Micropost: Tears

Tears are very common for small kids as crying is usual for them! Then we pamper them and they smile again!

Our brain is amazing material. It records such events in mind and tears are associated with pampering and smiling.

When we grow up, hardly anybody pampers us! Whenever we are in extreme grief or happiness or feel sentimental, we still feel need of pampering.

And here brain does its work. ...It checks its records. Pampering is found associated with tears.

Then tears are ordered to fill up our eyes. It helps to revisit our old memories and we feel pampered and consoled

Everything happens fast and unknowingly. We feel relaxed!

Hence tears fill up our eyes when we feel sad or happy or emotional!

Brain is an amazing material and its 'designer' is even more amazing 

Micropost: Music feels Gold, as it becomes Old

1. In 90s, our parents used to say, "today's songs r waste", "era of melodies has gone"!!
   But whenever I listen to 90s songs now, I find them amazingly melodious!!
   
   Actually, Every period has some great songs and some not-likeable songs!

   Every period had songs accused for plagiarism, item songs, bold songs, mass or non-class songs and what not!!
   Only beautiful songs remain immortal, others are forgotten!
   
   Majority songs of A R Rahman, Jatin Lalit and many songs (irrespective of origin of some songs disputed) of Nadeem Shravan, Anand Milind , Anu Malik were beautiful!
   
   I am sure, we too will tell our next generation that our childhood was an era of beautiful music 

Mind (and) Your Business: Part 1

              Once, a friend of mine went to a school for a survey, part of his MBA curriculum! He had a brief questionnaire out of which one question was ‘In your opinion, what is the reason to start business?’ Survey was to be conducted for 10+2 students, future of India! Maximum number of students answered, “People generally start business if they don’t get job”.

            Students were not at fault. They just replied what they observed. Majority of people in India start business just because they don’t get desired job. There are certainly exceptions and in significant numbers. Even there are many communities where business is preferred over job but still, majority prefers the job. Ironically, one can get job only if someone else starts business.

            In spite of this, there are many people (although still in minority) who want to do the business. They want to do the business just because its their dream. But sometimes, the surrounding and some misunderstandings distract such people and they too, start preferring job.

            Have you ever thought about doing business? I always do! But like most of the people, I was not much aware about “what the business is and how to do the business and all”. In the process, I learnt many things which I never knew before. Let’s discuss all this in series of some blog posts. I will start with business idea in this part. Again, discussion is expected to be spread in several blog posts and this is the just first part.

            I will not discuss anything about “why you should do the business” or “What personality traits are required to be an entrepreneur”. Very much online sources are already available for it and I am assuming that readers have already made their minds to do or not to do the business.

            Capital, Manpower, Market there are so many things one needs to do the business. But the most important thing required to do the business is ‘the mind’. Mind is required to manage business as well as to establish it. An innovative business idea can create a magic! Right from Google to Facebook, all are innovative business ideas!

            Innovative business has its pros and cons! As the business is innovative, you don’t have any established competitor at initial stage. It can also easily establish your brand identity. Being innovative business is itself an attraction of customer. Its an advertisement in itself. Cons include, innovative business may find it hard to win trust of stakeholders. Right from financiers to employees, people hesitate to trust innovative business idea. Also, there is no tested formula or rules book for such businesses. Business owners have to trust their intellect or implement trial and error where it is not harmful. Risk is high, gains are high!

            Innovative business idea is generally discovered or implemented by those who start their business almost from zero. Those people, who have sufficient capital, generally try to play safe and go by rules book. Those who don’t have anything to lose prefer innovative business!

            From where do these ideas come? Well, there is no school for this. No book or predefined set of innovative ideas is written. Source of innovative ideas is your own surrounding and your ‘Mind’. But how come this ‘Mind’ develops these ideas?

            Long back, all deals were done in commodity exchange. I have a cow and it gives milk, then I will offer milk in appropriate amount to purchase other goods like wheat, rice or services like barber etc. It was not easy to decide this appropriate amount. There was no standard behind it. A wheat-seller would be required to fix rate for his wheat in form of all the goods and services acceptable to him. E.g. 1 kg wheat would be given for 1 kg rice, half kg pulse, ½ liter milk, one time hair cut etc. moreover, what commodity he received may not be having same quality. E.g. 1 kg wheat might be given for ½ liter of milk with different standards of purity. If wheat-seller not at all required eggs and eggs are the only thing I have, it will involve 3^rd person in transaction who accepts eggs and has commodity or service acceptable to wheat-seller. There was no standard defined for transactions and nothing was uniformly acceptable commodity or service, which anyone won’t deny.

 What was the solution? Solution was actually simple. A dummy commodity was created. It was made by default acceptable by all (please see the footnote). Instead of defining rate of each commodity with respect to every other commodity, rate of all commodities were defined with respect to this commodity only. It was named as Money. It served as standard and it brought acceptability in transactions. Any good or service was valued with respect to money like, 10 coins for wheat, 5 coins for haircut etc.

It was simply for the convenience that concept of ‘money exchange for goods and services’ was formed. But, this money concept itself gave birth to thousands of businesses. People realized that more money means more availability of goods and services and ultimately, more comfort. Everybody wanted money. Everybody wanted to increase money with them. Some people wanted money to start their own production of goods or services. Some people wanted to keep money safe. Some people wanted to transfer it to our close ones living far. All these needs gave birth to banking business and it eventually became the backbone of any country.

Moral of the story is simple, innovative business ideas take birth from changes in society system or needs of people. One needs to be very alert and has to keep eyes open to look what people around you need.

An introduction to simple law can generate many businesses. Government implemented tax system and it created business for tax consultants. Even in latest scenario, when Government of India implemented Unique Identification System, many big info-tech companies grabbed this opportunity and provided service to generate unique identification of individuals in different areas.

There is a very basic sort of formula to new business idea. People in the world try to find comfort. Comfort here means easiness. People try to make things easier for them than earlier. Seek the situation where people are not so comfortable or their comfort can be increased. That’s all!! If you have a practical idea to provide something which can raise comfort level of people, you have a business idea!

Its an art to find where people can be made more comfortable in their life. One needs to develop abilities to sense what others are feeling or expecting in particular situation. Nevertheless, you are also among the people and the best source to detect situations where people can be made more comfortable. A person’s wife had a beautiful dress which she wanted to wear for a party but, she had become thin and dress was fitting lose. Husband got an idea; he shaped an iron wire in such way that it was able to hold dress tightly and fitted well. This particular shape was later known as ‘Safety pins’. Two research scholars found it difficult to remember all websites they visited frequently in order to find study material for their research work. They simply created a computer program to index all such sites and this program soon became our favorite, Google.

So, you yourself are the most important source to find discomfort and idea to overcome it. Do it, before anyone else can.

In order to achieve this comfort, social system makes changes in itself. Introduction of money is nothing but change in system to achieve more comfort. This change can be of any form like change in customs, traditions, practices. Generally, change in law (introduction of new law) or changes in technology (technical advancement/ introduction of new technology) bring the most significant and fast changes in social system and hence are the best source of innovative business ideas.

Law is enforced and technology is ready to provide comfort hence they work so fast and fast change launched by them creates some new discomforts for people or opens way to overcome earlier discomforts. Android operating system opened ways to many tech-developers to develop apps which may help Smartphone users in their day-to-day tasks. Most of the hi-tech society is still unaware about potential of Smartphone or android, hence, there is still huge scope of business ideas in this field.

Law made it mandatory to keep computerized records of business accounts. Many small businessmen were not able to maintain separate accountant or even clerk to handle this. Some people provided service to convert manual transactions to computerized accounts records.

Development in information technology and generation of business ideas is the very long topic in itself. Information technology made it possible to store and utilize large information or data. Several businesses generated right from providing storage to data, providing systems to deal with stored data (database management software vendors) up to professional services analyzing data.

Another simple example, as the URLs of website became complex and hard to remember or even copy-paste everywhere, idea of shortening or simplifying URL was invented. Discomfort was identified in remembering or copy-pasting complex URLs and it was overcome by providing simplified  URL. A business named ‘Tinyurl’ simply stores this complex  URL and gives simple  URL which will redirect you desired website. Before redirecting, tinyurl displays advertisement for a few seconds and earn revenue. For more information, visit Tiny URL official website or Wikipedia Article for the same.

A week before I am writing, new version of android was announced to be named as “KitKat”. A person in my knowledge instantly registered some domain names like “installkitkat.com, updatekitkat.com” for some 300 INR. Now he is expecting that some firm advising on KitKat matters will purchase it for more money as these domain names are highly desirable, being attractive and relevant. I don’t know how much legal it is, but yes, he is doing a business! (If you find very innovative idea making large amount of money in short time, please verify how much legal it is!). Further, even the firm that will advise technical matters related to “KitKat” and will purchase these domain names; they will put advice on their site and earn revenues with advertisements, just a business!!

To summaries this post, I will say, people generally seek comfort. Any new idea providing them more comfort means new business idea. This comfort seeking attitude forces social system to change and changes in social system brings either new discomforts or provides ways to overcome such discomforts. Changes can be of any type, law and technology being the most effective. So, be the aware of changes around you and try to find where you can raise comfort level of people in society relevant to these changes. You yourself are the best source to investigate this!

I will discuss about innovative ideas more in next blog posts in series. Let’s discuss some more technology and law changes. Till then, keep looking for the changes! (To be cond.-)

Footnote: There is famous concept ‘Liquidity’ in finance. A commodity is said be more liquid if it is more acceptable in market. Money is acceptable as it is by all hence it is the most liquid. Gold is widely acceptable and hence, gold is very much liquid. Old vehicle, old Tv etc are rather difficult in market to exchange, hence they are less liquid.

New Hindi Movies Expressing Different Angles of Emotions : part 1

      Well, this is a rather big title and discussion is also expected to be long and distributed to several blog posts over the time. It is first necessary to explain what I mean by this title.

       Our Hindi movies are often accused of having same story lines. A hero, a heroine, their love, opposition to it and their conquest over this opposition! The one who is able to present the same set of sequences with attractive twists and climax along with big names becomes the successful movie maker. Its the own style of Hindi cinema and I really appreciate it, we are unique in that matter. Still, it is not so, that different movies are not at all made. There are many movies with different plots right from historic to thrillers and even up to science fictions.

      Whatsoever be the plot of movie, movie is a story of humans and humans are largely driven by emotions. Actually, almost every event in the human world is driven by emotions. Even the most practical person is not emotionless, in fact, his practical nature is a sort of emotional trait only.

      So the movies are also all about emotions. Love stories are directly inherited from emotions but even science fiction movies are quite less meant to increase knowledge but in fact they present story of emotions in particular circumstances which arise due to some scientific event. If something is presented just as factual scientific knowledge or historic knowledge, we identify it as 'documentary'!

       Hindi movies have achieved unbeatable expertise in presenting "anti-parent boy-girl (shall I use the word hetero?) love" along with family dramas, patriotism, underworld emotions, terrorists emotions and are slowly learning to present human-machine emotions, machine-machine emotions (what a contradiction!!) and human-alien emotions etc. Human-animal emotions are quite rare in Bollywood but not absent.

        Our discussion is about such films which presented a different angle of emotion which is not so usual in all this set. Any emotion, including as I said hetero-love qualifies for our discussion provided, it should be presented in different way. Presentation of altogether different emotion (like machine-machine love) will make movie eligible for our discussion, de facto . This discussion will continue for several blog posts, whenever I will remember such movies or such movies will be made or you will suggest me inclusion of such movies.

        Such movies are being made in Hindi since long. Many of them have even got superstar touch like Anand (1971) with Rajesh Khanna or Manzil (1979) with Amitabh Bachchan. Anand narrated story of a person who conveys message of "living great life, not long" and Manzil is a story of man with huge dreams, his failures and his success. However, being afraid of never ending discussion in that case, I decided to discuss only about new films, released in or after 1990.

               Again, whole new plot of the movie is not an essential condition, we can even discuss movies where small but significant part has rendered different angles of emotions. It makes enough clear that we are very much liberal in our classification and sole purpose of such articles is to attract attention of viewers to such movies which can give them different experience or which can touch their hearts like never before. Only different plot or social-political natures of plot are by no means our criteria.

            A typical nature of such movies is they are set in particular small world. Like, Anand had the small world of protagonist Anand, his doctor-cum-friend, Anand’s quickly approaching death and his philosophy of life! There was nothing beyond that, all emotions were part of this set, this small world only. Manzil had world of a day-dreamer and nothing else. Largely influenced by Anand, Kal ho naa ho (2003) too had a similar small world of young man having short life and his friends. A common person is largely involved in his or her world only. Hence, its very likely that one finds such movies, their plot or characters close to oneself.

            Let’s start our first article with mostly mainstream and famous movies. This will help us to boost our memory to find out other such movies.

            Jo jeeta wohi Sikander (1992) was quite different attempt as it tried to collect maximum teen-age emotions. Rendering infatuation, jealousy, competition, first love, true love and sense of achievement this movie is still able to attract 13-30 age group.

Kabhi haan Kabhi naa (1994) is one of the most unique movies ever made. Unlike other Hindi movies, here, hero (?) is a loser! From academics to love, he is failure everywhere. Yet, he has 2 qualities, one being an extra ordinary musician and other having a good heart. He is portrayed to be very realistic in behavior like telling lies to get his lady-love or hiding his actual exam results from parents but still, at the end, he helps his lady-love to get her lover who is in fact, hero’s best friend. This movie is also set in small world of protagonist and his town in Goa. Interestingly, protagonist is Hindu and his love is Christian but religion is not made an issue anywhere. Its all about a life of person who faces frequent failures. To the much extent, Ajab prem ki gazab kahani (2009) has some similar things like hero is loser, his relations with his father (which any frequently failing person will have) and even further, hero being Hindu and his love is Christian. However, protagonist of APKGK finally tastes success by getting his love and treatment of movie makes it to be identified it as comic movie separating it from Kabhi haan Kabhi naa. Personally, KHNH is my favorite movie and I will dedicate a blog post specifically to it one day.

As it is about different angles of emotions, Aamir Khan’s movies will certainly find maximum space here. Apart from Jo jeeta wohi Sikander, his several other movies have different presentation of emotions. His Dil Chahata hai (2001) had the most attractive rendering of friendship and Taare zamin par (2007) is undoubtedly among the best movies ever made. This revolves around a small kid suffering from dyslexia and his relationships with parents, friends, teachers and one teacher-cum-friend. I won’t include his other great movies like 3 Idiots (2009) or  Lagaan (2001) as I consider these movies are a bit social in nature and do not represent any ‘specific’ emotion. Remember, good movie or bad movie is not our criteria.

Owing to the rules of our discussion, Koi mil gayaa(2003) finds its place here having story of human-alien friendship, relation of (intellectually) immature boy with his mother and a girl of his same (physical) age. However, somewhere all these emotions were not properly represented and movie highly focused on glamour of its artists, an alien and being a rare kind of hindi science fiction movie. Similarly, there is another movie, Paheli (2005) which lacks entertainment value but has different sort of emotions rendered. It portrayed love of a ghost for a lady and what the ghost is ready to do for her. A movie Ra.one (2011) tried to describe relationship in between a kid and a robot(?) looking like his deceased father. But again, movie was made to focus on many other things and these emotions were shadowed. All these films had great chance to represent different angles of emotions but somehow, these films didn't succeed in it much.

Tum Bin (2001) is among the surprise creations in such sort of movies. A person dies in car accident! It makes large impact on his close ones. The person who is responsible for this accident approaches these close ones with guilt and his guilt in fact maximizes when he notices condition there. He tries to fill up the place of deceased by doing every possible thing, right from keeping family members happy to contributing the collapsed business of the deceased. Film succeeds very much in representing impact of death of one person on his close ones and the guilt one person carries when unintentionally he is responsible for such loss.

Lootera (2013) is roughly based on O. Henry’s short story “The last leaf”. A woman suffering from tuberculosis believes that she will die the day when a tree visible from window of her room becomes leafless. A man (hero - who was responsible for some loss of the lady in past) takes care of her health. One day, lady notices that tree has only one leaf left and thinks that her death is close. But, when she wakes up another day, she finds leaf at its place. That leaf never falls and the lady is cured. Later, after the death of hero in some events, lady discovers that he used to paint a fake leaf and tie it to the tree just to keep her hopes alive! His emotions behind doing this are not clear, whether its out of love or guilt or humanity. This makes the story different from others.

Let's stop here for now. Let’s keep other movies for next parts of the same article! Till then, keep enjoying the emotions. (To be contd. -)