The balcony overlooks a busy road. Honks of all decibels and tunes are heard above the din of the factories in the distance.

Plato walks nervously up and down the long balcony as Socrates wears a forlorn look.

“Aren’t we supposed to celebrate?”, Plato looks up at Socrates and then looks down at the bevy of party girls carrying confetti for the party.

“Celebrate what?”, asks Socrates with his gaze fixed elsewhere.

“The fact that the new year is here.”

“Yeah”

“Then why aren’t we out there partying with all these people?”

“We are old. And philosophers.”

“Oh yes. We give others reasons not to party”, Plato mumbles with loaded sarcasm topped with anger

“Do you see the horizon?”, Socrates asks, ignoring Plato’s juvenile bursts.

“Horizon?? What the…No”.

“What is the horizon?”, Socrates goes on.

Self-jubilant, Plato thinks “Yes, the Greek has finally lost it. No more cryptic passages for the world”.

“The Horizon..er…a horizontal line at the end of the world”, he answers with a smirk.

“How can there be a line when the earth is a sphere?”

“Well yeah, what I meant is the place where the earth meets the sky and you see it as a line”, Plato drops his jubilant note and quickly understands the old man is still stable.

“Yes, and now you don’t see the horizon because of all these buildings”, says the old man.

“The party starts at 8 pm tonight. Its Happy Hours as well.”

“Now, the horizon is where it all starts or it all ends. And if we have covered this origin of things (or conclusion of things) by our creations, what are we celebrating for?”

“I don’t think I follow that”, says Plato and immediately realises his folly in saying so.

“When there is no reason to be or to die, why party?”, Socrates puts it in simpler terms.

Dropping any hopes of jostling on the dance floor tonight, Plato resigns to his fate and sits down.

Socrates, in the meanwhile, spots a fight on the road. Around five to six people chasing a guy and then beating him up as the traffic comes to a halt.

“Celebrate?”, Socrates asks looking at Plato.

Plato shrugs and then looks at the sky, upward from the horizon. Three colorful kites flutter in the wind and make the world strangely brighter.
The horizon remained covered, but beyond it lay a world of freedom and joy.

The party is on.

Happy New Year, ladies and gentlemen.

Previous Socrates & Plato posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

Back to blogging after an extended coffee break.

Times of India, the nation’s flagship media company that has taken upon itself the task of building(!) this nation, asks a pertinent question on its website:

Are women mesmerised by Narendra Modi?

The question makes you think twice about the entire Lead India campaign.
The comments make you think more than twice about what kind of India someone would want to lead.
Do read the comments.

Two of my friends, who are both brilliant in their work, have started a new website called Antya.com.

Antya has been started by my former colleagues Bharani (who is also a fellow ISB alumnus) and Sunny, an ex-Googler.

Antya provides a refreshing space in the saturated search engine market. While you can definitely search for all things you want, Antya offers you to discover new websites which are out there in some corner of the internet.

Their mission is simple: To make all brands & businesses discoverable to the end user.
Essentially, they are targeting to bring to the user all the niche websites that currently form the long-tail of the web.

Here’s wishing Bharani and Sunny all the very best with this new venture.

If you are in Mumbai, then you have to read this and act now: Batti Bandh.

From the site:

Batti Bandh is an entirely voluntary event taking place on the 15th of December between 7:30 & 8:30 p.m. This event is aimed at requesting all of Mumbai to stand up for a cause that is greater than all of us. All you need to do is switch off lights and appliances in your home, shop, office, school, college or anywhere you are for 1 hour to take a stand against global warming. Just 1 hour.

What will this 1 hour do? This 1 hour for just 1 day is not our only aim. This 1 hour is to set an example to the world, to every person who witnesses it, to show that together we can make a difference. This 1 hour will save a lot of electricity as well as pollution and if done regularly can go a long way in reducing pollution that is released by electricity plants as well.

We were inspired by a similar event recently held in Sydney, Australia, called Earth Hour. In Sydney, 2.2 million people participated. Their one hour of lights out meant that 24.86 tons of carbon dioxide were not released into the air – the equivalent of taking 48,613 cars off the road. We are a city of more than 20 million people. Let this number be motivation enough to show that we can make a difference. Unplug Mumbai.

How about starting this for Bangalore? I would be interested to contribute in organizing it. How about a Traffic Bandh? Take your vehicles off the road.

Firstly, a huge thanks to everyone who left their best wishes on my previous post.

Ladies and gentlemen, yes I am back. And married. In reverse order.

At least ten people have asked me: ‘So how does it feel now?’
One of the questioners also took the liberty to answer on my behalf: ‘Do you feel numb? Do you feel in a dazed state?’
Before I could respond, the answer continued: ‘It is better if you feel that way. Once it hits you, life is well…’

‘Well what?’, I waited and then asked explicitly. But no, the man had decided to shut up.

Anyway, here I am after a two week hiatus, owing largely to the wedding, a short honeymoon and attending a social function.
Mumbai, where the wedding took place, is a rocking place, and inspite of being a hardcore Bangalorean I find Mumbai very appealing in terms of its pace of life and industrious nature of progress. You always get to see the city working towards making itself a better place for its citizens.

After Mumbai, we found ourselves cramped in economy seats on board a flight to Kuala Lumpur. Yes, we thought it was a nice and unique thing to do for a honeymoon. Until we found atleast 20 Indian couples who were also cosily cramped with zero leg space on the same flight. But then, so what? These were probably people going to tour KL city and all that. We, on the other hand, had planned a nice getaway on an island called Langkawi and checked into an exclusive resort.

I strike a conversation with the male member of another couple (earlier, I would have freely struck a conversation with the female member of course, but then…).

He: Where are you guys heading to?
Me (proud of my exclusive trip plan): Its an island called Langkawi.
He: Hey, same here.
Me: Oh! Yeah?
He: Yeah, and so are some of my other friends who are sitting in the seats across there.
Me: Oh cool. (But I still had the resort to my self).
Me: Which resort?
He mentions the same place as mine.
Me: Oh cool.

So anyway, the unique and exotic place that I had promised Mrs. Dhi Only One had clearly leaked out and many Indian couples were heading to the same place. The Mrs. was clearly not overjoyed at this. Thankfully, the whole wedding affair was so tiring that I managed to sleep off the entire flight journey and didn’t have to talk to anyone else.

We get off the airport and there is a big van waiting for us. A private transfer from airport to hotel had been promised to me, but this was really lavish of the tour operator to send a huge van only for the two of us. We drag our trolleys in touristy style to the parking lot and find 3 other Indian couples peering at us from the van.
‘What? No Private Transfer also?’, asked Mrs. Dhi Only One to me. I said it was in the deal, but I had taken pity on these folks and allowed them to travel in our van. The explanation didn’t quite work.

But thankfully, Mrs. Dhi Only One got along very well with one of the other newly married girls. They discussed their mehendi and their work and all that part of the universe. However, I should have sensed the trouble. The girl’s husband was one of those over-enthusiastic guys, especially with the camera. At any given instant, he would hand over his camera to me, swoon over his wife, flash a long wide smile and ask me to click. He took about a 100 pictures in that very van.

Seeing this, Mrs. Dhi Only One felt left out. “See?”, is all she said to me.
Immediately I got my camera out and set about clicking photographs. It took me a while to realize that she was asking me to shoot photos of the two of us, and not of the scenic view outside the window. Immediately, I asked the other dude to click photos of us. I even smiled for many of them. It was fun. Of course.

The Indian couples carried a good amount of Indian food, all that pre-cooked MTR kinda stuff. I on the other hand, had carried a bar of chocolate.
“See?” is what came out of Mrs. Dhi Only One when they opened their packs of Haldiram and home made food.
I tried to explain that there is no point in eating Indian food in a foreign country, we should try out Malaysian cuisine and all that. That did seem exciting to the Mrs. until we figured that there is absolutely no vegetarian food available in that entire country. Pretty soon we were back with the foodie couple and even shared one of their dinners.
Personally, I had a blast eating fish and chips there. I even had a blast at the KFC and Burger King outlets. But the Mrs. had to make do with biscuits, bread and water. So my joy at eating a Zinger burger was also veiled.

But then, along came a lot of fun. One of them being snorkeling off the coast of Langkawi. The water was pretty clear and we got into the ocean with our snorkeling gear. The view under the water was breathtaking. Colourful fish, vibrant plants and strangely shaped rocks dotted the shallow ocean floor. This is one thing you should experience to really understand the beauty of the world under the water.

We also did a bike trip of the entire island, riding alongside the various small villages and beautiful fields of this island. In fact the entire island took almost a day to cover from one end to the other. Armed with just a map and some broken English, we had a splendid time of exploring the town.

The other wonderful part of our stay there was the tour through the mangrove forest in the Geopark. The mangrove forest has a series of small narrow waterways which make for interesting explorable areas. There was a small uninhabited strip of beach that we stumbled upon (along with 3 other Indian couples, of course) and where we took some more snaps (yes, that couple was at it again – clicking snaps that is).

We also did a tour of KL city on our own, using the local metro rail as our mode of transport. Good fun.

Ladies and gentlemen, life is on. And now there is another coffee mug next to mine to keep me company.

Enjoy.