An excerpt from Shantaram

“The soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can’t be stilled.

One of the reasons why we crave love and seek it so desperately is that love is the only cure for loneliness and shame and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.”

Good bye old friend....

One of the greatest phenomenons of our time has finally come to an end. “Harry Potter”... nothing I write would suffice to say what a profound place it held in my life… Well I have to say good bye anyhow…. So well here are the se7en things I’d like to say for you dear friend:

1. I know it’s a fantasy but how I wish to live in a constant repudiation of the prosaic reality in favor of this fantasy!!!!!

2. If it were all for real, then the one person I’d have liked to be…would be Severus Snape. Harry and Voldemort come at a close second. However if asked to select and idol.. I think I’ll have to go with Harry -:D

3. Hermione is the best friend, Dumbledore the greatest mentor and McGonagall the best teacher one can ever have… and anyone would be lucky to have brothers like Fred and George, parents like Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Godfather like Sirius and a Ginny to love -:P.

4. The bonds with all these characters run so deep that when some of them died, it felt as if an integral part of my own existence had been lost.

5. It is painful to realize that it has finally come to an end, that there is no more magic to look forward to. Well I bade you a poignant farewell guys.

6. Harry Potter’s been one of the closest friends I ever had. I just hope my love for you never fades, and I take it with me to the very end.

7. And at last Thank You J.K.Rowling, for giving us Harry Potter. It truly was a magical experience growing up with him. It’s an honor to have lived in a time when Harry Potter was written and published. -:)

This one seriously is NERDY.. :P :D

Our actions, decisions, thoughts go a long way. Even the tiniest of effort on our part may have a profound effect on the entire system. I say this in the wake of a realization that why it is that we do what we do at my internship in my department. I always thought it had something to do with increased productivity, but well that was more wrong than right. Though increased production will be an outcome in the long run, work measurement is basically intended to bring about a balance in the activities. Work measurement of a process gives out the entire work content of that process in terms of time taken(including allowances for fatigue etc.) for a qualified worker to do that job given he were doing it all alone. Now that might look a bit absurd at the beginning for in an industry never is a process, a one man activity. But then this time content gives the production department a general idea as to how many men are required to do that activity if the cycle time for that process were fixed, while ensuring maximum involvement of every single person involved in the process for that cycle. This is of significant consequence when that process is one of many on an assembly line, for the lack of proper manpower allocation for every single station may result in an imbalance b/w the cycle times of various activities taking place on the line. This in turn will lead to regular stoppages of the line which would then result in a delayed production. Now all that jargon later what I mean to put forth is that, work measurement verifies the demand for manpower made by various departments. So we see that a thing as simple and mundane as time study to measure the work content of a process, can lead to a person securing or not securing a job. Now one job is of no serious consequence to an entire plant but for that particular individual it might as well be the means of providing for a family who have no one else to look up to save him.

Now that is thinking a bit on the extremes but it’s possible nevertheless and though this realization doesn’t change the fact that work measurement is a highly boring job and I wouldn’t do it given other options, it does bring out a certain appreciation for the fact that our actions might have an effect, way far-reaching than we can imagine.

On a side note though I know it all looks very nerdy but then a very nice person whom I’ve known for quite some time now, said to me once that it’s your blog. So does it matter what others think of what you write there? :P :P