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Types of Data
Types of Data: 1. Nominal Data: The word Nominal comes from the Latin word nomen, which means name. They can be differentiated using a simple naming system, hence can be called as labels. They don’t have any quantitative value. Eg. M-Male and F-Female 2. Ordinal Data: In an ordinal data set, the order of the values matter. It may indicate a temporary position, superiority but arithmetic operations are not applicable to them. Eg. Page numbers of a book. 3. Interval Data: In an interval data set we know about the order and the exact difference between the values. Statistical analysis is applicable here. Eg. Temperature, in degrees Fahrenheit. 4. Continuous and Discrete data: Continuous data represent measurements. They can be measured along a continuous scale which can be subdivided into infinitely fine sub-divisions. Eg- The amount of petrol bought at a petrol pump can take any value between 0 to 8 liters. Discrete Data: Discrete data is based on counts. Only a finite number of values is possible, and the values cannot be subdivided meaningfully. Eg: No. of students in a class( we cannot have a half student)
Shaleen Choudhary
ODISHA AND FOOD
TOP 5 DISHES YOU MUST TRY WHILE TRAVELING TO ODISHA Let’s start with some glace on Odisha. It is situated in the eastern coast of India surrounded by four states, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh ,West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.The current population is 44.5 crore with the literacy rate of 75%.The state is protected by the blessings of Lord Jagannath. It’s capital is “The city of Temples” ,that is, bhubaneswar.Now coming to the foods and cuisines , Odisha cuisine is less spicy and rich compared to the other regional cuisines in India.It was once said that Odisha people or Odias are the best cooks in India.They specially use mints and coriander leaves to flavour their dishes which also helpful for cooling their bodies as Odisha is having hot climatic conditions. The top dishes which one should try in Odisha are:- 1-CHUNGDI MALAI This is a delicious creamy prawn curry, where the creamy part comes from the coconut milk.It’s richness and creaminess is more enhanced with the spices used which makes it more mouth watering and flavoursome.This is best tasted with steamed basmati rice and one must try it in and around Odisha. 2-MACHA GHANTA This is a dish which is made using fried fish heads and potatoes. As fish is very famous in Odisha, their are lot of fish dishes but this particular curry is a must try one. I t is offered to Lord Durga in Dhushahra. Onions,garlic and some vegetables make this more delicious. Vegetarians can try the same using only vegetables which is called as ghant. 3-DALMA Dalma is just an awesome dish to try.It is made with fried moong dal ,some regular spices and a cup od veggy.....that’s all to make it to a perfect one. It works as a magic to your body. Only plain steamed rice and dalma can make your day.Nothing else will be required. 4-KHICEDE Almost famous in all states in India ,Khicede is a wholesome meal .It is an important dish in Odisha as it is served as bhog to Lord Jagannath in Puri temple.A perfect combo of rice ,lentils and ghee........makes it complete.Lightly spiced ,tasty and flavoursome yet nutritious to body.Mainly served with papad and curd. 5-PAKHALA BHATA Pakhala Bhata is the daily lunch for almost every household in Odisha during summers. It is prepared by soaking cooked rice in water and sour curd. This fermented rice is the perfect dish to beat the heat and refreshes you from within. 20th March is celebrated as Pakhala Dibasa (Universal Pakhala Day) by all Odias to welcome summer season with Odisha’s traditional food. This sumptuous meal is a must try.
Anuja Bhadra
ODISHA IN BOLLYWOOD
PEOPLE HAILING IN BOLLYWOOD FROM ODISHA 1-MIRA NAIR Mira Nair was born on 15 October,1957in Rourkela, Odisha, grew up with her two older brothers and parents in Bhubaneswar, Odisha.She ia an Indian American filmmaker based in New York. Mirabai Films, her production company, mainly focus in films for international audiences on Indian society, whether in the economic, social or cultural sector.Migration, The Bengali Detective, Still, The Children are Here, So Far From India, are some of her excellent works.She was awarded the India Abroad Person of the Year-2007. In 2012 she was awarded India's third highest civilian award the Padma Bhushan by President of India, Pratibha Patil. 2-SONA MOHAPATRA Born on 17 June,1976, in Cuttack, Odisha ,Sona Mohapatra has left no stone unfold to make Odisha proud. She is multi-talented being an Indian singer, music composer, producer and lyricist.Sona Mohapatra came to mainstream fame and distinction with the trendbreaking talk show with Aamir Khan [Satyamev Jayate] in which she frequently appeared as a lead singer and performer.She has won many bollywood awards too.Sona is married to Ram Sampath, a song composer and music director. 3-SUBASH SAHOO Background music plays an important role in movies. It adds essence to the movie. Susabh Sahoo, coming from Kendrapara, Odisha, has excelled in this field. An electronics and communication engineer by profession but his passion and interest leaded him to a different tangent which of course made him gain fame, appreciation and satisfaction.He went to give some of the most brilliant songs in bollywood history like Omkara, Kaminey, Khosla ka Ghosla , Once upon a time in Mumbai, etc. 4-KRISHNA BEURA Hailing from Cuttack, Odisha, this odia gentleman has amazed everyone with his high pitched notes and the soulful voice. With sweetness in his voice and carrying them to high notes, he has the ability to rule one’s heart. Some of his spellbinding and awe-inspiring creations are Maula mere lele meri jaan from Chak De India, Main jahan rahoon from Namastey London and Zindagi mein koi kabhi from Musafir. His golden voice enchants and captivates the audiences. 5-NANDITA DAS Nandita Das is an Indian film actress and director, is a woman of substance from Baripada who has taken her Odia roots and planted it deep and strong in the spangle town.she is known for her performances mainly in movies which generally contains a different taste like, Fire, Earth, Bawandar, KannathilMuthamittal ,Azhagi an Before The Rains. Firaaq, her directorial debut feature film, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2008, and has traveled to over 50 festivals, winning over 20 awards. Nandita Das started her acting career with the theatre group Jana Natya Manch. She has really made Odisha and India proud with her colossal talents and achievements. In fact She’s all set to make Odisha, world famous!
MONA LISA
SOME IDIOSYNCRATIC FACTS OF MONA LISA Mona Lisa.......the name is only enough to bring some beautiful, mysterious and bizarre thoughts in mind. The most famous and talked about painting was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci during Italian Renaissance. It is believed that this art piece is the most visited, the most written about and the most parodied in the world. Whether it be her ticklish smile or her charming and eyes, it bounds one to question about her mood and spirit. Mona Lisa is so beautiful and alluring that she can be used as a parameter to express beauty. People congregate in huge numbers to its home, the Louvre museum of Paris. Let’s have some glimpses on it’s history, creation and mysteries most importantly. 1- It is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506. Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. 2- The actual name of the painting is not Mona Lisa. It’s name is Monna Lisa, which means “ My Lady” in Italian language. 3- The painting is small than one can imagine. It measures just 30 by 21 inches and weighs 18 pounds. 4- It is in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel. A panel painting is a painting made on a flat panel made of wood, either a single piece, or a number of pieces joined together. 5- The painting is a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Her husband authorized the production of the portrait. They had five children and led a comfortable and satisfactory middle class life. 6- The most mysterious part of this unique painting is her smile. Some thinks that her smile shows that she is sad while other thinks that she is happy. Some believed that her smile changed when seen from different angles. But in 2000, Harvard neuro scientist Dr. Margaret Livingstone appealed a scientific mechanism to why Mona Lisa's smile seems to shift. It's all about where our focus is, and how our brain responds. 7- The beautiful Mona Lisa has no eye brows. Yes, this is another interesting fact. It is said that Da Vinci never completed the painting. Another reason which came to light is that when the authorities were re-establishing the painting, it got removed accidentally. 8- Researches shows that the portrait had three layers of painting before the present version of Mona Lisa. 9- Like a chapter straight out of the popular book "The Da Vinci Code," art historians have found microscopic codes hidden within the eye of the perplexing charming painting. 10- The technique Leonardo Da Vinci used to paint Mona Lisa was sfumato which means painting without outlines or boarders. 11- The painting has an imperfection. In 1956, a man named Ugo Ungaza threw a stone at the painting. This resulted in a small patch of vandalize paint next to her left elbow. 12- In 1911, Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre. It wasn’t recovered until two years later, in December 1913. 13- In 1852, an artist named Luc Maspero threw himself from the fourth floor of a Parisian hotel, leaving a suicide note containing that for years he had grapple desperately with her smile. Thus he preferred to die. Then in 1910, one fascinated fan came before her exclusiveness and uniqueness to shoot himself as he looked upon her. 14- The painting is extremely well kept and maintained. In Louvre, it has a room of its own. It is protected in a climate controlled environment and encased in bullet proof glass. The room was built exclusively for the painting and it cost the museum over seven million dollars. 15- The painting is considered priceless and so it cannot be insured.
Green marketing
What is green marketing and y this should be done ... All information is provided.
harsh singhvi
Aswin Tom
The mask
You say you don’t put it On your face like they do, But your saying this shows, The mask hiding you. You say your heart is clear Of all ploddings they do, But your saying this shows, The mask hiding you. You say you are brave enough To be original in all you do, But your saying this shows, The mask hiding you. You say your mind and body is knit And your thoughts are all you do, But your saying this shows, The mask hiding you. You say you are one And not divided into two, But your saying this shows, The mask hiding you. You say you really loved Every single person you knew. But your saying this shows, The mask hiding you. You say you don’t put it On your face like they do, But your saying this shows, The mask hiding you.
Monalisha Mishra
A dust over India
s your plane descends upon New Delhi, a soft orange haze engulfs you, drawing you in. A cascade of shanty towns drift below, clogged arteries of traffic dividing the landscape into innumerable scattered shards of populace. If you land in the evening, the haze throbs over the country with a dull glow in the speckled city lights. If you land in the afternoon, then the haze is a giant mass of incomprehensible dust — some amalgamation of smog, smoke, dirt, and fog — and no matter how far away you go, or how far you get, you never completely escape it. I have been to 40 different countries. Yet India made the most indelible impression of any of them. And not for all of the right reasons. Frankly, it’s not a pleasant place to be. Anyone who tells you otherwise lacks perspective. India’s full of contradictions: horrors and delights, achievements and atrocities, often on the same city-block. And despite the immense history, the monuments, the spectacular sites of human ingenuity, one can’t help but ask themselves repeatedly what they’re doing there. The first thing that strikes you about India is how dirty it is. In a word, the place is disgusting. All of it. The entire country. Never before have I seen mountains of garbage the size of a small house stacked on the side of a road, in broad daylight, in the middle of a city, repeatedly. Dumpsters tipped over and overflowing. Mounds of trash — wrappers, cups, papers, napkins, strewn all about, mixed with sludge from the soda and urine and spit coagulated from thousands of daily passersby. Like the dust, the garbage never ceases. And along with the garbage, there is an unending stream of humanity. It is impossible to spend a full day in the middle of a major Indian city without lobotomizing yourself trying to figure out where the hell all of the people come from. I’ve been to Hong Kong. I’ve been to Manhattan and Beijing. I’ve been to Mexico City. And the swarm of humanity crawling through India’s cities is unparalleled. There’s no comparison. Many streets more closely resemble a bee hive than a functioning human society. When I flew into Mumbai, there were homeless people sleeping on the tarmac. Take a moment for that to sink in: the city is so crowded and disgusting that people decide they’d rather sleep on the airport runway. And that is the second thing to strike you about India. The poverty. It is legitimate, take-your-breath-away poverty. Like the kind you see on TV charity ads, but far worse. And far more real. Limbless men stewing about in their own feces. Emaciated children playing on piles of garbage. A man with his leg literally rotting off to the bone, maggots and all, laying on the curb. It’s everywhere. The amount of suffering is indescribable. And it is unceasing. After a couple days, I was excited to hire a driver to go to Agra because I figured I’d be able to see some countryside and escape the stench and horrors of the city. But no. The entire four hours between Delhi and Agra was an unending stream of people, garbage and cars, with billows of dust drafting in our wake the whole way down. My initial reaction the first few days was pure shock. But it quickly evolved into anger. How could a place like this be allowed to exist? How could normal people walk around with a clear conscience with so much shit and squalor festering about them? I felt indignant. Where was the social accountability? Where was the charity? Where the fuck was the government? I’m no expert. And god knows my own country has plenty of problems. I’ve been to plenty of developing countries and seen plenty of poverty. But this was something else entirely. The sheer magnitude, more than anything, wrought a deeply emotional response out of me. For the first time in my life, I finally grasped what inspires people to drop everything and move to a dirt hole in the middle of Africa and start feeding people. When confronted with that much suffering, it seems insane not to do it. People like Mother Teresa or Princess Diana or Bill Gates didn’t seem like such foreign actors anymore. I could feel what they must have felt, even if just for a moment. With my driver taking me on a full-day trip to Agra, I watched the endless poverty scroll by like a demented video game. I had an overwhelming urge to stop at an ATM and withdraw 25,000 Rupees and start handing money out to people at random. I started doing the math in my head. That’s roughly $500. I could hand out $25 to twenty people. $25 could probably feed these people for almost a month. How much of my monthly income would I be willing to give up to feed 20 people each month? At what number would I no longer be willing to do it? At what dollar amount did my morality begin and end? The numbers began to make my head swirl. I was calculating my personal morality. I felt pathetic. And powerless. Like Oscar Schindler at the end of Schindler’s List, sobbing that his gold ring could have saved one more Jew, self-pitying yet noble at the same time. That Big Mac I had in the airport could have saved one more Indian! Damn you, value meal! Things only got more surreal from there. At a security checkpoint, a kid brought up a real live cobra to my car window, scaring the living shit out of me and my fellow passengers. He then asked us for a rupee. We didn’t give him one. In another scenario, a Swedish girl in the car with us mentioned she should have given some starving boys her box of cookies. When we asked her why she didn’t, she calmly replied that little boys shouldn’t be eating cookies, that it’s bad for them. In a Pizza Hut, every table had its own waitress. When I ordered hot wings as an appetizer my waitress duly congratulated me on making such an excellent culinary decision. Seriously. That’s what she said. As I looked around the restaurant, I saw each table occupied with fat, well-dressed Indians. I was reminded of the line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “He must be a king.” “What makes you say that?” “He doesn’t have shit all over him.” In Pizza Hut, the Indian people did not have shit all over them, therefore I assumed they were kings. That and they all conspicuously had their Blackberry’s out for one seemingly nonchalant reason or another, silently bragging to one another across the restaurant between garlic sticks. Meanwhile, out the window in front of the restaurant, a homeless boy (covered in shit) was attempting to pry open a boarded-up hot dog stand, presumably to find some scraps of food left inside. Stray dogs licked their open sores nearby. Trash milled about, blown by dust. And we, the fat, rich kings of Pizza Hut had our appetizers congratulated by personal staff. The mind boggled. The contradictions mounted. My cognitive dissonance flared. When the manager came by to ask me how I was enjoying my meal, my first thought was “This is fucking Pizza Hut. What’s wrong with you?” But I didn’t. I smiled and said “Fine, thanks.” But the bizarro world of India didn’t always lead to anger. It could be charming as well. At the Taj Mahal, I was approached by an Indian guy my age who asked me to take a picture. I said sure and reached out to take his camera, assuming he wanted me to take a photo of him in front of the monument. But instead, he stepped away from me, pointed the camera at me, and as four of his friends surrounded me and draped their arms around me, snapped a photo. Minutes later, a small family of four requested the same. And then another family, but this time just me kneeling with their kids. Then a group of teenage boys who wanted a picture with my tattoo. As a tourist, I became part of the tourist attraction myself. Here we are at the Taj Mahal. And here we are with a white person. And here’s little Sandeep flexing his arm next to the big white man. Soon a crowd had gathered. Many of them hung around, nervously trying to speak English with me. Some of them simply stared for minutes on end. All of them beamed smiles of excitement. The dust pervades every city and town, some with a smoggy golden hue, others with a gentle grey haze. It cakes the cars, the streetlights and the dead stray animals. It scratches at your throat and turns your snot black. Indian culture itself is quite disorienting. The people can be incredibly warm and hospitable, or cold and rude depending on the context and how they know you. The conclusion I eventually came to is that if they already know you, or if they’re somehow benefiting from you, then they can be incredibly warm and open people. But if they don’t know you, or if they’re trying to get something out of you, then they are a prickly, conniving bunch. The local I got to know the best was Sanjay, the 20-something year old who ran a hostel I stayed in. He had studied in London and been all over Europe so he was fairly westernized. He and I would stay up late together drinking cheap vodka, regaling each other with our travel stories. There was little else to do after nightfall in India but get drunk. And little felt more appropriate. But what Sanjay told me about Indian people is bizarre but true. He said Indians will rarely, if ever, resort to violence. As a foreigner, you never have to worry about being robbed, or having a knife pulled on you, or getting beaten up by a gang of thugs and having your kidney carved out of you. And this is true. I’ve been to many shady parts of the world. But never did I once feel unsafe in India. Even late at night. But, Sanjay said, an Indian will lie to your face. He’ll say anything to get what he wants from you. And most of them don’t see it as immoral or wrong. So on the one hand, they won’t stick a gun in your face to take your wallet. But they’ll hand you fake business cards and offer to sell you something that they don’t actually have, so that you’ll voluntarily empty your wallet to them on your own accord. And I have to give them credit, they’re really convincing salespeople. In Agra, our driver brought us to a handcrafted rug shop. Inside the shop I immediately knew what was coming: a “tour” of the rug factory where we would be cornered (literally) and pitched to buy one. I had seen this before in other countries and here I saw it coming a mile away. Yet the man came across as so unassuming, so genteel, so incredibly polite, it was impossible to not be won over. He showed us the individual thread counts of the rugs, how the rugs are meticulously woven by hand. He showed us how they design the patterns on elaborate grids and then translate them to their wooden weaves. He then took us downstairs, gave us beverages and launched into one of the most impressive sales pitches I’ve ever heard in my life. The man should be selling luxury cars in the United States. By the end of it, I was busy deciding which rug my mother would like the best. After some gentle bargaining, and some friendly gestures, I made the purchase and arranged to have it shipped to her in the US. It was about an hour later in the car when I realized what had just happened. The elaborate setup. The way packages with American addresses had been set out just right for us to see. The pictures of “satisfied customers.” I knew what they were, and they were good. My stomach dropped. I’d been had. My mother would never see that rug. But with only a couple hundred dollars lost, I got away fairly unscathed. An 18-year-old Canadian kid staying in our hostel got taken for thousands of dollars. A couple of Indians stopped him on the street, and with perfect English convinced him they worked for a travel agency. They then led him to their “office,” where they handed him “brochures” and “planned” out over a month’s worth of traveling and lodging, telling him the entire time that they were getting him the best deals and that they would pre-arrange every relevant tour. By the end of the hour, he had spent close to $2,000 and felt good about it. By the time he got back to the hostel his face was white. He realized what happened. He asked Sanjay about it and Sanjay told him to immediately call his bank in Canada and cancel the card. Tell them it had been stolen. There was no trip. No lodging. No travel agency. Just two Indian guys with silver tongues. The travel scams aren’t limited to high-end tourist items either. Pirated DVD’s that don’t work. Taxis that let you off at the wrong place. Hotels that add suspicious “fees” at the last minute. You get harassed constantly on the streets: vendors following you for half a block trying to hock their useless shit to you. Luckily, I learned long ago the perfect remedy to street touts: iPod + sunglasses. Crank that shit up to 10 and just keep walking. What you can’t hear or see can’t bother you. Would-be harassers and hagglers bounce off you like flies. Image credit: t3rmin4t0r But, to be fair, many Indians will go out of their way to be honest with you. There were multiple times where I thought the guy had asked for 50 Rupees when he had actually said something else, and instead of taking the extra money, he gave it back. Or like the time a taxi driver offered to show me a famous Minaret for free, for no other reason than because he was Muslim and thought I should see it. Or the kid in Gaya who rode me all the way back to my hotel on the back of his bike, for no other reason than he was excited to practice English with me. Or Sanjay, who on our third night drinking together, surprised me with an entire home-cooked meal made especially for me. Or my tour driver, who after dutifully driving us around for over 13 hours straight, teared up and hugged me when I gave him a 50% tip. Like anywhere else, Indians aren’t all good or all bad. You simply get more of each social extreme. It’s unpredictable. Not to mention emotionally draining. The constant need to be on-guard is taxing on one’s psyche. In Bangalore, I snapped. My taxi driver from the airport “forgot” to turn on the meter. Realizing this, I watched his odometer and counted the 30 kilometers we traveled. When we arrived, he tried to charge me for 50 kilometers. A shouting match ensued. I threw the money for 30km at him, grabbed my bag and walked into my hotel. He followed. He began pleading to the hotel clerk that I had refused to pay and that his price was the appropriate price. Now, with four people watching, I pulled out my laptop, connected to the wireless network, loaded Google Maps, and showed him that it was, in fact 30 kilometers from the airport to the hotel. My hands were shaking with anger by the time it finished loading. Luckily, he took my money and sulked off. At the door he turned around and said, “But you need to sign the receipt.” I shouted back, “Go fuck yourself.” I moped into my room, frazzled and bitter. After almost three weeks of dealing with such nonsense, I was reaching my wit’s end. I would not be surprised if I ended up punching someone over something menial soon. I lost it with the taxi driver. And when I did the math in my head, it was just $4. I freaked out over $4. Luckily I was leaving soon, heading to Singapore in a few days, back to civilization. I laid out on my bed, took a deep breath and opened my laptop. In the inbox was an email from my mom: “Thanks for the rug, I love it!” In the northern foothills of the Himalayas, the dust morphs into an awkward haze. It sticks to the horizon. Trash still permeates the small villages, although in smaller heaps, many of them charred from their daily burnings. The beggars seem less down-trodden. Cows sprinkle the roadways in between tuk-tuks and overflowing caravans. For the most part, the crowds have dissipated. India attracts a wide variety of spiritual-seekers, lost western souls criss-crossing its geography in search of meaning or of themselves. India is the cradle to two of the oldest major religions in the world: Hinduism and Buddhism, both of which, unlike their western counterparts, focus predominantly on a first-person perspective of spiritual development. Having been interested in Buddhism for over a decade and having spent much of my college years meditating and attending retreats, my interest was piqued by the plethora of ashrams, gurus, and Dharma groups available. The reality was a let down. There’s no other way to describe the phenomenon other than what it is: spiritual tourism. Which is somewhat of an oxymoron, especially in Buddhism. And also disheartening as it falls victim to the same scam-inducing practices as India’s other tourist markets. Scattered around places like Bodhgaya and Goa, flyers are shoved in your face, street peddlers try to convince you that they can take you to the best ashram in town (as if there’s a “best” way to do yoga). Some even promise enlightenment… for 10,000 Rupees a week. Now, I’m sure there are legitimate and profound retreats and ashrams in India. But the whole process felt cheap and inauthentic. Children tried to sell marijuana around yoga retreat centers. And it was apparent why: the dreadlocked, tie-dyed, mid-life-crisis’ed Western clientele who streamed through enthusiastically buying from them told you all you needed to know about the scene. Two westerners I spoke to in Bodhgaya, where I considered sitting in on a retreat for a couple days, told me that they had never meditated before and were excited to learn it in India. When I mentioned that one could learn to meditate in 10 minutes at home to see if they actually liked it, they replied, “Yeah, but it’s so much cooler to do it in India.” My mind’s eye could just see The Buddha face-palming at that statement. One girl tried to brag to me that she had visions of Krishna in the northern mountains and that she thinks she may convert to Hinduism. When it came out that she had been smoking local hashish every day for weeks on end, I pointed out that these two things may not be a coincidence. She didn’t like hearing that. Perhaps it was my own arrogance, but it saddened me. My belief has always been that spirituality is something that is experienced personally, not measured, compared, or quantified. Meditating on a loud bus in Chicago can be just as profound as meditating under the Bodhi Tree itself. In a religion whose whole belief system revolves around impermanence, unattachment to the material world, and equanimity, making a 4,000 mile pilgrimage to a tree in the middle of Nowhere, India, for bragging rights seems, well… counterproductive. I can see the interest historically, and perhaps emotionally, but spiritually, there’s not a whole lot of difference. And so as I passed the flyers, and the hippies with their braids and skullcaps, it became harder and harder not to be a little bitter. I understand that pilgrimages and capitalizing on your most holy site are pretty standard for all of the world’s religions. But I guess in my mind I held out hope that Buddhism was different. And actually, Buddhism is different. It’s the followers who aren’t. (Or maybe I just don’t like hippies.) But I can’t help but feel that the volume of poverty in India is related to the solipsistic tendencies of the religions based there. I also can’t help but feel that foreigners regularly mistake being pushed so far out of their cultural comfort-zone as some sort of spiritual experience. When the human mind is presented with paradoxical conditions, it usually reacts with inexplicable feelings and often invents a supernatural explanation for them. And India is rife with paradoxical conditions. The most beneficial effect of traveling that I’ve found is that it forces you to become more confident and independent in a million, tiny, unnoticeable ways that add up to a great, noticeable whole. The more difficult and exotic the culture, the more it challenges you, the more it engages you on an emotional level, and the more you grow in intangible and personal ways. Perhaps there’s nothing inherently “spiritual” about the sub-continent, it’s just the most extreme cultural experience a westerner can subject themselves to and, as a result, grow from. Every country we go to, our natural inclination is to search for some kind of greater meaning. “China’s finally making the leap,” or “Latin culture is exceedingly passionate,” or “Corruption dominates Russia,” — all of these trite little platitudes that we bring home with us and spill amongst our friends and loved ones to show that we did something significant, that we learned something interesting. This is where I went. This is the meaning. All in one or two sentences. There’s no single sentence for India. The place is a fucking mess. And it’s the only country that I’ve ever been to where I left more confused than when I arrived. My search for meaning came up empty time and time again. One day in Bodhgaya, a small town of maybe a few thousand people, I ate at an outdoor restaurant in the town square. Beggars, shirtless children and cows littered the square, along with a few assorted street vendors. I had just returned from touring the temple built for the place The Buddha had become enlightened. Looking out over the town square from my large plate of curry, I watched the beggars stew about, completely ignored by the townspeople. By this time my search for meaning in this land had become frantic, and my emotions fried. I looked at the mound of food before me. It had cost $2.50 US dollars and could feed multiple people. I called the waiter over and ordered another one. The two nearest beggars were an old man and woman together, huddled on the ground, clothes tattered, white hair and beard matted and dirty. They looked up at me with their emaciated arms outstretched in cups, the same cupped hands one would use to drink from a river. Their eyes sank into their sockets. They seemed to look beyond me. I put the second plate of food down in front of them like a pair of dogs. They looked at it wide-eyed for a moment, and began shoveling the food into their faces as fast as they could. Curry dripped from the man’s beard. Rice mashed into his black fingernails. Bits of chicken spattered on the ground below them. I stood there watching for a few seconds, expecting something. What? I don’t know. But I wanted to feel something. I wanted to feel like there was some purpose to all of this. That I could walk away with something important from my whole experience. But instead I felt helpless. It was like I had just put a band-aid on the Titanic. He’s going to go digging through garbage again in a couple hours. He didn’t even look at me. What’s the point? Obviously, I’m no Mother Teresa. And it’s just as well; Mother Teresa couldn’t save this society from itself. Sometimes human systems become so large that they hurt people, not by design, but by inertia. And it’s beyond any of our ability to grasp, let alone control. The townspeople had seen what I had just done. And within seconds, a boy approaches me and asks me to buy him a soccer ball. I tell him no and begin to walk away. He follows. Then another man comes up wanting to sell me pirated Bollywood DVD’s. I also tell him no. He gets upset, “You give food to a beggar, but you won’t even buy a DVD from me? Why not?” He felt like I committed some terrible injustice against him. A crowd was beginning to form around me, looking for handouts. I quietly put on my headphones and sunglasses, turned my iPod up to full blast, and walked through the dust.
Preet Kahlon
Operation You: Taking Personal Responsibility
There’s just no easy way to say this: your biggest problem is you. It’s not the weather, or the economy, or the government, or the alignment of the stars. It’s you. Phew! I’m glad we’ve sorted that out. Now, we can start getting you out of your own way. Prepare yourself for Operation: You. The Stuff That Happens TO You vs. BECAUSE of You In life, there’s stuff that happens to you and stuff that happens because of you. One you have control of, the other you don’t. The stuff that happens to you is often out of your control. Your boss is in a bad mood. Your football team got beaten in the playoffs. Your car won’t start. Many of these things you cannot control. Perhaps you can influence them. For example, servicing your car regularly means it probably will start, but largely that stuff just happens. If you put too much effort into worrying about it you’ll waste the energy you could actually use to effect some positive change in your life. The stuff that happens because of you and your actions is completely in your control. In understanding this, you put the power in your own hands and remove it from those around you. Meaning, no one else can prevent you from getting what you want. And that’s why I wrote earlier that you have to get out of your own way. Are You at the Cause or the Effect? Psychology students are taught about external and internal loci of control. An external locus of control is when you believe external factors control your situation. While an internal locus of control is when you believe you are in control. An internal locus of control sees you taking responsibility for what is happening in your life. The key is personal responsibility. When you take responsibility for what is happening in your life, then you put yourself in a position of power. You put yourself in a position from which you can achieve your dreams. NLP practitioners learn about cause and effect. When you are in control, you are at cause — you cause your results. When you are at effect, the external world affects your outcomes. Understanding the differences between these two positions is essential. Cause is a position of empowerment. Effect is disempowering. The position of effect allows you to explain away your poor outcomes. Cause doesn’t let you off the hook. If you want positive outcomes in your life, you have to be responsible and in control of your responses, actions, and outcomes.
Indian Middle Class Consumer
The article mainly focuses on the Indian middle class consumer. Using material from the article, discuss the relationship between the middle class consumer and the middle class citizen. Why has the Indian growth experience been different relative to its peers? Why has growth not created a middle class like other places (especially China)? As per the report of HSBC bank, India nearly has 300 mn citizens in middle class which expected to become 550 mn by 2025. Despite this huge base of middle class in India, the growth experience of firm has been completely different from expectations. The returns in India has fall short of expectations. The initial growth of more than 100% in 2014 and 2015 in e-commerce sector raised the growth expectations while the actual growth now lies somewhere between 25-30%. The growth in other sectors have also been very slow as compared to other countries. The article draws examples from countries like Ireland, Kazakhstan, Lithuania where Zara has more shops tan India or Starbucks which opens one store in 15 hours in China as compared to two months in India. The main reason lies in the difference between middle class consumer and middle-class citizen. Though the size of middle class has increased, most people have little money to spend. More than 80% of the Indian population earns less than $1700 while a latest iPhone costs $1400. The middle-class citizen spends most of its income on better education and health care facilities. National Council of Applied Economic Research defines a person to be belonging to middle class if s/he earns Rs. 250,000 in a year which amounts to less than $10 a day. According to article, most western firms assumed the size of middle-class to be same as that of other developing countries where these companies have succeeded in the past and the growth in GDP would be correlated with growth of middle-class. However, both these assumptions are found to be incorrect in the Indian context. This is primarily because of highly skewed distribution of wealth in India. The top 1% of India’s population holds almost 22% of the total wealth in India as compared 14% in China. This depicts the wide gap that exists between the rich and the poor in the country. A survey suggests that less than 3% of Indians own all five of the given luxuries: car or scooter, a television, a computer, refrigerator and air conditioner. Most of the households hold only one of the given luxuries. This is the true picture of Indian middle-class citizen as against the expected middle-class consumer. As opposed to other economies, the rich people in India are superrich while middle class do not have high spending capacity. Thus, the base of potential spenders in narrower in case of India. However, due to the high population of India, even this narrow base includes big consumer segment and attracts foreign companies. The growth in Indian economy has not created a middle class like other places as China because of the following underlying reasons: 1. Jobless Growth: A sudden jump from agriculture-based economy to service-based economy bypassing the manufacturing sector which is the most labour intensive in nature as has been the case with China for more than two decades. Since the service-based industry is highly skill based, lots of people are unable to find employment to sustain their basic needs let alone the luxuries. 2. Income disparity and growing inequality: This sudden jump and lack of labour intensive sectors has also resulted into a huge income disparity with rich people getting richer day by day while poor people are becoming destitute. Top 10% of population constitute around 55% of the national income. Even though the Indian middle class is far from wealthy, the rich people are super rich. 3. Over-dependency on government jobs and IT sectors: The government jobs which employ the major chunk for middle class in India are disappearing at a fast pace @ 100,000 jobs a year. 4. Stagnant Salaries: Salaries have been stagnant at big corporates for quite a long time and the recruitment rates are dropping. 5. Lower rate of urbanization: This has resulted in lesser migration of people from countryside to relatively better paying jobs in urban areas. 6. Employment in Informal Sector: Major chunk of the workforce is employed in the informal sector which is not productive enough to pay salaries close to the middle-income group. 7. Participation by Women Workforce: Women workforce participation is negligible because of social customs as well as the meagre situation at workplaces. 8. Poor Healthcare and Education: Dismal conditions of healthcare and education sector in India forces people to spend a major part of their disposable income on these facilities.
Vaibhav Kumar
7 Steps to Prepare for Your Job Interview
Now that you have an interview, there are certain things you will want to do in advance to prepare for it. This article will provide practical tips on how to prepare for a job interview. Remember, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so you’ll want to do your best in preparing for your interview in advance. 1. Pick your outfit: What you wear on your interview is an absolutely crucial part of how to prepare for a job interview. After you choose your outfit, make sure it is cleaned and pressed and you have the appropriate accessories and shoes to go with it. It doesn’t hurt to try the outfit on ahead of time, just to make sure everything fits and you look great. Then put your outfit aside for the day of your interview and have it ready to go. Now that you have this crucial step out of the way, you can concentrate on the rest. 2. Practice greeting your interviewer: You should always greet your interview with a friendly smile and firm handshake. If you do this right, you will set off the right energy and the chances of the interview going well will increase. This is a small and simple step that you should always to do to prepare for your interview. 3. Study your resume and know everything about it: Any work experience or skills you have listed on your resume are fair game to talk about during the interview. Your resume is all the interviewer has to go by in order to get to know you. They may pick things out from it and ask you to elaborate. Even though you may have a previous job listed that was many years ago, the interviewer may ask you to explain what you did at that job and you are responsible for providing an answer. This is one step you absolutely won’t want to skip on how to prepare for a job interview. 4. Practice your answers to the most common interview questions: If you don’t know what these are, do your research and find out or see one of my other articles. You’ll want to have your answers ready and practice them. You should always be able to answer “Tell me about yourself” and “Why do you think you would be great for this job?” The employer doesn’t know, so it’s up to you to sell it. Don’t completely memorize your answers so they come out rehearsed, but have a clear idea of what you are going to say. When you are asked, you want your answer to come out intelligently and natural. Be open to other questions as well and really know what you can offer to the company. 5. Research the company and the job position you are applying for: Write down any questions you may have about either so you can ask during the interview. If there any requirement of the job that you are unsure of, you should definitely ask during the interview. It always looks nice when you go into an interview with intelligent questions. It shows you put effort into preparing for the interview. However, never ask questions just to ask questions. The interviewer will see right through that. Your questions should be genuine and relevant. 6. Find out the type of interview you will be going on: There are several common types of interviews such as one on one, group, and behavioral. You shouldn’t assume you will get a certain one. Don’t be afraid to ask your recruiter what kind of interview will have if you don’t know – the interview will be more beneficial to both parties if you are prepared. 7. Print out the directions to the interview and be on time: Allow enough time to get there and anticipate traffic. It’s ok to be up to 10 minutes early, but no more than that. Otherwise, the interviewer may not be ready for you. Bring the phone number of your interviewer just in case you get lost or are going to be late. If you are going to be late, call to let the interviewer know. Follow these tips and you will successfully know how to prepare for a job interview. Interviewers can tell whether or not a candidate has prepared for it or not and they will appreciate it if you did.
Tanay Tandan
Beauty
Slithers through grass Shiny patches do lasts On its body that crawls Independent of legs of talls. The eyes that still show The beauty of world like before Rests on a burnt crater That makes them shine brighter. Trees and houses it sways Blowing structures it says- “What you have built son is, is weak, Be the strongest among meek.” Expressing goodness of all It grows in, on our every fall It marks us in the race Showing hurdles, yet to face. Things around me,that gather I sit a bit, see and ponder Are all nothing but only beauty In one or other form of almighty.