Writing – From hot-pan walk to cake-walk

There are a variety of readers with varying tastes; they have a reading pattern of their own, some like to read the old fashioned detailed writings, while others prefer crisp and to the point writings.

A writer writes to be READ and hence he strives to improve everyday, with this thing in mind, I would like to share some points that may come handy to my fellow writers and to-be-writers who are willing to be read:

1. Keep in mind the target audience, anyone who is going to read your writing is your audience; he is going to see you perform throughout your article.
2. Never show off, your writing is not your attire but your attitude and hence carry it with utmost care and never ever show off.
3. Have a clear picture of what you wish to convey, unless you are clear about the ideas you wish to share, it would be very tough for your audience to grasp the same.
4. Never make unnecessary assumptions which would eventually alter the entire style of your writing. For instance, don’t feed in a lot of details about some basic scientific phenomena when your target audience is scientists or take it the other way round, never write so much superficially that your readers are flummoxed and are even unable to comprehend the piece.
5. Using thesaurus is good but it is not meant to show off the language; to pick a precise word is one thing and to pick an unknown, uncommon word another.
6. See if your ‘writing’ interests you or not, if it can not interest you, there is a very high chance that it won’t interest anyone else; I tell you a secret – NO ONE READS TO GET BORED!!
7. If I want to get bored, I would never prefer reading over umpteen other mediums; hence never take chances and try creating a piece of work that could be anything but not BORING.
8. Be specific, digression is good only if you know your destination, you digress and reach somewhere, which leaves not only you but also your readers confused, is unacceptable.
9. Read your article a couple of times before actually publishing it, every time you would be beautifying your piece at least a bit.
10. Neither feel contended nor complacent; you might have written a fantastic article but DON’T get carried away, always have the zeal to improve upon yourself, bring in consistency, bring in charm, bring in a new wave of magic in each and every article.
11. Novelty is what we are all are looking for; bring in the variety and kill clichéd works in your article; this newness is always admired and talked about (This novelty made Aravind Adiga win Booker for The White Tiger).
12. Experiment with your articles; never be afraid of trying something new: it may or may not be liked by one and all, but it would certainly make you much wiser.
13. In the journey of your article writing, bring in unexpected twists, turns and sharp curves; grave and joyous picturesque sceneries for the reader to admire and then leave your article up to the reader to praise, love and cherish.

""13 points is just a matter of chance, no voodoo attempts""

Comparing writing with the culinary skill, some points garnishing this analogy are:

• However good your dish may be, it has a scope for improvement.
• All the best dishes in this world are a result of experimentation.
• Same kind of the best delicacy if eaten daily can lead to monotony and hence food merely becomes a daily bread rather than a piece of art, so bring in novelty.
• Be it a food connoisseur or your 10 year old kid, anyone can give you a tip or two to improve upon your dish, so listen to them.
• The content is certainly important but equally important is the overview of your dish; work on the overall presentation to ensure that no one makes a decision without even tasting it.
• Prepare food that can be digested, if the eater is required to take in something to digest it, you are to be blamed.
• Never prepare the food without the prior knowledge of those who are going to consume it, you serve the best sea-food to a bunch of veggies and end up receiving boos and shoos.

Unless you are very clear about the target audience, you can’t create a good piece of art.

Be it
a painting, a song
a poem, a dance

give your best shot
and never miss a chance

it should be appealing enough
even in the first glance

it is a piece of your soul
and not a piercing lance

it would bridge the distances
shorten the gaps

it would narrow the lanes
put you ahead some laps

Spread magic and charm
And make the cold life lovely and warm….

So gear up authors, mould your thoughts into words and present them in a beautiful platter to be remembered and admired till eternity.

You will die but your writing won’t, it would see the times that even your last worn-out strand of DNA won’t be able to.

This post is primarily motivated by a writing project on a fantastic site ‘Confident Writing’ to improve your writing skills by Joanna. Thanks Joanna for the inspiration!!

--sudharm baxi

The Grand Indian IT brigade

India and IT are somewhat synonyms in one way or the other. India, being the leader in outsourcing (more about it later) boasts of high revenue from IT. Till 1991, India used to be a big importer. Only after a lot of amendments to the existing tacky policies, India could retrace all its past glory (YES! India used to be a lavish exporter even before the British came to India).

A lot of companies emerged and eventually flourished as a result. Companies like Infosys, TCS, WIPRO, Tech Mahindra, Satyam, Patni, LnT Infotech and umpteen other small Indian IT enterprises became the front runners amongst exporters in India.

So what exactly do they offer?

They benefit from something called as outsourcing. Now, what is outsourcing? It would be much easier to understand this strange business practice using certain analogies.

Consider a shirt making company that makes variety of shirts. Now, is it required for this company to necessarily manufacture buttons, threads, collar material and other stuff? No not at all, pertaining to various constraints they avoid manufacturing all such stuff by themselves.

So, what they do is - They outsource (out + source) such material from some industry preferably devoted to manufacturing of that particular stuff. By doing this, they can focus on their core competence instead of thinking about other mundane stuff. This practice removes the pain off the shoulders of the shirt manufacturer and let them focus on their shirts.

In IT scenario, the big organizations of US of A and European nations prefer to get their IT operations outsourced, so that they can focus on their core competency - be it Banking, Manufacturing, Marketing, Advertising, or whatever.

They could have a full fledged department for carrying out their IT operations, but in that case their focus would be diverted and also they would require a lot of skilled professionals to carry out miniscule works (Compared to their major business flows, IT is just a small section).

One more reason for not doing their IT operations themselves is – Transformation of the business knowledge into IT panorama. So vendors come into picture, these vendors provide that ‘IT competence’ for the businesses. And where are the major IT vendors based on this planet - Ofcourse India!!

Now the question arises - why India? Because we are cheaper than our western counterparts; we know their language very well and above all we have learnt the tricks of trade over the period of time. The internal competition has made us smarter and more practical.

Before presenting another analogy about this scenario let me throw light upon some of the familiar IT companies:

Oracle: the Giant Database

SAP: the ERP pioneer

SUN: java fame, open source giant

MICROSOFT: who on earth has not heard of MICROSOFT

IBM: the real hardware giant, much into software development nowadays

YAHOO: the pioneer search engine, email provider

GOOGLE: the Giant search, the API/code provider and much more

ADOBE: .pdf fame, front end beautifier (particularly with FLASH)

All of these are the driving forces of the IT. I would like to do a little more detailing with the aid of another analogy that would explain the IT scenario as a whole.

Consider all the companies mentioned above as car manufacturers. They manufacture both customizable as well as non customizable cars. They design, innovate, and refurbish these cars from time to time.

And all the Indian companies (IT VENDORS) are either drivers or mechanics or both for these cars. As IT vendors, we drive the cars manufactured by some of those WESTERN car makers, we also modify, service, maintain, beautify, manage, buy/fix accessories for the owner of the as per his needs.

Now the drivers can also be put into varying categories based on their driving styles or the kind of car they prefer to drive:

• Some are good at driving the robust and reliable JAVA cars (INFOSYS, TECH MAHINDRA)
• Some are good at driving and customizing the automatic SAP cars (TCS, LnT Infotech)
• Some like to drive the legacy vintage cars (Patni)
• Some like to do a mix of all (WIPRO)
• Some are significantly into servicing (SATYAM- yes after all the ups and downs it is still a major player)
• Some provide stylish chauffer driven services (MINDTREE and many other small companies)

Some prefer to drive big cars, some small; some drive petrol cars, some diesel; some drive ready-to-use automatic cars; some others modify them according to the needs of the end customer and some offer chauffer benefits. The entire-grand-Indian-vendor-brigade is like a driver to the cars manufactured by US or European companies (particularly German and English).

All of these cater myriad of customers, aiding them in various IT tasks related to various business processes and existing at various stages of the business-process-life-cycle, in brief their operations can be pointed out as:

• they modify and customize the ERP systems as per their needs,
• they provide support and maintenance for the existing systems,
• they provide solutions to ease out the businesses using latest technologies
• they help customers to migrate from an old car(some legacy system) to a new one (some new technology).

But the only thing that trips me is being a Vendor - we don’t really get into R & D and bring up new products on our own.

I am not suggesting that the driver is not important. The driver is certainly an integral part of this complete process because the customers are unwilling to drive/service the car themselves; they have to have a driver cum service guy to do all this as per their needs. But how great it would be if our own IT giants (vendors) also try their hands at some R & D and develop newer technologies for themselves to work upon.

This is not like Indians are not a lot into product building but they do all this being in one of the ’car making companies’. Most of the guys in those western companies are Indians only but not in any Indian company that could develop such new technologies.

Have a look at the ‘credits list’ of Acrobat reader:

HELP- >> ABOUT ADOBE- >> CREDITS

And you will find every third name in the team is that of an Indian. So, ultimately Indians are driving everything everywhere in IT, but not the way that can help Indian companies come out of the garb of being a service provider.

The car manufacturers do listen to the drivers extensively because ultimately they are going to drive the cars and not the manufacturers or the real Customers.

But my urge to the Indian IT vendors is to spend more on R & D and develop newer technologies to cater the clients more ergonomically; provide solutions that help them in planning and creating a clearer picture of their businesses and ultimately helping them gain benefits where they actually want, that is - the BOTTOM LINE (i mean in monetary terms).

P.S.- Please put in your thoughts to provide a new direction to this debate.

Fly bird fly

Fly bird fly
the sky is waiting

Fly bird fly
horizon awaiting

Fly bird fly
There are boundaries to merge

Fly bird fly
With your profound upsurge

Go about
with courage in your heart

Chase mountains
with the well learnt art

Cross seas
Cross continents
Cross the mighty earthly gown

Act as that shining beacon
that doesn't
let us settle down

Go bird go
Ignite the spirits
Burn procrastination

Coz you are the one
who give us that
sense of satisfaction

That someone up there
is faithfully
playing its part

That someone up there
knows how to merge
duty with art
.
.

Friends

From the pen of a kid (my keyboard of course) who wants nothing but his friends around wherever he goes, whatever he does.

Life without friends....

Industry without shifts
Building without lifts

Father without heed
Moral without deed

Restaurant without food
Bike without hood

Shadow without light
Democracy without right

Sun without heat
Body without feet

Sleep without dream
Cake without cream


Life without friends is unimaginable
Lessons without them are incomprehensible....

Straight from the gut i declare
These are the guys on whom i swear

But in pain and in sorrow
When i have no choice but to borrow

They are the one who say
cheer up baby
This is just a rough time
don't go crazy

I know this life is full of
ups and downs
But my friends are here to
up the ups and
drown the downs

To narrow the lanes
Between love and care
magic and charm
and make my cold life
lovely and warm.


Thanks to all those who came into my mind while penning this.

Goodbye - salutations

It is always tough to part from your loved ones. Hence, the English language takes care of it through so many adopted words, phrases and idioms from various languages.

Some of the most appealing and widely used ones are briefed here, all of them suggest a meaning very close to goodbye:

• Ciao - Italian (pronounced Chao).
• Hasta la vista - Spanish (meaning: until next time) (remember Terminator 2).
• Sayonara - Chinese.
• Adieu - French.
• Adios - Spanish.
• Au revoir - French.
• auf wiedersehen - German.
• ta-ta - British (informal).
• Do svidaniya - Russian.

And the regular ones - See you later/soon/tomorrow(cya), goodbye, take care, b-bye etc. (Origin of Goodbye - God be with you).

OK so bye for now!! More coming up soon, keep crawling (a term used by Google to look for your search items in the web pages worldwide).

Writing - my endearing romance!!

This blog is like my baby. I once heard somewhere - किताबो से तो शादी करनी पड़ती है (One has to get into a wedlock with the books). But my engineering books never found me worthy enough as a life-long soulmate, hence i could just manage short term relationships with them (short term implies one semester).

And no traces of anything studied in that semester could be found in the rarest-remotest corner of my brain post that semester. Still, somehow i managed to clear engineering and ended up in an IT company. Here the ghoulish coding languages were awaiting my welcome to this graveyard (sorry for being harsh - i know this is my PRESENT EMPLOYER - making me a PAST). Somehow i managed to finish off with the gruesome training and right now doing something that earns my company some dollars.

During this whole expedition, i came across the world of blogging. And here i could deliver this baby - i was expecting ever since i came across linguistic communication. I could give shape to my thoughts, my ideologies, my understanding and as per my title - my underintelligence.

So why do you write?
Because i love writing.

And who gave you the right to impose this writing upon others?
I never imposed anything...

Yes you did..you forced them to read and admire your so called 'baby'..
Nooo!! i just send the link and if they wish they read it...

Don't send the link even - this is like forcing them to read..
I don't force them, i share it only with the selected few and that too i stop sharing if i feel they might not be interested in it.

This is like showing off, displaying your ego..
Showing off- i can't believe this, i have stopped using a capital 'i' ever since i started writing and you accuse me of showing off.

Ok Ok!! Still stop telling them that you have added something on your blog, stop imposing your love of writing upon others - Be humane, you should not trouble others because of your love. Should you?
No i should not and i will try that i do not.

But let me assure you of one thing - i will never let this baby grow old. Right now the baby is maturing with time, it is going through the vicissitudes of life and once it attains adult-hood, i would stop the process of its ageing (Yes, i can do that, but don't ask me how?). Because if my writing grows old it is bound to die, and i can't let it die.

I would die but my writing won't, it would see the times that even my last worn-out strand of DNA won't be able to.

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