An Outspoken Mind

Smoke et all..

2012-01-28T16:54:00.002+05:30

Yearning,n. and adj. At the core of this desire is the belief that everything can be perfect

On the highway....

2012-01-24T22:31:00.001+05:30

A star falls from the sky and into your hands. Then it seeps through your veins and swims inside your blood and becomes every part of you. And then you have to put it back into the sky. And it's the most painful thing you'll ever have to do and that you've ever done. But what's yours is yours. Whether it’s up in the sky or here in your hands. And one day, it'll fall from the sky and hit you in the head real hard and that time, you won't have to put it back in the sky again.- C. JoyBell C.

I realise there's something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they're experts at letting things go”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

Winter Mornings !!

2012-01-21T21:23:00.000+05:30

And as I worked, the strength returned to my arms and shoulders, and the hope to my heart - not the mad hope of wealth and power that had led me astray, but a sweet and steady sense of the worth of what I was doing. ― Jem Poster, Rifling Paradise

Unfortunately, diplomacy was a dance I needed to learn
― Maria V. Snyder, Magic Study

Eat more cake..

2012-01-11T00:23:00.001+05:30

Last week the candle factory burned down. Everyone just stood around and sang, 'Happy Birthday."
— Steven Wright

I guess Birthday's are nature's way of telling you to eat more cake - Jo Brand..

Lights up the sky....

2012-01-08T12:48:00.000+05:30

That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.

And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth,
"You owe me."
Look what happens with love like that.
It lights up the sky.

Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder

― Rumi

Tum dil se agar poochoge....

2012-01-02T21:42:00.003+05:30

Tum dil se agar poochoge, woh khush rehna hi chahein

Jab sachey mann se maango, toh khul jaati hai raahein

Toh khul ke khushi lutao, yeh kya aadha aadha

Umeedon wali dhoop, sunshine wali aasha...

Loved Coke's new commercial. :)

Second star to the right and straight on...

2011-12-27T19:41:00.000+05:30

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer

Enjoy it. Because it's happening

2011-12-24T21:41:00.000+05:30


A blue X-mas tree at work as a consultant passes by...		.

My pain may be the reason for somebody's laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody's pain. ― Charlie Chaplin

She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time. ― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Standing on the fringes of life... offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Conquer anger by love, evil by good; conquer the miser with liberality, and the liar with truth.”
― Siddhārtha Gautama

Happy Holidays everyone...

Safety Net

2011-12-18T19:30:00.000+05:30

Safe. No one ever is. No matter how hard we try. No matter how much we plan and prepare. There will always be an enemy at the door and a storm trying to knock us down. Life's not about security. It's about picking up the peices after it's all over and carrying on

Be realistic: Plan for a miracle

2011-12-17T17:48:00.003+05:30

View from our resort at Lonavala

Breaking dawn.. :)

In theory, the risk of business failure can be reduced to a number, the probability of failure multiplied by the cost of failure. Sure, this turns out to be a subjective analysis, but in the process your own attitudes toward financial risk and reward are revealed.

By contrast, personal risk usually defies quantification. It's a matter of values and priorities, an expression of who you are. "Playing it safe" may simply mean you do not weigh heavily the compromises inherent in the status quo. The financial rewards of the moment may fully compensate you for the loss of time and fulfillment. Or maybe you just don't think about it. On the other hand, if time and satisfaction are precious, truly priceless, you will find the cost of business failure, so long as it does not put in peril the well-being of you or your family, pales in comparison with the personal risks of no trying to live the life you want today.

Considering personal risk forces us to define personal success. We may well discover that the business failure we avoid and the business success we strive for do not lead us to personal success at all. Most of us have inherited notions of "success" from someone else or have arrived at these notions by facing a seemingly endless line of hurdles extending from grade school through college and into our careers. We constantly judge ourselves against criteria that others have set and rank ourselves against others in their game. Personal goals, on the other hand, leave us on our own, without this habit of useless measurement and comparison.

Only the Whole Life Plan leads to personal success. It has the greatest chance of providing satisfaction and contentment that one can take to the grave, tomorrow. In the Deferred Life Plan there will always be another prize to covet, another distraction, a new hunger to sate. You will forever come up short.

― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle : The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

Passion and drive are not the same at all. Passion pulls you toward something you cannot resist. Drive pushes you toward something you feel compelled or obligated to do. If you know nothing about yourself, you can't tell the difference. Once you gain a modicum of self-knowledge, you can express your passion.....It's not about jumping through someone else's hoops. That's drive

― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle : The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

Unfairness Explained

2011-12-04T18:51:00.001+05:30

Clicked on 4 Dec 2011

Real life is disobliging. People like to think, or feel, in black and white. Having to assess the relative values of all those intermediate greys is tiresome and perplexing.”

― Colin Watson, Snobbery with Violence: English Crime Stories and Their Audience

Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It’s ok, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices.”

― Chetan Bhagat

Unfairness – this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you. In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in English means you are pretty damm lucky by Indian standards. Let’s be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we don’t. I have so much love from my readers that other writers cannot even imagine it. However, I don’t get literary praise. It’s ok. I don’t look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are more beautiful than her. It’s ok. Don’t let unfairness kill your spark”

― Chetan Bhagat

The Ship Building

2011-11-01T22:24:00.000+05:30

He who leaps for the sky may fall, it's true. But he may also fly.”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear.

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it

― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

You see, I was looking for answers then. I still wanted to know why. As though somebody was going to answer that for me, as though any answer would be satisfying.
Not then, but afterward, I started to think about time, and how it keeps moving and draining and flowing forever forward, seconds into minutes into days into years, all of it leading to the same place, a current running forever in one direction. And we're all going and swimming as fast as we can, helping it along.
My point is: maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around in it, let it slide like coins through your fingers. So much time you can waste it.
But for some of us there's only today. And the truth is, you never really know.”
― Lauren Oliver

Of this alone even God is deprived, the power of making things that are past never to have been. - Heard on Criminal Minds

Untouched

2011-10-15T14:14:00.000+05:30

A friend once told me to not retouch the pictures. So here it is - An untouched picture. Leaving things as they are... :)

“Genuine tragedy is a case not of right against wrong but of right against right — two equally justified ethical principles embodied in people of unchangeable will.” ― Georg Friedrich Händel

Here's are a couple of other interesting thoughts i read ...

What's the first sign of a lurking, hidden expectation you didn't know you had? Pain! People don't do what we want, things don't happen quickly enough, the weather doesn't cooperate, our bodies don't cooperate. Why are these moments so painful? Because our minds are focused on a static, unchanging, me-centric picture while the dynamic unfolding of a broader life continues around us. There is nothing wrong with expectations per se, as it's appropriate to set goals and work, properly, towards their fruition. But the instant we feel pain over life not going "my way," our expectations have clearly taken an improper turn. Any moment you feel resistance or pain, look for -- and then let go of -- the hidden expectation. Practice giving yourself over to what "you" don't want. Let the line at the store be long. Let the other person interrupt you. Let the nervousness make you shake. Be where your body is, not where your mind is trying to take you.”
― Guy Finley

All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, father against mother; here is the war of Mary and Musa, and the polarities of knees and nose ... but I found, very early in my life, that the game lacked one crucial dimension, that of ambiguity - because, as events are about to show, it is also possible to slither down a ladder and climb to triumph on the venom of a snake ...”
― Salmon Rushdie

So close, yet so far...

2011-09-26T19:47:00.001+05:30

Captured on 26 September 2011

But paradise is locked and bolted... We must make a journey around the world to see if a backdoor has perhaps been left open

Difference between Imperviousness and Strength

2011-09-24T18:22:00.001+05:30

Bones: You know the difference between strength and imperviousness, right?
Booth: No, not if you're going to get all scientific on me.
Bones: (laughs) Well, uh … a substance that is impervious to damage doesn't need to be strong.
Booth: Hmm.
Bones: When you and I met, I was an impervious substance. Now I am a strong substance.
Booth: I think I know what you mean.
Bones: A time could come when … you aren't angry anymore and … I'm strong enough to risk losing the last of my imperviousness. Maybe then,,,,

- Bones, The Blackout in the Blizzard

Change, changes everything.

2011-09-20T22:45:00.000+05:30

A special capture..for many reasons...

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring. - Henry David Thoreau

Some changes occur suddenly like a brilliant flash of lightning striking across a dark sky. These changes are stunning, exciting but can be quickly forgotten. Other changes happen slowly, gradually, like a flower blooming in early spring, each day unfurling its petals another fraction of an inch towards the warm, nurturing sun. These changes are as inevitable as nature running its course; they’re meant to be.”
― Suzi Davis, Amber Frost

You may like me, you may hate me. But I guarantee you’ll remember me.”
― Shane Porteous

Love who you love while you have them.That’s all you can do.Let them go when you must. If you know how to love, you’ll never run out ....
― Ann Brashares

As we saw it....

2011-09-12T22:11:00.002+05:30

I Know it's kind of blurry, but then it's perfect just the way it is .:)

I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.
I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.
I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.
I've learned that making a "living" is not the same thing as making a "life."
I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.
I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.
I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.
I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.
I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.
I've learned that I still have a lot to learn.
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

- Maya Angelou

Just in time, just like that..

2011-09-10T17:57:00.000+05:30

A lone bird in the sky.

2011-09-05T21:26:00.002+05:30

An attempt at capturing the lone bird in the sky..

Every choice you make is the right move. It's a thought, think about it. Thinking that every move, must in the end be the right move, for in that moment of decision, it was the only move - the most promising option with a probable positive outcome. Perhaps that's what living a life with no regrets is all about. It may not be perfect, but it's always headed towards perfect. I think life is about challenging assumptions. Making assumptions. Re-charting territories.Putting up walls. Falling. Flying all in one breath. Like a sine wave with multiple crests and troughs that always moves forward towards an unknown fate.Life is what it is - An unknown journey to nothing and everything. Binary 0 and 1 all in a single line of thought, all in a day's work....

The Indian flag....and some Harry Potter magic..

2011-09-01T22:09:00.001+05:30

Captured at India Gate and then modified ...

Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right. —

J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

"I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.."

— Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live." — J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears.

"After all this time?"

"Always," said Snape."

— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

The Lokpal debate

2011-08-25T21:27:00.001+05:30

India Gate - Captured by Mohit Kant

So Anna Hazare's campaign against Corruptions seems to be progressing well. Over the last week or so, I've tried to absorb various available views on the matter and I've realized that the final Lokpal bill will perhaps be somewhere between the Government's version and Anna Hazare's version .... Perhaps it will more closely align with the social activist Aruna Roy's version of the bill. Here's the reason why

1. First, while I do agree that the government's version of the Lokpal bill is weak. However, Anna Hazare's version gives ultimate power to one body - The Lokpal. What happens if that body becomes corrupt? Anna's supporters claim that a transparent process for the selection to the Lokpal committee will ensure that credible individuals with strong track record get selected. However, any system in the end can get corrupted. Perhaps, the fight against corruption will be better served if we divide power into perhaps smaller independent sub-divisions dealing with different types of corruption to ensure that each division is accountable to each other. Therefore, each division can also act as a safeguard against other divisions. A simple concept of segregation of duties must be applied for an effective, transparent functioning.

2. Revolutions are a thing of vogue and the participants can be low on knowledge. A large section of people (my approximation ~60%) are unware that there are three versions of the Lokpal Bill. Most people are only aware of two versions. The government version and the much popularized Anna Hazare's Lokpal bill version. No negotiation can result in an absolute result for either party. In the end, government contains an elected set of individuals put in charge of effectively managing a country. The realization that will eventually dawn on people will be that what people support is not Anna Hazare's Lokpal Bill but a strong Lokpal Bill that puts up the much required defense against corruption that is currently eating our economy.

If we were to suppose that government with its supreme power a strong opponent. It will be appropriate to assume that Anna Hazare led movement against corruption with undwindling nation-wide support is an equally strong contender. Thus, any negotiation between two strong opponents must end with both parties conceding on their absolute demands and perhaps meet mid-way..and that mid way may turn out to be Aruna Roy's version of the bill

To fly or not to fly?

2011-08-17T22:41:00.001+05:30

Captured on 15 August 2011

But he who dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose. - Anne Brontë

If you like it, you'll find a way to justify it.
But if you don't , you'll find ways to falsify it. - Toba Beta

You ever get the feeling all hell’s about to break loose and there’s nothing you can do about it?"
— Ali Vali (The Devil Unleashed)

It's harder to make someone laugh than it is to make them cry." — Cath Crowley

Delhi Metro.. captured on 14 August 2011.

India against Corruption...

2011-08-17T20:04:00.002+05:30

If you have stayed in Delhi for as long as most of us here in Delhi have, you will be surprised. Streets are full of people, with a candle in their hand and a hope in their heart. A hope for a corruption free India.

Corruption has become synonymous with the Indian economy in recent times. It is thus, not surprising, that the people have had enough. Corruption is one of the biggest hurdles in India's growth. corruption hinders growth through its adverse effects on investment in physical capital, human capital, and political instability. In fact, a recent survey suggested that high levels of corruption in Asia could derail the Asian growth story.

The Jan Lokpal Bill, which is supported by Mr. Anna Hazare is a much needed step towards a corruption free India. There are a few things that I really like about Mr. Hazare's version of the bill -an independent, single body capable of conducting end-to-end investigations; This stand when coupled with a speedy trial (1 year to complete investigations, and 1 to complete trail) is one of the best defenses against corruption.

The fraud triangle lists three areas, which when entwined together, can result in a fraud. These areas include - 1.Opportunity to commit fraud (weak controls, lack of segregation of duties, easy use of influence to secure contracts/deals etc. )
2. Intent to commit fraud/Rationalization (weak punishment, easy ways out in case things go bad)
3. Pressure (A lifestyle that is beyond one's means/health issues/credit related problems)

A strong lokpal bill ensure that even when there is an opportunity and pressure to commit fraud. A rationalization will be difficult for a potential fraudster because of a speedy trial and a strict punishment. The government, as expected, opposes a strong Lokpal bill. Many people claim that government has taken such a stand to safe gaurd its own interests. Regardless of what the truth may be, I believe that we - the people of India - have shown to the government the true power that a democracy possess - The right to fight for what we think is right. No doubt there will be trails in the next few days and month. But i believe that the movement has too much momentum now to stop and a strong lokpal bill definately see the light of day.

I am all in support for a corruption free India and in awe of the great man, who has sacrificed so much to support a great cause - Mr. Anna Hazare ... here's me.. signing off with a couple of amazing moments that i captured at India Gate on 16th August 2011.. .Jai Hind.

The reason !

2011-08-08T21:31:00.000+05:30

"God is a philosophical black hole – the point where reason breaks down."

King of yesterday!!

2011-07-30T18:13:00.000+05:30

So, I heard this song and fell in love.. I am surprised how it's managed so little traction over the internet - Despite this song being featured in "Bubble Boy"... anyhow, I am embedding it here..

Jude - King of Yesterday...