Lets wish that we could go to Kashmir some day without any worries?

Is that possible? If we all pray for peace in Kashmir, and if god of all religions come together and make up their mind to make it true, would n't be a boon to mankind as a whole? I definitely believe so. Kashmir is said to be the heaven of earth.

I always dream of going to Kashmir and spend my 7 days vacation in one of those water boats. But if that would be come possible is a big question mark? By the way, what is this whole fight for? Why is all these killings of innocent people? Who is responsible for the killings in kashmir?

Is it Jehadi (so called) who are very much motivated by some militant groups across the border? Well, sometimes our indian army also end up killing innocent lives? But that is never intentional, as far as I believe. Only people of Kashmir could tell much about it?

The news of killings in Kashmir goes across us so easily. We never seem to get affected by such news. For this, we must thank god that we didn't take birth in one of the Kashmiri families. Could you imagine the lady from Kashmir below in image with a big question mark on her face?

Please don't smoke! Because smoking is injurious...

To health of those around you. Got puzzled! Yes, I also got puzzled when I saw the following poster Ad on the wall of one of the nearby tea stall that I visited today.

Please don't smoke. Smoking is injurious to our health!

The above is a dual meaning statement. Either, this is a general statement that says that smoking is injurious to our health. Or, this could also mean that if you don't care about your health, that doesn't mean our health is not affected when you are smoking around. After all, there is something called passive smoking.

So, if you really don't bother and care about your health, do care about other's health. Smoke in a lonely place. Don't smoke in crowd.

One of the secrets of success is...

Keep up a high self esteem like the one below!

Recipe of success for a start-up...from the horse's mouth

I am working in a company named Cendura corp, with offices in Mountain view, CA, USA and Hyderabad, India. My company is working in the area of configuration management. The CEO of Cendura is Mr. Pavan Nigam. A true and thinking enterpreneur in all aspects. He is of WebMD fame, which he grew from few people team to a team of 6000 employees. I am very much hopeful of same with Cendura, started somewhere in 2001.

Pavan Nigam is a visionary person. He graduated from IIT Kanpur, and moved to US thereafter. Since then he has been living in US.

Last week, Pavan was in India. Following are few tips from his side, and what I have watched since last couple of years while working in Cendura:

• A great idea is not the only sifficient thing. The other more important ones are great team, and great execution.
• Cost control is very important in the entire cycle of business. To acheive, do whatever it takes... Hire or Fire.:)
• Always good to have competitors. However, do everything to kill the competition.
• Proper positioning in the market. That is supported by quality publicity from time-to-time.
  
• Calculated and quality hiring from time-to-time. That includes calculated hiring of engineers, sales people, marketing guys.
  
• Having a couple of great board members always helps.
• One of the most important one is to have repeat business from same customer. That is possible by having greatly satisfied customers who could provide references.

I could firmly say that watching a growing start-up is better than any MBA degree from any university. Rightly said Pavan!

Ab Tumhare Hawaale Watan Saathiyo...Happy Independence Day!

This is an absolute wonderful day. Celebrating 58th indepedence day, I wish you all a very very happy independence day. I was listening some of the following songs that kind of gave some hard patriotic feeling on the fly.

• Kar chale hum fida.. ab tumhare hawale watan saathiyo
• Jahan daal daal pe
  
• Saare jahan se achaa

I am proud to be an Indian. Days are not far when we would be truely called as "maathe ki bindiya" as sung in a hindi movie, Pardes! We are progressing ahead on an absolute phenomenonal pace in all the aspects of life. If we sustain this pace in coming years, we would be able to eradicate poverty, unemployment from our great country, India.

On this day, let us take pledge to break all the barriers and acheive what no country has acheived so far.

Jai Hind!

Job hunter started talking in Hinglish! That was so pleasing!

On Friday, I got a call from a job hunter from Noida, Delhi. He started the normal questions such as "Are you looking out for change?" and then, quickly he moved to speaking in Hindi. And, I myself started talking in Hindi with no issues at all. This was a good experience for me when I talked with a job hunter in Hindi.

After I kept the phone down, I realized that I was speaking with a job hunter in hindi. I thought I should have complemented him on his manner of interacting with his clients in hindi.

Today, we have got so much Englishized that we rarely speak in our native language, be it Hindi, or Telugu, or Tamil. We should keep our native language alive for all times.

Mangal Pandey logs in or get logged out! We would know starting today!

Aamir Khan is finally back after a long wait of around 4 years. Last couple of movies that he acted in were Lagaan and Dil Chahta hai. Lagaan was a massive hit. Dil Chahta Hai also did very well on the box-office. Could Aamir khan bring back the Lagaan magic in Mangal Pandey? Only time will tell. But, all I know is Ashutosh Gowrikar, couldn't bring back Lagaan magic in his last movie Swadesh.

Mangal Pandey is getting released on 12th August. Right time to do so as 15th August, independence day, is around.

Are you one of those who is brain-storming on some idea for product development? Or, are you one of those who want to be enterpreneur? Then, following image could keep you busy for a while!

Size does matter! and so does Google, so much so that...

the search of two chefs for Google cafe for their mountain view office is covered by various newspapars. They say that Google is going to conduct some screening tests for two chefs. The chefs has to be creative and innovative. Why not? After all they have similar requirements for recruiting engineers. And, they could afford to do so. After all, they are such a big search engine company. But, talking about chefs is going a bit extra step. Is n't it? Anyways, rightly said, size does matter!

Discovery landed safely in California. Thank God! It takes me back to Columbia disaster where we lost the entire crew that included Dr. Kalpana Chawala. Congratulations to the entire crew of Discovery space shuttle. Let us see if US prepares for next space flight probably scheduled to happen sometime in coming september.

Cracking Rs. 1,60,000 in Kaun banega Crorepati 2 seems to be an easier task. KBC 2 started last weekend on Star Plus channel. Amitabh Bachchan, as usual, is attraction of the quiz show. Some of my observations regarding questions are following:

• Common sense
• Current affairs
• History

To crack 2 crore, one has to be smart, logical, knowledgeable, and lucky (mainly in 50/50 and flip lifeline).

Indian enterpreneurs could at least start with websites like Craigslist.org!

All that was needed for www.craigslist.org to have annual revenue of $7-10 million is to start off a privately owned online business with the aim of keeping one's friends up to date with what was happening in one's hometown, San Francisco.

This is one guy, Craig Newmark who founded Craigslist.org. The website is absolutely simple, no attractive images, but some useful stuff. And, today it attracts 10 million unique vistors every month. Not bad!

Ebay.com had to buy 25 % stake in the company last year.

So, the moral of the story is be simple, but be useful. To start a successful business, the KISS strategy could as well pay off, provided you have some useful stuff to offer the users. By the way, KISS is Keep It Simple & Straight.

Could we even have our young enterpreneurs start something like Craigslist.com? Take a look at the website and I promise, you would end up getting loads of inspiration. Cheers!

The Website to help raise money received $400000 in donation! God bless humanity!

Rightly said, where there is a will, there is a way. However, God should also be around to play his role.

It would have been very easy to lose all hopes when Susan Torres, a 26-year-old researcher at the National Institutes of Health, lost consciousness from a stroke May 7 after aggressive melanoma spread to her brain. At that time, she was pregnant having the gestation period of around 12 weeks. Susan was brain-dead pregnant woman who has been kept on life support for nearly three months to give her fetus more time to develop.

With all the effort made by doctors, and with all the blessings, the baby took birth today. The baby is doing absolutely fine.

Hats off to her husband Jason Torres! He kept his cool at this testing time. He fought out everything with courage. He put up a website, http://www.susantorresfund.org/ in order to get donations from anywhere possible. And, in return he got overwhelming response from people worldwide in form of a donation of $400000 since last week.

God bless humanity!