Two-0-Nine!! buhbyee!! :)

This year is coming to an end, I got no answer if someone aks me how it went for me, no clue I would say. But thinking again I feel its been good. And the best thing is we don't talk about recession anymore, I mean atleast Indians and as an engineering graduate I am happy seeing the placemnet spree certain top IT companies are on. But let me get back to my life and limit myself to a narrow view-point.

There are few thing I can't forget about 2009, its been quite an amazing year to a certain extend.

I earned my first pay this year, never knew working would be fun. These odd part-time jobs gave me enough moments to cherish and they would always be remembered. My first job was 2 days before Valentines day and that was where I met her. My first pay was 200 Rs., not a big amount but believe me it was fun. Working at Taj Coromandel for Dr. Reddy's Lab was nice. I still feel good that I went for it. :). That job brought me into this field of event management, thanks to WizCraft and brothers out there, its been a stage of learning and meeting new people. Believe me if ever you get to go for some part-time job don't miss the opportunity, it teaches you a lot of things as long as you are eager to learn. :).

My brother finally into college, something I always wanted to see. I felt he was immature to face life's hardships but he is doing well. He is in a class where the ratio of girls to boys is 1:4?. I miss his college.:P.Wonder what effect his result would have cause of this drastic difference in the ratio,lol. :).

The college tour, it was fun. It was right after the Swamiji event that me and anash worked on. I was the main organizer but I could never make it to the college since I was working those days and thanks to Rafi, he put a lot of effort trying to manage all the burden himself. But the effort didn't go wasted, we had a blast. Right from the train journey where I had a peg lol, everything was just fine except for the tedious bus journey which was made easier by the dancing group. :). We started having a better chemistry between the boys and girls and it was all for the good. :).

The Manglore trip for Adi's sisters wedding. I was suppose to leave the day my exams got over, I thought I amlost missed the train. Manglore was great, beautiful chicks and girls out there got the best of dressing sense I should say. :). Then the Manipal sight-seeing trip and the Udupi temple visit were also good. :).

This is funny lol, this happened early this month. Rakesh had kept our bike outside the house and when pappa went to take it after some 2 hours it was found missing. We tried searching everywhere we could kinda reach but confident that we would never get it in a city like Chennai. Pappa went and gave a complaint but the police said it wouldn't have gone out of this area and asked us to search properly. We knew they were joking,lol. And we forgot all about the bike, I started discussing about buying a second hand bullet for myself which pappa never accepted though. And one fine day when my parents were coming back home, my dad accidently lost his way back and came the wrong way. And to their sheer surprise my dad found the bike in one street in the wrong-way!! What a luck!! The guy who had taken it had kept it there and left it seems, so we could never get him caught! Moron never had to take the bike if he was to leave it there and flee.. :).

And the last and most memorable of all the incidents in 2-0-0-9. My secular trip. What is a secular trip? Is that what you are thinking, well then here is my answer. We went on a family trip the other day, actually planned to go to a temple and then to Kodaikanal. But we didn't make it till Kodaikanal, just because of my dad's shoulder ache. We went till Karaikkal though some 350 kms from Chennai. A nice long enough drive. We went on 26th December, the day which no one would forget cause of the tsunami effect. We went to Tirunallar temple first, a majestic temple wherein they follow the Tirupati system which meant the rich got the less crowded way. Though not rich, we had to take that cause of our time constraints, but its definitely not acceptable. Then we went to Nagore Dargah, a very famous one. It is an old mosque and a peaceful one. Quite good. There again there was some kinda money-snatching technique employed like in the temple, except for that everything was fine in Nagore. And finally Velankanni Church, a beautiful one. I should appreciate the fact that there was no money based system there and it was a clean place unlike any of the temples. Velankanni church is a place where you can get real peace of mind. I took the road less travelled on my way to Velankanni, that was the road which was hit by Tsunami, the effects still evident. Altogether a memorable trip. :)

Finally Investing!!

I have been a strong believer of the fact that for our country to develop and be a part of the real main stage( we are still not in there) we gotta be independent of the rest of the world on things concerning our economy. Yeah, I agree that we can never be 100% independent but we can be a lot more than where we stand today. These days we read so much of stuff about India and its influence on other nations. But that is not enough for us to keep going in this world. What we really need is a lot more, a lot more from its people i.e we Indians. Let me start off with my concept and perception about this entire event happening.

For any nation in the present world the most important thing that it requires is a sound and safe economy. A not so volatile, regularly expanding economy. And when we talk about economy a lot of other statistics comes into our mind, doesn't it? It is such a basic term with loads of stuffs involved making it a lot more complex in real-time. A country's economy is such a dynamic thing, all that we need to do to understand the complexity is think of the money we spend in a month. Right from day one of the month, analyze every penny that we spend. This is a matter of thousands or may be lakhs in certain exceptional cases but this small calculation can make us go mad, isn't it? That is cause we end up spending on a heap of stuffs ourselves. Now think of this nation which has a population of more than 1.2 billion and still growing. Complexity at its worst, added to that is all the taxes that the government collects. Great. Am not blaming the government a bit in this, just that the tax factor came into my mind.

So every one will have his/her own perception on how we can individually contribute to our economy and save it from the clutches of many foreigners who are earning more than an average Indian and taking advantage of our growing economy than any of us do. It really sounds so unfortunate, your country is developing and your people are still below the poverty line while some billionaire from some foreign country makes all the money and you have nothing. The worst thing here is to see the governments inability to reach those people, the ones who work in those humongous infrastructure projects, the ones who are squeezed for every penny they get and squeezed even more for the ones that they are never paid, the ones who have no other options but to live on the pavements and who are regularly run over by some millionaire in his expensive four-wheeler(usually a merc), the ones who die of poverty, the ones who can never even dream of going to school and studying. I am not blaming those foreign nationals, they are always in the lok out for opportunities and very true that India gives them a whole lot of opportunities and they are here. But I blame the government, there inability, the corruption, the lack of commitment to anything.

I actually thought of writing about something else and all these stuffs came in so thought will pen them down as well, if you are wondering the relevance of the above fact. But let it be, its the truth and something that we should work on. For our nation to develop it has to bring that down-trodden group from down there to a better stage or India will never reach where it wants to be. As i said in one of my earlier posts India is not really the urban life and its people, but majority of India is still in the back stage in its very rural form and remaining just the same for over decades now. But how do we change all these, its like all the governments are used to isolating them, the deprived and that is when all these organizations like the ULFA and the Maoists originated. Now its again becoming more deviated. lol

How can this end? The government must fund the development of the villages and remore interiors of the country, make stricter norms on the education of young children and its should have a free education scheme for all these deprived irrespective of their age. Mr. Kapil Sibal did bring in this issue in parliment but i wonder how far they are committed to it. For a country which at an average spends more than 1 trillion(1,00,000 crores) on its military(its way too less when compared to many other nations especially China and US), it must be able to spend the same or a little more on the even more important issues like these. And I believe every Indian has the right to ask this question to them, for we have one of the highest taxing system and we have been living over it without questioning it a bit. For if all these taxed money is used properly we would have been at a lot better stage than where we are now. Believe me though China is developing it lacks that unity which is required for growth, India has that edge over China but it never puts anything to the best of use.

Whats the result? The shiv sena, the Telungana, the ULFA etc etc.. The list goes like this. Why is it that these people want a separate state, set aside the shiv sena they need a separate nation i guess(****ers). According to them they are isolated, in the Telungana except for Hyderbad and Secondarabad most of the other parts of Telungana have been under isolation for over 4 decades now. Same is the case with ULFA. If the goverment could do some justice to them then these organizations wouldn't be there and life would have been lot more peaceful, a lot of money saved. And now, its just the opposite. How is all this related to being independent? Well let me put it this way, every human being uses less than 3% of his brain and the rest 97% is unused. The same is the case here, we are using less than 10% of our potential, the rest 90% is dormant and that is why this drift and over dependency.

A recent study has showed that India has one of the richest oil reserves in the world and this was found recently because till now the government never permitted the private companies to explore for oil and now when they explored they understood that India have been spending billions for something they never had to. Same is the case with then Indian stock market(actually this had to be the actual topic of this post but it just expanded lol). Indians contribute less than 10% when it comes to the investment in the stock markets(mainly BSE and NSE) and the rest 90% is the foreign investors who in a way are driving our markets, if they buy we have a bull run and when they sell the bear comes in. I hate this entire idea, someone else coming to our house and guiding us and this is where i feel we need to work a lot harder. I never meant to say that we should kick them off but just that work on increasing our influence rather than count on their moves. Better right, if not completely drive your vehicle you can atleast switch the gears.

This thought made me understand then importance of investing, though whatever I invest is absolutely nothing compared to theirs but it makes a difference atleast in my view point. I believe its the same with everyone, we end up spending lot of money unnecessarily why don't we contribute a little of that to the growth of our nation is what we should think. That can make a lot of difference in our lives, in the present world investment is the need of the hour. My dad taught me the initial lessons of investment, he started investing when he was some 21 just when he got a job. He never made anything out of investment cause his investments were on probability and it never worked. Most of the companies he invested in back then shut down and so its been a major loss but he never regretted :). But I want to be a cautious investor cause that works better and both ways.

I would probably stop with this. This post has been quite confusing but let it be this way now. Better. India is confused now and so am I. :D. And if you believe what I believe then do start investing a little of whatever you get. If you don't know how it works then google it and see. Its not complicated, very easy. Get yourself a pancard first, this again can be googled and found. Investments could start from 500Rs also, its al upto you. I started with 5000, you can get an online account and trade yourself. Initially start with a low sum learn about the markets then invest more. A good investment can give you good returns and helps you do your bit for India.

I hope this post makes atleast 1 person to think about it. :)

Jai Hind! :)