अमन की आशा - A completely wasteful effort by the Times Group

Just yesterday I started seeing a lot of ads on Times Now (a Times Group affiliate new channel) about a new effort to promote peace among India and Pakistan. Aman Ki Asha. This, according to me, is a wasteful effort of time and money by the Times Group.

Its been a while now that we are trying to reconcile with Pakistan.
Every time we are the ones who take the first step with a Benevolent heart.
And every time we are the ones who take the blow.

Why don't people see the underlying differences between India and Pak and see that both have different purposes in life, different outlook and different fundamentals. Hence, they cannot be friends. Hence, peace cannot be established. Even if it does come into force, its going to be short lived.

India and Pak are fundamentally two different countries. It's been this way right from the start.

The basis of foundation of Pakistan was just territorial identity for Muslim people in India. It was not established on the grounds of any other fundamental.

It would be wrong to comment about the basis of establishment of India, since it always just existed.

India wants to progress. Its tired of hundreds of years of poverty and apathy. And its trying hard for it. Admist all the chaos it exists in, its efforts are still paying off. There are many problems, but its tackling it one by one.

Pak's fundamental agenda is unknown. Its foundation was based on religious grounds. After that, its fundamental reason to exist became opposition to India and a planned effort to weaken India by a number of covert operations.

Its unknown whether Pak wants to develop or Progress. Its unknown that industries are setting up and actually flourishing in Pak. We never hear of any development going on in Pak even in International Media.

Although, maybe, ethnically we shared a lot in common at one point and also still do. Our minds have changed. The language maybe the same. But thinking is not.

We have changed so much now that we cannot come back and shake hands.

Peace can be expected if the basic fundamental on which Pak is operating on changes. It seems to inherently believe in violence, than peace.

Why then, are we making such an effort to create peace.

I think for the time to come, its going to be a cat and mouse chase for us. Pak plots terror and Indian intelligence/Army/BSF tries to foil the plan. Most plots will fail some of them will be a success.

That's how I see the relationship. This is how its going to remain.

I nominate myself to the stupidity award of the year!

This is going to be a long post. So, please bear with me till then.

It all started when I realized that my Demat account was lying inactivated from quite some time. Also, from a long long time, I hadn't seen what was the state of my stock investments since my online Demat account was inactivated.

Upon checking with the ICICI call center, I found out that I need to submit some documents at the local branch and within a day or two the account would be good to go.

In the daily chores and busy life, I again put this issue on the back burner for a week. At the start of the next week, I finally convinced my mind to take this issue on priority and started finding the address of the nearest ICICI Prudential Branch office.

I weakly remembered that at some point in the past that I had seen a ICICI Prudential Branch Office somewhere near Deep Banglow Chowk on JM Road. Going with the hunch that I will find the branch easily, I took off for JM Road on that bright Monday morning before going to office.

On reaching the Deep Bunglow Chowk, at the exact place that was imprinted in my mind, I found that there is no trace of anything called ICICI Prudential. The whole place seemed invaded with mobile repairing and selling centers. I was pretty frustrated and tired at that point, but realized that it was my mistake in the first place not to inquire for the right branch address beforehand. Feeling pretty defeated, I left for my office from there.

As soon as I came to office, I logged on to ICICI Prudential's website and found out their branch addresses. To my delight there was a branch right across Inox theater, which is just a stones throw away from my office. I decided that I would visit their office tomorrow and put this issue to rest, once for all.

Tuesday dawned, and after having breakfast I again started off for the ICICI Prudential Branch which, as per the document on the website mentioned, was located at Amar Avinash Plaza, near Inox theater. I reached Inox theater and found a building called Amar Avinash Corporate City. Not finding the mention of 'Plaza' anywhere, I thought this might be it (the document might have gotten it a little wrong). I had to climb up 5 floors as the lift was not working.

When I couldn't see any hoarding of ICICI Prudential, I asked a security guard where it was. He quickly pointed out that it was in Amar Avinash Plaza!, a building which was 20 meters beside Amar Avinash Corporate City. Feeling 'Ah Crap!', I climbed down 5 floors and entered Amar Avinash Plaza, finally. The frustration built up a little when again the lift at this building was also under repair. Not having a choice, I climbed up again 5 floors and reached a place which had a board of ICICI Prudential!

Feeling a little elated, I asked the security guard (Just to be doubly sure that I was on the right floor). The security guard pissed me off. He pointed out that the offices had moved to JM road!!

This now was actually was becoming a chase. Earlier I went to JM Road, couldn't find anything and came here. Climbed 10 floors. And this guys now tells me to back to JM Road! I was thoroughly disappointed with what was happening with me that day.

Gulping down the frustration, and keeping the final goal (of activating my account) in my mind, I decided to put this matter to rest today at any cost, and started back for JM Road.

I finally found the right building at JM Road, realized that I was searching at the wrong spot in my earlier trip and felt a little stupid myself of doing all the wrong things to start with.

This time the office was on the 3rd floor and the lifts were working. This soothed my nerves a little. I reached the reception, and with a sigh of relief, asked the receptionist to help me out with re-activating my Demat account.

She gave me a confused look and asked a couple of folks working around her to respond to me. Pop came the reply from one of them, "Sir, this is ICICI Prudential. We handle Insurance plans. For Demat you'll need to go to ICICI Bank".

I stood there dumbstruck with my stupidity. The ladies there realized that this guy seems stupid to come to this Branch without thinking. They stifled their laughter coz' it would be really bad to laugh on somebody's face. For them, they had a joke of the day to tell and laugh on.

I for one couldn't figure out for the life of me why I was looking for a Prudential branch to start with. What the hell was wrong with me? What was I thinking all this time that made me look so stupid.

Hence, today, I nominate myself for the Stupidity awards, if there is anything like this.

Snehal gets engaged with Neil

Yesterday finally another milestone was reached in my life. My only sister, Snehal got engaged with her long time sweetheart Neil. That rested a lot of my worries.

It's hard for me to put through my emotions to people, but I was pretty worried about Snehal all through the time she was in Mumbai. Her relationship with Neil was going around from quite sometime (3-4 years to be precise).

Now that its made official, gave me a sigh of relief.

The reason of my worry was that couple of my really close friends couldn't take their relationships to the next level, due to several circumstances. Somewhere deep in my conscience I had this fear lingering around and dreaded if something like that could happen to Snehal.

However, everything is fine and we are now gearing up for her marriage in May, 2010

Low Calorie Drinking

I recently switched to low calorie drinking. Sheer pressure from my conscience to reduce weight. I'm 78. I need to get to 70 at least.

Beer was my favorite. I fell in love with it when I discovered Corona. And after that there was no looking back. Recently, when I discovered that American regular beers had on an avg 200 cals per pint, I started thinking as to what would Indian beers have. I'm sure it will be more. We Indians don't care about calories when we drink. Hell, I'll be called stupid if I make that statement among my buddies.

So I've switched to Whiskey, Soda and Water. Yes, Totally Desi style. I contemplated keeping the Coca Cola mix, but then Coke is itself 400 cals per 350 ml, so dropped it.

My friends Rohit and Pramathesh had been advising this from months to me. But somehow I just liked beer, then and never paid heed to their advise. Rohit used to think I'm mad not to drink Whiskey or 'daru' in general. Beer, it seems, never fell into Daru category.

So, folks there I am. Your buddie again. I'll drink Whiskey with you now. No more beers. They make me fat.

I think I made a change

I always wonder whether I can be the person who can make a little change for the larger good of humanity. I think the other day, I kinda did it.

Nobody in Pune follows traffic rules. In fact, flouting a rule right under the nose of a Traffic Police Officer is the new high in this city. It's a little better in the evening time since the traffic is intense and cops are everywhere. However, at around 9-30 or so, the cops finish their duty and leave the lives of the people in the hands of Traffic Lights. And people in this city almost hate traffic lights, or just choose to ignore their existence.

However, as a good Samaritan, I always make it a point to follow Traffic rules 99% of the time. I admit that I have my own weak moments, but I'm trying to get over them.

So the other day, it was 9-30pm and I was returning home from work. The traffic light at Pune central chowk was red and quite blatantly people were flouting it and zooming off. Out of a pure call of conscience, I just decided to stop till the light went green. For around 5 seconds, bikes, cars trucks, just passed me by. Some got a little irritated that I was standing right between the road blocking their way. Notwithstanding their stern and disgusted looks I just continued to hold my base.

Around 10-15 seconds passed by and another biker who actually seemed like he will join the gang and zoom of, probably saw me and had a call of conscience too. He also stopped. This seemed to spread like a virus and one by one cars, trucks and other vehicles also seemed to stop. For this to happen at 9-30pm in the night is a big deal. A really big deal. People stopped till the light turned Green after a cool 90 seconds. That's 1 1/2 minutes people. This probably might be considered for Limca book of records or something. :)

From my perspective, by persevering to hold my base there in spite of people not caring a shit, I think I just nudged a couple of other folks' conscience, which always existed, but needed to be nudged a little to kick start into action.

I kinda felt satisfied that day; for just having done one honest good deed for me and my fellow beings.

Osho Gem

Life is a verb. Life is not a noun, it is really "living" not "life." It is not love,
it is loving. It is not relationship, it is relating. It is not a song, it is singing.
It is not a dance, it is dancing. See the difference, savor the difference.

Axis Bank USD Travel Cards - A really bad product

I had to travel for a short 3 month trip to the US. Our company Capgemini tied up with Axis bank for providing USD Travel Cards for meeting our day to day expenses in the US.

For those who do not know what's a cash card, imagine it as a Debit card which can be used at any merchant establishment which accepts VISA cards. The company initially deposits a certain amount of money up front in the card which can then be used. Once the money exhausts, additional money can be added. This makes the travelers life easy coz' he then does not need to carry a lot of currency with him.

Axis card provides such cash cards as one of their products. However, these cash cards are almost useless and incur a lot of loss to people who've bought these.

Firstly, whenever you use them at any of the ATM's a charge of $3 is charged. Whether you withdraw $20 or $200 the charge remains constant.

Secondly, most people would generally do online shopping when they visit the US since you get better deals online. These cash cards do not work online since they do not have the concept of a "Billing Address" and "Security Code", which are normally present on any VISA cards. This shortcoming makes this product really useless.

Thirdly, guess what? $1 charge if you need to change your ATM password! Yup, you read it right. If you forgot your ATM password and need to reset it, they happily charge you $1 to do that. Have you heard any service charging you $1 for changing the password on their cards? This is ridiculous and outrageous.

Fourthly, their web interface is really user unfriendly. When you try to register they take you to a site called iconnect, which is the name for their core banking website and it asks for a "Corporate Id" for the login. When asked to their Customer Service execs they say that we have no idea about the iconnect. It's supposed to be used internally by the bank employees!! Frustrating to the core, isn't it?

I'd really advise anybody to carefully choose a Travel Card product and save themselves all the hassles mentioned above. Pls evaluate all the products out there before making your choice.

Bad business ethics - Kotak Mahindra Bank

I wanted to take a moment to write about a really bad business ethic followed by Kotak Mahindra Bank (from now called KMB).

I have a home loan via KMB. Recently I did a spot check and found that I was paying around 13% interest on my loan. I read about the SBI Happy Loan scheme which is giving Home Loans at 9.75% and decided to switch.

As a part of submitting documentation about my property to SBI, I had to collect some documents (viz, Foreclosure Letter, Loan statement and property NOC) from KMB. I called up a representative called Etesh Jandial who handles my case at Kotak and requested him for these documents. Pop came a reply that it will take 7 working days for him to procure the same. On arguing with him about why such a long time, he said, the documents come from Mumbai head office and take time. I stopped arguing and waited for exactly 7 working days and gave him a call again.

This time he said that the documents are available and I should collect it from the Sorabh Hall branch. I went in there and met him. He told me to wait and went inside his cabin. I could see him in his cabin which was luckily visible from the reception where I was sitting. He was typing away something on the computer and then collected some printouts, stamped them and then came out and handed over those documents to me.

Notice that this entire process took 1/2 an hour and was done on the fly when I came physically to the office. So the 7 working day crap which I was given on the phone was just an excuse to delay the process. This entire thing was just an attempt to fool me which I am pretty pissed about.

Its so disappointing to know that professionals of such a large and reputed bank follow shallow and disgusting business practices. I'd really advise anybody to not deal with Pune office of Kotak's Home Loan department.

Freedom of Speech

Your opinion is yours, my opinion is mine
If you don't like what I'm sayin'? Fine
But don't close it, always keep an open mind
A man who fails to listen is blind
We only got one right left in the world today
Let me have it or throw The Constitution away.

- A song by Ice T

Amazing quote by Steve Jobs

While reading a article on "How to network at Startup events" I came across this incredibly profound quote by Steve Jobs. Here is the snippet :

Networking is very personality driven and for several folks, networking doesn't come naturally. Lots of people are simply shy and apprehensive of approaching strangers and starting a conversation. Making small talk is difficult for many people and the awkwardness simply shows. “Aise kaise kisi se bhi jaake baat karu ? Aur kya baat karu ? “. If you ever have gone through such thoughts, then don't worry, you aren't alone. But more than seeking solace in the fact that there are others in the same boat, you should try to work on developing your networking skills.

Here’re a few tips:

1) First and foremost, you’ll need to try and overcome the fear and apprehension of networking with strangers. Since this is an inherent personality trait, you’ll need to work hardest on it. One of the tips that comes to mind is the following excerpt from Steve Job’s graduation speech at Stanford:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.