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Showing posts from February, 2008

Jodha Akbar

Most of the people unnecessarily hype up Akbar's religious tolerance. Not that he was not a religiously tolerant man, but what annoys me is that his other great qualities are completely overlooked in this frenzy. Akbar was not only one of the earliest kings who started the trend of inter-religious marriages, but also perhaps the first king to prove that inter-lingual marriages can work. Who was 'that' wife, you might be wondering right? Its the same Jodha, the rajput princess! "What? we saw the movie and both of them seemed to speak Hindi and as far as we remember we did not see any subtitles when either of them spoke. Are you sure?" If these are the questions you are having, step back for a minute and observe what you had overlooked. Jodha spoke 'shuddh hindi' with an overdose of sanskrit, a language that would have become extinct, if not for those uninhabitable suburbs of Barjatya's Sundarnagar. Akbar spoke his hindi with heavy influence

Post Death Paranoia

What happens after a man dies? Is there a God waiting to settle things? Is there another world? An afterlife? Does Chitragupta use the latest version of Tally for his accounting purposes? Or do dead people get bored to death waiting in never ending queues for their turns to come up as he flips through the pages of his dusty old books? Would St.Peter's job be outsourced to some other Indian saint from a tier 2 city? Will the Indian saint have lost it to a mexican or a philipino by the time you reach there? Do the jehadis get their share of 72 virgins? Or will they be given a raw deal citing the dwindling male-to-female ratio as the reason? No, these are not the exact questions I am having. I am thinking more on the lines of what happens to the online world of a person after he dies. Have you ever wondered what will happen to the email account of a person once he dies? What happens to their blog? Their flickr account? Their adsense? I have no clue why, but this question h

Where Do All The 30 Percents Go?

You are asked to do the estimation for a module or a task. You consider the coffee breaks, orkut scrapping and the innumerable hours spent on Wikipedia and IMDB. You make a very high end calculation and add 30% buffer to it and send it to your lead. Your lead takes into consideration the time he would lose in mindless discussions, unwanted conferences and adds his 30% buffer. Your manager thinks of time lost in motivational meetings, online trading and the estimation goes up by 30% more. Finally, your account manager not wanting to be left alone, follows the 30% funda and sends the final estimation to the client. Everybody seem happy dreaming about the happy days ahead. But, from the day the project starts till it ends, everybody starts slogging their posteriors off. I wonder, where all those 30 percents vanish! I know this was a lousy post. But, there are many reasons why I wrote it: One, I dont have enough time. Two, I am in a cribbing mood and is there a better listener than a blog?