Beware - The Whatsapp virus is here!!!!

This is a VERY DANGEROUS one,no it certainly doesn't crawl into your phone from weird links you click in a hurry & siphon off your personal data or crash the RAM of your super expensive smartphone,this is worse,its the virus that makes you post pictures-of yourself,your family - spouse,kids etc., announce significant events in your life as a 'status' in Whatsapp without giving the slightest second thought that any damned psycho,any eccentric asshole,any pervert,paedophile out there in this country who has the same whatsapp installed in their phone & with access to just just your your phone number may also be able to view these pictures,read these excited 'status' messages,get to know about you.

One example - All of us use taxis at least at some point in time if not regularly in our lives & that person is a rank stranger who invariably gives you a call or the other way round to either give directions to your place most probably to pick you up.Will you,ever,give this person a photograph of your spouse,a photograph of your toddler son or daughter before leaving the cab.Well,I wouldn't do it, most people in their right minds wouldn't do it then why the hell do you reveal all this through whatsapp?through your smartphone? - do you think because the pictures are within the confines of your phone,its all cool?okay? - well think again my friends - these pics can be downloaded, saved & circulated in seconds.

Some of status messages along with DP's which I had seen in the recent past that prompted me to sit & type this in detail:

      DP                                                                           Status message

   Guy posing with his fiancee                      - 'Got engaged - first selfie with new love'

   Guy posing with his new born                  - 'Announcing his arrival & his name'

   Couple posing in a scenic spot                 - 'Vacation details and dates'

I am fully aware that security settings in Whatsapp can be personalized & pictures revealed only to those whose contacts you have saved down - but most users don't bother for one & even those who do ensure that setting is turned on do absently save down numbers in a lot of occasions - that of a random puncture fixing guy,some XYZ mechanic,the taxi driver,any number for that matter - our smartphones memories have no limits,do they.

Well if you have read through this & do feel it makes sense please forward it to those you care about – This is not a forward I received – this was conceived, typed out & sent across only to those I care about - Jayaram

PICK THESE SCRIPS

Nobody likes to go to a hospital, that’s something obvious unless you have to visit someone, unless you really don’t have a choice like if you are a doctor or a nurse or some lab technician. But I have realized over the past couple of months in the midst of difficult circumstances that these are the places that have become money spinners. The topic of discussion here are the private hospitals, the ones that are run as corporate entities.
The objective of any corporate entity is profit. They exist for profit, no two ways about that. But then hospitals are not the same as a company providing hospitality services; or a company selling mobile phones. They have to cater to patients, sick people, sometimes very sick people who could be as dejected, as much as their families are in a state of financial and emotional turmoil due to their sickness.
The point am trying to make here is that the profit motive of the corporate hospitals is fine but they have to be considerate keeping in mind the possibly distressed condition of the patients and the extreme anguish caused to their families.
The state of public health care system in India is well known. It’s in pretty bad shape and caters mostly to patients who are from the lower rung of the society who simply cannot afford even a single day’s expenditure in an average private hospital. Needless to say most government hospitals in the country are over crowded and are run in such a manner that an average educated Indian with an average salary would think many times before stepping into one. The scenario is well set for privately run hospitals to flourish in our country.
Am not going to bore people with details of my personal tragedy but here is an outline of what happened-My grandmother had a heart attack and she was admitted to a well known private hospital. It was a mild attack and a first one and the doctors very clearly said surgery was ruled out considering the old age of the patient. One day she actually had to be revived -the docs keep massaging and pressing the chest till the heart started beating again. She was kept in the ICU for a couple of weeks and in 30 days time since she was admitted to the hospital, Rs.3,00,000 literally flew out of the door. True, medical care in India is expensive but then the average cost here comes to Rs.10,000 a day and there was not even a surgery involved here. UNBELIEVABLE. This was when I realized something:

1. A hospital is one place where you are utterly helpless especially if your near and dear is admitted to one for you can never question them about any of their procedures as to why so many medicines have to be bought or why a patient has to remain in ICU for weeks together. You can only trust them with your loved one.
2. Yes. They do take good care of the patients. The doctors do explain the illness and complications involved but at the end of the day you are left with a HUGE bill.A ridiculously huge one. When a huge bill is levied at a different place say a restaurant or at any other place you get to read it, question the logics of it. But in a hospital you can never ever do that. If the doctor’s fees come to Rs. 50,000 you can only gape at it. You nevertheless have to pay it.
3. Do they look at this as an opportunity to skim a nice profit by charging atrociously? This is debatable.

But looking at the numbers mentioned above I don’t think the debate would last long. I would certainly love to have a look these companies oops hospitals Balance sheets. They would make an interesting study. Also there is something more interesting here:

1. It is estimated that by 2025, India will be number one in the world (Now now pl read on fully) with the maximum number of people with diabetes. At the moment the number is 30 million people with diabetes.
2. Researchers say India, a country with more than one billion people, will likely account for 60 per cent of heart disease patients worldwide, by 2010.
3. According to WHO studies there are more than 24 lakh cancer cases in India and India will have 8 lakh new cancer cases every year.
4. With the increasingly changing life style of young Indians especially in the IT and ITES sectors ,there would be a spurt in the lifestyle diseases-chronic diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and respiratory infections - which are ailments of long duration and slow progression.

If you have read till here what are you waiting for now. Go ahead and invest in the scrips of these corporate hospitals. If they come out with an IPO pounce on it for you know the analysis now. The ‘fundamentals’ are pretty strong and there is enormous potential for ‘growth’ in the future and the ‘business model’ if I can call it that would most certainly lead to increased ‘profitability’.

Am not a communist and profit making and all is fine (I work for a prominent private concern as well) but at what cost. This is thoroughly sickening.

The curious case of Slumdog millionaire

I watched this movie Slumdog millionaire(SM).It was a good movie all right, very well directed with a good screenplay and background score. However I have seen a lot of INDIAN MOVIES which were many times better than what this movie was. I would like to stress on the phrase INDIAN MOVIES because SM (as a lot of people are either not aware of or conveniently choose to ignore) is not an Indian movie. It is a movie which had Indian actors and quite a few Indian technicians in it. It was a foreigner's take on what India was and supposedly presented to an equally foreign audience.

And what Danny Boyle had portrayed about India is not untrue but neither is it something that should make us feel proud or rather 'Inspire India' as certain sections of the media has put forth. Maybe am saying this because I am an Indian and the movie had been made by a British filmmaker but overall I think India had been portrayed in this movie as a land of slums, gangsters and call centers and the English speaking audiences apparently liked what they saw.

What the hell are these Oscars anyway? They certainly aren’t some kind of a benchmark, that’s for sure. Otherwise the maestro that A.R.Rahman is, he would have won a lot of them already. His scores in this movie were certainly very good but he had composed much better scores in the past for much better movies and how is it that those works were never considered for Oscars. Now am not mentioning this for the sake of comparison but a Bombay or Roja directed by Mani Ratnam were such incredible movies that they left a lot of us Indians gaping and so did the musical scores that Rahman had composed for those movies and it had made him a household name and also fetched him national awards, but its only now that some foreign audiences have realized what a wonder this man was and had honored him with an Oscar all because this movie SM had been lapped up by the English speaking audiences.

It just goes to show within what kind of narrow confines that these academy awards are given.But without taking away anything from A.R.Rahman who deserves all the awards that exist for his extraordinary brilliance, there is nothing here for India as a nation to cheer about as our media claims. It’s akin to saying that the whole of America would cheer if Steven Spielberg was to be honored with a National award of India for his incredible film making prowess. Can you ever imagine such a scenario!

For god's sake....

If you have been to temples in Tamil Nadu(Am not sure about other places),there is a spectacle you would have most certainly noticed.This is that of the 'special darshan' or whatever name by which its called.The system here is ,if you have got the money to spare,you get a shortcut to view the deity.What a wonderful idea!! And to think we were all equal in the eyes of god.

So we have different categories here,the more you spend(lets say you buy an Rs.250 'ticket' instead of an Rs.100 'ticket'),the shorter is the route or waiting time to view the deity.Can anything be more incredulous?If crowd control is the idea then certainly something more innovative can be done to handle that.This,I believe is a system which promotes inequality in a society already torn apart and divided by lopsided growth.Agreed,money guarantees better and prompt service almost everywhere but visiting a temple is a completely different scenario and a temple is not a goddamn restaurant where you can pay more for better service.If people are in such a hurry and they are so damn busy that they cant wait in a queue to pray to whom they believe as god,if they cant respect the other individuals who are waiting in a queue for a longer time that they feel they can barge in by paying some extra money,these people are completely unworthy of any kind of faith that they possess and they dont deserve to visit a temple at all.

Even to those who are reading this blog now,this wouldn't seem to be a big deal at all and that exactly is the worst part of this social evil,the society sees no harm in it and it's being encouraged.

The other day,I visited a prominent temple in a town which is supposed to be the home to one of the most well known temples in the state.When we(I was acompanied by a couple of my colleagues) were inside the temple,one of the guys who had accompanied me gestured us to wait and disappeared somewhere with his mobile phone.He got back after some 20 minutes with a triumphant smile and a slip in his hand and guided us inside.The temple was fairly crowded since it was an auspicious day and while I was wondering how long we would spend in the rather lenghty queue,this colleague of mine had a word with the guy manning the crowd and that guy after having a look at the slip produced by my colleague opened the side gate and let us inside and by the time I grasped what has happened,we had bypassed the long line of devotees standing there and had gone right inside the 'sannidhi' and we hadn't even purchased the special darshan 'ticket' coz that colleague of mine it seemed had some relative in the temple trust and he had used his name(written on that slip) to gain access straightaway. (making a mockery of other devotees standing there for probably an hour or more)

When we came out,this person who had used his 'influence' to take us inside commented that it was satisfying that we had a great 'darshan'.I felt thoroughly disgusted.Forget the inequality in society caused by purchasing darshan tickets inside temples,what this guy had done was a completely despicable act and he was a properly educated guy of the twentieth century and to top it all he felt that he had accomplished something.I just put myself in the shoes of one of the devotees who was standing in the queue while we had cooly walked past him.I felt anger.

God save our nation.

The Improbable role model

Those who are familiar with Tamil cinema can not miss him.Whether we love him or loathe him,we just cannot ignore him.He is T.Rajendar or TR as he is popularly known as.To be honest,the guy resembles a small bear(I don't intend to pass comments on his appearance,pl read on....).But this man has played the lead role in various movies in the past and continues to do so even now,this despite the fact that he is ridiculed and made fun of by most movie goers.

He not only plays the lead role but is also the cameraman,director,script writer and a dozen other things in the movie that he produces.

Am typing all this not because I am a fan of his.I dont even come close although I do watch his movies because nowhere else in the world can you find a movie where even the most serious of scenes in the movie(his recent action movie 'Veerasamy' was an absolute laugh riot)does nothing but evoke laughter from you and hearty laughter that is.

I've often wondered what kept this guy going, doing movies of this sort.Maybe he does'nt have high standards when it comes to delivering quality cinema but he must,I reckon,possess incredible levels of self confidence for without which he just wouldn't be a household name(not always for the right reasons though) now.That kind of self confidence just amazes me and it has actually made me feel that he is a role model(plz plz guys read the entire post) for anyone who is low on self confidence for if he can through his efforts (he certainly is not a hero or director material although he is talented) taste success in the past as a hero(& director) in the tamil film industry then so can anyone with enough self confidence in other walks of life.

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Z2lIa6ACc --(Enjoy)TR mouthing english dialogues

ஏ டண்டனக்கா ஏ டனக்குனக்கா

The Inspiration factor

Its been more than eight years but I still remember the time when I wasn't taken seriously when it came to sports-athletics,cricket & any other damned wannabe macho activity,the reason?I used to be a lean(thin?) boy with  pathetic levels of self confidence....i still remember watching Rocky series the first time & the incredible effect these movies from Stallone(my idol,then & now) had on me....this movie played a major role in me taking up weight training although at that point of time all that I wanted was to pack on big muscle and look like someone who remotely resembled Stallone.

Its been eight years now and not only have I packed on big muscle but I've also acquired enough knowledge on the How,What and Whys of being fit and the various aspects of strength and weight training.

The other day when I was working out,I caught a guy staring at me and when he realized that I had caught his stare,he came to me and somewhat hesitantly asked like how long I had been working out and other related stuff.He turned out to be a college kid who had just hit the gym a few months ago.I told him patiently that i had been working out for years together and he almost gaped when I mentioned the no. of years.However before leaving he said that he was asking all that coz he wanted to build a physique just like mine...and hearing this I couldn't help but permit myself a broad smile.I was actually good enough to inspire someone and that moment made my day.

Trust me,It really was a great feeling!!

Why the system of ‘ARRANGED MARRIAGE’ in India is a joke

‘Arranged marriage’ doesn’t the name itself sound ambiguous? Well ambiguous in the sense, how can a marriage of all things in the world be arranged? All right lets get to the basics. Arranged all right but by whom? By the parents of the concerned guy and the girl would be the simple answer and yes that’s right. Also I never deny the fact that parents know best. I am what I am today because of my parents.

But how can the parents determine the life partner, the person with whom the guy or girl is going to spend the rest of their lives with. This is akin to saying that when you are in say school or college your dad comes over to your classes picks up a guy who looks decent and studious, comes to you and says ‘ok son this guy looks studious and decent so I want him to be your friend during the time you spend in college.’

Will you ever accept that? When it takes so much of time for you to understand and accept a person as a friend how can you simply look into a photograph or meet a person for a few minutes(during another joke of a ceremony)and agree to marry the person.

Now please dont think I am a rebel or some proponent of love marriages,I do attend these weddings day in and day out.I am just giving shape to my thoughts here!

Let us consider for instance the typical criteria for the selection of the groom:

1. First and foremost the dude should be from the same caste and creed.
2. The horoscope of the guy and the girl should match-very crucial indeed.
3. Must definitely be in a very well paying job that is deemed secure.
4. Must look decent, if conditions 2and 3 are satisfied even a not so decent looking guy would be an ideal match.

Even after meeting all these ‘crucial selection criteria’, the guy could be a complete nut case(like that dumb colleague of yours in office and might not even come close to your daughter who could be having a great creative side) or could even be a homicidal maniac.

And he could also be a great guy, a perfect match for your daughter. But is this something that can be left to chance? What if he doesn’t turn out to be a great guy but rather seems to be like the former cases.

Still the marriage will seem to be a success but mark my words it will only seem to be a success because we are a society of hypocrites.

What is the definition of success here? As I mentioned earlier the guy would be having a great paying job and the financial security would be in place and there would be a kid too now. So the marriage is a success. Or is it?