If you are of Indian origin, chances are that you have heard the song above, probably sung it at one point or other in your life. It was a translation done by Girija Kumar Mathur

We used to sing the English version of this song in school, the real song “We Shall Overcome”  is in English which had become the Anthem of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

Standing at the Berlin HB station, we were singing this song, and then the reality struck(akin to the light bulb being lit). The song is probably a reflection of the prepetual state of affairs in India…it talks about overcoming the odds someday, it doesn’t mention when…not today, not tomorrow but someday.

Isn’t that the real Indian way? Infrastructure projects going on forever, to be completed someday? Lokpal Bill in process for over 30 years, will be passed someday? India will be corruption free someday…Indians will be empowered someday…

Maybe it gives us hope to not give up…but it also makes the time period abstract…

What are your views?

Sometime in February, I had written something about the Facebook Revolution; the year is now on its last day. Sadly, the revolutions have not yet resulted in stability and peace. In some cases, like Egypt, the savior army now seems villainous while in places like Syria, violence driven by the autocratic leaders has become the norm. It just stands to prove how short sighted was my view of expected outcomes of uprising. If there is one more additional wisdom I have earned on this, it is the fact that one cannot fast forward to self-rule or self-determination without going through the motions of the transformation. No NATO forces could get a nation back on the road to recovery until a support structure is ready by itself.

But enough of the uprisings, for I was to play soothsayer again…umm..wait I already talked about EU no? Hmm…its already 2012, and EU is still not disintegrated except for the Brits, who weren’t the part of it anyways…but…

The thing is, I am at pains to see that the Euro crises hasn’t gotten any better. Italy and Greece are already seeing new governments, Italy is already in recession. EU is expected to be in recession for the next year, we are in for tough times, tougher than we can visualize right now, because there is no eminent solution in sight. Its like someone hitting the snooze button and refusing to wake up, until the day is already bright enough that you can’t help it.

People still laugh at me when I mention that such a crises could have huge political and social repercussions, they say that its Europe not Africa. Well, here’s the logic…if you refer to the recent Youth Employment rates for EU(not this is NOT a direct percentage, click on the link and understand it). So the Youth Employment rates are as high as 48.9% in Spain and 45.1% in Greece, if this is compared to the Germany figures of 8.5% you will understand what I am referring to. The recent roits in UK may be a sign of what could happen. To complicate the situation, free movement of people across Europe allows citizens of one state to apply for a job in another, so for an already shrinking number of opportunities more people can apply. This in turn can lead to resentment in people belonging to an economically better off state, and is often used as an issue by the politicians to play upon.

Maybe my view is very cynical, afterall EU East consistently has bad youth unemployment, and we don’t see them screaming. But what we miss here is, for people who suddenly see themselves as not being better off or equally well off as their parents were, it means that the state is failing them…once the numbers start adding up it doesn’t matter if it were civilized europe.

Maybe am just being paranoid, but things back home also don’t seem ripe. The Parliament didn’t vote for Lokpal, Hazare just finished another fast. Its silly that some people say that he keeps doing his fasts again and again…he should do something different. Wonder if thats what people felt with Gandhi too. Indian rupee is the worst performing currency, market is down, inflation is up…well…just hope that 2012 is NOT like the 2012 Mayans predicted.

A ring, a ring o’ roses,
A pocket full o’posies-
Atishoo atishoo we all fall down

And so I got married (you should read my last post here) and had a nice trip to Bali and am back in the midst of cold Alps on what is the day of the Christmas eve. Someone had asked me to write about Bali, normally I would jump at the idea of writing a blog post on any new place visited. However, giving a review of your own honeymoon didn’t seem to make sense (no no, not the juicy details but of the location itself!).

I remember watching it on Discovery that the real moments of life which we truly remember are the ones which were unique experiences, this is exactly the reason we hardly seem to remember details of what we did 2 months ago on this date at office, because life is often very regulated(or as Morgan Freeman said, Institutionalized). The mind tends to recall most the specific moments which were unique, these could be visiting new places, first kiss, first love, first breakup, first job interview and so on…

Now the trip to Bali was something which I wanted to be unique, and it indeed was, yet today someone has pasted pictures on facebook about the same Island, their honeymoon and well a lot of similar places…and the trip suddenly doesn’t seem as unique as it was. Its strange, even the iPhone 4S which I bought standing in a queue here on the second day of its launch seems not so unique when I see some other newly wed bride getting the same from her hubby. Jeez…we first try to prove we are different and then we do all the same things as others! How predictable no?

But then, my experience in Bali or my emotions while buying the phone are unique to me, nobody in the same place even at the same time could feel the way as I did. That special feeling or experience is privy to me, it can never be duplicated.

Oh and one more thing, to have unique experiences one doesn’t need to do big things, sometimes even the smallest things are big enough to leave a sweet mark in our memories…

Here’s a song I love, Rob Thomas – Little Wonders

Its been more than 6 months since the day was decided upon with due consultation from the holy men, November being the wedding season in India, my D-day is on the 20.11.2011

For the past few weeks, with an increasing frequency (and thanks to Mr Zuckerberg’s facebook) I have been a party to these questions, the thing is, for most of them nobody believes my answers or they just drown my answers in their own way (of course with all good and sweet intentions). So here’s a primer,

• Now that its just xyz days left. How do you feel? Honestly, I haven’t been feeling any different, am so far away from home that I don’t feel anything different than I normally do! But then, most people either feel something is wrong with me or am just not speaking the truth!
• Aren’t you excited or nervous (or maybe scared)? To this the standard response is neutral, but people feel you are just denying the excitement…umm…but why would I do that?
  The fun part of this question is, most of my European colleagues refer to a phenomena called the cold-feet and they believe that we have a choice left till the last day to say I do. But I have explained them the dynamics of a few gazillion guests visiting you in an Indian wedding, and thus making your escape impossible. Hey, I don’t even know if you can successfully get a loo break in the process without being a victim of some humor. But honestly, am NOT over the top, neither am i scared to death. I have been trying hard to scare my fiance a bit, but she doesn’t seem to fall for my pranks yet!
• Then there’s the classic, the statement that wedding resembles an sweet which those who don’t eat they regret, and those who do eat regret eating it! Hmm…surely they are referring to an obese person on a diet…who could not resist a donut…and then regrets eating it later. Anyways…am bored of this one, I was never regretting my not eating the sweet, was trying to defend it (click here), and I still don’t and I hope not to regret the next phase either. Afterall, I remained single by choice (or by other peoples’ choice?) and now I’ll be married by my choice. 
• You don’t know what you are getting into! Hmm…well that holds true for anything we do in our own personal and professional lives. We step in with an assumption, give it our best and wish it turns out well.

• Beta, how are you feeling? Umm…make a guess…there are a couple of hundred folks all at my wedding eating away all the food while I look at them…i have been smiling constantly for hours, haven’t slept in 3 days…there is no part of my body which isn’t in a state of rebellion. And yes, am dressed like a magician who is just going to pull up a bunny from his hat!
• When did you arrive from Zurich? You are so lucky to be there, Switzerland is a very beautiful place. Yes indeed its a wonderful country, sadly I work there unlike most people who go there for fun…everyday i struggle to meet deadlines, attend meetings, cook food, communicate like an ape-like sign language to the kind Swiss folk who speak German, and yes…watch no TV as nothing is in English. And yes, I DO NOT see snow covered Alps out of my window (thanks a lot Yashraj Chopra)
• Where are you going for honeymoon, oh wait…isn’t Switzerland a honeymoon destination? Umm…yes…but do you realize what month this is? Its November…do you know how cold it is in November? Sigh….
• And the event called Jaimal(or the garland exchange)…so here you are tired as hell…and the girl arrives and now you are supposed to exchange the garlands. But…and this is a big massive BUT…everyone now wants you to stand up and wait for the other person to do it first…and then there are a few overzealous cousins who want to lift you up so that the girl cannot reach out…Guys, do you realize, it hurts my bottom and the magician outfit doesn’t help either! Moreover, if you get tired of the joke and try to get over with this exchange of garlands, you are also labeled as a joru-ka-gulam (umm…means something like a slavish husband?). Honestly, guys I don’t care…you want to do the garland exchange after a few hours, fine by me, just allow me to sit down and chill!
• Photographers and the likes, Oh don’t get me started on these creeps, they blow up a super warm light on your face to blind you, so that you don’t even realize whats happening behind their back! They charge you by the number of pictures they take, and then they fill it up with pictures of people gobbling up all the food you paid for and of young teenage female guests, who you probably don’t even know.
• Cousins and the aunties and the uncles and the people who-you-are-meeting-the-first-time-yet-they-expect you to remember their name, Well…they are there to support you, or is it? They are there to make sure that no opportunity of pulling up a prank, joke or a snide remark is missed. Hmm…engineering college ragging was better? Maybe, but this has its own special charm (thats what I have been told)…ah well…once I get married, i can pull them up for the rest of my life…
• Vidaai (the time when you take the bride with you after the wedding), this is an emotional moment, suddenly the bride starts weeping, all that extra layers of make up starts to wash away. But what about the groom? He stands there alone, feeling utterly guilty of taking the bride away. Its as if he is taking her away forcibly without her consent, and he is the villian of this story. Well..sweetie if you are feeling so bad, maybe you can stay for another day…I can take you home the next morning…just don’t cry okay!

I know many of my guests who may read this blog may not approve of it, don’t worry am thrilled to be married and I am glad that you all will be there to pull my leg and make sure that I don’t run away

No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again! Sometimes I just want it to stay saved, you know? For a little bit. I feel like the maid: “I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for, for 10 minutes?! Please?!” –

Not too many years ago, the West was ravaged by a storm of complex financial debacle, it was known as the Sub-Prime crises. The crises brought upon the death of Lehman Brothers, large scale bailouts by the Federal Reserve, unemployment and bear markets. It also was often hailed as the end of Capitalism as we knew it, for the Federal Reserve was bailing out private financial institutions using the tax payers money. It was also the time when I was about to finish my B School studies and was promptly the victim of the recession, I wrote about it here.

Three years on, this is another September of gloom, and this time its bigger and badder than ever. I am no economist, while I can often understand the trail of disasters, I am not able to interpret the complexity or the severity of the crises which is about hit both Europe and US (or has it already hit us, and we are just sitting in denial?).

US with its trillion dollar debt, failed housing revival, and stubborn unemployment is barely growing. On the other end European Union is battling its debt crises with Greece in tatters, and the other members of the PIIGS doing no better. It is only a matter of time, when general constipation of better solutions will fail to avert the crisis which could explode in a few weeks.

While I have been closely tracking the situation as the crises unfolds, it puts me ill at ease when I cannot picture how insulated will I be from this crises. The current world is deeply interlinked, it is chaos theory redefined, the ripple effect is global.

Economic crises often results in political crises, is this the doom of capitalism? Maybe not, maybe what the world needs is a mixture of capitalist and socialist(or state involvement) philosophies being balanced as the situation demands…or maybe it is a cyclic phenomenon between the two extreme concepts

These are turbulent and exciting times for us, and I hope we all survive long enough to tell the stories on the life and times we lived in.

Ever wondered, if you didn’t wake up the next day? Will it be easier for you? Will it be easier for the people around you?

Sometimes life is swirling vortex of sticky situations, and all you wonder is if your not being around would have made life easier for people around you. Sadly, these are those days when you don’t have better thoughts and neither do you have any comfort. I often plunge into such situations, at work or home…strangely i blame human interaction as the culprit. The lesser I interact the fewer are the sticky situations, but then isn’t this the first stage of turning into a sociopath?

Ah well, why do you care, you are another unfortunate visitor to this blog, which is plunging in popularity and meatiness of content…quick click the back button to never return.

I don’t know what is required of me to disprove the impression…

In roughly every 100 years over the last 2-3 centuries the world has witnessed a new political uprising  and a new philosophy.

The July Revolution and  the French Revolution were targeted at the monarchy and feudal structures in France, they ushered the transformation of a heavily aristocratic and religiously influenced governance structure to a democracy(partial). It was a movement of the working class, and the unemployed people…

A century later the proletariat rose up in Russia in the October Revolution and uprooted the Czar’s rule. The philosophy of socialism and communism was an attempt to distribute the weather equitably to the people, a different political movement, led by Lenin and the likes.

100 years after the 10 days which shook the world, new movements have born in Middle East. The theme is similar, people want development, and self-governance more than ever. But the difference is the absence of central leadership, there is no single face in these uprisings, people lead them. Another difference is, it is no more only the labour/working class but a mixture of people from all walks of life, who want better governance. Its a movement of all classes, its faceless, peaceful and co-ordinated through volunteering!

Yes, each revolution in these centuries is themed on development, and opportunities but the causes and the methods are different. It is unfair to call these revolution as the Social Media uprisings, for it is a medium to an end, not the starting point.

Gandhi couldn’t be more relevant today, peaceful uprisings are indeed making a difference!

They will never forget you ’til somebody new comes along – Eagles from the New kid in Town

I am writing this post at the time when Egypt is undergoing a Facebook Revolution, a movement of hundreds of thousands of protesters who have come together after using social media like Twitter, Blogs and Facebook for organize and demand of a regime change in their country. Needless to stay, at this point, Internet is under a clampdown to stop the freedom of expression!

This post is not about the revolution, it is an insight into this Juggernaut of Facebook, a country with over 500 million users. It one of the stickiest websites on the internet, the centerpiece of an Oscar nominated film and probably one of your favorite websites.

Facebook is not the first social network, neither it will be the last, but it has been the most impact-full. It took over from the erstwhile leader MySpace  in 2009 and has exceeded all estimates of its impact. Millions of users share vital information about their preferences on their profile pages, which further helps facebook categorize and provide extremely well segmented advertising opportunities to businesses. Its better than Google, because while google earns its dough by targeted advertisements based on search criteria, Facebook moves ahead by stitching user profiles and their own personal network in the process.

Looking back, there was a time when ICQ was the killer chat program, and Yahoo! was the killer email website. The internet evolved, most of these internet applications committed a few mistakes which coupled with better/newer services brought on the table to give users an opportunity to move.

Orkut might have been trolled by Orkutiyas looking for a hookup and had its own share of donut server errors, MySpace became a playground of over customization of profiles and a haven of pedophiles. At the same time facebook innovated with its interface, and applications like FarmVille. This was their window of opportunity, and the irony of most collaborative internet services is the same as their well publicized strength…they are social.

Users stick to a social network/tool only till the people who matter the most to them are active on the same network. The exodus begins the moment when the important people in your network start moving to a different website(these maybe just 10 out of your 400 friends!). So what would make the users move to a different website from Facebook?Well, I don’t know…and I wish I knew that(would have loved to invent it). But I do know are the threats/risks which Facebook faces today, which could accelerate the exodus whenever it happens:

• Privacy concerns – A normal user may still not be conscious of the risks which they are exposed to because of Facebook’s questionable privacy policy. However, user awareness on this issue could just turn the tide against Facebook!
• Rogue apps - Email spammers killed off good web mail services with weak spam filters. Similarly, rogue and unregulated apps on facebook are taking away the sheen of safety and utility of the network. As more and more such unregulated applications continue to flood our walls by posting our first facebook messages or profile views, it poses a bigger challenge to ensure that the user experience is not ruined.

Am not a doomsayer, but every product or service has a life-cycle specially when it is not a need but a want. The only way to beat this curve is by staying ahead of it.

]]> http://www.ankurwrites.info/2011/01/29/facebook-they-will-never-forget-you-til-somebody-new-comes-along/feed/ 4 http://www.ankurwrites.info/2011/01/18/unit-of-time/ http://www.ankurwrites.info/2011/01/18/unit-of-time/#comments Tue, 18 Jan 2011 09:03:02 +0000 Ankur http://www.ankurwrites.info/?p=420 Continue reading →]]>

A new year, a new month or a day…our days are divided into units of time. Many of us are often cynical about the celebrations for a new year, afterall it would be just another day on Jan 1 of a year as it was on 31st December. Nothing out of the ordinary would happen to our lives in the change of date. This argument is logically correct specially given the fact that different calendar systems provide us different points of reference for a new year.

But, inspite of all this, millions revel in hope and zeal that the next year shall be better. It is a psychological necessity for most of us to have a point of reference, to start over, to try again and harder. A small altercation with the boss, a reference to your sad past, a fight with family…all can be ignored in the hope of tomorrow. Afterall tomorrow is a new day! I wish one could gain the same psychological support in believing in the next hour, okay, the such and such event annoyed me to no end at 2.23 pm today, but hey…3 o’ clock is a new hour. I’ll just stand up, brush off the dust and move on!

One must not forget that while time is a great measure to slot our memories into decades, years, months and seasons…it is not a discrete measure but is ever changing and analog. Our words, feelings, work and ambitions are only relevant to us in our life time, in the big scheme of things, you simply do not matter. Like those giant dinosaurs, or elaborate civilizations we all have an expiry date, no single human can have an indelible impact on the large scale of time.

PS – A Light year is a measure of distance and not time, many still confuse themselves with its definition