I have all the time and all my world for you…
Keep me going…
Keep me strong…
I trust you’d never go wrong…
Don’t be around…
But send your fragrance through a whiff of wind…
I’ll welcome it with wide open arms
And kiss the ground…

For most people, growing up is synonymous to getting older. But after living for almost a quarter of century, I look upon my life and realize its much more than just getting older… Its about getting more experience, getting more ideas, its about getting mature (I seem to hit upon the exact word)…

So here I am, with my life before me… So much time seems to have passed. I have lived my life as it came… played, laughed, cried, teased, run, fell, got up, hurt, got hurt, learned, unlearned, forgot, remembered… I have done it all… and I liked it… If I’d given chance to life again, I’ll still make the decisions I made, I’ll go from those paths that I went…

So what did I learn from all my life’s experiences? When I compare myself from what I was 10 years ago, I find many changes in myself. The most prominent one; becoming deliberate from being spontaneous… Now I think before I act… and I am no more impatient. I am now more content then I was 10 years ago… and I am more aggressive. Perhaps those are the signs of maturity!! I now know that maturity isn’t something you’d gain just by being old… You’ll have to interact, think, feel, act. I now know that world isn’t perfect — it was never meant to. I don’t expect perfect outcomes now… Because if you become perfect, you wont have any chance to improve — which is imperfect in its own… Over the years I feel becoming more self centered… which I think is a by product of maturity - or vice versa…

Here too I am talking about myself from the start... I now feel more confident in being honest about things I feel… which is a nice thing as I have said everything about myself without any hesitation and without any lie… Over the years I have seen people’s expectations from me growing… sometimes I find it choking me, sometimes I find it very stimulating… I have learned that if you fear something it will keep you haunting for ever, and if you face it firmly you will conquer it… Be it a memory of someone …

I stopped celebrating my birthday long ago as I don’t see the logic in people congratulating you on something to which you have no credit. I’ve been very less emotional from start and I feel birthdays are just like other days… But, I still love the surprise feeling of answering some long lost friends’ call… Hey! that’s the reason I remember all my friend’s birthdays… I don’t believe in making resolutions because I don’t need any resolution to do something…

Hmm… I wanna end this monologue now… So when I hear to my 11 year old cousin who now dreams to become a pilot, I get reminded of myself… One can draw his inspiration from anywhere… and thats why I believe that this is a continuous process… I have yet to see more… and experience and explore. Life is meant for learning… and growing up… these years will keep coming and going, what counts in the end is how you utilize the time allotted to you…

I will turn 24 tomorrow! I’d like to thank everyone, my family, my friends who are around me, makes me feel happy everyday & keep inspiring me… and special thanks goes to my friend Shahab Jafri for the similar thoughts.

According to the latest issue of “Outlook Business” magazine, the healthcare services in India’s private hospitals is getting world class. However, the customer service at the same private hospitals is not able to catch up with the rapid developments in the infrastructure of the hospital. The patients are happy with the patient care but they are still unhappy with the quality of customer care they get. Waiting in the queue, doctor not available on time, payment hassles etc.

A new trend that is coming up in this eco-system of traditional healthcare delivery through Hospitals / Clinics is “Online Healthcare”. The doctors and hospitals can look at this as a channel that filters the patients and then forwards them to the doctors and hospitals for treatment.

Online Healthcare includes a few important aspects as mentioned below. At the core of the system is a central web-site or portal.

• It provides an access to doctor online for Live Chat. The patients can use the Internet and chat with the doctor. The doctors can provide medical advice to handle the current situation and then refer the patient to the nearest hospital and doctor in their locality. Doctors also provide answers for the common medical queries.

• It provides patient generated reviews about the hospitals and doctors and also the contact details of the doctors and hospitals.

• It provides a Forum where people of similar health problems can discuss with each other.

• The website also provides content in the form of answers to common queries, which the patients might have.

• The website has common health tools and price listings for the common medical procedures in hospitals.

• Patients can buy medicine over the Internet and it will be delivered to their home.

Such trend is already popular in the USA and Europe. Many websites like WebMD is widely used worldwide. In India, HealthcareMagic has recently started this service and has already referred hundreds of patients for OPD and IPD procedures in Bangalore.

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What brand of shirt & trouser do you wear?  Allen Solly, Van Heusen, Polo! Each costing you atleast a couple of thousand bucks!! How often do you go to restaurants, pubs? Once in a week, twice in  week, costing atleast 500 Rs each time.

Irrespective of whether you are a young bachelor, or a young couple  recently married & having one or no kids or you are a middle aged person with a high school going child, there’s no denying that the spending pattern of the Indians have changed a lot in the last few years. Everyone spends on br&ed products. The local tailors have long perished at the on-set of major apparel br&s. India is on a move. Everyone earns decent amount of money in the metros. Thousand rupees has no value today in the metros.

Have you ever thought how we react when we talk about the spend on Healthcare. My God!! His fees is 400 bucks. He just made a big hole in my budget. My goodness, this medicine costs 94 Rs. I stopped the Antibiotics because I got well in 2 tablets. You know what - each tablet costed 14 bucks. The Doctors these days just give you expensive medicine!!

Come on, I just want to ask these so called Rising Indian Middle Class. They can spend thousands on a shirt, thousands on a massage, facial, pedicure, hair cut; lakhs on a foreign trip. But when it comes to their own health, it seems they become the same old small town middle class hesitant to spend every penny they have. It is very surprisng to see people cribbing for Doctors fees, medicine cost etc when their vehicles would have guzzled up more petrol in reaching the Doctor & hospital. It’s all in the mind. Service industry is still in shambles because people don’t want to pay unless it becomes a question of life & death. Very few people buy health insurance on their own, citing reasons like their company gives them an insurance coverage already. How small is that corporate provided insurance, nobody cares.

Is it time when we start taking our health as seriously as we purchase our shirt or buy a pizza!! How many of the people over 30 actually go for a full body check up each year? How many have ever paid for it? Everyone is looking for FREE items when it comes to his/her own health. According to a survey, 90% of the young people in Bangalore have undergone health check up only because the health insurance company mandated them to get it done for free. Had it been a paid service, again, very few of these 90% would have been even insured.

Interesting to read such findings but it is time when we start allocating a certain percentage of our income. Even 2-5 Rs. per day to take care of our health coverage for life. People need to understand that health is not a one time down-payment item. It needs to be invested throughout the life time. Why become so stingy when it comes to our own health.

Be it Guy Kawasaki or be it Paul Graham or be it Steve Jobs - every pundit swears by the mantra that you should do what you love. If you do not enjoy what you are doing, there are very few chances that you will be successful in it.

So, here’s a question for those of you reading this post -

• How many of you actually love what you are doing ?
• If not, are you doing anything to change that ?

Feel free to leave your responses via anonymous comments. It would be great to get a feel of how many of you are actually pursuing your passion, whatever that might be…

The theory of 80:20 perfect applies to Indian Tech  Industry… my good friend Amit Darda defines the 80:20 theory as…

Almost all working people in corporate world must have heard about this. but still today no body is serious about this and day by day this ratio is increasing.

80:20 means it is a ratio of non working employee vs working employee. In almost all the offices in world only 20% of employee do work and 80% enjoys. Today with the new work culture, I feel this ratio is increasing as most of the employees don’t want to work. They just want big money for small work.

I seen many such cases and they are so lucky that even they get the places like this.

Often, people don’t find any enjoyment in the work… they are usually a part of a project & some other major stuff like that where there are 60 or 100 people like them are working for the same thing, thing which they might called an MNC project for some big-fish MNC client… and things which they miss are Recognition, India & Satisfaction. Personally, when I was working for my last company, though it was a midsize product company I was pretty aware of all these things. And, at start of my career this was the main reason I did not accepted offers from services companies in the town, though they were offering me much more than what I started with at my last company, but I was mainly looking for quality of work, team & recognition of things/work I do. I started-off as a freelancer in my college days, then the company I joined-in after college was pretty entrepreneurial. That helped me expanding my vision.

Nothing special about this post, It is not like that I’m not liking what I am doing… I’m loving what I am doing & I always love what I do…

This is just a post to see what you people think around about what you are doing rightnow…? Usually, I come across many people, many friends of mine… Even if they’re not doing anything they are pretty happy, and they pretend to be happy earning money for doing nothing in their office space, but sitting & googling & FWDing mails to their gangs, This is what we define as “typical employee minded”. Sitting & passing the month in the cube, almost doing nothing…  95% people I meet or know  are working for IT companies in the town and they are either not happy with their current work, boss or manager or looking for a change. Especially in the Indian Tech Industry, which is purely a service industry in our country… You must be familiar with terms like “sitting on the bench”… and stuff like that, So…

My question is why to sit if you can walk, you can do & most of all, you can think…?