Sunday, December 26, 2010

All the best laid plans

Which is more difficult?
Planning or Executing?
Formulating or Implementing?
Thinking or Doing?
Learning or Performing?
Talking or Working? and on goes the questionnaire.

In my opinion, for any action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Ok. That was Newton's law. Let me try again. In my opinion for any action before it gets materialised something should have been ideated prior to it. Coming back to the initial question of which is more important, is the intellectual part more important or the gross and palpable part? Some would opine and rightly so, as there are two sides to a coin which are equally important so does the subtle and gross elements that are equally important. But the secret lies in the quality and the pace at which one makes the transition from the conception of an idea to its implementation.

Sometimes because the idea lacks the desired punch it falls apart. And sometimes getting absorbed too much in the nitty gritty of the practical aspects also causes the execution part to go haywire. Added to this there is one Murphy's law "If anything can go wrong it will go wrong". So what is one supposed to do amidst this seemingly inextricable maze called life?

We all had faced this dilemma in the past,are facing at present and I have no reason not to believe that it will happen in the future.
The topic in discussion is to have a party among friends. The usual barrage of questions like why, when, where, how and who, follows and we more often that not end up in the same square from where we had actually set forth. Democracy is good until every Tom, Dick and Harry comes up with a opinion of his own. Though one's friends doesn't consist of any of Toms, Dicks and Harrys each one will have his or her own opinion which makes it a challenging task to reconcile all these different opinions and to find a common ground.
However your woes won't end at the arrival of the decision. Only after it actually happens can one truly answer the question, which one is more difficult?
The planning or its execution? :-)

Saturday, December 18, 2010

1st Anniversary

It's really amazing how time flies!

It's been exactly a year since I started blogging in the net and you started banging your head on the wall. It's said that all good things come to an end; but not my blogging, for obvious reasons. :-)

But if at all I have learned something by this year long experience, it is this. Though anybody can write not everybody can write. Not because someone lacks proficiency in language but rather lack of inclination to write. It's only when someone starts to write do they realise to their astonishment, how much they want to share their thoughts and feelings with the world. It doesn't matter even if no one in the world gives a damn to what you want to say as is the case. But what is important is the process of giving shape to the thoughts in your head through words. I guess it provides an emotional and intellectual(probably :-)) outlet atleast for the blogger(Not sure about the readers).

So with this spirit, my legacy continues and so is your torture.......

Friday, December 10, 2010

History and its lessons we ignore!

Today the nobel committee awarded this year's peace prize to one Chinese national "Lu Xiabao". This is the first time I am watching such a ceremony and unfortunately it was incomplete because of the absence of the prize winner himself. In other words he was conspicuous by his absence. None of his relatives and friends were present on the occasion. It seems that the Chinese government has put him in jail and imposed a 11 year sentence on him.
Here comes the interesting part. He did only one thing for which he was awarded nobel peace prize on one hand and a 11 year sentence on the other, and that one thing is to raise his voice against the Chinese government on behalf of the weak and downtrodden. One action and two extreme reactions.

In the award ceremony the person who addressed the gathering had rightly criticised China on its unwillingness to realise that peaceful protests and valid dissent is as important as discipline and compliance to the incumbent constitution. Just because a country is an economic and military super power it can not turn a blind eye to the indispensable needs of its citizens and human rights is an important part of it. If imprisoning Lu is not enough, it went ahead and decried the nobel committee's decision to give the prize to Lu and by influencing around 40 nations not to attend the ceremony, China has brought itself upon the ignominy of an immature state not withstanding its economic and military might.

The same kind of mistakes were committed by erstwhile USSR, and now a fading super power called USA. Both, during the course of history were blinded by pride and an insatiable greed to gain control over anything and everything they could lay their hands upon. Only now do they realise that ones stature is not based on GDP or military might but based on the extent of empowerment of its people. Both the nations taught us these lessons and we humans, the most intelligent species should have learned the lesson by now. But no, we don't learn our lessons as is shown by China and by thus doing so, history repeats itself. When a person begins to hate himself the road to degeneration has already begun and the same is true for a nation. When a country tries to suppress the voice of its people, though its economic curve may point northward in the short term, its social curve falls to depths pulling the entire nation down.

Once Abraham lincoln famously said "Anybody can stand adversity. But if you want to test the character give him power". China did struggle a lot and survived the last century to become a major player in this century. But the real test has only started now because it's only now that it has great power. If God has equipped us with a neck, he surely meant us to stick it out. So all the nations should at-least voice their opinions against this immature stance taken by China and hope that sanity prevails in the end.