Lair of thought

I sat on the horizontal bar but he was the one actually riding the bicycle. I was only a mere passenger. The world seemed very simple. I was five and he was probably twenty four. He was my larger than life cousin who lived with us and was my best friend in the short five years of my life. With wind in my hair I was a free bird. Then it happened, my feet got jammed in the front wheel and he was petrified. He quickly stopped and checked for damage. Then we wheeled the bicycle to next corner store and I was awarded a candy for my silence. Of course, the first thing I did after getting home was to announce that I had my leg jammed and got myself a candy. The incident still lingers deep in the recesses of my memory that I relive once in a while with a broad smile on my face. Yesterday I spoke to him over the phone across the seven seas. He sounded very different. Years have passed and life has come a long way. He was fighting back tears telling me about his father who is battling a quadrupl...

Barack Obama mentions that people are so disillusioned by politicians that they have stopped voting on the issue of the economy and always stick to moral issues while casting their votes. According to his rivals, this is insulting to the intellect of the people listening and they should be offended. Well I am not! As a matter of fact I think that even if Barack is not right about his analysis, the spirit of the statement, that people have become cynical about the political process and its impact on our day to day challenges, is obviously lost on these people. So there, I said it, I am not offended and I am actually flattered that someone is addressing the issue of cynicism in politics. It is shameful the way people tell us what should and should not be offensive to us. That is what is really an insult to our intellect. I think I have a brain of my own which will tell me when I think of something as offensive and I will then do the needful. Thanks, but I will do my own thinking.

A clutter bug, I am torn between collecting miscellaneous memoribillia and between tossing away unwanted junk. As a child I saved everything with any sentimental value- birthday cards received from the sister, letters from friends and aunts, photographs, clothes, presents, etc. But in the recent past, I have learnt to close my eyes and throw away all these letters and cards and unused gifts with the objective of clearing up storage space and making room for my growing collection of "stuff". Recently on a cleaning mission in my mothers house, I came across bundles of old letters saved. Letters written by me, my sisters, aunts to my mother over the past years. I opened each letter, read through it and found myself smiling as I was transported back in time recollecting the events detailed in the letters. Letters with a hand print of her granddaughter, gossip that was hot at the time. The cards my mom had saved brought a smile to my face. But I decided to close my eyes and thr...

Friday I attended my first Toastmasters area contest. The setting was a conference room of a reputed Semiconductor company. The turnout was rather slim compared to my expectations. However, our club was very well represented and it was a jolly good time. I had managed to get into the contest by winning the impromptu speech contest at our club. So I was sufficiently nervous about having to perform on the stage. But the real highlight of the show was the three prepared speeches made by relatively senior members of various clubs. What impressed me most about the experience was the ease with which the waltzed on stage and delivered their speeches. Not a care in the world. They showed no signs of effort or pretense. It was quite astounding. What is it that makes us nervous about talking in front of a crowd? For me it is the sensation that people are watching me constantly expecting me to be interesting. I also have this perennial fear of looking the audience in the eye because I am scared I...

Heard this from a friend over lunch: "You need talent to get up the mountain. But you need character to stay up there." Another one goes: "Its not the destination but the journey that matters." The problem is that I am in such an almighty hurry to climb the mountain and get to the destination that I doubt if I am building any character or enjoying the journey.

A year back it was Anna Nicole Smith. All leading news channels couldn’t stop talking about her death, her baby and everything else that surrounded her. Never mind that there was a war going on, an impending housing crisis and oil was at all time highs. Just when that was dieing down and you figured that the channels will focus back on the issues at hand, there came along Britney Spears and her little escapades. Not to mention the other minor distractions such as Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, The DC madam, the airport restroom rendezvous and everything else that kept us at the edge of our seats. It’s almost as if the channels have decided that I am incapable of digesting real news in a decent fashion. Everything has to have drama and intrigue built into it. There has to be a sense of celebration and victory, anguish and defeat. Nothing in between seems to matter anymore. Is it that people can’t consume news in a normal fashion? Does listening to news have to be like reading a novel? Nam...

As the primaries began I really didn’t care much for the process. My first experience of the primaries was lackluster to say the least. The contenders were uninspiring and really couldn’t speak two sentences without sounding almost apologetic about running the campaign. That was four years ago. Today I have a whole different perspective on politics. Not because my cynicism for the process has decreased or that I envision a country that would transform into something completely different under the leadership of Barack Obama, but because I “HOPE” to see some of the critical changes that I yearn for in the nation’s political scene. Even if Barack Obama doesn’t achieve half the things he says he would, I would still be glad to see him get ahead in the primaries and move on to win the presidential elections. Over the last eight years I have watched in utter dismay at the way politics has degenerated in America. In the late 90s, when I began following politics, Clinton was embroiled in his s...

Boom Boom, they called him. I was mesmerized by the man. He was young, energetic and unpredictable. He dove around on the hallowed courts of the All England Club as if it were the courts in his local neighborhood. He showed no respect or contempt and was full of energy for the game. Boris Becker was my idol. I held my breath as he lost another Wimbledon final and craved for one last title. But it was never to be. I have always been fascinated by the underdog. Something about the unpredictability, the exhilaration in the victory, the agony in defeat and the rags to riches story always attracts me towards it. Be it Indian cricket, Becker, Oakland Raiders, Cameroon, Brett Favre or any other underdog, I have always had the perverse pleasure of being on their side. I think it is the great high that I get when they win against all odds that makes me go with them. Something about consistent champions always turned me off. Even a graceful champion like Sampras was not in my good books. But the...

See if this brings a smile to your face. It makes my day every time I see it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E25cGeY13M0&feature=related

There is a lot to be said about the ability to speak. As I watched Barack Obama speak after the Iowa caucus, the environment was electric. He was a man possessed by his emotions. Words rolled off his tongue and he made believers out of people in that room and even the ones watching him on television. Today the mood was subdued. He lost a hard fought battle in New Hampshire and his voice was calmer and more measured. However, even with a change in tone the man did not skip a beat. Hillary spoke from prepared notes. She spoke well but the fact that she looked into a piece of paper to lead her on took something away from what she said. She spoke pretty well but it just wasn’t the same. I really believe that she would be a completely different candidate if she would speak from the heart and not from the notes. I did my first Toastmasters speech on Sunday and I have a whole new respect for people who can speak without any aid. As I prepared my speech the previous day I tried to squeeze in a...

I walked out of the house yesterday and the sky was draped with ominous dark clouds threatening to unload its fury upon me. The air in my lungs had a brisk and wet feeling about it that took me back decades. For some reason rain or the anticipation of it always transports me to my grandfather’s house. There is something about the Kerala rain in its entire splendor that makes me nostalgic about childhood. Summer vacations always ended with the beginning of the monsoon season and I never got to see the rain gods in all its fury. However, if I was lucky they graced me with a couple of visits before I had to go back to my urban living. The few hours before the showers exploded from the sky, the earth always appeared to be coming together to greet it. The wind begins to snake through the trees and the leaves begin to rustle with anticipation. The soil exhales an aroma that only a person in the moment can describe. The light becomes a somber grey just in time for the spectacular show of ligh...

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine about religion the other day. It actually started off because we were looking for interesting topics to talk about. I have always found that religion, as a topic of discussion seems to evoke a great deal of passion in people and this was no different. However, while arguing my point I tripped upon an idea that got me thinking. As part of the discussion I was asking the question – How can we bring people together under one umbrella of norms? If religion is not the binding factor then what else could it be? What is it that holds a society together and why do we all conform to the norms of society? There are basic rules in society that we do not question. We all seem to walk the line on those ideas. Killing and stealing are the most obvious crimes that we consider as an evil in society. But what is it that makes us work under that assumption? Who sets the rules of society and based on what factors do we modify those rules? If religion ...

One day I was getting ready for work and happened to look out into the patio. This is what I saw. I guess the little fella got to work earlier than I did.

If you buy now you are catching a falling knife. If you don’t buy in a down market you are missing your opportunity. If you sit on the sidelines your cash is depreciating. If you don’t put cash in your portfolio you are over exposed. The markets are at it again. It is the end of the year and everyone is trying to talk everyone out of the market. There are analysts galore who believe that Armageddon is around the corner. Global meltdown is only a heart beat away and the Federal Reserve chairman has no understanding of the markets. There are bankers peddling new instruments that handle “convexity of the mortgage losses” and “calculus of the…” Whatever! In the past six years that I have followed the markets, CNBC and other business media outlets seem to take investing as a contact sport rather than a calm and calculated activity. The last time I felt this way was when I was walking down the aisles of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Apparently, I am doomed if I do and damned if I don’t. And ...

Have you ever listened to a person talk and wondered – “What the hell is he talking about”. As I was growing up, English was not the most popular language among kids. However, I was never a local of the city I resided in and so most kids had to talk to me in English. Even with their limited knowledge (and admittedly my own) of the language we never had a problem exchanging ideas and thoughts. We used expressions, sound effects and many other modes of communication in addition to the language to express ourselves. Yet everything was crystal clear to each other. Fast forward to today. Over the last few days I have been noticing someone I interact with very closely doing the very same thing we used to do as kids. His mind seems to be moving faster that his tongue and most of his thoughts are left unspoken. He uses obscure sounds and half sentences to put together a thought and at the end of it all it makes only partial sense. So I am forced to ask for an explanation again. I am certain th...

I watched my dad iron his clothes one by one. From the time I could remember, he has enjoyed ironing clothes. As he ironed there were two stacks forming on the bed, one had his clothes and the other had everyone else’s. That was really unacceptable to me. After all I was more like my dad, I thought. My clothes belong in the first stack. I protested, and in a very deliberate manner I moved my clothes from the generic pile to the other stack. I said “Like papa”. I was probably eight when that happened. I have always wanted to be like my dad. He always seemed to have a very reasonable explanation for the things he did. When we were commended or punished it always came with a clear explanation. So I always tried real hard to be a lot like him. Starting from the mock episodes of shaving where I applied his shaving cream to my face and used a stick to scrape it off to the time when I started driving and copied every single driving style of his, it was always about doing it the way he did it....

Merck is settling with a bulk of the Vioxx plaintiffs for five billion dollars. Now, on the face of it might seem like a lot of money. After all Citibank got hammered for reporting a write down of 8 billion dollars the other day. But when you consider that the amount being talked about four years ago was fifty billion, the new number sounds a lot better. The clincher however is the way they went around getting to this settlement. When the Vioxx warning came out and Merck pulled the drug off the shelf and everybody who had anything to do with the drug sued the company. There were thousands of plaintiffs and everyone clamored to consolidate it into a class action lawsuit. People dreamt of the days when Altria was slapped with a 250 billion dollar fine. They could all see the millions. So Merck did the honorable capitalistic thing to do. They started working on a divide and rule strategy. First they made sure that the lawsuit did not get a class action status. They then began defending ea...

It was a regular weekday morning. I woke up and headed straight for the microwave. I needed the adrenaline rush from the coffee before anything would make sense. I picked up the Wall Street Journal and browsed through it. The anchor on “Morning Call” was talking about a funny instrument that the markets have been seeing off late, “SIV”. I looked up from the paper. What does that mean, I wondered? It begins with the mortgage lenders. When you and I go out to buy a house we obviously do not have the cash to pay for it. So we head to the nearest lender. They do a background check on you figure out that you are a worthy borrower. So the lender gives you a loan which you repay through regular payments including an interest on that loan. So it is easy for you to see that the lender makes money through the interest that you pay. But how does the lender get the money to lend? Ok, so the lender obviously doesn’t have all that money. So he goes around shopping for people who would buy the assets...

I crunched into the last of the chips. The evening was fading and I was reclining into my chair in front of the television. It was time to open up my laptop and begin writing up the essays that I had been struggling with for a while now. And then I heard the roar. It sounded like somebody landed hard on the floor above me. I sat up startled. It was not the usual noise of someone running around or dropping something. No, it had an unearthly hollowness to it. I looked up at the ceiling annoyed at the inconsiderate neighbor. It was 8:03 pm. Then it happened again. Bump! Bump! Now I knew it wasn’t the poor lady upstairs. I realized that the crisscross of fault lines over which I have lived with careless abandon for eight years has finally come to haunt me. My head was racing. Run for cover! I thought to myself. Do I have enough time to get out of the building? I guess not. The dinning table in the corner of the room looked like Fort Knox under these circumstances. I ducked under it. Bump! ...

It’s not a growth stock. There is nothing worth waiting for here. You might as well move on to greener pastures. The organization has lost its relevance in the market place. The days of it showing stellar growth are over. It’s a value stock now. All you can hope for is an increase in dividend and put it into your retirement fund. Then it happened. The company with $32 billion in cash and $300 billion in market cap came back roaring. With 95% of the market share and a bottom line of $13Billion it was not expected to grow at a whopping 23% no matter what the conditions and yet Microsoft did the unthinkable. It turned around and became a growth stock once again. It is not even twenty-four hours since they announced the results and there is a parade of analysts upgrading the stock and claiming that the growth days are back and yet nothing has changed in the company itself. It still holds the same PC market share. It still makes a loss in the online business, a wider loss for that matter. I...