Return of the dragon

after a long time, am returning to blogging.
i've changed jobs, had a daughter and a whole lot of things.The job is not as much fun as Lintas, but, i am so glad about a couple of things:
1. There's tons of work
2. this place is so close to home

Am trying to balance work and home, and, managing ok, now if only i could do something about my craving for sweets, and drive myself to walk everyday.

went for my brother amit's wedding. i desperately wanted to see my village again and did manage to get a couple of days there. I loved being there, but after i saw the state of our old house, i literally cried a lot. Its totally ruined, and it hurts so much to see the place of so many childhood dreams crumble in the manner it is crumbling. time can be cruel and so can human beings

i guess this is the way things happen in the world - the old order changeth yielding place to new....

it is sad to lose one's childhood memories this way. wil write more soon

Gaming and risque games

I love small time gaming - the arcade variety or the sports variety on the computer.Anyone who has met me will vouch that i am way too unfit to be playing any actual physical games beyond tt and pool i usually play on miniclip and zapak. years back, when the internet gaming phenomena was just starting and we were still happy with the pacman variety, among the initial sites was c2w and Hungama.com they would provide brand related games for the consumer to play and win small prizes like a t-shirt, cap etc as more people got onto the site, my winnings started reducing and i stopped visiting the sites. Recently, i rediscovered my fondness through miniclip. Among the banners on miniclip i found the banner for various games on c2w. The games had changed to games about stealing a kiss from a girl on a class bench, or passion during pizza making with some pamela anderson clone hardly the kind of games that i have known on this site. this is definetely not the kind of sites that i would encourage my child to go onto. is this the kind of games i want to play? have we lost the essence of a good game? or am i too old to enjoy these things? i dont know, but i still believe that we need to take a call on whether we want to encourage such games. I am not saying that we need to ban such sites. some artist had said, praise me, abuse me, but, please dont ignore me

maybe its time we started to discourage such games by ignoring them? till the next time then...

The start

You remember the opening lines of Star Trek : " Space the final frontier, these are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise...."

I am new to blogging. Initially I was inherently concerned about my personal thoughts being read by anyone, but then I have always believed that all new experiences should be tried atleast once. If it is good and stays with you, good for you, if it doesnt, put it down as experience

One good thing about blogging - it attracts both the young (my bachcha Vipul) and the Old (sorry Lynn)

Actually to be fair, this is one of the few things where i have been inspired by Lynn DeSouza my erstwhile boss at Lintas. Lynn and I are very different in our approach to most things in life. People talk about generation gaps being about a decade or two, but Lynn and I are seperated by eras

We have seldom agreed on anything in life (unless i have first been beaten black and blue by her), and have seldom understood each other (she must be taking a sigh of relief on this), but, she has been my big boss for the longest tenure of my 11 year+ career

I read the blogs of some people whose links are there on Lynn's page and observed how people use blogs - as a marketing and positioning tool. Lynn, appreciate your straight from the heart approach

Other people whose blogs i would like to read - Sunil Maloo (the boss who I respect the most and would work for anyday), Praveen Tripathi (am sure his blog would have timings post 12 noon and pre 4am only :-)), Amit Ray ( a mind without boundaries, whose canvas has always been so much bigger than anything i thought) and Raj Gupta (a brilliant distiller of ideas) to name a few

To end my first post, let me go to the real reason for blogging,

It is in the hope that someday my daughter (and hopefully the young one round the corner) will read about what their father thought. Remember the song (Ek Din Bit Jayega, Maati ke Mol, Pal Mein Reh Jayenge, Pyaare Tere Bol...). Raj Kapoor, here's looking at you...

Leadership - lessons learned

Today i failed in my first step as a leader. I didnt get 2 people who i care a lot for to buy into what i wanted to do. it hurt. especially since i did think that i could rely on them otherwise. that got me thinking - what is a leader? i remembered a definition of leadership - it is the ability to get someone to do what you want them to do while they think they are doing what they want but this is not my idea of leadership - i believe a leader is the person who you turn to when you need guidance - a thought leader. all others are merely facilitators. if that is the role of a leader, maybe i still am one. am feeling quite sleepy now but will return to take this thought forward