nk's blog

letter to the editor- speaking tree I have always liked the contents of The Speaking Tree’. However, the article on Gandhi (September 26) by Sonal Srivastava was disappointing. First, since speaking tree is a paper that offers us articles with good depth, I do not understand how your editors decided to include it here. Secondly, if you want to understand Gandhi, you do not ask common people, like a university student. I think this task of asking people’s opinions would be better suited if this article was about a survey on Gandhi. If you want to understand Gandhi, the right thing would be to analyse the writings and opinions of those who either adopted and followed his principles, or those who have known him personally and those who have done some research on him. It took almost 40 years for Stanley Walport to study Gandhiana and come around to writing his book on Gandhi ‘Gandhi’s Passion – The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi’. Even William Shirer wrote the book ‘Gandhi- a Memoir’, a...

The recent idea ad is advising us wrongly i think. The ad encourages everyone to 'walk while you talk'. This i think is wrong advice. The ad may be scoring brownie points for advice on health but what about the unsafe practice of walking while talking?It is very likely that you may end up in accident situation - look at the case of a person walking on the marine drive parapet wall being admonished to 'walk while you talk'. It is very likely that this person may fall either on this side of the parapet wall on to the promenade or oops the other side in the sea. And look at another shot which shows the 'walk/donot walk' sign on the road crossing. This also according to me will make a person walk when the 'do not walk' sign is on. Its all right to be extra creative in the ads. But what about the disastrous consequences of such advice? The advertisers should give more heed to their ethical social responsibilities, while releasing ads.

I like to bring up this blatant misuse of quant figures in an ad to dupe the customer. the recent lifebuoy ad talks about implementing a change in attitude of people by making them use the soap and get health benefits. the ad is using apparently inflated quantities since it talks about having dealt with 2000 families in two tall, skyscraper buildings. as all of us are aware, skyscrapers have not reached more than 30 stories in India and considering this to be the upper limit my logic works like this. how many families can a 30-story building accommodate? according to me, at an average of 4 or 5, it cant be more than 500 considering say 4 flats on each floor. if you take into account the fact that most of the tall buildings are in posh localities and middle class people cant afford to live in these skyhigh buildings. moreover,with rich people staying there, these buildings are not likely to have more than 4 flats on each floor. hence according to me the ad's use of quants falls f...

when i bought toilet soap this time, i noticed a very interesting practice of the manufacturer to achieve price increase without explicit intimation or knowledge of customers. dove produced in march 08 cost rs.30. for 75 gm cake and in jan 2009 90 gm cake is offered in a three pack for rs.120. if you had expected a reduced price in a value pack of three you are in for a surprise. the price increase works out like this: rs. 30 for 75 gms works out to rs. 120 for 300 gms i.e. for four cakes and now after 9 months you end up paying rs.120 for three 90 gm cake i.e. for 270 gms. this ruse of the manufacturers works very well esp when the customers are brought up on value pack concept of three/four packs which lasts for a longtime with you say two to three months. the product virtually lasts in the market for close to six months including the pipeline, after which you mentally accept a price change. incidentally, the three 90 gm pack also offers rs.8 discount i.e. 128 to 120 to boot. this ...

what is the new year going to bring to us? some delayed effects of the global recession or what? there is a general agreement on the understanding that india will not be affected so much by the global recession. this could be an understatement or underplaying the effect. anyhow, whatever happens should give us the strength to weather such financial storms better in the future. in the short term, HR consultants are saying that 2009 will see a rise and stabilisation of the recruitment process. so students who are graduating now can look forward to a reasonable salary and stable job.they should learn to accept lower salaries and stay on in their jobs for longer periods.

today mumbai mirror reminded all of us our duties in remembering the martyrs of 26/11 by writing about shri tukaram omble who died with his boots on while grappling with the only alive terrorist qasab thus ensuring that his colleagues captured the terrorist. but there was more talk about all others who were killed by the terrorists and there were very few mentions about tukaram. is this to match with his attitude on duty which was highlighted in the Mumbai mirror article?

a friend of mine sent me this sms the other day biggest mystery of maths... 1000s of yrs hav passed ... millions of theorems derived... crores of formulas derived.... but still...."X" is unknown!! i thought i should give him a suitable reply when i thought for a while i realised that i also need to send a xmas greeting to this friend and connected both the needs my reply sms was this i thought 2k yrs ago X was shown by God to be his son Jesus. merry x mas. the connect was X being used to replace christ in christmas. how's that!!! a friend of mine Mr.Kak gave me the reference of wikipedia to the origin of use of X for christmas. from wikipedia i understand that X stands for chi the greek letter starting in christmas. i think i was over enthusiastic in blowing my own trumpet.