A 'Serif' existence!

116 smiling faces :-) 24 th Dec. 5.30am: Nokia 73 hollers it’s time to wake up. I am breathing Zzzzzz…. into my wife’s unwilling ear. After a ten minute struggle to freeze time, I give up. The Art of Living Advanced course starts today and the reporting time is 6.30 am. Half-asleep, I rustle up my favourite cup of tea and try to read the newspapers. There is yet another rape somewhere, yet another corruption case and yawn, yet another box item on Mahendra Singh Dhoni. What will happen to the world if Dhoni is out of the team for two matches? Will the heavens fall? Will ESPN and NEO Cricket shut shop? What will Dhoni eat for breakfast when he is not in the team? Wow. Dhoni matters even if he is not in the team. I braved all hurdles to the venue: which was primarily crossing the indomitable main road in front of IIT main gate in one piece. After the registration formalities, I entered the hall. It was just what I had seen the last time I had been to Shet...

A headache in the pocket: Why i love my gmail ! First of all, the disclaimer: Any Resemblance to Actual Events or Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental. A few months back, my doctor shared one 'experience' with me. He started having chest pain and went for a check up. In an era, when even a patient with a running nose is also asked to go for full body MRI, my doctor (in his unfamiliar position on the other side of the fence) was also asked to some tests. A week later, doctors couldn't find out what is causing the chest pain. Then he met a smart cookie, who asked him what is kept in the shirt pocket. Then the bulb lit up like we see in Tintin comics....Eureka!!! He was keeping his mobile in his shirt pocket! My Doctor stopped keeping his mobile phone anywhere near his chest and the pain vanished like "select-all-delete" in Photoshop! And everyone lived happily ever after! Cut to: Yours truly, an avid nokia user and mobile phone lover, experienced a bit of ...

Recently I learned a very valuable lesson on the value of time. I happened to read a letter written by Dr. Sunil, an NRI, a classmate and friend of my brother. Dear Dr. ......, I would like to document some of the ayurvedic recipes developed by my grandmother for common medical problems. She has done a considerable amount of work in the area of natural medicine and handed over all the data to my mother. I would like you to discuss this with my mother in detail and work on a project to make a documentary film on this topic. Please give me the details of time required, total cost etc. I am enclosing a demand draft of $ .............. for your valuable time needed at this initial stage of the project. Please let me know the time required there to encash this so that I can plan all future payments according to that. This letter, dated some time in 2003, showed a very serious acknowledgment of the time taken by a person to finish a task. Dr. Sunil later told me that it is a way of life in...

Lifetime validity: dead or alive? There are so many offers from mobile phone service providers which offer "Lifetime" validity of a new phone connection. They say that you can receive calls for a "lifetime", without charging your prepaid account. Happy and impressed customers flocked to get these schemes. You pay the minimum initial activation fee, a minimal top up and there you go! we can receive calls for a lifetime! We never thought about this question: Whose "Lifetime" are they talking about? 1. "Lifetime" of the person who takes the prepaid connection? 2. "Lifetime" of the company who sells the account? 3. "Lifetime" of the mobile phone instrument? 4. "Lifetime" of the man who owns the mobile company? If the answer is 1. then how will the company know when a customer is dead? Confusion at its best. I asked many of my friends this question, no body knew. Then I came across Mr. Hebatpuria, our Reiki Master who gav...