Other's Bakar

Hi frndz this is basically the collection of bolgs by other people and my after thoughts to it. if you want to see my own blogs then go to the following url:shekharshwetank.blogspot.com

बुधवार, अगस्त 24

So another product from google:

Google Spawns Googlettes

As is often the case with Google, the first hint of a major new development was a quiet announcement on its site -- in this case, the jobs section. The ad for Director of Product Management, Googlette, leads immediately to the question -- what the hell is a Googlette?

According to the ad, a Googlette is "a start-up within a start-up" and that there will be "a wide array of them". The Director of Product Management will "define Google's innovation engine and grow the leaders of our next generation of businesses."

In an absence of any press release or comment (as yet) from Google, here's what I surmise:

  • This venture – rather, these ventures – have grown directly out of "Google labs", which has spawned many new, exciting ideas. Google wants to manage some of these innovations as separate projects, recognising they may require as much nurturing as Google itself did when starting out four or five years ago.
  • This is Google sticking to New Economy-style thinking, which so many companies rushed to emulate in the late 1990s, then quickly abandoned after the dot-com meltdown. Not Google, which understands that its toughest competition in the future may come from within its own offices.

    Thus, instead of trying to quash or control emerging ideas and/or personalities, Google encourages them. It offers to create a support network for potential leaders, in exchange for loyalty and an ongoing network relationship. Thus, Google's vision's of the future is one where it is the "queen bee", with many satellite companies hovering around it, at once feeding it and gaining support from it.

  • Google is reacting to external competition, which is fast toughening. Witness the recent frenzy of mergers and acquisitions in internet search and advertising. Even Bill Gates is developing a search engine designed to rival Google's. Realising that the best form of defence is attack, Google's strategy is to start working on the next generation of technologies to change the web landscape.

मंगलवार, अगस्त 16

Crush crushes da-iict

Sometimes every one (oops) most of one go through the goosebumps on the first crush ..... i liked the blog very much.It hursts when you long for someone very deeply and u see that u can do nothing about it.Sometimes it is better not to think of the consequences and follow urs heart.But then sometimes it's not.This is the main theme of the following blog: http://blogs.sify.com/blog_display.php?blogid=1179&pid=3515 Tenth Standard CrushThursday, December, 16th, 2004 Crushes do require courage! Hmmm...Studying in a boy’s school had its own share of merits and demerits. I never tried to reason out them. But if there was a time, when I certainly missed out on girls then it was at my tenth standard. I was tenth standard, when I first joined a tuition class. The tuition center was really far and I had to travel an hour by bus to reach there. I had never previously spoken to girls other than people whom I knew from childhood. The first day of my tuition class was when I met Rajalakshmi. Her friends always used to call her Rajee and I always pleaded with myself to stop looking at her. I was not a bright guy at class and I was really worried as to how she looked upon me. I chit chattered with all the other guys whenever she was not around. But when she was there, I used to portray myself as a sweet silent guy. She used to speak to all the other guys in the class, except me. I decided to open up to my friend about my crush. He was surprised too. Finally after a lot of thought, I decided to approach her. That day, I went to the class well ahead of time and waited for her. When she came, there were around 5 guys in the room. So I decided against approaching her then. She then left to the room next by, to find her test book. I followed her. My legs were shaking and my hands were cold. As I was walking, I tried to recollect what I had planned to tell her. I put my hand in my pocket and tried to search for the piece of paper over which I had written my dialogue. As I neared her, my heart started to pound faster. I could hear it too. Suddenly she turned and saw me. I almost fumbled with the book in my hand. I cleverly covered my nervousness. I went to the book shelf at the other end of the room. Now I was sweating. Phew...!! After a few minutes, I mustered some more courage and turned around. Booo.. She had left the place. 'What a bulb' I told myself. I left the room and entered the study hall only to find three things. First, our tutor had come and so no more chance of talking to her. Second, my place had gone and so I had to go back and sit. Third, I could only sit in the last row, from which, all my chances of even watching her were lost. BOOO... 'My fate', I thought to myself. Next day, my friend started to tease me. "You don’t have the courage to even face a girl? How are you going to propose to her?" "That’s enough", I said. I knew he made sense, but my ego was at stake. So that day I told myself, "today I am really gonna speak to her". I remained cool for the other half in my school. When it was one hour before the class, as expected, I started to get nervous. I went there a bit earlier than the day before. This time to my surprise, she was there in the class, sitting and reading something. I landed myself in the bench adjacent to her. For the first few minutes, I didn’t dare to turn and see her. Then again, I mustered myself up. I turned and then walked to her straight. This is it, I thought. I was just a few feet away from her. My head was rotating and all the other external crush-phobia symptoms were also there. I thought I was gonna break down for a second. And then I was caught off-guard. She turned to me and held out a book. I saw the book and realized it was my test book. "Damn, how did she get my test book???” I saw on the table the pile of all the other test books and immediately realized that our tutor had asked her to hand it over. "GEEE... " I quietly took the book, went back and sat. "How much did you get?" I turned and saw that she was not only speaking to me but also standing a few feet away from me. I was speechless. "Me?", I gulped and asked. "Ya", she said. It was then that I realized that I never even opened my book to see how much I had scored. I opened and saw. Oops! It was thirty five out of hundred. I decided to maintain some image and told her "Seventy five". Hey eyes widened. "Wow", she said. "I got only sixty. I think you must've got the third sum correct. Can I just see your book?" I was trapped. I swallowed hard. I opened my book, pretended to see it and then told her that I had got it wrong as well. I feared she might still persist to see my book. But she didn’t. I heaved a sigh. "I am not sure how my father will react to this mark. I am scared", she said. "I don’t even tell my father such marks", I thought of telling her. I just remained quiet. "Speak to her", I could even imagine my friend telling this to me. But somehow words would not come out. "Tell me something na. It’s going to be another 40 minutes for the class to begin", she said. "Something? How much do I tell honey?” I thought to myself. I was sweating. I remained mute. "You appear to be a very quite guy? I see that you don’t talk much in the class. Why?" I thought I should smile at her and did so. "Ok" "enough" "Stop it" "Your blushing too much", something inner kept telling me all these things. That was it. She stood up and walked away outside. I kicked myself for not having spoken to her. "You didn’t speak to her? Your nuts", my friend told me the next day after I had told him everything. "I know", I told him. "Hey, don’t feel bad man. It happens the first time. Just think her as anybody else. Just go and speak to her casually today. I am sure she'll respond", he told me. I thought about it and realized the truth behind it. Alas, it then reigned into me that an opportunity lost is like spilt milk. For the next seven days, I was not able to speak to her. I repented my missed chance. Weeks later, as I was sitting quietly inside my tuition hall, she came in. By that time, I had almost lost all hope of speaking to her again and proposing to her. She came over to me and asked, "How much did you get in the last test?” I chuckled. I did not know. I never had the habit of even knowing how much I scored in tests. I opened my mouth to tell a mark of around 'eighty'. "I got 78 and you know what I am the highest", she said. Phew, I just couldn’t imagine myself getting into another tight corner. I told her that I did not attend the last test. "My dad was very happy", she said gleaming. I congratulated her. I understood that bubbliest in her character and I felt that, that was what which had attracted me to her. She kept on speaking for some more time. And I too, to my own surprise, started to speak as well. In between, I used to wonder, "What happened to you man? That’s great. Keep it going". The next day, my friend could not believe what I had told him. I guess he got a little bit jealous and dared me to propose to her. I told him I'll do that the very same day. It was only after sometime, I realized the depth of the challenge. I was really scared. I wrote down whatever I had to say. I memorized it more times than my history book's dates. That day, I went over to her. She turned and smiled. Before I could speak, she again opened up by asking me my marks in the last exam. "Man, doesn’t she know anything else?” I wondered. I spoke about studies and I returned back without saying a word about anything else. The next day my friend was back teasing me. This time, he crossed his limits. I was angry and told him that I will definitely propose to her that day. The day after that, my friend eagerly came over to me and asked me what had happened. I told him the same thing had repeated itself. He started to laugh. However, he did not say anything. I remained silent the whole day. I felt bad that my friend’s words were true. I had done so many things in life up to that day, but nothing could ever give me the courage to propose to a girl, I thought. My friend understood that I was disappointed. He came over to me and told me that he would accompany me to the tuition class that day, but he refrained from accompanying me when I was to go and talk to rajee. I agreed upon. I thought that my friend would give me some tips on approaching her. He did so and it did really work. I went to tuition that day in a more relaxed manner. In fact, I did not even write down my dialogues. I thought I am just gonna go there and speak out my mind. We reached an hour early. She had not come then. 10 Minutes had passed. I started to think. 20 minutes had passed, I started to get nervous. My friend started to cool me down. 30 minutes had passed. I almost felt like breaking down. "I'm never gonna do it", I thought to myself. My friend calmed me down. Fifty minutes had passed by that time and everyone had come to class. My friend decided to leave. I felt lot uncomfortable after he left. The class started. "She's on leave", I told myself disappointed. "I'm gonna find why she's on leave today", I told myself. After the class got over, I went over to my tutor. I asked him about rajee, casually telling him that she had my test book with her. My tutor gave a dead look at me. "Did he know of anything?” I wondered. "Why did you give your book to her?” he asked. "She wanted to see it" "I don’t know what to say", he said. "Why, what's wrong?” I asked him. "Her father called up today to tell that she will not be coming to tuition anymore. I don’t know how you’re going to get back your book. ??? " !@#$%^&* It had been two days after that. I had told my friend all about it. Both of us were sitting on top of the wall by the side of our school. The thought still hadn’t sunk into me. My friend had a hearty laugh when I had told him. But he did not say anything now. I felt lost. When I had all the time in the world, my instincts ruined my chances. And finally when I had decided to nail the coffin, the nail went missing. My friend read my disappointment. "Cool it man. If she had to be your Mrs., she would have never missed you", he said. Nice words indeed to heal a bruised or rather CRUSHED sentiment. So Crush crushes shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com

शनिवार, अगस्त 13

Engineering Colleges Students........CATEGORY

Its the categories in which we can divide the students.............. It was written about the mumbai engineering DUDS.....but be pretty much assured that any enginerites fits the BILL. http://o3.indiatimes.com/blah_blah_blah

hi guys

just got over with my “submissions” for this semester. god what a relief!! its like givin ur last exam paper. u think im kiddin, ask any mumbai engg student bout it.

engg student life truly roxxx. of course lotsa ppl tend to think that u find only nerds or geeks in engg. but thats like sayin all the movies made in bollywood are superhits. (that btw is a lousy statement). life as an engg student can be as u want it to be. tough as well as smooth.

some ppl tend to take the high road and study frm day one of a fresh semester like theres no tomorrow. they'll occupy first benches. and they have many “doubts“ while the lectures goin on. they will leave no stone unturned to be real goody good in the eyes of our “estemeed“ (haha) profs. these few ppl r truly in the geek category. ironic as it may sound, but most of these so-called "geeks“ dont boast of a very good result. some even get KTs.

then u have “the politically correct“ crowd, who attend lectures regularly. take down notes. do all their practicals sincerely. they arent exactly geeks but they r one level below them. these ppl never create havocs in classrooms but are part of fun (if there is any joke cracked or leg pulled)and can be said to be the model students of the college. and they have good results also.

then u have the “the LLBs“. chill these arent law school graduates but Lords of Last Benches. sittin on the last benches is their birthright and no one dare occupy their seats. LLBs r the “jaan“ of the otherwise boring classrooms where profs are goin on and on bout god knows what! thay call it teaching. duh!

last benches r platforms where ppl discuss everything under the sun except wots bein taught in the classroom. here everything frm bar girls controversy to britney spears pregnancy reports r discussed. if the profs too strict and theres no scope for havin talks, then we pretend to play it sufi, prof thinks last benchers have calmed down but thats their mistake. cos it takes only one joke to convert our class into a joggers parks' laughter club. sometimes we even have meetings with LLBs of other classrooms to come up with innovative ways of sittin throughout those one hour “torture“ lecs.

everything said and done, when the going gets tough, the tough gets goin. resultwise last benchers rock, sometimes they get better marks than the previous two counterparts. of course some also get kts, some even get year drops! but then thats a part and parcel of engg life. wot say?

so thats bout the categories of engg students in a nutshell. will try to throw light on some more engg students trivia some other time. theres lots ppl. theres first year (FE) dilemmas, then second year(SE) vivas and practical exams, then third year(TE) seminars and presentations and job interviews and finally final year(BE) projects and lookin back!!! theres lots to discuss.

an addition frm a fellow blogger GAURAV RAJE.

Sumdi mein komdi category. These ppl pretend to be full fledged llbs. But then after college is over, they hit the books straight away. These end up getting amazing marks. Some are extraordinarily brilliant ppl who dont even need to study much.

Dumb ppl category. These are neither studious nor funnmy. They are plain dumb. They normally sit in the middle of the class. They are the least noticed ppl and usually get away without even getting noticed. Some ppl mistake them for the front benchers.

Despo bhooka category. These are desperate ppl. They try to woo any girl in sight. They dont care how she looks or how she is. Just the fact that she is a girl is enuf for them. Though there is absolutely no beauty in engineering, these guys try to act like a shadow for the hideously ugly girls.

Dedh shahana public category. These are smartasses who try to disturb the entire class by acting like smartasses. They act like know-it-alls. Though they donot know a thing. They usually raisse stupid doubts when the profs are teaching and give vague answers when the profs ask questions. They feel dat they are the most intelligent ppl. they give excuses for failing.

keep rockin

ciao!

FAQS: 1..........ATKT. it means "allowed to keep terms". see wot happens is that we have 2 semesters per year and around 5-6 subjects per sem. so in the exam if a student fails in a subject or two, then he's allowed to sit for the next semester. he dosent get a year drop. does that clear ur doubt recca? 2..........LLBs. Lords of Last Benches 3..........FE first year 4..........SE second year 5..........TE Third year 6..........BE Final Year(B-Tech) I wanted to give persona example in each of the categories ..but i don't know why i stopped doing it..maybe it's only temporarily. Next time i wish to bring the categories of the professors...... i assure you that this time it will be full of the examples

Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect! ~Owens Lee Pomeroy

school farewell day revisited!

the blog below just made me go back to my sweet/bitter childhood memory.

theblog can be found out at:http://o3.indiatimes.com/blah_blah_blah/ Indeed, the present is so tense and the past seems oh so perfect. Sometimes you just dont want to move on, sometimes you just dont want to let go of time. How we wish we could turn back time. If only. But Life they say is a one way journey. So be it. Living it and Loving it. Do we have a choice?

When I was a small child I always used to wonder, “When the hell am I going to grow up? Being a grown up is so cool. No more tension of completing the homework, no more learning those awful math tables, no more worrying about the verbs and nouns and tenses, no more being afraid of mam and the house master.”

Then came the final year of school. Now the thinking had changed a bit. “Yess! Just one more year. One more year of this jail called school. One more year of homeworks, nagging teachers, stupid project work. Then college. Freedom. Girls. New clothes everyday. Yippee!!”

Finally the school days were coming to an end. Then came the School Farewell Dinner Party. Officially the Last Day of school. The day me and all my friends were waiting for.

Why then were my eyes moist?

Why then was I feeling as if this year had passed through pretty fast?

Why then was I feeling so sad?

Why o Why??

Was it just me feeling that way?

I took a look around, and hey presto, all my classmates had misty eyes.

Wasnt this the moment we all were looking forward too?

Why then was I not ready for this now?

Why then did it seem like I was loosing a very near and dear one?

Why o Why???

Who was going to applaud my English Essays now?

Who was going to feel proud of my History marks now?

Who was going to laugh at my Geography locations now?

Who was going to correct my kanas and matras in Hindi now?

Who was going to shout the living daylights out of me for not completing my homework now?

Who was going to ask me to write “i wont talk and create nuisance in class when the teacher is teaching” a thousand times now?

Who was going to tell me to run three full rounds of the school ground now?

Who was going to call me “Bony” now?

Who was going to play “pen-fight, book-cricket, seed-chess” withe me now?

Who was I going to share the fruitjam biscuits in the breaks now?

Who was going to CARE for me now?

With these questions, a few tears, a choked throat and lots of photos locked in my camera, i bid adieu to my alma mater, my school, my life! All through school life we want to get out of school but on the last day at school, our feet are glued to the place. If this isnt irony, then what is? That chapter in my life is over. Life goes on, each day a new page. But whenever I pass my school those days come flooding back and just looking at my school I am filled with a feeling of pride that is second to none.

School Days are the land of lost content, I see them shining plain, the happy highway where i once went and cannot come again!

Ciao

i to had this thing in my mind at that time. till date i haven't met those few of my friends.. at that time we didn't had the NET facilities.

The 80-20 Rule.

Today i came through a beautiful blog titled 80-20 rule. yeah it Instantly striked my sesnses that it's how true....... But we have rarely stopped enough to reflect it ourself. things which are as simple often escape ours attention.But it's the most fundamental of the rule...and we should reflect upon it to do the optimization. Optimization is everywhere, In computer science we study optimization, data-mining and all sort of algorithm to arrive at some simple and pure statistics which can atleast satisfy the 80% of the conditions. the beautiful blog camn be found out at: http://o3.indiatimes.com/thoughtsforlife/archive/2005/01/28/60902.aspx The same is produced here..............................................................................................

The 80-20 Rule.

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was an Italian economist who, in 1906,observed that twenty percent of the Italian people owned eighty percent of their country's accumulated wealth. Over time and through application in a variety of environments, this analytic has come to be called Pareto's Principle, the 80-20 Rule, and the "Vital Few and Trivial Many Rule."

Pareto's rule states that a small number of causes is responsible for a large percentage of the effect, in a ratio of about 20:80. Expressed in a management context, 20% of a person's effort generates 80% of the person's results. The corollary to this is that 20% of one's results absorb 80% of one's resources or efforts. For the effective use of resources, the manager's challenge is to distinguish the right 20% from the trivial many.

Examples of the 80-20 Rule:

80% of a problem can be solved by identifying the correct 20% of the issues 80% of advertising results come from 20% of your campaign. 80% of an equipment budget comes from 20% of the items 80% of an instructor's time is taken up by 20% of the students 80% of benefit comes from the first 20% of effort 80% of customer complains are about the same 20% of your projects, products, services. 80% of our personal telephone calls are to 20% of the people in our address book 80% of the decisions made in meetings come from 20% of the meeting time 80% of the outfits we wear come from 20% of the clothes in our closets and drawers 80% of the traffic in town travels over 20% of the roads 80% of what we produce is generated during 20% of our working hours 80% of your annual sales come from 20% of your sales force 80% of your future business comes from 20% of your customers 80% of your growth comes from 20% of your products 80% of your innovation comes from 20% of your employees or customers 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers 80% of your staff headaches come from 20% of our employees 80% of your success comes from 20% of your efforts 80% of your website traffic comes from 20% of your pages

Hmm.....well I think theres' a good new for us all... 80% of success is achieved from 20% of our efforts......... I guess we all need to sit and think wots that 20% :)

On an afterthought one can think that we should look for that 20% of the things. but as it can be rightly said that for identifying that 20% of the product,effort....whatever.... we will have to spend 80% of the same thing. so total thing becomes constant at 100% ......... this fact can be stated from another famous saying my one of the greastes physicists of the time that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed but can be changed from one form to another.that is total energy is constant.In the same way total work is constant for the total results, it's just that one acheives first 80% of the output earlier than the other ones Applying the same rule as above we can say that the efforts for a particular thing can never be 20,30....90%. It has to be 100% for that particular thing.It is just that one has to 100%.... in others word it is that for that 80%of the work to be shown u have to give 100% of the effort. the 80% of the work can't be shown independently. for that thing to be called complete you have to complete that 20% of the work with 80% of the effort.It's just complimentary in nature.You cannot isolate the TWO. Shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com/Photo

शुक्रवार, अगस्त 12

The Bed

I liked the way Anant brought home the idea of ...... of how he couldn't leave his bed which, initially he thought was going to challenge his Autjority of the household The following posts can be viewed at http://o3.indiatimes.com/anant_rulz The Bed It was just a bed. A four-post wooden bed. Two days before my marriage, as I came back from office, I saw these two carpenters busy in assembling this bed. It was a teak wood bed, ornate, with small mirrors and quite big in size. It had displaced everything in my room, including my single bed and it seemed that the bed was waiting to swallow the whole room. The carpenters, while assembling it explained to me that they had taken 3 months to make this bed, with all that carving and making the bed suitable for ‘Bitiya Rani’ and her things in the those built-in boxes underneath. Bitiya Rani! And what about me, I couldn’t dare ask? I wanted to peep inside the boxes to see if anything was hidden there but they were empty. As I came out of the room, my mother gave me that meaningful and amused kind of smile. I knew that my dear father-in-law had not sent a bed but a Trojan horse into my room, our house, my life, and my existence. I knew it. Through this piece of dead wood, he plans to send his dear daughter into my bedroom, our house and slowly take kabja over the whole place. Our lives. I know these girls; they all do this kind of tricks. Just like the camel and the tent- first the head, then the neck and then the whole body. Oongli pakad ke pahuncha pakad leti hain yeh ladkiyan. No way! I won’t let her usurp my authority and my exclusive domain. I wondered if this decision to get married was correct or not; looking from the way things were shaping, I didn’t think so. The bed had occupied the prime real estate in the house and certainly in my bedroom. I didn’t sleep in it that night. As I slept in the other room, I dreamt of the bed changing into an alien spreading its four tentacles slowly but surely all over my house. The mattress was delivered the next day and with mom’s red bedcover over it, it surely looked a lot less menacing, but still like a Chinese dragon; a red fire-spewing dragon with expansionist designs. A day later, the bed changed itself into a shaadi-ka-storehouse with all those guest occupying every inch of our house, including my room. Cellophane-wrapped wedding presents with some carrying the Christmas design or a Happy Birthday written on them, hold-alls waiting to burst, attaché cases with cloth cover on them, milk bottles with infants attached to them, sarees in various stages of packing/unpacking, shagun-ka-samaan with Satiya inscribed in red geroo, laddoo boxes with miniature Ganesh statuette on them, empty jewellary boxes with their silken undergarments, Raymond suit pieces with names written with a sketch pen, fruits waiting to rot, gifts exclusively meant for passing them on- I was jealous that the bed had so brazenly assumed such an important and an all-encompassing status overnight. In our house. And made a place so quickly for itself in our lives like a jinn out from his bottle in the form of a new boy-servant. ‘Hukum, mere aaka’, it seemed to say. And without my explicit permission. How dare it! I hated the bed. After two night, the bed changed into a bookshelf. On top of it, I found a silk, gold and diamond studded book, surrounded by motiya, red roses and hand-plucked petals. I was pushed in my room by my sisters and bhabhi. Not even mandatory and filmy ‘Devarji, jaldi nahi karna’. Just go! The room smelled of mithai, fruits and flowers. I looked at the book. What is this book all about? These two are in conspiracy- the bookshelf of a bed and the book. I was too tired, mentally empty and had no desire or patience to read this book. Any book. I just wanted to sleep. Still, I was mesmerized by its smell, the newness of the book, which reminded of those we used to buy in summer for our next class and keep near our bedside till the schools opened; or, like the smell of that new car, straight from the showroom. I hesitatingly removed the silk cover, open the book hurriedly with a boyish curiosity, unstuck some chipke-huey pages. I just wanted to read the book and reach to the end as quickly as possible, to know what is written on that last page and to unload my excitement. It was a small book with two pages only- the first and the last. The first page was entitled welcome and the on last page was written, come again. I kept the book in my arms and slept. The bed watched us silently. Some days passed, or was it months, I don’t know. The bed became an explorator’s dream, an archaeologist’s temptation. It beckoned me to find out the mysteries of those hillocks, rivulets, ravines and the springs that smell of life. The bed had changed into a valley of flowers, a thin mountain spring that emanates and confronts us suddenly on the hair-pin bend of the road and when you stop to taste its life-sustaining water, it continues to flow with a gurgle, totally unmindful of your presence, into the deep crevices in those perennial bushes below. Sometimes, the mirrors in the bed would reflect those dancing figurines from Khajuraho, trying to please kaamdev. The bed became a chameleon- changing its appearance with the change of seasons, woolen blankets, mosquito nets and chenille coverings. I could see a small sapling trying to break the wooden ground of the bed. Was it love? Before I could even explore fully to my boyish delight, our two incomplete halves became one to create another one. Suddenly, she was occupying the space between two of us and yet, by some mysterious alchemy, some sorcerer’s magic, some out-of-syllabus law of chemistry that I had skipped in my school, she was joining us like the co-valent bond; she was the O between the our two H. H-O-H. The bed had changed itself into a nursery where, most of the time, she would find that space right between our two hearts, now ‘idling’ in unison like some All India permit holder truck driver’s automobiles by the roadside dhaba. Every night, and on days too, the bed would remind us of that new life and we would be attracted to it like an helpless iron file to the magnet. Like some hungry insects to the life-light. Involuntarily. Hypnotically. Naturally. Almost like zombies in a trance. And then, we left the bed, but we somehow knew we would return to it. The bed remained in our hearts and when we came back to it, the bed had somehow expanded, anticipating the growing need to accommodate all four of us. The bed had now become a playground, a dining table, a kiddies wrestling arena, a toy box and our Fort Knox, where all our worldly wealth was right there itself in the form of those two. More than all the money and power on the earth. Making the decision to have children was to decide forever to have our hearts placed outside our bodies. And we didn’t even take that important decision consciously. It just happened and like beggars on Diwali night, we watched from a distance in awe, stared at God’s fireworks- with admiration, with jealousy and yet, with eternal gratefulness to Him. And suddenly, we were conjoined to them; they wake, we wake, they eat, we eat, they sleep, we sleep. The bed had become our prison and we, its willing and chained life-timers. At times, when kids were not well, the bed would become a bed-of-nails fit for an Indian yogi only and every moment would stretch itself into eternity. Our hearts in our mouths, prayers on our lips and tears in our eyes, we waited for that difficult moment to pass, the upheavals to subside. Or, when mom was in those last months. A drop of pin would wake us up and I would rush to find out if she needed anything, while the nurse slept. And, the bed will become Bhagwadgita and ask me to stop crying and be at peace with the laws of nature- that Atman was trying to changes its outer covering only. What comes must go and this too shall pass, it spoke like a sage. And, I would keep my weary head on the bed to wake up the next minute, fearing the worst. Is she breathing? Is she still there? What to do? The sand clock was emptying fast The bed watched us writhe in anguish, pain and helplessness like a mute spectator, offering no solutions, just solace. Maybe, the bed knew all the answers to all of my silly questions. But, I wasn’t even asking any. The bed had become the barometer of my emotions; I have fought many a battles and realized to my surprise that all those I won, I lost and those I lost- turned out to astonishing victories. As I shed my clothes, my vanity, my ego, my false pride, my worldly everything, and with my weary soul and body- defeated, punished, bruised and hurt, the bed became Tiger balm, that druid’s magic potion which not only cures but also provides sustenance to fight- for another day. I learnt never to bring anger or bitterness to this bed and to bury in it my small secrets and victories, written in passion. The bed has always been my box seat on which I have seen many a movies and laughed and shed tears while she sleeps peacefully, oblivious of naughty Sid’s inner turmoil, Gump’s innocent queries or even ET’s magical finger reaching to cure the human child’s hurt; It becomes a snack bar to satiate my sudden desire for munchies and coffee; a round-table for family meetings where we have discussed many an important issues of life; a card table where we cheated and played ‘kot-pees’ and ‘3-2-5’. I have traveled far and wide. Slept on expensive beds in 5-star hotels, air-conditioned coaches with complimentary sheets and blankets, standing or sitting in a general compartment’s bare wooden seats and much-scarce railway platform benches. But everywhere, I have yearned for peaceful sleep like that in my own bed. My slave bed, my pillow and my part of territory- my feudal instincts find peace in this very limited space of my bedroom. Here I can be me. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. These days, I sometimes find her looking into its innards of the bed for her past, knitted into small clothes and sweaters. There is a glint of future in her eyes, which she somehow wants to fit into this past. On seeing me, she packs her tears and her hopes with the naphthalene balls into those kiddy clothes. As I leave the sanctuary of this bed to explore and measure distances, I wonder if this is my ‘Do Gaz Zameen’ that Emperor Zafar so eloquently yearned for? Is it my casket where my bandaged mummy rests? Is it just a bed? Is it just a four-post wooden bed? http://shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com Presented to you by Shwetank shekhar http://shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com

गुरुवार, अगस्त 11

Why ME.....................???

At some point of time we find that there is some time when we feel that everything goes wrong for us. that we feel that ........... why everytime it has to be me.......... "WHY ME??"
Below also some one is in trouble finding out why there in search for one's lady love he has to beat the dust every time why him................. or maybe why most of US
(the original can be found out at:http://yyyy123.rediffblogs.com/)
I asked myself Why ME???
There she was in my school!!
the most beautiful girl !!
and gosh she became my friend :-)
I asked myself Why ME???
the days were filled with fun and joy..
there was always a smile in my face :-)
and our freindship grew over the years..
i loved her every move..every word...
we spent times together!!!
we kept on talking for long hours!!
Suddenly from nowhere a new boy joined the classand she became frns with him...
soon she started ignoring me...
and our freindship came to end..
after so many years with her..
i couldnt feel any better...
life and smile were out of my face..
and one day she said she loved the other guy..
and my life was shaken !!!
I asked myself Why ME???
time passed on and things changed..
we went out of school and
i moved on to diff place !!!
I was in college now...
and there she was a beautiful girl!(Another beautiful girl)
we became frns the very first day!! :-)
I asked myself Why ME???
and smiles came back to my face!!we went together..
bunked classes together :-)
wow it has happend to me again...
there is some one finally who cares for meshe said she liked me!!!
and time went on..and we were in 3rd year..
and then another guy came along...
she befrinded him..and then time moved on...
and one day she said she loved the other guy!!!She left me and then ignored me..
she was busy with the other guy..and soon our friendship came to end
I asked myself Why ME???
time changed..
i moved on...
though with pain in heart..
to seek love and friendship and comapinonship..
to seek the sole mate of my life..
the one, god has made for me!!!
i kept on trying to console me..
that god has done this on purpose..
and i have a role to play...
and will meet my life partner some where..
i moved on ... changed places...
there i was in my First Job
and there she was a beutiful girl...(Another beautiful girl)
we became friends very instant!!!
I asked myself Why ME???
and we shared thoughts..
we went to every place together!!!
we moved with hand to hand every where..
we watched movies together..
ate food together!!
she said she liked me!!!
she said she wanted to be with me...
she said she loved melife has come back to me..
i have found my sole mate!!!
and one day she reveled...
she loved some one (NOT ME!!!)
she had loved some one lese frm her childhood..
and she wanted to marry him (NOT ME!!)
she left me...
saying i am sorry!!!
and she asked me to forget her : -( (which i cant ever)
and there i was heart broken...
I asked myself Why ME???
I had no choice but to move on!!!
With lot of pain in my heart!!
My mind has stopped thinking!!!
i was living myself again and againthen the thought came to me
GOD had some other plans for me!!!!
I moved on ..
changed places....
(had to change places)there i am in one of the most beautiful city!!!..
city of gardens...
city of light...
and i am still thinking of what happened in past.!!!
I asked myself Why ME???
I needed change !!! I needed break!!
I could nt tolerate it any more...
i couldnt enjoy the beauty of nature!!!
my life has changed ..changed again!! ..
changed again!!
I asked myself Why ME???
SO I moved on again to another place.....
another country!!!..
to meet another civilization!!!
BUT I KEPT ON ASKING
Why ME???
Why ME???
Why ME???

Authors Filmy bachpan

this one is from ANANT IT goes as: MY FILMY BACHPAN Cinema is a very powerful medium. It not only provides us an escape from the humdrum of life, but also conditions us to understand the reality of the society we live in; it reflects and imitates society and life but at times, life imitates cinema itself. I have been watching cinema since my very childhood. And, like every one of you, the summer holidays were our favorite part of the year for doing all those innocent ‘badmaashi and khuraphaat’. In fact, my love for movies started in one of the summer holidays when I was 4-5 years. The earliest I remember is watching a movie called 'Jagriti'- it came to our colony (yes, that was what it was called- a cluster of govt. flats). I think it was a part of Information & Broadcasting Ministry’s way of making us Indian patriotic and they used to send this van for this. Every evening, the van will go from one colony to another and once they reached there, there was a loud roar from all of us kids. Some kids would even follow the van to see where it would finally stop. The news would spread around like wildfire and within no time, kids like me would be ready to watch the movie and fight for that first row seat- nearest to the screen. By 7 PM, they will put out a folding white 16 mm paper-screen and a noisy projector to boot and we children will sit on the ground and watch the movie and would be transcended to another world. The world of cinema. We laughed at cruel Asit Sen’s moving paunch while he slept and Mohan Choti’s antics and cried when hero’s mother came on the screen; every time, at the same spot. Without fail. And Masterji Abhi Bhattacharya's ‘Aao bachchon tumhe dikhayen jhanki Hindustaan ki’, 'De di humey azaadi bina khadag bina dhaal’, 'Chalo chalen maa, sapno ke gaaon mein’ and so many other songs I still remember with their tunes etched on my little heart. BTW, were those kind of Masterji in films only? I don't think so. I saw ‘Jagriti’ at least 12 times because it seems I & B Ministry had only one film and like Richard Attenborogh’s ‘Gandhi’, they would show this movie at any and every place and occasion. Year after year. Subsequently, in summer holidays itself, some private entrepreneur brought a larger cloth-screen and more than 7-8 movies were shown in a week. The local central park was covered with tents and every evening a new fare was for us. The ticket was 4 and 8 Annas for a ground seat- which was quite a lot, and we would try to get in free. Somehow; by going along with some auntyji, by sneaking in unseen, by giving some khota-sikka or some such trick. The gatekeeper would ask auntyji if the child was her’s and before she would reply, we would run and mill with the crowd inside. At times, we would lift the tent and get in free. Or, we would even sit outside and listen to the sound track till we would find an opportunity to get inside- free, of course. Even after the intermission. The year was 1960 and I was 4 years old- and don’t you start calculating my age! I think after that, I became a full-fledged cine-buff and I am still crazy about cinema. I have seen cinema at oddest places and Delhites, would you believe, where there is Bhikaji Cama Place now, there was a tent-wala cinema hall (hall?) called, Raj Talkies. (Talkies- can you believe this name?). Once again, it was a temporary tented cinema hall. The legs of the wooden chairs were tied to each other by sutlee-rope (to avoid people taking the chair away to a place near the screen) and in the noon show, one could see a million stars in the sky- yes, the tent had million holes and sunlight would come thru it. The ticket was 10 Annas to 1-1/4 Rupees. After the school, we would steal some money and use our pass valid for DTU- yes, it was called DTU and not DTC then- bus to see the movie The other cinema halls that we used to love- in fact 3 of them were - Race Course, Palam and Defence. Race Course being Air Force area and the cinema Hall was primarily for the entertainment of defence personnel; we civilians were allowed only to make the whole thing viable. So come noon show- first day, first show, we would be standing outside the gate with a burly Air Force Gateman stopping us, as the area is protected one. At 10 minutes to 3 PM, the gate would be opened and we the cine-buffs would race with our shoes or chappals in our hands for at least 500 meters till we reach the ticket window. And there was a lot of dhakkam-dhukka there. I saw many a movies sitting in the front row. The cinema hall is still working, though my wife prefers the PVRs for their superior air-conditioning, sound and projection. Palam was another one. It is still there, I suppose. There also, we had to wait for the gates to open and then as we used to stand in the line to get tickets, one man will come and put a stamp on our palms; you show the stamp and then only ONE ticket will be sold to you. As many people wanted more than one ticket for their friends also, outsiders would come and jostle in the line. But, look at the ingenuity of Indian brain- as soon as the stamp was put, one guy would put some spit on it and transfer the stamp on another guy from outside the queue. Ab toh ticket dena hi padega! Many a days, we would walk into racecourse where races were held quite regularly. We could see from a distance, all those film stars and beautiful and decked up women. When cricket season was on- we used to get the glimpse of cricketers like Pataudi and Nariman Contractor- of course, in those days, for entertainment, Pataudi used to play cricket instead of killing blackbucks. We would go and take their autographs. And throw the papers away later for fear of being caught by gharwalas. And yes, polo was also our favorite. We used to see Maharaja of Jaipur and Maharani Gayatri Devi and many a famous personalities we couldn’t even recognize, chukkar after chukkar. Those magnificent horses and those elegant horse-riders. It was really awesome, as the X-Gen says it now. In the night, we would put our charpoys outside in the ‘ground’ and enjoy the long meetings with our friends. In the worst days of summer, we would sprinkle some water on the bed/durries and by the time we used to come back to sleep- the bed was cool as a cucumber. No fridge, no a/c- only ice block from the nearby paan-wala for making sharbat and lassi. My father used to smoke ‘Panama’ cigarettes and many a times, while bringing the pack of ciggies, I would put one in my mouth and try to bring out those imaginary ‘chchallas’ (Rings) that only Pran could do with effortless ease. And how we loved to hate him! Next day morning, we would get up by 4.30 AM and go for walks and games to Lodi Garden. Lodi Garden was a heaven for us kids- unlike what it is now for lovers- and we have played a lot of chchupan-chchupaai, kho, and langdi-taang there. The ubiquitous signs like sonu-loves-monu were there even then and all those hearts with a piercing arrow etched on the top of the tombs were visible even from a distance to the lovers. I think we Indians have learnt to declare our love by defacing our historic legacy from our childhood itself and ‘Kilroy was here’ is a just copycat. Two months of summer holidays would finish in a blink and predictably, in the last few days, we would try to find someone from whom we would 'copy’ our homework. And predictably, the teacher would ask on the first day itself, contrary to our wishes, to deposit the homework copies, and predictably, I would end up saying ki ‘Sirji, meri kaapi meri chchoti bahan ne phaad di’ And predictably, I was made to stand on the bench for the whole period. And equally predictably, in the next one too. That was also the start of my introduction to Hollywood; the first three movies I saw were ‘Ben-Hur’, ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Guns of Navrrone’. I didn’t understand a single word of what they were saying but the chariot race between Charlton Heston and ganja Yul Brynner and the parting of (Red) sea are still fresh in my memory. This continued till one day, my father, who didn't even know in which class I was studying, predicted to my mother the profession I will most probably take up in my life- no, you can’t even guess it- selling chchole by the roadside! (not Sholay, stupid!). ‘Padta-likhta toh hai nahi. Bada hokar saala chchole hi bechega sadak par’ were his exact words of Bhavishyavaani. To prove him right, that day itself, I went with my friend and saw ‘Phir Wohi Dil Laaya Hoon’. Again. Joy Mukherjee and Ash Parekh and O P Nayyar’s music ‘Banda Parvar Thaam Lo Jigar’ ‘Aanchal Mein Saja Lena Kaliyaan’ transported me to another world, that I can never forget. That day, when I reached home, my father did what all Indian parents believe to be the God-ordained duty and divine rights bestowed upon them- you guessed it right this time- he beat me Black & Blue. That definitely was the end of Black & White movie era. At least for me. You see, I had a filmy bachpan. Filmy, very filmy. INDEED

बुधवार, अगस्त 10

I Always thought that marriage sites are a BIG SHAM

I am a gr8 NET SURFER.... May be the reason being that i am having a free Net on my college room. but then don't think that i surf anything to everything. my favorite being the Indian news sites and all other reading suff. Being voracious reader i used to read all the news sites and other related material in COUPLE OF HOURS. So what to do in spare time...(i dont like mail and emails on which some of my friends spend good time.). During this dilemma some one said that why not search the brides for our friends........... after many bakars we started searching the sites for ours room -mates(Don't beleive that we were looking for good ones for ours pals..) During these time it came to me an idea why not seriously go through all these profiles and "Time Katto". Indeed it was a good time pass...... there were many profiles that aroused my curiosity and will BLOG on them some time Later. Right now many of my pals have got the habit of "ORKUTTING"(orkut.com). i also find it good....Anything that GOOGLE does has to be interesting(On a second thought what would the MARRIAGE SEARCH would look like through Google search. Will thery be able to stop the Spams.....i think that they would atleast do a better job than the rest of them.(see what they have done to mail system...... Giving a whopping 1GB at a time when others were giving 2-4 MBs. Okay i have gone too far now below is the post because of which all these bables started.. Sham marriage sites: you can see the blogger at : http://o3.indiatimes.com/MarriageBeuro/ My experience with New Age Arrange Marriage ”Hrishi you are 27 now, you should get married now...” My Mom.... Said worriedly ... For her son like me who is done with Engineering and MS in US with lots of M in dollars.. still unmarried was surprise... though I was little hesitant... I had have had few dates to whom I was looking after in my early 20's .. now all of these gals got married , and started thire families.. So I had no option but to enter into arrange marriage 'market'. Here your value is more into your cast and salary... I was hesitant to go with traditional marriage beuro's.... So i opt out for Shaadi.com and Jeevansathi.com... Fortunately my mom enrolled my name into one of the leading local marriage beuro's Anuroop Wiwaha Sanstha in Pune ( www.anuroopwiwaha.com) I Started looking after gals online thru shaadi/jeevansathi.... My experience was pathetic... I recieved close to 200 praposals thru these means.. 60 % of them were fake.... They charged hefty 2750 rs.... We had no time to look at those 200 praposals... So I decided to search on my own.... I found few gals with my matching criteria .... later I realized all these paposals were fake..... My advice dnt go for shaadi.com.... its all fake.. they will just screw u up with ur money.. Fortunately Anuroop Wiwaha lend me heling hand, they organized pre-marrital councelling sessions.. Also Mr. Mahendra Kanitkar, Director Anuroop gave some good practical tips... In few weeks I recieved 11 praposals... all are decent educated cultured girls... 2 months I reached my destination, again Anuroop helped us with thire quick service... Now I am happily married with my beautiful, cultured and understanding wife Anuradha... Just for advice.... dnt jump into marriage market.... make sure u recieve “true praposals“ and not fake one ( these matrimony portals will give u 90 % fake data) Happy match,mate finding....... PS: i see many sites advertising that they have made so many perfect marriages. anybody knows them personally.Also i couldn't understand whay the Shaddi.com people were asking for money.............. My SITE

Adult most of the times see their childhood in their Children

Below is the rumblings of an Adult who sees his childhood through the eyes of her 2 year Daughter I personally dont have experience (i have no child and am unmarried and an Indian).but i think that every one one day or the other goes through the emotions. i think that i have seen may people LIKE THAT. YOU CAN VIEW THE BLOGGER AT http://o3.indiatimes.com/I_Me_Myself Last night, I was watching my two-year old daughter trying a karaoke - to sing along (she is too young to talk) with the TV. That was an interesting sight. She was trying her best to beat that female vocal (I'm sure she will do that one day). Then the promo changed to some other movie and she was not interested. So she turned back, and saw me smiling. She gave back a big smile and trotted away to her mother in the kitchen. Time flies... I remember my childhood days when I was very much impressed by - who else - Amitabh. And that song 'Ek Raasta Hai Zindagi...' from Kaala Patthar (shot on Shashi Kapoor, not Amitabh) was my favorite. I used to be the centre of attraction while singing that song. Soon thereafter, came the 'Laila O Laila' from Qurbani, and that won me the third prize in singing competition in my school. I still remember the picture book I got as my prize, though I tore off the book in the next few days. That way way back in 1980-81 and I was probably in my first standard. Then I went to second standard and dad got transferred to Visakhapatnam. New school, and I was the boss in my class (also a bully, I must admit). Anybody who dared to disobey me was done for. Since my school had classes only upto third standard, I was one of the seniors (imagine!) and a darling of those teachers (yeah, those beauties were young and unmarried, but unfortunately too old for me - one of them was married and her kid was my junior). I was good at studies, or let's say, others were not very good. As a result, I stood first in everything that I participated - be it studies or games. Then there was a skit - Snowhite and the Seven Little Dwarfs - and I was the hunter who was assigned the job to kill Snowhite. Even if it were not a skit and even if they paid me a million dollars, I would never kill that beauty (I hope my wife does not read this). I would rather kill the woman (my teacher, that fatso) who gave me that role. Then I went to IV standard and changed my school. Now I was among my equals, but still a smart guy. I was one of the best, if not the best of the best. I had many admirers around me, and so some rival groups were formed. We used to have fistfights and anybody found alone separated from his gang used to face the warth of the rival gang. We lived the life as in the movies - perfect (only the ladies were missing and we longed for them). Then time passed and one day I found myself updating my knowledge of the Bollywood. I was perfect in this field, or at least I thought so. I was still in the school and destined to become a hero some day. But nothing much happened. Then I went through the school and finally through college. I knew everything (so I believed) about the movies, the glamour world, the new beauty in the college that would some day fall for me (she was our lecturer)... No, nothing is funny. I really believed in myself. If you laugh at me today, then you have probably forgotten your yesterday. Thereafter, it was the Chartered Accountancy course that took the better part of my youth. And one day, I was a CA. Then came the first job and the first salary. I was the king - on the top of the world. The richest man ever on the earth. I could buy that stereo, the walkman, those 'costly' cassettes which my pocket money never allowed, and what not. But when I looked back, I saw many unfinished agenda. How come I was a CA when I should have been a movie superstar? I had everything that takes to become that superstar (except for a Godfather who could make me the superstar; why, I once even thought of running away to Bombay - I had a relative who could do at least something for me...)! Why didn't that lass fall for me? How could she get married to another person that she didn't know (read “I didn't know”)? She should have talked to me, at least once. She never talked to me when we were in the college (never before and never thereafter). She could have asked for my phone number during the farewell. She could have taken some pains to get it from others... I don't even know her name till today. OK, let bygones be bygones. I'm happily married, have a family of my own. And no longer aspire to be a superstar (well, give me a chance and I can still become one). Why am I thinking of all this? Simple, because I think I was stupid to have such a thinking. I should have acted like a grown-up and should have rubbished all those ideas when they came in my mind. Like any other parent, I would never let my children make a fool of themselves. I'll take care that they behave like grown-ups, even if they are just two year olds. They should start early... NO! I won't do that! Back then, I really believed in all that I thought, though all that might seem stupid today. That was a part of my growing up. Those dreams were worth dreaming at that time, and I shall never be that innocent ever again in my life. Those are my sweet memories, stupid sweet memories. My children will go through all that on their own. They will go through the joy, the ecstasy, the heartbreak on their own and go through every emotion that life can give them. I'll always be available if they need me, but I won't ever interfere with their thoughts, their feelings. I might not make a good father, but at least I'll not be a bad father - a bully - for my children. Go ahead, my child. Sing along, for probably I'm too old to sing that song - Doom Hila Le Doom Hila Le Doom... Or is that Dhoom Macha Le... seems that he he not that young afterall Later on i will add more BAKARS On child life....... My Site

Shopping with Hubby

Well i may tell you that i am neither female nor married....... then surely the next logical question would be...... "toh phir title ka MATLAB" IT happens so that i came through a blog of a newly married lady. it's her musings. NOW WHY HAVE I ADDED THAT HERE........... for the simple reason that the lady gave her side of story and reading here can get the reason for wild (NOT)Shopping spree...... it can be found at the following link. http://o3.indiatimes.com/anu3001/ The Blogs Goes at Under Last week my husband and I went to M.G. Road. How we landed there is a different story altogether that I will narrate some other time. There were a lot of sales happening, this being August, and my sole purpose was to window shop, become familiar with the market, and kill some time, in that order. Accordingly, we entered a KSIC showroom. There were yards and yards of lovely silk sarees and, as any Indian lady would vouchsafe, it's a natural impulse to check out each saree in its six-yard splendour, feel its texture, and glance at the price tag. While I was still rapt in this magical silken world, hubby broke into my reverie with a "Do you want to buy this one?" I gave him a bewildered "Of course not!" look. Men!!! Just because a man admires a beautiful woman, it doesn't mean he's going to marry her. Similarly when a woman admires a dress in a store, it doesn't necessarily follow she's going to buy it. Most shopkeepers who are male cannot understand why a woman may sometimes admire a thousand dresses and yet not buy one and at other times may buy a dozen outfits off the rack without giving them a second glance. The truth is, apart from impulsive or compulsive shoppers, most women are smart enough to know what to buy and where. Many of them will rarely buy anything from a new shop the first time they visit it -- unless they are on a holiday. Women like to scout shops and compare their stuff for future buys. Men, on the other hand, are likely to pick the first thing they see at the first shop. Coming back to my story, my husband, soon as he realised I had no plans to actually buy anything, wanted to get out of the shop as quickly as possible. He finds it "embarrassing" to look around a shop without buying anything whereas I find it perfectly natural to reco the market before buying what I want. That day was a revelation to both of us -- we learned a few things about each other that were hitherto hidden. (Those who plan to get married should go on a shopping binge with their intended life partners before making the final commitment. :) They may yet discover a few secrets. ) My husband, like most men, needs to justify every action, even something as trivial as shopping. So if he goes to a store, he has to buy something to show there's a reason why he went to the store in the first place and why the trip isn't a waste. Women thankfully don't need to justify anything. We rounded off our sojourn with a stop at Kidskemp. One persistent saleswoman there kept trailing us all over the place, showing off their various collections. I would have much preferred to look around on our own but, out of sheer courtesy, we let her guide us. It was then I realised how easy it is to browbeat a guy into buying something totally useless. No wonder women are able to sell everything from cars to shaving cream! So this time it was I who hastily dragged my husband out of the store. P.S. Have you ever wondered why in a store having a sale the one thing you want is either not on sale or is selling at the lowest possible discount? so, what's the lesson.... don't ever go shopping with urs lady love if u don't feel embarrased in not buying....... (on a private not i will agree that yes some times we buy something utterly useless) My Site
 

Google Spawns Googlettes

As is often the case with Google, the first hint of a major new development was a quiet announcement on its site -- in this case, the jobs section. The ad for Director of Product Management, Googlette, leads immediately to the question -- what the hell is a Googlette?

According to the ad, a Googlette is "a start-up within a start-up" and that there will be "a wide array of them". The Director of Product Management will "define Google's innovation engine and grow the leaders of our next generation of businesses."

In an absence of any press release or comment (as yet) from Google, here's what I surmise:

|W|P|112488588111994705|W|P||W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com1/23/2006 12:55:00 am|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|Hey this blog is not about

I have been doing hours of research on "Aero Bed" and it brought me to your blog on this post. Anyways, Shwetank Shekhar I was reading your blog and I think it is really cool. It’s really a pleasure reading your posts! Keep up the great work.

Keep blogging away :-)1/23/2006 11:38:00 am|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you!
I have a Bath. site/blog. It pretty much covers Bath. related stuff.
Come and check it out if you get time :-)8/16/2005 05:43:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Sometimes every one (oops) most of one go through the goosebumps on the first crush ..... i liked the blog very much.It hursts when you long for someone very deeply and u see that u can do nothing about it.Sometimes it is better not to think of the consequences and follow urs heart.But then sometimes it's not.This is the main theme of the following blog: http://blogs.sify.com/blog_display.php?blogid=1179&pid=3515 Tenth Standard CrushThursday, December, 16th, 2004 Crushes do require courage! Hmmm...Studying in a boy’s school had its own share of merits and demerits. I never tried to reason out them. But if there was a time, when I certainly missed out on girls then it was at my tenth standard. I was tenth standard, when I first joined a tuition class. The tuition center was really far and I had to travel an hour by bus to reach there. I had never previously spoken to girls other than people whom I knew from childhood. The first day of my tuition class was when I met Rajalakshmi. Her friends always used to call her Rajee and I always pleaded with myself to stop looking at her. I was not a bright guy at class and I was really worried as to how she looked upon me. I chit chattered with all the other guys whenever she was not around. But when she was there, I used to portray myself as a sweet silent guy. She used to speak to all the other guys in the class, except me. I decided to open up to my friend about my crush. He was surprised too. Finally after a lot of thought, I decided to approach her. That day, I went to the class well ahead of time and waited for her. When she came, there were around 5 guys in the room. So I decided against approaching her then. She then left to the room next by, to find her test book. I followed her. My legs were shaking and my hands were cold. As I was walking, I tried to recollect what I had planned to tell her. I put my hand in my pocket and tried to search for the piece of paper over which I had written my dialogue. As I neared her, my heart started to pound faster. I could hear it too. Suddenly she turned and saw me. I almost fumbled with the book in my hand. I cleverly covered my nervousness. I went to the book shelf at the other end of the room. Now I was sweating. Phew...!! After a few minutes, I mustered some more courage and turned around. Booo.. She had left the place. 'What a bulb' I told myself. I left the room and entered the study hall only to find three things. First, our tutor had come and so no more chance of talking to her. Second, my place had gone and so I had to go back and sit. Third, I could only sit in the last row, from which, all my chances of even watching her were lost. BOOO... 'My fate', I thought to myself. Next day, my friend started to tease me. "You don’t have the courage to even face a girl? How are you going to propose to her?" "That’s enough", I said. I knew he made sense, but my ego was at stake. So that day I told myself, "today I am really gonna speak to her". I remained cool for the other half in my school. When it was one hour before the class, as expected, I started to get nervous. I went there a bit earlier than the day before. This time to my surprise, she was there in the class, sitting and reading something. I landed myself in the bench adjacent to her. For the first few minutes, I didn’t dare to turn and see her. Then again, I mustered myself up. I turned and then walked to her straight. This is it, I thought. I was just a few feet away from her. My head was rotating and all the other external crush-phobia symptoms were also there. I thought I was gonna break down for a second. And then I was caught off-guard. She turned to me and held out a book. I saw the book and realized it was my test book. "Damn, how did she get my test book???” I saw on the table the pile of all the other test books and immediately realized that our tutor had asked her to hand it over. "GEEE... " I quietly took the book, went back and sat. "How much did you get?" I turned and saw that she was not only speaking to me but also standing a few feet away from me. I was speechless. "Me?", I gulped and asked. "Ya", she said. It was then that I realized that I never even opened my book to see how much I had scored. I opened and saw. Oops! It was thirty five out of hundred. I decided to maintain some image and told her "Seventy five". Hey eyes widened. "Wow", she said. "I got only sixty. I think you must've got the third sum correct. Can I just see your book?" I was trapped. I swallowed hard. I opened my book, pretended to see it and then told her that I had got it wrong as well. I feared she might still persist to see my book. But she didn’t. I heaved a sigh. "I am not sure how my father will react to this mark. I am scared", she said. "I don’t even tell my father such marks", I thought of telling her. I just remained quiet. "Speak to her", I could even imagine my friend telling this to me. But somehow words would not come out. "Tell me something na. It’s going to be another 40 minutes for the class to begin", she said. "Something? How much do I tell honey?” I thought to myself. I was sweating. I remained mute. "You appear to be a very quite guy? I see that you don’t talk much in the class. Why?" I thought I should smile at her and did so. "Ok" "enough" "Stop it" "Your blushing too much", something inner kept telling me all these things. That was it. She stood up and walked away outside. I kicked myself for not having spoken to her. "You didn’t speak to her? Your nuts", my friend told me the next day after I had told him everything. "I know", I told him. "Hey, don’t feel bad man. It happens the first time. Just think her as anybody else. Just go and speak to her casually today. I am sure she'll respond", he told me. I thought about it and realized the truth behind it. Alas, it then reigned into me that an opportunity lost is like spilt milk. For the next seven days, I was not able to speak to her. I repented my missed chance. Weeks later, as I was sitting quietly inside my tuition hall, she came in. By that time, I had almost lost all hope of speaking to her again and proposing to her. She came over to me and asked, "How much did you get in the last test?” I chuckled. I did not know. I never had the habit of even knowing how much I scored in tests. I opened my mouth to tell a mark of around 'eighty'. "I got 78 and you know what I am the highest", she said. Phew, I just couldn’t imagine myself getting into another tight corner. I told her that I did not attend the last test. "My dad was very happy", she said gleaming. I congratulated her. I understood that bubbliest in her character and I felt that, that was what which had attracted me to her. She kept on speaking for some more time. And I too, to my own surprise, started to speak as well. In between, I used to wonder, "What happened to you man? That’s great. Keep it going". The next day, my friend could not believe what I had told him. I guess he got a little bit jealous and dared me to propose to her. I told him I'll do that the very same day. It was only after sometime, I realized the depth of the challenge. I was really scared. I wrote down whatever I had to say. I memorized it more times than my history book's dates. That day, I went over to her. She turned and smiled. Before I could speak, she again opened up by asking me my marks in the last exam. "Man, doesn’t she know anything else?” I wondered. I spoke about studies and I returned back without saying a word about anything else. The next day my friend was back teasing me. This time, he crossed his limits. I was angry and told him that I will definitely propose to her that day. The day after that, my friend eagerly came over to me and asked me what had happened. I told him the same thing had repeated itself. He started to laugh. However, he did not say anything. I remained silent the whole day. I felt bad that my friend’s words were true. I had done so many things in life up to that day, but nothing could ever give me the courage to propose to a girl, I thought. My friend understood that I was disappointed. He came over to me and told me that he would accompany me to the tuition class that day, but he refrained from accompanying me when I was to go and talk to rajee. I agreed upon. I thought that my friend would give me some tips on approaching her. He did so and it did really work. I went to tuition that day in a more relaxed manner. In fact, I did not even write down my dialogues. I thought I am just gonna go there and speak out my mind. We reached an hour early. She had not come then. 10 Minutes had passed. I started to think. 20 minutes had passed, I started to get nervous. My friend started to cool me down. 30 minutes had passed. I almost felt like breaking down. "I'm never gonna do it", I thought to myself. My friend calmed me down. Fifty minutes had passed by that time and everyone had come to class. My friend decided to leave. I felt lot uncomfortable after he left. The class started. "She's on leave", I told myself disappointed. "I'm gonna find why she's on leave today", I told myself. After the class got over, I went over to my tutor. I asked him about rajee, casually telling him that she had my test book with her. My tutor gave a dead look at me. "Did he know of anything?” I wondered. "Why did you give your book to her?” he asked. "She wanted to see it" "I don’t know what to say", he said. "Why, what's wrong?” I asked him. "Her father called up today to tell that she will not be coming to tuition anymore. I don’t know how you’re going to get back your book. ??? " !@#$%^&* It had been two days after that. I had told my friend all about it. Both of us were sitting on top of the wall by the side of our school. The thought still hadn’t sunk into me. My friend had a hearty laugh when I had told him. But he did not say anything now. I felt lost. When I had all the time in the world, my instincts ruined my chances. And finally when I had decided to nail the coffin, the nail went missing. My friend read my disappointment. "Cool it man. If she had to be your Mrs., she would have never missed you", he said. Nice words indeed to heal a bruised or rather CRUSHED sentiment. So Crush crushes shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com|W|P|112419704891252200|W|P|Crush crushes da-iict|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com4/21/2008 09:02:00 pm|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|How spontaneous! How impromptu! How realistic!8/13/2005 10:19:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Its the categories in which we can divide the students.............. It was written about the mumbai engineering DUDS.....but be pretty much assured that any enginerites fits the BILL. http://o3.indiatimes.com/blah_blah_blah

hi guys

just got over with my “submissions” for this semester. god what a relief!! its like givin ur last exam paper. u think im kiddin, ask any mumbai engg student bout it.

engg student life truly roxxx. of course lotsa ppl tend to think that u find only nerds or geeks in engg. but thats like sayin all the movies made in bollywood are superhits. (that btw is a lousy statement). life as an engg student can be as u want it to be. tough as well as smooth.

some ppl tend to take the high road and study frm day one of a fresh semester like theres no tomorrow. they'll occupy first benches. and they have many “doubts“ while the lectures goin on. they will leave no stone unturned to be real goody good in the eyes of our “estemeed“ (haha) profs. these few ppl r truly in the geek category. ironic as it may sound, but most of these so-called "geeks“ dont boast of a very good result. some even get KTs.

then u have “the politically correct“ crowd, who attend lectures regularly. take down notes. do all their practicals sincerely. they arent exactly geeks but they r one level below them. these ppl never create havocs in classrooms but are part of fun (if there is any joke cracked or leg pulled)and can be said to be the model students of the college. and they have good results also.

then u have the “the LLBs“. chill these arent law school graduates but Lords of Last Benches. sittin on the last benches is their birthright and no one dare occupy their seats. LLBs r the “jaan“ of the otherwise boring classrooms where profs are goin on and on bout god knows what! thay call it teaching. duh!

last benches r platforms where ppl discuss everything under the sun except wots bein taught in the classroom. here everything frm bar girls controversy to britney spears pregnancy reports r discussed. if the profs too strict and theres no scope for havin talks, then we pretend to play it sufi, prof thinks last benchers have calmed down but thats their mistake. cos it takes only one joke to convert our class into a joggers parks' laughter club. sometimes we even have meetings with LLBs of other classrooms to come up with innovative ways of sittin throughout those one hour “torture“ lecs.

everything said and done, when the going gets tough, the tough gets goin. resultwise last benchers rock, sometimes they get better marks than the previous two counterparts. of course some also get kts, some even get year drops! but then thats a part and parcel of engg life. wot say?

so thats bout the categories of engg students in a nutshell. will try to throw light on some more engg students trivia some other time. theres lots ppl. theres first year (FE) dilemmas, then second year(SE) vivas and practical exams, then third year(TE) seminars and presentations and job interviews and finally final year(BE) projects and lookin back!!! theres lots to discuss.

an addition frm a fellow blogger GAURAV RAJE.

Sumdi mein komdi category. These ppl pretend to be full fledged llbs. But then after college is over, they hit the books straight away. These end up getting amazing marks. Some are extraordinarily brilliant ppl who dont even need to study much.

Dumb ppl category. These are neither studious nor funnmy. They are plain dumb. They normally sit in the middle of the class. They are the least noticed ppl and usually get away without even getting noticed. Some ppl mistake them for the front benchers.

Despo bhooka category. These are desperate ppl. They try to woo any girl in sight. They dont care how she looks or how she is. Just the fact that she is a girl is enuf for them. Though there is absolutely no beauty in engineering, these guys try to act like a shadow for the hideously ugly girls.

Dedh shahana public category. These are smartasses who try to disturb the entire class by acting like smartasses. They act like know-it-alls. Though they donot know a thing. They usually raisse stupid doubts when the profs are teaching and give vague answers when the profs ask questions. They feel dat they are the most intelligent ppl. they give excuses for failing.

keep rockin

ciao!

FAQS: 1..........ATKT. it means "allowed to keep terms". see wot happens is that we have 2 semesters per year and around 5-6 subjects per sem. so in the exam if a student fails in a subject or two, then he's allowed to sit for the next semester. he dosent get a year drop. does that clear ur doubt recca? 2..........LLBs. Lords of Last Benches 3..........FE first year 4..........SE second year 5..........TE Third year 6..........BE Final Year(B-Tech) I wanted to give persona example in each of the categories ..but i don't know why i stopped doing it..maybe it's only temporarily. Next time i wish to bring the categories of the professors...... i assure you that this time it will be full of the examples|W|P|112395506304241412|W|P|Engineering Colleges Students........CATEGORY|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/13/2005 10:05:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P|

school farewell day revisited!

the blog below just made me go back to my sweet/bitter childhood memory.

theblog can be found out at:http://o3.indiatimes.com/blah_blah_blah/ Indeed, the present is so tense and the past seems oh so perfect. Sometimes you just dont want to move on, sometimes you just dont want to let go of time. How we wish we could turn back time. If only. But Life they say is a one way journey. So be it. Living it and Loving it. Do we have a choice?

When I was a small child I always used to wonder, “When the hell am I going to grow up? Being a grown up is so cool. No more tension of completing the homework, no more learning those awful math tables, no more worrying about the verbs and nouns and tenses, no more being afraid of mam and the house master.”

Then came the final year of school. Now the thinking had changed a bit. “Yess! Just one more year. One more year of this jail called school. One more year of homeworks, nagging teachers, stupid project work. Then college. Freedom. Girls. New clothes everyday. Yippee!!”

Finally the school days were coming to an end. Then came the School Farewell Dinner Party. Officially the Last Day of school. The day me and all my friends were waiting for.

Why then were my eyes moist?

Why then was I feeling as if this year had passed through pretty fast?

Why then was I feeling so sad?

Why o Why??

Was it just me feeling that way?

I took a look around, and hey presto, all my classmates had misty eyes.

Wasnt this the moment we all were looking forward too?

Why then was I not ready for this now?

Why then did it seem like I was loosing a very near and dear one?

Why o Why???

Who was going to applaud my English Essays now?

Who was going to feel proud of my History marks now?

Who was going to laugh at my Geography locations now?

Who was going to correct my kanas and matras in Hindi now?

Who was going to shout the living daylights out of me for not completing my homework now?

Who was going to ask me to write “i wont talk and create nuisance in class when the teacher is teaching” a thousand times now?

Who was going to tell me to run three full rounds of the school ground now?

Who was going to call me “Bony” now?

Who was going to play “pen-fight, book-cricket, seed-chess” withe me now?

Who was I going to share the fruitjam biscuits in the breaks now?

Who was going to CARE for me now?

With these questions, a few tears, a choked throat and lots of photos locked in my camera, i bid adieu to my alma mater, my school, my life! All through school life we want to get out of school but on the last day at school, our feet are glued to the place. If this isnt irony, then what is? That chapter in my life is over. Life goes on, each day a new page. But whenever I pass my school those days come flooding back and just looking at my school I am filled with a feeling of pride that is second to none.

School Days are the land of lost content, I see them shining plain, the happy highway where i once went and cannot come again!

Ciao

i to had this thing in my mind at that time. till date i haven't met those few of my friends.. at that time we didn't had the NET facilities.|W|P|112395353522882070|W|P|Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect! ~Owens Lee Pomeroy|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/13/2005 09:28:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Today i came through a beautiful blog titled 80-20 rule. yeah it Instantly striked my sesnses that it's how true....... But we have rarely stopped enough to reflect it ourself. things which are as simple often escape ours attention.But it's the most fundamental of the rule...and we should reflect upon it to do the optimization. Optimization is everywhere, In computer science we study optimization, data-mining and all sort of algorithm to arrive at some simple and pure statistics which can atleast satisfy the 80% of the conditions. the beautiful blog camn be found out at: http://o3.indiatimes.com/thoughtsforlife/archive/2005/01/28/60902.aspx The same is produced here..............................................................................................

The 80-20 Rule.

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was an Italian economist who, in 1906,observed that twenty percent of the Italian people owned eighty percent of their country's accumulated wealth. Over time and through application in a variety of environments, this analytic has come to be called Pareto's Principle, the 80-20 Rule, and the "Vital Few and Trivial Many Rule."

Pareto's rule states that a small number of causes is responsible for a large percentage of the effect, in a ratio of about 20:80. Expressed in a management context, 20% of a person's effort generates 80% of the person's results. The corollary to this is that 20% of one's results absorb 80% of one's resources or efforts. For the effective use of resources, the manager's challenge is to distinguish the right 20% from the trivial many.

Examples of the 80-20 Rule:

80% of a problem can be solved by identifying the correct 20% of the issues 80% of advertising results come from 20% of your campaign. 80% of an equipment budget comes from 20% of the items 80% of an instructor's time is taken up by 20% of the students 80% of benefit comes from the first 20% of effort 80% of customer complains are about the same 20% of your projects, products, services. 80% of our personal telephone calls are to 20% of the people in our address book 80% of the decisions made in meetings come from 20% of the meeting time 80% of the outfits we wear come from 20% of the clothes in our closets and drawers 80% of the traffic in town travels over 20% of the roads 80% of what we produce is generated during 20% of our working hours 80% of your annual sales come from 20% of your sales force 80% of your future business comes from 20% of your customers 80% of your growth comes from 20% of your products 80% of your innovation comes from 20% of your employees or customers 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers 80% of your staff headaches come from 20% of our employees 80% of your success comes from 20% of your efforts 80% of your website traffic comes from 20% of your pages

Hmm.....well I think theres' a good new for us all... 80% of success is achieved from 20% of our efforts......... I guess we all need to sit and think wots that 20% :)

On an afterthought one can think that we should look for that 20% of the things. but as it can be rightly said that for identifying that 20% of the product,effort....whatever.... we will have to spend 80% of the same thing. so total thing becomes constant at 100% ......... this fact can be stated from another famous saying my one of the greastes physicists of the time that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed but can be changed from one form to another.that is total energy is constant.In the same way total work is constant for the total results, it's just that one acheives first 80% of the output earlier than the other ones Applying the same rule as above we can say that the efforts for a particular thing can never be 20,30....90%. It has to be 100% for that particular thing.It is just that one has to 100%.... in others word it is that for that 80%of the work to be shown u have to give 100% of the effort. the 80% of the work can't be shown independently. for that thing to be called complete you have to complete that 20% of the work with 80% of the effort.It's just complimentary in nature.You cannot isolate the TWO. Shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com/Photo |W|P|112395253562165491|W|P|The 80-20 Rule.|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/12/2005 12:01:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| I liked the way Anant brought home the idea of ...... of how he couldn't leave his bed which, initially he thought was going to challenge his Autjority of the household The following posts can be viewed at http://o3.indiatimes.com/anant_rulz The Bed It was just a bed. A four-post wooden bed. Two days before my marriage, as I came back from office, I saw these two carpenters busy in assembling this bed. It was a teak wood bed, ornate, with small mirrors and quite big in size. It had displaced everything in my room, including my single bed and it seemed that the bed was waiting to swallow the whole room. The carpenters, while assembling it explained to me that they had taken 3 months to make this bed, with all that carving and making the bed suitable for ‘Bitiya Rani’ and her things in the those built-in boxes underneath. Bitiya Rani! And what about me, I couldn’t dare ask? I wanted to peep inside the boxes to see if anything was hidden there but they were empty. As I came out of the room, my mother gave me that meaningful and amused kind of smile. I knew that my dear father-in-law had not sent a bed but a Trojan horse into my room, our house, my life, and my existence. I knew it. Through this piece of dead wood, he plans to send his dear daughter into my bedroom, our house and slowly take kabja over the whole place. Our lives. I know these girls; they all do this kind of tricks. Just like the camel and the tent- first the head, then the neck and then the whole body. Oongli pakad ke pahuncha pakad leti hain yeh ladkiyan. No way! I won’t let her usurp my authority and my exclusive domain. I wondered if this decision to get married was correct or not; looking from the way things were shaping, I didn’t think so. The bed had occupied the prime real estate in the house and certainly in my bedroom. I didn’t sleep in it that night. As I slept in the other room, I dreamt of the bed changing into an alien spreading its four tentacles slowly but surely all over my house. The mattress was delivered the next day and with mom’s red bedcover over it, it surely looked a lot less menacing, but still like a Chinese dragon; a red fire-spewing dragon with expansionist designs. A day later, the bed changed itself into a shaadi-ka-storehouse with all those guest occupying every inch of our house, including my room. Cellophane-wrapped wedding presents with some carrying the Christmas design or a Happy Birthday written on them, hold-alls waiting to burst, attaché cases with cloth cover on them, milk bottles with infants attached to them, sarees in various stages of packing/unpacking, shagun-ka-samaan with Satiya inscribed in red geroo, laddoo boxes with miniature Ganesh statuette on them, empty jewellary boxes with their silken undergarments, Raymond suit pieces with names written with a sketch pen, fruits waiting to rot, gifts exclusively meant for passing them on- I was jealous that the bed had so brazenly assumed such an important and an all-encompassing status overnight. In our house. And made a place so quickly for itself in our lives like a jinn out from his bottle in the form of a new boy-servant. ‘Hukum, mere aaka’, it seemed to say. And without my explicit permission. How dare it! I hated the bed. After two night, the bed changed into a bookshelf. On top of it, I found a silk, gold and diamond studded book, surrounded by motiya, red roses and hand-plucked petals. I was pushed in my room by my sisters and bhabhi. Not even mandatory and filmy ‘Devarji, jaldi nahi karna’. Just go! The room smelled of mithai, fruits and flowers. I looked at the book. What is this book all about? These two are in conspiracy- the bookshelf of a bed and the book. I was too tired, mentally empty and had no desire or patience to read this book. Any book. I just wanted to sleep. Still, I was mesmerized by its smell, the newness of the book, which reminded of those we used to buy in summer for our next class and keep near our bedside till the schools opened; or, like the smell of that new car, straight from the showroom. I hesitatingly removed the silk cover, open the book hurriedly with a boyish curiosity, unstuck some chipke-huey pages. I just wanted to read the book and reach to the end as quickly as possible, to know what is written on that last page and to unload my excitement. It was a small book with two pages only- the first and the last. The first page was entitled welcome and the on last page was written, come again. I kept the book in my arms and slept. The bed watched us silently. Some days passed, or was it months, I don’t know. The bed became an explorator’s dream, an archaeologist’s temptation. It beckoned me to find out the mysteries of those hillocks, rivulets, ravines and the springs that smell of life. The bed had changed into a valley of flowers, a thin mountain spring that emanates and confronts us suddenly on the hair-pin bend of the road and when you stop to taste its life-sustaining water, it continues to flow with a gurgle, totally unmindful of your presence, into the deep crevices in those perennial bushes below. Sometimes, the mirrors in the bed would reflect those dancing figurines from Khajuraho, trying to please kaamdev. The bed became a chameleon- changing its appearance with the change of seasons, woolen blankets, mosquito nets and chenille coverings. I could see a small sapling trying to break the wooden ground of the bed. Was it love? Before I could even explore fully to my boyish delight, our two incomplete halves became one to create another one. Suddenly, she was occupying the space between two of us and yet, by some mysterious alchemy, some sorcerer’s magic, some out-of-syllabus law of chemistry that I had skipped in my school, she was joining us like the co-valent bond; she was the O between the our two H. H-O-H. The bed had changed itself into a nursery where, most of the time, she would find that space right between our two hearts, now ‘idling’ in unison like some All India permit holder truck driver’s automobiles by the roadside dhaba. Every night, and on days too, the bed would remind us of that new life and we would be attracted to it like an helpless iron file to the magnet. Like some hungry insects to the life-light. Involuntarily. Hypnotically. Naturally. Almost like zombies in a trance. And then, we left the bed, but we somehow knew we would return to it. The bed remained in our hearts and when we came back to it, the bed had somehow expanded, anticipating the growing need to accommodate all four of us. The bed had now become a playground, a dining table, a kiddies wrestling arena, a toy box and our Fort Knox, where all our worldly wealth was right there itself in the form of those two. More than all the money and power on the earth. Making the decision to have children was to decide forever to have our hearts placed outside our bodies. And we didn’t even take that important decision consciously. It just happened and like beggars on Diwali night, we watched from a distance in awe, stared at God’s fireworks- with admiration, with jealousy and yet, with eternal gratefulness to Him. And suddenly, we were conjoined to them; they wake, we wake, they eat, we eat, they sleep, we sleep. The bed had become our prison and we, its willing and chained life-timers. At times, when kids were not well, the bed would become a bed-of-nails fit for an Indian yogi only and every moment would stretch itself into eternity. Our hearts in our mouths, prayers on our lips and tears in our eyes, we waited for that difficult moment to pass, the upheavals to subside. Or, when mom was in those last months. A drop of pin would wake us up and I would rush to find out if she needed anything, while the nurse slept. And, the bed will become Bhagwadgita and ask me to stop crying and be at peace with the laws of nature- that Atman was trying to changes its outer covering only. What comes must go and this too shall pass, it spoke like a sage. And, I would keep my weary head on the bed to wake up the next minute, fearing the worst. Is she breathing? Is she still there? What to do? The sand clock was emptying fast The bed watched us writhe in anguish, pain and helplessness like a mute spectator, offering no solutions, just solace. Maybe, the bed knew all the answers to all of my silly questions. But, I wasn’t even asking any. The bed had become the barometer of my emotions; I have fought many a battles and realized to my surprise that all those I won, I lost and those I lost- turned out to astonishing victories. As I shed my clothes, my vanity, my ego, my false pride, my worldly everything, and with my weary soul and body- defeated, punished, bruised and hurt, the bed became Tiger balm, that druid’s magic potion which not only cures but also provides sustenance to fight- for another day. I learnt never to bring anger or bitterness to this bed and to bury in it my small secrets and victories, written in passion. The bed has always been my box seat on which I have seen many a movies and laughed and shed tears while she sleeps peacefully, oblivious of naughty Sid’s inner turmoil, Gump’s innocent queries or even ET’s magical finger reaching to cure the human child’s hurt; It becomes a snack bar to satiate my sudden desire for munchies and coffee; a round-table for family meetings where we have discussed many an important issues of life; a card table where we cheated and played ‘kot-pees’ and ‘3-2-5’. I have traveled far and wide. Slept on expensive beds in 5-star hotels, air-conditioned coaches with complimentary sheets and blankets, standing or sitting in a general compartment’s bare wooden seats and much-scarce railway platform benches. But everywhere, I have yearned for peaceful sleep like that in my own bed. My slave bed, my pillow and my part of territory- my feudal instincts find peace in this very limited space of my bedroom. Here I can be me. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. These days, I sometimes find her looking into its innards of the bed for her past, knitted into small clothes and sweaters. There is a glint of future in her eyes, which she somehow wants to fit into this past. On seeing me, she packs her tears and her hopes with the naphthalene balls into those kiddy clothes. As I leave the sanctuary of this bed to explore and measure distances, I wonder if this is my ‘Do Gaz Zameen’ that Emperor Zafar so eloquently yearned for? Is it my casket where my bandaged mummy rests? Is it just a bed? Is it just a four-post wooden bed? http://shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com Presented to you by Shwetank shekhar http://shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com|W|P|112383042635504038|W|P|The Bed|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com1/21/2006 11:38:00 am|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|Hi Shwetank Shekhar, I read your post which I find interesting and very informative! I was also looking for related info which I found
Some at adjustable bed
It's not exactly what I was looking for but it was nonetheless interesting to read.8/11/2005 06:18:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P|
At some point of time we find that there is some time when we feel that everything goes wrong for us. that we feel that ........... why everytime it has to be me.......... "WHY ME??"
Below also some one is in trouble finding out why there in search for one's lady love he has to beat the dust every time why him................. or maybe why most of US
(the original can be found out at:http://yyyy123.rediffblogs.com/)
I asked myself Why ME???
There she was in my school!!
the most beautiful girl !!
and gosh she became my friend :-)
I asked myself Why ME???
the days were filled with fun and joy..
there was always a smile in my face :-)
and our freindship grew over the years..
i loved her every move..every word...
we spent times together!!!
we kept on talking for long hours!!
Suddenly from nowhere a new boy joined the classand she became frns with him...
soon she started ignoring me...
and our freindship came to end..
after so many years with her..
i couldnt feel any better...
life and smile were out of my face..
and one day she said she loved the other guy..
and my life was shaken !!!
I asked myself Why ME???
time passed on and things changed..
we went out of school and
i moved on to diff place !!!
I was in college now...
and there she was a beautiful girl!(Another beautiful girl)
we became frns the very first day!! :-)
I asked myself Why ME???
and smiles came back to my face!!we went together..
bunked classes together :-)
wow it has happend to me again...
there is some one finally who cares for meshe said she liked me!!!
and time went on..and we were in 3rd year..
and then another guy came along...
she befrinded him..and then time moved on...
and one day she said she loved the other guy!!!She left me and then ignored me..
she was busy with the other guy..and soon our friendship came to end
I asked myself Why ME???
time changed..
i moved on...
though with pain in heart..
to seek love and friendship and comapinonship..
to seek the sole mate of my life..
the one, god has made for me!!!
i kept on trying to console me..
that god has done this on purpose..
and i have a role to play...
and will meet my life partner some where..
i moved on ... changed places...
there i was in my First Job
and there she was a beutiful girl...(Another beautiful girl)
we became friends very instant!!!
I asked myself Why ME???
and we shared thoughts..
we went to every place together!!!
we moved with hand to hand every where..
we watched movies together..
ate food together!!
she said she liked me!!!
she said she wanted to be with me...
she said she loved melife has come back to me..
i have found my sole mate!!!
and one day she reveled...
she loved some one (NOT ME!!!)
she had loved some one lese frm her childhood..
and she wanted to marry him (NOT ME!!)
she left me...
saying i am sorry!!!
and she asked me to forget her : -( (which i cant ever)
and there i was heart broken...
I asked myself Why ME???
I had no choice but to move on!!!
With lot of pain in my heart!!
My mind has stopped thinking!!!
i was living myself again and againthen the thought came to me
GOD had some other plans for me!!!!
I moved on ..
changed places....
(had to change places)there i am in one of the most beautiful city!!!..
city of gardens...
city of light...
and i am still thinking of what happened in past.!!!
I asked myself Why ME???
I needed change !!! I needed break!!
I could nt tolerate it any more...
i couldnt enjoy the beauty of nature!!!
my life has changed ..changed again!! ..
changed again!!
I asked myself Why ME???
SO I moved on again to another place.....
another country!!!..
to meet another civilization!!!
BUT I KEPT ON ASKING
Why ME???
Why ME???
Why ME???
|W|P|112376820631744477|W|P|Why ME.....................???|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/11/2005 08:32:00 pm|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|इस टिप्पणी को एक ब्लॉग व्यवस्थापक द्वारा हटा दिया गया है.8/11/2005 05:30:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| this one is from ANANT IT goes as: MY FILMY BACHPAN Cinema is a very powerful medium. It not only provides us an escape from the humdrum of life, but also conditions us to understand the reality of the society we live in; it reflects and imitates society and life but at times, life imitates cinema itself. I have been watching cinema since my very childhood. And, like every one of you, the summer holidays were our favorite part of the year for doing all those innocent ‘badmaashi and khuraphaat’. In fact, my love for movies started in one of the summer holidays when I was 4-5 years. The earliest I remember is watching a movie called 'Jagriti'- it came to our colony (yes, that was what it was called- a cluster of govt. flats). I think it was a part of Information & Broadcasting Ministry’s way of making us Indian patriotic and they used to send this van for this. Every evening, the van will go from one colony to another and once they reached there, there was a loud roar from all of us kids. Some kids would even follow the van to see where it would finally stop. The news would spread around like wildfire and within no time, kids like me would be ready to watch the movie and fight for that first row seat- nearest to the screen. By 7 PM, they will put out a folding white 16 mm paper-screen and a noisy projector to boot and we children will sit on the ground and watch the movie and would be transcended to another world. The world of cinema. We laughed at cruel Asit Sen’s moving paunch while he slept and Mohan Choti’s antics and cried when hero’s mother came on the screen; every time, at the same spot. Without fail. And Masterji Abhi Bhattacharya's ‘Aao bachchon tumhe dikhayen jhanki Hindustaan ki’, 'De di humey azaadi bina khadag bina dhaal’, 'Chalo chalen maa, sapno ke gaaon mein’ and so many other songs I still remember with their tunes etched on my little heart. BTW, were those kind of Masterji in films only? I don't think so. I saw ‘Jagriti’ at least 12 times because it seems I & B Ministry had only one film and like Richard Attenborogh’s ‘Gandhi’, they would show this movie at any and every place and occasion. Year after year. Subsequently, in summer holidays itself, some private entrepreneur brought a larger cloth-screen and more than 7-8 movies were shown in a week. The local central park was covered with tents and every evening a new fare was for us. The ticket was 4 and 8 Annas for a ground seat- which was quite a lot, and we would try to get in free. Somehow; by going along with some auntyji, by sneaking in unseen, by giving some khota-sikka or some such trick. The gatekeeper would ask auntyji if the child was her’s and before she would reply, we would run and mill with the crowd inside. At times, we would lift the tent and get in free. Or, we would even sit outside and listen to the sound track till we would find an opportunity to get inside- free, of course. Even after the intermission. The year was 1960 and I was 4 years old- and don’t you start calculating my age! I think after that, I became a full-fledged cine-buff and I am still crazy about cinema. I have seen cinema at oddest places and Delhites, would you believe, where there is Bhikaji Cama Place now, there was a tent-wala cinema hall (hall?) called, Raj Talkies. (Talkies- can you believe this name?). Once again, it was a temporary tented cinema hall. The legs of the wooden chairs were tied to each other by sutlee-rope (to avoid people taking the chair away to a place near the screen) and in the noon show, one could see a million stars in the sky- yes, the tent had million holes and sunlight would come thru it. The ticket was 10 Annas to 1-1/4 Rupees. After the school, we would steal some money and use our pass valid for DTU- yes, it was called DTU and not DTC then- bus to see the movie The other cinema halls that we used to love- in fact 3 of them were - Race Course, Palam and Defence. Race Course being Air Force area and the cinema Hall was primarily for the entertainment of defence personnel; we civilians were allowed only to make the whole thing viable. So come noon show- first day, first show, we would be standing outside the gate with a burly Air Force Gateman stopping us, as the area is protected one. At 10 minutes to 3 PM, the gate would be opened and we the cine-buffs would race with our shoes or chappals in our hands for at least 500 meters till we reach the ticket window. And there was a lot of dhakkam-dhukka there. I saw many a movies sitting in the front row. The cinema hall is still working, though my wife prefers the PVRs for their superior air-conditioning, sound and projection. Palam was another one. It is still there, I suppose. There also, we had to wait for the gates to open and then as we used to stand in the line to get tickets, one man will come and put a stamp on our palms; you show the stamp and then only ONE ticket will be sold to you. As many people wanted more than one ticket for their friends also, outsiders would come and jostle in the line. But, look at the ingenuity of Indian brain- as soon as the stamp was put, one guy would put some spit on it and transfer the stamp on another guy from outside the queue. Ab toh ticket dena hi padega! Many a days, we would walk into racecourse where races were held quite regularly. We could see from a distance, all those film stars and beautiful and decked up women. When cricket season was on- we used to get the glimpse of cricketers like Pataudi and Nariman Contractor- of course, in those days, for entertainment, Pataudi used to play cricket instead of killing blackbucks. We would go and take their autographs. And throw the papers away later for fear of being caught by gharwalas. And yes, polo was also our favorite. We used to see Maharaja of Jaipur and Maharani Gayatri Devi and many a famous personalities we couldn’t even recognize, chukkar after chukkar. Those magnificent horses and those elegant horse-riders. It was really awesome, as the X-Gen says it now. In the night, we would put our charpoys outside in the ‘ground’ and enjoy the long meetings with our friends. In the worst days of summer, we would sprinkle some water on the bed/durries and by the time we used to come back to sleep- the bed was cool as a cucumber. No fridge, no a/c- only ice block from the nearby paan-wala for making sharbat and lassi. My father used to smoke ‘Panama’ cigarettes and many a times, while bringing the pack of ciggies, I would put one in my mouth and try to bring out those imaginary ‘chchallas’ (Rings) that only Pran could do with effortless ease. And how we loved to hate him! Next day morning, we would get up by 4.30 AM and go for walks and games to Lodi Garden. Lodi Garden was a heaven for us kids- unlike what it is now for lovers- and we have played a lot of chchupan-chchupaai, kho, and langdi-taang there. The ubiquitous signs like sonu-loves-monu were there even then and all those hearts with a piercing arrow etched on the top of the tombs were visible even from a distance to the lovers. I think we Indians have learnt to declare our love by defacing our historic legacy from our childhood itself and ‘Kilroy was here’ is a just copycat. Two months of summer holidays would finish in a blink and predictably, in the last few days, we would try to find someone from whom we would 'copy’ our homework. And predictably, the teacher would ask on the first day itself, contrary to our wishes, to deposit the homework copies, and predictably, I would end up saying ki ‘Sirji, meri kaapi meri chchoti bahan ne phaad di’ And predictably, I was made to stand on the bench for the whole period. And equally predictably, in the next one too. That was also the start of my introduction to Hollywood; the first three movies I saw were ‘Ben-Hur’, ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Guns of Navrrone’. I didn’t understand a single word of what they were saying but the chariot race between Charlton Heston and ganja Yul Brynner and the parting of (Red) sea are still fresh in my memory. This continued till one day, my father, who didn't even know in which class I was studying, predicted to my mother the profession I will most probably take up in my life- no, you can’t even guess it- selling chchole by the roadside! (not Sholay, stupid!). ‘Padta-likhta toh hai nahi. Bada hokar saala chchole hi bechega sadak par’ were his exact words of Bhavishyavaani. To prove him right, that day itself, I went with my friend and saw ‘Phir Wohi Dil Laaya Hoon’. Again. Joy Mukherjee and Ash Parekh and O P Nayyar’s music ‘Banda Parvar Thaam Lo Jigar’ ‘Aanchal Mein Saja Lena Kaliyaan’ transported me to another world, that I can never forget. That day, when I reached home, my father did what all Indian parents believe to be the God-ordained duty and divine rights bestowed upon them- you guessed it right this time- he beat me Black & Blue. That definitely was the end of Black & White movie era. At least for me. You see, I had a filmy bachpan. Filmy, very filmy. INDEED|W|P|112376371113198256|W|P|Authors Filmy bachpan|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/10/2005 05:06:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| I am a gr8 NET SURFER.... May be the reason being that i am having a free Net on my college room. but then don't think that i surf anything to everything. my favorite being the Indian news sites and all other reading suff. Being voracious reader i used to read all the news sites and other related material in COUPLE OF HOURS. So what to do in spare time...(i dont like mail and emails on which some of my friends spend good time.). During this dilemma some one said that why not search the brides for our friends........... after many bakars we started searching the sites for ours room -mates(Don't beleive that we were looking for good ones for ours pals..) During these time it came to me an idea why not seriously go through all these profiles and "Time Katto". Indeed it was a good time pass...... there were many profiles that aroused my curiosity and will BLOG on them some time Later. Right now many of my pals have got the habit of "ORKUTTING"(orkut.com). i also find it good....Anything that GOOGLE does has to be interesting(On a second thought what would the MARRIAGE SEARCH would look like through Google search. Will thery be able to stop the Spams.....i think that they would atleast do a better job than the rest of them.(see what they have done to mail system...... Giving a whopping 1GB at a time when others were giving 2-4 MBs. Okay i have gone too far now below is the post because of which all these bables started.. Sham marriage sites: you can see the blogger at : http://o3.indiatimes.com/MarriageBeuro/ My experience with New Age Arrange Marriage ”Hrishi you are 27 now, you should get married now...” My Mom.... Said worriedly ... For her son like me who is done with Engineering and MS in US with lots of M in dollars.. still unmarried was surprise... though I was little hesitant... I had have had few dates to whom I was looking after in my early 20's .. now all of these gals got married , and started thire families.. So I had no option but to enter into arrange marriage 'market'. Here your value is more into your cast and salary... I was hesitant to go with traditional marriage beuro's.... So i opt out for Shaadi.com and Jeevansathi.com... Fortunately my mom enrolled my name into one of the leading local marriage beuro's Anuroop Wiwaha Sanstha in Pune ( www.anuroopwiwaha.com) I Started looking after gals online thru shaadi/jeevansathi.... My experience was pathetic... I recieved close to 200 praposals thru these means.. 60 % of them were fake.... They charged hefty 2750 rs.... We had no time to look at those 200 praposals... So I decided to search on my own.... I found few gals with my matching criteria .... later I realized all these paposals were fake..... My advice dnt go for shaadi.com.... its all fake.. they will just screw u up with ur money.. Fortunately Anuroop Wiwaha lend me heling hand, they organized pre-marrital councelling sessions.. Also Mr. Mahendra Kanitkar, Director Anuroop gave some good practical tips... In few weeks I recieved 11 praposals... all are decent educated cultured girls... 2 months I reached my destination, again Anuroop helped us with thire quick service... Now I am happily married with my beautiful, cultured and understanding wife Anuradha... Just for advice.... dnt jump into marriage market.... make sure u recieve “true praposals“ and not fake one ( these matrimony portals will give u 90 % fake data) Happy match,mate finding....... PS: i see many sites advertising that they have made so many perfect marriages. anybody knows them personally.Also i couldn't understand whay the Shaddi.com people were asking for money.............. My SITE|W|P|112367711383462084|W|P|I Always thought that marriage sites are a BIG SHAM|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/10/2005 04:52:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Below is the rumblings of an Adult who sees his childhood through the eyes of her 2 year Daughter I personally dont have experience (i have no child and am unmarried and an Indian).but i think that every one one day or the other goes through the emotions. i think that i have seen may people LIKE THAT. YOU CAN VIEW THE BLOGGER AT http://o3.indiatimes.com/I_Me_Myself Last night, I was watching my two-year old daughter trying a karaoke - to sing along (she is too young to talk) with the TV. That was an interesting sight. She was trying her best to beat that female vocal (I'm sure she will do that one day). Then the promo changed to some other movie and she was not interested. So she turned back, and saw me smiling. She gave back a big smile and trotted away to her mother in the kitchen. Time flies... I remember my childhood days when I was very much impressed by - who else - Amitabh. And that song 'Ek Raasta Hai Zindagi...' from Kaala Patthar (shot on Shashi Kapoor, not Amitabh) was my favorite. I used to be the centre of attraction while singing that song. Soon thereafter, came the 'Laila O Laila' from Qurbani, and that won me the third prize in singing competition in my school. I still remember the picture book I got as my prize, though I tore off the book in the next few days. That way way back in 1980-81 and I was probably in my first standard. Then I went to second standard and dad got transferred to Visakhapatnam. New school, and I was the boss in my class (also a bully, I must admit). Anybody who dared to disobey me was done for. Since my school had classes only upto third standard, I was one of the seniors (imagine!) and a darling of those teachers (yeah, those beauties were young and unmarried, but unfortunately too old for me - one of them was married and her kid was my junior). I was good at studies, or let's say, others were not very good. As a result, I stood first in everything that I participated - be it studies or games. Then there was a skit - Snowhite and the Seven Little Dwarfs - and I was the hunter who was assigned the job to kill Snowhite. Even if it were not a skit and even if they paid me a million dollars, I would never kill that beauty (I hope my wife does not read this). I would rather kill the woman (my teacher, that fatso) who gave me that role. Then I went to IV standard and changed my school. Now I was among my equals, but still a smart guy. I was one of the best, if not the best of the best. I had many admirers around me, and so some rival groups were formed. We used to have fistfights and anybody found alone separated from his gang used to face the warth of the rival gang. We lived the life as in the movies - perfect (only the ladies were missing and we longed for them). Then time passed and one day I found myself updating my knowledge of the Bollywood. I was perfect in this field, or at least I thought so. I was still in the school and destined to become a hero some day. But nothing much happened. Then I went through the school and finally through college. I knew everything (so I believed) about the movies, the glamour world, the new beauty in the college that would some day fall for me (she was our lecturer)... No, nothing is funny. I really believed in myself. If you laugh at me today, then you have probably forgotten your yesterday. Thereafter, it was the Chartered Accountancy course that took the better part of my youth. And one day, I was a CA. Then came the first job and the first salary. I was the king - on the top of the world. The richest man ever on the earth. I could buy that stereo, the walkman, those 'costly' cassettes which my pocket money never allowed, and what not. But when I looked back, I saw many unfinished agenda. How come I was a CA when I should have been a movie superstar? I had everything that takes to become that superstar (except for a Godfather who could make me the superstar; why, I once even thought of running away to Bombay - I had a relative who could do at least something for me...)! Why didn't that lass fall for me? How could she get married to another person that she didn't know (read “I didn't know”)? She should have talked to me, at least once. She never talked to me when we were in the college (never before and never thereafter). She could have asked for my phone number during the farewell. She could have taken some pains to get it from others... I don't even know her name till today. OK, let bygones be bygones. I'm happily married, have a family of my own. And no longer aspire to be a superstar (well, give me a chance and I can still become one). Why am I thinking of all this? Simple, because I think I was stupid to have such a thinking. I should have acted like a grown-up and should have rubbished all those ideas when they came in my mind. Like any other parent, I would never let my children make a fool of themselves. I'll take care that they behave like grown-ups, even if they are just two year olds. They should start early... NO! I won't do that! Back then, I really believed in all that I thought, though all that might seem stupid today. That was a part of my growing up. Those dreams were worth dreaming at that time, and I shall never be that innocent ever again in my life. Those are my sweet memories, stupid sweet memories. My children will go through all that on their own. They will go through the joy, the ecstasy, the heartbreak on their own and go through every emotion that life can give them. I'll always be available if they need me, but I won't ever interfere with their thoughts, their feelings. I might not make a good father, but at least I'll not be a bad father - a bully - for my children. Go ahead, my child. Sing along, for probably I'm too old to sing that song - Doom Hila Le Doom Hila Le Doom... Or is that Dhoom Macha Le... seems that he he not that young afterall Later on i will add more BAKARS On child life....... My Site|W|P|112367530952798049|W|P|Adult most of the times see their childhood in their Children|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/10/2005 04:12:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Well i may tell you that i am neither female nor married....... then surely the next logical question would be...... "toh phir title ka MATLAB" IT happens so that i came through a blog of a newly married lady. it's her musings. NOW WHY HAVE I ADDED THAT HERE........... for the simple reason that the lady gave her side of story and reading here can get the reason for wild (NOT)Shopping spree...... it can be found at the following link. http://o3.indiatimes.com/anu3001/ The Blogs Goes at Under Last week my husband and I went to M.G. Road. How we landed there is a different story altogether that I will narrate some other time. There were a lot of sales happening, this being August, and my sole purpose was to window shop, become familiar with the market, and kill some time, in that order. Accordingly, we entered a KSIC showroom. There were yards and yards of lovely silk sarees and, as any Indian lady would vouchsafe, it's a natural impulse to check out each saree in its six-yard splendour, feel its texture, and glance at the price tag. While I was still rapt in this magical silken world, hubby broke into my reverie with a "Do you want to buy this one?" I gave him a bewildered "Of course not!" look. Men!!! Just because a man admires a beautiful woman, it doesn't mean he's going to marry her. Similarly when a woman admires a dress in a store, it doesn't necessarily follow she's going to buy it. Most shopkeepers who are male cannot understand why a woman may sometimes admire a thousand dresses and yet not buy one and at other times may buy a dozen outfits off the rack without giving them a second glance. The truth is, apart from impulsive or compulsive shoppers, most women are smart enough to know what to buy and where. Many of them will rarely buy anything from a new shop the first time they visit it -- unless they are on a holiday. Women like to scout shops and compare their stuff for future buys. Men, on the other hand, are likely to pick the first thing they see at the first shop. Coming back to my story, my husband, soon as he realised I had no plans to actually buy anything, wanted to get out of the shop as quickly as possible. He finds it "embarrassing" to look around a shop without buying anything whereas I find it perfectly natural to reco the market before buying what I want. That day was a revelation to both of us -- we learned a few things about each other that were hitherto hidden. (Those who plan to get married should go on a shopping binge with their intended life partners before making the final commitment. :) They may yet discover a few secrets. ) My husband, like most men, needs to justify every action, even something as trivial as shopping. So if he goes to a store, he has to buy something to show there's a reason why he went to the store in the first place and why the trip isn't a waste. Women thankfully don't need to justify anything. We rounded off our sojourn with a stop at Kidskemp. One persistent saleswoman there kept trailing us all over the place, showing off their various collections. I would have much preferred to look around on our own but, out of sheer courtesy, we let her guide us. It was then I realised how easy it is to browbeat a guy into buying something totally useless. No wonder women are able to sell everything from cars to shaving cream! So this time it was I who hastily dragged my husband out of the store. P.S. Have you ever wondered why in a store having a sale the one thing you want is either not on sale or is selling at the lowest possible discount? so, what's the lesson.... don't ever go shopping with urs lady love if u don't feel embarrased in not buying....... (on a private not i will agree that yes some times we buy something utterly useless) My Site|W|P|112367332536871048|W|P|Shopping with Hubby|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com-->

Google Spawns Googlettes

As is often the case with Google, the first hint of a major new development was a quiet announcement on its site -- in this case, the jobs section. The ad for Director of Product Management, Googlette, leads immediately to the question -- what the hell is a Googlette?

According to the ad, a Googlette is "a start-up within a start-up" and that there will be "a wide array of them". The Director of Product Management will "define Google's innovation engine and grow the leaders of our next generation of businesses."

In an absence of any press release or comment (as yet) from Google, here's what I surmise:

  • This venture – rather, these ventures – have grown directly out of "Google labs", which has spawned many new, exciting ideas. Google wants to manage some of these innovations as separate projects, recognising they may require as much nurturing as Google itself did when starting out four or five years ago.
  • This is Google sticking to New Economy-style thinking, which so many companies rushed to emulate in the late 1990s, then quickly abandoned after the dot-com meltdown. Not Google, which understands that its toughest competition in the future may come from within its own offices.

    Thus, instead of trying to quash or control emerging ideas and/or personalities, Google encourages them. It offers to create a support network for potential leaders, in exchange for loyalty and an ongoing network relationship. Thus, Google's vision's of the future is one where it is the "queen bee", with many satellite companies hovering around it, at once feeding it and gaining support from it.

  • Google is reacting to external competition, which is fast toughening. Witness the recent frenzy of mergers and acquisitions in internet search and advertising. Even Bill Gates is developing a search engine designed to rival Google's. Realising that the best form of defence is attack, Google's strategy is to start working on the next generation of technologies to change the web landscape.
|W|P|112488588111994705|W|P||W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com1/23/2006 12:55:00 am|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|Hey this blog is not about

I have been doing hours of research on "Aero Bed" and it brought me to your blog on this post. Anyways, Shwetank Shekhar I was reading your blog and I think it is really cool. It’s really a pleasure reading your posts! Keep up the great work.

Keep blogging away :-)1/23/2006 11:38:00 am|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you!
I have a Bath. site/blog. It pretty much covers Bath. related stuff.
Come and check it out if you get time :-)8/16/2005 05:43:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Sometimes every one (oops) most of one go through the goosebumps on the first crush ..... i liked the blog very much.It hursts when you long for someone very deeply and u see that u can do nothing about it.Sometimes it is better not to think of the consequences and follow urs heart.But then sometimes it's not.This is the main theme of the following blog: http://blogs.sify.com/blog_display.php?blogid=1179&pid=3515 Tenth Standard CrushThursday, December, 16th, 2004 Crushes do require courage! Hmmm...Studying in a boy’s school had its own share of merits and demerits. I never tried to reason out them. But if there was a time, when I certainly missed out on girls then it was at my tenth standard. I was tenth standard, when I first joined a tuition class. The tuition center was really far and I had to travel an hour by bus to reach there. I had never previously spoken to girls other than people whom I knew from childhood. The first day of my tuition class was when I met Rajalakshmi. Her friends always used to call her Rajee and I always pleaded with myself to stop looking at her. I was not a bright guy at class and I was really worried as to how she looked upon me. I chit chattered with all the other guys whenever she was not around. But when she was there, I used to portray myself as a sweet silent guy. She used to speak to all the other guys in the class, except me. I decided to open up to my friend about my crush. He was surprised too. Finally after a lot of thought, I decided to approach her. That day, I went to the class well ahead of time and waited for her. When she came, there were around 5 guys in the room. So I decided against approaching her then. She then left to the room next by, to find her test book. I followed her. My legs were shaking and my hands were cold. As I was walking, I tried to recollect what I had planned to tell her. I put my hand in my pocket and tried to search for the piece of paper over which I had written my dialogue. As I neared her, my heart started to pound faster. I could hear it too. Suddenly she turned and saw me. I almost fumbled with the book in my hand. I cleverly covered my nervousness. I went to the book shelf at the other end of the room. Now I was sweating. Phew...!! After a few minutes, I mustered some more courage and turned around. Booo.. She had left the place. 'What a bulb' I told myself. I left the room and entered the study hall only to find three things. First, our tutor had come and so no more chance of talking to her. Second, my place had gone and so I had to go back and sit. Third, I could only sit in the last row, from which, all my chances of even watching her were lost. BOOO... 'My fate', I thought to myself. Next day, my friend started to tease me. "You don’t have the courage to even face a girl? How are you going to propose to her?" "That’s enough", I said. I knew he made sense, but my ego was at stake. So that day I told myself, "today I am really gonna speak to her". I remained cool for the other half in my school. When it was one hour before the class, as expected, I started to get nervous. I went there a bit earlier than the day before. This time to my surprise, she was there in the class, sitting and reading something. I landed myself in the bench adjacent to her. For the first few minutes, I didn’t dare to turn and see her. Then again, I mustered myself up. I turned and then walked to her straight. This is it, I thought. I was just a few feet away from her. My head was rotating and all the other external crush-phobia symptoms were also there. I thought I was gonna break down for a second. And then I was caught off-guard. She turned to me and held out a book. I saw the book and realized it was my test book. "Damn, how did she get my test book???” I saw on the table the pile of all the other test books and immediately realized that our tutor had asked her to hand it over. "GEEE... " I quietly took the book, went back and sat. "How much did you get?" I turned and saw that she was not only speaking to me but also standing a few feet away from me. I was speechless. "Me?", I gulped and asked. "Ya", she said. It was then that I realized that I never even opened my book to see how much I had scored. I opened and saw. Oops! It was thirty five out of hundred. I decided to maintain some image and told her "Seventy five". Hey eyes widened. "Wow", she said. "I got only sixty. I think you must've got the third sum correct. Can I just see your book?" I was trapped. I swallowed hard. I opened my book, pretended to see it and then told her that I had got it wrong as well. I feared she might still persist to see my book. But she didn’t. I heaved a sigh. "I am not sure how my father will react to this mark. I am scared", she said. "I don’t even tell my father such marks", I thought of telling her. I just remained quiet. "Speak to her", I could even imagine my friend telling this to me. But somehow words would not come out. "Tell me something na. It’s going to be another 40 minutes for the class to begin", she said. "Something? How much do I tell honey?” I thought to myself. I was sweating. I remained mute. "You appear to be a very quite guy? I see that you don’t talk much in the class. Why?" I thought I should smile at her and did so. "Ok" "enough" "Stop it" "Your blushing too much", something inner kept telling me all these things. That was it. She stood up and walked away outside. I kicked myself for not having spoken to her. "You didn’t speak to her? Your nuts", my friend told me the next day after I had told him everything. "I know", I told him. "Hey, don’t feel bad man. It happens the first time. Just think her as anybody else. Just go and speak to her casually today. I am sure she'll respond", he told me. I thought about it and realized the truth behind it. Alas, it then reigned into me that an opportunity lost is like spilt milk. For the next seven days, I was not able to speak to her. I repented my missed chance. Weeks later, as I was sitting quietly inside my tuition hall, she came in. By that time, I had almost lost all hope of speaking to her again and proposing to her. She came over to me and asked, "How much did you get in the last test?” I chuckled. I did not know. I never had the habit of even knowing how much I scored in tests. I opened my mouth to tell a mark of around 'eighty'. "I got 78 and you know what I am the highest", she said. Phew, I just couldn’t imagine myself getting into another tight corner. I told her that I did not attend the last test. "My dad was very happy", she said gleaming. I congratulated her. I understood that bubbliest in her character and I felt that, that was what which had attracted me to her. She kept on speaking for some more time. And I too, to my own surprise, started to speak as well. In between, I used to wonder, "What happened to you man? That’s great. Keep it going". The next day, my friend could not believe what I had told him. I guess he got a little bit jealous and dared me to propose to her. I told him I'll do that the very same day. It was only after sometime, I realized the depth of the challenge. I was really scared. I wrote down whatever I had to say. I memorized it more times than my history book's dates. That day, I went over to her. She turned and smiled. Before I could speak, she again opened up by asking me my marks in the last exam. "Man, doesn’t she know anything else?” I wondered. I spoke about studies and I returned back without saying a word about anything else. The next day my friend was back teasing me. This time, he crossed his limits. I was angry and told him that I will definitely propose to her that day. The day after that, my friend eagerly came over to me and asked me what had happened. I told him the same thing had repeated itself. He started to laugh. However, he did not say anything. I remained silent the whole day. I felt bad that my friend’s words were true. I had done so many things in life up to that day, but nothing could ever give me the courage to propose to a girl, I thought. My friend understood that I was disappointed. He came over to me and told me that he would accompany me to the tuition class that day, but he refrained from accompanying me when I was to go and talk to rajee. I agreed upon. I thought that my friend would give me some tips on approaching her. He did so and it did really work. I went to tuition that day in a more relaxed manner. In fact, I did not even write down my dialogues. I thought I am just gonna go there and speak out my mind. We reached an hour early. She had not come then. 10 Minutes had passed. I started to think. 20 minutes had passed, I started to get nervous. My friend started to cool me down. 30 minutes had passed. I almost felt like breaking down. "I'm never gonna do it", I thought to myself. My friend calmed me down. Fifty minutes had passed by that time and everyone had come to class. My friend decided to leave. I felt lot uncomfortable after he left. The class started. "She's on leave", I told myself disappointed. "I'm gonna find why she's on leave today", I told myself. After the class got over, I went over to my tutor. I asked him about rajee, casually telling him that she had my test book with her. My tutor gave a dead look at me. "Did he know of anything?” I wondered. "Why did you give your book to her?” he asked. "She wanted to see it" "I don’t know what to say", he said. "Why, what's wrong?” I asked him. "Her father called up today to tell that she will not be coming to tuition anymore. I don’t know how you’re going to get back your book. ??? " !@#$%^&* It had been two days after that. I had told my friend all about it. Both of us were sitting on top of the wall by the side of our school. The thought still hadn’t sunk into me. My friend had a hearty laugh when I had told him. But he did not say anything now. I felt lost. When I had all the time in the world, my instincts ruined my chances. And finally when I had decided to nail the coffin, the nail went missing. My friend read my disappointment. "Cool it man. If she had to be your Mrs., she would have never missed you", he said. Nice words indeed to heal a bruised or rather CRUSHED sentiment. So Crush crushes shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com|W|P|112419704891252200|W|P|Crush crushes da-iict|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com4/21/2008 09:02:00 pm|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|How spontaneous! How impromptu! How realistic!8/13/2005 10:19:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Its the categories in which we can divide the students.............. It was written about the mumbai engineering DUDS.....but be pretty much assured that any enginerites fits the BILL. http://o3.indiatimes.com/blah_blah_blah

hi guys

just got over with my “submissions” for this semester. god what a relief!! its like givin ur last exam paper. u think im kiddin, ask any mumbai engg student bout it.

engg student life truly roxxx. of course lotsa ppl tend to think that u find only nerds or geeks in engg. but thats like sayin all the movies made in bollywood are superhits. (that btw is a lousy statement). life as an engg student can be as u want it to be. tough as well as smooth.

some ppl tend to take the high road and study frm day one of a fresh semester like theres no tomorrow. they'll occupy first benches. and they have many “doubts“ while the lectures goin on. they will leave no stone unturned to be real goody good in the eyes of our “estemeed“ (haha) profs. these few ppl r truly in the geek category. ironic as it may sound, but most of these so-called "geeks“ dont boast of a very good result. some even get KTs.

then u have “the politically correct“ crowd, who attend lectures regularly. take down notes. do all their practicals sincerely. they arent exactly geeks but they r one level below them. these ppl never create havocs in classrooms but are part of fun (if there is any joke cracked or leg pulled)and can be said to be the model students of the college. and they have good results also.

then u have the “the LLBs“. chill these arent law school graduates but Lords of Last Benches. sittin on the last benches is their birthright and no one dare occupy their seats. LLBs r the “jaan“ of the otherwise boring classrooms where profs are goin on and on bout god knows what! thay call it teaching. duh!

last benches r platforms where ppl discuss everything under the sun except wots bein taught in the classroom. here everything frm bar girls controversy to britney spears pregnancy reports r discussed. if the profs too strict and theres no scope for havin talks, then we pretend to play it sufi, prof thinks last benchers have calmed down but thats their mistake. cos it takes only one joke to convert our class into a joggers parks' laughter club. sometimes we even have meetings with LLBs of other classrooms to come up with innovative ways of sittin throughout those one hour “torture“ lecs.

everything said and done, when the going gets tough, the tough gets goin. resultwise last benchers rock, sometimes they get better marks than the previous two counterparts. of course some also get kts, some even get year drops! but then thats a part and parcel of engg life. wot say?

so thats bout the categories of engg students in a nutshell. will try to throw light on some more engg students trivia some other time. theres lots ppl. theres first year (FE) dilemmas, then second year(SE) vivas and practical exams, then third year(TE) seminars and presentations and job interviews and finally final year(BE) projects and lookin back!!! theres lots to discuss.

an addition frm a fellow blogger GAURAV RAJE.

Sumdi mein komdi category. These ppl pretend to be full fledged llbs. But then after college is over, they hit the books straight away. These end up getting amazing marks. Some are extraordinarily brilliant ppl who dont even need to study much.

Dumb ppl category. These are neither studious nor funnmy. They are plain dumb. They normally sit in the middle of the class. They are the least noticed ppl and usually get away without even getting noticed. Some ppl mistake them for the front benchers.

Despo bhooka category. These are desperate ppl. They try to woo any girl in sight. They dont care how she looks or how she is. Just the fact that she is a girl is enuf for them. Though there is absolutely no beauty in engineering, these guys try to act like a shadow for the hideously ugly girls.

Dedh shahana public category. These are smartasses who try to disturb the entire class by acting like smartasses. They act like know-it-alls. Though they donot know a thing. They usually raisse stupid doubts when the profs are teaching and give vague answers when the profs ask questions. They feel dat they are the most intelligent ppl. they give excuses for failing.

keep rockin

ciao!

FAQS: 1..........ATKT. it means "allowed to keep terms". see wot happens is that we have 2 semesters per year and around 5-6 subjects per sem. so in the exam if a student fails in a subject or two, then he's allowed to sit for the next semester. he dosent get a year drop. does that clear ur doubt recca? 2..........LLBs. Lords of Last Benches 3..........FE first year 4..........SE second year 5..........TE Third year 6..........BE Final Year(B-Tech) I wanted to give persona example in each of the categories ..but i don't know why i stopped doing it..maybe it's only temporarily. Next time i wish to bring the categories of the professors...... i assure you that this time it will be full of the examples|W|P|112395506304241412|W|P|Engineering Colleges Students........CATEGORY|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/13/2005 10:05:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P|

school farewell day revisited!

the blog below just made me go back to my sweet/bitter childhood memory.

theblog can be found out at:http://o3.indiatimes.com/blah_blah_blah/ Indeed, the present is so tense and the past seems oh so perfect. Sometimes you just dont want to move on, sometimes you just dont want to let go of time. How we wish we could turn back time. If only. But Life they say is a one way journey. So be it. Living it and Loving it. Do we have a choice?

When I was a small child I always used to wonder, “When the hell am I going to grow up? Being a grown up is so cool. No more tension of completing the homework, no more learning those awful math tables, no more worrying about the verbs and nouns and tenses, no more being afraid of mam and the house master.”

Then came the final year of school. Now the thinking had changed a bit. “Yess! Just one more year. One more year of this jail called school. One more year of homeworks, nagging teachers, stupid project work. Then college. Freedom. Girls. New clothes everyday. Yippee!!”

Finally the school days were coming to an end. Then came the School Farewell Dinner Party. Officially the Last Day of school. The day me and all my friends were waiting for.

Why then were my eyes moist?

Why then was I feeling as if this year had passed through pretty fast?

Why then was I feeling so sad?

Why o Why??

Was it just me feeling that way?

I took a look around, and hey presto, all my classmates had misty eyes.

Wasnt this the moment we all were looking forward too?

Why then was I not ready for this now?

Why then did it seem like I was loosing a very near and dear one?

Why o Why???

Who was going to applaud my English Essays now?

Who was going to feel proud of my History marks now?

Who was going to laugh at my Geography locations now?

Who was going to correct my kanas and matras in Hindi now?

Who was going to shout the living daylights out of me for not completing my homework now?

Who was going to ask me to write “i wont talk and create nuisance in class when the teacher is teaching” a thousand times now?

Who was going to tell me to run three full rounds of the school ground now?

Who was going to call me “Bony” now?

Who was going to play “pen-fight, book-cricket, seed-chess” withe me now?

Who was I going to share the fruitjam biscuits in the breaks now?

Who was going to CARE for me now?

With these questions, a few tears, a choked throat and lots of photos locked in my camera, i bid adieu to my alma mater, my school, my life! All through school life we want to get out of school but on the last day at school, our feet are glued to the place. If this isnt irony, then what is? That chapter in my life is over. Life goes on, each day a new page. But whenever I pass my school those days come flooding back and just looking at my school I am filled with a feeling of pride that is second to none.

School Days are the land of lost content, I see them shining plain, the happy highway where i once went and cannot come again!

Ciao

i to had this thing in my mind at that time. till date i haven't met those few of my friends.. at that time we didn't had the NET facilities.|W|P|112395353522882070|W|P|Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect! ~Owens Lee Pomeroy|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/13/2005 09:28:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Today i came through a beautiful blog titled 80-20 rule. yeah it Instantly striked my sesnses that it's how true....... But we have rarely stopped enough to reflect it ourself. things which are as simple often escape ours attention.But it's the most fundamental of the rule...and we should reflect upon it to do the optimization. Optimization is everywhere, In computer science we study optimization, data-mining and all sort of algorithm to arrive at some simple and pure statistics which can atleast satisfy the 80% of the conditions. the beautiful blog camn be found out at: http://o3.indiatimes.com/thoughtsforlife/archive/2005/01/28/60902.aspx The same is produced here..............................................................................................

The 80-20 Rule.

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was an Italian economist who, in 1906,observed that twenty percent of the Italian people owned eighty percent of their country's accumulated wealth. Over time and through application in a variety of environments, this analytic has come to be called Pareto's Principle, the 80-20 Rule, and the "Vital Few and Trivial Many Rule."

Pareto's rule states that a small number of causes is responsible for a large percentage of the effect, in a ratio of about 20:80. Expressed in a management context, 20% of a person's effort generates 80% of the person's results. The corollary to this is that 20% of one's results absorb 80% of one's resources or efforts. For the effective use of resources, the manager's challenge is to distinguish the right 20% from the trivial many.

Examples of the 80-20 Rule:

80% of a problem can be solved by identifying the correct 20% of the issues 80% of advertising results come from 20% of your campaign. 80% of an equipment budget comes from 20% of the items 80% of an instructor's time is taken up by 20% of the students 80% of benefit comes from the first 20% of effort 80% of customer complains are about the same 20% of your projects, products, services. 80% of our personal telephone calls are to 20% of the people in our address book 80% of the decisions made in meetings come from 20% of the meeting time 80% of the outfits we wear come from 20% of the clothes in our closets and drawers 80% of the traffic in town travels over 20% of the roads 80% of what we produce is generated during 20% of our working hours 80% of your annual sales come from 20% of your sales force 80% of your future business comes from 20% of your customers 80% of your growth comes from 20% of your products 80% of your innovation comes from 20% of your employees or customers 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers 80% of your staff headaches come from 20% of our employees 80% of your success comes from 20% of your efforts 80% of your website traffic comes from 20% of your pages

Hmm.....well I think theres' a good new for us all... 80% of success is achieved from 20% of our efforts......... I guess we all need to sit and think wots that 20% :)

On an afterthought one can think that we should look for that 20% of the things. but as it can be rightly said that for identifying that 20% of the product,effort....whatever.... we will have to spend 80% of the same thing. so total thing becomes constant at 100% ......... this fact can be stated from another famous saying my one of the greastes physicists of the time that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed but can be changed from one form to another.that is total energy is constant.In the same way total work is constant for the total results, it's just that one acheives first 80% of the output earlier than the other ones Applying the same rule as above we can say that the efforts for a particular thing can never be 20,30....90%. It has to be 100% for that particular thing.It is just that one has to 100%.... in others word it is that for that 80%of the work to be shown u have to give 100% of the effort. the 80% of the work can't be shown independently. for that thing to be called complete you have to complete that 20% of the work with 80% of the effort.It's just complimentary in nature.You cannot isolate the TWO. Shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com/Photo |W|P|112395253562165491|W|P|The 80-20 Rule.|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/12/2005 12:01:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| I liked the way Anant brought home the idea of ...... of how he couldn't leave his bed which, initially he thought was going to challenge his Autjority of the household The following posts can be viewed at http://o3.indiatimes.com/anant_rulz The Bed It was just a bed. A four-post wooden bed. Two days before my marriage, as I came back from office, I saw these two carpenters busy in assembling this bed. It was a teak wood bed, ornate, with small mirrors and quite big in size. It had displaced everything in my room, including my single bed and it seemed that the bed was waiting to swallow the whole room. The carpenters, while assembling it explained to me that they had taken 3 months to make this bed, with all that carving and making the bed suitable for ‘Bitiya Rani’ and her things in the those built-in boxes underneath. Bitiya Rani! And what about me, I couldn’t dare ask? I wanted to peep inside the boxes to see if anything was hidden there but they were empty. As I came out of the room, my mother gave me that meaningful and amused kind of smile. I knew that my dear father-in-law had not sent a bed but a Trojan horse into my room, our house, my life, and my existence. I knew it. Through this piece of dead wood, he plans to send his dear daughter into my bedroom, our house and slowly take kabja over the whole place. Our lives. I know these girls; they all do this kind of tricks. Just like the camel and the tent- first the head, then the neck and then the whole body. Oongli pakad ke pahuncha pakad leti hain yeh ladkiyan. No way! I won’t let her usurp my authority and my exclusive domain. I wondered if this decision to get married was correct or not; looking from the way things were shaping, I didn’t think so. The bed had occupied the prime real estate in the house and certainly in my bedroom. I didn’t sleep in it that night. As I slept in the other room, I dreamt of the bed changing into an alien spreading its four tentacles slowly but surely all over my house. The mattress was delivered the next day and with mom’s red bedcover over it, it surely looked a lot less menacing, but still like a Chinese dragon; a red fire-spewing dragon with expansionist designs. A day later, the bed changed itself into a shaadi-ka-storehouse with all those guest occupying every inch of our house, including my room. Cellophane-wrapped wedding presents with some carrying the Christmas design or a Happy Birthday written on them, hold-alls waiting to burst, attaché cases with cloth cover on them, milk bottles with infants attached to them, sarees in various stages of packing/unpacking, shagun-ka-samaan with Satiya inscribed in red geroo, laddoo boxes with miniature Ganesh statuette on them, empty jewellary boxes with their silken undergarments, Raymond suit pieces with names written with a sketch pen, fruits waiting to rot, gifts exclusively meant for passing them on- I was jealous that the bed had so brazenly assumed such an important and an all-encompassing status overnight. In our house. And made a place so quickly for itself in our lives like a jinn out from his bottle in the form of a new boy-servant. ‘Hukum, mere aaka’, it seemed to say. And without my explicit permission. How dare it! I hated the bed. After two night, the bed changed into a bookshelf. On top of it, I found a silk, gold and diamond studded book, surrounded by motiya, red roses and hand-plucked petals. I was pushed in my room by my sisters and bhabhi. Not even mandatory and filmy ‘Devarji, jaldi nahi karna’. Just go! The room smelled of mithai, fruits and flowers. I looked at the book. What is this book all about? These two are in conspiracy- the bookshelf of a bed and the book. I was too tired, mentally empty and had no desire or patience to read this book. Any book. I just wanted to sleep. Still, I was mesmerized by its smell, the newness of the book, which reminded of those we used to buy in summer for our next class and keep near our bedside till the schools opened; or, like the smell of that new car, straight from the showroom. I hesitatingly removed the silk cover, open the book hurriedly with a boyish curiosity, unstuck some chipke-huey pages. I just wanted to read the book and reach to the end as quickly as possible, to know what is written on that last page and to unload my excitement. It was a small book with two pages only- the first and the last. The first page was entitled welcome and the on last page was written, come again. I kept the book in my arms and slept. The bed watched us silently. Some days passed, or was it months, I don’t know. The bed became an explorator’s dream, an archaeologist’s temptation. It beckoned me to find out the mysteries of those hillocks, rivulets, ravines and the springs that smell of life. The bed had changed into a valley of flowers, a thin mountain spring that emanates and confronts us suddenly on the hair-pin bend of the road and when you stop to taste its life-sustaining water, it continues to flow with a gurgle, totally unmindful of your presence, into the deep crevices in those perennial bushes below. Sometimes, the mirrors in the bed would reflect those dancing figurines from Khajuraho, trying to please kaamdev. The bed became a chameleon- changing its appearance with the change of seasons, woolen blankets, mosquito nets and chenille coverings. I could see a small sapling trying to break the wooden ground of the bed. Was it love? Before I could even explore fully to my boyish delight, our two incomplete halves became one to create another one. Suddenly, she was occupying the space between two of us and yet, by some mysterious alchemy, some sorcerer’s magic, some out-of-syllabus law of chemistry that I had skipped in my school, she was joining us like the co-valent bond; she was the O between the our two H. H-O-H. The bed had changed itself into a nursery where, most of the time, she would find that space right between our two hearts, now ‘idling’ in unison like some All India permit holder truck driver’s automobiles by the roadside dhaba. Every night, and on days too, the bed would remind us of that new life and we would be attracted to it like an helpless iron file to the magnet. Like some hungry insects to the life-light. Involuntarily. Hypnotically. Naturally. Almost like zombies in a trance. And then, we left the bed, but we somehow knew we would return to it. The bed remained in our hearts and when we came back to it, the bed had somehow expanded, anticipating the growing need to accommodate all four of us. The bed had now become a playground, a dining table, a kiddies wrestling arena, a toy box and our Fort Knox, where all our worldly wealth was right there itself in the form of those two. More than all the money and power on the earth. Making the decision to have children was to decide forever to have our hearts placed outside our bodies. And we didn’t even take that important decision consciously. It just happened and like beggars on Diwali night, we watched from a distance in awe, stared at God’s fireworks- with admiration, with jealousy and yet, with eternal gratefulness to Him. And suddenly, we were conjoined to them; they wake, we wake, they eat, we eat, they sleep, we sleep. The bed had become our prison and we, its willing and chained life-timers. At times, when kids were not well, the bed would become a bed-of-nails fit for an Indian yogi only and every moment would stretch itself into eternity. Our hearts in our mouths, prayers on our lips and tears in our eyes, we waited for that difficult moment to pass, the upheavals to subside. Or, when mom was in those last months. A drop of pin would wake us up and I would rush to find out if she needed anything, while the nurse slept. And, the bed will become Bhagwadgita and ask me to stop crying and be at peace with the laws of nature- that Atman was trying to changes its outer covering only. What comes must go and this too shall pass, it spoke like a sage. And, I would keep my weary head on the bed to wake up the next minute, fearing the worst. Is she breathing? Is she still there? What to do? The sand clock was emptying fast The bed watched us writhe in anguish, pain and helplessness like a mute spectator, offering no solutions, just solace. Maybe, the bed knew all the answers to all of my silly questions. But, I wasn’t even asking any. The bed had become the barometer of my emotions; I have fought many a battles and realized to my surprise that all those I won, I lost and those I lost- turned out to astonishing victories. As I shed my clothes, my vanity, my ego, my false pride, my worldly everything, and with my weary soul and body- defeated, punished, bruised and hurt, the bed became Tiger balm, that druid’s magic potion which not only cures but also provides sustenance to fight- for another day. I learnt never to bring anger or bitterness to this bed and to bury in it my small secrets and victories, written in passion. The bed has always been my box seat on which I have seen many a movies and laughed and shed tears while she sleeps peacefully, oblivious of naughty Sid’s inner turmoil, Gump’s innocent queries or even ET’s magical finger reaching to cure the human child’s hurt; It becomes a snack bar to satiate my sudden desire for munchies and coffee; a round-table for family meetings where we have discussed many an important issues of life; a card table where we cheated and played ‘kot-pees’ and ‘3-2-5’. I have traveled far and wide. Slept on expensive beds in 5-star hotels, air-conditioned coaches with complimentary sheets and blankets, standing or sitting in a general compartment’s bare wooden seats and much-scarce railway platform benches. But everywhere, I have yearned for peaceful sleep like that in my own bed. My slave bed, my pillow and my part of territory- my feudal instincts find peace in this very limited space of my bedroom. Here I can be me. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. These days, I sometimes find her looking into its innards of the bed for her past, knitted into small clothes and sweaters. There is a glint of future in her eyes, which she somehow wants to fit into this past. On seeing me, she packs her tears and her hopes with the naphthalene balls into those kiddy clothes. As I leave the sanctuary of this bed to explore and measure distances, I wonder if this is my ‘Do Gaz Zameen’ that Emperor Zafar so eloquently yearned for? Is it my casket where my bandaged mummy rests? Is it just a bed? Is it just a four-post wooden bed? http://shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com Presented to you by Shwetank shekhar http://shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com|W|P|112383042635504038|W|P|The Bed|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com1/21/2006 11:38:00 am|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|Hi Shwetank Shekhar, I read your post which I find interesting and very informative! I was also looking for related info which I found
Some at adjustable bed
It's not exactly what I was looking for but it was nonetheless interesting to read.8/11/2005 06:18:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P|
At some point of time we find that there is some time when we feel that everything goes wrong for us. that we feel that ........... why everytime it has to be me.......... "WHY ME??"
Below also some one is in trouble finding out why there in search for one's lady love he has to beat the dust every time why him................. or maybe why most of US
(the original can be found out at:http://yyyy123.rediffblogs.com/)
I asked myself Why ME???
There she was in my school!!
the most beautiful girl !!
and gosh she became my friend :-)
I asked myself Why ME???
the days were filled with fun and joy..
there was always a smile in my face :-)
and our freindship grew over the years..
i loved her every move..every word...
we spent times together!!!
we kept on talking for long hours!!
Suddenly from nowhere a new boy joined the classand she became frns with him...
soon she started ignoring me...
and our freindship came to end..
after so many years with her..
i couldnt feel any better...
life and smile were out of my face..
and one day she said she loved the other guy..
and my life was shaken !!!
I asked myself Why ME???
time passed on and things changed..
we went out of school and
i moved on to diff place !!!
I was in college now...
and there she was a beautiful girl!(Another beautiful girl)
we became frns the very first day!! :-)
I asked myself Why ME???
and smiles came back to my face!!we went together..
bunked classes together :-)
wow it has happend to me again...
there is some one finally who cares for meshe said she liked me!!!
and time went on..and we were in 3rd year..
and then another guy came along...
she befrinded him..and then time moved on...
and one day she said she loved the other guy!!!She left me and then ignored me..
she was busy with the other guy..and soon our friendship came to end
I asked myself Why ME???
time changed..
i moved on...
though with pain in heart..
to seek love and friendship and comapinonship..
to seek the sole mate of my life..
the one, god has made for me!!!
i kept on trying to console me..
that god has done this on purpose..
and i have a role to play...
and will meet my life partner some where..
i moved on ... changed places...
there i was in my First Job
and there she was a beutiful girl...(Another beautiful girl)
we became friends very instant!!!
I asked myself Why ME???
and we shared thoughts..
we went to every place together!!!
we moved with hand to hand every where..
we watched movies together..
ate food together!!
she said she liked me!!!
she said she wanted to be with me...
she said she loved melife has come back to me..
i have found my sole mate!!!
and one day she reveled...
she loved some one (NOT ME!!!)
she had loved some one lese frm her childhood..
and she wanted to marry him (NOT ME!!)
she left me...
saying i am sorry!!!
and she asked me to forget her : -( (which i cant ever)
and there i was heart broken...
I asked myself Why ME???
I had no choice but to move on!!!
With lot of pain in my heart!!
My mind has stopped thinking!!!
i was living myself again and againthen the thought came to me
GOD had some other plans for me!!!!
I moved on ..
changed places....
(had to change places)there i am in one of the most beautiful city!!!..
city of gardens...
city of light...
and i am still thinking of what happened in past.!!!
I asked myself Why ME???
I needed change !!! I needed break!!
I could nt tolerate it any more...
i couldnt enjoy the beauty of nature!!!
my life has changed ..changed again!! ..
changed again!!
I asked myself Why ME???
SO I moved on again to another place.....
another country!!!..
to meet another civilization!!!
BUT I KEPT ON ASKING
Why ME???
Why ME???
Why ME???
|W|P|112376820631744477|W|P|Why ME.....................???|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/11/2005 08:32:00 pm|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|इस टिप्पणी को एक ब्लॉग व्यवस्थापक द्वारा हटा दिया गया है.8/11/2005 05:30:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| this one is from ANANT IT goes as: MY FILMY BACHPAN Cinema is a very powerful medium. It not only provides us an escape from the humdrum of life, but also conditions us to understand the reality of the society we live in; it reflects and imitates society and life but at times, life imitates cinema itself. I have been watching cinema since my very childhood. And, like every one of you, the summer holidays were our favorite part of the year for doing all those innocent ‘badmaashi and khuraphaat’. In fact, my love for movies started in one of the summer holidays when I was 4-5 years. The earliest I remember is watching a movie called 'Jagriti'- it came to our colony (yes, that was what it was called- a cluster of govt. flats). I think it was a part of Information & Broadcasting Ministry’s way of making us Indian patriotic and they used to send this van for this. Every evening, the van will go from one colony to another and once they reached there, there was a loud roar from all of us kids. Some kids would even follow the van to see where it would finally stop. The news would spread around like wildfire and within no time, kids like me would be ready to watch the movie and fight for that first row seat- nearest to the screen. By 7 PM, they will put out a folding white 16 mm paper-screen and a noisy projector to boot and we children will sit on the ground and watch the movie and would be transcended to another world. The world of cinema. We laughed at cruel Asit Sen’s moving paunch while he slept and Mohan Choti’s antics and cried when hero’s mother came on the screen; every time, at the same spot. Without fail. And Masterji Abhi Bhattacharya's ‘Aao bachchon tumhe dikhayen jhanki Hindustaan ki’, 'De di humey azaadi bina khadag bina dhaal’, 'Chalo chalen maa, sapno ke gaaon mein’ and so many other songs I still remember with their tunes etched on my little heart. BTW, were those kind of Masterji in films only? I don't think so. I saw ‘Jagriti’ at least 12 times because it seems I & B Ministry had only one film and like Richard Attenborogh’s ‘Gandhi’, they would show this movie at any and every place and occasion. Year after year. Subsequently, in summer holidays itself, some private entrepreneur brought a larger cloth-screen and more than 7-8 movies were shown in a week. The local central park was covered with tents and every evening a new fare was for us. The ticket was 4 and 8 Annas for a ground seat- which was quite a lot, and we would try to get in free. Somehow; by going along with some auntyji, by sneaking in unseen, by giving some khota-sikka or some such trick. The gatekeeper would ask auntyji if the child was her’s and before she would reply, we would run and mill with the crowd inside. At times, we would lift the tent and get in free. Or, we would even sit outside and listen to the sound track till we would find an opportunity to get inside- free, of course. Even after the intermission. The year was 1960 and I was 4 years old- and don’t you start calculating my age! I think after that, I became a full-fledged cine-buff and I am still crazy about cinema. I have seen cinema at oddest places and Delhites, would you believe, where there is Bhikaji Cama Place now, there was a tent-wala cinema hall (hall?) called, Raj Talkies. (Talkies- can you believe this name?). Once again, it was a temporary tented cinema hall. The legs of the wooden chairs were tied to each other by sutlee-rope (to avoid people taking the chair away to a place near the screen) and in the noon show, one could see a million stars in the sky- yes, the tent had million holes and sunlight would come thru it. The ticket was 10 Annas to 1-1/4 Rupees. After the school, we would steal some money and use our pass valid for DTU- yes, it was called DTU and not DTC then- bus to see the movie The other cinema halls that we used to love- in fact 3 of them were - Race Course, Palam and Defence. Race Course being Air Force area and the cinema Hall was primarily for the entertainment of defence personnel; we civilians were allowed only to make the whole thing viable. So come noon show- first day, first show, we would be standing outside the gate with a burly Air Force Gateman stopping us, as the area is protected one. At 10 minutes to 3 PM, the gate would be opened and we the cine-buffs would race with our shoes or chappals in our hands for at least 500 meters till we reach the ticket window. And there was a lot of dhakkam-dhukka there. I saw many a movies sitting in the front row. The cinema hall is still working, though my wife prefers the PVRs for their superior air-conditioning, sound and projection. Palam was another one. It is still there, I suppose. There also, we had to wait for the gates to open and then as we used to stand in the line to get tickets, one man will come and put a stamp on our palms; you show the stamp and then only ONE ticket will be sold to you. As many people wanted more than one ticket for their friends also, outsiders would come and jostle in the line. But, look at the ingenuity of Indian brain- as soon as the stamp was put, one guy would put some spit on it and transfer the stamp on another guy from outside the queue. Ab toh ticket dena hi padega! Many a days, we would walk into racecourse where races were held quite regularly. We could see from a distance, all those film stars and beautiful and decked up women. When cricket season was on- we used to get the glimpse of cricketers like Pataudi and Nariman Contractor- of course, in those days, for entertainment, Pataudi used to play cricket instead of killing blackbucks. We would go and take their autographs. And throw the papers away later for fear of being caught by gharwalas. And yes, polo was also our favorite. We used to see Maharaja of Jaipur and Maharani Gayatri Devi and many a famous personalities we couldn’t even recognize, chukkar after chukkar. Those magnificent horses and those elegant horse-riders. It was really awesome, as the X-Gen says it now. In the night, we would put our charpoys outside in the ‘ground’ and enjoy the long meetings with our friends. In the worst days of summer, we would sprinkle some water on the bed/durries and by the time we used to come back to sleep- the bed was cool as a cucumber. No fridge, no a/c- only ice block from the nearby paan-wala for making sharbat and lassi. My father used to smoke ‘Panama’ cigarettes and many a times, while bringing the pack of ciggies, I would put one in my mouth and try to bring out those imaginary ‘chchallas’ (Rings) that only Pran could do with effortless ease. And how we loved to hate him! Next day morning, we would get up by 4.30 AM and go for walks and games to Lodi Garden. Lodi Garden was a heaven for us kids- unlike what it is now for lovers- and we have played a lot of chchupan-chchupaai, kho, and langdi-taang there. The ubiquitous signs like sonu-loves-monu were there even then and all those hearts with a piercing arrow etched on the top of the tombs were visible even from a distance to the lovers. I think we Indians have learnt to declare our love by defacing our historic legacy from our childhood itself and ‘Kilroy was here’ is a just copycat. Two months of summer holidays would finish in a blink and predictably, in the last few days, we would try to find someone from whom we would 'copy’ our homework. And predictably, the teacher would ask on the first day itself, contrary to our wishes, to deposit the homework copies, and predictably, I would end up saying ki ‘Sirji, meri kaapi meri chchoti bahan ne phaad di’ And predictably, I was made to stand on the bench for the whole period. And equally predictably, in the next one too. That was also the start of my introduction to Hollywood; the first three movies I saw were ‘Ben-Hur’, ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Guns of Navrrone’. I didn’t understand a single word of what they were saying but the chariot race between Charlton Heston and ganja Yul Brynner and the parting of (Red) sea are still fresh in my memory. This continued till one day, my father, who didn't even know in which class I was studying, predicted to my mother the profession I will most probably take up in my life- no, you can’t even guess it- selling chchole by the roadside! (not Sholay, stupid!). ‘Padta-likhta toh hai nahi. Bada hokar saala chchole hi bechega sadak par’ were his exact words of Bhavishyavaani. To prove him right, that day itself, I went with my friend and saw ‘Phir Wohi Dil Laaya Hoon’. Again. Joy Mukherjee and Ash Parekh and O P Nayyar’s music ‘Banda Parvar Thaam Lo Jigar’ ‘Aanchal Mein Saja Lena Kaliyaan’ transported me to another world, that I can never forget. That day, when I reached home, my father did what all Indian parents believe to be the God-ordained duty and divine rights bestowed upon them- you guessed it right this time- he beat me Black & Blue. That definitely was the end of Black & White movie era. At least for me. You see, I had a filmy bachpan. Filmy, very filmy. INDEED|W|P|112376371113198256|W|P|Authors Filmy bachpan|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/10/2005 05:06:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| I am a gr8 NET SURFER.... May be the reason being that i am having a free Net on my college room. but then don't think that i surf anything to everything. my favorite being the Indian news sites and all other reading suff. Being voracious reader i used to read all the news sites and other related material in COUPLE OF HOURS. So what to do in spare time...(i dont like mail and emails on which some of my friends spend good time.). During this dilemma some one said that why not search the brides for our friends........... after many bakars we started searching the sites for ours room -mates(Don't beleive that we were looking for good ones for ours pals..) During these time it came to me an idea why not seriously go through all these profiles and "Time Katto". Indeed it was a good time pass...... there were many profiles that aroused my curiosity and will BLOG on them some time Later. Right now many of my pals have got the habit of "ORKUTTING"(orkut.com). i also find it good....Anything that GOOGLE does has to be interesting(On a second thought what would the MARRIAGE SEARCH would look like through Google search. Will thery be able to stop the Spams.....i think that they would atleast do a better job than the rest of them.(see what they have done to mail system...... Giving a whopping 1GB at a time when others were giving 2-4 MBs. Okay i have gone too far now below is the post because of which all these bables started.. Sham marriage sites: you can see the blogger at : http://o3.indiatimes.com/MarriageBeuro/ My experience with New Age Arrange Marriage ”Hrishi you are 27 now, you should get married now...” My Mom.... Said worriedly ... For her son like me who is done with Engineering and MS in US with lots of M in dollars.. still unmarried was surprise... though I was little hesitant... I had have had few dates to whom I was looking after in my early 20's .. now all of these gals got married , and started thire families.. So I had no option but to enter into arrange marriage 'market'. Here your value is more into your cast and salary... I was hesitant to go with traditional marriage beuro's.... So i opt out for Shaadi.com and Jeevansathi.com... Fortunately my mom enrolled my name into one of the leading local marriage beuro's Anuroop Wiwaha Sanstha in Pune ( www.anuroopwiwaha.com) I Started looking after gals online thru shaadi/jeevansathi.... My experience was pathetic... I recieved close to 200 praposals thru these means.. 60 % of them were fake.... They charged hefty 2750 rs.... We had no time to look at those 200 praposals... So I decided to search on my own.... I found few gals with my matching criteria .... later I realized all these paposals were fake..... My advice dnt go for shaadi.com.... its all fake.. they will just screw u up with ur money.. Fortunately Anuroop Wiwaha lend me heling hand, they organized pre-marrital councelling sessions.. Also Mr. Mahendra Kanitkar, Director Anuroop gave some good practical tips... In few weeks I recieved 11 praposals... all are decent educated cultured girls... 2 months I reached my destination, again Anuroop helped us with thire quick service... Now I am happily married with my beautiful, cultured and understanding wife Anuradha... Just for advice.... dnt jump into marriage market.... make sure u recieve “true praposals“ and not fake one ( these matrimony portals will give u 90 % fake data) Happy match,mate finding....... PS: i see many sites advertising that they have made so many perfect marriages. anybody knows them personally.Also i couldn't understand whay the Shaddi.com people were asking for money.............. My SITE|W|P|112367711383462084|W|P|I Always thought that marriage sites are a BIG SHAM|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/10/2005 04:52:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Below is the rumblings of an Adult who sees his childhood through the eyes of her 2 year Daughter I personally dont have experience (i have no child and am unmarried and an Indian).but i think that every one one day or the other goes through the emotions. i think that i have seen may people LIKE THAT. YOU CAN VIEW THE BLOGGER AT http://o3.indiatimes.com/I_Me_Myself Last night, I was watching my two-year old daughter trying a karaoke - to sing along (she is too young to talk) with the TV. That was an interesting sight. She was trying her best to beat that female vocal (I'm sure she will do that one day). Then the promo changed to some other movie and she was not interested. So she turned back, and saw me smiling. She gave back a big smile and trotted away to her mother in the kitchen. Time flies... I remember my childhood days when I was very much impressed by - who else - Amitabh. And that song 'Ek Raasta Hai Zindagi...' from Kaala Patthar (shot on Shashi Kapoor, not Amitabh) was my favorite. I used to be the centre of attraction while singing that song. Soon thereafter, came the 'Laila O Laila' from Qurbani, and that won me the third prize in singing competition in my school. I still remember the picture book I got as my prize, though I tore off the book in the next few days. That way way back in 1980-81 and I was probably in my first standard. Then I went to second standard and dad got transferred to Visakhapatnam. New school, and I was the boss in my class (also a bully, I must admit). Anybody who dared to disobey me was done for. Since my school had classes only upto third standard, I was one of the seniors (imagine!) and a darling of those teachers (yeah, those beauties were young and unmarried, but unfortunately too old for me - one of them was married and her kid was my junior). I was good at studies, or let's say, others were not very good. As a result, I stood first in everything that I participated - be it studies or games. Then there was a skit - Snowhite and the Seven Little Dwarfs - and I was the hunter who was assigned the job to kill Snowhite. Even if it were not a skit and even if they paid me a million dollars, I would never kill that beauty (I hope my wife does not read this). I would rather kill the woman (my teacher, that fatso) who gave me that role. Then I went to IV standard and changed my school. Now I was among my equals, but still a smart guy. I was one of the best, if not the best of the best. I had many admirers around me, and so some rival groups were formed. We used to have fistfights and anybody found alone separated from his gang used to face the warth of the rival gang. We lived the life as in the movies - perfect (only the ladies were missing and we longed for them). Then time passed and one day I found myself updating my knowledge of the Bollywood. I was perfect in this field, or at least I thought so. I was still in the school and destined to become a hero some day. But nothing much happened. Then I went through the school and finally through college. I knew everything (so I believed) about the movies, the glamour world, the new beauty in the college that would some day fall for me (she was our lecturer)... No, nothing is funny. I really believed in myself. If you laugh at me today, then you have probably forgotten your yesterday. Thereafter, it was the Chartered Accountancy course that took the better part of my youth. And one day, I was a CA. Then came the first job and the first salary. I was the king - on the top of the world. The richest man ever on the earth. I could buy that stereo, the walkman, those 'costly' cassettes which my pocket money never allowed, and what not. But when I looked back, I saw many unfinished agenda. How come I was a CA when I should have been a movie superstar? I had everything that takes to become that superstar (except for a Godfather who could make me the superstar; why, I once even thought of running away to Bombay - I had a relative who could do at least something for me...)! Why didn't that lass fall for me? How could she get married to another person that she didn't know (read “I didn't know”)? She should have talked to me, at least once. She never talked to me when we were in the college (never before and never thereafter). She could have asked for my phone number during the farewell. She could have taken some pains to get it from others... I don't even know her name till today. OK, let bygones be bygones. I'm happily married, have a family of my own. And no longer aspire to be a superstar (well, give me a chance and I can still become one). Why am I thinking of all this? Simple, because I think I was stupid to have such a thinking. I should have acted like a grown-up and should have rubbished all those ideas when they came in my mind. Like any other parent, I would never let my children make a fool of themselves. I'll take care that they behave like grown-ups, even if they are just two year olds. They should start early... NO! I won't do that! Back then, I really believed in all that I thought, though all that might seem stupid today. That was a part of my growing up. Those dreams were worth dreaming at that time, and I shall never be that innocent ever again in my life. Those are my sweet memories, stupid sweet memories. My children will go through all that on their own. They will go through the joy, the ecstasy, the heartbreak on their own and go through every emotion that life can give them. I'll always be available if they need me, but I won't ever interfere with their thoughts, their feelings. I might not make a good father, but at least I'll not be a bad father - a bully - for my children. Go ahead, my child. Sing along, for probably I'm too old to sing that song - Doom Hila Le Doom Hila Le Doom... Or is that Dhoom Macha Le... seems that he he not that young afterall Later on i will add more BAKARS On child life....... My Site|W|P|112367530952798049|W|P|Adult most of the times see their childhood in their Children|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/10/2005 04:12:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Well i may tell you that i am neither female nor married....... then surely the next logical question would be...... "toh phir title ka MATLAB" IT happens so that i came through a blog of a newly married lady. it's her musings. NOW WHY HAVE I ADDED THAT HERE........... for the simple reason that the lady gave her side of story and reading here can get the reason for wild (NOT)Shopping spree...... it can be found at the following link. http://o3.indiatimes.com/anu3001/ The Blogs Goes at Under Last week my husband and I went to M.G. Road. How we landed there is a different story altogether that I will narrate some other time. There were a lot of sales happening, this being August, and my sole purpose was to window shop, become familiar with the market, and kill some time, in that order. Accordingly, we entered a KSIC showroom. There were yards and yards of lovely silk sarees and, as any Indian lady would vouchsafe, it's a natural impulse to check out each saree in its six-yard splendour, feel its texture, and glance at the price tag. While I was still rapt in this magical silken world, hubby broke into my reverie with a "Do you want to buy this one?" I gave him a bewildered "Of course not!" look. Men!!! Just because a man admires a beautiful woman, it doesn't mean he's going to marry her. Similarly when a woman admires a dress in a store, it doesn't necessarily follow she's going to buy it. Most shopkeepers who are male cannot understand why a woman may sometimes admire a thousand dresses and yet not buy one and at other times may buy a dozen outfits off the rack without giving them a second glance. The truth is, apart from impulsive or compulsive shoppers, most women are smart enough to know what to buy and where. Many of them will rarely buy anything from a new shop the first time they visit it -- unless they are on a holiday. Women like to scout shops and compare their stuff for future buys. Men, on the other hand, are likely to pick the first thing they see at the first shop. Coming back to my story, my husband, soon as he realised I had no plans to actually buy anything, wanted to get out of the shop as quickly as possible. He finds it "embarrassing" to look around a shop without buying anything whereas I find it perfectly natural to reco the market before buying what I want. That day was a revelation to both of us -- we learned a few things about each other that were hitherto hidden. (Those who plan to get married should go on a shopping binge with their intended life partners before making the final commitment. :) They may yet discover a few secrets. ) My husband, like most men, needs to justify every action, even something as trivial as shopping. So if he goes to a store, he has to buy something to show there's a reason why he went to the store in the first place and why the trip isn't a waste. Women thankfully don't need to justify anything. We rounded off our sojourn with a stop at Kidskemp. One persistent saleswoman there kept trailing us all over the place, showing off their various collections. I would have much preferred to look around on our own but, out of sheer courtesy, we let her guide us. It was then I realised how easy it is to browbeat a guy into buying something totally useless. No wonder women are able to sell everything from cars to shaving cream! So this time it was I who hastily dragged my husband out of the store. P.S. Have you ever wondered why in a store having a sale the one thing you want is either not on sale or is selling at the lowest possible discount? so, what's the lesson.... don't ever go shopping with urs lady love if u don't feel embarrased in not buying....... (on a private not i will agree that yes some times we buy something utterly useless) My Site|W|P|112367332536871048|W|P|Shopping with Hubby|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com-->

Google Spawns Googlettes

As is often the case with Google, the first hint of a major new development was a quiet announcement on its site -- in this case, the jobs section. The ad for Director of Product Management, Googlette, leads immediately to the question -- what the hell is a Googlette?

According to the ad, a Googlette is "a start-up within a start-up" and that there will be "a wide array of them". The Director of Product Management will "define Google's innovation engine and grow the leaders of our next generation of businesses."

In an absence of any press release or comment (as yet) from Google, here's what I surmise:

  • This venture – rather, these ventures – have grown directly out of "Google labs", which has spawned many new, exciting ideas. Google wants to manage some of these innovations as separate projects, recognising they may require as much nurturing as Google itself did when starting out four or five years ago.
  • This is Google sticking to New Economy-style thinking, which so many companies rushed to emulate in the late 1990s, then quickly abandoned after the dot-com meltdown. Not Google, which understands that its toughest competition in the future may come from within its own offices.

    Thus, instead of trying to quash or control emerging ideas and/or personalities, Google encourages them. It offers to create a support network for potential leaders, in exchange for loyalty and an ongoing network relationship. Thus, Google's vision's of the future is one where it is the "queen bee", with many satellite companies hovering around it, at once feeding it and gaining support from it.

  • Google is reacting to external competition, which is fast toughening. Witness the recent frenzy of mergers and acquisitions in internet search and advertising. Even Bill Gates is developing a search engine designed to rival Google's. Realising that the best form of defence is attack, Google's strategy is to start working on the next generation of technologies to change the web landscape.
|W|P|112488588111994705|W|P||W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com1/23/2006 12:55:00 am|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|Hey this blog is not about

I have been doing hours of research on "Aero Bed" and it brought me to your blog on this post. Anyways, Shwetank Shekhar I was reading your blog and I think it is really cool. It’s really a pleasure reading your posts! Keep up the great work.

Keep blogging away :-)1/23/2006 11:38:00 am|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you!
I have a Bath. site/blog. It pretty much covers Bath. related stuff.
Come and check it out if you get time :-)8/16/2005 05:43:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Sometimes every one (oops) most of one go through the goosebumps on the first crush ..... i liked the blog very much.It hursts when you long for someone very deeply and u see that u can do nothing about it.Sometimes it is better not to think of the consequences and follow urs heart.But then sometimes it's not.This is the main theme of the following blog: http://blogs.sify.com/blog_display.php?blogid=1179&pid=3515 Tenth Standard CrushThursday, December, 16th, 2004 Crushes do require courage! Hmmm...Studying in a boy’s school had its own share of merits and demerits. I never tried to reason out them. But if there was a time, when I certainly missed out on girls then it was at my tenth standard. I was tenth standard, when I first joined a tuition class. The tuition center was really far and I had to travel an hour by bus to reach there. I had never previously spoken to girls other than people whom I knew from childhood. The first day of my tuition class was when I met Rajalakshmi. Her friends always used to call her Rajee and I always pleaded with myself to stop looking at her. I was not a bright guy at class and I was really worried as to how she looked upon me. I chit chattered with all the other guys whenever she was not around. But when she was there, I used to portray myself as a sweet silent guy. She used to speak to all the other guys in the class, except me. I decided to open up to my friend about my crush. He was surprised too. Finally after a lot of thought, I decided to approach her. That day, I went to the class well ahead of time and waited for her. When she came, there were around 5 guys in the room. So I decided against approaching her then. She then left to the room next by, to find her test book. I followed her. My legs were shaking and my hands were cold. As I was walking, I tried to recollect what I had planned to tell her. I put my hand in my pocket and tried to search for the piece of paper over which I had written my dialogue. As I neared her, my heart started to pound faster. I could hear it too. Suddenly she turned and saw me. I almost fumbled with the book in my hand. I cleverly covered my nervousness. I went to the book shelf at the other end of the room. Now I was sweating. Phew...!! After a few minutes, I mustered some more courage and turned around. Booo.. She had left the place. 'What a bulb' I told myself. I left the room and entered the study hall only to find three things. First, our tutor had come and so no more chance of talking to her. Second, my place had gone and so I had to go back and sit. Third, I could only sit in the last row, from which, all my chances of even watching her were lost. BOOO... 'My fate', I thought to myself. Next day, my friend started to tease me. "You don’t have the courage to even face a girl? How are you going to propose to her?" "That’s enough", I said. I knew he made sense, but my ego was at stake. So that day I told myself, "today I am really gonna speak to her". I remained cool for the other half in my school. When it was one hour before the class, as expected, I started to get nervous. I went there a bit earlier than the day before. This time to my surprise, she was there in the class, sitting and reading something. I landed myself in the bench adjacent to her. For the first few minutes, I didn’t dare to turn and see her. Then again, I mustered myself up. I turned and then walked to her straight. This is it, I thought. I was just a few feet away from her. My head was rotating and all the other external crush-phobia symptoms were also there. I thought I was gonna break down for a second. And then I was caught off-guard. She turned to me and held out a book. I saw the book and realized it was my test book. "Damn, how did she get my test book???” I saw on the table the pile of all the other test books and immediately realized that our tutor had asked her to hand it over. "GEEE... " I quietly took the book, went back and sat. "How much did you get?" I turned and saw that she was not only speaking to me but also standing a few feet away from me. I was speechless. "Me?", I gulped and asked. "Ya", she said. It was then that I realized that I never even opened my book to see how much I had scored. I opened and saw. Oops! It was thirty five out of hundred. I decided to maintain some image and told her "Seventy five". Hey eyes widened. "Wow", she said. "I got only sixty. I think you must've got the third sum correct. Can I just see your book?" I was trapped. I swallowed hard. I opened my book, pretended to see it and then told her that I had got it wrong as well. I feared she might still persist to see my book. But she didn’t. I heaved a sigh. "I am not sure how my father will react to this mark. I am scared", she said. "I don’t even tell my father such marks", I thought of telling her. I just remained quiet. "Speak to her", I could even imagine my friend telling this to me. But somehow words would not come out. "Tell me something na. It’s going to be another 40 minutes for the class to begin", she said. "Something? How much do I tell honey?” I thought to myself. I was sweating. I remained mute. "You appear to be a very quite guy? I see that you don’t talk much in the class. Why?" I thought I should smile at her and did so. "Ok" "enough" "Stop it" "Your blushing too much", something inner kept telling me all these things. That was it. She stood up and walked away outside. I kicked myself for not having spoken to her. "You didn’t speak to her? Your nuts", my friend told me the next day after I had told him everything. "I know", I told him. "Hey, don’t feel bad man. It happens the first time. Just think her as anybody else. Just go and speak to her casually today. I am sure she'll respond", he told me. I thought about it and realized the truth behind it. Alas, it then reigned into me that an opportunity lost is like spilt milk. For the next seven days, I was not able to speak to her. I repented my missed chance. Weeks later, as I was sitting quietly inside my tuition hall, she came in. By that time, I had almost lost all hope of speaking to her again and proposing to her. She came over to me and asked, "How much did you get in the last test?” I chuckled. I did not know. I never had the habit of even knowing how much I scored in tests. I opened my mouth to tell a mark of around 'eighty'. "I got 78 and you know what I am the highest", she said. Phew, I just couldn’t imagine myself getting into another tight corner. I told her that I did not attend the last test. "My dad was very happy", she said gleaming. I congratulated her. I understood that bubbliest in her character and I felt that, that was what which had attracted me to her. She kept on speaking for some more time. And I too, to my own surprise, started to speak as well. In between, I used to wonder, "What happened to you man? That’s great. Keep it going". The next day, my friend could not believe what I had told him. I guess he got a little bit jealous and dared me to propose to her. I told him I'll do that the very same day. It was only after sometime, I realized the depth of the challenge. I was really scared. I wrote down whatever I had to say. I memorized it more times than my history book's dates. That day, I went over to her. She turned and smiled. Before I could speak, she again opened up by asking me my marks in the last exam. "Man, doesn’t she know anything else?” I wondered. I spoke about studies and I returned back without saying a word about anything else. The next day my friend was back teasing me. This time, he crossed his limits. I was angry and told him that I will definitely propose to her that day. The day after that, my friend eagerly came over to me and asked me what had happened. I told him the same thing had repeated itself. He started to laugh. However, he did not say anything. I remained silent the whole day. I felt bad that my friend’s words were true. I had done so many things in life up to that day, but nothing could ever give me the courage to propose to a girl, I thought. My friend understood that I was disappointed. He came over to me and told me that he would accompany me to the tuition class that day, but he refrained from accompanying me when I was to go and talk to rajee. I agreed upon. I thought that my friend would give me some tips on approaching her. He did so and it did really work. I went to tuition that day in a more relaxed manner. In fact, I did not even write down my dialogues. I thought I am just gonna go there and speak out my mind. We reached an hour early. She had not come then. 10 Minutes had passed. I started to think. 20 minutes had passed, I started to get nervous. My friend started to cool me down. 30 minutes had passed. I almost felt like breaking down. "I'm never gonna do it", I thought to myself. My friend calmed me down. Fifty minutes had passed by that time and everyone had come to class. My friend decided to leave. I felt lot uncomfortable after he left. The class started. "She's on leave", I told myself disappointed. "I'm gonna find why she's on leave today", I told myself. After the class got over, I went over to my tutor. I asked him about rajee, casually telling him that she had my test book with her. My tutor gave a dead look at me. "Did he know of anything?” I wondered. "Why did you give your book to her?” he asked. "She wanted to see it" "I don’t know what to say", he said. "Why, what's wrong?” I asked him. "Her father called up today to tell that she will not be coming to tuition anymore. I don’t know how you’re going to get back your book. ??? " !@#$%^&* It had been two days after that. I had told my friend all about it. Both of us were sitting on top of the wall by the side of our school. The thought still hadn’t sunk into me. My friend had a hearty laugh when I had told him. But he did not say anything now. I felt lost. When I had all the time in the world, my instincts ruined my chances. And finally when I had decided to nail the coffin, the nail went missing. My friend read my disappointment. "Cool it man. If she had to be your Mrs., she would have never missed you", he said. Nice words indeed to heal a bruised or rather CRUSHED sentiment. So Crush crushes shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com|W|P|112419704891252200|W|P|Crush crushes da-iict|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com4/21/2008 09:02:00 pm|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|How spontaneous! How impromptu! How realistic!8/13/2005 10:19:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Its the categories in which we can divide the students.............. It was written about the mumbai engineering DUDS.....but be pretty much assured that any enginerites fits the BILL. http://o3.indiatimes.com/blah_blah_blah

hi guys

just got over with my “submissions” for this semester. god what a relief!! its like givin ur last exam paper. u think im kiddin, ask any mumbai engg student bout it.

engg student life truly roxxx. of course lotsa ppl tend to think that u find only nerds or geeks in engg. but thats like sayin all the movies made in bollywood are superhits. (that btw is a lousy statement). life as an engg student can be as u want it to be. tough as well as smooth.

some ppl tend to take the high road and study frm day one of a fresh semester like theres no tomorrow. they'll occupy first benches. and they have many “doubts“ while the lectures goin on. they will leave no stone unturned to be real goody good in the eyes of our “estemeed“ (haha) profs. these few ppl r truly in the geek category. ironic as it may sound, but most of these so-called "geeks“ dont boast of a very good result. some even get KTs.

then u have “the politically correct“ crowd, who attend lectures regularly. take down notes. do all their practicals sincerely. they arent exactly geeks but they r one level below them. these ppl never create havocs in classrooms but are part of fun (if there is any joke cracked or leg pulled)and can be said to be the model students of the college. and they have good results also.

then u have the “the LLBs“. chill these arent law school graduates but Lords of Last Benches. sittin on the last benches is their birthright and no one dare occupy their seats. LLBs r the “jaan“ of the otherwise boring classrooms where profs are goin on and on bout god knows what! thay call it teaching. duh!

last benches r platforms where ppl discuss everything under the sun except wots bein taught in the classroom. here everything frm bar girls controversy to britney spears pregnancy reports r discussed. if the profs too strict and theres no scope for havin talks, then we pretend to play it sufi, prof thinks last benchers have calmed down but thats their mistake. cos it takes only one joke to convert our class into a joggers parks' laughter club. sometimes we even have meetings with LLBs of other classrooms to come up with innovative ways of sittin throughout those one hour “torture“ lecs.

everything said and done, when the going gets tough, the tough gets goin. resultwise last benchers rock, sometimes they get better marks than the previous two counterparts. of course some also get kts, some even get year drops! but then thats a part and parcel of engg life. wot say?

so thats bout the categories of engg students in a nutshell. will try to throw light on some more engg students trivia some other time. theres lots ppl. theres first year (FE) dilemmas, then second year(SE) vivas and practical exams, then third year(TE) seminars and presentations and job interviews and finally final year(BE) projects and lookin back!!! theres lots to discuss.

an addition frm a fellow blogger GAURAV RAJE.

Sumdi mein komdi category. These ppl pretend to be full fledged llbs. But then after college is over, they hit the books straight away. These end up getting amazing marks. Some are extraordinarily brilliant ppl who dont even need to study much.

Dumb ppl category. These are neither studious nor funnmy. They are plain dumb. They normally sit in the middle of the class. They are the least noticed ppl and usually get away without even getting noticed. Some ppl mistake them for the front benchers.

Despo bhooka category. These are desperate ppl. They try to woo any girl in sight. They dont care how she looks or how she is. Just the fact that she is a girl is enuf for them. Though there is absolutely no beauty in engineering, these guys try to act like a shadow for the hideously ugly girls.

Dedh shahana public category. These are smartasses who try to disturb the entire class by acting like smartasses. They act like know-it-alls. Though they donot know a thing. They usually raisse stupid doubts when the profs are teaching and give vague answers when the profs ask questions. They feel dat they are the most intelligent ppl. they give excuses for failing.

keep rockin

ciao!

FAQS: 1..........ATKT. it means "allowed to keep terms". see wot happens is that we have 2 semesters per year and around 5-6 subjects per sem. so in the exam if a student fails in a subject or two, then he's allowed to sit for the next semester. he dosent get a year drop. does that clear ur doubt recca? 2..........LLBs. Lords of Last Benches 3..........FE first year 4..........SE second year 5..........TE Third year 6..........BE Final Year(B-Tech) I wanted to give persona example in each of the categories ..but i don't know why i stopped doing it..maybe it's only temporarily. Next time i wish to bring the categories of the professors...... i assure you that this time it will be full of the examples|W|P|112395506304241412|W|P|Engineering Colleges Students........CATEGORY|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/13/2005 10:05:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P|

school farewell day revisited!

the blog below just made me go back to my sweet/bitter childhood memory.

theblog can be found out at:http://o3.indiatimes.com/blah_blah_blah/ Indeed, the present is so tense and the past seems oh so perfect. Sometimes you just dont want to move on, sometimes you just dont want to let go of time. How we wish we could turn back time. If only. But Life they say is a one way journey. So be it. Living it and Loving it. Do we have a choice?

When I was a small child I always used to wonder, “When the hell am I going to grow up? Being a grown up is so cool. No more tension of completing the homework, no more learning those awful math tables, no more worrying about the verbs and nouns and tenses, no more being afraid of mam and the house master.”

Then came the final year of school. Now the thinking had changed a bit. “Yess! Just one more year. One more year of this jail called school. One more year of homeworks, nagging teachers, stupid project work. Then college. Freedom. Girls. New clothes everyday. Yippee!!”

Finally the school days were coming to an end. Then came the School Farewell Dinner Party. Officially the Last Day of school. The day me and all my friends were waiting for.

Why then were my eyes moist?

Why then was I feeling as if this year had passed through pretty fast?

Why then was I feeling so sad?

Why o Why??

Was it just me feeling that way?

I took a look around, and hey presto, all my classmates had misty eyes.

Wasnt this the moment we all were looking forward too?

Why then was I not ready for this now?

Why then did it seem like I was loosing a very near and dear one?

Why o Why???

Who was going to applaud my English Essays now?

Who was going to feel proud of my History marks now?

Who was going to laugh at my Geography locations now?

Who was going to correct my kanas and matras in Hindi now?

Who was going to shout the living daylights out of me for not completing my homework now?

Who was going to ask me to write “i wont talk and create nuisance in class when the teacher is teaching” a thousand times now?

Who was going to tell me to run three full rounds of the school ground now?

Who was going to call me “Bony” now?

Who was going to play “pen-fight, book-cricket, seed-chess” withe me now?

Who was I going to share the fruitjam biscuits in the breaks now?

Who was going to CARE for me now?

With these questions, a few tears, a choked throat and lots of photos locked in my camera, i bid adieu to my alma mater, my school, my life! All through school life we want to get out of school but on the last day at school, our feet are glued to the place. If this isnt irony, then what is? That chapter in my life is over. Life goes on, each day a new page. But whenever I pass my school those days come flooding back and just looking at my school I am filled with a feeling of pride that is second to none.

School Days are the land of lost content, I see them shining plain, the happy highway where i once went and cannot come again!

Ciao

i to had this thing in my mind at that time. till date i haven't met those few of my friends.. at that time we didn't had the NET facilities.|W|P|112395353522882070|W|P|Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect! ~Owens Lee Pomeroy|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/13/2005 09:28:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Today i came through a beautiful blog titled 80-20 rule. yeah it Instantly striked my sesnses that it's how true....... But we have rarely stopped enough to reflect it ourself. things which are as simple often escape ours attention.But it's the most fundamental of the rule...and we should reflect upon it to do the optimization. Optimization is everywhere, In computer science we study optimization, data-mining and all sort of algorithm to arrive at some simple and pure statistics which can atleast satisfy the 80% of the conditions. the beautiful blog camn be found out at: http://o3.indiatimes.com/thoughtsforlife/archive/2005/01/28/60902.aspx The same is produced here..............................................................................................

The 80-20 Rule.

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was an Italian economist who, in 1906,observed that twenty percent of the Italian people owned eighty percent of their country's accumulated wealth. Over time and through application in a variety of environments, this analytic has come to be called Pareto's Principle, the 80-20 Rule, and the "Vital Few and Trivial Many Rule."

Pareto's rule states that a small number of causes is responsible for a large percentage of the effect, in a ratio of about 20:80. Expressed in a management context, 20% of a person's effort generates 80% of the person's results. The corollary to this is that 20% of one's results absorb 80% of one's resources or efforts. For the effective use of resources, the manager's challenge is to distinguish the right 20% from the trivial many.

Examples of the 80-20 Rule:

80% of a problem can be solved by identifying the correct 20% of the issues 80% of advertising results come from 20% of your campaign. 80% of an equipment budget comes from 20% of the items 80% of an instructor's time is taken up by 20% of the students 80% of benefit comes from the first 20% of effort 80% of customer complains are about the same 20% of your projects, products, services. 80% of our personal telephone calls are to 20% of the people in our address book 80% of the decisions made in meetings come from 20% of the meeting time 80% of the outfits we wear come from 20% of the clothes in our closets and drawers 80% of the traffic in town travels over 20% of the roads 80% of what we produce is generated during 20% of our working hours 80% of your annual sales come from 20% of your sales force 80% of your future business comes from 20% of your customers 80% of your growth comes from 20% of your products 80% of your innovation comes from 20% of your employees or customers 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers 80% of your staff headaches come from 20% of our employees 80% of your success comes from 20% of your efforts 80% of your website traffic comes from 20% of your pages

Hmm.....well I think theres' a good new for us all... 80% of success is achieved from 20% of our efforts......... I guess we all need to sit and think wots that 20% :)

On an afterthought one can think that we should look for that 20% of the things. but as it can be rightly said that for identifying that 20% of the product,effort....whatever.... we will have to spend 80% of the same thing. so total thing becomes constant at 100% ......... this fact can be stated from another famous saying my one of the greastes physicists of the time that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed but can be changed from one form to another.that is total energy is constant.In the same way total work is constant for the total results, it's just that one acheives first 80% of the output earlier than the other ones Applying the same rule as above we can say that the efforts for a particular thing can never be 20,30....90%. It has to be 100% for that particular thing.It is just that one has to 100%.... in others word it is that for that 80%of the work to be shown u have to give 100% of the effort. the 80% of the work can't be shown independently. for that thing to be called complete you have to complete that 20% of the work with 80% of the effort.It's just complimentary in nature.You cannot isolate the TWO. Shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com/Photo |W|P|112395253562165491|W|P|The 80-20 Rule.|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/12/2005 12:01:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| I liked the way Anant brought home the idea of ...... of how he couldn't leave his bed which, initially he thought was going to challenge his Autjority of the household The following posts can be viewed at http://o3.indiatimes.com/anant_rulz The Bed It was just a bed. A four-post wooden bed. Two days before my marriage, as I came back from office, I saw these two carpenters busy in assembling this bed. It was a teak wood bed, ornate, with small mirrors and quite big in size. It had displaced everything in my room, including my single bed and it seemed that the bed was waiting to swallow the whole room. The carpenters, while assembling it explained to me that they had taken 3 months to make this bed, with all that carving and making the bed suitable for ‘Bitiya Rani’ and her things in the those built-in boxes underneath. Bitiya Rani! And what about me, I couldn’t dare ask? I wanted to peep inside the boxes to see if anything was hidden there but they were empty. As I came out of the room, my mother gave me that meaningful and amused kind of smile. I knew that my dear father-in-law had not sent a bed but a Trojan horse into my room, our house, my life, and my existence. I knew it. Through this piece of dead wood, he plans to send his dear daughter into my bedroom, our house and slowly take kabja over the whole place. Our lives. I know these girls; they all do this kind of tricks. Just like the camel and the tent- first the head, then the neck and then the whole body. Oongli pakad ke pahuncha pakad leti hain yeh ladkiyan. No way! I won’t let her usurp my authority and my exclusive domain. I wondered if this decision to get married was correct or not; looking from the way things were shaping, I didn’t think so. The bed had occupied the prime real estate in the house and certainly in my bedroom. I didn’t sleep in it that night. As I slept in the other room, I dreamt of the bed changing into an alien spreading its four tentacles slowly but surely all over my house. The mattress was delivered the next day and with mom’s red bedcover over it, it surely looked a lot less menacing, but still like a Chinese dragon; a red fire-spewing dragon with expansionist designs. A day later, the bed changed itself into a shaadi-ka-storehouse with all those guest occupying every inch of our house, including my room. Cellophane-wrapped wedding presents with some carrying the Christmas design or a Happy Birthday written on them, hold-alls waiting to burst, attaché cases with cloth cover on them, milk bottles with infants attached to them, sarees in various stages of packing/unpacking, shagun-ka-samaan with Satiya inscribed in red geroo, laddoo boxes with miniature Ganesh statuette on them, empty jewellary boxes with their silken undergarments, Raymond suit pieces with names written with a sketch pen, fruits waiting to rot, gifts exclusively meant for passing them on- I was jealous that the bed had so brazenly assumed such an important and an all-encompassing status overnight. In our house. And made a place so quickly for itself in our lives like a jinn out from his bottle in the form of a new boy-servant. ‘Hukum, mere aaka’, it seemed to say. And without my explicit permission. How dare it! I hated the bed. After two night, the bed changed into a bookshelf. On top of it, I found a silk, gold and diamond studded book, surrounded by motiya, red roses and hand-plucked petals. I was pushed in my room by my sisters and bhabhi. Not even mandatory and filmy ‘Devarji, jaldi nahi karna’. Just go! The room smelled of mithai, fruits and flowers. I looked at the book. What is this book all about? These two are in conspiracy- the bookshelf of a bed and the book. I was too tired, mentally empty and had no desire or patience to read this book. Any book. I just wanted to sleep. Still, I was mesmerized by its smell, the newness of the book, which reminded of those we used to buy in summer for our next class and keep near our bedside till the schools opened; or, like the smell of that new car, straight from the showroom. I hesitatingly removed the silk cover, open the book hurriedly with a boyish curiosity, unstuck some chipke-huey pages. I just wanted to read the book and reach to the end as quickly as possible, to know what is written on that last page and to unload my excitement. It was a small book with two pages only- the first and the last. The first page was entitled welcome and the on last page was written, come again. I kept the book in my arms and slept. The bed watched us silently. Some days passed, or was it months, I don’t know. The bed became an explorator’s dream, an archaeologist’s temptation. It beckoned me to find out the mysteries of those hillocks, rivulets, ravines and the springs that smell of life. The bed had changed into a valley of flowers, a thin mountain spring that emanates and confronts us suddenly on the hair-pin bend of the road and when you stop to taste its life-sustaining water, it continues to flow with a gurgle, totally unmindful of your presence, into the deep crevices in those perennial bushes below. Sometimes, the mirrors in the bed would reflect those dancing figurines from Khajuraho, trying to please kaamdev. The bed became a chameleon- changing its appearance with the change of seasons, woolen blankets, mosquito nets and chenille coverings. I could see a small sapling trying to break the wooden ground of the bed. Was it love? Before I could even explore fully to my boyish delight, our two incomplete halves became one to create another one. Suddenly, she was occupying the space between two of us and yet, by some mysterious alchemy, some sorcerer’s magic, some out-of-syllabus law of chemistry that I had skipped in my school, she was joining us like the co-valent bond; she was the O between the our two H. H-O-H. The bed had changed itself into a nursery where, most of the time, she would find that space right between our two hearts, now ‘idling’ in unison like some All India permit holder truck driver’s automobiles by the roadside dhaba. Every night, and on days too, the bed would remind us of that new life and we would be attracted to it like an helpless iron file to the magnet. Like some hungry insects to the life-light. Involuntarily. Hypnotically. Naturally. Almost like zombies in a trance. And then, we left the bed, but we somehow knew we would return to it. The bed remained in our hearts and when we came back to it, the bed had somehow expanded, anticipating the growing need to accommodate all four of us. The bed had now become a playground, a dining table, a kiddies wrestling arena, a toy box and our Fort Knox, where all our worldly wealth was right there itself in the form of those two. More than all the money and power on the earth. Making the decision to have children was to decide forever to have our hearts placed outside our bodies. And we didn’t even take that important decision consciously. It just happened and like beggars on Diwali night, we watched from a distance in awe, stared at God’s fireworks- with admiration, with jealousy and yet, with eternal gratefulness to Him. And suddenly, we were conjoined to them; they wake, we wake, they eat, we eat, they sleep, we sleep. The bed had become our prison and we, its willing and chained life-timers. At times, when kids were not well, the bed would become a bed-of-nails fit for an Indian yogi only and every moment would stretch itself into eternity. Our hearts in our mouths, prayers on our lips and tears in our eyes, we waited for that difficult moment to pass, the upheavals to subside. Or, when mom was in those last months. A drop of pin would wake us up and I would rush to find out if she needed anything, while the nurse slept. And, the bed will become Bhagwadgita and ask me to stop crying and be at peace with the laws of nature- that Atman was trying to changes its outer covering only. What comes must go and this too shall pass, it spoke like a sage. And, I would keep my weary head on the bed to wake up the next minute, fearing the worst. Is she breathing? Is she still there? What to do? The sand clock was emptying fast The bed watched us writhe in anguish, pain and helplessness like a mute spectator, offering no solutions, just solace. Maybe, the bed knew all the answers to all of my silly questions. But, I wasn’t even asking any. The bed had become the barometer of my emotions; I have fought many a battles and realized to my surprise that all those I won, I lost and those I lost- turned out to astonishing victories. As I shed my clothes, my vanity, my ego, my false pride, my worldly everything, and with my weary soul and body- defeated, punished, bruised and hurt, the bed became Tiger balm, that druid’s magic potion which not only cures but also provides sustenance to fight- for another day. I learnt never to bring anger or bitterness to this bed and to bury in it my small secrets and victories, written in passion. The bed has always been my box seat on which I have seen many a movies and laughed and shed tears while she sleeps peacefully, oblivious of naughty Sid’s inner turmoil, Gump’s innocent queries or even ET’s magical finger reaching to cure the human child’s hurt; It becomes a snack bar to satiate my sudden desire for munchies and coffee; a round-table for family meetings where we have discussed many an important issues of life; a card table where we cheated and played ‘kot-pees’ and ‘3-2-5’. I have traveled far and wide. Slept on expensive beds in 5-star hotels, air-conditioned coaches with complimentary sheets and blankets, standing or sitting in a general compartment’s bare wooden seats and much-scarce railway platform benches. But everywhere, I have yearned for peaceful sleep like that in my own bed. My slave bed, my pillow and my part of territory- my feudal instincts find peace in this very limited space of my bedroom. Here I can be me. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. These days, I sometimes find her looking into its innards of the bed for her past, knitted into small clothes and sweaters. There is a glint of future in her eyes, which she somehow wants to fit into this past. On seeing me, she packs her tears and her hopes with the naphthalene balls into those kiddy clothes. As I leave the sanctuary of this bed to explore and measure distances, I wonder if this is my ‘Do Gaz Zameen’ that Emperor Zafar so eloquently yearned for? Is it my casket where my bandaged mummy rests? Is it just a bed? Is it just a four-post wooden bed? http://shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com Presented to you by Shwetank shekhar http://shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com|W|P|112383042635504038|W|P|The Bed|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com1/21/2006 11:38:00 am|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|Hi Shwetank Shekhar, I read your post which I find interesting and very informative! I was also looking for related info which I found
Some at adjustable bed
It's not exactly what I was looking for but it was nonetheless interesting to read.8/11/2005 06:18:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P|
At some point of time we find that there is some time when we feel that everything goes wrong for us. that we feel that ........... why everytime it has to be me.......... "WHY ME??"
Below also some one is in trouble finding out why there in search for one's lady love he has to beat the dust every time why him................. or maybe why most of US
(the original can be found out at:http://yyyy123.rediffblogs.com/)
I asked myself Why ME???
There she was in my school!!
the most beautiful girl !!
and gosh she became my friend :-)
I asked myself Why ME???
the days were filled with fun and joy..
there was always a smile in my face :-)
and our freindship grew over the years..
i loved her every move..every word...
we spent times together!!!
we kept on talking for long hours!!
Suddenly from nowhere a new boy joined the classand she became frns with him...
soon she started ignoring me...
and our freindship came to end..
after so many years with her..
i couldnt feel any better...
life and smile were out of my face..
and one day she said she loved the other guy..
and my life was shaken !!!
I asked myself Why ME???
time passed on and things changed..
we went out of school and
i moved on to diff place !!!
I was in college now...
and there she was a beautiful girl!(Another beautiful girl)
we became frns the very first day!! :-)
I asked myself Why ME???
and smiles came back to my face!!we went together..
bunked classes together :-)
wow it has happend to me again...
there is some one finally who cares for meshe said she liked me!!!
and time went on..and we were in 3rd year..
and then another guy came along...
she befrinded him..and then time moved on...
and one day she said she loved the other guy!!!She left me and then ignored me..
she was busy with the other guy..and soon our friendship came to end
I asked myself Why ME???
time changed..
i moved on...
though with pain in heart..
to seek love and friendship and comapinonship..
to seek the sole mate of my life..
the one, god has made for me!!!
i kept on trying to console me..
that god has done this on purpose..
and i have a role to play...
and will meet my life partner some where..
i moved on ... changed places...
there i was in my First Job
and there she was a beutiful girl...(Another beautiful girl)
we became friends very instant!!!
I asked myself Why ME???
and we shared thoughts..
we went to every place together!!!
we moved with hand to hand every where..
we watched movies together..
ate food together!!
she said she liked me!!!
she said she wanted to be with me...
she said she loved melife has come back to me..
i have found my sole mate!!!
and one day she reveled...
she loved some one (NOT ME!!!)
she had loved some one lese frm her childhood..
and she wanted to marry him (NOT ME!!)
she left me...
saying i am sorry!!!
and she asked me to forget her : -( (which i cant ever)
and there i was heart broken...
I asked myself Why ME???
I had no choice but to move on!!!
With lot of pain in my heart!!
My mind has stopped thinking!!!
i was living myself again and againthen the thought came to me
GOD had some other plans for me!!!!
I moved on ..
changed places....
(had to change places)there i am in one of the most beautiful city!!!..
city of gardens...
city of light...
and i am still thinking of what happened in past.!!!
I asked myself Why ME???
I needed change !!! I needed break!!
I could nt tolerate it any more...
i couldnt enjoy the beauty of nature!!!
my life has changed ..changed again!! ..
changed again!!
I asked myself Why ME???
SO I moved on again to another place.....
another country!!!..
to meet another civilization!!!
BUT I KEPT ON ASKING
Why ME???
Why ME???
Why ME???
|W|P|112376820631744477|W|P|Why ME.....................???|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/11/2005 08:32:00 pm|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|इस टिप्पणी को एक ब्लॉग व्यवस्थापक द्वारा हटा दिया गया है.8/11/2005 05:30:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| this one is from ANANT IT goes as: MY FILMY BACHPAN Cinema is a very powerful medium. It not only provides us an escape from the humdrum of life, but also conditions us to understand the reality of the society we live in; it reflects and imitates society and life but at times, life imitates cinema itself. I have been watching cinema since my very childhood. And, like every one of you, the summer holidays were our favorite part of the year for doing all those innocent ‘badmaashi and khuraphaat’. In fact, my love for movies started in one of the summer holidays when I was 4-5 years. The earliest I remember is watching a movie called 'Jagriti'- it came to our colony (yes, that was what it was called- a cluster of govt. flats). I think it was a part of Information & Broadcasting Ministry’s way of making us Indian patriotic and they used to send this van for this. Every evening, the van will go from one colony to another and once they reached there, there was a loud roar from all of us kids. Some kids would even follow the van to see where it would finally stop. The news would spread around like wildfire and within no time, kids like me would be ready to watch the movie and fight for that first row seat- nearest to the screen. By 7 PM, they will put out a folding white 16 mm paper-screen and a noisy projector to boot and we children will sit on the ground and watch the movie and would be transcended to another world. The world of cinema. We laughed at cruel Asit Sen’s moving paunch while he slept and Mohan Choti’s antics and cried when hero’s mother came on the screen; every time, at the same spot. Without fail. And Masterji Abhi Bhattacharya's ‘Aao bachchon tumhe dikhayen jhanki Hindustaan ki’, 'De di humey azaadi bina khadag bina dhaal’, 'Chalo chalen maa, sapno ke gaaon mein’ and so many other songs I still remember with their tunes etched on my little heart. BTW, were those kind of Masterji in films only? I don't think so. I saw ‘Jagriti’ at least 12 times because it seems I & B Ministry had only one film and like Richard Attenborogh’s ‘Gandhi’, they would show this movie at any and every place and occasion. Year after year. Subsequently, in summer holidays itself, some private entrepreneur brought a larger cloth-screen and more than 7-8 movies were shown in a week. The local central park was covered with tents and every evening a new fare was for us. The ticket was 4 and 8 Annas for a ground seat- which was quite a lot, and we would try to get in free. Somehow; by going along with some auntyji, by sneaking in unseen, by giving some khota-sikka or some such trick. The gatekeeper would ask auntyji if the child was her’s and before she would reply, we would run and mill with the crowd inside. At times, we would lift the tent and get in free. Or, we would even sit outside and listen to the sound track till we would find an opportunity to get inside- free, of course. Even after the intermission. The year was 1960 and I was 4 years old- and don’t you start calculating my age! I think after that, I became a full-fledged cine-buff and I am still crazy about cinema. I have seen cinema at oddest places and Delhites, would you believe, where there is Bhikaji Cama Place now, there was a tent-wala cinema hall (hall?) called, Raj Talkies. (Talkies- can you believe this name?). Once again, it was a temporary tented cinema hall. The legs of the wooden chairs were tied to each other by sutlee-rope (to avoid people taking the chair away to a place near the screen) and in the noon show, one could see a million stars in the sky- yes, the tent had million holes and sunlight would come thru it. The ticket was 10 Annas to 1-1/4 Rupees. After the school, we would steal some money and use our pass valid for DTU- yes, it was called DTU and not DTC then- bus to see the movie The other cinema halls that we used to love- in fact 3 of them were - Race Course, Palam and Defence. Race Course being Air Force area and the cinema Hall was primarily for the entertainment of defence personnel; we civilians were allowed only to make the whole thing viable. So come noon show- first day, first show, we would be standing outside the gate with a burly Air Force Gateman stopping us, as the area is protected one. At 10 minutes to 3 PM, the gate would be opened and we the cine-buffs would race with our shoes or chappals in our hands for at least 500 meters till we reach the ticket window. And there was a lot of dhakkam-dhukka there. I saw many a movies sitting in the front row. The cinema hall is still working, though my wife prefers the PVRs for their superior air-conditioning, sound and projection. Palam was another one. It is still there, I suppose. There also, we had to wait for the gates to open and then as we used to stand in the line to get tickets, one man will come and put a stamp on our palms; you show the stamp and then only ONE ticket will be sold to you. As many people wanted more than one ticket for their friends also, outsiders would come and jostle in the line. But, look at the ingenuity of Indian brain- as soon as the stamp was put, one guy would put some spit on it and transfer the stamp on another guy from outside the queue. Ab toh ticket dena hi padega! Many a days, we would walk into racecourse where races were held quite regularly. We could see from a distance, all those film stars and beautiful and decked up women. When cricket season was on- we used to get the glimpse of cricketers like Pataudi and Nariman Contractor- of course, in those days, for entertainment, Pataudi used to play cricket instead of killing blackbucks. We would go and take their autographs. And throw the papers away later for fear of being caught by gharwalas. And yes, polo was also our favorite. We used to see Maharaja of Jaipur and Maharani Gayatri Devi and many a famous personalities we couldn’t even recognize, chukkar after chukkar. Those magnificent horses and those elegant horse-riders. It was really awesome, as the X-Gen says it now. In the night, we would put our charpoys outside in the ‘ground’ and enjoy the long meetings with our friends. In the worst days of summer, we would sprinkle some water on the bed/durries and by the time we used to come back to sleep- the bed was cool as a cucumber. No fridge, no a/c- only ice block from the nearby paan-wala for making sharbat and lassi. My father used to smoke ‘Panama’ cigarettes and many a times, while bringing the pack of ciggies, I would put one in my mouth and try to bring out those imaginary ‘chchallas’ (Rings) that only Pran could do with effortless ease. And how we loved to hate him! Next day morning, we would get up by 4.30 AM and go for walks and games to Lodi Garden. Lodi Garden was a heaven for us kids- unlike what it is now for lovers- and we have played a lot of chchupan-chchupaai, kho, and langdi-taang there. The ubiquitous signs like sonu-loves-monu were there even then and all those hearts with a piercing arrow etched on the top of the tombs were visible even from a distance to the lovers. I think we Indians have learnt to declare our love by defacing our historic legacy from our childhood itself and ‘Kilroy was here’ is a just copycat. Two months of summer holidays would finish in a blink and predictably, in the last few days, we would try to find someone from whom we would 'copy’ our homework. And predictably, the teacher would ask on the first day itself, contrary to our wishes, to deposit the homework copies, and predictably, I would end up saying ki ‘Sirji, meri kaapi meri chchoti bahan ne phaad di’ And predictably, I was made to stand on the bench for the whole period. And equally predictably, in the next one too. That was also the start of my introduction to Hollywood; the first three movies I saw were ‘Ben-Hur’, ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Guns of Navrrone’. I didn’t understand a single word of what they were saying but the chariot race between Charlton Heston and ganja Yul Brynner and the parting of (Red) sea are still fresh in my memory. This continued till one day, my father, who didn't even know in which class I was studying, predicted to my mother the profession I will most probably take up in my life- no, you can’t even guess it- selling chchole by the roadside! (not Sholay, stupid!). ‘Padta-likhta toh hai nahi. Bada hokar saala chchole hi bechega sadak par’ were his exact words of Bhavishyavaani. To prove him right, that day itself, I went with my friend and saw ‘Phir Wohi Dil Laaya Hoon’. Again. Joy Mukherjee and Ash Parekh and O P Nayyar’s music ‘Banda Parvar Thaam Lo Jigar’ ‘Aanchal Mein Saja Lena Kaliyaan’ transported me to another world, that I can never forget. That day, when I reached home, my father did what all Indian parents believe to be the God-ordained duty and divine rights bestowed upon them- you guessed it right this time- he beat me Black & Blue. That definitely was the end of Black & White movie era. At least for me. You see, I had a filmy bachpan. Filmy, very filmy. INDEED|W|P|112376371113198256|W|P|Authors Filmy bachpan|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/10/2005 05:06:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| I am a gr8 NET SURFER.... May be the reason being that i am having a free Net on my college room. but then don't think that i surf anything to everything. my favorite being the Indian news sites and all other reading suff. Being voracious reader i used to read all the news sites and other related material in COUPLE OF HOURS. So what to do in spare time...(i dont like mail and emails on which some of my friends spend good time.). During this dilemma some one said that why not search the brides for our friends........... after many bakars we started searching the sites for ours room -mates(Don't beleive that we were looking for good ones for ours pals..) During these time it came to me an idea why not seriously go through all these profiles and "Time Katto". Indeed it was a good time pass...... there were many profiles that aroused my curiosity and will BLOG on them some time Later. Right now many of my pals have got the habit of "ORKUTTING"(orkut.com). i also find it good....Anything that GOOGLE does has to be interesting(On a second thought what would the MARRIAGE SEARCH would look like through Google search. Will thery be able to stop the Spams.....i think that they would atleast do a better job than the rest of them.(see what they have done to mail system...... Giving a whopping 1GB at a time when others were giving 2-4 MBs. Okay i have gone too far now below is the post because of which all these bables started.. Sham marriage sites: you can see the blogger at : http://o3.indiatimes.com/MarriageBeuro/ My experience with New Age Arrange Marriage ”Hrishi you are 27 now, you should get married now...” My Mom.... Said worriedly ... For her son like me who is done with Engineering and MS in US with lots of M in dollars.. still unmarried was surprise... though I was little hesitant... I had have had few dates to whom I was looking after in my early 20's .. now all of these gals got married , and started thire families.. So I had no option but to enter into arrange marriage 'market'. Here your value is more into your cast and salary... I was hesitant to go with traditional marriage beuro's.... So i opt out for Shaadi.com and Jeevansathi.com... Fortunately my mom enrolled my name into one of the leading local marriage beuro's Anuroop Wiwaha Sanstha in Pune ( www.anuroopwiwaha.com) I Started looking after gals online thru shaadi/jeevansathi.... My experience was pathetic... I recieved close to 200 praposals thru these means.. 60 % of them were fake.... They charged hefty 2750 rs.... We had no time to look at those 200 praposals... So I decided to search on my own.... I found few gals with my matching criteria .... later I realized all these paposals were fake..... My advice dnt go for shaadi.com.... its all fake.. they will just screw u up with ur money.. Fortunately Anuroop Wiwaha lend me heling hand, they organized pre-marrital councelling sessions.. Also Mr. Mahendra Kanitkar, Director Anuroop gave some good practical tips... In few weeks I recieved 11 praposals... all are decent educated cultured girls... 2 months I reached my destination, again Anuroop helped us with thire quick service... Now I am happily married with my beautiful, cultured and understanding wife Anuradha... Just for advice.... dnt jump into marriage market.... make sure u recieve “true praposals“ and not fake one ( these matrimony portals will give u 90 % fake data) Happy match,mate finding....... PS: i see many sites advertising that they have made so many perfect marriages. anybody knows them personally.Also i couldn't understand whay the Shaddi.com people were asking for money.............. My SITE|W|P|112367711383462084|W|P|I Always thought that marriage sites are a BIG SHAM|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/10/2005 04:52:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Below is the rumblings of an Adult who sees his childhood through the eyes of her 2 year Daughter I personally dont have experience (i have no child and am unmarried and an Indian).but i think that every one one day or the other goes through the emotions. i think that i have seen may people LIKE THAT. YOU CAN VIEW THE BLOGGER AT http://o3.indiatimes.com/I_Me_Myself Last night, I was watching my two-year old daughter trying a karaoke - to sing along (she is too young to talk) with the TV. That was an interesting sight. She was trying her best to beat that female vocal (I'm sure she will do that one day). Then the promo changed to some other movie and she was not interested. So she turned back, and saw me smiling. She gave back a big smile and trotted away to her mother in the kitchen. Time flies... I remember my childhood days when I was very much impressed by - who else - Amitabh. And that song 'Ek Raasta Hai Zindagi...' from Kaala Patthar (shot on Shashi Kapoor, not Amitabh) was my favorite. I used to be the centre of attraction while singing that song. Soon thereafter, came the 'Laila O Laila' from Qurbani, and that won me the third prize in singing competition in my school. I still remember the picture book I got as my prize, though I tore off the book in the next few days. That way way back in 1980-81 and I was probably in my first standard. Then I went to second standard and dad got transferred to Visakhapatnam. New school, and I was the boss in my class (also a bully, I must admit). Anybody who dared to disobey me was done for. Since my school had classes only upto third standard, I was one of the seniors (imagine!) and a darling of those teachers (yeah, those beauties were young and unmarried, but unfortunately too old for me - one of them was married and her kid was my junior). I was good at studies, or let's say, others were not very good. As a result, I stood first in everything that I participated - be it studies or games. Then there was a skit - Snowhite and the Seven Little Dwarfs - and I was the hunter who was assigned the job to kill Snowhite. Even if it were not a skit and even if they paid me a million dollars, I would never kill that beauty (I hope my wife does not read this). I would rather kill the woman (my teacher, that fatso) who gave me that role. Then I went to IV standard and changed my school. Now I was among my equals, but still a smart guy. I was one of the best, if not the best of the best. I had many admirers around me, and so some rival groups were formed. We used to have fistfights and anybody found alone separated from his gang used to face the warth of the rival gang. We lived the life as in the movies - perfect (only the ladies were missing and we longed for them). Then time passed and one day I found myself updating my knowledge of the Bollywood. I was perfect in this field, or at least I thought so. I was still in the school and destined to become a hero some day. But nothing much happened. Then I went through the school and finally through college. I knew everything (so I believed) about the movies, the glamour world, the new beauty in the college that would some day fall for me (she was our lecturer)... No, nothing is funny. I really believed in myself. If you laugh at me today, then you have probably forgotten your yesterday. Thereafter, it was the Chartered Accountancy course that took the better part of my youth. And one day, I was a CA. Then came the first job and the first salary. I was the king - on the top of the world. The richest man ever on the earth. I could buy that stereo, the walkman, those 'costly' cassettes which my pocket money never allowed, and what not. But when I looked back, I saw many unfinished agenda. How come I was a CA when I should have been a movie superstar? I had everything that takes to become that superstar (except for a Godfather who could make me the superstar; why, I once even thought of running away to Bombay - I had a relative who could do at least something for me...)! Why didn't that lass fall for me? How could she get married to another person that she didn't know (read “I didn't know”)? She should have talked to me, at least once. She never talked to me when we were in the college (never before and never thereafter). She could have asked for my phone number during the farewell. She could have taken some pains to get it from others... I don't even know her name till today. OK, let bygones be bygones. I'm happily married, have a family of my own. And no longer aspire to be a superstar (well, give me a chance and I can still become one). Why am I thinking of all this? Simple, because I think I was stupid to have such a thinking. I should have acted like a grown-up and should have rubbished all those ideas when they came in my mind. Like any other parent, I would never let my children make a fool of themselves. I'll take care that they behave like grown-ups, even if they are just two year olds. They should start early... NO! I won't do that! Back then, I really believed in all that I thought, though all that might seem stupid today. That was a part of my growing up. Those dreams were worth dreaming at that time, and I shall never be that innocent ever again in my life. Those are my sweet memories, stupid sweet memories. My children will go through all that on their own. They will go through the joy, the ecstasy, the heartbreak on their own and go through every emotion that life can give them. I'll always be available if they need me, but I won't ever interfere with their thoughts, their feelings. I might not make a good father, but at least I'll not be a bad father - a bully - for my children. Go ahead, my child. Sing along, for probably I'm too old to sing that song - Doom Hila Le Doom Hila Le Doom... Or is that Dhoom Macha Le... seems that he he not that young afterall Later on i will add more BAKARS On child life....... My Site|W|P|112367530952798049|W|P|Adult most of the times see their childhood in their Children|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/10/2005 04:12:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Well i may tell you that i am neither female nor married....... then surely the next logical question would be...... "toh phir title ka MATLAB" IT happens so that i came through a blog of a newly married lady. it's her musings. NOW WHY HAVE I ADDED THAT HERE........... for the simple reason that the lady gave her side of story and reading here can get the reason for wild (NOT)Shopping spree...... it can be found at the following link. http://o3.indiatimes.com/anu3001/ The Blogs Goes at Under Last week my husband and I went to M.G. Road. How we landed there is a different story altogether that I will narrate some other time. There were a lot of sales happening, this being August, and my sole purpose was to window shop, become familiar with the market, and kill some time, in that order. Accordingly, we entered a KSIC showroom. There were yards and yards of lovely silk sarees and, as any Indian lady would vouchsafe, it's a natural impulse to check out each saree in its six-yard splendour, feel its texture, and glance at the price tag. While I was still rapt in this magical silken world, hubby broke into my reverie with a "Do you want to buy this one?" I gave him a bewildered "Of course not!" look. Men!!! Just because a man admires a beautiful woman, it doesn't mean he's going to marry her. Similarly when a woman admires a dress in a store, it doesn't necessarily follow she's going to buy it. Most shopkeepers who are male cannot understand why a woman may sometimes admire a thousand dresses and yet not buy one and at other times may buy a dozen outfits off the rack without giving them a second glance. The truth is, apart from impulsive or compulsive shoppers, most women are smart enough to know what to buy and where. Many of them will rarely buy anything from a new shop the first time they visit it -- unless they are on a holiday. Women like to scout shops and compare their stuff for future buys. Men, on the other hand, are likely to pick the first thing they see at the first shop. Coming back to my story, my husband, soon as he realised I had no plans to actually buy anything, wanted to get out of the shop as quickly as possible. He finds it "embarrassing" to look around a shop without buying anything whereas I find it perfectly natural to reco the market before buying what I want. That day was a revelation to both of us -- we learned a few things about each other that were hitherto hidden. (Those who plan to get married should go on a shopping binge with their intended life partners before making the final commitment. :) They may yet discover a few secrets. ) My husband, like most men, needs to justify every action, even something as trivial as shopping. So if he goes to a store, he has to buy something to show there's a reason why he went to the store in the first place and why the trip isn't a waste. Women thankfully don't need to justify anything. We rounded off our sojourn with a stop at Kidskemp. One persistent saleswoman there kept trailing us all over the place, showing off their various collections. I would have much preferred to look around on our own but, out of sheer courtesy, we let her guide us. It was then I realised how easy it is to browbeat a guy into buying something totally useless. No wonder women are able to sell everything from cars to shaving cream! So this time it was I who hastily dragged my husband out of the store. P.S. Have you ever wondered why in a store having a sale the one thing you want is either not on sale or is selling at the lowest possible discount? so, what's the lesson.... don't ever go shopping with urs lady love if u don't feel embarrased in not buying....... (on a private not i will agree that yes some times we buy something utterly useless) My Site|W|P|112367332536871048|W|P|Shopping with Hubby|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com-->

Google Spawns Googlettes

As is often the case with Google, the first hint of a major new development was a quiet announcement on its site -- in this case, the jobs section. The ad for Director of Product Management, Googlette, leads immediately to the question -- what the hell is a Googlette?

According to the ad, a Googlette is "a start-up within a start-up" and that there will be "a wide array of them". The Director of Product Management will "define Google's innovation engine and grow the leaders of our next generation of businesses."

In an absence of any press release or comment (as yet) from Google, here's what I surmise:

  • This venture – rather, these ventures – have grown directly out of "Google labs", which has spawned many new, exciting ideas. Google wants to manage some of these innovations as separate projects, recognising they may require as much nurturing as Google itself did when starting out four or five years ago.
  • This is Google sticking to New Economy-style thinking, which so many companies rushed to emulate in the late 1990s, then quickly abandoned after the dot-com meltdown. Not Google, which understands that its toughest competition in the future may come from within its own offices.

    Thus, instead of trying to quash or control emerging ideas and/or personalities, Google encourages them. It offers to create a support network for potential leaders, in exchange for loyalty and an ongoing network relationship. Thus, Google's vision's of the future is one where it is the "queen bee", with many satellite companies hovering around it, at once feeding it and gaining support from it.

  • Google is reacting to external competition, which is fast toughening. Witness the recent frenzy of mergers and acquisitions in internet search and advertising. Even Bill Gates is developing a search engine designed to rival Google's. Realising that the best form of defence is attack, Google's strategy is to start working on the next generation of technologies to change the web landscape.
|W|P|112488588111994705|W|P||W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com1/23/2006 12:55:00 am|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|Hey this blog is not about

I have been doing hours of research on "Aero Bed" and it brought me to your blog on this post. Anyways, Shwetank Shekhar I was reading your blog and I think it is really cool. It’s really a pleasure reading your posts! Keep up the great work.

Keep blogging away :-)1/23/2006 11:38:00 am|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you!
I have a Bath. site/blog. It pretty much covers Bath. related stuff.
Come and check it out if you get time :-)8/16/2005 05:43:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Sometimes every one (oops) most of one go through the goosebumps on the first crush ..... i liked the blog very much.It hursts when you long for someone very deeply and u see that u can do nothing about it.Sometimes it is better not to think of the consequences and follow urs heart.But then sometimes it's not.This is the main theme of the following blog: http://blogs.sify.com/blog_display.php?blogid=1179&pid=3515 Tenth Standard CrushThursday, December, 16th, 2004 Crushes do require courage! Hmmm...Studying in a boy’s school had its own share of merits and demerits. I never tried to reason out them. But if there was a time, when I certainly missed out on girls then it was at my tenth standard. I was tenth standard, when I first joined a tuition class. The tuition center was really far and I had to travel an hour by bus to reach there. I had never previously spoken to girls other than people whom I knew from childhood. The first day of my tuition class was when I met Rajalakshmi. Her friends always used to call her Rajee and I always pleaded with myself to stop looking at her. I was not a bright guy at class and I was really worried as to how she looked upon me. I chit chattered with all the other guys whenever she was not around. But when she was there, I used to portray myself as a sweet silent guy. She used to speak to all the other guys in the class, except me. I decided to open up to my friend about my crush. He was surprised too. Finally after a lot of thought, I decided to approach her. That day, I went to the class well ahead of time and waited for her. When she came, there were around 5 guys in the room. So I decided against approaching her then. She then left to the room next by, to find her test book. I followed her. My legs were shaking and my hands were cold. As I was walking, I tried to recollect what I had planned to tell her. I put my hand in my pocket and tried to search for the piece of paper over which I had written my dialogue. As I neared her, my heart started to pound faster. I could hear it too. Suddenly she turned and saw me. I almost fumbled with the book in my hand. I cleverly covered my nervousness. I went to the book shelf at the other end of the room. Now I was sweating. Phew...!! After a few minutes, I mustered some more courage and turned around. Booo.. She had left the place. 'What a bulb' I told myself. I left the room and entered the study hall only to find three things. First, our tutor had come and so no more chance of talking to her. Second, my place had gone and so I had to go back and sit. Third, I could only sit in the last row, from which, all my chances of even watching her were lost. BOOO... 'My fate', I thought to myself. Next day, my friend started to tease me. "You don’t have the courage to even face a girl? How are you going to propose to her?" "That’s enough", I said. I knew he made sense, but my ego was at stake. So that day I told myself, "today I am really gonna speak to her". I remained cool for the other half in my school. When it was one hour before the class, as expected, I started to get nervous. I went there a bit earlier than the day before. This time to my surprise, she was there in the class, sitting and reading something. I landed myself in the bench adjacent to her. For the first few minutes, I didn’t dare to turn and see her. Then again, I mustered myself up. I turned and then walked to her straight. This is it, I thought. I was just a few feet away from her. My head was rotating and all the other external crush-phobia symptoms were also there. I thought I was gonna break down for a second. And then I was caught off-guard. She turned to me and held out a book. I saw the book and realized it was my test book. "Damn, how did she get my test book???” I saw on the table the pile of all the other test books and immediately realized that our tutor had asked her to hand it over. "GEEE... " I quietly took the book, went back and sat. "How much did you get?" I turned and saw that she was not only speaking to me but also standing a few feet away from me. I was speechless. "Me?", I gulped and asked. "Ya", she said. It was then that I realized that I never even opened my book to see how much I had scored. I opened and saw. Oops! It was thirty five out of hundred. I decided to maintain some image and told her "Seventy five". Hey eyes widened. "Wow", she said. "I got only sixty. I think you must've got the third sum correct. Can I just see your book?" I was trapped. I swallowed hard. I opened my book, pretended to see it and then told her that I had got it wrong as well. I feared she might still persist to see my book. But she didn’t. I heaved a sigh. "I am not sure how my father will react to this mark. I am scared", she said. "I don’t even tell my father such marks", I thought of telling her. I just remained quiet. "Speak to her", I could even imagine my friend telling this to me. But somehow words would not come out. "Tell me something na. It’s going to be another 40 minutes for the class to begin", she said. "Something? How much do I tell honey?” I thought to myself. I was sweating. I remained mute. "You appear to be a very quite guy? I see that you don’t talk much in the class. Why?" I thought I should smile at her and did so. "Ok" "enough" "Stop it" "Your blushing too much", something inner kept telling me all these things. That was it. She stood up and walked away outside. I kicked myself for not having spoken to her. "You didn’t speak to her? Your nuts", my friend told me the next day after I had told him everything. "I know", I told him. "Hey, don’t feel bad man. It happens the first time. Just think her as anybody else. Just go and speak to her casually today. I am sure she'll respond", he told me. I thought about it and realized the truth behind it. Alas, it then reigned into me that an opportunity lost is like spilt milk. For the next seven days, I was not able to speak to her. I repented my missed chance. Weeks later, as I was sitting quietly inside my tuition hall, she came in. By that time, I had almost lost all hope of speaking to her again and proposing to her. She came over to me and asked, "How much did you get in the last test?” I chuckled. I did not know. I never had the habit of even knowing how much I scored in tests. I opened my mouth to tell a mark of around 'eighty'. "I got 78 and you know what I am the highest", she said. Phew, I just couldn’t imagine myself getting into another tight corner. I told her that I did not attend the last test. "My dad was very happy", she said gleaming. I congratulated her. I understood that bubbliest in her character and I felt that, that was what which had attracted me to her. She kept on speaking for some more time. And I too, to my own surprise, started to speak as well. In between, I used to wonder, "What happened to you man? That’s great. Keep it going". The next day, my friend could not believe what I had told him. I guess he got a little bit jealous and dared me to propose to her. I told him I'll do that the very same day. It was only after sometime, I realized the depth of the challenge. I was really scared. I wrote down whatever I had to say. I memorized it more times than my history book's dates. That day, I went over to her. She turned and smiled. Before I could speak, she again opened up by asking me my marks in the last exam. "Man, doesn’t she know anything else?” I wondered. I spoke about studies and I returned back without saying a word about anything else. The next day my friend was back teasing me. This time, he crossed his limits. I was angry and told him that I will definitely propose to her that day. The day after that, my friend eagerly came over to me and asked me what had happened. I told him the same thing had repeated itself. He started to laugh. However, he did not say anything. I remained silent the whole day. I felt bad that my friend’s words were true. I had done so many things in life up to that day, but nothing could ever give me the courage to propose to a girl, I thought. My friend understood that I was disappointed. He came over to me and told me that he would accompany me to the tuition class that day, but he refrained from accompanying me when I was to go and talk to rajee. I agreed upon. I thought that my friend would give me some tips on approaching her. He did so and it did really work. I went to tuition that day in a more relaxed manner. In fact, I did not even write down my dialogues. I thought I am just gonna go there and speak out my mind. We reached an hour early. She had not come then. 10 Minutes had passed. I started to think. 20 minutes had passed, I started to get nervous. My friend started to cool me down. 30 minutes had passed. I almost felt like breaking down. "I'm never gonna do it", I thought to myself. My friend calmed me down. Fifty minutes had passed by that time and everyone had come to class. My friend decided to leave. I felt lot uncomfortable after he left. The class started. "She's on leave", I told myself disappointed. "I'm gonna find why she's on leave today", I told myself. After the class got over, I went over to my tutor. I asked him about rajee, casually telling him that she had my test book with her. My tutor gave a dead look at me. "Did he know of anything?” I wondered. "Why did you give your book to her?” he asked. "She wanted to see it" "I don’t know what to say", he said. "Why, what's wrong?” I asked him. "Her father called up today to tell that she will not be coming to tuition anymore. I don’t know how you’re going to get back your book. ??? " !@#$%^&* It had been two days after that. I had told my friend all about it. Both of us were sitting on top of the wall by the side of our school. The thought still hadn’t sunk into me. My friend had a hearty laugh when I had told him. But he did not say anything now. I felt lost. When I had all the time in the world, my instincts ruined my chances. And finally when I had decided to nail the coffin, the nail went missing. My friend read my disappointment. "Cool it man. If she had to be your Mrs., she would have never missed you", he said. Nice words indeed to heal a bruised or rather CRUSHED sentiment. So Crush crushes shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com|W|P|112419704891252200|W|P|Crush crushes da-iict|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com4/21/2008 09:02:00 pm|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|How spontaneous! How impromptu! How realistic!8/13/2005 10:19:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Its the categories in which we can divide the students.............. It was written about the mumbai engineering DUDS.....but be pretty much assured that any enginerites fits the BILL. http://o3.indiatimes.com/blah_blah_blah

hi guys

just got over with my “submissions” for this semester. god what a relief!! its like givin ur last exam paper. u think im kiddin, ask any mumbai engg student bout it.

engg student life truly roxxx. of course lotsa ppl tend to think that u find only nerds or geeks in engg. but thats like sayin all the movies made in bollywood are superhits. (that btw is a lousy statement). life as an engg student can be as u want it to be. tough as well as smooth.

some ppl tend to take the high road and study frm day one of a fresh semester like theres no tomorrow. they'll occupy first benches. and they have many “doubts“ while the lectures goin on. they will leave no stone unturned to be real goody good in the eyes of our “estemeed“ (haha) profs. these few ppl r truly in the geek category. ironic as it may sound, but most of these so-called "geeks“ dont boast of a very good result. some even get KTs.

then u have “the politically correct“ crowd, who attend lectures regularly. take down notes. do all their practicals sincerely. they arent exactly geeks but they r one level below them. these ppl never create havocs in classrooms but are part of fun (if there is any joke cracked or leg pulled)and can be said to be the model students of the college. and they have good results also.

then u have the “the LLBs“. chill these arent law school graduates but Lords of Last Benches. sittin on the last benches is their birthright and no one dare occupy their seats. LLBs r the “jaan“ of the otherwise boring classrooms where profs are goin on and on bout god knows what! thay call it teaching. duh!

last benches r platforms where ppl discuss everything under the sun except wots bein taught in the classroom. here everything frm bar girls controversy to britney spears pregnancy reports r discussed. if the profs too strict and theres no scope for havin talks, then we pretend to play it sufi, prof thinks last benchers have calmed down but thats their mistake. cos it takes only one joke to convert our class into a joggers parks' laughter club. sometimes we even have meetings with LLBs of other classrooms to come up with innovative ways of sittin throughout those one hour “torture“ lecs.

everything said and done, when the going gets tough, the tough gets goin. resultwise last benchers rock, sometimes they get better marks than the previous two counterparts. of course some also get kts, some even get year drops! but then thats a part and parcel of engg life. wot say?

so thats bout the categories of engg students in a nutshell. will try to throw light on some more engg students trivia some other time. theres lots ppl. theres first year (FE) dilemmas, then second year(SE) vivas and practical exams, then third year(TE) seminars and presentations and job interviews and finally final year(BE) projects and lookin back!!! theres lots to discuss.

an addition frm a fellow blogger GAURAV RAJE.

Sumdi mein komdi category. These ppl pretend to be full fledged llbs. But then after college is over, they hit the books straight away. These end up getting amazing marks. Some are extraordinarily brilliant ppl who dont even need to study much.

Dumb ppl category. These are neither studious nor funnmy. They are plain dumb. They normally sit in the middle of the class. They are the least noticed ppl and usually get away without even getting noticed. Some ppl mistake them for the front benchers.

Despo bhooka category. These are desperate ppl. They try to woo any girl in sight. They dont care how she looks or how she is. Just the fact that she is a girl is enuf for them. Though there is absolutely no beauty in engineering, these guys try to act like a shadow for the hideously ugly girls.

Dedh shahana public category. These are smartasses who try to disturb the entire class by acting like smartasses. They act like know-it-alls. Though they donot know a thing. They usually raisse stupid doubts when the profs are teaching and give vague answers when the profs ask questions. They feel dat they are the most intelligent ppl. they give excuses for failing.

keep rockin

ciao!

FAQS: 1..........ATKT. it means "allowed to keep terms". see wot happens is that we have 2 semesters per year and around 5-6 subjects per sem. so in the exam if a student fails in a subject or two, then he's allowed to sit for the next semester. he dosent get a year drop. does that clear ur doubt recca? 2..........LLBs. Lords of Last Benches 3..........FE first year 4..........SE second year 5..........TE Third year 6..........BE Final Year(B-Tech) I wanted to give persona example in each of the categories ..but i don't know why i stopped doing it..maybe it's only temporarily. Next time i wish to bring the categories of the professors...... i assure you that this time it will be full of the examples|W|P|112395506304241412|W|P|Engineering Colleges Students........CATEGORY|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/13/2005 10:05:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P|

school farewell day revisited!

the blog below just made me go back to my sweet/bitter childhood memory.

theblog can be found out at:http://o3.indiatimes.com/blah_blah_blah/ Indeed, the present is so tense and the past seems oh so perfect. Sometimes you just dont want to move on, sometimes you just dont want to let go of time. How we wish we could turn back time. If only. But Life they say is a one way journey. So be it. Living it and Loving it. Do we have a choice?

When I was a small child I always used to wonder, “When the hell am I going to grow up? Being a grown up is so cool. No more tension of completing the homework, no more learning those awful math tables, no more worrying about the verbs and nouns and tenses, no more being afraid of mam and the house master.”

Then came the final year of school. Now the thinking had changed a bit. “Yess! Just one more year. One more year of this jail called school. One more year of homeworks, nagging teachers, stupid project work. Then college. Freedom. Girls. New clothes everyday. Yippee!!”

Finally the school days were coming to an end. Then came the School Farewell Dinner Party. Officially the Last Day of school. The day me and all my friends were waiting for.

Why then were my eyes moist?

Why then was I feeling as if this year had passed through pretty fast?

Why then was I feeling so sad?

Why o Why??

Was it just me feeling that way?

I took a look around, and hey presto, all my classmates had misty eyes.

Wasnt this the moment we all were looking forward too?

Why then was I not ready for this now?

Why then did it seem like I was loosing a very near and dear one?

Why o Why???

Who was going to applaud my English Essays now?

Who was going to feel proud of my History marks now?

Who was going to laugh at my Geography locations now?

Who was going to correct my kanas and matras in Hindi now?

Who was going to shout the living daylights out of me for not completing my homework now?

Who was going to ask me to write “i wont talk and create nuisance in class when the teacher is teaching” a thousand times now?

Who was going to tell me to run three full rounds of the school ground now?

Who was going to call me “Bony” now?

Who was going to play “pen-fight, book-cricket, seed-chess” withe me now?

Who was I going to share the fruitjam biscuits in the breaks now?

Who was going to CARE for me now?

With these questions, a few tears, a choked throat and lots of photos locked in my camera, i bid adieu to my alma mater, my school, my life! All through school life we want to get out of school but on the last day at school, our feet are glued to the place. If this isnt irony, then what is? That chapter in my life is over. Life goes on, each day a new page. But whenever I pass my school those days come flooding back and just looking at my school I am filled with a feeling of pride that is second to none.

School Days are the land of lost content, I see them shining plain, the happy highway where i once went and cannot come again!

Ciao

i to had this thing in my mind at that time. till date i haven't met those few of my friends.. at that time we didn't had the NET facilities.|W|P|112395353522882070|W|P|Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect! ~Owens Lee Pomeroy|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/13/2005 09:28:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Today i came through a beautiful blog titled 80-20 rule. yeah it Instantly striked my sesnses that it's how true....... But we have rarely stopped enough to reflect it ourself. things which are as simple often escape ours attention.But it's the most fundamental of the rule...and we should reflect upon it to do the optimization. Optimization is everywhere, In computer science we study optimization, data-mining and all sort of algorithm to arrive at some simple and pure statistics which can atleast satisfy the 80% of the conditions. the beautiful blog camn be found out at: http://o3.indiatimes.com/thoughtsforlife/archive/2005/01/28/60902.aspx The same is produced here..............................................................................................

The 80-20 Rule.

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was an Italian economist who, in 1906,observed that twenty percent of the Italian people owned eighty percent of their country's accumulated wealth. Over time and through application in a variety of environments, this analytic has come to be called Pareto's Principle, the 80-20 Rule, and the "Vital Few and Trivial Many Rule."

Pareto's rule states that a small number of causes is responsible for a large percentage of the effect, in a ratio of about 20:80. Expressed in a management context, 20% of a person's effort generates 80% of the person's results. The corollary to this is that 20% of one's results absorb 80% of one's resources or efforts. For the effective use of resources, the manager's challenge is to distinguish the right 20% from the trivial many.

Examples of the 80-20 Rule:

80% of a problem can be solved by identifying the correct 20% of the issues 80% of advertising results come from 20% of your campaign. 80% of an equipment budget comes from 20% of the items 80% of an instructor's time is taken up by 20% of the students 80% of benefit comes from the first 20% of effort 80% of customer complains are about the same 20% of your projects, products, services. 80% of our personal telephone calls are to 20% of the people in our address book 80% of the decisions made in meetings come from 20% of the meeting time 80% of the outfits we wear come from 20% of the clothes in our closets and drawers 80% of the traffic in town travels over 20% of the roads 80% of what we produce is generated during 20% of our working hours 80% of your annual sales come from 20% of your sales force 80% of your future business comes from 20% of your customers 80% of your growth comes from 20% of your products 80% of your innovation comes from 20% of your employees or customers 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers 80% of your staff headaches come from 20% of our employees 80% of your success comes from 20% of your efforts 80% of your website traffic comes from 20% of your pages

Hmm.....well I think theres' a good new for us all... 80% of success is achieved from 20% of our efforts......... I guess we all need to sit and think wots that 20% :)

On an afterthought one can think that we should look for that 20% of the things. but as it can be rightly said that for identifying that 20% of the product,effort....whatever.... we will have to spend 80% of the same thing. so total thing becomes constant at 100% ......... this fact can be stated from another famous saying my one of the greastes physicists of the time that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed but can be changed from one form to another.that is total energy is constant.In the same way total work is constant for the total results, it's just that one acheives first 80% of the output earlier than the other ones Applying the same rule as above we can say that the efforts for a particular thing can never be 20,30....90%. It has to be 100% for that particular thing.It is just that one has to 100%.... in others word it is that for that 80%of the work to be shown u have to give 100% of the effort. the 80% of the work can't be shown independently. for that thing to be called complete you have to complete that 20% of the work with 80% of the effort.It's just complimentary in nature.You cannot isolate the TWO. Shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com/Photo |W|P|112395253562165491|W|P|The 80-20 Rule.|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/12/2005 12:01:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| I liked the way Anant brought home the idea of ...... of how he couldn't leave his bed which, initially he thought was going to challenge his Autjority of the household The following posts can be viewed at http://o3.indiatimes.com/anant_rulz The Bed It was just a bed. A four-post wooden bed. Two days before my marriage, as I came back from office, I saw these two carpenters busy in assembling this bed. It was a teak wood bed, ornate, with small mirrors and quite big in size. It had displaced everything in my room, including my single bed and it seemed that the bed was waiting to swallow the whole room. The carpenters, while assembling it explained to me that they had taken 3 months to make this bed, with all that carving and making the bed suitable for ‘Bitiya Rani’ and her things in the those built-in boxes underneath. Bitiya Rani! And what about me, I couldn’t dare ask? I wanted to peep inside the boxes to see if anything was hidden there but they were empty. As I came out of the room, my mother gave me that meaningful and amused kind of smile. I knew that my dear father-in-law had not sent a bed but a Trojan horse into my room, our house, my life, and my existence. I knew it. Through this piece of dead wood, he plans to send his dear daughter into my bedroom, our house and slowly take kabja over the whole place. Our lives. I know these girls; they all do this kind of tricks. Just like the camel and the tent- first the head, then the neck and then the whole body. Oongli pakad ke pahuncha pakad leti hain yeh ladkiyan. No way! I won’t let her usurp my authority and my exclusive domain. I wondered if this decision to get married was correct or not; looking from the way things were shaping, I didn’t think so. The bed had occupied the prime real estate in the house and certainly in my bedroom. I didn’t sleep in it that night. As I slept in the other room, I dreamt of the bed changing into an alien spreading its four tentacles slowly but surely all over my house. The mattress was delivered the next day and with mom’s red bedcover over it, it surely looked a lot less menacing, but still like a Chinese dragon; a red fire-spewing dragon with expansionist designs. A day later, the bed changed itself into a shaadi-ka-storehouse with all those guest occupying every inch of our house, including my room. Cellophane-wrapped wedding presents with some carrying the Christmas design or a Happy Birthday written on them, hold-alls waiting to burst, attaché cases with cloth cover on them, milk bottles with infants attached to them, sarees in various stages of packing/unpacking, shagun-ka-samaan with Satiya inscribed in red geroo, laddoo boxes with miniature Ganesh statuette on them, empty jewellary boxes with their silken undergarments, Raymond suit pieces with names written with a sketch pen, fruits waiting to rot, gifts exclusively meant for passing them on- I was jealous that the bed had so brazenly assumed such an important and an all-encompassing status overnight. In our house. And made a place so quickly for itself in our lives like a jinn out from his bottle in the form of a new boy-servant. ‘Hukum, mere aaka’, it seemed to say. And without my explicit permission. How dare it! I hated the bed. After two night, the bed changed into a bookshelf. On top of it, I found a silk, gold and diamond studded book, surrounded by motiya, red roses and hand-plucked petals. I was pushed in my room by my sisters and bhabhi. Not even mandatory and filmy ‘Devarji, jaldi nahi karna’. Just go! The room smelled of mithai, fruits and flowers. I looked at the book. What is this book all about? These two are in conspiracy- the bookshelf of a bed and the book. I was too tired, mentally empty and had no desire or patience to read this book. Any book. I just wanted to sleep. Still, I was mesmerized by its smell, the newness of the book, which reminded of those we used to buy in summer for our next class and keep near our bedside till the schools opened; or, like the smell of that new car, straight from the showroom. I hesitatingly removed the silk cover, open the book hurriedly with a boyish curiosity, unstuck some chipke-huey pages. I just wanted to read the book and reach to the end as quickly as possible, to know what is written on that last page and to unload my excitement. It was a small book with two pages only- the first and the last. The first page was entitled welcome and the on last page was written, come again. I kept the book in my arms and slept. The bed watched us silently. Some days passed, or was it months, I don’t know. The bed became an explorator’s dream, an archaeologist’s temptation. It beckoned me to find out the mysteries of those hillocks, rivulets, ravines and the springs that smell of life. The bed had changed into a valley of flowers, a thin mountain spring that emanates and confronts us suddenly on the hair-pin bend of the road and when you stop to taste its life-sustaining water, it continues to flow with a gurgle, totally unmindful of your presence, into the deep crevices in those perennial bushes below. Sometimes, the mirrors in the bed would reflect those dancing figurines from Khajuraho, trying to please kaamdev. The bed became a chameleon- changing its appearance with the change of seasons, woolen blankets, mosquito nets and chenille coverings. I could see a small sapling trying to break the wooden ground of the bed. Was it love? Before I could even explore fully to my boyish delight, our two incomplete halves became one to create another one. Suddenly, she was occupying the space between two of us and yet, by some mysterious alchemy, some sorcerer’s magic, some out-of-syllabus law of chemistry that I had skipped in my school, she was joining us like the co-valent bond; she was the O between the our two H. H-O-H. The bed had changed itself into a nursery where, most of the time, she would find that space right between our two hearts, now ‘idling’ in unison like some All India permit holder truck driver’s automobiles by the roadside dhaba. Every night, and on days too, the bed would remind us of that new life and we would be attracted to it like an helpless iron file to the magnet. Like some hungry insects to the life-light. Involuntarily. Hypnotically. Naturally. Almost like zombies in a trance. And then, we left the bed, but we somehow knew we would return to it. The bed remained in our hearts and when we came back to it, the bed had somehow expanded, anticipating the growing need to accommodate all four of us. The bed had now become a playground, a dining table, a kiddies wrestling arena, a toy box and our Fort Knox, where all our worldly wealth was right there itself in the form of those two. More than all the money and power on the earth. Making the decision to have children was to decide forever to have our hearts placed outside our bodies. And we didn’t even take that important decision consciously. It just happened and like beggars on Diwali night, we watched from a distance in awe, stared at God’s fireworks- with admiration, with jealousy and yet, with eternal gratefulness to Him. And suddenly, we were conjoined to them; they wake, we wake, they eat, we eat, they sleep, we sleep. The bed had become our prison and we, its willing and chained life-timers. At times, when kids were not well, the bed would become a bed-of-nails fit for an Indian yogi only and every moment would stretch itself into eternity. Our hearts in our mouths, prayers on our lips and tears in our eyes, we waited for that difficult moment to pass, the upheavals to subside. Or, when mom was in those last months. A drop of pin would wake us up and I would rush to find out if she needed anything, while the nurse slept. And, the bed will become Bhagwadgita and ask me to stop crying and be at peace with the laws of nature- that Atman was trying to changes its outer covering only. What comes must go and this too shall pass, it spoke like a sage. And, I would keep my weary head on the bed to wake up the next minute, fearing the worst. Is she breathing? Is she still there? What to do? The sand clock was emptying fast The bed watched us writhe in anguish, pain and helplessness like a mute spectator, offering no solutions, just solace. Maybe, the bed knew all the answers to all of my silly questions. But, I wasn’t even asking any. The bed had become the barometer of my emotions; I have fought many a battles and realized to my surprise that all those I won, I lost and those I lost- turned out to astonishing victories. As I shed my clothes, my vanity, my ego, my false pride, my worldly everything, and with my weary soul and body- defeated, punished, bruised and hurt, the bed became Tiger balm, that druid’s magic potion which not only cures but also provides sustenance to fight- for another day. I learnt never to bring anger or bitterness to this bed and to bury in it my small secrets and victories, written in passion. The bed has always been my box seat on which I have seen many a movies and laughed and shed tears while she sleeps peacefully, oblivious of naughty Sid’s inner turmoil, Gump’s innocent queries or even ET’s magical finger reaching to cure the human child’s hurt; It becomes a snack bar to satiate my sudden desire for munchies and coffee; a round-table for family meetings where we have discussed many an important issues of life; a card table where we cheated and played ‘kot-pees’ and ‘3-2-5’. I have traveled far and wide. Slept on expensive beds in 5-star hotels, air-conditioned coaches with complimentary sheets and blankets, standing or sitting in a general compartment’s bare wooden seats and much-scarce railway platform benches. But everywhere, I have yearned for peaceful sleep like that in my own bed. My slave bed, my pillow and my part of territory- my feudal instincts find peace in this very limited space of my bedroom. Here I can be me. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. These days, I sometimes find her looking into its innards of the bed for her past, knitted into small clothes and sweaters. There is a glint of future in her eyes, which she somehow wants to fit into this past. On seeing me, she packs her tears and her hopes with the naphthalene balls into those kiddy clothes. As I leave the sanctuary of this bed to explore and measure distances, I wonder if this is my ‘Do Gaz Zameen’ that Emperor Zafar so eloquently yearned for? Is it my casket where my bandaged mummy rests? Is it just a bed? Is it just a four-post wooden bed? http://shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com Presented to you by Shwetank shekhar http://shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com|W|P|112383042635504038|W|P|The Bed|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com1/21/2006 11:38:00 am|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|Hi Shwetank Shekhar, I read your post which I find interesting and very informative! I was also looking for related info which I found
Some at adjustable bed
It's not exactly what I was looking for but it was nonetheless interesting to read.8/11/2005 06:18:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P|
At some point of time we find that there is some time when we feel that everything goes wrong for us. that we feel that ........... why everytime it has to be me.......... "WHY ME??"
Below also some one is in trouble finding out why there in search for one's lady love he has to beat the dust every time why him................. or maybe why most of US
(the original can be found out at:http://yyyy123.rediffblogs.com/)
I asked myself Why ME???
There she was in my school!!
the most beautiful girl !!
and gosh she became my friend :-)
I asked myself Why ME???
the days were filled with fun and joy..
there was always a smile in my face :-)
and our freindship grew over the years..
i loved her every move..every word...
we spent times together!!!
we kept on talking for long hours!!
Suddenly from nowhere a new boy joined the classand she became frns with him...
soon she started ignoring me...
and our freindship came to end..
after so many years with her..
i couldnt feel any better...
life and smile were out of my face..
and one day she said she loved the other guy..
and my life was shaken !!!
I asked myself Why ME???
time passed on and things changed..
we went out of school and
i moved on to diff place !!!
I was in college now...
and there she was a beautiful girl!(Another beautiful girl)
we became frns the very first day!! :-)
I asked myself Why ME???
and smiles came back to my face!!we went together..
bunked classes together :-)
wow it has happend to me again...
there is some one finally who cares for meshe said she liked me!!!
and time went on..and we were in 3rd year..
and then another guy came along...
she befrinded him..and then time moved on...
and one day she said she loved the other guy!!!She left me and then ignored me..
she was busy with the other guy..and soon our friendship came to end
I asked myself Why ME???
time changed..
i moved on...
though with pain in heart..
to seek love and friendship and comapinonship..
to seek the sole mate of my life..
the one, god has made for me!!!
i kept on trying to console me..
that god has done this on purpose..
and i have a role to play...
and will meet my life partner some where..
i moved on ... changed places...
there i was in my First Job
and there she was a beutiful girl...(Another beautiful girl)
we became friends very instant!!!
I asked myself Why ME???
and we shared thoughts..
we went to every place together!!!
we moved with hand to hand every where..
we watched movies together..
ate food together!!
she said she liked me!!!
she said she wanted to be with me...
she said she loved melife has come back to me..
i have found my sole mate!!!
and one day she reveled...
she loved some one (NOT ME!!!)
she had loved some one lese frm her childhood..
and she wanted to marry him (NOT ME!!)
she left me...
saying i am sorry!!!
and she asked me to forget her : -( (which i cant ever)
and there i was heart broken...
I asked myself Why ME???
I had no choice but to move on!!!
With lot of pain in my heart!!
My mind has stopped thinking!!!
i was living myself again and againthen the thought came to me
GOD had some other plans for me!!!!
I moved on ..
changed places....
(had to change places)there i am in one of the most beautiful city!!!..
city of gardens...
city of light...
and i am still thinking of what happened in past.!!!
I asked myself Why ME???
I needed change !!! I needed break!!
I could nt tolerate it any more...
i couldnt enjoy the beauty of nature!!!
my life has changed ..changed again!! ..
changed again!!
I asked myself Why ME???
SO I moved on again to another place.....
another country!!!..
to meet another civilization!!!
BUT I KEPT ON ASKING
Why ME???
Why ME???
Why ME???
|W|P|112376820631744477|W|P|Why ME.....................???|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/11/2005 08:32:00 pm|W|P|Anonymous बेनामी|W|P|इस टिप्पणी को एक ब्लॉग व्यवस्थापक द्वारा हटा दिया गया है.8/11/2005 05:30:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| this one is from ANANT IT goes as: MY FILMY BACHPAN Cinema is a very powerful medium. It not only provides us an escape from the humdrum of life, but also conditions us to understand the reality of the society we live in; it reflects and imitates society and life but at times, life imitates cinema itself. I have been watching cinema since my very childhood. And, like every one of you, the summer holidays were our favorite part of the year for doing all those innocent ‘badmaashi and khuraphaat’. In fact, my love for movies started in one of the summer holidays when I was 4-5 years. The earliest I remember is watching a movie called 'Jagriti'- it came to our colony (yes, that was what it was called- a cluster of govt. flats). I think it was a part of Information & Broadcasting Ministry’s way of making us Indian patriotic and they used to send this van for this. Every evening, the van will go from one colony to another and once they reached there, there was a loud roar from all of us kids. Some kids would even follow the van to see where it would finally stop. The news would spread around like wildfire and within no time, kids like me would be ready to watch the movie and fight for that first row seat- nearest to the screen. By 7 PM, they will put out a folding white 16 mm paper-screen and a noisy projector to boot and we children will sit on the ground and watch the movie and would be transcended to another world. The world of cinema. We laughed at cruel Asit Sen’s moving paunch while he slept and Mohan Choti’s antics and cried when hero’s mother came on the screen; every time, at the same spot. Without fail. And Masterji Abhi Bhattacharya's ‘Aao bachchon tumhe dikhayen jhanki Hindustaan ki’, 'De di humey azaadi bina khadag bina dhaal’, 'Chalo chalen maa, sapno ke gaaon mein’ and so many other songs I still remember with their tunes etched on my little heart. BTW, were those kind of Masterji in films only? I don't think so. I saw ‘Jagriti’ at least 12 times because it seems I & B Ministry had only one film and like Richard Attenborogh’s ‘Gandhi’, they would show this movie at any and every place and occasion. Year after year. Subsequently, in summer holidays itself, some private entrepreneur brought a larger cloth-screen and more than 7-8 movies were shown in a week. The local central park was covered with tents and every evening a new fare was for us. The ticket was 4 and 8 Annas for a ground seat- which was quite a lot, and we would try to get in free. Somehow; by going along with some auntyji, by sneaking in unseen, by giving some khota-sikka or some such trick. The gatekeeper would ask auntyji if the child was her’s and before she would reply, we would run and mill with the crowd inside. At times, we would lift the tent and get in free. Or, we would even sit outside and listen to the sound track till we would find an opportunity to get inside- free, of course. Even after the intermission. The year was 1960 and I was 4 years old- and don’t you start calculating my age! I think after that, I became a full-fledged cine-buff and I am still crazy about cinema. I have seen cinema at oddest places and Delhites, would you believe, where there is Bhikaji Cama Place now, there was a tent-wala cinema hall (hall?) called, Raj Talkies. (Talkies- can you believe this name?). Once again, it was a temporary tented cinema hall. The legs of the wooden chairs were tied to each other by sutlee-rope (to avoid people taking the chair away to a place near the screen) and in the noon show, one could see a million stars in the sky- yes, the tent had million holes and sunlight would come thru it. The ticket was 10 Annas to 1-1/4 Rupees. After the school, we would steal some money and use our pass valid for DTU- yes, it was called DTU and not DTC then- bus to see the movie The other cinema halls that we used to love- in fact 3 of them were - Race Course, Palam and Defence. Race Course being Air Force area and the cinema Hall was primarily for the entertainment of defence personnel; we civilians were allowed only to make the whole thing viable. So come noon show- first day, first show, we would be standing outside the gate with a burly Air Force Gateman stopping us, as the area is protected one. At 10 minutes to 3 PM, the gate would be opened and we the cine-buffs would race with our shoes or chappals in our hands for at least 500 meters till we reach the ticket window. And there was a lot of dhakkam-dhukka there. I saw many a movies sitting in the front row. The cinema hall is still working, though my wife prefers the PVRs for their superior air-conditioning, sound and projection. Palam was another one. It is still there, I suppose. There also, we had to wait for the gates to open and then as we used to stand in the line to get tickets, one man will come and put a stamp on our palms; you show the stamp and then only ONE ticket will be sold to you. As many people wanted more than one ticket for their friends also, outsiders would come and jostle in the line. But, look at the ingenuity of Indian brain- as soon as the stamp was put, one guy would put some spit on it and transfer the stamp on another guy from outside the queue. Ab toh ticket dena hi padega! Many a days, we would walk into racecourse where races were held quite regularly. We could see from a distance, all those film stars and beautiful and decked up women. When cricket season was on- we used to get the glimpse of cricketers like Pataudi and Nariman Contractor- of course, in those days, for entertainment, Pataudi used to play cricket instead of killing blackbucks. We would go and take their autographs. And throw the papers away later for fear of being caught by gharwalas. And yes, polo was also our favorite. We used to see Maharaja of Jaipur and Maharani Gayatri Devi and many a famous personalities we couldn’t even recognize, chukkar after chukkar. Those magnificent horses and those elegant horse-riders. It was really awesome, as the X-Gen says it now. In the night, we would put our charpoys outside in the ‘ground’ and enjoy the long meetings with our friends. In the worst days of summer, we would sprinkle some water on the bed/durries and by the time we used to come back to sleep- the bed was cool as a cucumber. No fridge, no a/c- only ice block from the nearby paan-wala for making sharbat and lassi. My father used to smoke ‘Panama’ cigarettes and many a times, while bringing the pack of ciggies, I would put one in my mouth and try to bring out those imaginary ‘chchallas’ (Rings) that only Pran could do with effortless ease. And how we loved to hate him! Next day morning, we would get up by 4.30 AM and go for walks and games to Lodi Garden. Lodi Garden was a heaven for us kids- unlike what it is now for lovers- and we have played a lot of chchupan-chchupaai, kho, and langdi-taang there. The ubiquitous signs like sonu-loves-monu were there even then and all those hearts with a piercing arrow etched on the top of the tombs were visible even from a distance to the lovers. I think we Indians have learnt to declare our love by defacing our historic legacy from our childhood itself and ‘Kilroy was here’ is a just copycat. Two months of summer holidays would finish in a blink and predictably, in the last few days, we would try to find someone from whom we would 'copy’ our homework. And predictably, the teacher would ask on the first day itself, contrary to our wishes, to deposit the homework copies, and predictably, I would end up saying ki ‘Sirji, meri kaapi meri chchoti bahan ne phaad di’ And predictably, I was made to stand on the bench for the whole period. And equally predictably, in the next one too. That was also the start of my introduction to Hollywood; the first three movies I saw were ‘Ben-Hur’, ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Guns of Navrrone’. I didn’t understand a single word of what they were saying but the chariot race between Charlton Heston and ganja Yul Brynner and the parting of (Red) sea are still fresh in my memory. This continued till one day, my father, who didn't even know in which class I was studying, predicted to my mother the profession I will most probably take up in my life- no, you can’t even guess it- selling chchole by the roadside! (not Sholay, stupid!). ‘Padta-likhta toh hai nahi. Bada hokar saala chchole hi bechega sadak par’ were his exact words of Bhavishyavaani. To prove him right, that day itself, I went with my friend and saw ‘Phir Wohi Dil Laaya Hoon’. Again. Joy Mukherjee and Ash Parekh and O P Nayyar’s music ‘Banda Parvar Thaam Lo Jigar’ ‘Aanchal Mein Saja Lena Kaliyaan’ transported me to another world, that I can never forget. That day, when I reached home, my father did what all Indian parents believe to be the God-ordained duty and divine rights bestowed upon them- you guessed it right this time- he beat me Black & Blue. That definitely was the end of Black & White movie era. At least for me. You see, I had a filmy bachpan. Filmy, very filmy. INDEED|W|P|112376371113198256|W|P|Authors Filmy bachpan|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/10/2005 05:06:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| I am a gr8 NET SURFER.... May be the reason being that i am having a free Net on my college room. but then don't think that i surf anything to everything. my favorite being the Indian news sites and all other reading suff. Being voracious reader i used to read all the news sites and other related material in COUPLE OF HOURS. So what to do in spare time...(i dont like mail and emails on which some of my friends spend good time.). During this dilemma some one said that why not search the brides for our friends........... after many bakars we started searching the sites for ours room -mates(Don't beleive that we were looking for good ones for ours pals..) During these time it came to me an idea why not seriously go through all these profiles and "Time Katto". Indeed it was a good time pass...... there were many profiles that aroused my curiosity and will BLOG on them some time Later. Right now many of my pals have got the habit of "ORKUTTING"(orkut.com). i also find it good....Anything that GOOGLE does has to be interesting(On a second thought what would the MARRIAGE SEARCH would look like through Google search. Will thery be able to stop the Spams.....i think that they would atleast do a better job than the rest of them.(see what they have done to mail system...... Giving a whopping 1GB at a time when others were giving 2-4 MBs. Okay i have gone too far now below is the post because of which all these bables started.. Sham marriage sites: you can see the blogger at : http://o3.indiatimes.com/MarriageBeuro/ My experience with New Age Arrange Marriage ”Hrishi you are 27 now, you should get married now...” My Mom.... Said worriedly ... For her son like me who is done with Engineering and MS in US with lots of M in dollars.. still unmarried was surprise... though I was little hesitant... I had have had few dates to whom I was looking after in my early 20's .. now all of these gals got married , and started thire families.. So I had no option but to enter into arrange marriage 'market'. Here your value is more into your cast and salary... I was hesitant to go with traditional marriage beuro's.... So i opt out for Shaadi.com and Jeevansathi.com... Fortunately my mom enrolled my name into one of the leading local marriage beuro's Anuroop Wiwaha Sanstha in Pune ( www.anuroopwiwaha.com) I Started looking after gals online thru shaadi/jeevansathi.... My experience was pathetic... I recieved close to 200 praposals thru these means.. 60 % of them were fake.... They charged hefty 2750 rs.... We had no time to look at those 200 praposals... So I decided to search on my own.... I found few gals with my matching criteria .... later I realized all these paposals were fake..... My advice dnt go for shaadi.com.... its all fake.. they will just screw u up with ur money.. Fortunately Anuroop Wiwaha lend me heling hand, they organized pre-marrital councelling sessions.. Also Mr. Mahendra Kanitkar, Director Anuroop gave some good practical tips... In few weeks I recieved 11 praposals... all are decent educated cultured girls... 2 months I reached my destination, again Anuroop helped us with thire quick service... Now I am happily married with my beautiful, cultured and understanding wife Anuradha... Just for advice.... dnt jump into marriage market.... make sure u recieve “true praposals“ and not fake one ( these matrimony portals will give u 90 % fake data) Happy match,mate finding....... PS: i see many sites advertising that they have made so many perfect marriages. anybody knows them personally.Also i couldn't understand whay the Shaddi.com people were asking for money.............. My SITE|W|P|112367711383462084|W|P|I Always thought that marriage sites are a BIG SHAM|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/10/2005 04:52:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Below is the rumblings of an Adult who sees his childhood through the eyes of her 2 year Daughter I personally dont have experience (i have no child and am unmarried and an Indian).but i think that every one one day or the other goes through the emotions. i think that i have seen may people LIKE THAT. YOU CAN VIEW THE BLOGGER AT http://o3.indiatimes.com/I_Me_Myself Last night, I was watching my two-year old daughter trying a karaoke - to sing along (she is too young to talk) with the TV. That was an interesting sight. She was trying her best to beat that female vocal (I'm sure she will do that one day). Then the promo changed to some other movie and she was not interested. So she turned back, and saw me smiling. She gave back a big smile and trotted away to her mother in the kitchen. Time flies... I remember my childhood days when I was very much impressed by - who else - Amitabh. And that song 'Ek Raasta Hai Zindagi...' from Kaala Patthar (shot on Shashi Kapoor, not Amitabh) was my favorite. I used to be the centre of attraction while singing that song. Soon thereafter, came the 'Laila O Laila' from Qurbani, and that won me the third prize in singing competition in my school. I still remember the picture book I got as my prize, though I tore off the book in the next few days. That way way back in 1980-81 and I was probably in my first standard. Then I went to second standard and dad got transferred to Visakhapatnam. New school, and I was the boss in my class (also a bully, I must admit). Anybody who dared to disobey me was done for. Since my school had classes only upto third standard, I was one of the seniors (imagine!) and a darling of those teachers (yeah, those beauties were young and unmarried, but unfortunately too old for me - one of them was married and her kid was my junior). I was good at studies, or let's say, others were not very good. As a result, I stood first in everything that I participated - be it studies or games. Then there was a skit - Snowhite and the Seven Little Dwarfs - and I was the hunter who was assigned the job to kill Snowhite. Even if it were not a skit and even if they paid me a million dollars, I would never kill that beauty (I hope my wife does not read this). I would rather kill the woman (my teacher, that fatso) who gave me that role. Then I went to IV standard and changed my school. Now I was among my equals, but still a smart guy. I was one of the best, if not the best of the best. I had many admirers around me, and so some rival groups were formed. We used to have fistfights and anybody found alone separated from his gang used to face the warth of the rival gang. We lived the life as in the movies - perfect (only the ladies were missing and we longed for them). Then time passed and one day I found myself updating my knowledge of the Bollywood. I was perfect in this field, or at least I thought so. I was still in the school and destined to become a hero some day. But nothing much happened. Then I went through the school and finally through college. I knew everything (so I believed) about the movies, the glamour world, the new beauty in the college that would some day fall for me (she was our lecturer)... No, nothing is funny. I really believed in myself. If you laugh at me today, then you have probably forgotten your yesterday. Thereafter, it was the Chartered Accountancy course that took the better part of my youth. And one day, I was a CA. Then came the first job and the first salary. I was the king - on the top of the world. The richest man ever on the earth. I could buy that stereo, the walkman, those 'costly' cassettes which my pocket money never allowed, and what not. But when I looked back, I saw many unfinished agenda. How come I was a CA when I should have been a movie superstar? I had everything that takes to become that superstar (except for a Godfather who could make me the superstar; why, I once even thought of running away to Bombay - I had a relative who could do at least something for me...)! Why didn't that lass fall for me? How could she get married to another person that she didn't know (read “I didn't know”)? She should have talked to me, at least once. She never talked to me when we were in the college (never before and never thereafter). She could have asked for my phone number during the farewell. She could have taken some pains to get it from others... I don't even know her name till today. OK, let bygones be bygones. I'm happily married, have a family of my own. And no longer aspire to be a superstar (well, give me a chance and I can still become one). Why am I thinking of all this? Simple, because I think I was stupid to have such a thinking. I should have acted like a grown-up and should have rubbished all those ideas when they came in my mind. Like any other parent, I would never let my children make a fool of themselves. I'll take care that they behave like grown-ups, even if they are just two year olds. They should start early... NO! I won't do that! Back then, I really believed in all that I thought, though all that might seem stupid today. That was a part of my growing up. Those dreams were worth dreaming at that time, and I shall never be that innocent ever again in my life. Those are my sweet memories, stupid sweet memories. My children will go through all that on their own. They will go through the joy, the ecstasy, the heartbreak on their own and go through every emotion that life can give them. I'll always be available if they need me, but I won't ever interfere with their thoughts, their feelings. I might not make a good father, but at least I'll not be a bad father - a bully - for my children. Go ahead, my child. Sing along, for probably I'm too old to sing that song - Doom Hila Le Doom Hila Le Doom... Or is that Dhoom Macha Le... seems that he he not that young afterall Later on i will add more BAKARS On child life....... My Site|W|P|112367530952798049|W|P|Adult most of the times see their childhood in their Children|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com8/10/2005 04:12:00 am|W|P|shwetank|W|P| Well i may tell you that i am neither female nor married....... then surely the next logical question would be...... "toh phir title ka MATLAB" IT happens so that i came through a blog of a newly married lady. it's her musings. NOW WHY HAVE I ADDED THAT HERE........... for the simple reason that the lady gave her side of story and reading here can get the reason for wild (NOT)Shopping spree...... it can be found at the following link. http://o3.indiatimes.com/anu3001/ The Blogs Goes at Under Last week my husband and I went to M.G. Road. How we landed there is a different story altogether that I will narrate some other time. There were a lot of sales happening, this being August, and my sole purpose was to window shop, become familiar with the market, and kill some time, in that order. Accordingly, we entered a KSIC showroom. There were yards and yards of lovely silk sarees and, as any Indian lady would vouchsafe, it's a natural impulse to check out each saree in its six-yard splendour, feel its texture, and glance at the price tag. While I was still rapt in this magical silken world, hubby broke into my reverie with a "Do you want to buy this one?" I gave him a bewildered "Of course not!" look. Men!!! Just because a man admires a beautiful woman, it doesn't mean he's going to marry her. Similarly when a woman admires a dress in a store, it doesn't necessarily follow she's going to buy it. Most shopkeepers who are male cannot understand why a woman may sometimes admire a thousand dresses and yet not buy one and at other times may buy a dozen outfits off the rack without giving them a second glance. The truth is, apart from impulsive or compulsive shoppers, most women are smart enough to know what to buy and where. Many of them will rarely buy anything from a new shop the first time they visit it -- unless they are on a holiday. Women like to scout shops and compare their stuff for future buys. Men, on the other hand, are likely to pick the first thing they see at the first shop. Coming back to my story, my husband, soon as he realised I had no plans to actually buy anything, wanted to get out of the shop as quickly as possible. He finds it "embarrassing" to look around a shop without buying anything whereas I find it perfectly natural to reco the market before buying what I want. That day was a revelation to both of us -- we learned a few things about each other that were hitherto hidden. (Those who plan to get married should go on a shopping binge with their intended life partners before making the final commitment. :) They may yet discover a few secrets. ) My husband, like most men, needs to justify every action, even something as trivial as shopping. So if he goes to a store, he has to buy something to show there's a reason why he went to the store in the first place and why the trip isn't a waste. Women thankfully don't need to justify anything. We rounded off our sojourn with a stop at Kidskemp. One persistent saleswoman there kept trailing us all over the place, showing off their various collections. I would have much preferred to look around on our own but, out of sheer courtesy, we let her guide us. It was then I realised how easy it is to browbeat a guy into buying something totally useless. No wonder women are able to sell everything from cars to shaving cream! So this time it was I who hastily dragged my husband out of the store. P.S. Have you ever wondered why in a store having a sale the one thing you want is either not on sale or is selling at the lowest possible discount? so, what's the lesson.... don't ever go shopping with urs lady love if u don't feel embarrased in not buying....... (on a private not i will agree that yes some times we buy something utterly useless) My Site|W|P|112367332536871048|W|P|Shopping with Hubby|W|P|shwetank.shekhar@gmail.com-->