विद्वान आणि सापेक्षता

मी पुढील सिद्धांत कुठे वाचला ते नक्की आठवत नाही, परंतु मला तो फार आवडतो. एका Ph.D झालेल्या विद्यार्थ्याची विविध स्थितीमधील मनोभूमिका त्यात विषद केली आहे.
दहावी पास - मला जगातील सर्व गोष्टी कळल्या आहेत
बारावी पास - मला जगातील ९०% गोष्टी कळल्या आहेत
पदवीधर - मला जगातील खूप गोष्टी कळल्या नाहीत
मास्टर्स DEGREE - मला जगातील खूप गोष्टी कळल्या नाहीत आणि विद्वानांना देखील काही गोष्टी कळल्या नाहीत
Ph.D - मला काहीच कळले नाही आणि विद्वानांना देखील खूप गोष्टी कळल्या नाहीत

या सिद्धान्ताबरोबर हे देखील मजेशीर आहे. जगात ४ प्रकारची माणसे आहेत
प्रकार १ - या माणसाना बरेच ज्ञान असते आणि आपल्याकडे जे ज्ञान आहे त्याची त्यांना माहिती असते
प्रकार २ - या माणसाना बरेच ज्ञान असते पण आपल्याकडे जे ज्ञान आहे त्याची त्यांना माहिती नसते
प्रकार ३ - या माणसाना खूप कमी ज्ञान असते पण आपल्या अज्ञानाची त्यांना माहिती नसते
प्रकार ४ - या माणसाना खूप कमी ज्ञान असते पण आपल्या अज्ञानाची त्यांना माहिती असते

व्यावसायिक जगात काम करताना मला एक गोष्ट जाणवली ती म्हणजे विविध प्रसंगी आपणास या ४ प्रकारातील एक प्रकार अंगीकारावा लागतो. त्याविषयी विस्ताराने पुढील ब्लॉग मध्ये !

पर्यावरण

आधीच्या एका blog मध्ये मी आपल्या समाजातील असंयमी वृतीविषयी थोडक्यात बोललो. आज त्याविषयी जरा विस्ताराने बोलूया. आपण सर्वच ठिकाणी पूर्ण फायदा मिळवण्याची वृत्ती बाळगतो. पुढील पिढीसाठी थोडे काही राखून ठेवावे असा जो विचार विकसित देशांमध्ये दिसतो त्याचा पूर्ण अभाव आपल्या मध्ये आहे. शेती वाडीचे जे काही थोडे तुकडे बाकी होते ते आपण development च्या नावाखाली विकून मोकळे होतो. IT कंपनी मध्ये आपली ESTIMATES दिवसाचे १२ तास गृहीत धरून केली असतात. २ तासाचा चित्रपट २ तासाच्या जाहिरातीसोबत ४ तासाचा बनवला जातो. समुद्रातील रेती उपसून काढणे, टेकड्या फोडून त्यातील दगडे काढणे, रस्ते वाढविण्यासाठी झाडे तोडणे, इमारती बांधून त्यांचे सांडपाणी नैसर्गिक जलाप्रवाहात सोडणे हे सर्व उद्योग आपण development च्या नावाखाली करतो.
CLOCK IS TICKING FAST . आपण पर्यावरणाच्या विनाशाकडे झपाट्याने चाललो आहोत. जबाबदार आहोत आपण सर्व, आपली नोकरी सांभाळत BLOG लिहिणारा आदित्य पाटील देखील! आपण जबाबदार आहोत ते आपल्या निष्क्रीयतेबद्दल ! गरज आहे ती एका मोठ्या सामाजिक चळवळीची पण त्यासाठी सर्व पाश तोडून मुक्त होण्याची गरज आहे आणि तिथेच आपण सर्व कच खातो. तर मग सर्वजण प्रेषक बनून बघत बसुया आपली पुढील वाटचाल!

मजा सुट्टीची

विषमज्वरामुळे मी गेले काही दिवस Blog लिहू शकलो नाही. शालेय जीवनात म्हण असे 'पडू आजारी मौज ही वाटे भारी! परंतु नोकरीच्या कालावधीत मात्र तसे नसते. प्रत्येक सुट्टीचा दिवस हा आपल्या कामाचा बोजा वाढवीत असतो. परंतु काही दिवसानंतर मात्र आपण निर्वाणा स्थितीत पोहचतो. कामाचे विचार नाहीसे होतात आणि फक्त वेळ कसा काढायचा याची चिंता उरते! सकाळी वर्तमानपत्रे, दुपारी झोप आणि संद्याकाळी IPL असा दिनक्रम ठरतो. ललित मोदीने दररोज ipl चे दोन दोन सामने का ठेवले नाहीत असे प्रश्न मला पडतात
NCL चे सामने मात्र मी गेले दोन रविवार खेळू शकलो नाही. NCL मध्ये आता २००६ आणि २०१० च्या batch चे विद्यार्थी सहभागी होऊ लागले आहेत ही आनंदाची गोष्ट आहे!
बघता बघता तब्येत सुधारते आणि कार्यालयात परतण्याचा दिवस जवळ येतो! मन होते थोडे दुखी कारण संपलेला असतो आराम ! लक्ष्य असते ते येणाऱ्या दीर्घ साप्तहिक सुट्टीकडे आणि IPL / NCL सामन्याकडे!

marathi blog

नवीन वर्षाच्या तुम्हां सर्वाना शुभेछा! सुनील, या लिंक विषयी माहिती पुरविल्याबद्दल ध्यनवाद! आपल्या batch मधील पहिल्या मराठी ब्लॉग साठी http://chok-chizza.blogspot.com/ या संकेत स्थळाला भेट द्या!
आज थोडक्यात मी आपणास IPL मधील काही हावरट गोष्टी विषयी सांगू इच्छितो. या स्पर्धेत मारला गेलेला प्रत्येक षटकार हा DLF MAXIMUM म्हणून आपणास ऐकावा लागतो. दोन चेंडूंच्या मध्ये थोडा देखील जास्त वेळ लागत असल्याचा संशय त्या लोकांना आल्यास लगेचच मध्ये एक जाहिरात घुसविली जाते. जाणकार दर्शक हा समालोचकाच्या विवेचनाला देखील हपापलेला असतो हे त्यांना कसे कळणार?
प्रत्येक गोष्टीचे हल्ली मी बरयाच वेळा एकच कारण समजतो ते म्हणजे आपली दिवसेंदिवस कमी होणारी जाणकार वृत्ती ! या बाबीवर मी बोलीन पुठील ब्लॉग मध्ये!

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धन्यवाद !

Uncle

At times I try to recollect when I was first called uncle. Still there are lucky guys in our batch who have maintained that non-uncle look. My hats off to them. In case of the remaining unlucky guys, in high probability the person who called them uncle for the first time is rikshawala in Vasai. And the sentence which he would have uttered 'Uncle, puthe basata ka? The injustice is two-fold. You are the first one to arrive, wait patiently till 3 passengers come and then when the 4th person comes, it's your turn to share the front seat with him. To add on to that, you are being called uncle.
First my few initial encounters with uncle, I became used to it and thought about it quitely. To make myself feel better, I assumed that it was their way of showing respect to my age/wisdom :). The terms were different at different places. In crowded train, they would call you Boss. The Boss word can be used with different meaning by saying it in different tones. In office, term used is Sir. In office, you can use it for your benefit.
But with our relatives and community the experience is different and it is pleasant. You attend any function and you end up meeting grannies, aunties who would still talk with you in same way as they have been doing since last 30 years. For them you are still that same school boy.
The question which still remains unanswered for me is how to refer a riskhawala aged around 50, who has just called you uncle!

Swanand

Today's topic is about increasing formal nature in us. In US, we don't visit anyone's house without calling them in advance. That culture has slowly come down to Mumbai. But in Vasai still we have this fun when an unexpected guest arrives and you have fantastic chat with him for hours disturbing your schedule.

Are we becoming too tied up with clock losing our ability to readjust schedule with slight disturbance? I can stretch this further. In US you live life by rules. You drive by rules and probability is that you will rarely involve in accident. You go to grocery shop and you get same quality of vegetables for years together. You get advance 1 day notice of guest, hurricane, snowstorm. You brain is slowly formatted for following simple instructions. But then when it comes to marriage, it is for the first time a US person is sharing his/her space with another living being who not necessarily comes with predictable behavior. As a result they may find it difficult to cope up with marriage experience. From few examples which I have seen, the second marriages are successful for those guys as they are now ready to deal with uncertainty in their life. This is completely my opinion and as a reader you may disagree with it in all probability.

My point is as Indians we need to maintain our ability to face uncertainty, make adjustment in our personal life. This will make us more stronger in life. This is reason I support joint families. I will give you one example, in job one makes a lot of adjustments as we don't have other alternatives. But in joint family we don't stay together because we can't make simple adjustments with our own relatives and that too just because we have alternative. By doing so we end up depriving our kids from most pleasant experience of growing up in a fantastic surrounding.

Another thing on which we are fast losing out is our ability to face rejection or lack of attention. Our earlier generation was never in need of so much attention, but we always need attention. We avoid the the place where we don't get attention.

Look at me, I am writing this blog with very few comments received. But that won't stop me from writing it on frequent basis. The goal is to keep on writing for a while. There was a sentence in our 10th standard Marathi book. Swanand he kaviche mothe paritoshik aahe - For a poet the self satisfaction is the biggest trophy. Even if 10% of the stuff is worth reading then may be at the end of year, I would have written some 30 pages of decent material. And that won't be bad at all!

Finally wishing you all happy watching of IPL season III - Aditya

Down The Memory Lane - 10 March 1985

Today's newspaper has covered India's Benson & Hedges triumph on 10th March 1985 in detail in their sports section. I remember this day as well as the day of our 7th standard scholarship examination. I was not at all happy that the final of such an event should coincide with our scholarship examination. To make the matter worse, the centre was in St. Augustine School at Stella.

But as they say where there is will there is way! We have a relative who stay near the school. The examination time-table was like Marathi 11-12, Maths 1-2 and Buddhimatta Chachani 3-4 with breaks of 1 hour in between. The original plan was to have one of my parents accompany me for the examination. But somehow both of them ended up with me for the examination. My father was as keen as me to see the match. So during those two breaks and after final paper, we ended up at the relative's place witnessing India's historic victory over Pakistan and Ravi Shastri winning Audi car. During the breaks some of our batch mates who had appeared for examination had come to see us.
Reading today morning's papers with details of that match made me remember that day. Those days were still days of black and white television.
Let's consider this. I am sharing memories with you which are dating back 25 years! I will leave the conclusion to you!

Who is dominating our thoughts?

I keep on thinking India is changing fast. Everyone has become liberal, people are spending a lot, losing values. What makes me form this opinion? I am influenced by media. I am influenced by television channels, a leading newspaper whose many articles seem to revolving around affairs, scantily clad actresses. But it is the reality?
If you look closely at the normal people around you, the values are still there. People still care about their relatives, values and spend money carefully. Yes, I agree, there is some percentage of population has changed but that percentage is smaller as compared against the one which has remained unchanged. But it looks as if there is planned effort from media to bombard common citizen with news which portraits as if world has changed considerably. If you tell a lie continuously for a while, people start believing it is a fact.
Ultimately it comes down to fact that who dominates the mindset of society? Earlier (some 20-30 years back), it was educated class (teachers, graduates) used to get respect in society and now it is the number and model of cars which determines the amount of respect you get.
Another worrying factor is the way our kids are spending their childhoods. The cartoon channels are painting incorrect images of our historical heroes. The cartoon serial Bheem projects him as some rural hero with unrealistic capabilities.
I believe in our ancestors. The Kaliyug is coming our way. I can't go out and stop it from spreading it outside. I am too busy with my job for the same. But I will fight it from invading my home. This is the need of hour! I hope you also fight it!

In the Zone

Sachin Tendulkar speaks about it sometimes. I suspect Classical singers / instrumental musicians are always in it whenever they are performing. Yes, you guessed it right, I am referring to the Zone. To be in Zone means you are fully concentrating on the task on hand. You don't realize what else is going around you. You realize the presence of other things around you only when you are done with the task on hand.
The question is with type of professions most of us are related to, do we get opportunity to be in zone. The answer is yes. Though our zone may not be as prolonged as that of Sachin but still we can still squeeze in that half an hour when we can fully concentrate on topic / task we are working on. It helps us in doing the task in more efficient way, finding other aspects of it which we might not have understood if we had just tried to complete it.
There is difference in performance of a person when he is in zone and when he is not. Important point is to identify the factors which can help you to find the zone. Examples are your favourite time of the day, any music which you hear. Some persons are more effective in morning. Others are more effective when light music in background is being played.
During my educational days, I was at my best in morning after a good night's sleep. So I used to make effort to get up early in morning and study. But then being at your best does not necessarily mean to be in zone. And zone is not always something which you find in your profession.
On a lighter note, writing blog is something where I am trying to find my ZONE!

Aastik and Naastik - Sandeep Khare and Salil Kulkarni

This one is from mail Archives.

Aastik and Naastik - Sandeep Khare and Salil Kulkarni
The conventional definition
Criteria - Whether you belive in God or NotPossible Values - Y / N - Cobol definition - X(1)Side Effects - Person with attribute Y (Aastik) is a pious, virtuous person not indulding in criminal activities. A person with attribute N (Naastik) is doesn't care about sins as defined in God's world. He would not perform pujas, he would not visit temples


Sandeep Khare's definitionCriteria - Whether you own consequences of your acts or notPossible Values - Y / N - Cobol definition - X(1)

Aastik - He does not want to take responsibility for his acts. So he transfers the responsibilities of his acts by standing in temple queues and visiting god. Nastik - He takes responsibility for his acts. So he doesn't want to visit to god to make that transfer. He would stand outside temple. God is happy to find someone like him who is carrying burden of his / others responsibilities. So at the end of the day God meets Naastik and thanks him for giving him company

My approach - I would like to combine above these 2 approaches.

Criteria1 - Whether you belive in God or Not

Criteria2 - Whether you own consequences of your acts or not

Possible values - YY / YN / NY / NN - Cobol definition - X(2)

YY - Aastik Aastik - Believes in god and does not want to take responsibility for his acts.

YN - Aastik Nastik - Believes in god but wants to take responsibility for his acts.

NY - Nastik Aastik - Does not believe in god and does not want to take responsibility for his acts.

NN - Nastik Nastik - Does not believe in god and wants to take responsibility for his acts.

I am Aastik Nastik, What about you guys?
Another question - Which categories you would find standing outside temple in queues?

My answer- YY / NY

Alibaug - From Eyes of Darshan Vartak

This one is from our friend Darshan
Although I stay so close to Mumbai and aware of the popularity of Alibaug as a hot tourist destination, quite surprisingly, never got a chance to visit this beautiful and natural getway. Christmas vacation of 2009 served the occasion for paying a visit to this popular island.

Apart from the actual place, even the ferry ride from GATEWAY OF INDIA to Mandva jetty is equally interesting. The journey begins with the cool breeze of arabian sea, convincing you, that its going to be a joy ride and your trip is going to fetch all the beauty and serenity that you seek.

By the time you reach madva jetty the magnifincent and beautiful structures of Getway of India as well as the Old Taj Hotel, are still visible and makes you wonder of the fact that how different these two places are just separeted by arround 45 minutes odd boad ride. I might call them as world apart, one being the business financial capital, where people sweat day and night, in tall spectacular multinational offices, while you will find this beautiful scenic island of alibau,g having scattered villages and people still resorting to do farming and fishing. One is famous for it rush, concrete jungles, stress and fight for survival instinct, while the other so close but still waking up to the beautiful sunrises, laid back villagers, having chat at the village katta and tourists meandering over at the beaches leaving behind all the domestic worries and rat-race back home.

The Kulaba fort is right at the main alibaug seashore. The trip to Kulaba fort is an unique experience and there are multiple options going there. During high tide you can take a speed boad ride, while during low tide, you can walk down to the fort, through the, all drainedup shallow sea. Horse-cart rides are also available to reach this historic place during low tides. It was built by Sarkhel Kanhoji Angre, one of the knights of Shivaji's kingdom.

You have an option of staying in some beach front resort or hotel, thus giving 24 hours view and access to the sea. But then this does add up to the budget, as there is this hefty premium that you have to pay for this luxury. I kept my budget low and stayed in a hotel right in the middle of the locality, just in front of the bus-depo. The hotel we chose was Meera Madhav, not quite luxurious, but served my purpose. Advantage of this is you have access to few of the good restaurants, ferry booking centers, tourist offices and you can be more flexible in planning your side trips to murud and few other destinations.

Going here with your own car would be the best option. but even the local tour operators are reasonable and trip to Murud can be planned covering few other places in as less as 1400 Rs. with a private car.A early morning startup is quite advisable, as you get the glimse of actual rural activities,as these villages wake up from their deep slumber and start with their daily chores.The serenity of the villages enchants you and you would fall in love with those redbricked, slanting-roofed, cute houses, hidden admist thickness of coconut and betel nut (supari) trees.

The yellow sand of the Kashid beach is most attactive and walking down the beach barefoot is what I love to do .The course grains of yellow sand on kashid beach definitely does some magic to your feet and the symphony of high tide waves makes you one with the nature and forget all the worries for the timebeing. My daughter is a beach freak and enjoyies playing with waves timelessly.

This place is also known for its cusine and especially the seafood is awesome. The fresh catch of fish like Ravas, Surmai, Pomret cooked in a local fashion and served hot does give a tinkle to your taste buds.Hotel fullora was quite closeby to our base location and they serve some of the best lip smacking seafood dishes.The surmai fry is something that, I savoured a lot and prawns biryani was fantastic.

The beaches out here are clean and warning boards are at every place to make sure people are caucious of the depth and low tide, high-tide situations. Awas phata has some of the options for private bunglows and these are also quite close to the beach. For people looking for little peaceful and secluded place away from the town and close to nature these can be good options.

On the way to Murud you can visit Nandgaon Ashtavinayak Temple, this road is quite scenic and takes you through the real rural alibaug passing through quaint villages like nagaon, revadanda, chaul, akshi, each famous for its unique seashore. The nagaon, has a thick woods of Suru trees and seems to be much famous for its water sport activities like beach buggy, banana boat ride, para sailing and jet-skiing.

Murud fort was build over a period of 22 years and stills exhibits its strength. It's a magnificient structure build over an island not quite far away from the sea shore. But the location and the achitecture of this fort convinces its invincible nature. Shivaji Maharaj alway wanted this fort to be part of swaraj, and tried all his military strategies to win janjira. Some of these battles were the fiercest and went into heavy loses for maharaj and always remained an unfulfiled dream for him.

There are more than 20 canons on this fort, still available for the tourists to view and the largest among them is the "Kalal Bangdi". Its one of the largest canons of those times apart from the "Mulukh Maidan" from Bijapur and one other (Can't recollect the name) from Delhi. This canon is made from 5 metals and forged using several rings into a single barrel.

There isn't a single stone brought from outside on this island for construction of this fort, all the stones were escavated from the same island and during the escavation, to their surpise, they even got sweet water springs in here, in the middle of the sea on this island. Later this escavation was converted into a lake and Siddi Johar built a beautiful Shish Mahal for his begum. The "Chor Darwaja" and the underground tunnel, opening in a secret mahal on the mainland, is one more great example of the strategic intelligence of those times to leave the fort in case of emergency and move to a safer place, before the enemy can reach you.

In all a nice and quiet place for a short outing and quite reachable in few hours from Mumbai.

Changing World

It has been frequently said that only thing which is constant in current world is change. The world has seen changes all the time. People from all generations have been complaining that things have gone worse since their childhood.
Let's try to analyze concept called Samaj-man i.e. mindset of a community. In my childhood years (Late 70's and early 80's) life around us was much more simpler than what it is now. Most of the people were happy with their current positions. Middle class was happy being middle class, educated people concentrated on education and money was not their primary objective. For that matter even the poor people had no complain about being poor. Somewhere in late 80s and early 90's things started changing suddenly. I am tempted to link it to India's economic reforms at national level and selling of agriculture land by farmers at local level. But I wouldn't go into much details of it since I am a complete novice in those matters. The change was very conspicuous. Everyone suddenly realized that there is opportunity to lift themselves in education, business and then eventually convert it into better financial positions. The professional life became competitive and it had its effects on social, personal lives. Everyone suddenly started needing personal space and the relations were redefined. The simple things like spending summer vacation at your maternal uncle's place which were earlier integral part of our lives became rare and suddenly became business opportunities. Combined families disintegrated into nuclear families. People became more comfortable in spending leisure time with their professional colleagues then their relatives as it had better commercial values. The list is endless. I am not complaining here. The point here is were we prepared for these changes as a society when they arrived here? There are certain changes which have taken place in last 20 years or so. Are we accepting these changes as irreversible? Can we look back and find out whether any of these changes can be reviewed and anything which was better earlier can be restored? The million dollar question is do we have time and willpower do the above activities? We need to remember the fact that these changes become baseline of our lives once they stay here for some period.
Having discussed above changes which have taken place in last 20 years, the next question which arises is where we are heading in next 20 years? Does anyone of us has any idea about it? Does anyone of us has willingness to give proper direction to these changes? This needs to be a collective efforts of responsible citizens. I will write about it sometime later

Introspection - Final Blog

This would be the final blog in this series related to introspection. One need to know what is your objective. The options are

1. Lead a fully satisfied personal / social life
2. Use your full potential and strive for maximum possible professional success
3. Try to strike a balance of point1 and 2.

One has to know among the above options which one he /she would like to choose or he / she has already chosen unknowingly. There are totally different skills and techniques for each of these options. It is also possible that you would like to divide your life in various phases and in each of these phases you choose different option. Each option comes with it own set of advantages / disadvantages. The key is to know which option you have knowingly / unknowningly chosen and live happily as per that.

Since people around you have signifcant influence on your life, you also need to spend some time in understanding them. The amount of this time varies for each option you have selected above.

Well I think, that's it from my side on this topic. We will move to another topic in my next blog.

Some Fundas

This one is from mail Archives....

Some software lessons learnt by me.

Every Day is a new day.
There will be really bad days in office. The days when Murphy’s law will hold good for you. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong during these days. Below are examples
Team member handling most critical task has emergency. His / her backup also has emergency. And task has to be delivered on same day.
Natural calamities happen on your delivery date
Your supervisor has received some firing from his supervisor and you forget to send him status report which would have saved him from saving his back.
And so on…

What we do in these situations?
· Try best to complete the day without making further damage. Don’t fight with your supervisor on this day. Listen to him. Give it back to him in double when you have your chance.
· Next day you are likely to find few things going your way which would give your strength to work on remaining challenges.

Also if you are worried that people around are going to remember your embarrassing day throughout their life then forget it. They have many other things to worry about and they have short term memory.


Switch Off technique.
Once you swipe out from office building, you should be able turn into mindset of a school kid. There is one life and you need to enjoy it whenever you get chance. You may get calls from office at odd hours. You need to develop ability to decide quickly whether that call coming from office at odd hour is really important to you. You can’t always be honest.

You are not the only one responsible.
You as a programmer/leader/manager will witness your delivery causing major havocs in production environment. Apart from backing out your code, you will be required to fix data corruption, resume operations in stipulated time. Then there will be root cause analysis meetings which you need to attend. In these all situations remember that behind every delivery there is process of the organization which is involved. You may be responsible partially being part of that process but not entirely.

Ability to live normally outside office.
What you do in your office / profession should not affect your relations with your family / friends. We have already reached half way through our professional lives, but long way to go in our actual life. Family / friends are going to be ones who are going to be most important part of your remaining lives.

Can’t insist on perfection all the time.
This was very difficult lesson for me to learn. You need to be as perfect as is required by situation. That is as tricky as it can get. Those who master this art become quickly up the ladder. Others keep on struggling on achieving perfection in areas which may not be relevant in broad perspective.

10000 feet view
This is the term used to investigate anything from neutral / broader perspective. In case your delivery has failed, you are feeling really bad then you need to think on following lines. This is just one delivery from this project. This is just one project from this client. This is just one client from this company. This is just company from many companies which you are going to join. This will help in long way reducing the impact.