Picturesque phrase

A picture may speak a thousand words but the converse is also true ; a few words could paint an entire picture on the canvas of mind’s imagination. here’s my list;

Daybreak gift-wrapping the foothills

A shiny dewdrop clinging to a blade of grass, glistening in the morning brightness.

An eagle perching on a shaft of air

Clouds leaning on mountain tops to rest

Whispering music of the ripening wheat sheaves in the field

Boats in the bay, sitting patiently on their reflections to the fading crimson light

Shining stars pinned to the soft canopy of the night

Gentle sound of crackling timber in the camp-lit fire

Down under: True to character?

I had a chance to link up with a good old friend & excolleague recently. A chartered accountant by profession, this quiet diminutive guy is currently based out at Sydney in Australia. Regular mail exchanges followed our LinkedIn connection and in one of the mails I put a general note of caution asking him to watch out his back & keep safe, out of harms bound. I guess the recent nasty developments in down under was uppermost in his mind too. Yet , he choose to tone down his reaction and wrote back me to saying “Thanks Vasant ...Generally Sydney is quiter than Melbourne. But life is pretty cool here with 99% of the people are good..”

Now he may be a better judge at assessing the situation out there but I was surprised at this calm demeanor in which responded. I am not sure whether the sensationalizing electronic media out here especially the TV NEWS channels have overhyped this situation and carried these incidents overboard, but whatever has happened, in whatever measure , has been utterly distasteful and downright ugly and nasty.

Looking back at his reaction, do i assume that only certain cities in Australia are violence/crime prone than others? Is Sydney safer than Melbourne going by the profile of its residents? Does it mean that these hoodlums are not restricted to few back corner alleys in dark downtown Australia but certain specific geographic locations defined by select cities? Seems hard to digest but Ian Botham, the former English cricketer had an interesting take on this; he always considered all Aussies to be a bunch of convicts who had been banished downunder from England (Ian also had an interesting take on Pakistan, he once described it as "the kind of place to send your mother-in-law for a month, all expenses paid" in an off-the-cuff remark in a radio interview in 1984)

Could it be that this ‘Kalapani’ type island is turning true to its character now, especially with Indians? Between 1788 to 1868, about 165,000 convicts were sent to Australia which means 22 per cent of Australians are descended from exiles. Their sentences served, many convicts remained Down Under, becoming Australia’s first western settlers. Now their descendants are showing why they are often called the offspring of ‘burglars’, ‘heifer stealers’,’ felons’, etc. Ask those numerous badgered Indians and they shall swear by it.

Mid point Crisis

Sachin and Kumble's suggestion for 25 over (x2) and 40 over format respectively for the one dayer looks like they want to revv up the throttle even in this slightly longer version of the game. But how far can you press the adrenalin accelerator?

Assuming that the slam-bang version of the game has the highest excitement quotient, ask any cricket enthusiast and he will inevitably swear by the first few and last over’s of the match. The rush of adrenalin , brought about by the pace of change is always exciting. Its the middle over’s that a trifle little sedate and boring and I think that is at the center of this reformatting suggestions . 

The batsman consolidating, scratching and accumulating runs and preserving wickets for the final flourish while the opposite team trying to further peg them down has never been an exciting proposition in the short form of the game. The graph that usually depicts this phase is a drooping curve or at best a staid flat line while the tendency is to seek a rocket like trajectory.

Is it a universal phenomena that got to do with everything ranging from sports to general change encompassing everything from project management to human lives? On this Rosabeth Moss Kanter has an interesting insight, she says ‘Welcome to the miserable middles of change. This is the time when Kanter's Law kicks in. Everything looks like a failure in the middle. Everyone loves inspiring beginnings and happy endings; it is just the middles that involve hard work’.

I wonder why...

Taare Zameen Par (TZP) a Hindi movie based on the story of a 10-year old dyslexic boy takes viewers on the journey to a world of amazing possibilities achieved by encouraging an young mind. While TZP may have inspired many constituencies, it profoundly impacted audiences on a kind of sensitization that is required to understand and encourage the world of small children and their imaginations. 

As they say creativity doesn't come with a boxed set of instructions. By nature,creativity is unleashed by stepping outside the normal thought patterns to connect to a new idea or new way of saying or writing something. And it’s not just limited to children with normal abilities as the film clearly depicts. It is very important to encourage children develop imagination and here’s a piece of information I gathered on some of its amazing benefits


• Imagination helps school-age children solve problems by helping them think through different outcomes to various situations and role playing ways to cope with difficult or new circumstances.

• Imagination allows children to practice real-life skills. From shopping at a pretend grocery store to assigning roles and dialogue to dolls or puppets, children's pretend play helps them practice and apply new learning and better understand how those skills are used in the real world.

• Imagination encourages a rich vocabulary. Telling and hearing real or made-up stories, reading books and pretend play help children learn and retain new words.

• Imagination helps children grow up to be adults who are creative thinkers. Adults who were imaginative children often become problem solvers, innovators and creative thinkers.

My 4 year old son lives in his own world of imagination which reflects in many of his sketches. So apart from his computer & TV games he spends a good part of his free time sketching drawings and playing with his favorite car toys. I have put together a collection of his sketches on strange creatures that somehow come alive in his world or let’s say ‘Echo in his grey Hills’. Looks like some strange alien planet to me but interesting nonetheless



"You see things and you say Why? But I dream things that never were and I say, why not?" - George Bernhard Shaw