There are many reasons why I write and ‘Money’ is not in the top 5.

This post is a must read for all the aspiring young Indian writers out there….

Ravi Subramanian

This piece written by me was published first by Scroll.in on 29th August 2015. You could read the article on Scroll.in here : Click here 

Every time I log on to Facebook, I find a number of people either wanting to write a book, or desperately hunting for a publisher having written a book. There are also scores of published authors, all attempting to promote their books.  This is indeed symptomatic of the fact that everyone today wants to become an author. And why not? If you have a story you want to tell the world, all you have to do is to open your laptop and start typing.
But why does everyone want to become a writer? Is it the inherent desire to tell a story? Is it the desire to change the world? Is it the passion for writing? Or is it greed?  I have no idea. I…

View original post 1,117 more words

My Honey Diet

I have always been a moderately good eater ever since I can remember. I never used to shy away from eating pretty much anything that was vegetarian and edible; in fact, the tastier and sweeter the dish, the more helpings I have. However, the fact that I was reasonably active throughout my school and college life meant that I never had to worry about putting on weight or being obese at any point in time till I was around 20 yrs old. A healthy dose of physical activities in the form of outdoor sports, the occasional exercise routine and some walking/running meant that I kept my weight and my tummy in check. I guess all that physical activity also meant that my metabolism also kept the calories from being accumulated.

And then graduation happened, and I stepped into the corporate world; a desk job meant that I was well into my journey to a sedentary lifestyle. Most of my waking hours were spent either commuting to and from work or behind desks in front of a computer tinkering around with word documents and spreadsheets. This automatically put me on a sticky wicket as far as my metabolism went. Coupled with the untimely meals and constantly eating out this meant that my fitness levels gradually started going down south and the kilos just kept adding on.

As if the sedentary lifestyle weren’t bad enough, since I strictly believed in working hard and partying even harder, I soon began guzzling down beer by the gallon. Although I developed a taste for the fizzy beverage somewhat late when compared to my peers, I would like to believe I more than made up for the delay in terms of guzzling down quantities like there was no tomorrow. All that aerated water went ahead and added up bang in my mid-section with the result that today it looks I have a Formula One tyre instead of a midriff.

While this by itself is not a cause for grave concern, the fact is that I am on the wrong side of the thirties and it is high time that I took corrective action to get back in shape and get back to my fitness levels of yore. And it is in this context that I am strongly contemplating beginning a Honey Diet. And what better source of information and readymade tips than Dabur Honey’s website http://www.daburhoney.com/.

The website is a veritable treasure trove of information on all the relevant topics for me such as Fitness Tips, Knowing all there is to know about honey, Expert Advice and the icing on the cake, some really easy to cook and yummy to eat recipes by none other than Chef Vikas Khanna.

While the Fitness Tips section has small instructional videos of some easy, quick, but effective exercises to stay fit, the 3 Click Fitness Test has an option where the website provides you with a relatively customized diet plan based on some simple parameters you have to input. In a nutshell, this website truly is your one stop fitness shop and is a boon for all of you who are looking to get healthier.

The All About Honey portion of the website very clearly brings out reasons as to why honey is better than sugar and as to how honey forms probably the best substitute to sugar in our daily lives. And as mentioned before, some lip-smacking honey based recipes from Chef Vikas Khanna truly adds honey to the cake (notice how I say honey instead of cake).

So then, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and start your own customized Honey Diet at http://www.daburhoney.com/

Cricket Information – At the speed of light

I still remember the days when my grandfather used to rely on his trusted Philips transistor radio and tune into either BBC or Ceylon Radio to get live commentary of the test matches happening in those days. For him cricketing legends like Gavaskar, Sobers, Gundappa Vishwanath and Vivian Richards were just names and faces from newspaper clippings.

My father though had the fortune of actually following cricket in an era when televisions slowly started making their way into our homes. In fact, the first tournament he saw on TV was the Prudential World Cup of 1983 when Kapil’s Devils beat the mighty Windies to bring the cup home.

As for me, I have been brought up on a healthy diet of cricket on TV and a major part of the last decade has been an explosion of sorts in terms of the sheer volume of cricket being broadcast on TV screens. But for the generation after mine, this simply is not enough. TV simply is not enough for them.

This truly is the day and age when cricket lovers can breathe a sigh of relief as they can easily follow the fortunes of their favorite cricket teams and players with just the swiping of a few fingers on their smart phones.

And this is where the free UC Browser (http://www.ucweb.com/) with its special focus on cricket (http://www.ucweb.com/English/UCbrowser/cricket.html) is a godsend opportunity for cricket fans to have the latest cricket related information at their fingertips (quite literally). It not only has the latest live scores of all international matches with live ball by ball commentary, but also a historical database of results, scores, scorecards and other statistics related to all matches. As if this weren’t enough, it also has the latest news regarding cricket, teams playing the game and all other people involved with the same, either as players, or as administrators or commentators or in any other capacity. In a nutshell, UC Cricket is the cricket lovers’ one stop shop for all information related to cricket, in what is probably the most easy to use interface as well.

It goes without saying that we all live in an era where information is king, and more importantly the speed at which relevant information is delivered to us is probably the only condition based on which we choose our sources of information. And it is in this regard that the UC Browser and UC Cricket in particular score really high. Gone are the days when we had to stare at our phone screens and see the ‘buffering circle’ spinning round and round. With its proprietary cutting edge technology working at the back-end, the UC Browser and UC Cricket ensure that all cricket related information is delivered to us almost immediately after each ball is bowled.

In case you are still not convinced, go ahead and watch this video, which will make a convert out of you for sure. I mean, it has none other Yuvraj Singh (yes, you heard me right, Yuvraj Singh) endorsing UC Browser and UC Cricket!!!

The Deadly Duo

Picture this situation; you are reaching the end of the financial quarter and this has been a terrible quarter, both for your company and your client as well. The sheer volume of financial transactions has been mind-boggling and the ongoing economic recession means that your company cannot hire additional resources to handle the increased load. You and your teammates are pulling in all-nighters as well as working through most morning hours as well, and yet the load simply refuses to come down. The only times you can relax a little and forget about work is when you folks go to the company cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee and some snacks as a team. It is only in the lobby of the cafeteria that all boundaries of hierarchy, age, gender and class are broken down and your true spirit of camaraderie comes out to the fore.

Now, while the company management realizes that while monetary compensation is probably the best reward that they can offer the team for all the hard efforts they are putting in during the quarter, there is only so much happiness that money can buy. Your bosses really want to do something special for you folks. They literally want to re-energize the team and charge them up so that it can take on the additional work-load with renewed vigor. What would you suggest?

Well, why think any further than the ‘deadly duo’ of music and dance? After all, there is hardly anybody who doesn’t respond positively to foot-tapping music and mind-blowing dance performances. It is a universally known truth that the right genre of music is probably one of the most effective therapies for all of us to take our mind of tensions, worries and live in the moment and enjoy life to the fullest. It also goes without saying that when we hear awesome music, if we see an equally mind-blowing dance performance, then our bodies and minds will be doubly re-energized.

And when you think of this ‘deadly duo’ of dance and music, why would you want to look any further than the ‘deadly duo’ of Anushka Manchanda for the music and Allu Arjun for the dance performance. After all, they have more than half the country’s youngsters rocking and re-energized with their bubbly, chirpy and overall energetic personalities.

Picture this, your bosses arrange for a secret impromptu concert of this duo without publicizing it within the company at all. You and your team head out to the cafeteria for your much needed break, and you find the cafeteria engulfed in darkness when you step out of the elevators. And then suddenly the music starts, foot-tapping music, and gradually when the lights come on, you see Anushka behind the turntables at a makeshift DJ counter. By the time this fact registers and you begin enjoying her groovy beats, Allu Arjun makes his way on to the stage by literally tearing through the back of the specially made prop for his foot-tapping, mind-blowing performance.

Just imagine this, the combination of music and dance, of Anushka and Allu Arjun, of good food, good music and good times. Do you think you and your team could get any better re-energizers? I don’t think so.

—————–

I am blogging for #MaxFreshMove activity at BlogAdda.com. Are you?

Rekindling my love for photography

Call it bragging, boasting or blowing my own horn, but the fact is that right from a very young age I have had a knack of looking at things very differently. While the rest of the folks around me would see the fallen branches of trees and the clogged drains after a good thunderstorm, I would probably be the only one who would notice the rainbow in the horizon; I was the only one who saw the ‘silver lining’ in the clouds, so to speak. It therefore goes without saying that I was thrilled to bits when I bought my first digital camera, all the way back in 2004.

It helped that I was on the picturesque hill-top campus of IIM Indore back in those days where everyday life offered more than a vista of the surrounding areas as well as the wonderfully and aesthetically designed campus itself. Suffice to say that I had quite a ball back in those days clicking a crazy amount of photographs. For someone who enjoyed photography so much even with the regular point and shoot analog cameras as a teenager, a digital camera was a blessing in disguise in that it allowed me to indulge in a lot of experimental photography.

However, as is the norm with all of us corporate slaves, life and professional commitments got in the way and the digital camera got relegated to a dusty corner of my cupboard. Over the last eight odd years now, I haven’t even bothered to pull it out of its cover, let alone take photographs. However, all this changed when two important things happened in my life in 2011.

First, I bought my first smartphone with a 13 MP camera which rekindled my love for photography. What with the fact that the phone was always with me and also supported a whopping SD Card which could store more than quite a few pictures. Second, the birth of my angelic cherubic daughter in late 2011 meant that I had more than enough reasons to indulge in photography. Both the availability of a good camera and an ever enthusiastic subject meant that photography made a comeback in my life.

However, the smartphone itself was not quite good and was made by a particular Korean company whose credo was that their products would work really well for a year or so by when they would have launched a new flagship with better features and latest software which would render the old phones redundant. This meant that although I was enjoying my photography I was not quite able to keep up with the latest in hardware and software updates as far as my mobile phone was concerned.

This issue will now be addressed squarely in the face with the launch of the new Moto E. The second generation phone in its series, this phone packs a powerful punch with its quad core processor, all day battery, Android Lollipop OS and customization options in the form of Motorola Bands and Grip Shells. As if these weren’t enough reasons to buy the phone immediately, the fact that it comes with two cameras – a rear facing one as well as a front facing one means that I can indulge in my love for clicking pictures with great gusto with the new Moto E.

What is better is the fact that clicking pictures with this phone is as easy as flicking my wrist twice to activate the rear facing camera and twist my wrist again to take selfies with the front facing one. Taking pictures has never been easier. I guess it is time for me to start taking photos by the dozen.

If you need more details regarding the new Moto E, visit their site at http://www.startwithmotoe.com/ to enjoy the experience itself.

———-

This post has been written for the #choose your smartphone journey with the all new Moto E blogging contest being conducted by Motorola in collaboration with Indiblogger, India’s largest community of bloggers.