I am nuts

The mighty oak was once a little nut which stood its ground

Thats all folks ;)

About Bangalore Traffic

I feel going through bangalore traffic is like watching Rahul Dravid play. You ultimately reach your destination but 1 run at a time!!!

Thats all folks ;)

We are being slaves?

For the uninitiated, I work in an Indian IT company whose name in particular is of no consequence to this article. Then you would say why did I mention it in the 1st place. Well the whole point of mentioning it is that the company's major clients are non-Indian. We get money from the clients to do their work (or should I say we are cheap.... er labour for them). Anyways my project had been recently changed and so had my timings. I was in the afternoon shift. One day, while chatting with a friend of mine, he asked me why was I working so late these days? I said "The client wants us to work at this time." To which he remarked "Desh ko azad huye 60 saal se bhi zyada hua, lekin aaj bhi hum angrezon ki ghulami kar rahe hai" (Its more than 60 years since our country gained freedom but we are still slaves of the English-speaking) 
The comment was made in a light tone and I too laughed it off. But it struck me somewhere that whatever he said was so profound and true. Yes we were going according to the whims and fancies of the err foreigners. 
Last tuesday was Republic day. On monday evening my team got a mail from my team lead saying "Tomorrow we are working. Please come to office". And why were we supposed to come to office on a day when we had to celebrate being a republic nation? We were supposed to do so because "client wants support tomorrow. So we have to work tomorrow. Cancel all your plans and come to work". I felt sickened on reading that mail. I wanted to say to my leads "Dont you have any pride left for your country? How could you just be a puppet in front of the client and nod your head to everything he says?" but I knew that there was no point in saying this to them who are being brain washed by their client. 
Is this progress? The IT industry gave employment and good social status to lakhs of people in India. While dealing with a foreign client, work with them well and let there be good learnign and sharing. But not at the cost of some things. We should not forget that before being an Engineer, before working for so and so company we are Indians. Be proud of it. If you cant respect your country you cant respect any other place. After all, at the end of the day this is the place we call home. 
Remember this quote: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Today we all think that we want to work for so and so company and earn big bucks(Yeah yeah me included). So the least we can do is atleast have self respect and take pride for our nation.
I read this article from the Economic times today:  Responding to a ET questionnaire over phone from Delhi, Sangeeta Gupta, vice-president of Nasscom said: "The animation and gaming industry in India has immense scope to grow. Given the financial meltdown, many western countries are actively looking at destinations like India to develop animation content within moderate budgets."
Why are we still thinking that we can do the work of other countries. Why are we not thinking that we have the potential to do things on our own? If we have the man power, we also have the brains. We have the ideas. We are not behind. But we go unnoticed. The concept of an animation film was thought of in India around a 100 years back by Dada Saheb Phalke with "The growth of a pea plant". Unfortuantely the project didnt take of. But the  point of saying this is that when animation industry started in other parts of the world, the concept was thought of in India too by one of our greatest film makers. If he could think of it back then when the industry was in nascent stages, what are we lacking now? We have access to the same sources of learning. And ideas are born not taught. The bollywood is a huge industry portraying a vast array of movies. Jugal Hansraj recently made Roadside Romeo. True the animation was lacking in certain aspects but he created characters which were very much Indian. Many people could relate to it and it was recieved well.
One experiment then another and boom - we have our own laboratory where "we" develop things. The work of softwares films etc is being developed by people who are from India, but the credit is not ours. Why are we narrowing our mindset? Why are we being frogs in the well? Its about time we jumped out of the well into the vast ocean. After all, we are the only country having a ocean named after us ;).