Ten promises to my dog...

Tamil and Japanese make me experience the role of languages in our daily lives. Language intertwines with day to day activities in your life, the way you think, act and respond to external events. In short, they give a new perceptions to life. And as always Japanese movies make my eyes glee with tears at some instant of time. One such was 'Inu to watashi no 10 no yakusoku', meaning the ten promises between me and doggy.

Released in 2008, 'Ten promises to my dog' expresses the bonding between the girl and the dog. The film starts with the Akari, a young woman narrating her childhood with her 'socks'. Her mother names the newly found dog 'socks' since her feet resembles socks. The ten promises are the ones her mother tells Akari. True to her name, Akari is like the unending light that the whole universe looks into. The movie also captures the feelings of the girl as she grows up.

As with most of Japanese movies, patience is the key to finish watching the movie. At one point in time, Akari reminded me of Ritu, my mentor/ex-colleague's daughter and her puppy Randy. Lots of thoughts and memories spooled from their rusted reels...

Promises are not only for dog and you, but for any new relation you might enter into!, what do you say?

Happiness stealer

One forceful wish by an adamant guy...had he not done that, he would have been the wealthiest of all... (A real incident heard it in a different perspective!)

'Happiness stealer'; wishfully received out of God's creations...


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God said "NO, do not ask me to grant your wish!...enjoy your life..."

Our guy, a business magnet could entertain himself with anything he wished, but this wish of his could not be fulfilled by the vastness of his business empire.

After business hours, like a door-door salesman, he filled God's ears with his wish repeatedly.

God had only one answer "NO"

As with any business dealing, next he started threatening God.

God made him get more business so that this guy would not pester any further but in vain...

Business-man was adamant...and finally God fulfilled his wish...a girl child...

That was the day after when he lost all his happiness

As she grew, she stole happiness from people around her...all of them died grief stricken!

Now, even at the rim of life, she still loves stealing happiness from her spouse, son, and recently daughter-in-law, grandchild, huh...everyone.

She is sixty and still going on...

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ROADS....from sandy roads all the way again to sandy roads!!

Man cleared the bushes and paved a path to walk along safely. He evolved and when he invented the wheel and wheel carts, he made the path a little wider; this was circa 4 century BC. Slowly over the course of 2200 years wheels evolved in various facets when it met the engine technology and automobiles were created. This journey still continues and we have got n-lane roads made out of asphalt, concrete and recently plastics!

A step ahead we will be having roads that have photovoltaic underneath them and produce energy out of the sun all the day along. This is still in very pre-mature stage and prototypes are being carried out (http://solarroadways.com/). These roads are expected to have displays that would send our emergency information to the road users. More information on their construction is shared in their web-site.

Imagine such roads with loads of silicon circuitry underneath them...all sending out signals with a programmed purpose.

A system churning out engineers (a.k.a cheap labour)

Recently exposed bogus mark-sheet scandal in Tamil Nadu reinforces the point that our systems, processes and our mindset are not geared up to meet ethical standards, leave alone global competitive standards. This scandal has indeed exposed the greediness in us; the greediness for power that exists in all layers of a society.

Being an engineer thirty years ago was regarded something special and engineers were held in high respect then. But these days, an engineering degree is more common that every second person you meet from a middle-class and upward family is an engineer. Five years ago Tamil Nadu (TN) had 230 engineering colleges...almost half of what we have now. TN government abolishing the common entrance exam four years ago has forced students to vie even for 0.01 marks. For every decimated fraction of marks approaching the 100%, you have thousands of students competing. This is the case almost in any state though in varying proportions.

Though the rise of IT in India cannot be blamed fully for this situation, it has a equal role to play. As cheap goods from China are not the goods sought out for, engineers from India will soon become a chunk of cheap labour that the world will not seek out for...both of them will be used in day-to-day life and will be dumped in the back-yard...

Learn it in your native tongue... in your own way !!

Four years from now we will see engineers with more concrete basics who had opted for studying in Tamil medium. Had there been no Tamil in the engineering entrance question paper side-by-side to English, I swear I would have score 2-3 marks less. Reading it in my native tongue increased my comprehending speed and avoided any ambiguous situation. I had then dreamed of studying engineering in Tamil, and now it is a reality. Yes, from this year onwards selected colleges will offer Civil and Mechanical streams in Tamil.

Some might argue that Tamil-engineers cannot cope up with the current industry which is services based. But at the end of the day what matters is how much of an engineer you are rather than how much of a communicator you express. It all depends on what people consider as success...Being an engineer or being a fluent English speaker. We can study the degree in Tamil and still learn to communicate in English, but not the other way round. When the whole world is embracing web2.0, Let's embrace this next step with pride.

A dangerous face lurking in the dark...

These days almost every other person you meet has a mail-id. Some people muse that internet gave addresses to millions who do not have a proper snail-mail address. Most of the mail-id owners these days have a networking site profile that says something about themselves, their hobbies, their likes and many more. The idea behind these personalized profiles is to help like minded people network. These profiles also aid in knowing more about the individual/owner but behold: there is always a dangerous face (an ugly face perhaps) that lurks behind these profiles.

Sakshi was pursuing her masters in industrial relations when she got a marriage proposal from a well known family. The guy held a masters degree in engineering and was working for a small firmware company abroad. Sakshi had a fine liking to arts and was adept in painting and playing the keyboard. She saw the guy’s profile and gathered that he played the flute and many more. While meeting in person, he too accepted that he played flute occasionally. Few months after marriage what Sakshi experienced was hell; I mean she experienced the truth. The guy actually had an opportunity to attend flute classes for three weeks when he was ten years old! Sakshi also found that each line item in his profile was wrong. His real face was ugly than what his profile conveyed. His hobby included reading, but he had never read a whole novel in his life. The ugly face posed a more dangerous face, a threatening one perhaps when she had to politely apply for divorce and put an end to the relation. But will the Indian society accept?

The incident happened a few years ago and this intrigued me to probe into profiles of few people whom I have met in office or elsewhere and found that an alarming number of profiles contain information that do not match with the real face of them. The irony is that almost 95% percent of Indians do not have a hobby or a past-time activity and their ego forces them to fill one in the profile. The one filled is probably the activity that their parents thrust upon them in their childhood.

(Name are obviously changed, but the incident mentioned is real)

Not only on web-profiles, many fake their real identity as well...

Last Sunday I met Mr.Vel at a fair in Chennai. I had known this person earlier through a web group. Slowly the talk went into hobbies and he exclaimed that he was a great fan of Tamil language and his pastime was to update his blog. I commented back saying that his blog was last updated way back in 2008. He paused for a moment and weaved a story that all his writings were in paper and before I could ask further questions, he said he had lost all papers while shifting his house and left the place for a moment.

This reminded me of Sri, who joined with me in my previous company on the same day. He claimed that he was an expert in net technology, business, art, and many more. He also started bullying other guys in net-tech group and had a pleasure making him feel greater at the expense of others feelings.

(Name are obviously changed, but the incident mentioned is real)

A listening ear...

While working in my previous company, I was posted in Chennai for three months. The office was located sixty kilometers south of Chennai city. I was staying in the company’s guest house nearby office forcing my schedule to guest house-office-guest house and nothing else. The day of diwali was approaching and I had got reservation only in a sitting coach in a train departing late afternoon, after all diwali is one such occasion when members of the family get-together.

My journey to the railway station would take little less than two hours and as planned, I left the office at 1pm. I had to postpone my lunch and board a bus to Tambaram. It was hot afternoon and I managed to get a seat in a few minutes next to a man in his late forties. He started talking…the way he grew-up in a family of sculptors, the reasons that forced him to come to Chennai, his two year life in Bangalore, the way he entered the welding practice, the way his college going son was sucking money to pay his mobile-phone expenses, the way everyone in their family rejoices during diwali, the importance of real work and so on. Slowly the conversation was heading towards rail-wagon and steel industry perspectives and opportunities/risks for the SMEs in this industry.

After fifteen-twenty minutes of this talk he became silent. He was looking into my eyes, smiling. A minute of pause and then he sadly expressed the way his pay-hike was hurt by crooked middle management politics and the way the word ‘recession’ has ate their bonus money paid before diwali. I smiled and I said him that this was the case everywhere, be it a big IT company or be it a small foundry and also said some few words that seemed to spread warmth inside his soul. Ten minutes later, his place came and before parting he thanked me for hearing to him and also a special thanks for my smile!

Meeting this man with no name and the conversation left me questioning myself. What people need from relations is a listening ear and a soul, and most of them think different. In the past paced lifestyle people have been drawn into a maze of unknown and fear that causes them to shrug off whatever is not them. Many hide their faces from their personal responsibilities as a friend or brother-sister or spouse or a parent as all these do not pay off in pecuniary terms or does not satisfy their dirty-ego. They consider this act of theirs as correct and thrust them unknowingly into their next generation as well.

Red vented bulbul - My first bird shoot

This Sunday, I woke up to the 8'o'clock sun filling the room. I was at my aunt's place at Trichy. Coming out of the house in a sombre mood, I gazed at the hibiscus blooms in the corner of the garden. Chirp chirp ... and three or four red vented bulbuls perched on the tree opposite to their house. My aunt was swift in fetching my camera and we both started watching them . The drooping bunch of yellow flowers fluttered by the bulbuls hopping between the fragile branches.

Two of them flew and perched on the fence wall. Earlier when I spotted these birds few months ago at Auroville-Pondicherry, I loved their shiny eyes and their colour. Today I consider myself lucky shooting these birds on my new camera.



PS: I got my new dslr camera last week ...canon eos-550d

The lost 8th mile...

A stretch covered by tamarind trees on both side of the road, a canal accompanies you for a couple of kilometers and banana plantations on the other side of the canal. Such a place is the 8th-mile canal bridge on the Trichy-Karur road. What I like so much about this place is the early morning mist during non-summer season. The mist engulfs the moving water and is motionless compared to the water flow. The water surface seems to be a slate of green glass before it plunges another foot deep after the bridge. The way the mist touches the flowing water is a good sight to see, slightly swirling at the edges

Usually this place, the 8th-mile canal bridge goes un-noticed when you are on the wheels and as the name goes, the inundation canal bridge is on the 8th mile towards Trichy from Kulithalai, a small town on the banks of river Kaveri. The canal swells with water during the monsoon / winter season and goes completely dry in summer.

Though the road in this section of the highway is bumpy, I eagerly look forward driving this section in the early morning hours for the sight of the 8th mile canal bridge. Ten days ago, while driving down, I thought, I missed this place, but later got to know that the whole section is now newly laid bypassing this place as a part of road-widening-project. I felt really sad missing this place this time. But I vow that the next time, I shall take the previous intersection in the highway, see this place before proceeding on. The 8th-mile might be out of the current highway, but not from my memories.

Some of my previous photo shoots @ this place are listed
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ck_selvam/2162304184/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ck_selvam/2783479438/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ck_selvam/2161486461/

Changes

Changes
Originally uploaded by Ms Ladyred

I liked what was written below the photograph...

"If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies..."

It was soothing as I am experiencing my first dash of job-change...