Category: Uncategorized

Satyam Eva Jayate Or StyamevaJayate, a TV program has stirred up a hornets nest once against where gory stories of father, husband, father in laws, mother in laws are being told where every husband, brother, father, in-laws seems to bow their head in shame! But is this the true picture of India we are showing to the world on TV ? Are we equating aberration of some fellow Indians to be the norms of the society ? In our jealous enthusiasm for fighting social ills, are we punishing innocent husbands, fathers, brothers and in laws ?
When we discuss about honour killing, have we forgotten Rakhi where a brother promises to protect his sister from all trouble in the world ?

Have we forgotten the father who have started many businesses in their daughters name ? Have we forgotten the temples in the name of our female deities and the number of male visitors to them ?

Have we not fought among our friends to offer our chairs to the newly entering girl to our class ? Have we forgotten the our habit of throwing away our cigarettes as soon as we see a girl approaching us ?

Have we forgotten that a husband built Tazmahal for his wife ? Have we forgotten the thousands of fathers who celebrate their daughters ?
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It is almost 4 years now that I have been thinking to go back to my village and live there forever. To be honest, my desire to go back increased after I had Stone Problem in February 2008. So in while, I keep updating my Facebook Status, Twiter about my desire to retire and permanently go back to my village. I think many people do not like to believe that. But I surely want to go back. Still, I have not gone back yet, why ?

Before I post here why I have not gone back, I would like to list why I want to go back:-

1. I want to go back during summer

Summer in Rajasthan ( where I presently live) is too hot. The sun is way too bright. It is very tough going outside during day. The hills are not green or blue for most of the time in a year. It looks rocky and harsh.

Finally, it does not rain enough. I feel like ages where I have seen rain properly. The rain here are like few sprinkle of water which last few seconds!

2. I want to go back during winter

Winter is better. But its so short lived! And then you do not have woods to start bonfire at night, roast some pork or other meat and enjoy with family back in my village. I miss it badly and often ask myself, am I sacrificing too much living away from my village ?

3. The jungle are full of thorns
Yes, I tried roaming around jungles and feel wilderness in jungles of North India, Western part of India. They are full of small bushes which have lot of thorns! You just can not hug them, fall on them just like that! I miss doing those becoming one with the jungle, nature!

4. I can not swim in rivers

Most of the small rivers I visited are either too dirty and no depth or no current where I could take a bath or swim around for some time! How I miss rivers in my village!

The lakes are good, I often think of swimming there. But I have not been able to do that! Most probably, some day I will try to swim and may be I would like it.

5. Only work, no leisure at all

Six days a week, it is just work, work and work! No leisure at all! In the name of leisure, it is just watching a movie, going out to some bank of lake, drink coffee.

I miss playing football, volleyball, badminton (ok, I played badminton for few days with great difficulty), walking in vast paddy fields aimlessly.

6. I miss stars in sky

Yes, sometime, I look up to the sky and miss the billions of stars there! Here I can see just few thousands up there in the sky!

Some time, I miss it very much! It is very difficult to get to see blue sky full of stars here were I live!

7. I miss pork

I do not get to eat pork here. When ever I get to eat, they are not tasty. In the name of meat, I just get to eat broiler chicken which I almost hate !

I do not like the smell of fish here! I miss the fun of catching fish on my own eat at my own leisure!

There are few more reasons why I want to go back to my village! But still I have gone back yet. I know why I have not been able to go back yet. I will post about that too.

I will also post other reasons when I want to go back to my village!

Finally, I thought I would publish some pictures of birds which I captured here and there in Udaipur. I was not very keen to take pictures of bird, majorly because I did not want to invest in lenses required for bird photography. I started with Nikon 55-200mm Non VR lens and after getting frustrated for few days, I could improve a bit. And finally ordered 7-300mm VR lens.

VR ( Vibration Reduction) is a feature which reduces camera shake to the equivalent up to 4 shutter stops. It is a huge advantage.

Here are few Bird Pictures, I thought I would share. I normally upload my pictures in my photography blog.

I thought I would share few experiences with Indian bureaucracy and its grievance redress system. First of all, I must tell you that, the “grievance redress system in Indian bureaucracy” is firmly in place, and it works mostly to the satisfaction of the complainant. But if you read news paper, watch TV News, one may believe the other wise!

Well, I think, Indians treat their problems more emotionally then logically. So when, most of the time, when they seem to have been treated unfairly by the bureaucracy or the system, they seem to love to play victim than trying to get justice using the built-in “Grievance Redress System” in place. Yes, I do agree many people are not aware of them, or many are too afraid to approach them fearing aggravating their problems.

But, I had no such fear and thanks to Google God, I am confident of information about grievance redress system and like to use them.

1. Keep written record
The most basic thing to remember while trying to get justice in any Grievance Redress System is not to get emotional about the issue, but be reasonable and arm yourself with facts and figure. Also, Indian bureaucracy can not work verbally ( rightly so), so one has to keep written record of following of the procedures. Including all the official correspondence, courier details, speed post or registered post records etc. Bureaucracy has no space for personal emotions, so avoid getting angry, use of abusive languages, shouting at counters etc. Trust me, they do not help your cause.

2. Do not be afraid.
The officers are no more qualified than you. Always remember, the all powerful collector, IAS/IPS officers are just graduate in education just like you but smarter than you to clear UPSC. The same is true for every government officers in any bureaucratic setup. The incidents like “Ruchika Girhotra – ex DGP SPS Rathore” are extreme cases and rare. Normally such thing will not happen to you. Majority of the Indian officers are God fearing, hones, work honestly and follow rules.

3. Be patient, do not give up
Yes, do not give up. Keep following up. Now a days, following up is just an Email Away or FAX. Or one may send follow mail through speed post or registered post. They help as they maintain date and time stamp. These correspondences are important as they are in written format and bureaucracy love them and never lose them.

4. Follow procedure
Now a days, there is a deadline to close any application within a fixed period. Learn them and follow them. After that accelerate the complaint to higher authority. Yes, they work.

By following above tricks, I have been able to get my grievances redressed in many government departments. Some of them are :-

1. State Bank of India
a. In Guwahati, I could get Rs. 18 as interest for delay of Cheque cleraance for one day. To be fair to them, all bank officers were on strike.
b. I got my SBI account opened in the second day in Jaipur. On first visit, my documents were not complete. On second visit documents were complete but the officer simply refused to open our account and asked to come back next day. I protested and called the grievance Telephone number displayed int he branch and my account was opened after 10 minutes.

2. North Eastern Council
Complained to DONER ministry by email about broken bridge on NEC funded road with images of the road. New wooden bridge was constructed in 3 months time.

3. Director General of Civil Aviation in Udaipur Airport
This is experience my my friend Ankit who was wrongly charged parking while standing in queue. He emailed DGCA authorities. Now no car is charged for waiting in queue to pass the toll gate. He also got an written apology for his inconvenience.

These were some of the experiences. I have many other similar experiences in Railways, Collector office, Municipality office, Government Hospitals, Police Stations where I thought I was not getting proper treatment of service as per my privilege as a citizen, I complained to citizen grievance cell and got my issues fixed ( sometime quickly, sometime it took time).

I have not failed to get my grievance addressed even a single instance. Yes, some time it took time, I had to visit offices and attend meetings with officials etc., but at the end, truth always prevailed.

When I first started blogging in August 2008, I thought I would be able to make a lot of money with Google AdSense. For that, I did many silly things including searching for ‘high paying’ keywords and try to put them in some useless blog posts.

Everyday, I used to check Google AdSense account for the money accumulated! Sadly, I never crossed $4 a day! I even tried asking my friends to click on AdSense advertisements on my blog. I also used to click on theirs in return.

I used to spend lot of time Googling “how to make money online”, “How to increase Google AdSense” revenue. I also searched for bloggers making lot of money and used to read those lists of bloggers who make thousands of dollar per month! How I wanted to make such money by blogging!

Finally, I gave up trying to earn from AdSense. Luckily, I started enquiries from my blog for some serious work. So, I continued blogging.

Meanwhile, unique visitors to my main blog on IVR (Interactive Voice Response) System started increasing. I had also started getting more and more business enquiries.

Eventually after two years, I found out, in order earn enough from Google AdSense, one needs lot of visitors, that too from western countries like United States of America, Canada etc. If one gets click from there, then only one earns enough. Clicks from India and other “third world countries” earn hardy few cents per click!

Three years is a long time to make a blog popular. Most probably, If I spent my time in popularising, I would have generated more visitors and there by making good amount of money from Google AdSense. Instead of doing that, I spent time in finding out short cut to increase clicks on Google AdSense. So eventually, I could not make money from Google AdSense.

Also, most probably, choice of topic for the blog is important to make it popular with more people. Some topics which have large audience, should get more visitors than a blog with very niche topic. According to me, without getting many visitors or being a popular blog, I should not have tried any trick to make money from Google AdSense.

But one thing I am happy that, if I have to start over again, most probably, in two years time, I would be able to make money from Google AdSense by building popular blog! Also, I will not expect serious revenue if I am not a full time serious blogger.

I visited Goa recently on some photography work, wedding photography to be exact. I think Goa is one of the cleanest place in India. May be I was traveling to good or tourist locations in Goa, but I found all roads remarkably good, without any potholes!

While, I would be uploading my picture in my Photography Blog, I thought I would also upload few here.

I visited the following beaches in Goa :

1. Colva
It is a very big beach and never look crowded. It has almost white sand!

2. Calangute Beach
Picturesque beach with many shacks to eat good food and beer!

3. Bagha Beach
Smaller beach, but found it to be crowded with many domestic and international tourists.

4. Anjuna Beach
Anjuna Beach in North Goa is what I liked most!

Some of Goa pictures here :-

Recently, I faced a hacking attack due to which my VPS ( Virtual Private Server) was disabled by hosting service provider and all my websites were down almost for 18 hours! The server was hacked by some hacker and were using the server to attack other servers all around the world!
Since I had no other option but to reset it to default and putting back the websites manually one by one! It was very difficult for me to put back all the websites! During the process, I learnt few things :-

1. Always use daily Snap Backup service by the hosting provider! It may cost you money but its worth it!

2. While installing CMS ( Content Management Software) like WordPress, always create your own databases. If you use those One click installer, make sure to give names, user name, and password of your choice! These comes in handy when you have to put back the database in future manually!

3. Remember to change your root password monthly at least! If one can keep changing weekly, much better!

4. One should monitor server usage, CPU, Memory and space daily. Also if possible, put email alerts if any of those resources cross certain thresh hold. This will you monitor if any unusual activity in your server. Some regular distraction, but it saves lot of pain!

5. When your hosting provider does not respond to your support tickets, pick your phone and call them up! Most of the time, phone call is the fastest way to get help. Phone call also alerts support team about the seriousness of the problem.

These are my thinking after a really a nasty hacking attack and pain of putting back many websites manually! Be smart, learn from others mistakes!

Online reputation monitoring is checking if anyone is ‘talking’ about you or your brand. Online Reputation Monitoring is very important for any online business like e-commerce portal, travel portals, online shops. With recent explosion of social networking sites( Facebook, Twitter etc.), even brands which normally sells offline, monitoring online reputation has become a major brand management exercise.

Common people, customers of any service or product may write ( a blog post), tweet ( on twitter), update status ( on Facebook) about his own experience about that service of product! And his blog post, status update or tweet may go viral ( which means it gets shared by many people who agree with his view about that product) in web, then it may mean huge credibility loss tot he product, brand or service! This in turn may result in huge revenue loss to the brand owner!

For a person, it may tarnish his image, destroy ones authority on his subject both online and offline, which may result immediate loss of revenue, embarrassment! Imagine a doctor or hospital whose reputation goes down! Or which gets bad reviews online, no one will take their patients to them!

The same is true for a blogger! But since a blogger can be anonymous, both good review or bad review may help him getting more visitors to his website! And normally, more visitors mean more revenue for a blogger! But if blogger blogs about some of his authoritative subject and he he gets bad reviews, his offline revenue may go down! For example, if a photographer blogs about “Photography“, and if he gets negative review, tweet, or status update in Facebook, his blog may get more visitors, but he may lose many photography assignment!

One of the most interesting thing is, Google stores almost all information including the tweets, reviews, blog posts about any one, any product or service and Google shows them when some one searches about that product, brand, service or person!

So, everyone, whether depends on internet/website or not, needs to do Online Reputation monitoring!

The very first question I am asked, as soon as I introduce myself as blogger to any one, is “How I earn for living ?”!

I find it hard to reply, even when I reply, I do not find people to be convinced. So I thought, if you are really curious, here are how I earn from blogging:-

1. I earn from inquiries sent to my blogs. People do send inquiries about IVR Software requirements. I pass on them to related IVR companies and I earn from them.

2. I earn some from advertisements in my blogs.

3. I earn from Google Adsense. Not much. But I earn some. But one day, I hope to earn good amount from Google AdSense. According to me, Google AdSense can provide one regular and sufficient earning per month if one devotes proper time in blogging!

4. I have ancestral land and I do farming there. I want to go back to my village and do farming and blog, full time.

5. I am trying to learn and earn from photography. It is difficult, but I am trying.

Blogging, Farming an Photography are three fields where I would like to earn my living. Presently, these are not main bread earner, but I hope to achieve soon.

I have been blogging for four years now! While I blog variety of subjects, my main and original blog is IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) System which was my first blog with .COM domain!

It has been a good experience with the blog. I have come to know many people in the small IVR industry in the world, learned many technologies in IVR!

There have been many encouraging comments by visitors! One of the best comment is when, one web visitors thanked me for putting up list of IVR companies! He applied to some companies and got a job!

Apart from that, there have been many interactions among company representative as well as their customers on the blog!