Though we had a very active theater group at college for English/Hindi and Bengali, I must confess I had never seen a play before. I somehow don’t have much inclination towards cultural activities.

Ravi was hoping for a good play in town when I came to Mumbai first. Fortunately for me, Naseeruddin Shah’s play “Katha Collage” was in Prithvi. I was so excited when I went to Prithvi. It happened to be one of the days when they have an open forum where anyone can go and perform in front of the audience at the Prithvi Cafe. The energy was contagious and since then, I have been a regular at plays (Ravi could count only 70 plays he has seen in the last 10 yrs while I have already seen 25 in 1 year in Mumbai:D Ofcourse he has seen a number of plays twice and some even thrice

The experience of watching a play is unique. The amount of effort that goes into a live performance is tremendous and the actors pull you into the play. Sometimes its just entertainment, but at times the plays are also thought-provoking, picking up social issues and sometimes they also touch on topics like friendships, values etc which are there in our unconscious mind and we take them for granted.

If I am asked whats the best play I have seen till date, its “Class of 84″ by the “Rage” group. There have been lots of other excellent plays I have seen – Hamlet the clown prince, Joke, Proof, Art, Poha Gone Wrong, Taj Mahal ka Tender, One on One, Kuch bhi ho sakta hai to name some of them. We even went for a kids play called “Fantasia Fantastique” once

One should watch a play to appreciate it. But get some advice on the first play you see. It makes a lot of difference and it could make or break your heart towards watching more plays

And last but not the least, thank you Prithvi Theater, NCPA and various performing artists and groups for the lively theater scene in Mumbai.

Thinkers, innovators or creators – whatever we call them, are the people who use their intelligence, will power and hard work to accomplish their goals and make the society a better place to live. The book focuses more on industrialists but symbolizes any thinker – a philosopher, a writer, an entrepreneur, a scientist or anyone who uses their mind to achieve the best they can and contribute to the prosperity of the economy. Protagonist of the novel is a lady called Dagny Taggart who runs a railroad and is a progressive industrialist in a male-dominated domain.

Looters are like leeches who use all their might and power to destroy a thinker and thrive on a creator’s labor. These are the politicians, bureaucrats, regulators and law makers of today.  These are people who in the name of public interest pass legislations which serve their special interests (laws like Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule or Equalization of Opportunity Bill).

In the novel, the thinkers keep fighting these looters till they realize enough is enough and decide to go on a strike. What would happen when the leeches have no blood to suck? The plot is very gripping at at no point did I feel the novel was boring.  There are times when there are philosophical fundae, but it would have been difficult for Ayn Rand to portray the emotional frustration and struggle innovators go through in such situations.

At one place in the novel, one of the creators says he is against Robin Hood because he is the one who supported these leeches indirectly. He was the one who looted from the creators/rich men and distributed it among the poor. He believed in distribution of wealth according to need and not ability.  The book strikes because its still so relevant, people complain the business tycoons and CEOs making money – they forget these are the ones who create jobs and technology; promote reservation system to increase their vote bank.

I would recommend reading the book with an open mind and appreciate Rand’s philosophy of objectivism.

HOLD ON TO YOUR DREAMS!!!

Dreams need people like people need dreams,

vision need somebody to make them real it seems.

World is a canvas and you have the power,

to paint your kind of picture, when it comes to be your hour.

Hold on to your dreams, just believe that you can.

Nothings going to stop you, thats the story of man.

If you should ever lose your faith and stumble in your stride,

remember that the dream you hold is your purpose is your pride.

Never think of losing your place is in the sun,

to have the courage, to have a dream is to have already won.

hold on to your dreams…just believe that you can!!!!

Its tough for people like us to believe that such cruelties happen in societies.  There was this lady called Samara in the prison with Mayada who was believed to be a spy because she chose to change her surname. Her maternal grandfather was very fond of her and wanted her to carry his surname. Her parents agreed because they had other children and she was just one among the rest. She married someone of her choice and had 3 kids from the man. Later, he probably died in the Iraq-Iran war(or was prisoned by Iran and the family told that he was killed). She married the 2nd time and unfortunately her 2nd husband had a problem with she carrying her grandfather’s surname. She changed her surname in a lawful way but was still picked up by Saddam’s soldiers who thought she was a spy. Her husband was initially tortured brutally for no reason. When he was thrown back to her in the prisons, she had to spit in his face to bring him back to senses; as there was no water. Later the two were separated and she was individually tortured.. dunno if she survived or not!

I have still not read the hard copy and plan to buy it now, it gives you an insight of how cruel a human being could be to other. You will feel you are in heaven when you read the misery of these women. You can read the excerpts of the book at this URL: http://www.jeansasson.com/mayada_info.htm

I haven’t read Jean Sasson before but I understand that she specializes in writing about the lives of middle east women. Looking fwd to this read….

TZP is no doubt a wonderful movie. The credit surely goes to the writer Amol Gupte(I actually had the curiosity to google the writer; I am the last person I know who would write a movie review or find out details of a movie), Aamir Khan and the other actors and the unit behind the movie. Its afterall not a one-man game to come up with something like this. However, I had slightly different take on the ending of the movie. Would Ishaan’s parents still be so happy in the end if their son would not have fared well in the exams, if his progress report was still not as good as they show. I understand that one aspect that TZP team wanted to highlight was that if given proper attention and training, differently-abled people can also gel into the mainstream and be as successful as anyone else… that every child has a special talent that needs to be identified and nurtured. But he ends up making Ishaan a mainstream child. My question is: If Ishaan would have been a wonderful painter but still not good at studies, would an Indian parent still be as happy as Ishaan’s parents in the movie? I have no answer…

Movie has some wonderful music as well. My favorite is ‘Maa’. The lyrics, music, picturisation; everything is just perfect. 

I would surely rate TZP as one of the BEST movies I have seen till date. Hats off to the team!!

Quite a few young enthusiasts participated in the event which aimed at 3min dating experience. They had selected 10 guys and 10 girls and all of them were given 3mins to interact with each other.  The event was held at one of the lounge bars in Residency Road and was conducted by RJ Prithvi. It was nice event… followed by drinks and dance; though I felt kind of odd being there..am not really the party type person

I hope some of the participants did find their soulmate

Fortunately, both of us in the company feel that PWD (person with disability) can be as productive as any other person given an opportunity. That was one of the reasons why we wanted to give a chance to handicapped people in our organization. Even before we started Hungryzone, we had been to Enable India a few times to teach some Visually Impaired(VI) students. We felt little odd because we were really nor sure how to teach them. But I felt so good looking at their enthusiasm to learn something new. Even the participation in the class when we asked something was much more than you see in any usual class. I have seen this enthusiasm at 2 places till now: one was this class and the other one was at Parikrma; a non-profit organization that works on teaching slum students. We could not continue after 2 classes at Enable India because the timings didn’t suit us; but we were quite regular at Parikrma which we joined later. I would still love to go back and spend time at Parikrma; but unfortunately had to leave that when we started Hungryzone. At Parikrma, students don’t call teachers ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam’ or ‘Miss’ as we used to. They call them ‘Anna’ and ‘Akka’ which means brother and sister in Kannada. There was so much of energy in those students; it really used to refresh me.

Anyways, I will write about Parikrma some other day. So even before we started hungryzone, whenever we talked about starting a company; we spoke abt recruiting handicapped people. Ofcouse one reason was because we felt they could work at par with anyone else on most of the jobs; the other thing was also that they would be more sincere, hardworking and loyal towards the company than any non-disabled people. They do not really keep looking for jobs outside always. Ofcourse there are exceptions and usually in BPO jobs where there is pick-up, drop, facilities etc; attrition rate of even PWD is also high.

When we started looking for an employee to handle our operations(phone calls etc); we approached a few organizations working with employment of disables. Since Enable India knew our affinity towards PWD, they put us in touch with a girl who was a wheelchair candidate. She was very polite, perfect for customer service. But she wasn’t very well educated and domain knowledge was less. We wanted her to come to my residence cum office for few months after which we could give her work from home option. But I guess her brother had lot of prbs getting her here by car, parking, picking her up and leaving her inside the house. So finally after trying to train her for 2 months, she left. Since we had an emergency, we hired someone who was non-disabled. But we were always looking for someone disabled whom we could hire next. Finally we got one girl. She was VI(Visually Impaired). She has been with us for 5 months now. It took us a good 3+ months to train her but finally she has turned to be an asset. At times we felt we were doing something wrong… that we would maybe one day realize that hiring her was a bad decision and then it would be too late to even hire someone at market salary. But thankfully both me and Ritesh thought this at different times. When I was frustated with she not understanding something or doing a blunder, Ritesh would convince me that it would take time but we wont regret… and vice versa. So finally we are here, at a position where I can proudly say that we have 2 VI at our call center who are much better than few others who are  sighted in a lot of ways.

But if I think from a corporates point of view, at times I would not blame them for not hiring PWD. I feel there is a huge gap between the supply and demand. Demand is of skilled ppl these days, and I dont see them around. Call it our “need of the day” or “motivation to hire PWD”… but if I were a part of any other organization, I would not give someone 4 months to make basic fundae abt their work. People want results, and thats the only thing that drives private companies. And in govt, there is more than enough bureaucracy required. I could write a separate post on that someday…

As I write this, I can imagine HB having a huge operations and the call center being manned by mostly PWD. And customers writing to us abt the excellent customer support that we provide compared to any other service in India

I have realized that once you start working on a project, it takes a lot of time, effort, though, money etc. This money could have gone in some other noble work, the time could have been spent with your family. So one needs to understand why one is doing this, if he/she is ready to do something which might not fetch substantial results in the next few year. But again as I say this, there is no clear answer to all this. 

To think of it, I consider myself a very normal person who has done a lot of things which usually junta feels only intellectuals can do. At school I was not someone who used to come first, but I was a good student. No one thought I would get through JEE. Infact in my Std 12, I had not applied for any entrance except JEE, Roorkee and BITs. Even my parents were scared what would happen if I do not get through any of these. None of my teachers had expected me to get through JEE when some brilliant students could not make it. I have always felt JEE is more of a hard work and perseverance; and ofcourse basic intelligence which 4 out of 5 people would surely have. Yes, rank 1-500 is definitely students who are extraordinarily brilliant… but beyond that its all hard work. I was also a Table Tennis player and represented Bihar in National Level events. Again this came just by hard work and luck to me. I took up TT as a hobby when I was in Std.5 and kept working on it. Again, you need basic intelligence and lot of practice to be at that level. I am told that after I passed out from school, my pricipal used to tell students about me on how to manage sports and acads together ( ). I am not bragging about myself… the point I am trying to make is that I never thought I was brilliant enough to do any of these. But with hard work and determination, I have done them. 

I don’t consider myself a successful person yet, but I am not a failure. I had never thought I would start a company and quit a high paying job for that. But it just happened. Guess if you keep your mind open to ideas, decide logically on what to do and at the end trust that whatever happens happens for good; you would not regret in life.

I have heard a lot of people say “When I can do it, you can also do it”. Dunno how many believe in that statement, but I sure do

“A thousand Splendid Suns” is the story of 2 women in Kabul/Afghanistan during 1960-2005 about how their lives cross each other. The story runs around Mariam and Laila, two women with completely different background but fate brings them as close as a mother and daughter. Mariam is an illegitimate child of a wealthy man who feels ashamed to accept her and after her mother commits suicide, is married to a man 30yrs elder to her. Rasheed, her husband treats her like a slave after Mariam has 6 miscarriages in 2 yrs and he is convinced she cannot give him a son. Laila, the other girl stays in the same neighborhood as Rasheed and Mariam. She is lucky to have a father who encourages her to study, boyfriend Tariq who protects her from rowdies on the street. However, her luck  leaves her when she loses her parents when a rocket launched by one of the warlords to control Kabul lands on her house.  Tariq had left with his family for a refuge in Pakistan. Suddenly she finds herself all alone in the world when she realizes she is pregnant with Tariq’s child and Tariq had supposedly died in some other rocket attack. She agrees to marry Rasheed, who is some 45yrs elder to her to give a name to her child. Unfortunately, a girl is born and Laila suffers. She eventually finds a very good friend in Mariam, and as the story unfolds things get little better.

It describes Kabul families, how people continue to go on with their life even after losing their loved ones, how some Kabul men are dictators in the family and take their wives for granted, how much a son is wanted and birth of a daughter makes the mother suffer in the hands of his husband…its all so sad. I am the fourth daughter of my parents and I wonder what my life would have been if I was born in that place. I remember my dad telling me how his colleagues sympathized with him when I was born. He took them a box of sweets and they were all surprised.  My sisters and I, all got the best of education. But not everyone has that luck… and people say they write their own fate. What if I was born in Kabul, what if there was a war going on in our country when I was born, what if my parents were not the kind who accepted girl child heartily, what if I had not had a good education.  I would have still carried on with life for sure, everyone does… but I mostly wouldn’t be writing this then. These factors beyond our control is what I call luck…