So many of Indian bloggers that I know are cosmopolitans; they have lived in different cities at different points in their life. Their cities include – the home-city where they are born, the place where they are educated (often graduation/post graduation), the city(ies) where they (have) work(ed). Hence when I thought about writing a post on the cities in my life, I though why not spread the germ? (!) So I have decided to make this a ‘tag’. I would prefer people to describe ‘their’ cities in detail including the emotional bonds they share with them. Janmabhoomi: Bhopal Bhopal is one of the most beautiful cities that I have lived in. Rightly known as the city of lakes, Bhopal is situated in the hills with many ponds, lakes and parks dotting the city. Being the capital, the city affords wide and well maintained roads and greenery all around. But unlike public perception Bhopal, is no way a small city. With a population of 14.5 lakhs and an area of 286 square kms (eqvt. to 65% of Mumbai’

Mark Twain once said - "All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." This statement was very true when we launched MastishK ’04 last year. There was nothing to loose .... and I have always felt that last year's success was limited and not complete. We could never manage to get a single penny of sponsorship - though we got a lot of popularity during and after the event (Some coverage in newspapers and Arbit ). But this year as MastishK '05 unfolded slowly ... there was a big pressure on our team to retain the interest in B-school junta and retain our reputation to be revolutionizers in the B-school event arena. Last year, the very concept of launching a completely online event and that of having multiple simulation games on one platform was a novel concept - and so whatever we gave our audience, it was new. But this year the challenge was much bigger, ironically to beat our own performance; to come up with games much more novel in des

Here is an excerpt from Nandan Nilekani's Interview to Business Week (published on Red i ff ) ".....When the Paris Air Show was held, all the Indian carriers put together ordered 200 planes. This is mind-boggling to anybody from India. We don't know where they'll land. They'll probably just circle in the air. (Laughs) ....." Q: Things are happening much faster in China, where they build infrastructure so rapidly. "It's going to happen, but not the way it happens in China. In China, a bunch of guys get in a room and decide to build a 16-lane highway from Shanghai to Beijing, and it's going to happen. There's no way that will happen in India. It's too chaotic and argumentative. But what's going to happen is these 200 planes will be ordered, they won't land. They'll be circling. Everybody will get [very angry]. Finally, there will be such public outcry that the airports will get built. It's a different model. But it's a mo

I guess almost everyone must have read those forwards like - "You are in the 21st century if...", or "Signs you've been in the Indian IT industry for too long - new ones...". Adding to it I have my own list of incidents/habits that illustrate how intensely our lives have changed and intermingled with the technological environment that we are exposed to nowadays. Following are REAL instances that happened with me or people around me You've been using computers long enough if: You say –“I’ll write it down” and gesture typing it out with your hands You press/tap the right bottom of the page in a book to turn to the next page. You search for the Ctrl-Alt-Del key on your TV remote while you take a loo break from a movie The TV channel you are watching goes blank and you are searching for a mouse to move (to reset the screensaver) You are asked your address and you say ‘.......... @yahoo.com’ You tell your dad that you’ll (e)mail your current resident

For the uninitiated, I am just back from Hyderabad after spending a good 3 weeks in that lake'n'hill city. The flight was delayed by 3 hrs at departure itself and as much as I was eager to catch upon life here ... I was not disappointed by the 'challenges' that emerged - a Highway that is worse than a mud road in a village, exorbitantly charging taxi drivers, jam-packed roads and to compound it all, rain from the above. Mumbai this year has gone to the dogs!! As I came near the Powai lake and saw the new widened road - I felt being guilty of eating into nature. The road widening along the Powai lake has eaten up parts of the lake and thick vegetation that lined it up on all sides. The way we are playing with nature, it is no wonder we are facing its furies like the Floods and Hurricanes It is an irony that I chose to live in Powai to enjoy the vegetation and natural beauty it abounds, but it is because of dwellers like me that the pressure on the area's infrastructu

Shubham and me compiled and created an article during our first year of MBA. It was never published, nevertheless MBA aspirants will find it very useful. Publishing it online for the same purpose. However, Shubham and myself claim a copyright on the text .... and of course very many thanks to all our freinds whose views have helped us compile the article. Experienced vs. Freshers – an MBA perspective By Nikhil Kulkarni, KPMG Shubham Choudhury, Infosys PGDIM- X, NITIE, Mumbai Ashita Mittal was placed during her final year in engineering college with a leading software firm. But she never wanted to be another brick in the wall. She wanted to differentiate herself from other graduates who start their career at the lowest rung of organizational hierarchy. MBA was a natural choice for her. On the other side is Shailesh Dhawla, who worked as a software engineer with a leading software consultancy firm for 3 years. He started his job with some ends in mind, like working with a known company,

I have been spending a lot of my online time on researching “.Net in OpenSource” on request from a friend. Below are presented the results of this research. The sources include – OpenSource websites, replies from Linux/OpenSource community to my queries, and the Microsoft website. I am starting with a bit of a background; some of you might want to skip it. When we talk of .Net we are referring to a new development platform promoted by Microsoft and standardized by the ECMA (European Computer Manufacturer's Association). This platform consists of a virtual machine (like the JVM), a class library, a language (C#) and a language specification that compilers can follow if they want to generate classes and code. When we talk of OpenSource we refer to a philosophy that code should be shared and not copyrighted. The code generated for OpenSource is instead copy left-ed which means protected from being copyrighted by anyone by use of licenses like GNU Public license (GPL) and GNU LGPL etc

Read the post "Who Killed The IIT JEE" on Manish Chauhan's Blog The comments to this post are equally frustrated. I was more than surprised how all of these people missed and mis-interpreted the whole aspect of paper format. I am posting my interpretation which I presume is correct. According to the new format, the IIT-JEE paper itself will include "short write-ups on various topics followed by objective questions based on the write-up" which means two things 1. Students will NOT need to write any paragraphs or essays in the paper as is being presumed by so many people. 2. Students need not mug up or remember loads of information and rather need to further concentrate on building concepts. The paper will test how well they can answer questions based on their understanding of the passage given in the paper itself. Its a test of grasping power .. a very welcome change according to me. More so the changes are not proposed by government (unlike changes done by Mu

Then world has come a long way since the ages of Kings, Queens and Feudal lords. As far as the developed world is concerned feudalism started dying in late 19th Century and mid 20th century saw widespread adoption of democracy across the globe. Feudalism at the international level, represented by colonial practices, also started disintegrating soon after and barring some parts of the world, feudalism as a system has ceased to exist today globaly. However, the mindset of people is far from changing even today. Whether it is Jehadi rebels or castiest voters - the feudal mindset of leaders (who act as feudal lords) and their followers keeps rebutting every now and then. One finds that internationally too, some nations (or leaders of some nations) have not been able to develop a post-fuedal mindset. In this age of internet, blogs and (resulting rise of) individualism - there are still institutions like the United Nations Security Council which stink of feudalism. The UN came about in a wor

A forward comparing Katrina and Mumbai Rains is making rounds these days... I could not find a better answer to it than the one Here http://chaoticmoments.blogspot.com/2005/09/just-adding-on.html#comments PS: I am in Hyderabad on an official trip ... little time to post .... hoping to post something as soon as I find time.