SunCorp

 2001 - 2008

One day you are with us, the next day you are gone. With deep sorrow we announce the demise of our pet dog Shadow. A victim of snake bite. We will miss you and your ever active presence.

Farewell dear friend we will always miss you!

You got a fast car,
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we can make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere.

  Tracy Chapman’s lyrics came unnervingly to mind while reading about the tragic way in which Adnan Patrawala’s life ended—on a Saturday night in a fast car flanked by young boys claiming to be his friends but who strangled him for money.
    The murder of Adnan, too young to drive and much too young to die, at the hand of killers his age and from a similarly affluent background, has thrown up a number of searching questions about the lifestyle of youngsters in big cities—on speed with no limits for those who have the money to go the distance. Despite police efforts, Mumbai’s promenades are like race tracks for teenagers who tear past in cars pulsing with music after a night of shooting vodka at an expensive club.
    Adnan’s killing adds a more macabre dimension to the incidents involving youngsters on the loose, from Alistair Pareira crashing his Toyota on Carter Road to Abhishek Kasliwal being charged with rape.
    On the same spectrum, albeit at the lower end, were the gruesome Borivili murders by a gang of teenagers from broken homes, who wanted money to go buy dope and visit dance bars. Adnan’s killers too were young, rich and looking for money.

    Hopefully this is a rare aberration but psychologists and educationists caution that unbridled consumerism and lack of parental control are fuelling a dangerous trend that’s here and growing. Teens are ready to blow up Rs 250 on a tequila shot
    Parents are caught in a cleft between being parents and being ‘friends’ to their kids, between teaching values and sparing them what sociologists describe as ‘status anxiety’. “Often both parents are working round the clock at multinationals and drawing hefty salaries. They get little time with their kids and so give in to their demands for money,’’ says KC College principal Manju Nichani.
    Nichani describes the case of a student who came to college by car, but would park a little away from the gate as he was too embarrassed to be seen in just a Maruti. Lubricated as they are by confused parents, who often don’t know how much to allow and how much to deny, the disco becomes their stomping ground.
    Mumbai’s nightclubs are spilling over with students between 16 and 19 years.
    Many are regulars at up-end joints like Ra, Hard Rock Cafe, and even Prive at Colaba, which charges an incredible entry fee of Rs 10,000.
    Naturally, there’s easy access to alcohol. “At a fresher’ party for degree college students many girls got dead drunk at the disco and landed up necking random guys,’’ said an 18-year-old collegian. Teenagers think nothing of knocking back half-adozen tequila shots at Rs 250 a throw. Many spend over Rs 2,000 a month only on cigarettes. As for cell phones, a Nokia E-90, one of the most expensive models in the market, is more popular amongst collegians than it is with their parents.
    It’s not just the business class that suffers from affluenza, say teachers. Many parents from middle-class families invest in good schools, where their children meet the children of wealthy industrialists and businessmen and are influenced by the lifestyle that their peers lead.
    “Students are very conscious of their designer clothes, and know a Tommy Hilfiger from a Gucci,’’ says Navaz Batlivala, a teacher at JB Petit High School, Fort.
    In addition to blowing their parents’ cash, many youngsters also make money on the side by working for event management companies. “When an event management company hosts a party at a club or disco, they pay their agents (usually young college-goers) in excess of Rs 30 for each guest they can bring to the party,’’ said a student.

Whats happening is a taste of things to come in the future, if this trend does not stop at a point, it is going to get dangeruous and beyond control !!!!! 

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
-- Mahatma Gandhi, Statesman

The business executive was deep in debt and could see no way out.

Creditors were closing in on him. Suppliers were demanding payment. He sat on the park bench, head in hands, wondering if anything could save his company from bankruptcy.

Suddenly an old man appeared before him.

"I can see that something is troubling you," he said.

After listening to the executive's woes, the old man said, "I believe I can help you."

He asked the man his name, wrote out a check, and pushed it into his hand saying, "Take this money. Meet me here exactly one year from today, and you can pay me back at that time."

Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come.

The business executive saw in his hand a check for $500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, then one of the richest men in the world!

"I can erase my money worries in an instant!" he realized. But instead, the executive decided to put the uncashed check in his safe. Just knowing it was there might give him the strength to work out a way to save his business, he thought.

With renewed optimism, he negotiated better deals and extended terms of payment. He closed several big sales. Within a few months, he was out of debt and making money once again.

Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the uncashed check. At the agreed-upon time, the old man appeared. But just as the executive was about to hand back the check and share his success story, a nurse came running up and grabbed the old man.

"I'm so glad I caught him!" she cried. "I hope he hasn't been bothering you.  He's always escaping from the rest home and telling people he's John D. Rockefeller."

And she led the old man away by the arm.

The astonished executive just stood there, stunned. All year long he'd been wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, convinced he had half a million dollars behind him.

Suddenly, he realized that it wasn't the money, real or imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his newfound self-confidence that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after.

First, we survived being born to mothers, some, whose husbands smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate whatever food was put on the table, and didn't get tested for diabetes. They were mothers who did not check their blood pressure every few minutes.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking or going out on our own. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We would share a dosa, dip a chapatti into someone else's plate of curry without batting an eyelid. We ate jam sandwiches or pickle on bread and butter, raw mangoes with salt and drank orange squash with sugar and water in it.

We ate at roadside stalls, drank water from tender coconuts, ate everything - Bhel Puri to bhajias and samosas, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day during the holidays,we were never ever bored, and we were allowed freedom all day as long as we were back when the streetlights came on, or when our parents told us to do so. No one was able to reach us all day by mobile phone or phone. And we were O.K.

We swam with an inflated tube which we got from somebody who was replacing their car tyres. We ran barefoot without thinking about it, if we got cut we used iodine on it which made us jump. We did not wash our hands ten times a day. And we were OK.

We did not have parents who said things like "what would you like for breakfast, lunch or dinner". We ate what was put in front of us and best of all, there was never any leftovers.

We fell out of trees numerous times, got cut, broke bones and teeth. We ate fruit lying on the ground that we shook down from the tree above. And we never washed fruit. We had a bath using a bucket and mug and used Lifebuoy soap. We did not know what shampoo and conditioners meant.

Yet this generation of ours has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

Please pass this on to others who have had the luck and good fortune to grow up as kids in India in the 50's 60's and 70's.

Those were the days my friends !!

Alcoholics have one, and so do drug abusers. Now people addicted to e-mail also have a 12-step program designed to tackle their obsession.

An executive coach in Pennsylvania has devised a plan to teach people how to manage the electronic tool, which some users say can be as much an intrusive waste of time as it is fast-paced and efficient.

Developed for cases such as a golfer who checked his BlackBerry after every shot, and lost a potential client who wanted nothing to do with his obsession, Marsha Egan's plan taps into deepening concern that e-mail misuse can cost businesses millions of dollars in lost productivity.

"There is a crisis in Corporate America, but a lot of CEOs don't know it," Egan said. "They haven't figured out how expensive it is."

One of Egan's clients cannot walk by a computer--her own or anyone else's--without checking for messages. Other people will not vacation anywhere they cannot connect to their e-mail systems. Some wait for e-mails and send themselves a message if one hasn't shown up in several minutes, Egan said.

The first of Egan's 12 steps is "admit that e-mail is managing you. Let go of your need to check e-mail every 10 minutes."

Other steps include "commit to keeping your in-box empty," "establish regular times to review your e-mail" and "deal immediately with any e-mail that can be handled in 2 minutes or less, but create a file for mails that will take longer."

Egan says she hosts no 12-step meetings but is planning a monthly teleconference for "e-mailers anonymous."

Michelle Grace, an insurance agent in Lehighton, Pa., said she receives up to 60 e-mails a day and uses Egan's program to make it less time-consuming and less stressful.

"E-mail had me by the throat," she said. "When you can't find what you need, then it becomes a problem."

Now that her e-mails are transferred--some manually and some automatically--into files, Grace said she spends less time hunting for them.

On average, workers who receive an e-mail take 4 minutes to read it and recover from the interruption before they can resume working productively, Egan said.

She also recommends checking e-mails not more than three or four times a day.

Some employees resist the lure of e-mail during the regular workday, only to find themselves putting in extra hours at home to clear the backlog, she said. One of Egan's clients said he had 3,600 e-mails in his in-box.

Part of the problem is senders who copy messages too widely and are too vague in their subject lines, so recipients don't know what they need to open right away, Egan said.

For Grace, relief from her e-mail addiction means she is not checking her computer every 5 minutes.

She said she has let her colleagues know that if they need to reach her immediately, e-mail is not the way to do it.

"I told them, 'If you need me urgently, pick up the phone,'" she said.

 Courtesy: ZDNet News: February 20, 2007

In a tragedy caused by gross neglect on the part of the Kerala state administration, fifteen children - below the age of ten - and three teachers, died when a boat carrying about 50 students and staff of a school capsized in the Periyar river in Kerala's Ernakulam district on Tuesday (February 20).

A total of 103 students and staff of Elavoor School near Angamaly had gone to Thattekkad bird sanctuary in two boats when one of the three hired boats capsized at around 6 pm. The poor condition of the boat is being given as the reason for the capsizing.

The navy, fire service and police were involved in rescue operations, but the latter were hampered due to poor light and lack of enough rescue boats. Thirteen bodies were taken to Dharmagiri Hospital at Kothamangalam while two bodies were brought to Mar Baselious Hospital in the same town, sources said. Parents of the children rushed to the site of the accident on hearing about the tragedy. Few remained unmoved as the bodies of children, shrouded in white, were laid out in the nearby hospital.

Expressing grief over the boat tragedy, Kerala Governor, R L Bhatia said “I am deeply shocked and saddened at the boat tragedy at Tattekkadu that has claimed several tender lives. I convey my heartfelt condolence to the bereaved families.”

No safety measures in place

Shockingly, the boats appeared to be in a state of disrepair, but had been put to use to ferry children despite this, resulting in one boat capsizing. Moreover the boats, which were not registered, had been loaded much beyond their capacity by the boatmen. Survivors of the tragedy also alleged that one of the boats had had a leak. The driver of the boat has been absconding since the incident.

Now, in a knee jerk reaction, the government is talking of sterner safety measures.

“We need to strictly put down guidelines for children on how they should go for picnics. We need to enforce these guidelines,” said M A Baby, Kerala’s education minister.

Could this tragedy have been avoided, who is responsible, the school management, the person who was in charge of the boat, this is some thing that could have been avoided. 

• Of the 223 hectares, 144 hectares will be redeveloped over 7 years
  
• Of the Rs 9,250 crore, a fifth to be spent on basic amenities
  
• Developers to build 57,531 units for rehabilitation, but sell 35% of the redeveloped area in the open market
  
• Builders to make a minimum profit of Rs 4,700 crore; critics estimate it to be ten times this figure
  
• Profits to be shared between developers and government
  
• Households to pay Rs 450 per month for maintenance
  
• The plan envisages a shuttle train service and a skybus link to the metro

Seventy thousand residents of Dharavi, Asia's largest slum in the heart of Mumbai, are angry. They want to have a say in the state's redevelopment plan to demolish their houses and build a new township. They have decided to let the policymakers know about their angst. "We are protesting against the state's rigid stance in imposing the Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP) on its extremely dissatisfied residents. We want the chief minister to see for himself how the people of Dharavi will behave in case they're pushed too far," says Arputham Jockin, Magsaysay award winner and the president of the National Slum Dwellers Federation.

The anti-DRP agitation has acquired a political tinge with the formation of the Dharavi Bachao Samiti (DBS), which has 20,000 members. During last week's municipal polls, the Samiti, along with the CPI(M), fielded its candidates in all the six electoral wards in Dharavi, which has been a Congress stronghold. It's a shrill reminder that the tussle in the slum has transcended issues of development to become a contentious political battle.

Dharavians complain the DRP doesn't even require their consent unlike other slum redevelopment schemes, is ill-planned and hasn't considered the existing socio-economic realities, that it would really benefit the builders and the state government. In addition, they feel that powerful lobbies have shaped the contours of the Dharavi plan. Not surprisingly, over eight years after it was conceived, and four years after the DRP was included in the Vision Mumbai plan, there have been several hiccups in Dharavi's proposed makeover.

But before we get into specific issues, a quick reminder about DRP. The project will cost Rs 9,250 crore, of which Rs 1,800 crore will be spent on civic amenities. Two-thirds of the total area of 223 hectares will be redeveloped as a township by builders, under the private-public partnership model. Over 57,500 residential units—225 sq ft (1 BHK) each—in 7-storey buildings will be given free to existing households. Of the total redeveloped area of 144 hectares, the builder will be allowed to sell 35 per cent of the land as residential or commercial spaces in the open market.

Similar rules regarding free units and open sale govern other slum development plans in the state. The glaring difference is that the other schemes require the consent of 70 per cent of the residents, but in DRP's case, the state government has omitted this condition. Instead, it invoked an existing clause in the development control regulations, which states that projects undertaken by government agencies on public land don't require the approval of the affected slum-dwellers. And this has now become the primary issue for DBS. Complains Raju Korade, a CPI(M) member and the editor of Dharavi Times, "Many surveys have been conducted for DRP, but the people don't have a clue as to what exactly the plan holds for them."

Adding to this confusion are other arguments being raised by DRP detractors. Arputham is using religion to drive his point home.

 In the last three weeks, he has advertised the fact that the DRP project document doesn't mention what will happen to the 110 religious structures (of all religions and some that are nearly 100 years old) in Dharavi Korade questions the state's motives. "The DRP's aim is not to ameliorate the conditions of the families living and working in Dharavi for the past 100 years. It's to access and auction prime property, with proximity to the city's financial centres (like the Bandra-Kurla Complex), to global bidders," he says.
The pro-DRP lobby sees such views as misrepresentations. "This is another ploy to needlessly undermine a project of this magnitude that has been undertaken for the first time in the world, and is likely to be emulated elsewhere in India and in other countries," says an angry Mukesh Mehta, CEO, MM Consultants, the state-appointed consultant for DRP. He argues it will integrate Dharavi with Mumbai, convert slums into a cultural-knowledge-business centre, and transform Dharavians into a middle-income community by 2010. CM Vilasrao Deshmukh, feels the DRP is for the "development of Dharavi and the city, so people should cooperate with us."
 

1. The nicest thing about the future is that it always starts tomorrow.

2. Money will buy a fine dog, but only kindness will make him wag his tail.

3. If you don't have a sense of humor, you probably don't have any sense at all.

4. Seat belts are not as confining as wheelchairs.

5. A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you're in deep water.

6. How come it takes so little time for a child who is afraid of the dark to become a teenager who wants to stay out all night?

7. Business conventions are important because they demonstrate how many people a company can operate without.

8. Why is it that at class reunions you feel younger than everyone else looks?

9. Scratch a dog and you'll find a permanent job.

10. No one has more driving ambition than the boy who wants to buy a car.

11. There are no new sins; the old ones just get more publicity.

12. There are worse things than getting a call for a wrong number at 4 AM. It could be a right number.

13. Think about this..., No one ever says "It's only a game." when his team is winning.

14. I've reached the age where the happy hour is a nap.

15. Be careful reading the fine print. There's no way you're going to like it.

16. The trouble with bucket seats is that not everybody has the same size bucket.

17. Do you realize that in about 40 years, we'll have thousands of OLD LADIES running around with tattoos? (And RAP music will be the Golden Oldies!)

18. Money can't buy happiness -- but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Toyota than in a Fiat.

19. After a certain age, if you don't wake up aching in every joint, you are probably dead.

so much that you just want to pick them from
your dreams and hug them for real!

 
When the door of happiness closes, another opens;
But often times we look so long at the
Closed door that we don't see the one,
Which has been opened for us

 
Don't go for looks; they can deceive.
Don't go for wealth; even that fades away.
Go for someone who makes you smile,
Because it takes only a smile to
Make a dark day seem bright.
Find the one that makes your heart smile.

 
Dream what you want to dream;
Go where you want to go;
Be what you want to be,
Because you have only one life
And one chance to do all the things
You want to do.

 
May you have enough happiness to make you sweet
Enough trials to make you strong,
Enough sorrow to keep you human and
Enough hope to make you happy.

 
The happiest of people don't necessarily
Have the best of everything;
They just make the most of
Everything that comes along their way.

 
The brightest future will always
Be based on a forgotten past;
You can't go forward in life until
You let go of your past failures and heartaches.

 
When you were born, you were crying
And everyone around you was smiling.
Live your life so at the end,
You’re the one who is smiling and everyone
Around you is crying.

 
Don't count the years - count the memories!

Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress and working together is Success