From Hindu Rate of growth to entrepreneurship: an indian story

Dear Sleepfulls,

Another night and i cant sleep.as i walk down the Worli sea face i can hear the rumblings of a Train moving across my mind..a Train journey that wasnt like a Train journey, that wasnt like going from place A to place B , that was more about Travelling, about the journey than the destination, a train to Discover myself, a train to reach me..

, it started with a few creative individuals of the suburban ilk planning an experiment that could become the beginning of a profound change in India..

In a small, inspiring and unnoticeable lane at Prabhadevi , Mumbai Swapnil kant dixit, an IItian and an architect sleeps less than 5 hrs a day to finalise the move plan, adjoining him is Revathi working for the last sixteen hrs on coffee, hope and unflinching enthusiasm to chaffe through the thousands of applications received from the would be Yatris!

On 25 dec, 1997 a bunch of idealists, a group of optimists, a number of pragmatists, a few evolutionists, one stupid epistemologist, a team of entrepreneurs and a whole lot of motivated, talented indians set forth from the precincts of Bombay Central Railway Station on a train journey, a yatra, a sabbatical called Azad Bharat Rail Yatra . It was a Journey that was to take them across the length and breadth of India with a five point agenda to work through on the India they would experience, a journey as much into geography, culture and religion as through ideas, hope and innovation.

From 25 Dec to 15 Jan, the Yatris marched forward into the hinterlands of India, discovering, debating, exploring, realizing, meeting obscured heroes and forgotten martyrs. for some it was an adventure, for some an evolution, for quite a few a life changing experience, and for some a turning point of their lives.

And on 26 jan 1998 while India had finished celeberating fifty years of independence , this bunch of idealists wrote a new constitution for India and dedicated it to the vision that they saw on the train.

Come 2008 and a motley group of interesting and intelligent people are working round the clock to embark on an Azad Bharat Rail Yatra Part II, now called Jagriti Yatra. While Azad Bharat Rail Yatra was about discovering our motherland, Jagriti Yatra is about nurturing and healing the wounds that we discovered , about taking our country forward, about the way ahead.

While the Hindu Rate of growth may be a thing of past now yet indians have begin to understand that as we continue to be called one of the Asian Power house Economies, this growth and its benefits can only boil down to sustainable development when more and more educated people passing out from our universities take to entrepreneurship which has many names in India like the Jugaad of Bhopal, the kahin ki eent kahi ka rora-bhanumati ne pitaara joda popular saying, the ubiquitous grandma’s home remedies, the Indian mechanic’s self styled engine works and numerous other local variants where indians are known to be innovative, cost cutting and reliable !

As an economy we are making the large jump from a society to a Knowledge society and entrepreneurship is the launch pad on which we have to stand . Jagriti Yatra aims to do just that ..its central theme is “promoting entrepreneurship among youth in india”. one can read more about it at www.jagritiyatra.com .

While our prime minister smiles cheek to cheek getting the us congress’s nod and moves ahead with the france deal, while sleepless , young men with a wrongly wired head plot bombs in our capital, while china spacewalks silencing many a western experts on its so called over ambitious space programme, while all our uniformed bretherns worry over the 6th pay commission swapnil, revathi, shashank , raj and a few others continue to work silently…

The harbingers of change, the messengers of growth and the silent doers of a sleepless, restless mumbai..

sleepless mind’s ten unblocking tricks

dear sleepfulls,

while i remain sleepless in mumbai i watch the blocks clear from my mind. when you are wide awake in the middle of night nothing is unaccessible..nothing is unworthy..nothing is sinful..in darkness there are no road blocks, no boundaries, no perimeter fences of minds..
an awake, sleepless mumbai grants acceptance to all..maulvis, marauders, moralists, maimed, mighty, mute, mirthful and mirthless..there are just no boundaries..
walking on the worli sea face i hear the restless sea calling, playing, splashing its waves against the walls of my sleeping conscience, drowning the smallness of my existence under the explosion of its contemptuous roar..
suddenly a text..
“sandy, they have blocked orkut here..sys admin playing the RSS ! can you help?”
deafening splashes against the sleeping conscience..
i will. dear snigdha..16 year old kid sister needs a cyber avatar to eliminate the cyber asurs
let there be no blocked sites, no unaccessible knowledge, no blocks..let the boundaries dissolve in the splashing, roaring worli sea..

takes me 21 mins, 23 secs and three lukewarm cups of coffee on the newbie google chrome to salvate snigdha..she is ecstatic..so is radha, priya, anushka, the whole bunch of girls at the hostel..poor sys admin..here are the tricks to annihiliate the rest of the asurs out there !

1. UltraSurf
UltraSurf ,a software product for Internet anti-censorship. It enables users inside countries with heavy Internet censorship to visit any public web sites in the world safely and freely. It enables users to browse any website freely just the same as using the regular browser while it automatically searches the highest speed proxy servers in the background.
2. GPass
Hide your IP address during web surfing. Support streaming audio/video, email, instant messaging, download managers, etc. Break through Internet blocking. Easy-to-use graphical user interface.
3. FreeGate
FreeGate an anti-censorship client software for a secure and faster internet. Users access web sites overseas as fast as their local ones. no installation or change in system setting. FreeGate works together with DynaWeb, a P2P-like proxy network system.
4. Garden GTunnel
GTunnel a Windows application that works as a local HTTP or SOCKS proxy server. After setting proxy to GTunnel in web browser or other Internet applications, the traffic will go through GTunnel and our server farm before it reaches its original destination.

5. JAP

JAP makes it possible to surf the internet anonymously and unobservably. Instead of connecting directly to a webserver, users take a detour, connecting with encryption through several intermediaries, so-called Mixes. JAP uses a predetermined sequence for the mixes. Such a sequence of linked mixes is called a Mix Cascade. Users can choose between different mix cascades.

6. Your Freedom
Your Freedom services makes accessible what is unaccessible to you, and it hides your network address from those who don’t need to know. It turns your own PC into an uncensored, anonymous web proxy and an uncensored, anonymous SOCKS proxy that your applications can use, and it can even get you connected to the Internet just as if you were using an unrestricted DSL or cable connection.

7. Hopster
Hopster is all about open, safe and uncensored internet access. At home, schools, universities and offices worldwide, even in countries where Freedom of Speech is a political challenge. Hide your real IP address and protect yourself from nosy people and wannabe-hackers.

8. Freenet
Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack.

9. Tor
Tor is a software project that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

10. HotSpot Shield
HotSpot Shield creates a secure virtual private network (VPN) over your connection allowing you to bypass any ISP firewalls and lets you visit even those websites which are blocked by your ISP. It can also be used to visit those websites which are specifically meant for US users e.g. Pandora, Hulu etc.
These Tools will surely help to all those who are not able to access Blocked site in their offices or schools.
[Source : sizlopedia.com]

yada yada hi site block karmansay,
glani na bhavati akhand vishwahe,
unblocking sites se dharmasay,
ope source suwah surjyam waha… meaning..

when, when, there will be sites blocked in this world,
and it will become full of such sys admins who will block sites guiltlessly,
a new breed of developers will take birth and slain them with their open source softwares..always..always !

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ONE NIGHT @ BORED.COM

It was a beautiful day with hope and promise strewn by warm sunshine and lukewarm coffee with just the right sugar but i was bored. 

like sun coming out in london suddenly today i had a visitor too. suddenly and without notice. almost quietly and sheepishly. it hung around the collars of my white shirt till it tainted my heart and then just stayed.

boredom visited me at 7:15 am sharp, this saturday morning ..7:15 am, a schooleable, sociable, goable, doable time . i had just got up and looked at it. it wasnt even looking at me. restlessly restless restlessness was absent from my pillow’s side but there was boredom.

funny it paid me a visit but didnt bother to even look at me. it looked away all the time. looked everywhere but me..then why visit me? sometimes some questions just dont have some answers..may be i am always looking for questions to answers which i have..i just need the questions..answers are all there..

sleepfulls asked me what was the matter?..

“i have a visitor but he wont talk to me”

“whose he? may be did not come to see you..may be you are forcing your way on him”!

sometimes life just stops. void fills up your room rather than sunshine.they advised me to fill up the void , to engage myself to drive away boredom.i could have more guests.i could get up and brush my teeth, go to my job, call up my gal, connect to mozilla firefox or i could just watch some tv..

i didnt do anything. i accepted boredom.i felt it, touched it and tried to look at it. it wasnt bad looking and it had an interesting face. i thought it looked just like me and gungun said it looked just like her. funny it looked like anyone and everyone.

we have been sitting for more than an hour when it noticed me and said something. like slow, lazy, random ripples reflecting the distant hills on the solitary lake surface near bhimtaal, nainital the words reached me.i felt so alive. so real.never felt like this for years.

perhaps boredom isnt so bad, perhaps life isnt about entertaining ourselves all the time, when i am bored i am with myself. in moments of boredom i can hear the distant calls of my true nature. i come close to myself.i come close to life, close to the voices playing in my head.

its a unique gift of being a human being, a power, a luxury unknown to animals who merely survive.we are the only species that gets bored.

its a beginning of something creative inside us, its the start of a new order, its a germination of new ideas, its a moment of vital importance, its a moment of creation.lets celeberate boredom. lets accept it and talk to it. may be have a round of lukewarm coffee with it..who knows it might be the beginning of something great.

sleepless with boredom at crossroads..

PS- MY VISITOR LIKED MY COFFEE AND VISITS ME QUITE OFTEN NOW. WE TALK…

                             Of   Kites ,  Kali  and  Mc Donald’s……

 

Years of  solitude… ages of mediocrity…times of Solitary existence, India has seen all. An old land which lives on religion ,mysticism and the realms of unpredictability.

A land charmed by someone unknown ,from  another world  who promised it eternal life and  bountiful dreams but left the people gaping upwards , never to return. 5000 years… millions of eyes waiting…

somehow.. something..

Human beings besmalled by Gods. The country of small existences, of small aspirations, of small things and of small efforts .

Jingle Bells…Jingle Bells…

Its people who dream of unending wealth , golden birds and fountain of  happiness, a suffused night  but

wretched mornings..

 Of  Pink  Palaces ,exquisite caves and silk embroideries and ugly brown hats, stench filled rooms and ruined slums.

Of  imperial legacies which sneer with lavishness and erudition and native pride which maintains them to this day.

Of dark  skimpy children with feverish hopes and monsooned  bodies ,staring at the English man  clicking

on and on at the Taj, on buffaloes in the maroons of Bihar  mimicking the Air India  747  from Calcutta to Patna.

Of 5 year  old Ramu  and his tiny paper boat in the dockyards of Vishakapatnam…

Of changes now dynamic, deep and fundamental

Of  turbulence seeping into Indians.

Of  heightened dreams of dreamers.

                        Jingle bells…Jingle bells

India now.., of material ideals, of  dollars and credit cards..

Of silicon senses and sky scrapers. Of 15 year olds with PC’s , pagers…of feminine charms and freedom.

Of small town girls with a bank balance, a non marital existence and Cielos..

And yet of hopes, changes..

Now or Never .Believe me .

India is now 50 years old not 5000 years .

            India is change, India is free and yet i am restless and sleepless…

LIFE = P like square

DEAR sleepfulls,

“like” is the universal operator of our lives. its a universal constant which is true for anyone regardless of his point of reference. its almost an apriori axiom. here is the GENEREAL THEORY OF LIKE-LIFEVITY-

LIFE x LIKE OPERATOR = LIFE AS WE DESIRE

like started making me restless sixteen years back. till then it was my escape, my new found freedom to twist the world and everything into it in simple aphorisms, i played like -like all the times..life is like this, snehal is like that, love is like this, pain is like that…i was like “liked”.

but one likeable night i stopped sleeping. it was like sleepless only it wasnt like sleepless..it was more than that..so much more than that and thats when i just lost on like. i realised how unlike like was actually!!

how life was free of ‘like’. how it has always been free of like. it stumped me. something died deep inside me. it was a disappointment, a betrayal, a coming of age, i knew then that life is what it is and my like-like game was just that..a game. it didnt change anything.

but that was not what made me sleepless. or restless. it was just one of the many things that the strange night whispered into my ears during those long, empty, unaccompanied walks on the streets and lanes of a sleepless mumbai..it was just another gift i received for not sleeping when so much was awake..wide eyed..staring and like me and like mumbai..sleepless..

THE ETERNAL RESTLESSNESS OF THE SLEEPLESS MIND

DEAR sleepfulls,

i am restless. like the worli sea face’s megalith structures restlessness grows on me like monsoonal moss covering me up with a shapeless, nameless, reasonless benevelonce. its there when i wake up from my sleepless nights.restlessly restless restlessness sitting by my pillow.like forgotten rememberance, like lost, manjaless kites hovering without an acceptance, like those foggy december nights swollen up with her smells , like the abrupt, unsure moments of seperation, like  the faithful black mongrel chasing superstardom in the drenched depravity of your soul..restlessly restless restlessness sitting by my pillow…

i like the word like. like makes life simple. like is like those grandma’s stories which always made life simple, good and worth living. stories which made you dream , but most of all which made you sleep. like is perhaps the world’s most beautiful mathematical formula..just fit in anything

sleepless since sixteen years

dear sleepfulls,

i was born with a story in my head and ever since i have been trying to tell it to anyone who pleases to hear it. i havent found too many listeners and perhaps thats why i cant sleep.

i am sleepless since i was sixteen and that has been a good 14 years, 08 months and 07 days ago.i have slept occasionally . momentarily. stealthily.my sleepfull moments have been like peaceful, uneventful, unafraid days in mumbai.few, unsure, suffused with a silent yearning of the unknown,the unexpressed. mumbai has engulfed my sleep like so much else,like TAVARE TEA STALL AND BAKERY washed down the byculla passway with its butterbuns sheathed in dangling shit by the rains, like ADHAO BHIMRAO BALASAHEB, 5 year old with 5 glutted, swollen, funny fingers ..like so many other things.

mumbai doesnot sleep and so do i. we are both pariahs , outcasts , fringes on the collective composure. we both have been shunned , sidelined by the importance of living and the dead alike. we are both sleepless since sixteen years..