts are made towards achieving a goal, we must learn to let go and let life take the best course. It might or might not be of one's choice, but if we have faith, we will realise that it inevitably is the best course. We need to believe that forces above us are far better equipped to make judgments for us. We must learn to have faith in their judgment. Letting go, however, does not mean turning into a fatalist. One cannot sit idle in life and expect life to take care of itself. Karma, the fulfilment of one's duties is the ultimate objective of all human existence and if we fail to fulfil our duties towards life, life inevitably fails us.

When God gives us dreams, He shares them with us. Whatever we consider our dreams, are actually His dreams and He gives us the capability to realise them. The part we are required to play is to ensure the optimum usage of the capabilities bestowed upon us. And once we have played our part with utmost honesty and effort, we need to let go, step aside and let God step in to fulfill our dreams. After all, they are His dreams, too.

iPhone is here..

The wait is over.. Apple iPhone is hitting the markets this week.

"Burn"ing down nuclear issues

A CNN-IBN report

My candidate for the next President

Born in London... and educated in Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi.. !!!
Ph.D. holder in Law and Diplomacy at the age of 22 (phew!)
Joined United Nations at the age of 22 (phew! phew!)
Served for 29 yrs at the UN (phew! phew! phew!)
Named "Global Leader of Tomorrow" by World Economic Forum in Davos.
Youngest and the most experienced to run for the post of UN Secretary-General in the history of UN in 2006.

An impressive resume isnt it!!!

Above are just some of the uniqueness and achievements of the "genius" Shashi Tharoor. As a diplomat and writer, Shashi Tharoor has explored the diversity of culture in his native India. On Indian diversity he says - "If America is a melting-pot, then to me India is a thali, a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast"

No better person can give us a complete inside into the working, evolution, changing times and strides UN has taken since its formation in the October of 1945. Ending a 29 yr long career at UN only a few weeks back, here is what he writes for TOI. After reading this I felt hez tailor-made (read God-made) to be the next President of India.

[Do read the last few lines, really impressive]

"April Fool's Day 2007 is actually a rather serious day for your columnist. Yesterday, i ended my career as an international civil servant, just one month shy of what would have been 29 years at the United Nations. Today is the first day of the rest of my life, and yet i can't help looking back a bit at the organisation i've just left behind. I joined the UN in 1978 as an idealistic young man of 22, hoping to serve refugees and discover the world. I did a bit of both. But how much the institution i joined has changed! If i had suggested to my seniors at that time that the UN would one day observe and even run elections in sovereign states, conduct intrusive inspections for weapons of mass destruction, impose comprehensive sanctions on the entire import-export trade of a member state, or set up international criminal tribunals and coerce governments into handing over their citizens to be tried by foreigners under international law, i am sure they would have told me that i did not understand what the UN was all about. Indeed, since those were the late 1970s, they might well have asked me, "Young man, what are you smoking?" And yet the UN has done every one of those things during the last three decades, and more: it has administered territory, conducted huge multi-dimensional peace-keeping operations with nearly 80,000 soldiers in the field, deployed human rights monitors to report on the behaviour of sovereign governments. The UN, in short, has been a highly adaptable institution that has evolved in response to changing times. There's little acknowledgement of that in the perennial calls for 'reform' of the UN. 'Reform' is a term that means different things to different people nowadays any change a country wants at the UN is labelled 'reform', which conveniently garbs self-interest in the cloak of institutional progress. Today's reform imperatives can be traced back to the divisions over the Iraq war. In the summer of 2003, a poll conducted by the Pew Organisation in 20 countries around the world revealed that the UN's standing had gone down in all 20. It had gone down in the US because the UN did not agree to support the US Administration on the war, but it had also gone down in the 19 other countries, because the UN was unable to prevent the war. So we got hit from both sides of the debate. We disappointed both sets of expectations. Some famous and rather powerful voices began to speak of the UN's irrelevance. It was at the peak of this intense scrutiny of the UN, at a time when its potential and its deficiencies had never been more in the public eye, that talk of reform reached a crescendo. But as former secretary-general Kofi Annan never tired of pointing out, reform is a process, not an event. There is a case for reviewing and reviving the entire architecture of the international system that had been built up since 1945, in order to construct a more effective house of global governance for the 21st century. But change comes as adaptation, rarely as legislative fiat. The perennial saga of Security Council reform (the 'Open-Ended Working Group' of the General Assembly set up in 1992 to resolve the problem is now widely disparaged as the 'Never-Ending Talking Group') demonstrates the point.

No one disputes that the Council's composition reflects the geopolitical realities of 1945 rather than those of 2007, but change will benefit only a few, so the rest resist it even at the price of perpetuating an anomaly. But one day what merely seems anachronistic today will begin to ook absurd. At that point change will have to come. So the UN reflects the realities of world politics, even while seeking to transcend them. The UN, at its best and its worst, is a mirror of the world: it reflects our differences and our convergences, our hopes and aspirations — as well as our limitations and failures. The UN is a forum where sovereign states can work out common strategies for tackling global problems, and an instrument for putting those strategies into effect. But it can be a much more effective instrument. As Mahatma Gandhi put it, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." The UN is no exception. When i joined the UN, it was almost unthinkable for the UN to take sides between democracy and dictatorship, or seek to intervene in the internal affairs of its members. Even human rights were by no means universally agreed, with some states seeing them as a tool of western neo-imperialism. Today, by contrast, the UN itself does more than any other single organisation to promote and strengthen democratic institutions and practices around the world. India is a leading donor to the UN's Democracy Fund, which provides assistance for building democracy, and we have established a Peacebuilding Commission to help countries transition from war to durable peace. The UN is more focussed on combating terrorism than ever before. As we face these new challenges of our time, let us not forget the old ones, especially the persistent terror of underdevelopment. The combination of poverty, drought, famine and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa threatens more human lives than terrorism or the tsunami ever did. The Millennium Development Goals have become better known, but we are not on course to achieving these targets by 2015. All governments must be held accountable for fulfilling their part of the bargain, both to their own peoples and to each other. There is no longer any excuse for leaving well over a billion of our fellow human beings in abject misery. Of course, the UN isn't perfect. As the great second Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold, put it, "the UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell." Sometimes the best the UN can do is to keep trying to prevent us all from tumbling into hell. It's a worthwhile battle the UN is waging, and it deserves our support, if we are to sustain our hopes for a fairer and safer world."