Free Will

For ages, people have fought for freedom from external influences. Erstwhile colonial powers have been staved off by men who have exalted the importance of having the freedom to think, live and act freely. But have we ever paused for a moment and asked ourselves, are we really free? Unless you are one of the lead characters from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', the answer would be anybody's guess!

It starts from the time a fetus is allowed to see the light of the day only when the laws of nature provide consent. At times, some are not even fortunate to do so! Later, as a child, we are brought up with the expectation to conform to the world which has already been created. Then comes the stage where the rules dictate us to chose not beyond a set of 'sanctioned' occupations, raise a family, retire after a certain age and finally draw a close post a period of emotional, mental and physiological decadence. Unfortunate but true, the circle of life doesn't concede any leeway at all!

Au contraire, there are people who, in pursuit of the elusive intellectual independence, embark on a journey of creative pursuits like fine arts, debating over incomprehensible ideas and then celebrating their illusory achievements by plunging into an endless spree of eating, drinking and merry making. While conferring themselves with titles of cerebral supremacy, they lose track of their destination. In reality, they are a species constantly on the verge of self extinction.

What binds us all is the fact that we think we have free will, yet we move like automaton. Our incessant craving for freedom is what makes us exactly the opposite, creatures of slavery!

The defeaning silence at the crossroad

"Have I lost my way?" I ask myself without expecting an answer. The truth however is that you cannot lose your way while waiting at a crossroad. Can you? Any road you take leads you to somewhere. Then is it that I have intentionally wanted to lose my way all along? Do I really want to unravel the truth which I seek? We all live in the constant fear of finding out the ultimate truth of our own lives. The question that I ask myself is: Do I really want to cross the road? Or just like everyone else, am I more comfortable with questions than I am with answers!

Children and Innovation

"Why can't we have taxis which fly in the air to beat traffic congestions?"..."Why don't we put up our own Sun in the sky to provide us with light during the night?". Irrational as these statements might sound yet children somehow always have a solution to every issue plaguing our planet! It's only as we grow up that we learn to brand certain problems as unsolvable. Or rather we are taught to accept certain situations and move on. Little do we realize that had inventors from the pages of history not thought as incoherently as these toddlers do, we might still have been living in caves!

We all agree that to survive in this overtly competitive and information leveraged hyper dynamic market, organizations need to 'innovate' continuously. The past decade has in fact seen the word 'innovation' taking a Neil Armstrong like leap from being protectively used as a management jargon to being rebranded as the master key to all organizational issues. In reality though the word has rather been used, misused, overused and at times even abused in every single boardroom meeting. So as we spend billions of $ in framing and implementing (and faltering on most occassions!) innovation programs', let's ask ourselves a grassroot question: What exactly is innovation?

The answer lies in the way we look at things. The way we challenge the status quo. Give a pencil to a grown up and he'll either use it to scribble something or use it as a makeshift ear bud or migght do something even more unparliamentary. But give the same pencil to a three year old and observe carefully. He'll imagine it to be an airplane and fly it with indefatigable vigour for hours on the trot. He'll hold it upright and imagine it to be a skyscraper taller than even those found in Dubai or Taipei. Let him have it for some more time and he'll come up with many possibilities that we grown ups usually categorize as incongruous. This very act of perceiving the unimaginable out of something as mundane as a pencil is innovation. The ability to dream of the unexplored, as unfounded as it might be, is innovation. And didactic as it might sound, let's never forget that it's those amongst these children who retain their irrationality are the ones who're going to be the innovators of tomorrow!

The question of nothingness!

This blog exists for you because you can see it. Because you can make an attempt to comprehend it. But what if it wouldn't have existed? What if the screen you're staring into right now wouldn't have existed too? What if YOU wouldn't have existed? What if no life would have ever existed anywhere in the whole universe? Or for that matter, what if even this universe wouldn't have ever existed? Exactly WHAT would have existed then? And where would have that "nothing" existed (given that there would've been no universe in the first place)? How big or small would have this "nothing" been? And lastly, is THIS the limit of human imagination?

The shrinking lifecycle of brands

10 years back we all swore by MSN and Yahoo search. Have you ever wondered how these two giant brands were so effortlessly overshadowed by Google? So much so that the word "Google" has started to gain acceptance in being used as a verb synonymous with web search! Google stuck to the old fashioned textbook style of making a strong product speak for itself and came up trumps. And in what way! But what's noteworthy is a gradually increasing trend of mammoth e-brands having an ever decreasing shelf life. In fact this trend can also be comfortably extrapolated to brick and mortar brands too. Look at Motorola. A decade back it was the leader in handheld phones and commanded the lions share in the market. Then one fine day a rubber manufacturer from a nondescript Finnish town(Nokia) decided to foray into the market and again in the space of a decade another bigwig brand was reduced to an almost rubble. Point to ponder is whether this trend is dangerous or encouraging to new age marketing specialists. A quarter of a century back things were seemingly easier. Create a strong product, market it well enough to create a differentiating brand and add a few small stitched up innovations in time to keep it alive for perhaps half a century or more. Look at brands like Maggi(Nestle), Surf/Rin/Nirma, Kissan(Jam, Ketchup etc.), Ambassador(Car) - they've all stuck to the age old formula and have thrived in the domestic market for decades on the trot. But all rules were turned headlong with the advent of the information age. The tried and tested formulae of elongating the lifecycle of super brands have rudely gone for a vicious toss. There's a constant trepidation that what you brand as a superbrand today might as well be gone for ever tomorrow. So as we keep ourselves occupied with the hunt for a key to evade this blink and you miss phenomena, let's have a minute's silence for all brands which have died an untimely death in this e-age!

Moonlight becomes her!

Radiant stares of a delicately treasured bronze eye
Captures a glistening star as it lingers in the sky
Her soul silently levitating in the vastness of the night
In a shape that shifts the darkness, as moonlight becomes her!

Thin sunbeam satin strands, lightly dust her skin
Full luscious lips, highlight the slightest dimple of a grin
Her beauty a fascinating portrait, from hair line to chin
In a shape that shifts the darkness, as moonlight becomes her!

Chilled winds lightly blowing, enlarge the peaks of her breasts
Igniting a flaming fire, housed deep within the halls of her chest
Expanding the nightlike blackened walls, becoming darkness' sweet caress
In a shape that shifts the darkness, as moonlight becomes her!

The shadows light, delicately bouncing off the wavering of her curves
Tracingly devouring the shallow hollows and rounded swerves
Licking up every droplet of her skins dampened preserves
In a shape that shifts the darkness, as moonlight becomes her!

A mirage of perfection, hovers distantly in the night
Highlighted by the earth's glow and the darkness' ray of light
A chameleon of pleasure locked away from every man's sight
In a shape that shifts the darkness, as moonlight becomes her!

Thank you is all I can say..!! :-)

The complicated chemistry of human preferences!

Nothing lasts forever. Nothing. It's a strange coincidence of sorts that some things which exhaust faster than others are the very ones we treasure the most. Contrarily, things towards which we have an aversion to surprisingly seem to drag on till perpetuity! Or is it just the other way round? Are nice things nice only because they conclude quickly?

But why do all good things necessarily have to have an end? Is it a mere celestial quirk to make us realize the importance of appreciating the worth of good things? What if we try really hard enough to make a cherishable experience last for ever? To think of it, even if we are successful in doing so, would a contaminated sense of euphoria assured by its everlasting nature be worth it? To be more overt, the deep inner craving for the unattainable is precisely what makes it seem so good to us!

So is there a way to escape this complex maze of human desires? There must be. But would it really be worth leading a life with nothing to yearn for? Aren't unfulfilled dreams the reason which make us want to witness the tomorrow? Even if we do fall short, it's the possibility of this tomorrow becoming a memorable yesterday is that what makes every moment of our lives worth living!


This time around I haven't got anything to say..We would be fools not to know, that silence does like a cancer grow!..