The Republic Day!

It has long been a habit for us to watch the Republic Day Celebrations on TV, since my childhood days. Probably that's the only day which we switch on Doordashan in our homes. As always, I watched the majestic parade over the Rajpath, today. It was quiet a visual feast as the aerial cameras gave us a birds eye glide over the Royal path and the VIP cabin where the Hon; President, PM and the Chief Guest Barak Obama were seated. The floral embellishments were majestic and I thought how great the natural aroma there would be!

The Amar Jawan jyothi, the National Anthem, Modi waiving hand to his well wishers, the cheers from the people around, the beautifully choreographed parade, Floats by different States, rich of their heritage; as things pass, I saw a warm cheer in my Amma's eyes.. Seemed blood was throbbing in her veins, and so was mine. Don't know why this day makes us proud!

There may be enough reasons that one could feel bad to be born in India, A nation where people are feeling bad of Corruption, lack of infrastructure, developments and opportunities. Despite the talent, where the Religion, Castes and political recommendations earn people positions. Where the word 'Profit' stays important than the Life of poor, where the phrase "Incredible India" is more often used as a Sarcasm rather with pride; yeah there are enough imperfections, but why do we feel the pride while we say "We are INDIANS!"? Because we Love India despite it's imperfections!

Despite all its imperfections, somewhere inside, we know it's the best place we could live in this world! A Land of diversities in unity, a land of different languages but of a single feeling, the feeling of an Indian! I saw someone saying its a sheer waste of money and efforts for such a big event. Heard some asking what's the whole point of celebrating the Republic Day itself. May be they have a point. But, it's an event which brings together 120 crore people of different thoughts and perspectives. One which makes a Tamilian, a Kashmiri, Marathi and Bengali feel the warmth of togetherness. One which makes us respect our Cultural, Traditional and demographic differences! A glance at the soldiers and widows whom we saw today would dilute those whole questions, Because, if those soldiers had thought only of their monetary benefits, would they have guarded us against those terrorists, at the cost of their lives?

The best (or probably the worst) status I saw on fb today was that "Why should I be proud of India which is just a Man-made boundary? It was never my choice to be born here, nor I am responsible for my predecessors to divide the world like this!" My reply to him is that, If he could convince his same point to all those terrorists (Al Quaida, ISIS, Taliban, etc) and wicked nations over the world, we would be really grateful for him, for a terror free world. :)

Yes I am a Writer!

February 6th 2012, that was the last time I've made a post here in my blog.. An year and a couple of weeks; thought of starting the post with ma clichéd dialog “am back again..”. Then thought, ya this is a better way to start.. :P Anyways, I’ve made a start after a long time! That’s the good thing here!! :)

A Summer, a spring, an autumn and a winter has passed.. Or twelve beautiful calendar months have passed and to tell it lightly, a beautiful year has passed. Sure that 2012 has left a lot for me to cherish. A year which has made me a truly social person, one which has molded myself into a good leader and moreover which has put me to know the pulse of how the real world is. Yeah SICASA! That’s exactly the thing which has changed my life in a very vibrant manner.

Being InNoVaTivE, bringing new ideas, having a good team to have a damn discussion with! Sharing, criticizing and finding out the best sequence of doing things. Convincing the insti to sanction necessary funds for the programs. Preparing horrible budgets which were shuttled between Me, Sri, Vinay & Deepak each time additions and deletions are made on them. Finding out the most cost efficient vendors for budgeted items. Preparing minutes for so called ‘formal meetings’ (chit chats in our language) and late night efforts for next day event.. Speeches and elocution before celebrities and dignitaries, anchoring and doing whatever things the time puts me to do in course of an event. After all, a great feeling of satisfaction, of being admired for our sincere efforts for a beautiful event.. :)

Huh! U see, I don’t bother of presenting it well in my blog, it all comes in my mind in a sequence and it simply flows off through my fingers into the blog.. It’s a great nostalgic feeling and it’s always thrilling to cherish the moments I had being the proud Secretary of Trivandrum SICASA!! Am dedicating this post to a very special person, whom I should say I have learned a lot from.. A person who has taught me the art of cutting a friendship cake in such a manner, that each one of them feels he has got the best piece of it. He taught us “There are a million reasons for you not to do a matter, but there would always be a really good reason why you should do it!”. He has taught us it’s the ‘person’ who makes the value of a ‘position’ and if you really wish to work for a cause, your post could never restrict you at all. None other than our very special final rep, Vinay Sivadass!! Bro U have inspired me in a zillion ways and of course learned a lot from you!! :)

The year has made me meet many people who are unique and different in there own ways. A fact which was fortified in my mind was that each person is unique, U have a good thing to learn from them. I got some really good people in my life, gifted by the year 2012. Bhavya, Deepa, Arun Hariharan, Kannan Iyer, John Paul bhai, ASKU, Hari Narayanan, Prem bhayya, Divya, Anusha, Veena, Anu, Abhijith Rajeev; some lovely people who are met for a lifetime, were gifted to me in that beautiful year of 2012 (pardon most are gals this time :P)

Just like I’ve said about Vinay, I have lots to tell about each of them.. As I’ve resumed my blogging, things would eventually flow into my blog in the most casual manner. Hey btw, have you noticed the new theme of ma blog?? Yeah moved colorful, and of course am sure the title has caught your eyes.. “Life of PAI!” Ya hereafter it’s gonna be known like that! I promise the name was inspired simply coz am a ‘PAI’ Brahmin and nothing else!! :P :D

A ‘Golden’ post..!

Hey, it’s time to speak out something to my dear readers after a short notch right now.. Haven’t written a thing for a long time, yet when I come forward, I must have some cool stuff to tell you, right? I think I have set kind of standards and all for my blog with the last post on democracy that nothing less than that would please my readers now. If I come forward with some naughty stuff, am sure I’ll get kicked on ass. Never mind, I’m dared to write something crazy here, right before you.. Here I go; the beauty of articleship has taken me to such a wide world where I look things around as another Sherlock Holmes. “Believe no one, only evidences speak.”, the cream and zenith rule of an auditor was reminded to me, once again by my principal when I was about to get started with a new audit work allotted to me – SP SMART FINANCE (P) LTD. 

As the name suggests, it’s a Smart new Finance Company which deals in lending loans taking Gold as securities. Just like the works I’ve done before, I started observing the business and transactions of my client. It’s a venture from well flourished SP Group who have deep roots and strong base of decades of business. The company lends out taking gold securities against each customer. The business seems so safe that even if he hasn’t returned a single pi, the company would still have profits going to auctions. See how safe the game is.. This thought left me ruminating on the stuff ‘Gold’ which is treated one of the most precious elements in the present day world.

’Golden memory’, ‘Golden moments’, ‘Old is Gold’; the proverbs take gold to endless heights and it is used synonymous to something great. No need of explaining much, how precious gold is considered today, just a look at the market rates is enough for a heart attack. More than it's charming beauty, it has an emblematic beauty as a safe investment in human hearts. People strive hard to buy gold with all their lifetime earnings to gift their children on auspicious occasions. Gold enriches those moments with purity and also assures to be a valuable gift which could help them with a good value of return in the future.

To be true, ‘Gold’ has never disappointed people whom believed in it. It has manifold their earnings to twice and even thrice in times of need. To tell it simply, ‘gold’ is the only thing a common man believes 100% to invest his money in. We could be sure that it has endless demand and limited availability that it assures a steady addition in value that it could be the safe and best investment in this world. Gold has limited availability, that’s a fact. But, a bit of funny question arising is, why do we have this much demand to gold? Is it a vital thing which a man can’t live without? Or is it a stuff which is of the best use for mankind? To respond plainly is ‘Not at all’, still why do we have this demand?

The exact answer is ‘because we believe it would have demand in the future too’. We know we could yield a better return through this investment than anything else with this much safety. To sum up, ‘Gold is precious because it has endless demand, and it has endless demand because it’s so precious.’ Whatever the reason be, the belief of man in gold is the most conspicuous factor that has backed the concept of economy in this world.

You know, we value currencies only because it’s backed with Gold Standards. The Bretton wood conference, 1944 of the world nations has made the world currencies 'worthy' by backing it with gold. Any person who bears a currency is promised by the issuer to get it exchanged with an equivalent worth of gold on demand (though hardly we do it). This has ensured the belief of people in paper currency which resulted into a smooth moving economic system and world markets. Nothing else than gold has gained this sacred belief in human hearts. Can we imagine a world which puts gold to dustbins? A world which hardly considers gold as anything more than a mere ornament.. No belief in currencies, no value for our investments, no scale of measure for prices.. How shocking it is!! It's not a 'chalu', U know, once people used to consider white pebbles as precious stones and used it in ornaments too. Now what is the worth paid to it?

Well, no need of such worries, lets simply be happy that not much people will have psychic thoughts like this.. Gold will be valued as long as people treat it precious. And as long as people value it, it stays precious!! ;-) So let me conclude simply telling that ‘Beware of people like me!!’ ;-)

Democracy!

Democracy, the most successful administrative system the time has ever proved.. That’s the soul of this blog post of mine. The term ‘democracy’ comes from the Greek language meaning "rule by the people". The policy of de-centralization and limited period of power stays foremost in the concept, which ensures reduced possibility for abuse of the same in personal interests. A democratic constitution guarantees its citizen, basic personal and political rights, equality, fair and free elections, and independent courts of justice. The public interest stays premier in decision making, and that has to happen in the most judicious and beneficial manner. These are the values that have made ‘democracy’ one of the favorite and convenient systems of rule, which gained huge vogue among the social camaraderie!

India, the land of mahatma, stays one of the prime most democracies in the present day world. It sets a parliamentary system of Government where the elected reps stay acme in decision making. They seek public acceptance each time in every 5 years and may be, that’s the only time we could see them in their constituency. A leader could not act like a dictator, here. Though it’s because of nothing else than the fear for next election, we could proudly say that “we, the people governs”. Okay friends, let me put a full-stop, or rather a semi-colon with the theory portions here.. Just like we do while solving mathematics, let’s put this as “eqn no. 1”. :-)

Here starts the second half.. Let me start from facebook, the modern democratic street where the views and aspects of the public is shared. May be it’s astonishing; still it’s a fact that we could find a cross section of the society in the facebook. The social networks have proved themselves, their credentials by invigorating public movements to their zillionth power, including the wallstreet revolution. In fact, this post of mine is inspired from such a status in fb. One of my routine fb hours made me curious, going through the ‘political statuses’ by some of my friends. Apart from the standard “I hate politics”, “Not interested”, or “Party Name” status, I found youngsters having broader thoughts and vision on our nation’s tomorrow.. Let me take Daksha as a common rep as her status matches with the vast majority concept among youngsters. It says, “politics is rubbish as long as the era of corrupt and aged politicians continue..” It can’t be blamed as it’s nothing else than most familiar fact for us. The concept of democracy stays futile in Our parliamentary system. What happens in practice is far beyond the beautiful theoretical democracy we’ve discussed in “eqn no. 1”. Here the people choose who should govern them, that’s it. What happens is, the one who seems cheating less is elected. The role of people is nothing more than choosing who should cheat them. It has made the youth fed-up and hardly interested in what’s happening around, outside Google. The fb status which made me think this much is that of Hrishikesh, hopefully a nice future pal of mine. He says,

“I blv in no party politics.. Politics must b ONLY for d welfare of d nation.. Ts people.. As said by Vivekananda “manava seva madhavaseva” for each nd every bill 2 b passd in parliament, der should b an election directly.. d law should b made by commn people.. especially such bills which may affect dem directly (low cost election techniqs like sms voting.. etc can b adopted)..”

(I’m sure, U guys won’t go crazy with the spellings, as U are all SMS Maniacs. ) ;-)

Hrishi has a great point with him. The concept of ‘by the people’ would come true only when people get their part in legislations and the Government’s policy-making. As he said, before each important bill is passed, the public opinion has to be considered. Bills against majority opinion must not get assented in the houses. The main constraint in such an approach is the impracticability of conducting elections each time for passing a bill. We can’t expect the Govt. to ask public to come to polling booths once in a month. For that too, hrishi suggests a solution. But, SMS voting is hardly a reliable solution, where the things would go even cheaper than a Reality Show final. Also, the one with 30 SIM Cards would gat 30 votes. These were not Overnight thoughts of mine. I used to think on this in my leisure times, intervals etc. Please don’t book a bed for me at Kuthiravattom, these thoughts just came in random, that’s it, okay? :-)

At last, I’ve got a solution of my own. The funny thing was, I got it when I was getting out from ‘Hotel Krishna’, after my lunch. When I saw a State Bank ATM just beside the hotel, I felt like “Manassil mattoru Laddu potti!! 8-)” Why can’t we use ATM’s for the purpose?? The thing Govt. has to do is nothing more than providing each citizen an electronic ID card, just similar to an ATM Card. Each such card should be made available with a confidential password. This task won’t be that difficult as the process of Adhar registration is in progress. Each time, an important bill is to be passed, it has to be presented before the public. M.P’s may take their part in elucidating the merits and demerits of the same to the common man. And, for each poll, a last date has to be published before which the entire citizen could vote either in favour or against the bill in their nearby ATMs. It’s a simple task for the Govt. to create an option of voting in this core-banking era. The majority decision must be the last voice on the matter. According to me, through this way, we could ensure a cost efficient as well as ‘DEMOCRATIC’ system of decision making. Hope this idea would be a spark which could bring about a new meaning to Our democracy. Also, Cheers Hrishi for this awesome thought! Jai Hind!! :-)

First time, in a Bar..!

‘Chartered Accountancy’, these are the words that have brought a new meaning for my Life.. Not only mine, but also for many people whom I meet today in my day-to-day Life. It has treasured me some exquisite experiences, which I would keep in my heart for a long time. Don’t worry, I’m not going to take a philosophy or management class here, straight away going to the matter makes my blog shorter, just for the sake I went on with a prologue.. Here, I’m recollecting a lovely (in other words, terrible) experience of mine as an articled auditor..

Here I go, It was the 1^st day of April 2011; U know how important that day is for an auditor. As all other articles, we were expecting an exquisite Stock audit from our principal Suresh sir. ‘We’ I have mentioned here refers to none other than me and Mr. Jacob John, my dear co-article. It was informed to us earlier a week before, that Our Stock audit would be at the ‘Spring Days’ of ‘S.P Grand Days’. Soon, that fine day came. We reached S.P sharp on 9 ‘O’ Clock. The accounts department was beautifully decorated for the New Year Celebrations. It was really lovely to see the cute idol of Goddess Mahalakshmi embellished with fresh Jasmine flowers and Red Roses. The aroma was so Soothing and the heap of Vibrant Sweets added to the beauty.

The accounts manager told us “Hello guys, plz wait for a while; we’ll start the audit in an hour. Btw, happy new year..:-)”. We smiled. We waited at the corridor as Jake suggested. A guy in Indian Jersey came across us; he was a staff in the Spring Days (bar). Just thinking we could get ready for the audit a bit earlier, I asked him “Chetta, Spring Days thurannitundo..?” Innocently he replied “Sorry Chetta.. Innu audit aayondu holiday aanu, naale undakum..”. Jake started laughing.. I felt like whether I should laugh or cry. :-P

After a small new year function, we moved to the Spring Days, 2 people from the accounts dept. and 3 from the outlet joined us. We entered into a glorious hall.. The whole room was charming in Incandescence.. Big round tables were neatly arranged in random. Cute Lead-Crystal glasses which shined like diamonds, were aligned One by One on them. A/C, Dolby Systems & LCD Displays seemed enthralling for a normal man to get Crazy. There was a small stage by the corner where the DJs & party would deal with. It was the first time for me to enter into a bar, Can’t blame the poor customers for sure, I thought..:-)

Back onto the ground, I took the print out of stock report which we have collected from the accounts department. Jake chose to record the observations and I chose to verify the stock. “Kingfisher Premium Gold, 8pm, Fosters, Mcdowells, Antiquity (loved that name)” one by one, Jake began to read the names and I verified the stock in the store room. The items were counted in numbers for fresh bottles and those were measured in ‘pegs’ for the opened ones. One of the staff opened a Fosters bottle and poured it into a measuring cylinder, Jake told “its 3.5 pegs”. While measuring Antiquity, as soon as the staff took the bottle, Jake was confident that “its 6.5 pegs ya..” It was exactly 6.5 pegs when we confirmed measuring it. I was amazed, if Jake was an expert in this deal. The staff there smiled on me when I tried covering my nose with a towel to save me from the smell..:-)

Well hats off to U dear Customers! Again I’m telling you.. “CA has left some exquisite experiences in my life, don’t know what it has left me for the Life ahead. Whatever it be, I’m happy..” Well for now, 'Cheers' guyz!

SICASA!!

Hey dear readers.. It’s a long time since I’ve blogged. I’m immensely pleasured to tell U that I have got a new role of SICASA Secretary of the Trivandrum Branch. It makes me happy and proud to deal in such a good role, as the representative of CA Students and to work as a Social being. These days, my weekends and holidays are dedicated to SICASA which makes me stay away from ma blog. But, rather taking it as a responsibility, it’s an opportunity for me to nourish what I have in myself. U know, the two things that I fear the most in my life is a Snake and a mike. But each time when the Secretary is expected to speak in a crowd, that fear disappeared bit by bit. Also, it imparts a spirit of team work, initiative and leadership among one and all of the committee. And, I have promised my heart to do my best to SICASA, in full-fledge..

The next thing I got there are some Sweet friends. Friendship, it’s always a nice thing to meet people similar to us. For me, a friend is one who has a similar wavelength to me. He/ She would have their own perspectives, but what makes two people ‘friends’ is basically their mutual acceptability. May be because I’m influenced by the Income Tax Act, I have defined the word ‘friend’ while using it..;-)

I believe, this too is just the grace of my lord Ganesh who has always showered it on me.. The thing I’m doing is just moving on true to my loved ones & to my own heart.. Wishing U all a Sweet Onam filled of happiness & prosperity, signing off, yours loving Abhi!

Aaranmula Kannadi, a treasure from Kerala....

Aranmula Kannadi.. That interesting stuff caught my eyes in a routine browse through the Google.. It's not the first time that I'm coming to know about it, but for Sure this is the first time I came to realize how Lovely & rich is Our Kerala with it's heritage. And I can't leave this One away from my blog..

Our traditions have left us some flagrant Stuffs which still remains amazing to the modern world. Aranmula Kannadi is One of such great Ones. Can you believe it that the metal is polished by the artisans in such a fashion that the metal starts to look like an actual glass mirror? How cool it is!

It is said that around the 18th Century, the artisans who were working on a crown for Lord Parthasarthy, accidentally discovered the reflective property of a particular Copper - Tin alloy. They failed at replicating the same effect in their subsequent works. They say, Parvathi Amma, a widow in the community happened to dream about the correct composition of the metal and disclosed the information to the artisans. Since then, this craft is a close guarded secret within the family through various generations.

Aranmula, ‘ar’ meaning six and ‘mula’ meaning bamboo, got its name when Lord Krishna depicting as a charioteer (from epic Mahabharata) was brought to the famous Parthasarthy temple on a raft made of 6 bamboos. The British Museum in London has on display a 45 cm tall Aranmula metal mirror in its collection. With this you can imagine how exquisite this mirror is to be acknowledged internationally. Friends, the thing is that the Global world pays great respect to Our rich heritage where as we believe everything western is the best. Ayurveda, great grandhas, Geetha, dharma.. Our great ancestors &  rishivaryas have already gifted us with the best. And it's meant for us to foster these precious Ones to Our heart with pride!