As a Butterfly flutters its wings...

Hi Guys,

A lot can happen when a Butterfly flutters its wings! The Butterfly Effect or Chaos Theory – A theory that fascinates me beyond limits whenever I think about it. One main reason why it fascinates me is that it makes me believe that our whole life is a chain of events where one event lead to the next event and at the end of the day we would do something, because of something that we did years back. It makes me believe another thought that is ‘Whatever happen, happens for a reason’

Butterfly Effect states that, ‘It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon half the way around the world’. This is very real in terms of real life too where a small decision or advice could turn the events in the future. It is more like a Decision Tree where you are provided with different choices. The first point is the Butterfly Wing and the direction in which you decide to flutter can alter your whole path.

The Tamil movie Dhasavatharam would be based on this theory. A king’s Superstitous belief and idiotic behaviour leads him to throw a statue in the sea, which ultimately creates movement of Tectonic plates and Tsunami centuries later saving thousands of people from a harmful virus.

Thinking a bit in my own life, I can see how Butterfly Effect has played a role in many of the things. I still remember the day when I sent the mail to my brother about an Industrial Visit. After typing all the content, I was hovering over the To Column. I wanted to send it to two of my friends and another part of my mind said not to send. It was good that I sent and that resulted in creation of my blog.

After a few months of writing blog, I was deserted. I had no ideas and I didn’t know where I was heading. A small little dog that lost its way came to my home, a few mischievous squirrels decided to play with my mother, Nat Geo was telecasting about Seals when I switched the TV on and my brother saw a few seals in Argentina. All this lead to the creation of Animal Week post and my brother was impressed with the post and that rejuvenated a lot of passion into me and that is what keeps me writing till now.

Many of the things we consider small and insignificant can have a huge impact in the latter part of life. As the famous proverb goes

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the message was lost.

For want of a message the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for a want of a Horseshoe nail.

- Unknown

There is a movie known as The Butterfly Effect which is based on this theory. I have already written about the movie and also a few things about the theory two years back. To see the post, ClickHere.

Happy Reading!!!

If its not Forever, its not Love - Durjoy Datta and Nikita Singh

Hi Guys,

A short Book Review for a Small book. The small book is ‘If it’s not forever, it’s not Love’ by Durjoy Datta and Nikita Singh. If you want to read a story book just for time pass and want to finish it within a day (or even shorter), then it’s a perfect book for you.

What will happen if you get stuck in a bomb blast on your way to office? For most of us, Bomb Blasts are just news of what happens some hundreds of kilometres away. The author has tried to relate to what happens to the people in the scene. The basic plot reminded me of the Tamil Movie Engeyum Eppothum, which dealt with the lives of people getting stuck in a bus accident.

Deb is the main character and one fine morning when he goes to office, a bomb blasts and he gets stuck. Though nothing happens to him, he gets disturbed by the scenes around him. After some days of shock, he tries to recover. He goes to the blast site and finds a diary at the site of a blast.

He reads the story and gets engrossed with the story of the dead man and his romantic life. The diary is burnt at the ends and hence the ending is not known. So, he sets out to find the story along with his girlfriend, friend and his crazy girlfriend.

The journey makes them travel all across India and in the process, they learn a lot about Human Characteristics and Behaviour. What they find about the so called dead man and his life forms the rest of the story.

The writing style appeared to be very crazy in nature. All the characters were portrayed as crazy beings who never cared about life and the only thing they wanted was enjoyment. There were a bit of serious thoughts among them now and then. It was like, they were not completely crazy, but had some insight.

I think the author was so engrossed with the word ‘Indirect Expenses’ from his MBA and so he kept using that one throughout. The story plot was good. A bit of more serious characterization would have made the story much better.

A good time pass, provided you don’t have any other works.

Happy Reading!!!

IRCTC - Is its Performance really poor?

Hi Guys,

Do you know which India’s largest e-commerce website is? It is IRCTC. Yesterday, IRCTC was trending in Twitter. I guess there would be no one, who has used IRCTC and ended up without booking a ticket. One of the tweets went on to say that IRCTC stands for ‘I Refuse to provide Connectivity to the Customer’

I myself was suffering from the connectivity problem last week, when I had to book tickets for my parents and it took me two days to book a ticket. The worst case scenario can be when the money gets debited and yet the ticket doesn’t get booked.

When I checked about IRCTC online, I learnt some interesting facts. IRCTC which actually stands for Indian Railway’s Catering and Tourism Corporation is a subsidiary of Indian Railways. Started in August 2002, when the Internet Spread in India was very low, IRCTC has grown big way. With a transaction of 1500-2000 per minute, the number of tickets booking per day is 4.5 Lakhs. In 2011, the total number of tickets booked was 9.69 Crore with a total value of Rs. 8000 Crore. There are totally 52 servers. IRCTC deposits Rs. 50 Lakh everyday to the Indian Railways as an advance to buy tickets.

One of the main complaints is that booking Tatkal tickets in IRCTC is a big headache. It is not IRCTC who has made it as a headache, but the sheer number of users trying to book tickets during the timeframe. On an average 8 Lakh a users (which is nearly double the number of ticket booking per day) try to book tickets in the first ten minutes of the Tatkal timeframe. Of that only 50000 people come out of the website with tickets.

One suggestion many people give is that IRCTC should increase the servers. If the number of servers is increased then probably more people can login. But, the number of people who will go unsatisfied will increase from the current 7.5 Lakh, as tickets are limited.

What is happening today is there is too much demand and too less supply. The optimum solution is to increase the number of trains and we can’t blame IRCTC. There are two reasons why people prefer trains – comfort and cost. Indian Railways has not increased the cost of tickets (thanks to our society oriented politicians) and are not in a condition to improve the infrastructure. The fares in buses have skyrocketed in the mean time.

Though these stats make me feel sympathetic towards IRCTC for the Tatkal tickets, the poor performance of the site in non peak times frustrates me. Even if you try to book a ticket for a normal day on a normal day, the website is slow. IRCTC must improve these types of performances, where it is absolutely possible to provide hassle free service.

Comparing with many of the Government Websites, IRCTC’s performance is very good. We need to understand the root cause of the problem and not blame the website.

Happy Reading!!!

Source: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-02-23/news/31091228_1_irctc-website-indian-railway-catering-bookings