Identity

I recently arrived here in US and this is my first visit to Uncle Sam's place. Being away from my homeland, I tend to be conscious about myself and my behavior. I sometimes feel that I tend to see myself through others eyes - could be cynical, but that's true. Am I doing the right things? Following traffic rules? Paying my bills promptly and timely? Tipping for every service that I avail?? Uncountable questions to myself. I was not so conscious in my previous trips to Western Europe countries or UK. May be because in India, Uncle Sam's homeland is hyped with several stories - I guess the hangover is not gone yet and quite possibly could take sometime to normalize.

I recently had an opportunity to visit the National Museum of US Air force in Dayton. My colleague-friends criticized that in India neither we have such museums nor details to history on war. Conveniently my friends forget the fact that India was never involved in a war rather our approach is non-violence and we should be proud of it. Perhaps I understood their criticism that we don't posses such technical capabilities. Also what I too felt or keep feeling is we never established a museum to that detail. Our capabilities of documenting history is definitely not so awesome, the reason could be lack of pride, passion, political, or economical. Being Indian all that we posses to display our next generation is just the religious places and some natural resources - I recently visited Akshardham in New Delhi - wow, what a beautiful and awesome place, I can't believe myself that we have one such place in India, however as said its a religious place.

Our identity of being an Indian is so prevalent than what it was while we were in India. Yes obviously we are different here amongst Americans in many ways - physical characters, etiquettes, and importantly thinking process. At work we are able to demonstrate our technical abilities but realized that we are lacking so many softer aspects that all contributes my thought on our Identity. I checked Google Trends and was happy to note the search trend on Mahatma Gandhi from various countries and especially from Central American countries like Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. I became curious to know why, but the trend doesn't reveal all such fact. As we all know, Nobel Laureate Martin Luther King was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi for his 'Ahimsa' (non-violence) approach and thus he adopted non-violence approach to fight against discrimination on Afro-American people. I'm happy for being born from a land that is respected for its Leaders and Legends like Mahatma Gandhi.

Basically our identity becomes more important and obvious here in Uncle Sam’s land could be the fact that America is historically land of immigrants.

Beyond Sport!

India winning T20 Cricket World Championship has brought back the Cricket hype in the Indian sub-continent. The way India came back in T20 and winning the championship was an icing on the cake after its just not-so-long disaster in 50 over’s 2007 World cup Cricket. The whole country enjoyed and celebrated the victory. I like cricket but I'm not a die hard fan of Cricket.

Success is a success and no second thought about it and India won T20 World Cup. However, how many people are willing to accept a different perspective of the way entire T20 Cricket Title came to India and importantly both the big cricket playing subcontinents India and Pakistan came to the finals? Also a perspective on other sports not getting their due recognition and support from the same Indian Nationals?

My comments here are not against any sport including Cricket but to question myself why other sports are not getting their due importance and recognition and more importantly Cricket overshadowing other sports. No offence intended but it’s just a Why-Not-Perspective and if you don't like this perspective you may ignore this blog at all. All in all, I appreciate your views and feedback.

Why India and Pak in the T20 Finals?

After the disaster exit of India and Pakistan in the 2007 World Cup Cricket at just the league levels, the entire Cricket fraternity's interest fell down overnight and also the sponsors failed to get their expected returns on investment. If you know, India and Pakistan is the two biggest Cricket playing and spectatorship nations across the world. And importantly BCCI is the India’s highest revenue earning board across all other cricket boards in the world. That means more sponsors for India. Of course, India is the nation with 9% GDP and consistently growing irrespective of economic and political turbulences in the neighboring nations in the Asian subcontinent. This genuinely makes lot of sense for most of the business enterprises to invest and grow in India. In all sense and given a chance, cricket is the sport through which any business would put its money to its instant revenue and profit. Having said this 2007 World cup didn't unfortunately bring the expected returns to the business tycoons who partnered and sponsored the event after both India and Pakistan's immediate exit in the league games. Of course the TV viewership dropped sharply and affected the companies which had put their money heavily on various advertisements, sponsorships and promotions.

On the other side, T20 cricket is a new format of game on the international Cricket space and it needs sufficient promotion and importance developed, first to be accepted by the cricket playing nations and also to catch up really fast with this new format. T20 Cricket provides an opportunity for more number of games to play if compared to both 50-overs and 5-day-long Test crickets. Having known the fact India and Pakistan have the highest spectatorship for this game, it makes lots of sense to hold these two nations till T20 final so that new format game positions very well for the future spectatorship. Thus, it is just a perception that it is a victory decided well ahead for both India and Pakistan to play the T20 Finals and India clinching the world cup. This provides the advantage to ICC to have the buy-in from both the important and big cricket playing nations and also from other nations accordingly for this 20 over cricket format. Also ICL’s (which is a competitive Cricket board evolving in India) cricket format is 20-20 cricket, that BCCI had not thought in the past. So BCCI also had the pressure of making T20 in favor of India so that it doesn’t loose players and viewers against ICL.

Why other sports not recognized equally?

First of all Cricket in India is promoted by a private body BCCI. Any private body’s motive is to invest and see the returns. Cricket is a business for BCCI. I think BCCI is doing its business perfectly and there is no question about it. It's just like football teams promoted by several private clubs in UK for ex Chelsea, and so on.

Whereas other sports are governed by the Government bodies. For example Indian Hockey Federation is an apex that governs the Hockey sport in the Indian sub-continent. All these sport bodies are not managed by business tycoons unlike cricket board. Which certainly means they fail to get the due recognition and growth that they deserve like Cricket or more.

I believe the sport - cricket became synonymous only after 1983 World Cup win by India. Otherwise Hockey and Football definitely had its share of viewers and players. Starting 1983 Victory, BCCI got the timing right and hijacked the entire sport enthusiasts to Cricket, by planning and promoting the sport professionally partnering with sponsors. In fact today Indian's are not bothered so much to recognize and appreciate any other sport next to Cricket. This Cricketisim has overshadowed and has induced slow-poisoning to other sports and its enthusiasts. The reason I say so is because the accolades, prize money given for Cricket players is HUGE and unimaginable. These acts only promotes the cricket sport and encourages everyone to play only cricket as it can give more-than deserving accolades, popularity, prize money and of course overnight stardom.

What is the way out for other sports to grow?

Today any sport other than cricket has to have its own hard-means to start-grow-succeed-and-survive. It’s quite apparent from how many private companies have really come forward to partner with Hockey, Football governing bodies. The learning’s are clear that, for any sport to be grown, it needs private participation in terms of sponsors. I personally see two means of developing other sports next to Cricket.

1. First approach is like helping a friend in need. Though BCCI is a private body and however being the only apex for cricket sport in the country, it holds certain responsibility of encouraging and helping grow other sports too in the country. This is what I see as true sporting quality. Since BCCI has surplus fund on the board, may be a certain percentage be funded to other sport bodies in the country. If this happens it not only helps other sport, sportsmanship to grow, but also develops a good will about the BCCI in a long run.

2. Alternatively, other Sport bodies also have to be managed by private bodies so that they devise and develop those sports like Cricket in a more business-like approach. We definitely have to have other sports growing as we have strong and motivated individuals striving hard on their own for success.

Note: My views are personal and could conflict with your views and perceptions. Please feel free to share your views, ideas, opinions so that I get to understand the theory "Beyond Sport" much better.

'Sivaji'...Indian News Channels GO Crazy!

Rajnikanth! Just spell the name and be sure, there will be a big fanfare around you! Of course this is the quite common scene in Tamil Nadu and some pockets of South India. Of course, Rajni is a person with such popular stature, so nothing to be surprised! However, what took me over surprise is the media coverage provided for the 'Sivaji' movie across the country on the day of release. Everyone just go awe and amazed with the LIVE coverage on ALL the leading Indian News channels - all day today (15th June). One leading TV journalist even went up to an extent of going into the Theatre and reporting from there with fan-filled crowds with the backdrop of 'Sivaji' movie running!

Why this craze? 'Sivaji' is just another movie of Rajnikanth but has got ALL the big names together for this movie like AVM (producer), Shankar (Director), AR Rahman (Music Director), KV Anand (Cinematographer), Thotta Tharani (Art Director) to name the few. You can't imagine such a team for any movie where ONLY the BEST is there! I believe this could be a reason for such a wwwwiiiiiiiiddddddeeeeeee LIVE news coverage by ALL the news channel across the country. Another possible reason could be is that 'Sivaji' is the first movie to be produced at a cost of Rs.80 crores (800 Million Rupees) in the history of Indian Cinema! However, I don't know if there was any such movie (including Amitabh starer) in the Indian cinema history which enjoyed SUCH a wide coverage of live telecast and publicity.

One thing apparent out of such coverage is that the south Indian cinema is far-reaching and pulling viewers of even non-Tamil speaking (rather understand) to watch South Indian cinema. Of course 'Sivaji' is a big milestone for Indian cinema (on many aspects like - Commercial and reaching wide-range of viewers) and a big mileage for South Indian Cinemas to inform the global cinema crowd that Bollywood movie is not just Hindi movies, but also Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam movies. Perhaps Rajni movies are watched by people in Japan, and Malaysia, but this film is sure to pull a mass of non-tamil speaking Indians to watch 'Sivaji'.

As one of the 'Sivaji's' super-hit song lyrics go, If Rajini is there, Yellame Style Thaan (everything is a style) !!!

Clueless!

Sometimes in our life, we love something/somebody so much but at some point in time, we will realize it is not going to be ours. This realization is a big step ahead from the day we wished/loved something. What is the remedy? I always try to think about the famous philosophical saying "Like/Love what you have got."

In our daily walk of life, every thing appears achievable - is it possible? We live in a very optimistic world where we assume things to fall in place. For few, life always is a cake walk - less efforts and formidable results. And for others, life is a tight-rope-walk - efforts are considerably high and the results are moderate. Still, we are happy and contended with what we possibly have achieved after that tough and tiring tight-rope-walk. I think this is the simple life theory! What potentially can happen is what drives us forward. But if we look back, what we possibly have achieved could be just a portion of it - but we are still contended and of course looking forward.

What is a perfect life? Good education, true friends, awesome career, understandable life-partner, a lavish house, an expensive car, wonderful kids... blah.. blah? Are you really having a perfect life? I'm sure every 6 out of 10 person will say NO. But are they not leading their life happily? I think its all about setting the expectations right! It is a trial-and-error process by which we learn every aspects of setting expectations right! As per our Indian social setup, everything should happen at pre-defined point-in-time; for example, education, job, marriage, kids and so on. I think the society has begun issuing me a Non-conformance for non-alignment of pre-defined staged-life-process. My first foreign travel happened almost after my complete six years of IT career - of course this was TOO late per standards, as already my peers made umpteen number of travels by then. Next I will achieve 3 decades of existence in 3 months from now, but still leading a happy bachelor life. According to the society, it appears a TOO late situation and can potentially introduce a gamut of complexities in my marriage & further life. What is my road ahead? I'm clueless!

Raider: I strongly believe, every person will be presented with a better or equally good opportunity/things in life to proceed. What is most important is to grab what will work for us than unnecessarily waiting for what will not happen forever. I'm sure the crucial of all is setting this particular expectation right in each one of us!

Marry if you can - Suspended Temporarily

Friends - I would like to suspend this topic for a while as:
- I'm little occupied with other tasks for sometime now
- Topic will span for 6 episodes and need a detailed writing

Keep watching for my further blogs;-))

Marry if you can! - Episode 1

Marriage - the magic (!) word that comes around like a buzzing bee, if any of us are in the age range of 25 and 29 (I won't count 30 and above into this range as it attracts very less/no prospects). Of course I have chosen to touch upon Marriage as I'm not married yet and its just biting me hard (as others keep constantly asking about it) than ever before!

I'm sure this topic can be interesting to many and will have lots of details to share. So please feel free to write them in the comments section with your name. When I started writing this blog, I realized this topic is going to go long in many parts, so please spare me if it happens to be too long!

I would like to touch upon the important factors that enable marriages to happen one-by-one:

Education: A very vital point that is needed for a marriage. Especially in the states like Kerala 100% literacy) and Tamil Nadu (90% literacy) it is totally inevitable to imagine a marriage without weighing the education factor (I believe this prevails elsewhere too but the weightage could be relatively different). Both grooms and brides are expected to have studied the most sought-after educations at the outset. The prevailing and most opted education is that something attracts IT or ITES jobs.

Nowadays almost in all schools (exclude govt schools) parents education is assessed before admitting their children in the respective schools. I share a different view on this aspect but it has become a de-facto nowadays. So this factor imposes a very strong point on both grooms and brides education to be checked.

What education means? Literacy is important in my own view. But the general public has defined a graduation is the meaning of education. If some one has not done any graduation they are so called uneducated people! I am completely different of this view. If we check the education background of most our parents it would be pity to note that they would have seen a college only to admit their children’s there. It would be interesting to note that the southern states of India have always come a long way emphasizing education from the late 19th century. So, I don't mean to say our parents were not educated but most of them may not be graduates or a degree holder.

I certainly agree in the years to come we necessarily have to have a very good education background to survive and also help our children’s study and grow-up in good institutions. For some unknown reasons, if some one has opted or was forced not to continue the education to achieve any graduation what would be the consequences? That might result very badly in finding a job, and in my opinion the most hit would be the marriage part. Sometimes it so happens, people tend to ignore the prospective non-graduate groom/bride regardless of other good qualities like brought-up, family, personal characters, and of course good-looks (I intend to touch upon them later in detail).

So education is pivotal for marriage prospects to really gear-up further.

(To be continued..)

Disclaimer (of course this is the title):

Why would you need a disclaimer? Is it to inform someone that you are intending to do something wrong? Is it to take the freedom to do anything, right before you start doing it? For instance a disclaimer to use abusive languages/ controversial topics/obscene materials?

If I think, should I use a disclaimer to convey that I am going to pick topics of varied streams that has interested/affected me - of course that can be more sensitive to others?

For what subjects should I use disclaimer - politics/religion/caste/sex - anything else? I think I can use disclaimer even to caution the readers to say that my english will be bad - it can be as simple as it could be used. I believe a disclaimer is used by people to disclose of themselves that they have written a subject which is unfamiliar to them and also let people know that this is their own view and don't intend to misguide/mislead/mis-inform readers? I'm not a good judge to issue an verdit of what can be disclaimed. However, I think disclaimer can be claimed at times when a subject that is observed to be sensitive to majority of the observers.

Generally I observed people (including me) talk/write on some subjects and in order to be diplomatic, they tend to apply a disclaimer that its their own view or thought. Is it right to accept such disclaimer? Yes & No. How is that possible? Its again left to the people amongst whom we share the so-called-sensitive information. If the majority chose to think the topic spoken/written by a person is non-acceptable then the topic is questioned. A disclaimer can help the writer/speaker to safe-gaurd themself from the majority to affirm their thoughts/views expressed are right on their own terms.

Disclaimers are used in favour of writer/speaker all the times may be because it helps them to establish the freedom of speech/writing. If a disclaimer wasn't there then it would have prevented the majority to think and establish thoughts and interests on something that was unintersting/unimaginable for many, sometimes ago. If this society or a person can do anything of his interest then I believe its because of the disclaimer the person/society has established for its existence.

A disclaimer can be used for both good and bad causes of a person or society. I believe a disclaimer is the true (sophisticated) expression of freedom in whatever we (can) do!

Disclaimer (the funniest part of this theory): I intend to write anything that comes to my mind which can be considered sensitive/provocative to you. So please be cautioned! of course language used would be very simple with no proper vocublary!