Digging for Meaning

http://player.vimeo.com/video/89305413 Ideas are tremendously potent. People turn mad in rage and kill. People smile beatifically and help others. People dig up, blow up, fill up, swamp the earth.  People chase imaginary ghosts & Questions & purposes. All their lives. People fetish on foods, movies, shoes, bodies and turn off the inner eye. People lose their sense of reality, their sense of justice, their balance of life. The breath. the breath is lost. The realisation of the breath becomes alien. A moment in silence turns into an eternity of restlessness. "Occupy me" screams the inner child fed on ideas 24x7. The hell that is introspection. the hell that is looking back into our acts in reality.  "Ideas. occupy me." The ants carry stuff for their colonies. What are we carrying, for whom? Our queen bee is Change with a capital C. Change, Change, Change. faster and faster. evolutions, revolutions. No matter at what cost. People chase c...

Facebook pays $19B for whatsapp. instagram goes for a billion... What kind of desperation is this? how can these acquisitions be justified? Even if you dig in numbers, there is no method to the madness - typically they would compare customer acquisition cost (which are astronomical for a category with such a low entry barrier and high attrition rates of users. And just try to realize the promised full potential of monetization - and see if the userbase doesn't evaporate.). Compare those numbers for geocities, aol, myspace, whatsapp.. (and for a sanity check, other industries). All money down the drain. Why is all the money being made in 'exits'? That is not a sustainable way for an industry to thrive. Then some talk about potential in a monopoly & ecosystems tying down people. But that's the sure sign of a dying desperate game. When the game changes from that of creating awesomeness, to cornering access - that is a sure sign of impending irrelevance. People swi...

Absolute identity The world wants you to know for sure, what you want to be. Ads, movies, inspiring talking heads.. all want you to 'find yourself'. You believe in absolute identity. The belief that there is one possible ideal future for you and it is your primary duty to 'find' that future. The concept of 'finding' is quite alluring. It is not as heavy as the concept of doing or making. It is rife with possibilities. It doesn't kill possibilities. It celebrates the 'potential'. And 'potential' talks to you about the awesome you that no one knows about, but you surely do. 'Potential' stalls your actions, for who do you really need to prove, if not yourself? And in that sedentary search, you end up doing nothing. So scared of walking in any other direction than 'the one for you', that you would rather 'wait'. Fluid Identity Your future is uncertain. Future always is. What if you stop trying to fight tha...

Matrix Cellular is quite possibly inflating your bills when you use their cards while traveling abroad. I traveled to Germany last September. During this time I used Matrix's O2 card. I was keenly aware of my usage, penny pincher that I am. So I was very surprised to see an inflated bill when I returned home, my credit card being charged already. I requested a bill. I was puzzled with the fact that the sums added up to the amount being charged. However, I had kept a tab on my usage and had an estimate in mind of my bill. On closer inspection, it turned out, that the anomaly is not in summation or in call rates. Instead, MATRIX HAD SYSTEMATICALLY INFLATED THE DURATION OF CALLS . Here's a snapshot of my bill. The number in red boxes is the duration of call as per my phone records. Matrix has agreed to my claims and now reduced the bill to account for inflated charges. (I had shared with them snapshots of my cell phone with call record.)  (its another 3 month...

Its easy to criticize. It comes easy. But it is not so productive. All it does is fill you up with negative energy and criticizing someone else only spreads that negative energy. So I was trying not to do any of that on this blog for the longest time. But that self censorship meant drying up of my writing habit altogether (coupled with the fact that I have been busy with better things in life. :) ) So here's another positive perspective.. i can dig dirt objectively. This objective dirt digging can actually help me (and you) not repeat those mistakes, the mistake by others. (Its so much harder to see our own mistakes!) So I try to list out fundamental and grave mistakes of others. I have done that before with, ET's abysmal editorial that completely lacked integrity (and logic) . Sergey Brin's weak -ass reason to invent Google glasses . Issues with Indian advertising (badly written, but some useful stuff there). Hypocrisy of social media 'activists' Ford Fig...

Chomsky apparently is a 'Contrarian'. Amartya Sen is 'anti growth'.  Labels come easy, comprehension not so. Chomsky is 84 and Amartya Sen is 79 - Both have spent major part of their lives in bringing to light facts and ideas that the mainstream and the powerful want to dust under the carpet. They are not attention seekers and side show freaks. They are heroes, the few brave ones who are fighting for well being of people through justice and truth.  and these heroes get branded as 'Contrarian' and 'anti growth'. The question to be asked is - by whom? Often these are people who don't read enough or don't read what should be read. They do not (or don't want to) comprehend the effect of ideas.(who benefits? how so? at what cost?). The ones whose source of perspective is Arnab Goswami and such other sensationalist prime time TV trash. For them, ideas are like fashionable clothes or a recent movie - useful as social conversations and nothing be...