The President of India, The Common Man and The Perspective

It's confusion all over - fire in Mantralaya at Mumbai, the way the Presidential Polls are poised with differences among political parties, the in-fighting among UPA and NDA cadres with regard to Presidential nominees . . . things do seem to be heating up, aren't they? 

Clearway has not yet got into the serious mode that it is used to - after the break, that is. Is that a reflection of some strategic re-think, or a new-born realisation of the futility of being serious about serious issues? After all, how has the office of the current President of India, for instance, under the able leadership of Prathibha Patil, affected the life of the common man? And how would the growing ranks of the middle class and the lower strata of the economic society respond to withdrawal from the Presidential contest by Dr Abdul Kalam, or to the choice between PA Sangma and Pranab Mukherjee? The common man may, perhaps, even be reluctant to invest his thinking faculties into the fate of the Prime Minister's chair, leave alone the President. Is this disenchantment with governance going to turn on its head with the arrival of the new President on to the arena? "Hope"! The essence of life that costs nothing!

Well, I never wanted Clearway to get this serious right away. Isn't it time to warm up and stay cool, taking a leisurely stroll in the early morning breeze with a cup of steaming hot coffee? It takes a different perspective of things to appreciate what goes on in the backdrop of what is normally on public display. That brings me to the lighter note of what it looks like to be behind the model. We are all so used to looking at the ladies through the lenses that it makes one wonder, 'is it time to look at the lenses through the lady'? This picture of Katherine Jenkins caught my attention, though its appropriateness to the post is definitely questionable. In any case, this post was supposed to be a different take on serious issues - and that allows for anomalies to be the norm! And she does look more graceful than all the men in blue and grey put together . . . 

A Different Perspective

Privacy in the Virtual World

To what extent would these online advertisement folks go?

I was working on a writing project that had to do with Finance and Insurance, more specifically, health insurance and investments. Content writing takes research and references, from books, journals and from the web. And when I had opened a page for my references, I found a couple of advertisements, one of them static on the left and the other, flashing across the monitor before it settled in its allotted spaces, one at the top and the other at the side of the page that I was visiting.

The surprising aspect was that one of the advertisements was about an investment plan, while the other was about 'health insurance'. Apparently, the advertising folks have been at work. Talk of the bull's eye! However, as an individual, I had reasons to be bothered about, with the kind of precision that on-line advertising has been able to achieve.

It would have, perhaps, been fine had the page I opened had something to do with finance, investments or insurance. But that was nothing but a humble, harmless dictionary, where I was checking out one of the correct forms of phrases to be used. To find two advertisements, one on Finance and the other on Health Insurance, when I was writing an article on Health Insurance and Investment, obviously could not be brushed aside as mere coincidence.

I could understand if it were one of Google's Advertisements within my GMail inbox, or perhaps one of them among search results, or even one of the associated advertisements in a finance journal, producing advertising messages relevant to the webpage content. But how about the exact advertisements related to the stories that I was working on, in a webpage unrelated to the subject and where the search term was not related to finance or insurance?

Yes, I would like to have related content suggested, but how would you feel if you had just been walking down a street, discussing your favourite food with your pal, and being served exactly that the very moment you enter a restaurant even before you had considered what to order?

Hello virtual world, would I have any privacy at all?

Back from the Ashes

It would have had to wait till the 26th of June, 2012, if my idea was to make it a '6-month' hibernation. But I have never been fussy about such intricacies, so decided to break free earlier than the scheduled resumption after the break.

So much water has passed under the bridge in a span of over 150 days. And nothing has changed because Clearway refused to record the flow of events during the course of the break. What a shame! 

This post is not to recall every event that went unnoticed by Clearway, starting with New Year 2012 through Sachin's 100th century, Baba Ramdev, Mayawati, Dravid's retirement, recession, more bad news, Viswanathan Anand, petrol price hike, IPL 5, down till growth in Australia and Spain's bailout. These events shall be revisited as and when deemed fit in the posts to come.

This post is sort of an appetiser, so to speak. And a brief re-introduction, not on the lines of "Clearway Defined" and "Clearway Explained", though. Those were, I should say, looking back, days when the idealists were marching forward, with their engines firing on all cylinders. So, what transpired between now and then? Well, the sun beamed across the horizon.

I have three remarks to make in this post:

1. To do justice to my remark about a 'brief re-introduction', I have become an acknowledged 'Freelance Business Writer' these days. So, what do I do? Well, management Guru's invented theories - I re-invent them! Will post some of my stories in this space, or elsewhere, when I find them fit.

2. The second remark in this post is sort of worldly wisdom. For people who are searching for Justice in this bad world - Good Luck! 

3. And my final remark in this 'Re-born - Yet Again' post: Thanks to 'Lak' and her prodding me to swear publicly, I resolved to write16 posts in the year 2012. Well, that was one of them. And I waited till there was another comment to the post (how logical!) - and here I am! (If anyone is really out of work and is interested to know if I lived up to my own words, please do the math when it's 31 Dec 2012.)

And they changed my url from clearway.blogspot.com to clearway.blogspot.in? Bloody Bloggers!

So, let's catch up!