There might be a reason why Indian rupee is weakening against the dollar.

Read what three analysts in Kotak Securities found out, which was reported by FirstPost.

Scam 2.0: How $40 bn of exports and FII flows may be fiction

And then, read the cover-up that the Government Export Data was erroneous.  So, how much believable are the statistics that Government releases at weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual intervals?  Is the inflation number reliable?  What about the GDP and IIP numbers to which the stock markets give prime importance?

Bad data? Why $9.4 bn export reporting ‘mistake’ is a scandal

Readers also liked

• Market coloru reddu reddu (0)
• கணினியில் இந்திய ரூபாய் எழுத்துரு உபயோகிக்க… (5)
• Ra Ra says India’s symbol for the Rupee (5)
• சுபிக்‌ஷாவும் சத்யமும் ஒன்றல்ல (4)

Niranjan Sathyamurthy

A very good morning to everyone and a thank you, for being gracious enough to sit here and listen to me speak.

When we hear the word college, to many of us, fanciful flights of fantasy pervades our senses of reality. We conjure up for ourselves a whole other world. A world painted poignantly on each frame of a thirty-five millimeter film that bares itself to a flood of eyes and the minds they feed. A world where you stand outside the college, happy and excited; mind overflowing with lamentably amusing glimpses into the future where we breeze in and out of college. You also probably think that there’s a whole band behind you following you around and playing awesome music as you skip in and out of scenes in a cool hero- sort of way. A victory jingle perhaps, as you, maybe, in a fit of superhuman intelligence, befuddle a professor and walk out of the class as your ever-loving classmates rain loaded laurels for you and your outwitted professor: cheers for you and mockery for your poor professor. You also probably come to college only whenever you feel like it.

God! Wouldn’t that be amazing?
Coming to college only when you feel like it? Doesn’t it feel glorious just to think about it?

Okay. You can wipe the drool off now. Enough dreaming. I know this is early, but you should be way past the drowsy stage by now. I mean it. No, seriously, I implore you to sit up, straighten yourselves and listen to me speak for a while. Please, let me tell you a story.

In a country that had the stink of defilement about it. By way of occupation by another culture, forcefully thrust on it for decades, culminating in wars with blood and tears shed; lives, memories and futures lost. In this country grew up a boy. A boy blessed enough to have parents who could see the world for what it was and be his first teachers. Knowledge imparted not by the familial relationships in between them, but by the very life his parents led. His father was a speaker of law who commanded respect not only because of his generosity, but also because of his liberal and progressive outlook about social and religious matters. His mother was a staunch believer of the gods. She prayed to Shiva and believed he passed on his traits to her in the form of a son. This was the life that the boy was influenced by.

All of this and everything about it was fodder for the boy’s hungry mind. It devoured and feasted on it. It enjoyed every morsel that it got. And it ate and sated its hunger. It was full.

When I talk about all of this, I am overwhelmed.
A quote from the sayings of the boy’s mother reads:

“Remain pure all your life; guard your own honor and never transgress the honor of others. Be very tranquil, but when necessary, harden your heart.”

I cannot be foolish enough to be so boastful as to suggest that I alone know the real intention attached to the boy’s mother’s saying, but I can fathom a venture. I have every right to do that, what with our very classification as ‘men’. ‘Man’ is an odd word. It is the singular of ‘men’ and at its very roots, ‘men’ has this certain other meaning: to think. And we are, so rightly, termed the thinkers. I am a thinker and here is what I think it means: what the boy’s mother tried to teach the world to do was to be tolerant to everything that occupied this shared space along with us. I think she tried to teach them that there is no contentment in depriving others of their right to think. Just as it is for us, it is for them. But when an attack on the right to thinking happens to us, we must fight for what we think because what we fight for is our existence. The fact that we can think, is our only birthright and we own nothing else. Everything else is borrowed life made possible only because of our right to think. Hence, I think she is asking us to live and let live. Believe in what you believe in because believing in something is the only thing you can do and don’t deprive others of this because it is the same for them.

Greatly influenced by the rational mind of his father and the power of self-control of his mother, the boy learned. He learned and began his maturation into a man. His rite of passage: listening to and reading what other people thought of life, of a Supreme being, of our ancestors, of the ones around us and of the ones that lived in his mind brought alive by writing. His father’s influence.

His mother’s influence made him form a strong affinity to scriptures. He learned music. And he kept his body healthy to enable him to continue his learning while his mind was still tender.

He fought for equal rights for his fellow men, fueled by his learning and he attempted to take the frills away from religion. He thought like his father and his rationality aimed to cut away the frivolities of religion and present the core, untarnished. As rational minds are cursed to do, he questioned the existence of a Supreme being and found himself with a strong affectation in his mind. It was in Raipur that this affectation overtook his mind and, they say, that Raipur was the place where the spiritual birth of Swami Vivekananda took place.

It was this man, who heard everyone with the same ears. He listened to a fellow human who had something to share. And he found contentment in it. In Sri Ramakrisha’s thoughts he found his one satisfactory answer. He began an establishment, hoping to share the contentment that he felt with everyone else. And that was the Ramakrishna Mission. They decided that they should try and help people learn to understand how this contentment that we long for, the end of our pursuit for happiness could be attained from an age when our body is fit and our minds starving. Looking for answers.

Up there. Outside. Did you see the sign on the entrance?

Come. Follow me as I guide you through the college. Hold what I say in your ears and if you have space enough, your hearts. Here, wear my eyes.

That’s the office. You’ll be going there a lot. Don’t forget where it is. It’ll be either for paying the fees or getting the chalan for paying the fees. Or it might be to pay a fine for the whatever it is that you do. You go in deeper and you’ll find the principal’s and the secretary’s offices, the departments rife with politics, the classrooms flooded with cold mockery and new-born cynicism, the Internet center for whiling away time and the canteen because there’s nowhere else to eat on the campus. The library, the prayer hall, the auditorium, the classrooms and the sports grounds are all in there. Exam-halls too. Right above the prayer hall. You just have to go and look.

Speaking of exams, it would be good if you took them seriously. But not too seriously. How would you read a novel that you liked enough to read a thousand times? Or a movie that you never got bored of. Consider your exam in that way. Enjoy them. Relish them. The exam is nothing more than a ear. The subjects that you read are what people think of things. And these exams want to hear what you think. They want to know whether you understand what they are talking about. To know whether you are able to perceive their thoughts as they are perceived by them. They want to know if you can think of a different perception supported by the steady hands of reason. They want to listen to you and learn. When you write an exam, think of yourself as the teacher. A teacher in command of curious minds. Understand the gravity of it. Take them seriously, they only want to listen to you. Take yourselves seriously, you owe it to yourselves.

I’d like to read a short poem by W.B. Yeats:

“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

This poem strikes a chord in my heart and I have some requests to make.

I beg all of you to at least listen to what it is. It is something that I think would help make the relationship that we will come to forge in the years we spend together in this institution better. To the students, my friends, guys, I ask you to do just two little things: one, be yourself and be proud of who you are. There is no one better than you. No, don’t misunderstand me. No one is lesser than you either. And therein, lies the second request I have for you. When you are in the classroom, defend your thoughts, but listen when your professor is speaking. You have no other business during class. Your only task is to listen. It isn’t work. Look at it this way. The world as we know it- even the universe is built on questions and answers. We are in the constant search for answers to our questions as we are born and as we grew up, old and fade away. We want the same satisfactory answers that we got in our young age, but as we grow older, our questions grow deeper and our answers less satisfactory. You are just one person and you think so much. Imagine how much and how different so many other people that occupy this same world would think. And now, when you have a professor in class speaking, listen to him. He is talking to you. He is sharing his thoughts. Listen to them. And think.

To the professors, I lay this request, humbly, before them, so as to not tread on any toes: give your students an opportunity to speak. They want to be heard too. Whatever reason it may be. They might tell you different. But they want to be heard. I want to be heard and so do they. Make them do it. Force them to. When you say you are like a parent, then, I urge you to be one and share the same intimacy and love that you have for your own and make your students speak and listen to them when they do.

Can you hear that thundering sound? That overwhelming surge in your ears? That is the sound of dreams.

I ask you, my friends, my companions, I ask ever so humbly, to come and share your dreams.

And I hope at the end of your stay here, you will have experienced enough to fuel the next stage of your life, embodied elegantly by the student-teacher metaphor in Swami Vivekananda’s relationship with his parents and Sri Ramakrishna. I hope you can find a minuscule place in your heart. A little hollow to carry this tale. Remember this, listen to what others have to say and learn. Keep learning.

I welcome you to Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda college.

Thank you.

(Freshmen welcome delivered by Niranjan Sathyamurthy, Vivekananda College)

Most Commented Posts

• Satyam fraud, unravelling the mystery (85)
• Ravi my favorite to win Super Singer 2008 (39)
• தமிழகத்தை குவைத் ஆக்கும் திமுக (28)
• Jai Ho – Wishes to Mozart of Madras (25)

Steve Jobs - We miss you

5 October 2011, millions of fans around the world were shaken by the expected but very sudden and hated demise of Apple founder Steve Jobs to a rare form of cancer that he battled for almost seven years. He lived to hear about the launch of an iPhone 4 variation, but God took him away before the world could see the next big leap in smart phones.

World will surely miss his innovations.

Here I am, paying tribute to the legend, whom I would like to remember as the Michael Jackson of technology world, by publishing one of his very famous speech.

Over to Mr. Jobs!

********
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you belie
ve is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.

********

Mr. Jobs! we will stay hungry for more Jobs like persons in this world!

We thank you very much for all the great things you gave to us!

RIP

Readers also liked

• ஆப்பிள் திலகம் (0)
• Elliott Waves (0)
• A Book on Elliott Wave (1)
• Don’t piggyback – this is about pig flu (3)

ஆப்பிள் திலகம் ஸ்டீவ் ஜாப்ஸ் உடல் நலன் சரியில்லாமல் போனதில் டெக்னாலஜி ரசிகர்களுக்கு ஏக வருத்தம். Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad என்று டெக்னாலஜி உலகில் புயல் அடித்தவர், ஆப்பிள் கம்ப்யூட்டர் கம்பெனிக்கு Apple of the Eye ஆக இருந்தவர், செயல் தலைவர் பதவியில் இருந்து  விலகிய செய்தி ரசிகர்களை புயலாகத் தாக்கியிருக்கிறது.

ஆப்பிள் கம்ப்யூட்டர் கம்பெனியில் அவரைப்போல “மாத்தி யோசி”க்க வேறு யாராவது இருக்கிறார்களா என்று தெரியவில்லை.  தினம் ஒரு மாடல் செல்பேசி தயாரித்து வெளியிட்டு செல் உலகை செலுத்தி ஆண்ட நோக்கியாவையும், மோட்டரோலாவையும், ஜாப்ஸ் ஒரு சமயத்தில் ஒரே ஒரு மாடல் போனை மட்டும் வைத்துக் கொண்டு  மார்க்கெட்டை விட்டு விரட்டி விட்டார்.

ஆ.தி. ஜாப்ஸ் விலகலில் வருத்தப்பட்ட ஒரு ரசிகர் தயாரித்து வெளியிட்டிருக்கும் ஜாப்ஸ் வாழ்க்கை வரலாறு சொல்லும் அடேங்கப்பா அனிமேஷன் இதோ.

இதை படித்துப்பாருங்கள்.

இதை நிச்சயம் விரும்புவீர்கள்

Readers also liked

• RIP Steve Jobs – world will miss your innovations (0)
• Elliott Waves (0)
• A Book on Elliott Wave (1)
• Creativity on Internet (0)

ரொம்ப நாளைக்கு முன்னால் கீத ஞான யக்ன்யா என்று சுவாமி கீதை ஏ. பார்த்தசாரதி அவர்களின் கீதை உரை கேட்டிருக்கிறேன். கீதையை ஓவர்ஹெட் ப்ரொஜக்டரில் பிழிந்து சாரத்தை அன்பர்களுக்குக் கொடுத்து அற்புதமான உரை நிகழ்த்தினார்.

சின்ன லேப்டாப் வைத்துக்கொண்டு பவர்பாயிண்ட்டில் என்னென்னவோ செய்கிறோம், உபன்யாசம் செய்யக்கூடாதா என்ன?

திருவல்லிக்கேணி அருள்மிகு பார்த்தசாரதி பெருமாள் கோவிலுக்கு மார்ச் 2011 இறுதியில் நான் சென்ற பொழுது, என்னைக் கவர்ந்த அறிவிப்பு.

Readers also liked

• என் கணிப்பில் தேர்தல் கணிப்புகள் :) (1)