Mundane Musings

http://www.hindu.com/mp/2009/01/28/stories/2009012850050100.htm

7DAYS.ae Claiming ‘Slumdog’ Wednesday 28 Jan, 2009 I totally agree with the reader Jayakrishna about his views on ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. While Danny Boyle’s depiction of poverty is not totally incorrect, there are several scenes in the film which was toofar-fetched. The scene where the boy Jamal jumps from the makeshift“toilet” was un! called for. And both the real life hosts of the TV show‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ namely Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan were very courteous towards the contestants and treated each of them with the same amount of respect no matter which part of society they were from. Unlike the protagonist played by Anil Kapoor in the film. Even if this film were to bag all the Oscars it has been nominated for. We as Indians should not rejoice about them. On the occasion of our Republic Day, we should take a vow to improve our country and remove poverty so that no more movies romanticising our poverty should be made.

How Do You Measure Success?By Shawn Driscoll One of the places I often start with a new client is to have them answer this question: "At this stage of my life/career/business success is?" By starting with a clear definition of what success looks like for them, we have a compass by which to measure their success. But recently, I've started to notice an interesting pattern. Many of my clients, colleagues, and friends (and yes, even yours truly!) go after certain goals for one set of reasons, but then later measure their success against a completely different set of reasons or standards. Here's an example of what I mean: One of my clients had set a goal of increasing the visibility of her business by getting lots of PR. So, she set about doing the things that would get her media interviews and lots of visibility. And it worked like gangbusters! In less than 90 days she had been featured in several prominent national newspapers, radio shows and even television. And yet, s...

WHY I AM A HINDU-A MUST READ for Hindus Four years ago, I was flying from JFK NY Airport to SFO to attend a meeting at Monterey , CA An American girl was sitting on the right side, near window seat. It indeed was a long journey - it would take nearly seven hours. I was surprised to see the young girl reading a Bible unusual of young Americans. After some time she smiled and we had few acquaintances talk.I told her that I am from India Then suddenly the girl asked: 'What's your faith?' 'What?' I didn't understand the question. 'I mean, what's your religion? Are you a Christian? Or a Muslim?' 'No!' I replied, 'I am neither Christian nor Muslim'. Apparently she appeared shocked to listen to that. 'Then who are you?' 'I am a Hindu', I said. She looked at me as if she was seeing a caged animal. She could not understand what I was talking about. A common man in Europe or US knows about Christianity and Islam, as they are t...

It's been a while since I posted anything meaningful on blogger. Well reason being that I was on holiday in December. And January has been really hectic with new projects , parties et al. Apart from that for the first time in many years I have read 3 books in 2 months time. This is really an achievement for a time constrained person like me. The books are : The Immigrant by Manju Kapur, Married but Available by Abhijit Bhaduri and Grandmother's Tale by R.K.Narayan. Admitted that the last one was rather a small book but I consider all this an achievement nevertheless. Of the lot the book I liked the most was Married but Available by Abhijit Bhaduri. Of course with due respect to R.K.Narayan who still remains my most favorite author till date. Its just that MBA(Married but Available) dealt with so many real life issues and yet had a good feel about it. And unlike most NRI authors it was not degrading India for a change.I liked the way he brought in simple management principles in...

When discussing about the ongoing war, I realised the lesson I learnt from playing the game of Risk. I quit the game early on primarily because I didn’t want to be attacked nor did I want to attack. While with the others it was only a question of winning. Even in real life people are only bothered about winning and they will trample whatever is on the way to achieving it. The final result of the game ? Nobody won! As is the case in real life nobody wins! But some people lost the lives of their loved ones.