RELATIONSHIPS ARE LIKE PLANTS

Relationships are like plants. They need to be nurtured. The way plants need right amount of sunlight, water, fertilisers, soil, etc., similarly, relationships also need right amount of love, understanding and space.

When taken good care of, plants develop strong roots that gives them stability and strength. Same is the case with relationships. If proper care is given to the relationship, it becomes more rooted to ensure the turmoils that will try to come and uproot it.

Plants take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen. Often, relationships also do that, where one of the partners takes in all the bad things of the other and yet gives out all the love that he/she has.

Plants prove that they have been taken good care of either by continuing to grow more or by bearing flowers and fruits. Relationships also prove that they are being nurtured properly when the people involved in it continue to be happy and their happiness increases more and more. They love each other more when they know that the relationship is being taken good care of.

Plants react very strongly when you put more water than required or your forget to put water or when they receive more than desired sunlight. Similarly, relationships also react when the amount of love is less, there is no space given to the individuals or there are too many misunderstandings.

Sometimes, one goes out of town and when one comes back, one needs to give immediate to the plants as they have not been cared for. Same holds good for relationships. In order to keep it alive, one needs to keep doing a reality check often so that they know that when a relationship needs more attention to keep it going.

Lastly, plants tend to wither when it gets neglected, when there is no-one to tender each and every leaf of it. Relationships also die when the people involved in it neglect each other or do not take care of each and every need of the other.

STATUS MESSAGES AND TWEETS

Status messages and tweets have become a part of our lives. People even say that they are nothing but mere extensions of our personalities. I don’t agree with this at all. Well, neither is this completely true nor is this completely false. This is partially true.

The reason I say this is partially true is because of the simple reason that there are some people for whom status messages are actually the extension of their personalities whereas for some other people it is just a way of projecting a personality which they really don’t have. For some others, some of their status messages reflect their personalities whereas some other of their status messages do not. In fact, in today’s times when one has a different status message on Facebook and a different one on their Blackberry Messenger and a completely different one on Twitter, it is just not possible for all these statuses/tweets to reflect ones’ personality unless someone suffers from split or triple personality.

What is clear is that there is a reason or an objective behind each of these status messages or in other words the person has certain expectations when he puts some of these messages. The objective could be hiding a cryptic message in the status which only he or a select few can understand. In such cases, these messages are no less than the Da Vinci code… only people who understand would respond or comment on such a status. The other objective of a status could be simply showing one’s creativity and getting a high by noticing how many people like such a status. Sometimes people put up a status/tweet just to vent out their anger against a person, system, company, society or any other thing. Some other times the idea of putting up a message is to open up a discussion or a debate with others. Sometimes when one has been missing in action for a long time, then just to remind people that he/she exists, a status message is put up.

The reason of putting up a status or a tweet could be one or many but the truth is that each status or tweet desires a conversation as it tells the one who has put it that in this widespread social network, where there are loads of friends, followers and contacts, there are atleast a few who have read what they had to say.

I won’t be surprised if few years down the line psychologists, criminal experts and psychiatrists start analysing status messages and tweets along with the body language to figure out more about a person, but the way body language can deceive, these messages can deceive much more… so lets see!!

POSSIBLE CARTELS IN THE WORLD

In today’s times, there is so much of inter-linkages between sectors/companies/countries that an activity or an event at one place can lead to the benefit of the other. I was just wondering that if some of these people decided to come together, they could easily form a cartel and ride on these joint benefits that would accrue.

Following are some of the possible cartels that my crazy mind could think of:

1. On-ground and on-air aviation cartel: Cartel between shops at the airport and aircraft carriers – Try and delay each and every flight by atleast half an hour to an hour. This would obviously give lot of time in the hands of passengers and would result in additional sales at the airport as some hungry ones would go to the restaurants, the tired ones would get a massage done, the bored ones would probably pick up a book or so and the ones with still some dough left would finish last minute shopping at the airport. While the airport stores stand to gain, not sure whether flights would gain anything or not by paying the high ground parking charges unless the retail chains at the airport agree to share the parking charges

2. Web and the Eye Cartel: Cartel between Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and other social networking sites and opticians- Make the content more and more interesting and get people to spend more time on each of the sites. Spending more time would mean spending more time looking at the screen and that would lead to eye strain and other eye problems for which people would have to go to opticians, so it is a win-win for everyone. The web sites would get more advertisers due to their stickiness and it would mean great business for the opticians.

3. Indian wedding and international honeymoon cartel: There are a few dates/months in the Indian calendar every year, when most weddings take place and nowadays a lot of Indians get their wedding fixed by a wedding planner. This is followed by a honeymoon to international destinations like Mauritius, Bali, Malaysia, etc. for a number of new couples. One way of forming this cartel is to for international hotels/airlines to tie-up with the Indian wedding planner, whose job is right from arranging for flowers, deciding a theme, getting wedding cards printed to suggesting interesting countries to couples for their honeymoon.

All a wedding planner has to do to convince a couple is to show some great pictures of the country, the hotel and the special honeymoon suite that he/she can arrange for at a great rate. Throw in a limo pick-up and the new husband would want to give that experience to his new wife. The hotels and airlines recommended by the wedding planner beat competition as the trust in this wedding planner is immensely high. This allows the hotels/airlines to tap into the right profile of customers and the money that they save on advertising can be used to make the wedding planner ‘plan’ the right honeymoon for the couples.

4. Indian and Chinese toy/mobile phone cartel: Chinese goods have made a number of small Indian dealers rich on one hand, but on the other hand, it has also hit a large number of Indian companies making Indian products and selling it in India. One of the possible cartels could be that these Indian companies pay the Chinese companies their margins on these products, buy these products and destroy them. Then they sell their products in the Indian markets at healthy margins (which covers for what they are paying to the Chinese). This will be a win-win for the Chinese manufacturers as well as the Indian manufacturers. The people who would lose out due to such a cartel would be the small dealers who make money by selling these Chinese goods and the consumers who buy Chinese goods regularly at half the prices of what they have to pay for the Indian goods. 

But then who said that cartels are supposed to be beneficial to all. In fact, the word CARTEL is supposed to mean that only. While it benefits a few groups of people/companies/sectors, there will always be another set who will bear the brunt of such a cartel.

I am sure that this way there can be a number of cartels that can be formed. One just needs to sit and look around and see the possibilities. What cartels come to your mind? Do let me know.