Should you toss a coin?

Are you looking for a job? A job, for which you have studied for four years or more, or some of you have crossed oceans and spent time between unknown people. A job, for which most of you have stayed away from your parents, school friends, pet, or things that make you feel comfortable. A job, for which you married a bank for a dowry of huge loan. A job which you, your parents, friends, relatives, facebook friends, and everyone who cares about you, have been waiting for all these years to hear about. A job, which most of you will be doing for the rest of your life. But what if you decide not to have a job?

I am not saying to become an entrepreneur. It is risky with full of uncertainty. After spending all those rigorous years in college, you are not prepared to face uncertainty at such an early stage of your life. You want to be safe. You want to see the life through a lens that clearly shows you -your growth plans, retirement plans, and investment plans. You need to have a plan. But what if you decide not to have a plan?

Questions, doubts, credibility, and mental stability are questioned. Questions for which you don’t have satisfying answers. Doubts which didn’t even stike your mind. Credibility which was earlier unquestionable. Mental Stability which was stable before the question. It is the clear sign of an obvious reaction to an unobvious behavior.

How do you convince that you don’t want a big package? You want a big mission in life. You don’t want stability to closes all those paths. You want uncertainty to explore those paths. You don’t want to make Friday nights lively. You want to make every night lively. You don’t want objectivity at work. You want emotions at work. You don’t want 8 hours of daily work schedule. You want 30 hours of daily work schedule.

You don’t want a job .You want a purpose. A purpose that you realized after 16 years of your education. A purpose that doesn’t correlate with your the job, you, your parents, your pet, your friends, your teachers, the world you have lived in, always believe that you will get one day.

Should you toss a coin or you have an answer?

Netrimony?

Before economic liberalization in 1991, middlemen in India enjoyed a very good time in business. Many bureaucratic hurdles could be leapfrogged through the middleman. Licenses for new businesses or contracts could be accessed easily through them. License Raaj(era) was boom time for them. However, there is another very important area where middlemen have played a vital role- getting Indians married.
Marriages in India have always been a big family festival. Just like getting through red tape in bureaucracy, there are many hurdles for a man or woman from a conservative family to get married. The caste, financial status of the family, the advice of family astrologer, and most importantly the religion should be the same. Then, comes the point of whether or not the man or woman actually likes each other. The middleman makes it easy for both parties. He informs both parties with the information and arranges meetings for them. I know many such couples who have been living happily together for years through this process-the best example of which are my parents.
However, over the last decade, the middleman is slowly disappearing from the scene. So, how are Indians getting married then? Well, Indian youngsters are now choosing their life-partners by themselves. In a country where ‘dating’ is a cultural taboo, how do they manage to choose someone? Thanks to Netrimony, a term used to describe many Indian matrimonial websites where one can create a profile and filter his/her search according to his/her caste, salary, astrological sign, religion and many other options. Glancing through the list, one can decide on the life-partner with just a click. I wasn’t quite interested in it until three of my friends got married through it in the past year. Now, I had to dig into it because according to India’s common cultural norms, 24years is the ripe age to get married.
My friends exchanged their phone numbers and finished most of the work of middleman without a slightest hint to their parents. One of the couples even managed to meet each other. It was a remarkable achievement in the history of Indian marriages that a couple could meet before their parents see each other. Surprisingly, parents can also create a profile of their daughter or son on that website. So, chances are high that you may be on the web without your knowledge. I guess, it would have been a big privacy issue in the US. Some call it westernization, others call it 21st century Indianization, but one thing is clear that India is not only developing economically but also culturally.
I searched through couple of popular sites and was impressed to find really good results as compared to Facebook. After spending couple of more hours, I started to realize the similarity of it with the dating sites like match.com, honey.com etc. After all, one in eight American married couples met online according to one YouTube video. Though, the business model of shaadi.com, a popular Indian portal, may differ in many aspects from match.com, their target customers overlap. One obvious difference to me was match.com offered to find you love before marriage whereas shaadi.com also offered ‘marriage before love.’

Notice Dream Connect Do

Indlish

Some 60 years ago, when the British left India, they did not realize the blunder they had made during that time. They taught us English. I now wonder why Mr. Blair gets so upset about getting a sales call from Mr. Kumar in Bangalore. Afterall, Kumar spent a good part of his childhood education learning English so as to make a living by calling Mr. Blair. The British had created an elite class of English speakers during their rule in India to administer the empire. Even today in India, if you are good at making English jokes, you are a dude, otherwise a yarr (pal). However, over the last decade or two, there is another language that is flourishing, though out of frustration, among not-so-dude Indians. These youngsters, who have tried their best in life, but failed, to learn the nitty-gritties of English grammar, have created an indigenous English called Indlish.
Indlish varies across different regions in India based on the local language. In the north, it is Hinglish, a hybrid of Hindi (the local language) and English; in my home state, it is Punglish from Punjabi. The way ‘Indlish’ works is that when an Indian struggles to find the appropriate noun/verb/adjective to complete an English sentence, they finish it with an Indianized word. Sometimes, they use English words to complete sentences in their local language. However, it is now a common trend on college campuses to use such words.
Some words are quite common like ‘timepass’ (Kill time)or ‘timewaste’ (to not utilize time appropriately). I believe ‘tension’ is one of the most commonly used words by non-English speakers in India, like my grandmother who speaks Punglish, ‘Put tension hee te bimari di jaad hai’(tension is the root of diseases). However, there are some English words which she has had difficulty in pronouncing like inverter, a power backup system in India. She settled with an alternative in Punglish, hor-power (more-power). In India, you never address someone older than you by his/her first or last name or you could be badly scolded by somebody. It is considered very disrespectful. Every person who looks significantly older than you is called AuntyJi or UncleJi, where Ji is the most widely used suffix in North India. The Ji at the end signifies respect. If you are being extremely respectful to someone, you may call him/her SirJi/MadamJi.
In one of my courses during my first semester at Tech, a professor spoke, very fluently in a language similar to English; later on, a friend of mine told me that I was listening to the American English. I liked his style of teaching, cracking jokes in between the lecture to make it interactive. Because of his accent, I often missed the transition from his lecture to his joke, so lagged in laughing. Watching American movies (not porn) helps a lot in getting the hang of the American accent, but to my surprise, I found that even they have Americanized the Queen. There were many words, which I heard in movies and during my interaction with fellow Americans, I didn’t find in my Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. I believe it doesn’t matter if the Queen is in jeans or a sari (Indian woman’s dress). English is now the world’s local language. According to Stefan Bergman- it is the bestest.

Batch Year or Batch Number?

Whenever someone asked me which batch I belonged to for my bachelor’s degree, I had trouble answering because I used to think the year of admission was my batch year. After some enquiry, I found it to be the year of graduation. Now that I know, I wouldn’t have to be embarrassed again after my master’s in the U.S.
In India, it is a very popular notion that the U.S. institutions are the best in the world, and that a degree from a good U.S. university means plenty of opportunities ahead. No doubt about it; even I have found it to be quite true. But there are some very disappointing facts about the American education system which no one told me before. I had been very interested in knowing the history of education especially about the US education. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was introduced indirectly by a professor of mine to the work of Ivan Illich, John Holt, John Taylor Ghatto and few others names in American education reform movement.
The first disturbing thing I found was the fact that the present school model had been taken from the factory model of the industrial revolution in the 20th century, eliminating the earlier school house model where children learned from peers of different ages and where the teacher could cater material to individual needs. In a factory model, a teacher is seen as a worker and a student is seen as a product to be manufactured. Each year is like an assembly line sequence, passing from one class to next. Those students who don’t make it as finished products are called “drop outs.” Still skeptical about these radical views, I wanted to know if there were people in the 21st century who agreed with what I had read.
To my surprise, one of the well known names in the field of management (also education), Clayton Christensen, has reinforced the same point in his book ‘Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.’ Daniel H. Pink in his book ‘A Whole New Mind’ describes the crises in education. Others have directly or indirectly hinted at the same underlying factory model. I was not prepared to digest all this, after all, I have grown up believing that good school education means a good job which means a good life, and if you are lucky enough, it could also mean a good wife.
Remembering my school days, spending 6-7 hours in the classroom, listening most of the time, writing important notes that could help me get an ‘A’ in the exam and in turn, earn respect among fellow students and praise from teachers. A single letter at the end of the year framed the perception of me in the eyes of my parents, friends, teachers and all those people who knew me. Things are not different here. After all, there is something wrong at the core. Though it sounds radical, it is not inaccurate.
During the career fair, everyone is busy researching the companies, practicing their interview skills, reviewing resumes. Even I had been waiting for this day. While working on my resume, one thing made me ponder for a while – the year of graduation. Does it represent a batch year or a batch number?
My Article in the Michigan Tech Lode
Link:http://www.mtulode.com/feature/2010/10/07/culture-shock-6-2/

Thank You

I met him on a train to Delhi from Amritsar. It was a long 9 hours journey. Being brought up in military family, I can quickly identify a person if he is from Army or not. He was a Madrasi in Amritsar, so this guess was like a toffee. I saw my watch and thought about ways to kill next 8 hours. The very thought compelled me to start a conversation with him, sitting beside me. We were traveling in a general sitting compartment so it was quite obvious that he belonged to a lower rank. "What is your battalion?" I asked. Surprised but comfortable he answered," 47."
I was looking more like 'chikna'(cleaned-shaved) Delhi guy with good education. My neat Hindi even made him believe that I was from Delhi. He described, like any other constable's story,his part of story how he got into the Indian Army. Feeling of nationalism and doing something for the country fooled him for this day. An army where no one cares about his opinions, his family problems, and his emotions. "But they say one has to sacrifice somethings for doing such a great job for the nation," I said to make him feel good. "If it is the case, then why do those officers are not making any such sacrifices, why no one sees their corruption, why we have to responsible for any wrong doing of them" he backfired. I had no answer, I nodded in yes by keeping my mouth shut, may be because I didn't want to add any more petrol. I took a glance over my wrist watch and was happy to see only 3 hours left. I thought about changing the topic and wisely took it to the current education system that he said his children were victim of. He had saved 1 Lakh over last 2 year and saving each year for the higher education of his two children. Worried over the thought that how these small saving will pay for the education of his children in long run, I advised him to look into the option of education insurance. Now I had gained a lot of his confidence and sympathy, he looked convinced that I was a wise person.

I could see the filthy slums and smell foul smell from drains. There was no need to ask anyone- Bhaisaab Dilhi aa gaya?(Have we arrived at Delhi?). Well, I could not get any moral message from my 9 hrs of journey to tell you , so won't you, I believe, after wasting your time to read 300 words. But one thing did really made my journey special, it was the 'Thank You' from his side at the station.

When AuntJi Shakes Hand!!

She was confused, being suddenly introduced to a lady of her age, in forties. Thinking, if she should take the initiative and give a loose hug to her, like most autiji’s do in India, or say Namaste, with folded hands like tradition Indian way of greeting. Both of them smiled at each other and there was a small pause. I was looking, curiously, to see how these upper-middle class ladies would greet each other. I was sure; they won’t do it like the way my grandma does. She hugs you until you concede. To my surprise, they both shook their hands. Now, I took a small pause to digest things. I had never seen before an AuntiJi shaking hand with another lady in India. An important thing to note here was that they were both dressed in simple suit-salwar, a tradition dress of woman in India. One thing is sure: Namaste is out.
May be the year 2009: The Year of Women Empowerment in India, worked out. I still remember my discussion with my dad few years ago about why women sit one-sided on the back of bikes with their husbands. My dad, who is really good at making theories on the spot , gave me some explanation about the discomfort a women would have with legs on both sides of a bike. In the last 1 month in India, I have been observing how women sit on bikes. Interestingly, they have proved my dad’s theory wrong. Leave aside the college girls, who are into the IPod world. I saw many mid-20s,30s women who were sitting behind their husband’s bike, holding them with both hands, with their legs on each side of the bike, surprisingly, all of it being in a suit-salwar.
Many may call is westernization. But, there is another factor to it-recognition. Indian women are recognizing their potential. They understand very well their contribution to the GDP. Many of the women are working, independent but still in culture. It will be interesting to see in the next 5-10 years when these empowered women would be driving bikes on roads. At least, some eyes will be rolled.

Static Shock

AAh!, What the heck! Every time I enter my office or home I say these words. Reason: Static Shock. Those of you who live near equator may not have had any such shocking experience because it is mostly a cold place's phenomenon. It is a light electric shock that you get when your body accumulates more charge with respect to a neutral conducting object. So, when you touch a metal object,like when I touch my office door nob,you get excited. At that moment you wish to punch or kick hard the door nob so that even it feels the same what you feel about it. But, believe me it is not a good idea; I learnt it from my experience.

After being victimized everyday, I tried to find the ways if static shock could be avoided. To my surprise, I found an electronic device for avoiding the static shock on the web which you would need to carry all the time;it was more than $10. After thinking more, I challenged myself, being an electronics engineer, to find some electronic law which can help me save my money and my life(though no one ever died of static shock but why take risk). I researched my undergrad book from freshman year when you are first told that electricity line to your home doesn't come from nowhere. Through Wikipedia I found out that if I touch a high resistance material then all the charge accumulated on my body would discharge slowly,thus I won't experience any shock. But the problem was that I would have to know before touching such a thing that I am charged. Unfortunately, I get to know this the moment I get discharged.

With no help from electronics/Wikipedia/Google/friends , I thought about a very different aspect of dealing with my enemies,static shock and my office door nob. As someone said,'If you can't win join them.' So, next morning, Knowingly that I am charged, I went to my roommates' office, who had not cleaned his dishes this morning, and I just poked him. Next morning, to my surprise,kitchen was clean. I started using my uncommon sense, and every morning I would meet new people to make friends with them and break away our infant friendship with just one hand shake. It is really fun to see people's expressions and what they say. I love when someone says,AAh!,What the heck!

Censorship?

In the last month,there was much hullabaloo about Google's pullout from China to protest against the Chinese government's censorship over the internet. Even the US government and various human right's groups supported Google, but Google didn't get much support from its corporate friends. According to Global Times, an online sister newspaper of a Chinese official newspaper, the Chinese government censors internet content for the betterment of its citizens and Google must abide by its laws in order to function in China.After all this debate, Google pulled out its search business from China.

Even I supported Google on its unprecedented move. After all, it is an era of FREE SPEECH. The US is the paramount example of free speech;here you can search anything you want from terrorist organization working against the US to free porn.Well, this is what is said at the international arena. However, recently, I observed that developed societies tend to change their rules when things seem against them.Here is what I observed:

I am the president of an organization which works for a particular group of residents living on campus. There was an email to the entire resident's email list from a lady expressing her concern over the cars not stopping at stop signs. Surprisingly, the matter went out of proportion;instead of replying to the sender, everyone was expressing his or her own views to the entire email list. From speeding cars, it went to educating kids abut crossing roads, taking all of the stop signs off the road,refraining from sending an email to the resident's list to celebrate 'Earth Day', and finally begging to stop all of this S#*@. It got much worse. For some, it was entertaining, waiting to see who sent what. For others, it was annoying, yelling, "WTF WTF." Overall, it was a serious issue.

I was waiting until the morning to see if people would calm down. I was planning to take the matter to the Facebook group. However, to my surprise, an email I sent to the resident's email list regarding some other matter didn't show up in my inbox,instead it went to a moderator. "A moderator" I asked myself,shocked. We never had any moderator before to censor our content. I pinched myself to make sure I was in the US.

After contacting someone in the office, I came to know that now every email to residents will go through a moderator, who will make sure the content is appropriate for the residents. After thinking for some time,I went back to the comments section of an article in Global Times about Google's unwise decision to pull out of china, and deleted my comment in which I had mentioned US, India, Europe as examples of countries for free speech.

I remember,I had faced the similar moral dilemma of finding out who is right or wrong when the US government had released the Human Rights report concerning china and other places in the world.I was torn,because at the same time it had given the permission under the Bush administration for some serious torture techniques to be used in the Guantanamo prison.

I believe that the scale of development is not a correct scale of any country's or civilization's human rights record. The real test of any country's human rights record is how it treats others when it is at the receiving end,all without bending the rules.

Gay Sardar

"That's so gay,"I have heard this sentence many times before, but quite a lot in the last week which has been extremely good. The interesting thing is the way it is being used in conversational English.
Many youngsters in the US use one of the most controversial words, Gay, as noun or an adjective but in different way. I noticed some of these guys using it as frequently as the other two most spoken words in US-Thank you and Fuck you. I think, as gays get more rights, probably, the use of the word gay would rank higher.
The very sights of two guys, who may be brothers, sleeping together activate the gay area of this young guy's brain. I am sure he would barely skip the chance to make some comment using the word 'gay.' As far as I know, the word gay as noun also means happiness. I came across an interesting use of it as an adjective. For example, one of my friends (whom I know from the last 7 days) was taking to his friend on phone. He was quite upset with him over some matter and said him that he (his friend) was having 'gay attitude.' It seems anything which sounds weird is characterized as gay.

Similarly, the word 'Sardar' is used in Indian community to describe a particular behavior. Actually, sardar is the noun used for Sikh males, who are considered as brave persons. However, our GenNext has gone a little far and with time the word sardar now has different meanings in conversational language. It has been dragged outside the boundaries of oxford and Cambridge. Nowadays, it is used to describe any silly act or stupid person. It is said that the highest population of sardars is found in jokes rather than their home land Punjab. Being a sardar I have learnt how to laugh at myself. For non-Punjabis the very introduction of any joke with sardar in it makes them laugh out loud. Any failed act may prove you to be a sardar. Any fickle joke means you are sardar. Making tea in pressure cooker means sardaron wale kaam. Always singing Punjabi songs in antakshri means hardcore sardar. In nutshell, any weird act can prove you to be a sardar or a relative of sardar.
So, what is common between a sardar in India and a gay? Well, sardar's fought against oppression, for freedom of religion and some other kinds of freedoms too. They came into existence from within the society and they created their own space by struggle and sacrifice. Similarly, in the 21 century, gays are also trying to create their space in the society. They are also fighting for their gay genes to be acceptable in the world. Now the point is that even if they get their constitutional rights in next 10-15 years, the word gay won't be used in its actual meaning. Like sardar, it will be used to describe any weird act in the world which has not been done before. Few more years then the dumbest thing would be described by the word 'Gay Sardar' which will not one bring a smile on others face but remind us that they have always contributed to the society.

What is Arranged-Love Marriage?

In India, in general if you are a girl between 20-25yrs with a college degree,then it is the ripe age to get married,or in case, you are modern (making use of your college degree, I mean earning) then you can buy more time. Similarly for guys, but they have to have some job along with above things.
Traditionally, before any marriage,the parents from both sides would inquire about each other's families through middle man and then sign the deal. There would be very little scope for the guy and the gal to know about each other. That's what is called arranged marriage. You know about your partner after you are married. I know many successful marriages happened this way.
But now at 24, it's my turn, I didn't realize it untill one of my friends got her Mr. Right though a Indian matrimonial websites. I was aware of such sites before, but I never showed interest in understanding their work until a close friend of mine found her finance.
Usually, it would be appalling to some of you, who believe in love or love at first sight. But thinking logically, I found that the probability of finding your love in the young section, between 20yrs -29yrs, of 3billion women population is very bleak. For an open minded Indian (that the term if you are peso-modern/educated)to find a his/her match in his/her caste becomes next to impossible.I came up with a number,200, that the number of girls I interacted in my life who were of same age as I was. Assume 10,000 gals to be the sample space of my true love, the p=.02 which also means that I need to get in touch with rest 9800 women before I turn 30.
It is not about defending or refuting anything about arranged marriage or love marriage but trying to understand how to make the best decision which may not be the right decision.
One of the things I found is that some open-minded parents are giving some space to their children in deciding their life partners. Based on the above calculated probability, it is very difficult for an average Indian guy to find a date in a country where 'SEX' is a taboo(I am not taking about you, who has girlfriend/boyfriend). Some may disagree with it but there is a general mentality in Indian males that a girlfriend can not be a wife.

The new concept is now ARRANGE LOVE. Parents, who have already made a decision on the girl,introduce their son to her in informal ways that neither the gal nor the boy knows about the plan. They interact for some time (months or years) and once they become comfortable with each other, the talk of marriage pops up on the dinner table.
The guy, who is more comfortable with someone he knows, has more probability of choosing her than the unknown ones.

So, this is how arranged love marriage works.

Why? Because we are a developing nation and we are also developing our culture.