Supporting humanity

Imagine being made to feed your family when you are just five.
Imagine pulling out your child from school because your job can't support your family.
Imagine your children cleaning cars on traffic signals to earn two meals a day.
Outrageous!!! But alas it's true. In fact, the situation is even worse!!! India is failing its rural poor with 230 million people being undernourished. Two million Indian babies die each year before they celebrate their first birthday. Children across the country suffer vexations and anger before going to bed every night.
But as educated Indians, do we help? No, because there's no right medium. Lao Tse once said "Take a step towards your goal. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."
It's already high time. Nevertheless, 'We' are here. 'We' are the step. 'We' are the medium. We, the Humanity Foundation, work as a facilitator between individuals who want to contribute and the NGO's. We are a non profit organization believing in addressing the root cause of our problems rather than superficial manifestations. We believe the only way to alleviate and ameliorate ourselves lies in our voters, parents, teachers, investors, neighbors, businesspersons, lawyers, consumers, activists, students, judges, administrators, journalists and politicians alike - overcoming apathy, cynicism and sheer inertia and reconfiguring our priorities to put the less fortunate first.

Supporting http://humanityfoundation.org/

Aquired Ineffieciency to write Syndrome

As i sit with my writers cap ON(I know I have it on if I am staring blankly at Microsoft Word on my laptop) to write a small paragraph on a topic I still haven't thought off. My mind wanders, from political issues like "OBAMA vs. McCain" to issues as clichéd as "Blood on Wall Street ", from something close to my heart like "Those college days" or something close to my mind right now like "From where am I to get dinner tonight".

Still unable to decide I find out to my dismay that I am suffering from a dreaded disease more prevalent than AIDS, more malignant than CANCER, more pervasive than COMMON COLD. Ok that was a bit apocryphal. Anywayz it's called or will be called Acquired inefficiency to write syndrome or AIWS.Dictionary defines it or will define it "As a condition when people are willing to write but are unable to write because of the absence of any tangible ideas". A person suffering from this malady initially loses his ability to write or think and in extreme cases one may even lose his ability to coherenent speech. The sufferer only communicates thanks to the power of association i.e. by associating some part of a sentence to another sentence. For e.g. I love my mother. Mother - Mother is the wife of father. Wife- Wife is root of all problems. Problems-I face many problems. You get the point, I hope.

The virus attacks part of brain called as grey cells. No cure is presently available. The causes of this disease are

1. Body contact- Actually it’s no body contact with books and newspapers.

2. Transfusion- Again it’s no transfusion of knowledge among peers.

3. Uncontrollable desires: It’s for people who often live in the miasma of television.

I have often suffered from this disease as you can observe from the frequency of my posts here. Also the blank sheets I returned to the examiner in college are a testament to the same fact.As I get ready to remove my writers cap I pray in all humility that none of you ever suffer from this disease.

SURVEYS ARE wonderful things. They not only give you an idea of what people feel about all kinds of issues, but also provide you the chance to air your views. And occasionally, there’s the simple pleasure of impressing the surveyor with the depth and sophistication of your tastes or of gently leading him up the garden path.

One of the best-known surveys is the annual Pew Global Attitudes Survey, which tells us what countries think of each other. The most interesting part in the recently published 2008 survey is about how people in other countries perceive Indians. The Brits love us the most, with a whopping 75 per cent of them viewing us favourably. The survey probably went something like this — ‘Q: What’s your view about India? A: That’s the place where chicken tikka masala came from, right? Must be a fantastic country?’

No prizes for guessing who dislikes us the most — 57 per cent of Pakistanis do. There’s no need to feel depressed about that, though, because 73 per cent of Indians, finds the survey, have an unfavourable view of Pakistan. We dislike them more than they dislike us.

What about our bigger neighbour, China? Forty-six per cent of us have a favourable view of that country, but this seems to be a case of unrequited love, because only 29 per cent of the Chinese like us. On the other hand, fully 76 per cent of Pakistanis love China. ‘Q: Do you guys like China? A: Of course, my enemy’s enemy is my friend?’ No wonder then that 61 per cent of Pakistanis believe that China’s growing military power is a good thing, which is the highest percentage among all the nations surveyed, with Nigeria coming in second.

The Nigerians seem to like most people, with a majority viewing Japan as well as India positively. They also like the US a lot, with 64 per cent of them having a favourable view of the superpower, not too far below the 66 per cent of Indians who love the US. What’s more, 56 per cent of Indians believe that the US will succeed in Iraq. That makes us more optimistic about the Iraq war than the Americans themselves, 40 per cent of whom think they’ll succeed.

But the most optimistic are the Nigerians, 61 per cent of whom believe the war will be won. The Nigerian survey probably went on these lines: ‘Do you like the US? Of course. What about China? Great country. India? Love it. What about Bhutan as a superpower? You bet. You think we could win in Iraq? Sure, bash them up.’

Most people seem to prefer the American people to the US — for example, while 70 per cent of Britons like Americans, only 53 per cent of them say they have a favourable view of the US. India is an exception, with more people saying they like the US and fewer people liking Americans. ‘Q : Do you like the Americans? A: Hmmmm...they’re ok, I guess, but they talk funny, eat too much, act weird sometimes. Q: What about the US? A: Oh, lovely place, the malls, the moolah, my cousin stays there. Someday I’ll get a green card.’

Do we also admire America’s love of freedom and its long tradition of protecting civil liberties? We seem to be a bit confused about that. While 65 per cent of Indians believe that the US government respects the personal freedoms of its people, 59 per cent believe so does the Iranian government, while 49 per cent have the same opinion about the Chinese government. ‘ Q: Which do you believe best protects civil liberties: a constitutional democracy with separation of powers, a theocracy or a communist dictatorship?’ Long pause. ‘A: Huh?....Ummmm...tough one...good question...let’s see..the first one, no the third...I’ll play safe and go with all of the above.’

But the last word comes from the recent US Religious Landscape Survey, which found that one in five of those who identified themselves as atheists said they believed in god. “It may very well be that they don’t really know what atheist means. It sounds good so they answered it,” said one of the surveyors.

By Manas Chakravarty for HT

TG-INF(Thank God its Not Friday)

It’s that time on Friday when all our great thinkers and visionaries a.k.a resources are performing their chores to perfection i.e. pondering about the tantrums to throw, when the team lead ask’s for the assignment which was supposed to be completed last week or was it the week before. Our deep musings are pulverized by the arrival of a new message in our lotus notes, a cursory glance on which takes us into our wonderland once again, but this time the dreams are of a different denomination. There is no team lead, no project manager but only the promiscuous us with the damsels we have never seen, okay seen but never talked to, what’s important is that the damsels are with us and are enjoying themselves ….don’t ask me how???
The talisman on our desktops reads TGIF and is from the HR team with a message (which we seldom read) .But the itineraries of our weekends of enjoyment tells us why the phrase Thank God it’s Friday is titular for us melancholy souls at CSC and should be changed to TGIS(which I’ll explain later).If u belong to the unlucky cabal for whom weekends are just the beginning of the wait for the week to begin then read on to share your sorrows . Other merrier souls read on to know about the sorry state of affairs of your unfortunate brothers.
Tired gory its Saturday (TGIS)
Saturday begins with all of CSC’s resources exhausted and wanting to renew themselves by sleeping through most of it. With no idea of what to do when we wake up bolsters our decision to sleep late. We do get up together with people in the countries we mostly serve (read following the Client). Anyways by the time our slumbering soul wakes up it’s already time for what we would like to call lunch.
TROUBLED GASTRO ITS SATURDAY (TGIS)
Unlike the easily palatable lunch we get in CSC during the week our nomadic soul has to wander for his ambrosia. Wandering from one place to another in search of his food he satiates himself eating the food Americans mockingly call junk which the dictionary defines as waste which is of no use and can lead to further harm. Do I need to state any further?
Tawdry guys its Saturday (TGIS)
Ah Saturday Evenings! This is the time when the real killer attitude in our shoddy soul surfaces. He covers himself up (both literally and figuratively) to do what he has been waiting for whole week i.e. shopping. Thinking of buying something to flaunt on next Friday, he discovers that most of the stuff is more expensive than his daily wages. While the cheaper stuff are not according to the standards of our exorbitant soul. So he decides to postpone his jaunts into the shops one weekend after another. As for what to wear next Friday, Don’t worry we have the t-shirts saying Celebrating success with Covansys.
Trunks gosh its Sunday (TGIS)
Baptism is the order of the day on Sunday’s which begin with the ordeal of washing our dirty undershirts , underpants, undies and other unmentionables. The odor they reek is a more dangerous weapon of mass destruction than ever possessed by IRAQ. But our hydrophobic holy souls putting aside all their fears of water step into it and clean their mess so that their friends can breathe in fresh air come Monday.
Thank God I’m Single (TGIS)
Sunday evenings call for another visit to the malls or the moles as they are commonly called in our beloved Noida simply because we have nothing else to do. But this time the motif is different as our Single ready to mingle souls are there to browse for someone with whom they could happily cohabit with, share their thoughts, be emotionally dependent upon and all other thing we say but don’t believe in. Our invidious souls come back making fun of the guys with the gals and how lucky they are because they have so much fun on weekends without spending a penny.
Sunday nights bring us back to our musings of what to say when the team lead asks for the project which was to be completed last to last week or the week before. We are bereaved because we will have to wait another five days for weak ends of enjoyment (full pun intended). Just a thought---
"I TURNED INTO A WORKAHOLIC AS I HAD NOTHING ELSE TO DO."

The Alchemist

A month ago as i walked out of the alleys of my college. my eyes became wet as i realised this was probably the last time i was seeing my collg,my classrooms which i rarely attended,or the lanes which as a matter of fact i seldomly walked on.but there was a sense of grief as i realised that i would not b able to do all these things again,as i walked i just wanted to c my room again and our mess.2 days later sth fateful happened. on the fateful day i lost one of my dmc and had to go back to collg to retrieve it.and from that day onwards every other day i have to go back to get 1 new signature, to b thrown out of one of the teachers room for being unmannered,uncivilised.everyday i walked the lanes i seldomly walked upon,saw the classrooms i rarely saw. i finally got my duplicate dmc after n(where n tends to infinite) hard laboured trips to my collgthen why am i writing it today becoz today i came to know that they have given me the dmc of another semester.so i have to start the process again :(:(moral of the story---Coelho was probably rite wen he said"when u want sumthimg bad whole universe conspires in helping u to get it"so think twice before u want sumthing bad as u mite actually get it