In Between The DOORS

Scared to be bothered

2009-05-03T12:17:00.002+05:30

Some time back I saw an accident in the middle of a road and I was sitting in my company bus. Apparently it was a bike accident and i could see a body on the road with loads of blood next to it. I could see many souls there .. but not a single soul at the same time. I saw it hardly for 10 - 15 seconds but a few thoughts starting going through my head.... I was thinking what if I was not in a bus. What would I have done or NOT done.....

The walk on the road
Takes him across twists and turns
I am not sure where it will lead him
But am not bothered for sure

The screams in his head
Makes him kill and burn
I am not sure if he is sane or insane
But am not bothered for sure

The wail of the child
Makes him stop and run
I am not sure if he is weak or strong
But am not bothered for sure

The blood on his hand
Shows him his pain and strain
I am not sure if he will live or die
But am not bothered for sure

The sorrow for the dead
Makes them howl and shed tears
I am not sure why does it matter
But am not bothered for sure

The blowing of the sirens
Make me go deaf and turn aside
I am not sure if am I empty or dead
But am not bothered for sure

Why should I bother?
Cause all it brings is trouble and pain
But my soul doesn’t listen
It shakes me, it snares me
I know I am bothered, but am too scared to say

-- Vinny, 15.03.2009

A Sincere Smile

2009-01-01T11:19:00.008+05:30

Some times in life you come across people that are so genuine that it is nigh impossible for you to believe that it is possible for such people to exist. Your mind and heart goes through a continuous conflict on the possibilty of mere existance of such people. I have been fortunate enough to know one such person for last few months and as an ode to that special and genuine person here are a few lines that I have written.

(Dedicated to this Kid)

“A Sincere Smile”

I have always seen her smile,
And marveled on its design

The endless hours of rumination,
Have failed my perception

All that my core understands,
Is the irrefutable evidence of her virgin mind

What is it that bonds us?
Sincere to say, is the sincerity of her smile
--- Vinny 17.12.08

Carcass of a relationship

2007-09-06T17:23:00.000+05:30

I am not sure why I wrote this. I guess one of the reasons is that one of my friends is just going through a separation after 4 years of relationship. His reasons are different but somehow when such things happen they do pull you down somewhat. Having said this, I still feel that the best way to overcome such things is to be strong, positive, and not being vindictive. Our mind is funny – at one hand it somewhere leads you on a path to hurt but it can also help you to overcome deepest of wounds as long as we want to. When things fall apart it is good to Smile and just move on.

“Carcass of a relationship”

The scream of the memory and the ashes of his dreams
Haunted his nights and burnt him from inside.

The battle in his mind and the execution of emotions
Defeated his innocence and made his soul cry.

The carcass of a relationship and the treason of promises
Crucified his trust and shook his cores inside.

The mirage of happiness and the reality of betrayal
Pierced his heart and ended his Life

--- Vinny 06.09.07

Breaking the silence of silence

2007-09-05T17:42:00.000+05:30

They say, The roar of the lion
Breaks the silence of the wild

They say, The tick of the clock
Breaks the silence of time

They say, The ring of the bell
Breaks the silence of prayer

They say, The wail of a child
Breaks the silence of motherhood

They say, The rise of arrogance
Breaks the silence of wisdom

They say, The fall of trust
Breaks the silence of friendship

They say, The beat of the heart
Breaks the silence of Life

They say, The fall of the tears
Breaks the silence of pain

They say, The sob of a heart
Breaks the silence of happiness

All I say, The rise of love
Breaks the silence of silence

-- Vinny 05.09.07

Am learning to live

2007-09-03T16:11:00.000+05:30

Couple of week’s back I went through loads of mixed feelings। Some one who is the reason I exist was going under the cut and I could not be there to hold his hands or even just be there. Loads of reasons which were all futile but all were just eating away my head. These lines are just my way to say. Thanks for being there for me and for forgiving me for not being there for you when you needed me the most.

I held your hands
And learnt to walk

I heard your words
And learnt to speak

I ate from your hands
And learnt to eat

I felt your embrace
And learnt to feel

I saw your smile
And learnt to laugh

I saw your anger
And learnt to apologize

I felt your warmth
And learnt to love

I saw your thoughts
And learnt to think

I saw your pain
And learnt to forgive

I saw your sacrifices
And I learnt to give

I tried to live your life
And I am learning to live

--- Vinny 03.09.07

Makes me wonder

2007-09-03T13:53:00.000+05:30

The hatred in their voices
And their wailing for the blood
The wastage of heroics
And the victory of bondage
Makes me wonder
Why do we have to be a slave to our mind?

The void in their hearts
And the death of love
The absence of sanity
And the freedom of evil
Makes me wonder
Why do we have to be a child of a lesser mind?

The abuse of happiness
And sacrilege of purity
The shine of the swords
And the wisdom of anger
Makes me wonder
Why do we have to shun the beauty of life?

The abundance of lust
And the sleep of the shame
The cries of the victims
And the laughter of the law
Makes me wonder
Why do we have to born of a grave?

The serpent of religion
And the venom of caste
The poisoning of our hearts
And the bath of the gun
Makes me wonder
How do we wake out of this slumber?

-- Vinny, 03.09.08

My first article for leading news daily

2007-09-03T12:58:00.000+05:30

I have recently finished authoring an article for a leading Indian Newspaper daily. The article tries to capture a snap shot of my understanding on a specific topic in professional domain. However, for reasons quiet obvious and “acceptable” in corporate world, this article would be published in somebody else’s name and to the external world I will have nothing to do with this article. I do expect and would like to imagine that the author under whose name it would be published in would modify it to a certain extent to showcase the contents of the article in a different manner. The article title is “Monetization of Social Networks in Telecom Space”

Irrespective of under whose name does this article gets published under; it has been enjoyable writing this article because I have been a part of this global phenomenon called social networking and do realize the impact this has made to our lives.

Pg 1 / 2
Pg 2 / 2

Wanna Rock the world - All you need is a guitar and a diaper

2007-08-17T16:40:00.000+05:30

This is so so hilarious and classy. For all of us who have grown up with rock and are now watching our kids adopting the same, this is something you are bound to love.

And, trust me while watching this all I could remember how my son and I used to watch Jim Morrison songs together. And those were the times when he couldn’t even stand but he would still keep on kicking his legs and shaking his head. And if I ever stopped the song in the middle I used to have it.

Man things like these sometimes make you feel.. God freeze the time .. watching our kids enjoying like this.. there is nothing better than this.

Preeti & Ragi you are two people I would really like to hear from on this.

http://view.break.com/313187 - Watch more free videos

One of my friends and a fellow blogger NRupesh sent this across to Me. Thanks mate

Secrets of Management Consulting

2007-08-13T12:07:00.000+05:30

Many times I have seen this to be equally applicable to consulting ..

Smile in a lie

2007-08-13T11:43:00.000+05:30

Hopping from one time to another
And, waiting for the darkness to clear
He prayed. She prayed.

Growing amidst the fading memories
And, mesmerized with life’s vagaries
He wondered. She wondered.

Covered in the smoke of love
And, buried under the load of hope
He sighed. She sighed.

Sitting out with a cold beer
And, counting the shivers of the fear
He wept. She wept.

Waking up to the stars of future
And, fighting away the life’s daily demure
He walked. She walked.

Flogging away the life
Together, they found truth in a lie
And Then They Smiled.

----- Vinny, 13.08.07

Are you Prepared to stay married

2007-07-16T13:36:00.000+05:30

A friend sent Me this story ... and i felt that this captured the real depth of marriage....
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When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I've got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes.

Suddenly I didn't know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly. She didn't seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why? I avoided her question. This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, you are not a man!

That night, we didn't talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; I had lost my heart to a lovely girl called 'Someone'. I didn't love her anymore. I just pitied her!

With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she this was a divorce by mutual consent. She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces. The woman who had spent almost six year of her life with me had become a stranger. I felt sorry for her wasted time, resources and energy but I could not take back what I had said for I loved 'someone' else dearly.

Finally she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me her cry was actually a kind of release. The idea of divorce which had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer now.

The next day, I came back home very late and found her writing something at the table. I didn't have supper but went straight to sleep and fell asleep very fast because I was tired after an eventful day with 'someone'. When I woke up, she was still there at the table writing. I just did not care so I turned over and was asleep again.

In the morning she presented her divorce conditions: she didn't want anything from me, but needed a month's notice before the divorce. She requested that in that one month we both struggle to live as normal a life as possible. Her reasons were simple: our son had his exams in a months time and she didn't want to disrupt him with our broken marriage.

This was agreeable to me. But she had something more, she asked me to recall how I had carried her into out bridal room on our wedding day. She requested that everyday for the month's duration I carry her out of our bedroom to the front door ever morning. I thought she was going crazy.

Just to make our last days together bearable I accepted her odd request.

I told 'someone' about my wifes divorce conditions. She laughed loudly and thought it was absurd. No matter what tricks she applies, she has to face the divorce, she said scornfully. My wife and I hadn't had any body contact since my divorce intention was explicitly expressed. So when I carried her out on the first day, we both appeared clumsy. Our son clapped behind us, daddy is holding mummy in his arms. His words brought me a sense of pain. From the bedroom to the sitting room, then to the door, I walked over ten meters with her in my arms. She closed her eyes and said softly; don't tell our son about the divorce. I nodded, feeling somewhat upset.

I put her down outside the door. She went to wait for the bus to work. I drove alone to the office.

On the second day, both of us acted much more easily. She leaned on my chest.. I could smell the fragrance of her blouse. I realized that I hadn't looked at this woman carefully for a long time. I realized she was not young any more. There were fine wrinkles on her face, her hair was graying! Our marriage had taken its toll on her. For a minute I wondered what I had done to her.

On the fourth day, when I lifted her up, I felt a sense of intimacy returning. This was the woman who had given almost six years of her life to me. On the fifth and sixth day, I realized that our sense of intimacy was growing again. I didn't tell 'somone' this. It became easier to carry her as the month slipped by. Perhaps the everyday workout made me stronger.

She was choosing what to wear one morning. She tried on quite a few dresses but could not find a suitable one. Then she sighed, all my dresses have grown bigger. I suddenly realized that she had grown so thin, that was the reason why I could carry her more easily. Suddenly it hit me; she had buried so much pain and bitterness in her heart.

Subconsciously I reached out and touched her head. Our son came in at the moment and said, Dad, it's time to carry mum out. To him, seeing his father carrying his mother out had become an essential part of his life. My wife gestured to our son to come closer and hugged him tightly. I turned my face away because I was afraid I might change my mind at this last minute. I then held her in my arms, walking from the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the hallway. Her hand surrounded my neck softly and naturally. I held her body tightly; it was just like our wedding day.

But her much lighter weight made me sad. On the last day, when I held her in my arms I could hardly move a step. Our son had gone to school. I held her tightly and said, I hadn't noticed that our life lacked intimacy. I drove to office... jumped out of the car swiftly without locking the door. I was afraid any delay would make me change my mind... I walked upstairs. 'Someone' opened the door and I said to her, Sorry, 'someone', I do not want the divorce anymore.

She looked at me, astonished. Then touched my forehead. Do you have a fever? She said. I moved her hand off my head. Sorry, 'someone', I said, I won't divorce. My marriage life was boring probably because she and I didn't value the details of our lives, not because we didn't love each other any more. Now I realize that since I carried her into my home on our wedding day I am supposed to hold her until death does us apart.

'Someone' seemed to suddenly wake up। She gave me a loud slap and then slammed the door and burst into tears. I walked downstairs and drove away. At the floral shop on the way, I ordered a bouquet of flowers for my wife. The salesgirl asked me what to write on the card. I smiled and wrote:

"I'll carry you out every morning until death do us apart"

The small details of our lives are what really matter in a relationship. It is not the mansion, the car, the property, the bank balance that matters. These create an environment conducive for happiness but cannot give happiness in themselves. So find time to be your spouse's friend and do those little things for each other that build intimacy. Do have a real happy marriage!

Mittal, Mukesh Ambani, Google and Yours Truly

2007-07-12T14:29:00.000+05:30

Just found this interesting fact about my blog:

If you search for

Mukesh Ambani is scared of mittal

Without quotes on google … then pg 2 i.e. 11^th Link points to my blog.. Hehehe .. And I don’t have any entry any where close to it ..

Life without consequences

2007-07-11T13:25:00.001+05:30

Saw this pic on the net .. Just made me remind me of my child hood days .. I though didn’t have much of an opportunity to play like this … but whenever I had the chance .. it was a blast ..

It just shows that no matter what happens to our Team India .. there is a passion for the game in India which remains unmatched ….

Wish I could go back to my child hood for a day and play like there is nothing in the world to worry about ..

Life while growing up was so much fun and freedom …. There could be so many small small things that you would discover and feel excited about it every thing in life was fresh .. and you could do anything you want and not worry about the consequences …

Whenever I meet my old friends .. its like time travel … we just cant stop talking about how much fun it was just to be a kid …

Anyways .. Am not that old now .. but still.. they were good old days

Times are changing

2007-07-09T11:55:00.000+05:30

With the way our lives are changing on all dimensions this picture captures a fact of life that we all should remember at all times।

They say change is the only permanent thing .. I totally agree.. And I also agree that with change comes the need to learn new thins and also to unlearn old things..

What we need to unlearn is probably a million times more difficult as compared to what we need to learn. Also, the quantum of what we need to unlearn is also a million times more than what we need to learn.

What we need to unlearn varies from person to person and culture to culture. For some they might need to unlearn big things like how they look at life at large and for some it might be limited to smaller things like how they need to manage their work on a day to day basis. This list I feel can be limitless and keeps on growing for all of us with every passing day. Refraining myself from going into more generic details I am just wondering that maybe I as a person also need to list down what I need to unlearn. The way every night I think about what I have learnt new in the day I should also think about what I need to unlearn today.

Before we walk this long and unending road of shedding unwanted and obsolete thoughts and unlearning things, I feel, that what we need to do foremost is we need to keep ourselves open enough ..

What is that you want to unlearn today????

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BOB DYLAN

"Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'"

Begining of a journey for Sachiel Bhagat

2007-07-06T10:26:00.001+05:30

Date: 3^rd July 2007

Event: 1st day at school (Play) for Sachiel Bhagat

I remember that when we were kids we never had to go through things like play school. Thank God for that. But play school or regular school. First day is always a big event. A big big occasion for our lives. But when we grow up we may not remember how we felt on our first day. But as parents we definitely go through a million emotions when we see our kids got to school. It varies from excitement, happiness, joy to being scared. To be scared is one emotion that hits first. My case is no different as of now.

School life opens a million doors to you. At every step you see a new door. Some times you can see them from miles and sometimes you have to search for them. And it is this journey between these doors that decide what and who we are. As a father, I look forward to my son’s journey through all these doors. And, hope that no matter what path he chooses, it should be a journey full of life and events that would help him in becoming a good human being.

In the end - I hope and pray to the almighty above that this is a beginning of a wonderful life for Jr. Bhagat. I hope he goes way beyond what I can and will ever achieve in my life. And as a father, I know that there may be times when he will have to make a certain journey himself (no matter how much I would I want to accompany him). But I also know that if I am not accompanying him on a journey, then I would always be available to him as a guide, friend and a facilitator.

God Bless you my son and best of luck to a life full of life itself.

Moon God, Lord Brahma, My wife and Fosters

2007-07-03T19:22:00.000+05:30

This is a disclaimer .. I have written this for laugh value .. not with any intention of hurting anybody's sentiments.. if you feel hurt .. plz move on .. and open up yourself .. this place is a blog and is for me to capture my thoughts the way i want it ..
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I just came across an interesting website (http://www.webonautics.com) which captures various aspects of characters (Read: Gods / Lesser Gods) of the Indian Mythology.

Among the listing of Lesser Gods I came across the details of the Moon GOD. His name is Chandra or SOMA. Just a Few facts about him:

1 - Soma is identified by Amrit (Nector)
2 - His second hand carries Nector (or Soma)
3 - It is said that 6000 dieties feed on SOMA or nector to achieve immortality
4 - His Fan Following was huge .. Lord Indra was one of them
5 - He is associated with the "underworld"
6 - Soma or the nector combines two aspects - a) Gods derive their strength from this drink and b) this drink also makes them wax and wain.
7 - Soma was banished from to the outer spaces by Brahma. (A sign of ban on intoxicants in heaven :) )

It's the fact no 7 that caught my attention. Somehow I found it interesting that as per the Indian mythology Soma is the producer and distributor of intoxicants. He was involved in a highly profitable trade (As would be expected in any monopoly. He had a huge fan following and highly satisfied clientele. The following testimonial by his clients in one of our vedas is a proof of the same:

"This Soma is a god; he cures
The sharpest ills that man endures.
He heals the sick, the sad he cheers,
He nerves the weak, dispels their fears;
The faint with martial ardour fires,
With lofty thoughts the bard inspires;
The soul from earth to heaven he lifts :
So great and wondrous are his gifts,
Men feel the god within their veins
And cry loud in exulting strains :
'We've quaffed the Soma bright
And are immortal grown :
We've entered into light,
And all the gods have known.
What mortal now can harm,
Or foeman vex us more ?
Through thee, beyond alarm,
Immortal god, we soar. '"

But.. coming to the meat of it ... his business had a shadow cast on it .. the shadow came in the form of a regulator (Read: Brahma) who ensured that Soma's monopoly was broken down, or atleast curtailed. The regulator said .. Out you go .. Thy shall not run your business freely in my territory (Probably Lord Soma should have entered a structured revenue sharing model with the regulator)..

Anyways lets not get into what could have been done ...Instead lets look at what has happened after that iron hand of the regulator came into the picture..cut forward a Zillions years:

Lord Soma of yester years has been replaced by beer companies. (My top choice Fosters - hence the coverage in the title). This makes me think that could it be that The moon God SOMA has smartly moved on to earth and started setting up various beer companies like fosters????? I think we should have a re-look at the holding structure of these companies...

I seriously am beginning to think that this might be true. And I have a supporting argument for that.. Where there is Lord Soma there is Lord Brahma .. I feel Lord Brahma has taken the entire "amrit" thing to his heart.. That is why no matter where Lord Soma goes Lord Brahma follows. He follows to bring in regulation. And there is another dimension to it .. the moon god decided to play smart and have many "avatars" simultaneously on earth.. he is all around in form of various Liquor barons.. But then Lord Brahma has also adopted the same strategy.. he has also decided to take many avatars.. He is there as our mother, father, girlfriend, wives etc ... My case is no different.. Its just that there is an ironical twist to it .... My wife is the regulator.. she is the one who has banished "Amrit" from my life. But the twist is that her name is SOMA... What does it mean ??? I think I don't need to answer this .. it is self explanatory . isn't it????

I am just wondering .. that if my hypothesis is right .. and Lord Soma is constantly on a look out for ways to stay two steps ahead of Lord Brahma .. then how do i use my learnings from him to stay a step ahead (for having my fair share of amrit) of the Lord Brahma avatar at my place.

Us – The Real and The Virtual

2007-06-21T15:23:00.000+05:30

I have been active online for more than 2 years now. I have been part of and still remain associated with a few of the community sites. Other than that, though I am not very active, I have been trying to do justice to this space that I have leased on the virtual real estate.

I have learnt many things – materialistic and not so materialistic in this world of WWW. And thanks to the community sites like Orkut & Stumbleupon I have gained knowledge about many topics / subjects & understanding of different points of view. The biggest development probably has been on the latter. I have “met” people from diverse cultures, countries, origins, economical strata, professions (both working and home makers) and different ages that it is not difficult to acknowledge the fact that many have left their impression on me. Some have left more than others. Many remain in touch with me on daily or on and off basis. And, for many the connection link has gone of the radar.

But among all these people that I have connected with – one thing remains common – had it not been for this virtual world probably I would have never even known of the existence or vice versa. Yet another that is constantly cropping up in my head right now is that the way I or the person on the other side of this screen has interacted with me is different for every touch point. This is not a “mystery” or something because this is the very nature of human interaction. Even in real life many people have different opinions about us. Some might consider us special, some might find us charming, some might us friendly, warm etc. These opinions about us could also fall on the “not so good” end of the spectrum. But that’s the way it has to be and everybody knows it. So, if I am saying that all our interactions are bound to generate diverse opinions about us and everybody knows it then what is that I am trying to point out over here?. My answer – am not reinventing the wheel, just trying to add a new spoke into it.

Let me raise a few questions both to myself and to you (if you have not only landed on my page by mistake but also have had the patience and time to read this :) )

Have you ever found yourself speaking to a contact or a friend that you think you have found on the “Virtual world” and finding that –

You are probably opening up things about yourself to a person (whom you may / surely will never even meet) and sharing your thoughts, emotions etc which you have not even told closest of your people.

You are more expressive on virtual world on certain topics or issues you feel about but consciously refrain either in part or completely in the real world.

You are more receptive to ideas from the other side of the screen than you would have been to someone face to face.

You have been more rude or more patient to someone virtual than you would have been to in real life.

The virtual person is sharing his / her thoughts about you and saying words about you as a person which you thought would have never been associated with you. (Some one might say you are cool where in real life you are anything but cool, or someone says that they find you serious in life where as you might be seen as clown of the town by the people you meet on a daily basis)

This list can go on and on. But I think even these would be sufficient to make you think.

I can’t generalize it but I have can say for sure about myself and about few people in both real and virtual world that many of us who are active in virtual world that the answer to many of the aforesaid queries is yes. I remember I was testing my thoughts on this topic with a virtual friend and she said that she thinks I would fall in the category of always focused on career from childhood and always sure of whatever I wanted to do as I grew up. And she is a psychologist. But if one ever meets up with my room mates in college or even glances through my mark sheets they would see the complete opposite side of it. I am not even risking questioning the credibility of that psychologist friend of mine. But what I am trying to drive home over here is that she is accurate on her part because my traces in virtual world would indicate this only. And, am not even saying that I have been leaving false traces on the web. But what I am saying for sure is that the my traces on net have strong flavor of 1) my reason to be active online and 2) Freedom to jump back and from like in a time machine in real time (like in a 4^th dimension).

Lets take these one by one.

Reason of your virtual existence: If one is actively into community sites or into blogging they would have reasons behind it (there has to be a reason behind everything). For me the reason to be online is to interact with different people, expand my scope of knowledge base and sharing my “let us think” ideas. The reasons could vary from plain and simple time to kill in office, to fight of loneliness in life, to gain more knowledge, to do crazy things online (many such available online – exhibitionists etc ), or just to connect to people etc. So when we approach something in life with a certain frame of mind we act in a certain manner. And if repeat those steps again and again there will be a similarity in our behavior. And this commonality in your behavior is what are left as traces in the virtual world. And anybody who sees these traces and the commonality in your behavior sees you like that only. But why is this different from the real world? It is different in the sense that in the virtual world the other person doesn’t have the chance to see the other side of you (or the traces of other part of you) because you have not depicted your other behavioral aspects online. Let me make it simpler. You meet some one online and you always end up talking about the beauty of art and artists like Picasso. What does that person see? That you are artistic. Whereas in real life you do nothing related to art. (Why you don’t do it could be because of many reasons and may be my next blog entry).

Virtual Time Machine: Most of us in this part of the world have started coming online only now. We are still trying to comprehend\the extent and possible impact of www on our lives. But as times are changing over here, so is our life style. And with life style what is changing are our aspirations and our way of looking at life at large. Thus, as we change our perspective, more often than not, we grow. And when we grow we change more.

Now lets go back in time in our real lives. Few years back, when I was in college I just wanted to go ahead and enjoy college. Career was the least of my worries. Find a partner for a game of pool everyday, finding a sponsor for my next bottle or beer and such things were more important. Few years of all that and growing up from it, all I could think of was grabbing a seat in IIMs. Then after getting that I wanted to crack sales. Post cracking sales I wanted to get into more macro level and do good strategy work. Once into that I wanted to get into giving gyan to people and what better way to do that than through management consulting. These were all different phases of life where different events happened. Now for all those people whom I connected to in real life during those phases see me in a different light. Again, for the virtual world, there is a different spoke in the wheel. This basic that different people in different phases of your life see you in a different light stands true for both real and virtual life. But what is different in the virtual world is that on the planet www I am able to interact with people who could have been a part of my other phases and other events in life at different points in time. This is where internet acts like a time machine. In real life as a management consultant I am definitely not going to hunt for a beer after every client meeting. But in the virtual world, even as a management consultant, I have the freedom to go back in time and connect as a dopey to a Jim Morrison fan. I can discuss “The Lords: Notes on Vision” with James Doughlas Morrison fan while being in office. I can do this over and over again. But the person on the other side sees me as a dopey only which I am not in the real life. Thus, when I have been interacting with the psychologist friend of mine, all I have been discussing is Sigmund Freud, onierology, and actions needed to convert dreams into reality. Maybe if I change my nature of discussions with her probably she will change her analysis :) .

Am exhausted right now. It seriously is tiring jotting down your thoughts on web. If anyone has had the patience to go through all of this than do feel free to leave a comment or share your thoughts with me on the subject.

No Title as of now

2007-06-20T13:22:00.000+05:30

To the heavens galore,
We find the seas a blind,
To the glory night
And the heavens abide
For the love of God.

We smile to the hearts alive
& pray to the Angels above
that the doves fly,
There is nothing to say,
there is nothing to pray,
But we worship the dreams alive.

God Bless us all,
And pray to Him
For the dreams unbroken
But not fulfilled to the swollen heart.

Take my hand and walk the blind
For I will take you far away from the world of grind.

Smile, Smile …. Smile
Cause that is worship, Cause that is love
Cause that is the dream of a heart alive,
God Bless us All !!

-- Vinny

The Angels of Love, Life and Hope

2007-04-23T14:30:00.000+05:30

When we are born,
God sends His angels to go and visit us.

As they stand near us, our eyelids lie closed.
When our mother holds us in her arms,
The supernatural beings sit and smile.
For they can see what will be ahead of us in our lives.
They see the adversity but they only notice the happiness and triumph.

The angels think for a moment and then
The angel of Hope says to the baby:
You will need to work hard in the many years ahead.
Your dreams will not be easily achieved,
Your goals will not be effortlessly reached.
There will be tears shed in tough times
But there will also be tears when there is joy.
Do not be afraid of achieving
And do not let fear pull you down.

On some days when you are growing up,
You will feel as though you do not want to carry on.
But these days will not last long
For darkness only appears until the light returns.
On those days you will need to work extra hard
And smile even if there is no reason to smile
For society appreciates people more when they have a happy face.

Then the angel of Life says:
Days may go as fast as the speed of light
But may also go as slow as a snail trying to reach its far away destination.
You must learn to love both these days.
The progressive ones and the rapid ones,
For the slow days are the ones on which you will grow and learn
And on fast days you will enjoy life but you will not spiritually gain anything.

Then the angel of love says:
You will inevitably fall in love,
And sometimes there will be rainbows beneath the valleys
And other times there will be storms below the clouds.
There will be times when you agree with your partner,
But also times when you will disagree.
Cherish both of these times as they both assist in the cycle of love.

You will meet people like and unlike yourself.
You will laugh with them and cry with them, too.
Time will seem to go quickly when spent with them.
These people will care for you and love you.
Always remember that the sun will rise at dawn,
That each day is a new day
And that as long as the sun wakes you up in the morning,
you must continue to have faith and hope.

And with that last thought,
The angels wave goodbye
And disappear into the thin air
And the baby opens its eyelids
Ready to begin its life long journey

----- By Benjamin Raymond

Flight in the Wild

2007-04-07T14:34:00.000+05:30

Let your dreams flow like the wind
Let your wings take the flight of freedom
Don’t be afraid to go around the bend
Just open yourself to the world of wisdom

Though you may drift miles
But you must not be scared
Cause freedom brings in smiles
And beauty of life lies in the flight in the wild

- Vinny 07.04.07

Will the Mohan in You save another Tenzin????

2007-04-07T12:14:00.000+05:30

One of very close friends of mine has just met with a real bad road accident ... He scared the life out of anyone and everyone who saw him... Luckily there is no threat to his life now... Though there is still a long long road for him to recovery ... I will be there with him anytime and every time he requires me ... and so we will be many of our friends...

I have mixed thoughts in my head right now ... On one hand I keep on asking why did this happen to him or for that matter to anyone ??? .. and on other I can't stop thanking God that he is still with us...

My friend's name is Tenzin Thargay .. One gem of a chap.... a poet at heart and a thinker to the core... friend of friends and a born optimist ....

None of us know what happened at that ill fated moment...All we have understood is that .. it was a hit and run case... he was driving his bullet ... and he was hit by a taxi ... the taxi got away ... we are not sure about the time .. he was lying in the middle of the road ... all covered in blood and unconscious ... he was surrounded by the typical Mumbai crowd... all over him ... all around him... eyes would have been all over him... And yes.. like a typical Mumbai crowd.... thats all they did .... no body wasn't even thinking on the lines of rushing him to a hospital and saving a life...I am sure they would all have been playing GOD by saying that he would surely die .. But none of them would ave tried to be what they really should have been- A HUMAN ... A human being there for a fellow human

Sadly... this image .. as I can visualize... has hit me straight in the face ... as an individual ... and as a human .. I have never been a part of such a crowd... standing there and watching a person die ... but yes... I have seen many a similar accident in my life time .. but I didn't even bother to stop and pick them up ... I was too engrossed in my thoughts to come forward and save some body's life... I am guilty of not respecting life.. But now I am prepared to respect life.. never again will I shy away from my responsibility..

And this realization is all due to one gentleman ... a God's man .. who respected life.. This Living example of hope in our lives, Mohan to us, saw our friend lying on the road ... and he did not shy away ... he took this total stranger to the hospital .. and called me up . .. and my friends boss.. thanks to Mohan .. we could take speedy action and save our friends life... Before I reached .. another friend of mine had reached there.. . and Mohan had left .... I couldnt even thank him in person ... I guess this is my way of saying thanks to him and many more Mohans who are out there.. And I feel that if only we can all learn .. and not always the hard way ... but by just looking at other Mohan and realizing that we got to bring out the Mohan inside of us...

I know there are a million problems attached with it ... cops and medical staff acting as irritants .. but still .. one act by you could save some body's life... today it is my friend, tomorrow it could be me .. or YOU .. or YOUR Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Daughter, Son, Grandchild.. Anyone of us can be where Tenzin is today ... that is something not in our hands .. but probably in hands of our fate .. .But to take Mohan's place is in our hands.. This is one thing not decided by our fate .. But by choosing to be Mohan we Control Fate ...

I just hope that we find the courage in ourselves to become Mohan.....

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Tenzin has a Hairline Fracture on his skull.. His forehead was smashed into his skull .... and his forehead has no skin ... and his face has so many cuts ... that a long and painful plastic surgery is the only way out for him ..... His Left leg is smashed in two pieces.... He is still in the ICU and in a semi conscious state...

Tenzin's blood over me and all inside the ambulance still shakes me and makes me imagine that if Mohan hadn't done what he had ... then a life so full of vigor, energy, potential and optimism would have ended right there on the road...

All his loved ones and us his friends will be with him on every step of his recovery ... I request you to say a silent prayer for his fast and complete recovery ... And for all of us also to find the strength to find the Mohan in us.

God Bless.

The Key to Become a Billionaire in India

2007-03-13T10:40:00.000+05:30

The billionaire list for 2007 is out. No exceptions and no surprises for the top 2 positions. Bill Gates ($56 billion) held on to his top slot and Warren Buffet ($52 billion) retained his place next to Gates. Overall, US continues to dominate the list with not less than 415 billionaires. This all is pretty regular.

But, what’s different this year is the India has displaced Japan as the country with the Asian country with the maximum number of billionaires (36 to be precise). All the Indians put together had a net worth of $191 billion. That is $3.6 billion each.

The Indian Battalion is led by Mukesh Ambani (#14, $20.1 billion) closely followed by Anil Ambani (#18, $18.2 billion) and Lakshmi Mittal (#5, $32 billion) takes the bronze pot.

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Ok.. this is a list that comes out every year. This is a list, which for people, other than those who actually feature on the list, is nothing more than a casual chit chat over lunch, fag, tea or coffee. Obviously, no matter how much I would like to be otherwise, I fall under the second category. And any dreams of making to this list are easily swept aside by just one look at my bank balance, my pay slips and my genealogy.

So, like a typical person of my category, my first reaction on reading this list was one of AWE: “Man these people are RICH”.

This was followed by JEALOUSY: “BUGGERS!!!”.

Third reaction was HOPE: “How can I make one of these guys adopt me?”.

Infact, the third reaction held on to me for some time. So much So that I had even started scribbling down a “Adoption Sales Pitch”, to one of these billionaires, in my head. Probably, since I have a wife and a kid, I could use “3 for the cost of 1” tag line to make my sales pitch look more attractive.

But, soon after being given dagger sharp looks by wife on discussing this adoption idea with her, I dropped the idea.

You can say I have a bug in me. It’s a bug which doesn’t let go of thoughts so easily. (The fact that I am working for one of the Billionaires on the list didn’t help either). Hence, in the evening, while my son was busy watching shin chan and wife was busy running after him to feed him dinner, I started thinking about the list again. But this time I thought of it from a more strategic point of view. I used the basics to analyze the situation.

My objective: To figure out what makes these people so rich.

My Tools: very basic - What, When, Why, Where, and How.

After running through the histories of these people I realized that, unlike what I would have wanted to believe, not all their wealth can be accounted to their Genealogy. Ok, few of them did inherit legacies but the inheritance only gave them a good base to stand on. And, they have made it to this elite list purely on what they have done post inheritance.

Another, interesting thing I realized that the actions of these extraordinary gentlemen is purely driven by the state of their national economies. For e.g. Bill Gates, Warren Buffe – they are part of Developed economies. Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani, Lakshmi Mittal, Ruia’s, Godrej etc are part of developing economies.

If one looks closely one can see that in the developed economies the people who are in the list are entrepreneurs and are linked with the new business economy drivers like internet, financial markets etc. Whereas in the developing economies like India &, Mexico the one’s who are on the list are old economy men. By old economy here I mean these people control natural wealth components which have supply constraints. Other explanation is people who are not into technology (search engine type) related businesses.

In Mexico, Carlos Slim Helu has his roots in telecom. In India, Mukesh Ambani has Oil & Gas, Anil Ambani has Coal, energy business, telecom, Tata’s have steel, telecom, energy business among many other natural resources, Ruia’s have oil rigs & Telecom, Godrej has real estate, Mittal is the steel baron. Azim Premji is the only one who doesn’t fit this bill.

What does this indicate? No matter how much the new generation businesses may have grown and India may be on the way to become the global outsourcing or IT hub these business have still not broken into the big league. A basic google search will show you that many of the biggest software biggies in India are still much much smaller than the old economy guys.

Thus, the way I see it, if you want to be big in India, forget software look for minerals. I don’t know whether I can reach the billionaire list. But, since I feel I have unlocked the key to become rich in India I am off to my local coal trader and am gonna make a separate room in my house just to stock coal and other mineral resources. You never know, these small chunks of coal bought by me from here on may be bought by these billionaires in future for billions of dollars. (Hoping ofcourse, that my wife doesn’t shoot down this idea also).

Bamboo, Fern and my Batch Mates

2007-02-09T16:29:00.000+05:30

I came across this story while I was cleaning up my cabin. This was on a piece of paper left by one of my colleagues who had resigned and left the cabin nearly a year back. This story got my attention immediately. And made me think and forced me to write. But first here is the story
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One day I decided to Quit…I quit my job, my relationships, my spirituality…I wanted to quit my life.

I went to the woods to have one last talk with God.

“God” I said, “Can you give me one good reason not to Quit?”
His answer surprised me …“Look around”, He said. “ Do you see the fern and the bamboo?”
“Yes” I replied.
“When I planted the fern and the bamboo seeds. I took very good care of them.
I gave them light. I gave them water. The fern quickly grew from the earth. Its brilliant green covered the floor. Yet nothing came from the bamboo seed. But I did not quit on the bamboo. In the second year the fern grew more vibrant and plentiful. And again, nothing came from the Bamboo seed. But I did not quit on the bamboo.” He said.

“In year three there was still nothing from the bamboo seed. But I would not quit. In year four again, there was nothing from the Bamboo seed. I would not quit.” He said.

“ Then in the fifth year a tiny sprout emerged from the earth. Compared to the fern it was seemingly small and insignificant.. But just 6 months later the bamboo rose to over 100 feet tall. It had spent the five years growing roots. Those roots made it strong and gave it what needed to survive. I would not give any of my creations a challenge it could not handle. “

He said to me. “Did you know, my child, that all this time you have been struggling, you have actually been growing roots”

“I would not quit on the bamboo. I will never quit on you”
“Don’t compare yourself to others.” He said. “The bamboo had a different purpose than the fern. Yet they both make the forest beautiful”

“Your time will come”, God Said to me. “You will rise high”

“How high should I rise?” I asked.

“How high will the bamboo rise?” He asked in return.

“As high as it can ?” I questioned.

“Yes”. He said “Give me glory by rising as high as you can.”

I came back from the forest having realized that God will never give up on you.

Moral of the Story - Never, Give up.
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This story could mean a million things to million people. For me also this is relevant from many angles. The portion that really caught me was where God says “ Don’t compare yourself with others. The bamboo had a different purpose…..“ the other part of the story that hit me in the face was “I would not give any of my creations a challenge it could not handle.”

Often, when I meet my batch mates, peers etc and after the initial euphoria and the nostalgia subsides, I have seen the discussion move on to doing a comparative. The comparison always seems to have very strong materialistic undertones. These comparatives range from being downright idiotic to hilarious. Few examples I have faced till now are -
“ hey, man what is your designation?”
“What is your CTC?”
“Have you bought a House?”
“Have you bought a car?”
“Nice cell phone”
“Oh, you are on V25 .. I prefer only Lonovo”
“ How often do you travel abroad?”
“Oh. I travel only business class or only Kingfisher”
“ I prefer consulting better than being in the industry” (This is the most hollow one – I feel)
And blah blah blah …

This is just a small sample of various other permutations and combinations. Many a times your replies make the other person feel let down by himself and many times he feels he is a superior being. Am not saying that I have not been a culprit. But, I have made a conscious choice to grow over these comparisons. And, this is where this story connected to me. It connected deep.

Guys, when we will realize that one’s purpose of being might be to be a fern. But, that doesn’t mean that if you are a fern and other is not then your purpose of being is more relevant than the other persons. Being a fern is obviously a reason for delight but then being a bamboo is equally delightful.

I might be faster in the blocks as compared to many .. but then I might be slower as compared to many more. But then it is for us to understand that being faster on the blocks is not the sole purpose of being. Its is important to understand that how successful you are in fulfilling the objectives that you had set for yourself in life.

Imagine when you are ninety you will not be looking back and saying that man I am satisfied in life cause I was the first guy in my batch to buy a merc. But you will definitely be looking back and saying that man I am satisfied with my life cause I have been able to fulfill all that I ever set for myself. You will be satisfied because you were competing with yourself and not competing with others. (If your only aim in life is to be the first one to buy a merc.. then I take back my words.. may be you will be the satisfied one !!! )

I agree that not everyone thinks similar. Some might have already realized the purpose of their being and some might be in the process of discovering theirs. But realizing one's own purpose of life is not the end. It is the start. Also, my purpose of life and your purpose of life go hand in hand. If you have realized that you are a fern it is equally important that you respect bamboo also otherwise .. well.. spring is followed by fall.

Don’t have much to say beyond this other than repeating the fact that it is really important to figure out your purpose of being and also respecting the purpose of being of others.

Last words: “Show me a person who is moving slower than me or you .. and I will show you a million who are faster than me or you”

Ant n Grasshopper

2007-01-29T15:37:00.000+05:30

This is an interesting story that I came across. It highlights the changes in the dyamics of our society over the years. And more importantly it drives home the point why we as a nation fail to grow at the pace we should ....

OLD Version:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

TODAY's Version:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter.

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper (many
promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for
non-compliance) .

Opposition MP's stage a walkout. Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal
and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry. CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]", with effect from the beginning of the winter.

Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for Grass Hopper in educational Insititutions & in Govt Services. The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice". Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden' Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to
address the UN General Assembly.

Many years later...The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley.100s of grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India .

Ticket to ride Twenty - Oh - Seven

2007-01-05T12:12:00.002+05:30

Ups and Downs
They make you smile
They make you frown
But Life is such a funny bitch
To LIVE it .. you have to DROWN

These lines have no poetic sense.. but they make realistic sense .. they may not rhyme .. but they are worth every dime .. Atleast to me ...

These are the thoughts, running through my head, as I book my tickets before embarking on a new journey - a transition from Twenty - Oh - Six to Twenty - Oh - Seven. ... This transition will mean different things to different people .. for some it may bring in hope of a better life.. for some it may mean looking forward to more joy .. or for some it may mean leaving behind something dear to them ....

Looking back I can say that Twenty - Oh - Six was fair to me ... it gave me joy at one hand .. and sorrow at another... it made me laugh ... it made me cry.. it took some people away from me .. and it gave me new friends .. on times it made me calm .. and on others it made me as mad as a raging bull... it closed many a doors.. but opened many a other ... life completed many a circle in 2006 for me ..

And, Looking into future .. Twenty - Oh - Seven... am sure like its old friend .. it will also not disappoint me .... it will be my master .. it will be my slave .. it will be my friend .. it will be my foe .. and it will also complete many more circles .. Overall, I look at the future with optimism standing heads and shoulders above the fears waiting to pounce upon my dreams ... and I Pray to the Lord above that he gives me the strength to be a good human being...

And this rare picture from Burma captures my thoughts for the coming year ....

Am a Good Cook

2007-01-05T12:12:00.001+05:30

What is life?..

One can get many a philosophic and not so philosophic answers to the same ... Here I am making one not so philosophic attempt to answer the same ...

Joy and Sorrow .. Pride and Shame ... Win and Loss... Love and Hatred... Success and Loss... Smiles and tears... these are the spices of life.. vital ingredients for a recipe which defines our purpose of existence ..be careful in what you pick and choose .. and how you mix them .. and in what proportion .. decides the taste of the recipe called LIFE ...

The variable proportions of these ingredients decide your fate... One extra spoon of sorrow and you might become a loner or one extra spoon of joy may make you selfish ... But what's really amazing about this recipe is that though the ingredients are the same and the proportions vary from person to person -The end result is different but The taste of the recipe is the same for every one ..

You don't agree???... Ok think about this ..

When you are happy ....everything just seems to fit in beautifully ... at that time you feel you can hear the chirping of the birds, the buzz of the bees, .. you an feel the smiles of a sleeping baby and on and on .... But when you hit the rough.. the world seems to come down as a house of cards... the same chirping of birds, the buzz of the bees become the noise that rattles your brain to insanity ...

Thats what i mean .. at the end ... one might be a pauper.. and other might be the president of US .. but the spices that bring the flavor in life .. they make them both go through the same emotions (though maybe at different points of life) .. This is applicable to all of us..

So you see.. next time anybody asks you ..
"Can You cook??" ...
Say .. "Yes I can ... And am damn good at it "

Dont give in to Bacchus... Plz Don't ....

2006-12-30T14:11:00.000+05:30

Every once in a while one comes across real life stories, happenings that shakes the soul.. they make you look at life in a different perspective .. The events might happen with occur with someone you know personally or some one you are not linked even remotely.. but the moment you look at those events happening with you or your loved ones.. they send chills down to your bones...

Recently, I came across a similar story .. it made me shake up with anger and sorrow,.. and it scared me .. and it still does as I am jotting these lines... Guys.. Gals.. Everybody ... please ... I understand that many a times our intent is not there .. but still our actions can change some body's life .. they can make them .. or break them ... A humble but hard request to everybody that lets stand up for ourselves and make sure that our actions are more deliberate and careful ... lets thik before we act ... our one moment of insanity .. can be a lifetime of pain and burden for someone ...

plz.. read this story .. and be scared.. be very scared .. and make sure that you will not let this happen to anybody on your account ...

and for the lady in the story .... All I pray is God Bless Her .. God Bless her with all the happiness of life.. and if God needs He can take a portion of my happiness and give it to this lady .. I am ready to share my happiness with her .. if it can bring even a single smile to her face ..

Once you have read this .. you will never forget the pictures.. and plz don't ... let these images be a reminder to you to be more careful about your actions ..

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This is the story of a women named Jacqueline Sabuido ... A bright, young and cheerful human being like anyone of us ..

This is her (dated: September 19, 1999)

And here are a few images from her life in happy times.. (Aren't these like images from our personal lives)....

Her birthday as a kid...With her Father ..
With her friends at party ...
In Venezuela on vacation ...
And then in Decemeber 1999... a drunk driver .. 17 year old male student rushing home after a couple of hard packs of bear with his friends ... crashed into her car .. and it destroyed her life for ever ...
She was caught in the burning ... car for 45 seconds and was badly burnt ... After the accident Jacqueline needed 40 operations .....

This is her getting treatment several months after the accident ...With her left eyelid she needs eyedrops to keep her vision ...
Now 20 years old, the boy who caused the wreck while drunk on that fateful night cannot forgive himself .. He knows he has devastated her life ....This was taken 4 years after the accident ....
The doctors are still working on Jacqueline, whose body was burnt 60% ...

Think About what you have seen here!..Whether you are a 16 - year old school student, a 21 - year old college graduate, or a 50- year old parent or even a grand parent.

DON'T LET SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPEN AGAIN !

End of a Dark Chapter in History

2006-12-30T13:53:00.000+05:30

This is a news article, just a few hours after the execution of one of the egotist and idiotic leaders - Saddam Hussain, that I came across.

One can always debate on the nature of the justice done... Some might feel it is apt .. some might feel otherwise.. Personally I feel that, irrespective of the circumstances in which the punishment was pronounced, he deserved this low key death.. This current version of devil has made many a suffer and his name will be bring shame to this era ...

Like Hitler he is a dark spot on our lives and history and with his execution a dark chapter comes to an end....

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Saddam Hussein, dictator who ruled Iraq, dies at 69

By Neil MacFarquhar
Friday, December 29, 2006

The hanging death of Saddam Hussein on Saturday ended the life of one of the most brutal tyrants in recent history and negated the fiction that he himself maintained even as the gallows loomed— that he remained president of Iraq despite being toppled by the American military and that his power and his palaces would be restored to him in time.

The despot, known universally as Saddam, had oppressed Iraq for more than 30 years, unleashing devastating regional wars and reducing his once promising, oil-rich nation to a claustrophobic police state.

For decades, it had seemed that his unflinching hold on Iraq would endure, particularly after he held on to power through disastrous military adventures against first Iran and then Kuwait, where an American-led coalition routed his unexpectedly timid military in 1991.

His own conviction that he was destined by God to rule Iraq forever was such that he refused to accept that he would be overthrown in April 2003, even as American tanks penetrated the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in a war that has become a bitterly contentious, bloody occupation.

After eluding capture for eight months, Saddam became the American military's High Value Detainee No.1. But he heaped scorn on the Iraqi judge who referred to him as the "former" president after asking him to identify himself on the first day of his trial for crimes against humanity, which ultimately lead to his execution.

"I didn't say 'former president,' I said 'president,' and I have rights according to the Constitution, among them immunity from prosecution," he growled from the docket. The outburst underscored the boundless egotism and self-delusion of a man who fostered such a fierce personality cult during the decades that he ran the Middle Eastern nation that joking or criticizing him in public could bring a death sentence.

Hussein's own execution came after he lost the automatic appeal against his death sentence. The conviction stemmed from the ruthless revenge killing of 148 Shiite Muslim men and boys from the small town of Dujail just north of Baghdad, after a 1982 attack on his motorcade there. It was one of countless assassination attempts he survived. Hussein was due to face a series of trials over incidents of far greater magnitude, but Iraqi prosecutors started with Dujail because the evidence was clear-cut — including Hussein's signature on at least one execution order.

"Long live the people!" Hussein shouted, looking drained but defiant, when the chief judge, Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman, read the death sentence. "Long live the nation! Down with the occupiers! Down with the spies!" The judge ordered him removed from court and he exited still yelling.

The tribunal's proceedings were condemned by some lawyers and human rights advocates as "victor's justice," not least because Iraq remained under American military occupation.

If a man's life can be boiled down to one physical mark, the wrist of Hussein's right hand was tattooed with a line of three dark blue dots, commonly given to children in rural, tribal areas. Some urbanized Iraqis removed or at least bleached theirs, but Hussein's former confidants told The Atlantic Monthly that he never disguised his.

Ultimately, underneath all the socialist rhetoric, underneath the Koranic references, the tailored suits and the invocations of Iraq's glorious history, Hussein was a village peasant trying to be a tribal leader on a grand scale. His rule was paramount, and sustaining it was his main goal behind all the talk of developing Iraq by harnessing its considerable wealth and manpower.

Mosques, airports, neighborhoods and entire cities were named after him. A military arch erected in Baghdad in 1989 was modeled on his forearms and then enlarged 40 times to hold two giant crossed swords. In school, pupils learned songs with lyrics like "Saddam, oh Saddam, you carry the nation's dawn in your eyes."

The entertainment at public events often consisted of outpourings of praise for Saddam. At the January 2003 inauguration of a recreational lake in Baghdad, poets spouted spontaneous verse and the official translators struggled to keep up with lines like, "We will stimulate ourselves by saying your name, Saddam Hussein, when we say Saddam Hussein, we stimulate ourselves."

While Hussein was in power, his statue guarded the entrance to every village, his portrait watched over each government office and he peered down from at least one wall in every home. His picture was so widespread that a joke quietly circulating among his detractors in 1988 put the country's population at 34 million — 17 million people and 17 million portraits of Saddam.

Throughout his rule, he unsettled the ranks of the Baath Party with bloody purges and packed his jails with political prisoners to defuse real or imagined plots. In one of his most brutal acts, he rained poison gas on the northern Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988, killing an estimated 5,000 of his own citizens suspected of being disloyal and wounding 10,000 more.

Even at the end, he showed no remorse. When four Iraqi politicians visited him after his capture in December 2003, they asked about his more brutal acts. He called the Halabja attack Iran's handiwork; said that Kuwait was rightfully part of Iraq and that the mass graves were filled with thieves who fled the battlefields, according to Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi foreign minister. Hussein declared that he had been "just but firm" because Iraqis needed a tough ruler, Pachachi said.

It was a favorite theme, one even espoused in a novel attributed to Hussein called "Zabibah and the King."

At one point, the king asks the comely Zabibah whether the people needed strict measures from their leader. "Yes, Your Majesty," Zabibah replies. "The people need strict measures so that they can feel protected by this strictness."

Aside from his secret police, the main factor that preserved his power was his practice of filling the government's upper ranks with members of his extended clan, regardless of their qualifications. Their Corleone-like feuds became the stuff of gory public soap operas. Saddam once sentenced his eldest son, Uday, to be executed after he beat Hussein's food taster to death in front of many horrified party guests, but later rescinded the order. The husbands of his two eldest daughters, whom he had promoted to important military positions, were gunned down after they defected and then inexplicably return to Iraq.

Continual wars sapped Iraq's wealth and decimated its people. In 1980, Hussein dragged his country into a disastrous attempt to overthrow the new Islamic government in neighboring Iran. By the time the war ended in stalemate in 1988, more than 200,000 Iraqis were dead and hundreds of thousands more wounded. Iran suffered a similar toll. Iraq's staggering war debt, pegged around $70 billion, soon had wealthy Arab neighbors demanding repayment. Enraged, he invaded Kuwait in August 1990, only to be expelled by an American-led coalition in the Persian Gulf war seven months later.

Yet in the language of his Orwellian government, Hussein never suffered a setback. After the gulf war ended with the deaths of an estimated 150,000 Iraqis, he called "The Mother of All Battles" his biggest victory and maintained that Iraq had actually repulsed an attack by "America and its criminal gang." "Iraq has punched a hole in the myth of American superiority and rubbed the nose of the United States in the dust," Hussein said.

His defeat in Kuwait, followed by more than a decade of tense confrontations with the West over his alleged weapons programs, ultimately led to his overthrow. The extended bloodbath that followed the invasion, with the monthly death toll of Iraqi civilians estimated roughly at 3,000 by the end of 2006, made some nostalgic for even the oppressive days of Hussein, when public security was not an issue. His repressive ways were credited with keeping the fractious population of 26 million — including 20 percent Sunni Muslims, who dominated; 55 percent Shiite Muslims; 20 percent Kurds plus several tiny minorities including Christians — from shattering along ethnic lines.

Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937, in a mud hut on stilts near the banks of the Tigris River near the village of Tikrit, 100 miles northwest of Baghdad. He was raised by a clan of landless peasants, his father apparently deserting his mother before his birth. (Government accounts said the father died.) "His birth was not a joyful occasion, and no roses or aromatic plants bedecked his cradle," his official biographer, Amir Iskander, wrote in "Saddam Hussein, the Fighter, the Thinker and the Man," published in 1981.

Hussein told his biographer that he did not miss his father growing up in an extended clan. But persistent stories suggest that Saddam's stepfather delighted in humiliating the boy and forced him to tend sheep. Eventually he ran away to live with relatives who would let him go to school.
Hussein's first role in the rough world of Iraqi politics came in 1959, at age 22, when the Baath Party assigned him and nine others to assassinate Abdul Karim Kassem, the despotic general ruling Iraq. Violence was a quick way for a young man who grew up fatherless in an impoverished village to get ahead; bloodshed became the major theme of his life.

During the failed assassination, Hussein suffered a bullet wound to the leg. The official version portrayed him as a hero who dug the bullet out with a penknife, while the other version suggests that the plot failed because he opened fire prematurely.

He sought asylum in Egypt, where President Gamal Abdel Nasser nurtured the region's revolutionary movements. Hussein recalled studying law and ignoring Cairo's attractions. Others remember differently.

"He was what we call a troublemaker," said Hussein Abdel Meguid, the owner of the Andiana cafe that Hussein frequented, recalling years later in an interview with The New York Times that the Iraqi once turned a brawl into a knife fight.

Soon after returning to Iraq, Hussein married his first cousin and the daughter of his political mentor, Sajida Khairallah Tulfah, on May 5, 1963. The couple had five children including two sons, Uday and Qusay, and three daughters, Raghad, Rana and Hala. He had mistresses, including prominent Iraqi women, but never flaunted them.

His wife, three daughters and roughly a dozen grandchildren survive him. Uday and Qusay, along with Qusay's teenage son, Mustapha, died in July 2003 during a gun battle with American forces in a villa in the northern city of Mosul. Denounced by an informant, they had been the two most wanted men in Iraq after their father.

The first years of Saddam Hussein's marriage coincided with political tumult in Iraq, with at least six coups or attempted revolts erupting between the assassination of King Faisal II in 1958 and the July 1968 putsch that brought the Baath Party to power.

Hussein's main role while still in his early 30s was organizing the party's militia, which became the seed of the dreaded security apparatus. By November 1969, he had eliminated rivals and dissidents to the extent that President Hassan al-Bakr appointed him vice president and deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, as the cabinet was known. Saddam remained head of the intelligence and internal security agencies, in effect controlling Iraq.

The Arab Baath Socialist Party, whose name means "renaissance" in Arabic, had been formed in the 1930s to push a secular, socialist creed as the ideal path to achieving Arab unity. But that dogma proved a sinister excuse for the imprisonment, exile or execution of all potential rivals.

No other Arab despot matched the savagery of Hussein as he went about bending all state institutions to his whim. His opening act, in January 1969, was hanging around 17 so-called spies for Israel, up to 13 of them Jews, in a downtown Baghdad square. Hundreds of arrests and executions followed as the civilian wing of the Baath Party gradually eclipsed the Iraqi military and the era of coups ended.

Hussein staged perhaps his most macabre purge in 1979, when at age 42 he consolidated his hold on Iraq. Having pushed aside President Bakr, Saddam called a gathering of several hundred top Baathists.

One senior official stepped forward to confess to having been part of a widespread plot to allow a Syrian takeover. After guards dragged the man away, Hussein took to the podium, weeping at first as he began reading a list of dozens implicated. Guards dragged away each of the accused. Hussein paused from reading occasionally to light his cigar, while the room erupted in almost hysterical chanting demanding death to traitors. The entire dark spectacle, designed to leave no doubt as to who controlled Iraq, was filmed and copies distributed around the country.

Firing squads made of cabinet members and other top officials initially gunned down 21 men, including five ministers. Iraq's state radio said the officials executed their colleagues while "cheering for the long life of the Party, the Revolution and the Leader, President, Struggler, Saddam Hussein."

Hussein invariably ensured that those around him were complicit in his bloody acts, which he masqueraded as patriotism, making certain that there would be no guiltless figure to rally opposition.

In an authoritative account of Hussein's regime called "The Republic of Fear," the self-exiled Iraqi architect Kenaan Makiya (writing under the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil) estimated that at least 500 people died in the purge that consolidated Saddam's power.

Hussein's titles reflected his status as an absolute ruler modeled after one of his heroes, Josef Stalin of the former Soviet Union. They included President of the Republic, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, Field Marshal and Prime Minister. In addition, the state-owned news media referred to him repeatedly as the Struggler, the Standard Bearer, the Knight of the Arab Nation and the Sword of the Arabs.

Hussein saw his first opportunity for Iraq to dominate the region in the turmoil that swept neighboring Iran immediately after its 1979 Islamic revolution. In September 1980, Hussein believed that by invading Iran he could both seize a disputed waterway along the border and inspire Iranians of Arab origin to revolt against their Persian rulers. Instead, they resisted fanatically. Hussein never acknowledged making a gross miscalculation; rather, he vilified the Iranian Arabs as traitors to the Arab cause.

Iraq fared badly in the war, not least because Hussein interfered in the battle plans despite a complete lack of military training, even issuing orders based on dreams. When strategies urged by Hussein failed, he often accused the commanders of betrayal, cowardice and incompetence and had them executed.

Hussein adored the macho trappings of the armed forces, appointing himself Field Marshal and dressing his ministers in olive-green fatigues. If he was a poor military strategist, he was fortunate in his first choice of enemy. The fear that an Islamic revolution would spread to an oil producer with estimated reserves second only to Saudi Arabia tipped the United States and its allies toward Baghdad and they provided weapons, technology and, most important, secret satellite images of Iran's military positions and intercepted communications.

The war lasted for eight years until Iran accepted a cease-fire in July 1988, with both sides terrorizing each other's civilian populations by rocketing major cities. But the March 1988 mustard gas attack on the Iraqi village of Halabja by its own government was perhaps the most gruesome incident.

Hussein waged war while promising the Iraqi people that he would not diminish their standard of living, investing in massive development that markedly improved daily life. Rural villages were electrified and linked by modern highways. Iraq boasted some of the best universities and hospitals in the Arab world — all free. Its painters, musicians and other artists, many benefiting from generous government subsidies, were also the most accomplished in the region. Hussein had his own development methods — anyone who avoided mandatory adult literacy classes in rural areas faced three years in jail.

Official corruption was unknown in Iraq in the 1980s, and religious worship somewhat free. Hussein occasionally took populist measures to underscore the importance of the public welfare. Once, for example, he decided that his ministers were too fat and he demanded that they diet, publishing their real weights and their target weights in the news media. Hussein's own weight could fluctuate from chubby to relatively trim, although well tailored suits hid his paunch. Around six feet tall, he was stocky and sported a trademark moustache.

In keeping with a ruler who used violence to achieve and sustain power, Hussein's most widespread investments were in his military. He ended the Iran-Iraq war with one million men under arms.

By then Iraq had embarked on extensive projects to acquire a homegrown arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Iraq had also become a regional power, and Hussein expected to dominate the Arab world much as his hero Nasser held sway through the 1960s. In March 1990, he threatened to "burn half of Israel" if it ever acted against Iraq, even though the Israeli Air Force had humiliated the Iraqi leader by destroying his country's nuclear research center at Osirik in June 1981.

Hussein's next target was another neighbor, Kuwait, which Iraq had long considered part of Iraq and coveted for its deep-water port. On Aug. 2, 1990, his army swiftly occupied the tiny, immensely wealthy emirate, provoking an international crisis. Hussein declared the country Iraq's 19th province, installing a puppet government. Saudi Arabia and other conservative Arab states were shaken and outraged, while the United States and other Western countries feared for the oil fields ringing the Persian Gulf. The United Nations imposed a trade embargo and economic sanctions.

The United States and eventually 33 other nations deployed forces to the region and warned of a wider war if Hussein did not withdraw. As the crisis wore on, Hussein held onto Kuwait despite repeated threats from the United States, which dominated the military coalition by dispatching some 500,000 American soldiers.

While Uday and other senior Iraqis set about plundering Kuwait, Hussein portrayed the invasion as the start of an Islamic holy war to liberate Jerusalem. He declared that the "throne dwarfs" of the gulf must be overthrown so their wealth could fund the Arab cause. To lend himself the veneer of a religious crusader, he added the words "Allah-u akbar," or "God is great," to the Iraqi flag, said to be modeled from his own handwriting.
His public aims resonated among many Arabs in Jordan, Yemen and elsewhere, particularly because the brutality of Hussein's government had never been detailed by the state-controlled media of other Arab states. In addition, Hussein's Scud missiles crashing into Tel Aviv, however ineffective, created a stir in the Arab world.

Washington and its coalition allies hoped that the war would bring Hussein's downfall. Even before the war ended, President George H. W. Bush encouraged the Iraqi people to overthrow him, but there was no coherent plan. The ground offensive against Iraq ended after 100 hours, partly out of concern that American troops not occupy an Arab capital, partly because Arab allies feared the disintegration of Iraq and partly because a "100-hour war" made a good sound bite. Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, warned that sending American forces to Baghdad would get them stuck in a "quagmire."

This decision enabled much of the elite Republican Guard to escape with minimal losses. The first Bush administration did little to support Shiite and Kurdish uprisings that erupted immediately after the war, which Saddam crushed with tanks and helicopter gunships.

For the next decade, Hussein repeatedly brought Iraq to the brink of renewed warfare by refusing United Nations weapons inspectors the unfettered access required to catalogue and destroy Iraq's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, as specified in the cease-fire agreement.
The United Nations maintained strict economic sanctions against Iraq until 1996, when some oil exports were allowed to pay for food, medicine and war reparations. The sanctions, devastating to Iraqis, proved a boon to Hussein and his subordinates. The Government Accountability Office in the United States Congress estimated that the Iraqi leader siphoned at least $10 billion from the program by making oil trades off the books and demanding kickbacks.

Still, in an effort to end sanctions, Baghdad over the years offered at least five "full, final and complete" weapons disclosures, which the United Nations dismissed as incomplete. Some of the most extensive revelations emerged after the astonishing August 1995 defection of Saddam's two sons-in-law and his two eldest daughters to Jordan. The Iraqi government was apparently worried that Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majid, the minister in charge of weapons development, would disclose all that he knew. Six months later, Gen. Kamel Majid and his brother abruptly declared they had accepted amnesty and returned. Within days, Hussein's daughters divorced them and they died in a violent shootout.

Hussein dyed his hair black and refused to wear his reading glasses in public, according to interviews with exiles published in The Atlantic Monthly in March 2002. Since a slipped disc caused him to limp slightly, he was never filmed walking more than a few steps. Each of his 20 palaces was kept fully staffed, with meals prepared daily as if he were in residence to disguise his whereabouts. Delicacies like imported lobster were first dispatched to nuclear scientists to be tested for radiation and poison.

His wine of choice was Portuguese, Mateus Rose, but he never drank in public to maintain the conceit that he was a strict Muslim. He even had genealogists draw a family tree that linked him to Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad.

He kept an immaculate desk, with reports from all the ministries neatly stacked. He usually read only the executive summaries, but would occasionally dig deeper and always complained that he was being deceived. He often was, with even his son Qusay telling military commanders to lie if Hussein thought something had been accomplished that was not.

He was particularly phobic about germs. Even top generals summoned to meet him were often ordered to strip to their underwear and their clothes were then washed, ironed and X-rayed before they could get dressed to meet him. They had to wash their hands in disinfectant.
Hussein's American jailers reported that he tried to maintain those precautions, using baby wipes to clean meal trays, his table and utensils before eating.

Rarely traveling abroad, and surrounded by often uneducated cousins, Hussein had a limited worldview. He once reacted with wonder when an American reporter told him that the United States had no law against insulting the president. Former officials painted him as a vain, paranoid loner who no longer believed he was a normal person and considered compromise a sign of weakness.

Saad al-Bazzaz, an Iraqi writer and editor, said that Hussein, having risen so far beyond the village and cheated death so often, believed that God anointed him.

Bazzaz told The Atlantic that even Hussein's speeches echoed Koranic texts. "In the Koran, Allah says, 'If you thank me, I will give you more,' " Bazzaz said. "In the early '90s, Saddam was on TV, presenting awards to military officers, and he said, 'If you thank me, I will give you more.' "

Iraq under Hussein had a stifled quality. Imprisonment, torture, mutilation and execution were frequent occurrences, at least for those who chose to dabble in anything vaguely political. Simple information like the weather report was classified. There was no freedom of expression — even foreign newspapers were banned — and no freedom to travel. Contact with foreigners was proscribed.

There were widespread reports that Hussein himself periodically carried out the torture or even execution of those he felt had crossed him. In the summer of 1982, for example, Riyadh Ibrahim Hussein, the health minister, suggested during a cabinet meeting that Hussein step down to ease the negotiation of a cease-fire with Iran. Hussein recommended that the two retire to another room to discuss the proposal. When they did, a shot rang out. Hussein returned to the cabinet meeting alone, although in later interviews he denied killing anyone. The minister's widow was sent his dismembered corpse.

Right after the gulf war, Hussein had 42 merchants executed for profiteering, their bodies hung on telephone poles with signs reading "Greedy Merchant" around their necks. Leaders of the Shiite Muslim religious community were a particular target for summary executions, a 1998 United Nations human rights report noted.

On the other hand, Hussein ordered mosques constructed around Baghdad on a scale not seen since it was the medieval capital of the Muslim caliphate. Perhaps the most striking was the Mother of All Battles mosque completed in 2001, the 10th anniversary of the gulf war. The minarets resembled Scud missiles, and the mosque held a Koran written with Hussein's own blood, the president having donated 28 liters over more than two years.

Evidence from inside Iraq after the invasion confirmed what United Nations weapons inspectors anticipated beforehand — that Hussein abandoned the attempt to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons after his 1991 defeat. Orders from Hussein to destroy vestiges of the program, interpreted before the 2003 invasion as an attempt to hide their development, turned out to be an effort to comply with the ban.

The fatal controversy over whether Iraq was still developing unconventional weapons stemmed in part from Hussein's desire to convince different audiences of different things, a postwar study by the Defense Department concluded. He wanted the West to believe that he had abandoned the program, which he had. Yet he also wanted to instill fear in enemies like Iran and Israel, plus maintain the esteem of Arabs, by claiming that he possessed the weapons.

Some Bush administration critics argued that the accusations over unconventional weapons were a smoke screen, that government hawks were determined to topple Hussein as a way of reasserting American power. Richard Clarke, a former national security adviser to three presidents, described in his 2004 book "Against All Enemies" the scene in the White House in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States, with President Bush and other senior officials trying to link Hussein directly to Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's organization. No such link was ever established.

Just before the invasion, Hussein, cigar in hand, appeared on television almost nightly, belittling American forces to small groups of Republican Guard commanders. He also admonished that the battlefields should be throughout Iraq, wherever there were people, even while secretly planning to protect only Baghdad.

His main concern was preserving his government, which the United States military discovered in interviews with his top aides after they were captured. Some of the unclassified results were published in a 2006 article in Foreign Affairs titled "Saddam's Delusions: The View From the Inside."

By 2003, Iraq's military was anemic, weakened by sanctions and constant changes in command, not to mention the fact that Hussein, suspicious of coup attempts, barred any rigorous maneuvers and repeatedly created new popular militias. Commanders also constantly lied to him about their state of preparedness. The United States report quoted Hussein's personal interpreter as saying that the president thought that his "superior" forces would put up a "heroic resistance and inflict such enormous losses on the Americans that they would stop their advance."

Hussein cited both Vietnam and the hasty American withdrawal from Somalia in 1994 as evidence that Americans could not stomach casualties, and he did not take the threat of regime change seriously. He so believed his own publicity about his success in fighting the first gulf war that he used it as a blueprint for the second. Hence, his main worry during the invasion was to avoid repeating the Shiite and Kurdish internal rebellion of 1991. He did not blow up the bridges over the Tigris and Euphrates to slow the American advance, for example, out of concern that he would need to rush troops south to quell any uprising. Nor did he order the oilfields ignited, as he had in Kuwait, thinking he would need the revenue in the postwar period.

"Even with U.S. tanks crossing the Iraqi border, an internal revolt remained Saddam's biggest fear," Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister, told the American investigators.

The war plan as described in the 2006 book "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq" states that while Republican Guard troops were supposed to seal off the approaches to Baghdad, only the Special Republican Guard was permitted inside the capital, again as insurance against a coup. Military commanders needed permission for any large troop movements, and the collapse came so quickly that Hussein was still issuing orders to units that had ceased to exist.

One of his last sightings was on April 9, the same day that American soldiers pulled down his statue in a Baghdad square. He appeared outside a mosque in one neighborhood, addressing a crowd from the back of a truck, with the film broadcast later on Abu Dhabi television. "I am fighting alongside you in the same trenches," he said.

He then disappeared, apparently using up to 30 hiding places and the aid of loyal tribesmen to escape capture despite a $25 million reward. He often traveled as he had during the first gulf war, in a battered orange and white Baghdad taxi. He issued periodic messages encouraging the insurgency.

In a letter dated April 28 that was faxed to Al Quds al Arabi, an Arabic newspaper published in London, Hussein blamed traitors for his ouster and urged Iraqis to rebel. "There are no priorities greater than expelling the infidel, criminal, cowardly occupier," he wrote.

In December 2003, his location was divulged by a clan member captured in a raid on a Baghdad house. Less than 11 hours later, 600 American soldiers and Special Operations forces supported by tanks, artillery and Apache helicopter gunships surrounded two farmhouses near the banks of the Tigris in Al Dwar, a village about nine miles southeast of Tikrit, the tribal seat. The soldiers — no Iraqis were involved — found nothing on the first sweep. But on the second, more intensive search, underneath a trap door apparently made of Styrofoam, Hussein was discovered lying flat at the bottom of an eight-foot hole.

His first words when he emerged, nervous and disoriented, were, "I am Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq, and I am willing to negotiate" in halting English. A special operations soldier there shot back "President Bush sends his regards," the military said later. The main indication that the filthy, dilapidated concrete hut close by had been used by the former Iraqi president was a battered green metal suitcase holding $750,000 in neatly bundled bills.

L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the occupation authority, made the first official announcement. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "we got him." The Iraqi journalists at the heavily guarded Baghdad news conference leapt up, applauded and cheered.

Hussein, sporting a bushy salt-and-pepper beard, was first shown on television undergoing a medical exam for head lice. The pictures electrified and shocked Iraqis and the larger Arab world, with some cheering and some appalled to see a captive Arab leader put on undignified display.
He was imprisoned at Camp Cropper, near the international airport some 10 miles from Baghdad, on the grounds of a former palace complex that the United States military turned into a prison for senior members of the government. The prison consisted of three rows of single-story buildings surrounded by a double ring of razor wire.

Hussein was kept in solitary confinement — letters and care packages including cigars sent via the Red Cross from his wife and daughters living in Qatar or Jordan were his main contact with the outside world. He lived in a relatively spartan cell consisting of a bed, a toilet, a chair, a towel, some books — including a slightly singed Koran with a bullet hole in it, which he said he found in some rubble —and a prayer rug.

Some of his former American guards, interviewed for a July 2005 story in GQ magazine, said he acted in a fatherly way, offering advice on finding a good wife — "neither too smart nor too dumb, not too old nor too young" — and invited them to hang out in one of his palaces after he was restored to power. He claimed that President Bush always had known he had no unconventional weapons. His favorite snack was Doritos corn chips, his guards said.

Hussein was combative throughout his trial, using it as a platform to encourage the insurgents. The proceedings frequently seemed to slide toward chaos, with the star defendant and the judges shouting at each other. The trial, held in one of the grandiose buildings erected not far from Hussein's former presidential palace, proved something of a security nightmare, with three defense lawyers assassinated.

At one point, something he said prompted guffaws from a spectator in an overhead gallery. Hussein turned and pointed a finger, saying, "The lion does not care about a monkey laughing at him from a tree."

Hussein often tried to draw parallels between himself and the famous leaders of Mesopotamia, the earliest civilization in the region, as well as Saladin, the 12th-century Kurdish Muslim military commander who expelled the crusaders from Jerusalem.

What preoccupied him, he said, was what people would be thinking about him in 500 years. To the horror of historic preservationists, he had the ancient walls of the former capital city of Babylon completely reconstructed using tens of thousands of newly fired bricks. An archaeologist had shown him bricks stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar II in 605 B.C.
After the reconstruction, the small Arabic script on thousands of bricks read, "In the reign of the victorious Saddam Hussein, the president of the Republic, may God keep him, the guardian of the great Iraq and the renovator of its renaissance and the builder of its great civilization, the rebuilding of the great city of Babylon was done."

The Shanghai Taxi Driver's MBA Lecture

2006-11-10T11:03:00.000+05:30

All the MBAs of the world.. this is awesome... .. have patience and read it carefully .. am sure you will love it ... This is so so coolll.....

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I needed to go from Xujiahui to the airport, so I hurriedly concluded a meeting and I was looking for a taxi in front of the Meiluo building. A taxi driver saw me and very professionally came in a straight line and stopped right in front of me. Thus followed the story that astonished me greatly as if I had attended a lively MBA course. In order to faithfully preserve the intent of the taxi driver, I have tried to reproduce his original words according to my memory.

"Where do you want to go? Good, the airport. At Xujiahui, I loved to get business in front of the Meiluo building. Over here, I only work two places: Meiluo building and Junyao building. Did you know? Before I picked you up, I circled around Meiluo building twice before I saw you! People who come out of office building are definitely not going to some place nearby ...."

"Oh? You have a method!" I agreed.

"A taxi driver must also have scientific methods," he said. I was surprised and I got curious: "What scientific methods?"

"I have to know statistics. I have made detailed calculations. Let me tell you. I operate the car 17 hours a day, and my hourly cost is 34.5 RMB ...."

"How did you arrive at that?" I asked

"You calculate. I have to pay 380 RMB to the company each day for the car. The gas is about 210 RMB. I work 17 hours per day. On an hourly basis, the fixed cost is the 22 RMB that I give to the taxi company and an average of 12.5 RMB per hour in gasoline expenses. Isn't that 34.5 RMB?" I was a bit surprised. I have taken taxis for ten years, but this is the first time that a taxi driver has calculated the costs this way. Previously, the taxi drivers all tell me that the cost per kilometre was 0.3 RMB in addition to the total company fee.

"Costs should not be calculated on a per-kilometre basis. It should be calculated on an hourly basis. You see, each meter has a 'review' function through which you can see the details of the day. I have done a data analysis. The average time gap between customers is seven minutes. If I started counting the costs when someone gets in, it is 10 RMB for about 10 minutes. That means each 10 RMB customer takes 17 minutes of time, which costs 9.8 RMB (=34.5 x 17 / 60). This is not making money! If we say that customers who want to go to Pudong, Hangzhou or Qingpu are like meals, then a 10 RMB customer is not even a bite of food. You can only say that this is just a sprinkle of MSG."

Great! This driver did not sound like a taxi driver. He seemed more like an accountant. "So what you do then?" I was even more interested and I continued my questioning. It looked like I was going to learn something new on the way to the airport.

"You must not let the customer lead you all over the place. You decide what you want to do based upon the location, time and customer." I was very surprised, but this sounded significant. "Someone said that the taxi driving is a profession that depends on luck. I don't think so. You have to stand in the position of the customer and consider things from the customer's perspective. " This sounded very professional, and very much like many business management teachers who say "put yourself in others' shoes."

"Let me give you an example. You are at the entrance to a hospital. There is someone holding some medicine and there is someone else holding a wash basin. Which person will you pick up?" I thought about it and I said that I didn't know.

"You take the one with the wash basin. If you have a minor complaint that you want to be examined and to get some medicine, you don't usually go to a faraway hospital. Anyone who is carrying a wash basin has just been discharged from the hospital. When people enter the hospital, some of them die. Today, someone on the second floor dies. Tomorrow, someone on the third floor dies. Those who make it out of the hospital usually have a feeling of having been given a second life and they recognize the meaning of life again -- health is the most important thing. So on that day, that person told me, "Go ... go to Qingpu." He did not even blink. Would you say that he wanted to take a taxi to People's Plaza to transfer to the Qingpu line subway? Absolutely not!"

I began to admire him.

"Let me give you another example. That day at People's Plaza, three people were waving at me. One was a young woman who had just finished shopping and was holding some small bags. Another was a young couple who were out for a stroll. The third one was a man who wore a silk shirt and a down jacket and holding a notebook computer bag. I spent three seconds looking at each person and I stopped in front of the man without hesitation. When the man got in, he said: 'Yannan Elevated Highway. South North Elevated Highway ....' Before even finishing, he could not help but ask, 'Why did you stop in front of me without hesitating? There were two people in front. They wanted to get on as well. I was too embarrassed to fight with them.' I replied, 'It is around noon and just a dozen or so minutes before one o'clock. That young woman must have slipped out at noon to buy something and I guess that her company must be nearby. That couple are tourists because they are not holding anything and they are not going to travel far. You are going out on business. You are holding a notebook computer bag, so I can tell that this is business. If you are going out at this time, I guess that it would not be too close.' The man said, 'You are right. I'm going to Baoshan.'"

"Are those people wearing pyjamas in front of supermarkets or subway stations going to travel far? Are they going to the airport? The airport is not going to let them enter."

That makes sense! I was liking this more and more.

"Many drivers complain that business is tough and the price of gas has gone up. They are trying to pin the cause down on other people. If you keep pinning the cause on other people, you will never get any better. You must look at yourself to see where the problem is." This sounds very familiar. It seems like "If you cannot change the world, then you should change yourself" or perhaps a pirated copy of Steven Corey's "Circles of Influence and Concern."
"One time, on Nandan Road, someone flagged me down and wanted to go to Tianlin. Later on, someone else flagged me down on Nandan Road and he also wanted to go to Tianlin. So I asked, 'How come all you people who come out on Nandan Road want to go to Tianlin?' He said, 'There is a public bus depot at Nandan Road. We all take the public bus from Pudong to there, and then we take the taxi to Tianlin. So I understood. For example, you look at the road that we just passed. There are no offices, no hotels, nothing. Just a public bus station. Those people who flag down taxis there are mostly people who just got off the public bus, and they look for the shortest road for a taxi. People who flag down taxis here will usually ride not more than 15 RMB."

"Therefore, I say that the attitude determines everything!" I have heard dozens of company CEOs say that, but this was the first time that I heard a taxi driver say that.

"We need to use scientific methods and statistics to conduct business. Those people who wait at the subway exits every day for business will never make money. How are you going to provide for your wife and kids at 500 RMB a month? This is murder? This is slowly murdering your whole family. You must arm yourself with knowledge. You have to learn knowledge to become a smart person. A smart person learns knowledge in order to become a very smart person. A very smart person learns knowledge in order to become a genius."

"One time, a person wanted a taxi in order to get to the train station. I asked him how he wanted to go. He told me how to get there. I said that was slow. I said to get on the elevated highway and go this other way. He said that it was a longer way. I said, 'No problem. You have experience because you go that way frequently. It costs you 50 RMB. If you go my way, I will turn off the meter when it reaches 50 RMB. You can just pay me 50 RMB. Anything more is mine. If you go your way, it will take 50 minutes. If I go my way, it will take 25 minutes.' So in the end, we went my way. We travelled an additional four kilometres but 25 minutes quicker. I accepted only 50 RMB. The customer was very delighted for saving about 10 RMB. This extra four kilometres cost me just over 1 RMB in gas. So I have swapped 1 RMB for 25 extra minutes of my time. As I just said, my hourly cost is 34.5 RMB. It was quite worthwhile for me!"

"In a public taxi company, an ordinary driver takes three to four thousand RMB home per month. The good driver can get around five thousand. The top driver can get seven thousand RMB. Out of the 20,000 drivers, there are about two to three who can make more than 8,000 RMB a month. I am one of those two or three. Furthermore, it is very stable without too much fluctuation. "

Great! By this point, I admired this taxi driver more and more.

"I often say that I am a happy driver. Some people say, 'That's because you earn a lot of money. Of course, you must be happy.' I tell them, 'You are wrong. This is because I have a happy and active mind, and that is why I make a lot of money.'"

What a wonderful way to put it!

"You have to appreciate the beauty that your work brings. Stuck in a traffic jam at People's Plaza, many drivers complain, 'Oh, there's a traffic jam again! What rotten luck!' You must not be like that. You should try to experience the beauty of the city. There are many pretty girls passing by. There are many tall modern buildings; although you cannot afford them, you can still enjoy them with an appreciative look. While driving to the airport, you can look at the greenery on both sides. In the winter, it is white. How beautiful! Look at the meter -- it is more than 100 RMB. That is even more beautiful! Each job has its own beauty. We need to learn how to experience that beauty in our work."

"Ten years ago, I was a general instructor at Johnson's. Eight years ago, I had been the department manager for three different departments. I quit because there was no point in making three or five thousand a month. I decided to become a taxi driver. I want to be a happy driver. Ha ha ha ...."

When we arrived at the airport, I gave him my business card and said, "Are you interested in coming this Friday to my office and explain to the Microsoft workers about how you operate your taxi? You can treat it as if your meter is running at 60 kilometres per hour. I will pay you for the time that you talk to us. Give me a call." Then I began to write down his lively MBA lecture on the airplane.

Driftwood - Lyrics

2006-11-09T12:29:00.000+05:30

Everything is open
Nothing is set in stone
Rivers turn to ocean
Oceans tide you home
Home is where your heart is
But your heart had to roam
Drifting over bridges
Never to return
Watching bridges burn
Youre driftwood floating underwater
Breaking into pieces pieces pieces
Just driftwood hollow and of no use
Waterfalls will find you bind you grind you
Nobody is an island
Everyone has to go
Pillars turn to butter
Butterflying low
Low is where your heart is
But your heart has to grow
Drifting under bridges
Never with the flow
And you really didnt think it would happen
But it really is the end of the line
So Im sorry that you turned to driftwood
But youve been drifting for a long long time
Everywhere theres trouble
Nowheres safe to go
Pushes turn to shovels
Shovelling the snow
Frozen you have chosen
The path you wish to go
Drifting now forever
And forever more
Until you reach your shore
Youre driftwood floating underwater
Breaking into pieces p ieces pieces
Just driftwood hollow and of no use
Waterfalls will find you bind you grind you
And you really didnt think it would happen
But it really is the end of the line
So Im sorry that you turned to driftwood
But youve been drifting for a long long time
Youve been drifting for a long long time
Youve been drifting for a long long
Drifting for a long long time

--- Thanx Ragi for Introducing me to this beautiful song

Karma Yoga as Strategy

2006-10-19T16:57:00.000+05:30

A beautiful article I stumbled upon recently....

A MANAGEMENT scholar once remarked that there are as many definitions of strategy as there are writers on the subject. Today, according to Henry Mintzberg, as many as ten major schools of strategy exist. These schools approach strategy from diverse, and sometimes conflicting, perspectives. However, two basic elements permeate all these schools of thought.

The first sees strategy as the `fit' between an organisation and its environment. The second views strategy as goal-directed action. These two notions came close to being challenged in the 1970s, with the advent and development of the "descriptive" approach. Henry Mintzberg, one of its chief protagonists, pointed out that strategies get formed — they cannot be formulated in advance.

Given the impossibility of predicting outcomes, only some elements of an intended strategy get realised, while most fall by the roadside, unrealised. Again, realised strategy includes a component that consists of unintended outcomes — the emergent strategy. According to Mintzberg, strategy involves synthesis and calls for the exercise of judgement and creativity. It cannot be reduced to the analytical task of planning or programming.

Having challenged mainstream thinking in this fashion, scholars who viewed strategy `emergent' did not carry forward their arguments to their logical conclusion.

If strategies are emergent, what use are goals? Quinn sought to answer this riddle by postulating that managers need to be goal-directed, but to reach these goals, they should adopt the approach of logical incrementalism, recasting both the goals and actions in small steps till the appropriate configuration of strategy, structure systems and other organisational attributes they have to achieve become clear.

Recently, a new school of thought based on the theory of complexity challenged the concept of fit, so central to strategic management. This school has advanced an alternative view of strategy in which "co-evolution" replaces the notion of "organisation-environment fit".

In the complexity-based view, organisation-environment relationships are viewed as inter-organisational networks. Organisations co-evolve with other organisations and entities external to them, driven more by their internal forces of "self-organisation" than by the external forces of environmental selection.

While this co-evolution takes an organisation far from equilibrium, the latter stays within a bounded region in parameter space, called the "strange attractor". These strange attractors are emergent and cannot be predicted in advance. The only constant, then, according to this school of thought, is change. Organisations survive and thrive by being in a state termed the edge of chaos — a state of constant flux bordering on the chaotic, but not chaotic. What differentiates this state from a chaotic state of random changes is the fact that the parameters of the organisation, while constantly changing, remain confined to "strange attractors".

Two things are clear from the tenets of complexity theory. First, the task of strategy is not to structure the organisation to achieve the best fit with the environment. The task, instead, is to maintain it at the edge of chaos by ensuring resource modularity and experimenting with ever-new configurations of organisational resources. Second, since outcomes are unpredictable, long-term goal setting would be futile. This calls for repudiating the view of strategy as goal-directed action.

While contemporary strategic management thought has transcended "fit" and equilibrium because of complexity theory, it is yet to go the whole way and repudiate strategy as goal-directed action. Many protagonists of the complexity theory still adhere to goals and predictable outcomes. Thus, while some are concerned with predicting the shape of strange attractors in advance, others are engaged in empirically finding out linkages between the "edge of chaos state" and profits.

The objective is to somehow arrive at new prescriptions for enhancing goal-attainment. This hesitation to go beyond goal-directed action perhaps stems from the Occidental mindset. One realised this while interacting with an American Jesuit, also an ethics consultant to MNCs. When talking about the Karma theory even the man of religion could not help interjecting, "If goals are not important, what are?" If strategy is not goal-directed, it is not difficult to see that complexity theory is taking strategic management towards a "Karmic" strategy paradigm — strategy as selfless action, as action without regard to its outcome.

Karma Yoga is not only the performance of actions without expectation of reward, but is, in addition, the performance of actions according to the yuga dharma. What is the yuga dharma that can guide organisational actions? Complexity theory points to seeking and achieving ever-new resource combinations as this dharma.

The reader familiar with Schumpeter would readily recognise that this is exactly what entrepreneurship is all about — combining factors of production in new ways. And, by definition, that which is new is not old or previously conceived.

Complexity theory calls for businesses to adopt entrepreneurship than the accumulation of profits as their dharma. Even Karl Marx was not averse to recognising this "revolutionary" side of capitalism, while opposing its other side of greed and aggrandisement.

Just as Vivekananda exhorted the western world to "go back to Christ" years ago, "Go back to being entrepreneurs" is what complexity theory seems to be telling the capitalist world now.

Ironically enough, rewards seek out the karma yogi whose actions are not driven by the expected fruits of his actions. It can be shown that the same is true of the business world. A re-look at corporate success stories would establish this fact.

A detailed examination of the history of Sony would reveal that the secret of its success was not — as Gary Hamel and Prahalad would have us believe — the core competence it deliberately built over years, but its devotion to creating new products as a goal in itself. In today's hyper-competitive environment, expecting businesses to repudiate profits and focus on entrepreneurship instead may sound like expecting a man-eater to turn vegetarian. But the rewards await the vegetarian tigers, not the man-eaters.

Heard Somewhere

2006-10-19T11:27:00.000+05:30

"Abstaining from sex for few days Doesnt help you Qualify as a Virgin "

Good Quotes...

2006-10-19T11:13:00.000+05:30

When I was a child of seven years old, my friends, on a holiday, filled my pocket with coppers. I went directly to a shop where they sold toys for children; and, being charmed with the sound of a whistle, that I met by the way in the hands of another boy, I voluntarily offered and gave all my money for one. I then came home, and went whistling all over the house, much pleased with my whistle, but disturbing all the family. My brothers, and sisters, and cousins, understanding the bargain I had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it was worth; put me in mind what good things I might have bought with the rest of the money; and laughed at me so much for my folly, that I cried with vexation; and the reflection gave me more chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure. This however was afterwards of use to me, the impression continuing on my mind; so that often, when I was tempted to buy some unnecessary thing, I said to myself, Don't give too much for the whistle; and I saved my money. -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Madame Brillon, November 10, 1779
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There never was a good war or a bad peace. -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Josiah Quincy, September 11, 1783
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In practice all men are atheists; they deny their faith by their actions. -- Ludwig Feuerbach, source unknown
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If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. -- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce. -- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court
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A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. -- Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
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Don't Quit

2006-10-10T15:20:00.000+05:30

This is one of the most relevant and motivating poems I have come across...

When things go wrongs, As they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems so uphill,
When the funds are low and debts are high,
And you want to Smile but have to Sigh,
When care is pressing ou downa a bit,
Rest, if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is Queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns.
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won if he'd stuck it out,
Don't give up though the pace seems slow,
You might succeed with Another Blow.

Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor's cup
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the Golden Crown.

Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint of clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit,
It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit.

---Anonymous

Aphoristic Blindness

2006-10-07T16:43:00.000+05:30

You and I stand here, togather yet alone
Waiting for someone or something
Disjoint emotions confuse our heads
And we question the moral worth of others??

Its an imperfect world
Bloated by corrupt thought processes
Value Judgements rule our eyes
Can we condone the infidelities of life??

We ride the horses of dreams
Driven by our volitions
Lust defines our actions
And we enjoy the death of our wisdom??

A meaningful birth
Moulded by the warmth of the world
Blinded by our imtemprate rage
Can we realize the beauty of our being??

-- Vinny (07.10.06)

The Lords - Notes on Vision

2006-10-04T14:40:00.000+05:30

Some of my favourite lines by the Lizard King:

In the womb we are blind cave fish
---------------------------------------------
When play dies it becomes the Game.
When sex dies it becomes Climax.

All games contain the idea of death.
---------------------------------------------

The voyeur, the peeper, the Peeping Tom, is a dark comedian.
He is repulsive in his dark anonymity, in his secret invasion.
He is pitifully alone.
But, strangely, he is able through this same silence and concealment
to make unknowing partner of anyone within his eye's range.
This is his threat and power.

There are no glass houses.
The shades are drawn and "real" life begins.
Some activities are impossible in the open.
And the secret events are the voyeur's game.
He seeks them out with his myriad army of eyes -
like the child's notion of a Deity who sees all.
"Everything?" asks the child.
"Yes, everything", the answer, and
the child is left to cope with the devine intrusion.

The voyeur is masturbator, the mirror is the badge,
the window his prey.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Destroy roofs, walls, see in all the rooms at once.

From the air we trapped gods, with the gods’
omniscient gaze, but without their power to be
inside minds and cities as they fly above.

----------------------------------------------------------------

The Lords & The New Creatures

2006-10-04T14:38:00.000+05:30

Throughout high school, and likely even earlier, Jim Morrison kept notebooks of quotes he had heard, notes, and stray thoughts. Over time, these notebooks also started to include at first aphorisms, fragments of poems, and ultimately entire poems in various stages of development.

It is well known that Jim was an avid reader, studying numerous genre aside from his schoolwork. His tastes were extremely eclectic, running from the “Great Books”, to westerns, surrealist, symbolist, beat and romantic poetry, philosophy, art history and criticism, mythology, metaphysics and trashy dime store novels - all of which would later provide a wealth of metaphor for his own work. He loved to learn perhaps more than anything else, and it has been said of Jim that he didn't just learn things, rather he merged with them.

During his days at UCLA film school, he continued to fill notebook after notebook. These would become the basis for his first published work, entitled The Lords: Notes on Vision. Later he would describe this work as “a thesis on film aesthetics”.

But the ideas expressed in this work go far beyond the scope of film alone; they are a commentary on the very fabric of social structure. Jim’s vision of a society of sheep, conditioned by fear, and controlled by the “Lords” is a dynamic which is even more easily seen at work in society today than it was during his time. Between the Lords and the Sheep were the individuals - those who were possessed of a personal conviction greater than their fear - the conviction to live in the integrity of their own being, no matter the cost. This truly describes the way Jim Morrison lived, and his personal cost was great indeed. It is an important element of his legacy, and the underlying cause of his torment by the Establishment, who knew exactly what Jim was talking about when he screamed “You’re all a bunch of fucking slaves” in Miami.

Jim would later say of The Lords: Notes on Vision :

“What that book is a lot about is the powerlessness that people have in the face of reality,” Jim said. “They have no real control over events or their own lives. Something is controlling them. The closest they ever get is the television set.”

Fear the Lords who are secret among us
The Lords are w/in us
Born of sloth & cowardice

The Lords & The New Creatures is Published

In the aftermath of the Miami incident, the largest tour the Doors had ever scheduled was canceled show by show, making a travesty of the band’s reputation and finances, but ironically leaving Jim free to at last pursue other interests. He set up his film production company, HWY Productions, and at the suggestion of his new friend, Beat poet Michael McClure, he self-published two limited edition volumes of poetry, The Lords: Notes on Vision followed by The New Creatures. It was in the following year that Simon and Schuster would publish the two volumes in one edition.

While The Lords is a collection of many interesting insights and aphorisms, it is The New Creatures which reveals Jim Morrison’s first fledgling poetic works.

There is no doubt that Jim's first love and perhaps his greatest gift was language, and his poetry exemplifies this gift in a startling, succinct and truly courageous honesty. His insights into the nature of the human experience, and his prophetic vision of the future are astounding. His maturity as both a critical thinker and a poet was developed to an incredible degree for a young man in his early twenties. His vision was absolutely exquisite. If possible, his work is even more relevant now than at the time it was first published.

Lord Krishna Vs. Corporate Organizations

2006-09-29T16:10:00.000+05:30

Dear Readers,

I am an MBA working with the strategy group of a company with nearly BUSD 10 turnover. This introduction I feel was necessary to communicate to you that I am very much a part of the world and situation I am about to discuss now.

Karma - to put it simply is the concept of self - realization. It is based on the logic of taking actions without looking at the outcome. The advantages of following this logic can be many. But the biggest advantage as I see it is that as you have no fear of loss or no distraction of the vision of victory you therefore give your sincere and best effort to the cause at hand.

But this advantage is what has prompted me to jot down my thoughts. In the corporate world, that I belong to, everything is result oriented. Every activity that you undertake, every initiative that you implement, every project that you execute is based on results. Even our own performance in the organizations has to be result oriented (Read KRAs / KPAs) and not task oriented.

Let me elaborate a bit more. All the stakeholders right from the Equity investors, lenders, Management, employees, Suppliers, business partners, stock markets, competitors and even the consumers look at the bottomline and topline of the organization. Would you invest or buy shares in an organization running into losses??? Lets look at a more specific example. In Mergers & Acquisitions the heart (disounting synergies and core competencies) lies in Valuation. No matter what route you take DCF or Multiples you look at the future results (read Cash flows) of the target company. Would you acquire a company with negative future cash flows?? Or Still better. Would you acquire a company without even looking at future results??? Wouldn't it be insane to do anything like that. Won't any company who adopts such kind of measure is sure to end up being takenover by someone who believes in taking actions with an eye for results.
Now, Just try and imagine that you are an investor who is ready to invest your entire life's savings in an organization and you have come across an Organization with a Management Philosophy like - "We are in the business of achieving Moksha. Our aim is to ONLY implement / execute our actions to the best of our abilities and sincereity. Increase in sales, profts and return to investors are not the things that can deviate us from our aim ". What will you do?? - 1) invest, or 2) run away as far as possible, 3) send your CV to the HR Dept. .

Lets move on from organizations to individuals. In this time, of PEs/ VCs/ IBs etc, where the remunerations are making and breaking the records within the sameday, can you imagine yourself or anyone for that matter going for an interview and accepting the job offer without asking or negotiating for the CTC or without ckecing out the job content. In this case, both the CTC or the job profile are the results you look at. Your action over here is taking the interview and the result is getting the job with the right job profile and with the right package.

I can go on and on about this. But the point still remains - Karma they say takes you on to the road to Moksha (or Liberation). But for Karma you need to take actions without looking at the results. But no Corporate entity (individual or Organization) has the liberty and the right to take actions without focussing on the results (Remember - The aim of an organization is to maiximize the returns to its various stakeholders). So, what does that mean - The Concepts of Karma / Moksha are fundamentally against the concept of the Corporate world???? And, can there ever be a merger (no acquisitions over here) of the Corporate World Philosophy to Lord Krishna's Philosophy??

I invite your comments on this.

The Struggle of love..

2006-09-29T11:39:00.000+05:30

Am struggling to bathe in the raindrops
Falling on my soul…
I see you in the weeping clouds…
I see you in the rain …
Though, the tears of GOD…. Has given me a reason to smile
But … Am not happy .. Am Sad….

Am struggling to live our memories
Running through my heart …
I see you in my eyes ...
I see you in my soul …
Though, your memory … Has given me a reason to smile
But … Am not happy .. Am Sad….

Am struggling to steal you from the heavens
Hiding you inside …
I see you in MY Truth …
I see you in HIS lies…
Though, our child in my arms ... Has given me a reason to smile
But … Am not happy .. Am Sad….

Am struggling to understand this marriage of love and pain
Deciding the fate of our lives …
I see God’s Love …
I see Devil’s Ploy…
Though, The love that I have received ...Has given me a reason to smile
But … Am not happy .. Am Sad….

Am struggling to wake you from your sleep
Brought on to you from the skies …
I see you MY Angel …
I see you MY Wife…
Though, the hope of meeting you on the other side ...Has given me a reason to smile
But … Am not happy .. Am Sad….

Am struggling NOT to question the ways of My Lord
Running my life ….
I see HIS victory…
I see HIS loss….
How can I be happy? .. How can I smile??
When all your love.. brings only.. agony, pain & cries...

--- Vinny (28.09.06)