आधुनिक "चाणक्य"

काही महिन्यांपूर्वी एक चित्रपट आला होता, "राजनीति", आधुनीक महाभारत दाखवण्याचा एक प्रयत्न। आधी सुद्धा पडद्यावर असे (आधुनीक महाभारत/रामायण) प्रयत्न बरेच झाले, पण कुणीही आधुनिक "चाणक्य" कुणी प्रयत्न केला नाही। म्हणून डोक्यात विचार आला, आपणच असे काही लिहिले तर ...
सध्याची अंदाधुंद परिस्थिति बघितली तर आधुनिक "चाणक्य" ह्याची गरज खुप आहे, त्यामुळे काहीशी काल्पनिक पण बहुतांशी सत्य परिस्थितिला साधर्म्य असणारी ही मालिका।

Disclaimer: If you find any references to any live or dead people then it is purely coincidence असे मी म्हणणार नाही, उलट जर तुम्हाला ते संदर्भ कळाले तरच खरी मजा आहे। अजून एक सूचना मी बहुतेक वेळेला मराठीमध्ये लिहिण्याचा प्रयत्न करीन, पण काही वेळेला जर English शब्द असतील तर समजुन घ्या।

Arabian Nights (Part III)

ने मजसी ने परत मातृभूमिला,
सागरा प्राण तळमळला....
भूमातेच्या चरणतला तुज धुता
मी नित्य पहिला होता
मज वदलासी अन्य देशी चल जाऊ
सृष्टीची विविधता पाहू
तै जननीहृद विरहशंकही झाले
परी तुवा वचन तीज दिधले
मार्गज्ञ स्वये मीच पृष्ठी वाहीन
त्वरित या परत आणिन
विश्वसलो या तव वचनी मी
जगदानुभव्योगे बनुनी मी
तव अधिक शक्त उद्धारांनी मी
येइन त्वरे, कथुनी सोडीले तिजला
सागरा प्राण तळमळला....

This poem, written by Swatantryaveer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar conveys the emotions he experienced when he was in England, away from his homeland, India.

Arabian Nights (Part II)

Quest

Somebody has to tell you that "Al-Salam Holiday Inn" is a five star hotel, otherwise nobody will believe it. It is not a bad hotel, but compared to five star hotels I have seen in India, I was bit disappointed. Actually, somebody said that it was the only five star hotel :-). (I had not dared to think about how ordinary hotel here would be) But, One good thing was, breakfast was included in the deal, and it has variety of Vegetarian food options (more than its lunch and dinner menu has. Actually, I found only three veg. menus in lunch/dinner : Veg. Fried rice, Veg. Soup, and Pizza Margareta.) In afternoon, we have to take lunch in office canteen where for veggie you will get only rice and sambar. So in night, now it was necessary to search for food (veg) outside. Thus, our quest for food started from Sunday.

Jeddah is very big city, divided in number of districts (sounds strange, but it is the reality). like Al-Thaghar, Al-Kandarah(where our office is located), Al-Balad etc. Pawar (who met me on Jeddah Airport) was living in some hotel in Al-Balad, so we started our search from Al-Balad itself. Al-Balad is basically part of old Jeddah. You can find more than 100 years old buildings there. It is also part where you will find local market which they call Sukh. We roamed around main street of Al-Balad but didn't find any restaurant. Also, we couldn't reach Pawar as he was not in his hotel. After unsuccessful search we returned to hotel and had Pizza.

Next day, we enquired with our colleagues in office (also from India, but was staying here from around 1 month) regarding indian restaurants. They had told that, there are two areas: one is Al-Sharfiyaa, (near to our hotel) where we can find "Chennai Darbar" south indian restaurant. And other area was Azizia, somewhat far but lot of indian and pakistani commuinty are staying there, so we can find good indian restaurants. On Monday we didn't want to go too far, so, that day we went to Al-Sharfiyaa. You can call call Al-Sharifiyaa as very much part of Old Jeddah.

Arabian Nights

"All passengers going to Bahrain from flight number GF 0273 are requested to proceed towards Gate No. 1 for boarding". Airlines lady was announcing it. I was going towards Gate No. 1, somewhat like 'hypnotysed'.

It was like "Dream Come true" for me, first Onsite Trip, first trip outside India. Two times in past "onsite" trip had given me hit-and-miss . Not this time, anymore. I was totally frustrated specially when Singapore trip was cancelled. All preparation was over, and suddenly one morning, shocking news came that project itself is cancelled. It was so rude to me that I was finding very difficult to sustain the shock. Though it is common in service industry, I was new for it. Then, after I came from vacation in January, this Saudi opportunity came. At that time, I told to myself : Till you land in Saudi, don't tell anybody that you are going onsite. People may misunderstood you, but this time don't make fun of yourself, not this time. But fortunately after few hiccups initially other things went fine this time.

And, finally the Day came. I got almost no time for preparation. On Thursday I got Tickets confirmed and on saturday morning I have to leave for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It was two stage journey, first Bangalore - Bahrain and then Bahrain - Jeddah. As, this was my first international journey, there was always some anxiety, some fear, some curiosity in my mind. And another thing was, I was going alone, my other colleaggue was coming next day. If he would have been with me, then atleast some company would have been there.

But, fortunately everything went fine. Plus, on Jeddah airport there was one nice surprise. One marathi person, Pawar was in queue ahead of me for immigration. He is garment Exporter for Oxemberg, and is regular visitor to Gulf countries. He told many things about city, food, culture here. I left him at his hotel in Al-Balad and went ahead towards my hotel Holiday-Inn, located in Al-Thaghar.

Taxi driver was from Pakistan (actually most of the taxi drivers here are from Pakistan, other are from either Bangladesh or Srilanka. You will hardly find any Arab taxi driver), he was also telling about culture here. He was living here for more than 15 years, but his family was in Pakistan only. He told that earlier his "kafeel" (Employer or master in Arabik) used to give him 3 months vacation per year, but now he hardly gives a month vacation per year.

In Saudi Arabia, you can't own business, you have to make 50% partnership with local person. (In general none of taxi drivers has nice opinion about Arabs, but still for their "Roji-roti" they have to live here.) He said, it(Saudi Arabia) is like Golden Prison, you will get good salary(enough for living and sending money back home) plus there are no taxes. But, prison is prison.There are lot of restrictions, neither you can't easily go back home nor you can bring your family here hassle-free. Law here is very strict, specifically for ladies, they should always were "Burkha", they can't drive, they can go outside only if they are accompanied with relative man. There is punishment if unrelated man and woman are found together in public. Ans so on.....

I was landed in such country. Forunately, Jeddah has lot of cosmopolitian society, so rules are bit realxed (Unlike Riyadh, capital of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where you will find Muttawa, religious police patroling on roads. I read news in New paper that in Riyadh this Muttawa caught one professor found with his girl studen in hotel). I have to adjust myself to these conditions, specially food. Being vegetarian here is really punishing. Even in Five Star hotel like Holiday Inn I have to struggle to find vegetarian dishes. Let's see what lies ahead in "Arabian Nights".....

My_Photo 

The Beginning

6-9-2004
Today, I joined UGS.

21-10-2004
I had written above sentence one month back(actually more than one month) and now completing the remaining draft. From this itself, one can guess how the last month might have gone. New company, new environment, new people, everything was new to me. First week I was staying in Hotel Tamanna in Hinjewadi itself. Next week I shifted to Kothrud flat with my friends, Sumant and Shreeniwas. Both of them are from M.E. Chemical Engg. IISc. So, atleast flatmates were familiar.
After one week, almost everything was settled. In company training had started, training was basically on various CAD packages of UGS, so that I will get feel of the softwares which helped me in understanding code of that softwares. After two weeks of training, I was assigned for "File Loader" project and work on that had started. Today, even I checked in some code changes into the main code. So, now I am fully involved in the project.
Before, two months I had never dreamt of it, but it's going in my way. Atleast, the Begining is good. Hope it will continue..........

My First Flight

Some things happen in your life which you never expect to happen. I think my first flight is the same case. Yesterday, at 1:00 PM when I was going for lunch, I saw some students were gathered near AE Quadrangle. Actually they were waiting for going to CABS for flight briefing. So I didn't go to lunch and filled up the form. At that time also i didn't know what was going to happen next. Around 1:30PM we left from IISc and arrived in CABS around at 2:30 PM. There AVM Lamba gave us flight briefing on board i.e. explained which manuevers we will do and how. Then he told that he will take three people for flight training. Fortunately among us only three(including me) seniors were present. So naturally we three got the opprtunity to be airborne.

Among three people, my flight was first. So I boarded in the plane with Lamba as main pilot. Then in the plane he first explained all controls, different control panel measurment instruments, what they signify, how to use radio etc. Then he started the engine, checked that all things are OK and then proceded to taxying way. There he took the permission from airport to use runway for take-off. Then, he put throttle on MAX (maximum power), and we were speeding on the runway. Around speed of 50-60 knots/h, the aircraft started to go over the ground. And after 5 minutes we were around 1000 ft. from ground. Then Lamba stablized aircraft. We were cruising in the sky at speed around 90-100 knots/h. After he showed me how
controls should be operated to do controlled roll, pitch and yaw. I followed his instructions for doing various manuevers. Then he told me to take turn, to avoid from entering into the clouds. At that time we were around 2000 ft. above ground. From that height, the ground was looking very beautiful.

Afterwards, Lamba explained me how to stall a plane and recover from it. Also he demonstrated this twice. Then I repeated the procedure. After he left all controls and aircraft was in my full control for around 20 minutes. Then we started our return journey. At that time, rain started. That was most thrilling experience. On some patches of ground rain was pouring while on other patches total sunshine. So we were able to see full rainbow. That was really beautiful. and main thing was, as we were in air we were able to see rainbow with three dimensional effects. Lastly, Lamba took permission for landing and we landed in about 5 minutes. In overall this experince
was really superb. Thanks to aerospace dept. because of whom i was able to experience such a thrilling flight.

Troy

Yesterday I saw 'Troy' with Ganu. very nice movie.
Dixit tried very hard to pursuade Ganu for not going to movie with me.
But he didn't succeed. Thanks to Ganu's persistence. Anyway I was
going to movie at any cost, but still u can't enjoy movie watching
it single.

These kind of movies can't be seen or enjoyed on small screen.
Size does matter. The visual/sound effects of such movies
can't be experienced when u are watching it on CD. But who will
tell this to Dixit who is more interested in eating fish than
watching such a nice movie in theatre.

Story of 'Troy' is based on the great battle of Troy between Troy and
Sparta united with Greece. Every team had their own goal. Sparta wanted
to take revenge and get back 'Helan'. Greece wanted to expand their
province by joining Troy to theirs. and Troy was defending Paris and his
wife Helan. The main characters are Achilles and Hector. Achilles, mightiest
of the Greeks. Hector, Prince of Troy, brother of Paris who brought Helan, queen
of Sparta. Achilles was fighting for Greek and Hector was fighting for honour of
Troy and to defend his brother Paris.

Some people think that in this movie, Hector had taken more sympathy than Achilles.
What's the reason? Actually Achilles is hero who's life is tragically ended. Still
Hector's role is seeming more powerful than Achiless. Why? Is it because Hector
was fighting to defend his brother and he has no intentions to kill Achilles'
cousin? Or is it because He was knowing that he will get killed from Achilles?
Can anybody explain this?