Bangalore figures fifth on country’s crime chart, reports the Times of India in this news article.

In its latest findings, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), rates Bangalore as the city recording the fifth highest crime rate, accounting for 9.2% of crimes in the country.

And now to the more interesting part – the response of a former police commissioner:

“In Karnataka the police register cases generously, even petty crimes like chain and mobile-phone snatching are registered as FIRs. The data from Bangalore will just look inflated.”

Crime is essentially nil, just that people in Bangalore keep reporting FIRs. I am glad to know this. I shall be returning to a safe city.
Life rocks.

An Update: I was trying to post the article that actually got published in the Business Standard, however blogger’s image uploading tool doesn’t appear to be functioning right.
Anyway, the crux of the whole thing is that the article that finally got published in the paper took about 3 mm x 3.1 mm of space in a tiny corner of the paper. It was edited beyond recognition and printed beyond sight.

I spent about 40 minutes writing it and re-reading it.
I want my time back. Please. Oh please. In return, I shall write another article. I promise.

—-End of Update——-

Yesterday was quite eventful. The Net Impact club over here along with Asha for Education organised a corporate quiz. 40 teams registered for the event and we were able to raise Rs. 2 Lakhs for the Asha foundation! A month-long effort went into making this a success.

In addition to the corporate teams, we also had kids from the government primary schools visiting the ISB as part of this event. They started off the event with a couple of songs and prayers.

Here is the press-release, written by you-know-who, and should most probably appear in the Business Standard either today or tomorrow.

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The Net Impact chapter at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad in association with Asha for Education, Hyderabad, conducted its annual corporate quiz “ACE 2006″ on Sunday, July 30th. The event was held at the Khemka auditorium of the ISB.

Net Impact’s mission is to improve the world by growing and strengthening a network of new leaders who are using the power of business to make a positive net social, environmental, and economic impact. Their chapter at the ISB, the first one in Asia, is striving to foster a sense of lasting social responsibility and to inspire student interest in applying business skills toward positive social impact.

Asha for Education, is a nonprofit tax-exempt organization dedicated to socio-economic change in India. In pursuit of this goal, Asha focuses on basic education in the belief that education is a critical requisite for socio-economic change.

ACE 2006 was truly a battle among the best brains from some of India’s top corporate houses. The teams that made it to the final were Google, Deloitte Consulting, Infosys (two teams), Kanbay and Satyam. Out of these, Deloitte Consulting emerged the winner. Infosys and Kanbay came second and third respectively. In addition to the interesting questions thrown at these top corporate teams, there were various questions for the audience as well with each correct answer being awarded by chocolates and mementos.

The proceeds received from this quiz shall go towards the welfare of needy students at Ramakrishna Upper Primary School at Yellammabanda, Kukatpally, Hyderabad.

The quiz master for the event was J. Krishnamurthi from Quizerati.
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In other news, I finally got myself on orkut. Virtual networking et al.

Two of us set out to the city today. Both of us had (rather, have) no clue about the city. An autorickshaw was hired and it turned out that the driver too had no clue about the city.

One of us wanted to visit the Birla Mandir over here. I didn’t know it was a tourist attraction until today. We set out, three of us including the driver.

What was interesting was that the driver would ask for directions only from another auto on the road. And what was even more interesting was that he would address the other auto driver with his first name. He virtually knew every auto driver that passed by on our way to the temple.

Networking anyone? Virtually asking.

Standing outside the temple at a roadside tea shop, I notice the vegetable seller on the opposite side. She was selling vegetables spread on a thin plastic sheet. Her husband (I assume it was her husband) was mentally challenged. He would dance on the street and then suddenly cower down in fright and talk to himself.

It then started drizzling. The man got out on the middle of the road and started dancing in the rain. He had a wide smile on his face and his eyes flickered with a happy glow, enhanced more so by the splattering of tiny droplets. He danced around motorcycles that tried to avoid him and the rain. He danced around himself. He danced.

His wife looked at the other vendors, felt embarassed and got up with a stick in her hand. A stick to discipline her husband who seemed to be one with the universe in his dance and happiness.

He saw the stick and immediately crouched in a corner. He started crying. Tears flowed by and he cried. The rain again came to the rescue. The drops of rain that fell on him mixed with his tears and wiped them away from his face. The very rain which he was rejoicing about became his only support. He cried.

My tea cup was empty. The rain poured on.

Before I finished blinking for the third time, my third term had started.
The rush of activity has been enormous, to put it mildly.

Three blinks ago, I was in my office finishing off my last project. A product that I loved creating and was really glad on seeing its success. I had a wonderful team to work with and each member of that team was brilliant, to say the least.

There were thoughts about what next, where do I go from here, what about my learning curve etc etc. GMAT happened in half a blink and then came the part where I had to break the news to my employers.

I told them about it way before I received any confirmation of any sort from the institution. I wanted to make sure that none of the new projects get jeopardised in case I had to move out suddenly. I was apprehensive initially, but the fact that I was a friend rather than an employee to most of them, I was able to talk it out with them.

For the first time I realised how important it is to develop good relationships with your colleagues and your employers. They were all very supportive and helped me a lot in the entire application process. Recommendation letters were flowing in from every corner and everyone was eagerly awaiting my results. (I remember how everyone had a talk with me the day I got the confirmation letter. Everyone rushed to my cubicle to read the letter and to congratulate).

When I look back at it, I think what really clicked was the fact that I took a lot of interest in knowing individuals with whom I was working. Conversations over coffee breaks ranged from books to philosophy to movies to news and to work. There was always that little extra that I was willing to work on out of personal interest and out of trying to be a helping hand to a friend.

People at a workplace appreciate camaraderie, more so since its hard to find such a thing amidst the aisles lined by cubicles. It was this very camaraderie that joined forces to help me with so many things during my last few months at the organisation.

Then came the persistence on me taking a sabbatical rather than quitting the organisation. I remember having a 2-week long discussion with the top management on this issue. They didn’t want me to go and I was happy to see that I was valued to this extent (for once!)
Quitting the organisation was a very hard decision and I still remember driving my car out of those gates and looking in the rear view mirror for one last time at those buildings which had been my home for over 4 years.

Now, here I am trying to figure out my elective courses, hazily drawing and wiping away pictures in front of my eyes about my areas of specialisation. I need to act and act fast.

The fourth blink is just around the corner. Visibly so.

A probable breakthrough with the bird flu vaccine, reports The Guardian.

What exactly are the Greeks upto with this? (Courtesy: BBC News)

Human rights activists in Greece have welcomed a new law passed by parliament which for the first time allows people to be cremated rather than buried.

The graveyards in the capital, Athens, are already full to overflowing. For many a burial plot is only rented for three years before the body has to be exhumed to make way for the next coffin.

Anyone there? Socrates? Plato?

Finally, its about time you took your reading seriously. (courtesy: BBC News)

Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is voted the book adults should read before they die on World Book Day

Does this mean adults are going to die on World Book Day?

Life rocks.

Seen those checkboxes that come along with every username and password forms?

Those tiny little checkboxes which are titled “Remember me” so that you don’t need to enter your username/password everytime you want to login to some website.

Life should come with such “Remember me” checkboxes.
Or with “Please Remember me” checkboxes.
Or with “Please Remember me even though you don’t want to” checkboxes.

A check, an un-check, a life, an un-life.

What was that again? Life rocks? Yeah.

Back home and drawing pictures…

As always, it feels great to be in Bangalore. Memories and roots conjure up a nice cocktail of fun, laughter, rememberance, gratefulness and a tinge of sadness (the latter added as per taste).

My home was being painted on the outside and at the same time I was getting a broadband connection cable hauled over my terrace.

So, there I was on the terrace with the broadband guy and with a LAN cable in my hand. One of the painters, his uniform spotted with different colours of the rainbow and beyond, comes over to me and takes the cable from me.

He looks at the cable, speaks out the layout of the wires to himself and tells me – “This is a straight cable, not a cross-cable”.

The broadband guy and I were both taken aback in surprise. Before I could say or ask anything, he continued with a smile and added, “I worked in the networking industry for three and a half years”.

He held the smile long enough for me to notice the happiness on his face and the way he started swaying the brush present in his hand.

“Why did you leave the networking industry and take up painting walls?”, I ask

“They didn’t pay me on time.”

“But the pay must have been good?”

“Yeah, I had a salary of Rs. 4200/-. But they never paid on time.”

“Surely you could have switched companies and got a better firm to employ you”

“Yeah, but the timings were odd. I had to work from 9 in the morning to 10 in the night”.

“Is painting walls better?”

“It is. I get paid daily wages. Every day I go home with Rs. 150 in my pocket”, he said and smiled.

He was happy. He was content with having 150 every day rather than 4200 every month. He was happy painting walls, and he showed keen interest in the setting up of the network.

He hung around cutting cables and fixing them correctly. The paintbrush lay on the terrace until his supervisor shouted at him and he hurriedly picked up the brush and continued painting the wall.

All the while, he continued to overlook the broadband person – checking whether he was doing the right job or not.

Ladies and gentlemen, I write this post on my new broadband connection.
The brush has gone. The colours have remained.

Just got back from a marketing exam.
The exam became so boring towards the end that I left around 10 minutes before the deadline. The looks I received in response to this were close to stating that I had committed some kind of sacrilege.

The point is I don’t like marketing. Show me one marketing person who actually creates a Bass diffusion model and I will gladly give him my prized possession – my copy of The Catcher in the Rye. On second thoughts, er, well, that person doesn’t deserve my copy of The Catcher….

Show me a marketing person who infact makes decisions based on Bass diffusion models, heck, I will educate him about life.

My second exam, starting at 2:30 is Global Economics. Now this is one subject I really like, although I wish that my liking towards the subject transforms into grades in that subject.

Life rocks, ladies and gentlemen.

Jitendra Gandhi had to suffer even after he was long gone.
A victim of the Mumbai bomb blasts, Jitendra’s body was fraudulently claimed by a couple to be a part of their family inorder to pocket the relief money of 1 lakh.

Read about it here.

MUMBAI: A Thane couple has been arrested by the Andheri government railway police for fradulently taking away the body of a 7\11 victim whom they did not know and claiming compensation.
The couple, identified as Sagar Vyapari (30) and his wife Sangeeta, both construction labourers, went to Cooper Hospital in Vile Parle on July 12 and claimed the body of Jitendra Gandhi (30), who had died in the Jogeshwari blast.

Now, what is worse? The fact that this happened or the fact that there are people in this country who are so starved of a decent living that they would resort to making use of the dead to do something of their own lives?

The book lying on my table is this:

Picture Courtesy: Penguin Books India

In addition to the supposedly relevant reading matter (also known as academic texts) that I have been spending time on, I yearn to devote enough time to this book. I have not been able to travel farther than the introduction though.

What was of interest to me was this particular paragraph:
“Even while ancient India was making breakthroughs in the natural sciences and mathematics, the sages of the Upanishads were turning inward to analyze the data that nature presents to the mind. Penetrating below the sense, they found not a world of solid, separate objects but a ceaseless process of change – matter coming together, dissolving, and coming together again in a different form. Below this flux of things with “name and form”, however, they found something changeless: an infinite, indivisible reality in which the transient data of the world cohere”

If you compare this with the revelations of quantum physics, you will more or less find similar observations. Schrodinger’s wave equation essentially brings to the fore the concept of everything being just a wave. Our inability to comprehend beyond three dimensions forces our observations to quantify everything into three dimensions. In other words, an n-dimensional wave equation gets narrowed down to a 3-dimensional wave equation only because we cannot see beyond the third dimension.

The fact that a human race was able to come up with a similar theory thousands of years ago is truly fascinating.

However, it is even more of a wonder that thousands of years later, the effective progress made by mankind has been of a negligible quantity. We are now trying to re-learn what was already mastered by our ancestors. Darwin’s theory of evolution probably applied only for a certain observable period of time I suppose. Otherwise there is no explanation for this degeneracy in our evolution which has led to us re-visiting past learnings.

Getting back to the book, this translation of the Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran appears to be a lot easier to read and understand as compared to the others that I had attempted reading earlier.

More on this book later. Now its time to hit the bed.
Hence, good night. Or good morning. Or whatever good it might be.