1. Drive on the wrong side of the road. Not just that, but I’ll give the eye (and sometimes a mouthful) to the person who is driving in the right direction. Why? Just because he wants to exercise his right and that’s something I don’t appreciate. Afterall, I am the king and all others are wretches, and so I reserve the right to practically own everything that I see, touch or step on.

2. Honk and honk and honk. Especially when there is a traffic jam and I can clearly see that there is not an inch of space to move. Well, for starters: my time is extremely important and it clearly seems that all you people have no work and like to party standing on the road. Move away, otherwise! The horns in my car have the power to blow away vehicles. I just might decide to blow you away.

3. Press the call elevator button while it is already lit. Infact every person who intends to take the elevator must exercise this auspicious act of pressing the poor button (atleast) once before entering it. It’s simple. Ofcourse I have the special power, and when I press that damn button: the elevator travels at twice the speed it would otherwise have had.

4. Push and get into the elevator/metro before people inside it stand any chance of getting out of it. Frankly I can’t see beyond me and it really doesn’t matter if I am making matters inconvenient for everyone including myself. I am OK with it. In all fairness, I am rather doing public service: I know the other guy was supposed to get down at the next station. I am trying to ensure he gets there.

5. Talk on the phone at the top of my voice. While in office. While someone’s sleeping around. While I’m in a theatre. While at someone’s funeral. While in the hospital. While in a meeting. Especially when the signal is low. The loudness carries through further (obviously) than usual thereby negating the low signal strength.

6. Drive slowly in the rightmost lane while speaking on the cellphone. I will prevent accidents by controlling the speed of vehicles moving in the fastest lane. When someone needs space to pass by, point out that there is ample of space on the left side to drive by. The other driver should have been intelligent enough to notice and pass by. I’m not surprised he isn’t.

7. Sticking to driving, believe that female gender is not meant to be good at driving (which is sexist, but true ). And every time I spot a car that is wavering around on the road, I will yell out : ‘Must be a woman driving it’. Then I will reinforce my theory by ensuring it is a woman behind the wheel.

8. At office when I see my team mate talking to a girl, I will go and tell everyone that there is something cooking between the two of them. Then I will patiently wait for my mate to come to back to his seat where I will pull him up and ask random questions infront of a crowd to make him uncomfortable.

9. (Girls) Believe that any guy, who even accidentally has looked at me once in 6 months, must definitely be interested in me. I’ll always believe that I am hot (even though secretly I know that I am not ). I will tell everyone around that the guy keeps checking me out. I will also lie to people that he sent me 11 texts at 11 PM. I will keep looking at him just to reinforce my theory. If our eyes meet once in 100 occasions, I will be happy.

<Yawn>

Make mistakes. Make more than one of them. Make each one atleast and atmost once. Enjoy the experience when you’ve made a mistake. Learn from the mistakes. But most importantly: when you know you’ve done wrong; ask for forgiveness. Ask for forgiveness: from the bottom of  your heart, with the realization of having made the mistake and taking ownership of the experience you have put yourself through. Ask for forgiveness: first from yourself, because unless you readily accept yourself as a person, chances are that no one else would. Ask for forgiveness: second from all those who have suffered because of your mistake. Be sincere about the apology, so that others can’t deny you your right to be forgiven. Now you have a clean slate, go on to make some other mistake. Aajkal to daag bhi achche hote hain, mistakes must also be fun

How many mistakes are you willing to make today?

Cheers!

• Ignore Calls: Nothing beats not answering calls. This is possibly the most essential trait that you must carry. What it does for you is clearly gives out a message to everybody: you are very busy with some official meeting/presentation! Something they wouldn’t really have been able to guess had you received that call. Moreover, when you don’t answer a call, you must also not disconnect the call. Let it ring for as long as it must! You are possibly the most dedicated and single-minded person in the organisation, and you shall not be disturbed from your work by a stupid cellphone. If the person calls repeatedly, you clearly understand that that person has nothing to do, and he just gets a better idea of how busy you are with every call that goes unanswered. Nevermind, if not answering means loss of revenue/opportunity or life/death for someone. You must remain too busy to notice.
• Don’t save any numbers on your cellphone: But just how many calls can you ignore? At some point in time, you will HAVE TO answer one or two! How will you still leverage your way to glory? While it goes without saying that saving the contact numbers of people you do not speak to regularly is a crime, saving the numbers of people you regularly interact with is also very lame. It shows you in a bad light, as a person who has too much time to enter somebody’s details into his phonebook; time that could have been utilized in a much better way by doing some constructive activity. Ofcourse you don’t need to come out looking so lame and meticulous, and hence there must be an unending need to ask the caller ‘Who’s it’ before you go on to say, ‘I’m a bit held up, will call you back’; something that you never shall.
• Make people stand infront of you as you casually enjoy a light-hearted conversation: Now with the cellphone conveniently out of your way, the only way a person can practically reach you is by visiting you to your cabin/cubicle. How do you keep consistency in the messaging of ‘brand you’? Consistent and accurate messaging is very important or else people will get confused and the brand will not really grow to its maximum potential. You just can’t be available with a smile on your face and a willingness to listen to the person. You have got to make the other person feel ‘a little unwelcome’ if not more. Give him a stare, don’t recognize him. Ask for reasons for visiting you before you go ahead to place a call to one of your friends who recently bought a new electronic product. Ask him for reviews about the product as the person stands infront of you tamely looking at you and wishing he had never turned up. Don’t offer him to sit, and he never will!
• Don’t check mails: Extremely crucial to your growth. If you answer emails regularly and consistently, people will feel that you don’t receive too many mails everyday, and hence you probably aren’t the bigshot you aspire people to see you as. You want to be seen as the person who is bombarded with mails, left-right-and-centre. Everyone seeks to put in a mail to you, to get signoffs; for suggestions; for permissions; or just to keep you in the loop. Always remember this rule: the number of unread mails in your inbox is directly proportional to how high you are placed in the organisation structure. So feel free to ignore mails. Start increasing that number. You are a person who, if you started checking and answering all your mails, will not get a single minute to do any ‘real work’, even after putting in twice the number of hours required for the day. This is your chance to show the world how strictly you need a personal assistant who could manage the ‘overheads’ for you. Don’t blow it.
• Agree to a time for a meeting, and then decline the meeting invite: So the organizer was very assertive and its a meeting on an important issue. You just had to agree to a meeting time. You specifically ask the organizer to send a meeting invite to all required for the meeting (including yourself) so that everyone can block their calendars in advance. The organizer just got you to agree to giving time for this meeting, which is a moral victory for him. He thinks he was assertive, but obviously he was very needy and pushy. You must teach him a management lesson that he’ll never forget. So once he sends an invite to everyone required, you decline the meeting invite. He shall be shocked, and then will have to send out a meeting cancellation notification to everybody. You just made him look like a fool, HAHA! You just told him who’s the daddy in this arena. If he still pushes you for another time, do it all again.
• Cancel meetings at the last minute: A person of your stature has bigger and better things to do. And the call of duty might come anytime. You are one of those few who worship work, give it their all. So when duty calls, you can’t refuse. Even if it is a huge convenience to a lot of people. The only thing you can refuse to, is that meeting. Call it off. Give no reason. Off-course they will understand. They have to anyway.
• Reach late for meetings, demand to leave early: Unfortunately, sometimes you will have to turn up for those waste-of-my-time meetings as well. I hope you have applied all the ‘essentials’ listed above to maximize your leverage over others, and passed as much time as you possibly could have. Now it’s time to show your importance and value inside that boardroom. No better way to kick start the process than reaching late. It’s simple math really. Just add 20 minutes to the time of start of the meeting, and you get the time when you should actually leave your seat and head for the meeting. You would’ve received calls in the meantime, which you should have duly ignored. If you receive a call on the way, answer it; and reassure the waiting attendees of your intention to ‘be there’ in 5 minutes. Safely, try and reach in min 10, max 15 minutes. Don’t apologize. Just get started with it. Apologizing is such a waste of time!
• Talk big things: Nevermind if your organization/business unit/horizontal/team is not doing well. Ignore any losses that you’ve been making. Forget about the high levels of attrition that have been historically attributed to your team. Because you know you are the person who will put it right, just like that, whenever you wanted to. You have been safely investing your time in ensuring that the outlook for the future is amazing. ‘That ppt’ must be great. Everything else is secondary. Talk about acquisitions that will help your languishing business do better. Talk about the making the acquisition with the money you don’t have. Talk about how you can leverage the IPRs you can’t get. Talk about latest technology that won’t exist. Plan for the unthinkable, the undoable. Be the torch bearer for everyone else. Point the torch in the wrong direction.
• Agree to figures and estimates only to disagree with them at a bigger platform: The best way to be highly regarded is to make others around you look foolish and belittled. Serve the wrong dish to your competitors/subordinates. If that is way to clear to them, serve the right dish, half-cooked. Give them the go-aheads and signoffs that they require. Feed them inaccurate data, and swear by it. Only when they’re presenting it to a larger audience, agree to disagree. Say you feel that the data is a little off the mark, that your colleague was a little underprepared. Fix the problem then and there by suggesting the right way to look into the situation. Show clarity of thought and leadership. Be both the saviour and the tormentor of the team. The team will hate you, but what the hell: everyone else just sees you as the thought leader that you wanted them to. You have done your job pretty well, my friend.

He probably deserved the Ballon d’Or the first time. But not the second time round. It clearly should’ve gone to either of Xavi or Iniesta. And to consider him as ‘one of the greatest ever’ is something that I really can’t digest. He is yet to prove that he can adapt to different playing styles and different formations and still come out as an effective player who can make things happen on his own. Truly great players do that. He seems to excel only in one formation and style, the Barcelona way. With Xavi and Iniesta supplying him with ammunition and goal scoring chances, which sometimes are, to be honest, harder to miss. And not to forget that UCL apart, he plays in one of the slowest and least physical leagues. The defenders in Spain are just not intimidating enough, and seem to prefer not to make tough challenges. Had he been playing in England, he’d have been cut into half several times every match. We all saw some of that in Barcelona’s infamous UCL clashes with Chelsea. Chelsea defenders scared him to death, tactically suffocated him, fouled him consistently. The only action from Messi that we all remember from that match is him rolling and rolling and rolling on the ground, as if he had been shot! I thought he covered a lot of ground without being on his feet which should be reduced from his ‘distance covered’ stat

He has fared miserably at the international level too. He hasn’t been able to deliver even when the coaches tried to play the same formation as Barcelona, to suit his style and get the best out of him. I guess because he didn’t have Xavi and Iniesta to support him from midfield. And the players who were filling in for them, let’s just say weren’t half as good as them! Couldn’t score a single goal in the entire WC, which was #classicfail at the biggest stage. We’re seeing the same thing happen at the Copa America as well. Argentina is trying to play through to Messi, who has been found missing from the play! Result: Argentina isn’t playing great, and Messi is being heavily criticized. While Xavi and Iniesta were at the heart of the Spanish team that has won just about everything on the international stage recently, a section of Argentina fans want Messi not to play for their team!

Is it a case of attaching too much importance to Messi’s role in the success of Barcelona. 50-odd goals are okay, but the real heart and engine of that team is in the centre of the field, where Xavi and Iniesta dictate and spread play. Without their creativity, Messi’s goals wouldn’t be a possibility. Maybe Messi isn’t as good a player as we all think and believe he is. Maybe he’s fantastic and one of the best in modern times, but he’s not one of the greatest, by a long way. He won’t be until he proves he can be just as good without Xavi and Iniesta supplying. He won’t be until he proves that he can adapt his game to different formations. He won’t be until he can be just as successful for a club that is not Barcelona. He won’t be until he can bring success and joy to Argentina. And if he still wins the Ballon d’Or ahead of Xavi/Iniesta, then all I can say is that he is simply #overrated.

And, if goals are to be considered, I rate Cristiano Ronaldo’s 42 goal season in the Premier League to be a much bigger feat as compared to Messi’s 53 goal season in La Liga, just on the count of the pace, physicality and difficulty level of the EPL. More so, I’d rate Kevin Phillips’ 30 goal season for the newly promoted Sunderland to be a bigger achievement than Ronaldo’s.

]]> http://pspratyush.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/messi-overrated/feed/ 3 pspratyush http://pspratyush.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/many-moments-one-life/ http://pspratyush.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/many-moments-one-life/#comments Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:29:38 +0000 pspratyush http://pspratyush.wordpress.com/?p=578 ]]> We all make decisions everyday. Some decisions are defining that will alter our lives in a particular way- like which city we want to live in, who we want to keep as close friends; some others are fairly routine – like whether we’d like to take tea or coffee on a given day, which seat you want to take (unless you’re Sheldon Cooper!) or about when to write this post (after procrastinating for good two weeks ). We all are adept at making these routine decisions, and while we make most of these routine decisions at a sub-conscious level, life-altering decisions need to be taken at a conscious level. And we all get stuck often while making these decisions, some more so than others. There are times when nothing fits the bill, no path seems right, when we’re muddling in between, at our indecisive best. I’ve had one such situation last month, which has brought me crashing back to humanity, looking for clarity! I’m sure each one of us has had atleast one. We panic, run around looking for a way out, ask for advice, get anrgy-animated-frustrated. No matter how much energy and time we put in, we are unable to turn the corner. All we can do in this situation is to sit back and relax, knowing that the right moment will come and bring clarity and change along with it.

Life is made of moments. A moment of reckoning. A moment of belief. A moment of solidarity. A moment of thoughtlessness. A moment of clarity. A moment of inspiration. A moment of courage. A moment of madness. A moment of disorder. A moment of jealousy. A moment of ecstasy. A moment of honour. A moment of neglect. A moment of pride. A moment of righteousness. A moment of self-control. A moment of disappointment. We all live one or more of these moments everyday. We just don’t pay proper attention to them when they happen. Ever wondered what the value of a moment is?

None, if we don’t recognize the moment and the feeler that life sends along with it. The moment is powerless if we’re not equipped/ready to realize the importance and the weight that it carries. On the other hand, if you look at it from a different perspective, just about everything in this world- good, bad or ugly; can be narrowed down to have been born out of a moment. A moment is a powerful, empowering tool if we can elevate ourselves from the depths of sub-consciousness to a state of consciousness and awareness. Awareness is the key here, to realize and recognize the moment when it happens, to absorb the energy that it carries, to understand the gravity and impact, to focus on gaining momentum on the way ahead  and to reflect the learning drawn from that moment through actions. That’s when the war begins. That’s when the things change. All it takes is one moment.

One moment. One moment changes everything.

One moment, and things will never be the same again.

That’s all it takes. One moment.

And in that observation did this trend occur to me. The younger generation lacks respect and etiquette. Or maybe it has something to do with the NCR region. I am not sure. But what I am sure of is what I have seen just about every single time I have boarded the metro. I have seen youngsters sitting quite comfortably, while the elderly stand looking for a seat right infront of their eyes. I have seen them rush to take the seats marked for elderly/physically handicapped/females even when they have seen the rightful people approaching for the same seats. Not once have I seen a young guy (or an old one) offer his seat to the fellow elderly/females standing right infront of him. For them, the best strategy is to look away. Plain, simple, uncomplicated and to be honest, effective as well. All that and yet not the right thing to do. And as it is, I am always concerned with what the right thing to do is.

Let’s take this situation into perspective. I am sure none of us would like to see a situation in which the elders or females from our family have to stand, despite having a seat marked for them, while young people like me and you are comfortably sitting throughout the journey. I am sure we’ll feel appalled by anyone who does not have the basic courtesy to get up and offer his seat to them. And yet, most of us don’t do the same when we are on the other side of the equation. You reap as you sow. Its as simple as that. So why not make it a point and start being more courteous and well mannered, to always try to do the right thing? Why do we always look at others to set an example? The onus is on you to be the change that you want to see around you. Show others some light, and even if one of them follows, you are more than successful. Let’s get the law of karma rolling!

And before I end this short post, I’d like to take this opportunity to take a pot-shot on a certain ‘baba’ who apparently has huge fanfare wherever he goes, and is fighting a losing battle for the country; again apparently . Not that it matters anyway. I don’t want to get into a discussion of who’s right and who’s wrong in the entire episode, all I want is to give my opinion on one thing. ‘Baba’, what kind of a person are you for you to ask for women, children and elderly to be the first layer of security for you? I mean, seriously? You expect them to defend you and not the other way round? That’s good strategy, for then you’d be able to claim how the police was brutal against the helpless. Good, but that’s pure shamelessness.

Cheers!!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,300 times in 2010. That’s about 13 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 21 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 27 posts. There were 94 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 21mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was November 16th with 140 views. The most popular post that day was L.I.M.E. – Kick-off and First Half!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, orkut.co.in, twitter.com, indiblogger.in, and orkut.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for pratyush shastri, pratyush shastri blog, shivpriya chaturvedi, complex search algorithm, and deepak bunde.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

L.I.M.E. – Kick-off and First Half! November 2010
3 comments

More About Me February 2010
11 comments

About Me August 2009
5 comments

The most complex search algorithm ever April 2010
7 comments

A Year of Giving January 2010
16 comments

There are some ‘not great’ professors. Then there are ‘average’ professors. Then much further beyond there are ‘great’ professors who have a cult following and are classified as studs. But there are only a few that could be handpicked to be classified as the ‘Studdest of all Professors’. In this post, we’re talking about one such professor. A professor who has unfinished business with the ‘soap-shampoo-kutte ke biscuit’ jobs chasing student population. A professor who brings along with him a burning desire to change the mindsets of his pupils, to install a completely new thought process amongst them, to help them view this world from a very different perspective. Talk to him about any damn thing in this world, and you will realize he has well defined opinions on every subject and his opinions run deeper than most oceans!

He’s different. You’ll realize it when you see him for the first time. You’ll keep on realizing it till the time he takes his last lecture. You’ll find him standing alone in a corner, far away from the academic block, having a smoke, listening to his iPod.  Wearing a pair of denims, a worn out black jacket, a completely bald look with heavy mustache, whistling away. You will hardly believe he is actually a professor, and that’s where you are getting yourself prepared to be taken to the cleaners!! And when he takes you to the cleaners in the classroom, with all your classmates laughing so hard that they could choke themselves, you too will be forced to smile at the proceedings. He will say the randomest things you wouldn’t have ever thought of, crack the craziest statements that will put you into splits; and still be 100% logical. He will give you names, change your gender, get sarcastic to an extent that you won’t like and sometimes he will get personal too; but you can still sense the logic he wants you to be able to see! All that logic and yet his email address is on the domain ‘luckfogic.com’; Supercoolness Personified! And not just this, like a true gentleman, he ensured that a participant with cramped leg was carried to and from the class in a car. And just one fine day, when I could not stop coughing, he came over to me and made me take a throat relaxant.

Anyway. This post it only meant for some of the awesomest statements he made in reply to some statements made by my classmates in the Service Marketing lectures. Here they are!

• Who is going to reply/retweet saying ‘Prill use karke bada mazaa aaya’! - Twitter as a medium for marketing, anyone?
• There are a bunch of people who might get turned on by it and carry Prill in their pockets! - There’ll still be takers!
• Tell me; can’t you use social media for selling dhaniya? – More about social marketing.
• Soon you’d want to do after sales service for soap!
• To a participant from another section who came to submit his assignment:
  • You don’t want to come inside?
  • Sir, I have already attended this session with my section
  • Toh kya hua, dubara attend karlo! (At this point, the participant had already begun running away )

• You have to bow infront of the classroom PC before it starts working. - The classroom computer needs worshipping!
• Arey tumne uski gaadi ka kaanch foda to wo tumhare baap ke paas hi jayega na, aur tumhare pitaji thodi kahenge ki usi ko kaho maine to nahi foda. - Sometimes you need to take an entirely different route to explain a particular logic
• That’s what happens when you concentrate too much on soap and shampoo. - To a participant who is losing hair by the day.
• You of all people shouldn’t be talking about shampoo. -To the same person.
• Wo usko dekho, kahi wo marr to nahi gaya. - Pointing towards a certain person who was dozing off in the class. Yes, me
• Trust me, when the author names start with K, D, O, X, Z , I; those journals are always unreadable. Oh the authors of this journal are &%( and &^((, this one is fraud for sure!
• When you buy a 4 bedroom house you don’t keep on sleeping in different bedrooms alternatively. – Use of alternative logic, yet again
• Yeah, the postman will come to your place to deliver the newspapers, milk and bread; move on to do laundry, housekeeping and then also deliver the letters. – Futuristic eh?
• So those electrical sockets make you feel like you’re a foreigner in your own country? - Killer one-tight-slap statement.
• Rajnikant was born on 30th February and after that they took it off the calendar. Even the closest date comes once in 4 years!
• In a bank there’s paper everywhere except the toilet. - True isn’t it?
• By your logic, why have IIM Indore and why have IIM Kozikode? Combine them and have IIM Nagpur! - And that’s why Maggi has two variants in Cuppa Mania
• You know what, that is a widows peak. – Pointing towards one of the participants. And he then moved on to do a google picture search and show the entire class what it really meant, see Jude Law’s picture after searching.
• You want to drive at 200 kmph and yet you have bought a bloody Maruti! – One-tight-slap statement made to me when I was complaining about Reliance Smart’s GPRS services.
• And the best one for the last! I bought a bullet from my first salary. As soon as I reached home my neighbour came to me and said:
  • Neighbour : Kitne ki hai?
  • Stud Prof: 52000 ki
  • Neighbour : Isme to 2 Kinetic aa jati
  • Stud Prof: Tune ek 24 saal ki ladki se shaadi kyu kari, 6 saal ki 4 ladkiyo se kar leta!

This is only from the last few sessions from my section. Please feel free to contribute the ones I have missed! Post them as comments.