I have moved...

...to tumblr. Like my friend Venkat, I wanted a change and tumblr has been refreshing.
Head over to http://mayankarya.com for Aryan Expedition. I have imported all the content from this blog since inception over there too.

Airtel Delhi Half Marathon

It was a foggy start to the last day of the week. My body was coming to terms with the fact that there wasn't supposed to be the 12 hour marathon slumber like on every other Sunday. Instead, there was supposed to be another marathon on Sunday, the 9th November 2008 - The Airtel Delhi Half Marathon. I had registered for the Great Delhi Run (7Kms) at a spur one fine day. And I started making plans on my marathon conditioning and schedule of training a month before the start. Needless to add I never trained. I woke up at 6:30 on Sunday and brought my ass to the starting line straight from bed! But the experience was exciting, the body stimulated by the sights and the adrenalin of doing something like this for the first time spurred me on. I ran(walked intermittently) the 7 km track in 38 minutes. I was elated. Along the way, I would keep an eye on the official photographers and whenever I saw them from afar, I would make it a point to run with all the efforts showing on my face, to make a pretty marathon picture. And when I found out my photos from the marathon-photos site, there were only the photos from the finishing line, with my arms raised and an all-conquering smirk(yeah, not smile) on my face!

I'm a happy man though, at least I did what I set out to. I've set my eyes on the Half Marathon next year - the full 21 Kms race. And I guess one year is a decent enough time to train hard. Lets hope I can do it without breaking down.

Weird Dreams...

We all dream, we see nightmares. Some remember them, some don't. I usually have dream free sleep; dunno if I dream or not, I don't recollect anything when I wake up. But there are those so called "recurring dreams" or nightmares that, as the name suggests re-appear every once in a while. You may think I'm stupid, but I constantly dream that I've been asked (dunno by who) to count from 1 to a billion in order to proceed( dunno where!).It only gets weirder. Sometimes I dream that I'm asked to count from 1 to a billion between in one breath! It's as if the agent of death won't allow me to breathe unless I count!
It doesn't only sound suffocating, it feels suffocating as hell when I wake up. I mean how the hell can anyone count from 1 to a billion in between two breaths!??!

To be honest, I have never divulged this to anyone. But believe me, it is an overpowering feeling second only to the recurring dreams during my school going years. So, when I was in 10th grade, I used to dream I was walking somewhere and BANG! There is no more land to walk on. Instead, there is a wall like cliff in front and I had to scale this wall to get ahead. Quite metaphorical IMHO. With no ropes, no protective gear, I forge ahead... scaling the wall step by step. And finally, I emerge at the other side, don't ask how. I remember seeing this particular dream during the run-up to my Board Exams. And I remembered this dream when it was announced in school that I had topped!

This cliff dream has eluded me since then. There are times I urge myself to dream about this fantastic "overcoming the odds and emerging victorious" kinda dream only to wake up empty handed. I guess I'm not that ambitious anymore, and so life doesn't present challenges seemingly impossible at first that can be overcome in dreams - leading to reality.

This is what I'm working for...

...this is what I got as a raise this year!

Time to wipe the dust off my résumé...

My Movies - 1950s & 60s

There can be two reasons why my earlier post on my movies collection didn't attract enough hits and/ or comments:

1. Not many of you who read/ happened to pass by this blog are into old movies
2. Some of you haven't seen these movies before.
3. Lets add another one - Nobody gives a damn!

So be it. As I promised, here is the list of movies I have from the 50s and 60s.



Now, for my favourites:

Rear Window - Absolutely delicious Hitchcock fare.
On the Waterfront - Marlon Brando all the way.
The Killing - A fantastic no linear coupe movie.
12 Angry Men - By far one of the best male performances ever from just about everybody in the cast. Brilliant.
Vertigo - Again, one of Hitchcock's best according to me.
To Kill a Mockingbird - Having read the book, I was elated with the way the film was made. Very, Very good.
Dr. Strangelove - I never knew Kubrick could be so into black comedies. Fantastic fare with Peter Sellers.

Well, so much for my catalogue. I will come back again with the 1970s later. Meanwhile, I'll go watch 12 Angry Men again...

My Fantastic Movies Collection

I am on an extended long weekend break from work so I thought I might as well catalogue my Movies. While at it, I said to myself why not ask you guys what your favourite movies are and discuss mine.

One of the major aims of this post is to find out which movies I've missed out on. I have most of the IMDB Top 250 movies in my collection; at least the ones that appealed to me enough to merit a place in my collection. I find IMDB as a mixed bag really, the site id est. Even though some people find it hard to digest the rankings, I found it to be a nice startng point to build one's catalogue.

Over the course of the next couple of days, I will start posting my collection, decade -wise and hope you guys can enlighten me on what I'm missing out on. I might add here that some movies in my collection aren't there for their cinematic qualities but for the sheer reason of my wanting to watch them.

Lets start with the Pre 1950s:



My personal favourites from the list are :
It Happened One Night
Citizen Kane
and
It's a Wonderful Life

Lets see what your favourites are. I could do with some recommendations. Tomorrow I will post the 1950s & 1960s list.

So, what does Mayra mean?

Thats one of the first questions everyone asked us after Mayra was born. To tell you the truth, we didn't really think about a meaning before choosing her name! Quite unlike most Indian couples who pour over the world wide web to pick baby names from a zillion sites. And Kunal, Mayra is staying by the way. There is no way this name would be changed. :P

I had thought of the name way back; actually around the time it dawned on me that Rashmi was the one I would spend the rest of my life with. And thats how I conjured up this name:
MAYRA = MAYank + RAshmi!

I had always pined for a beautiful baby girl... And wishes are answered as you can see.

"So, what does Mayra mean anyway?"

Well, we did it the other way round. We sought for the name meaning after choosing the name. And surprise, surprise!! Mayra does have meanings - 3 of them which quite pleased me!!!

Mayra
Beautiful
Latin Name

Mayra
Flourishing; creative
Spanish Name

Mayra
Spring, The wind
Australian-Aboriginal Name

Its a beautiful name after all! And to top it all, I'm not sure if any other girl in India has that name... Mon amour - Mayra

How to save Tax with Home Loan

or, Save taxes with a Housing Loan. Er, this title has been chosen deliberately for SEO. And it is a noble thought at that cos most of you who've meandered here from Google or other search engines wouldn't have been here had it not been for SEO and my submissions of the Aryan Expedition on search engines! He he...

So, I'm writing about this here as a matter of need rather than just for plain tax saving. As one's salary increases over time, there is very little one can do to save taxes; the Rs 1 Lakh limit for Section 80C just does not help. Higher salary means higher tax bracket(soon the highest tax bracket) and therefore more and more taxes. As a matter of fact, my employer deducts tax at source from my present salary today which is as much as about 65 % of my salary when I started working about 4 years ago! So what do you do? Having utilised the Section 80C to the maximum extent possible, the best way out is to go for a Home Loan.

Presented here are some of the best links to scout for information on home loans. The best way is to compare Home Loan offers from various banks and HFCs and go for the best offer:

http://www.indianpropertyloans.com/
http://www.honeybeeindia.com/

Here is an illustration on how much tax you can expect to save by taking a home loan. You can find your own tax savings by entering you info here. Very good tool.

For this illustration, we've considered a Floating rate Home Loan of Rs 30 Lacs, for 20 years and considered the taxable income of our friend Ramu to be Rs 5 Lacs. We've taken this loan from IDBI Home Finance which offers probably the cheapest floating rate home loan @ 10.25% p.a. Monthly rest.

Here is what we get:

For the first year, Loan Repayment(before tax benefits) is Rs 3,53,392 which is the summation of Rs 3,05,281 of Principal and Rs 48,110 of interest. The Tax payable(without the Home Loan) is Rs 1,18,830 (We haven't considered the other rebates / deductions like Section 80 C here for the sake of simplicity). Now here is the best part - with the Home Loan, the tax payable comes out to only Rs. 72,930. The Annual Tax saved comes to Rs 55,522 (Rs 45,900 + Rs 9,622). So, Ramu's Annual Repayment(after tax benefits) comes to only Rs 2,97,870. This has also reduced the Post Tax Effective Interest Rate(PTEIR) of the loan to 7.69% p.a. Monthly rest.

The Total Tax saved over the period of this loan, that is 20 years comes out to a neat Rs 11,60,565(A-B):
(A)Total repayment over the period of the loan WITHOUT tax incentives : Rs 70,67,832
(B)Total repayment over the period of the loan WITH tax incentives : Rs 59,07,267

The Annual Tax saved figure will keep on increasing with each passing year except the last 4-5 years when Ramu won't get the full tax benefits. The explanation which is given on the link I provided above is reproduced here:

You will notice a drastic fall in the effective interest rate that you pay after TAX benefits.

The above table examines for you the year from which you are not getting your full tax benefit. Normally, in the last couple of years you may not be able to avail the full tax benefit as the level of interest & principal payments are low. However if you don't have the full tax break even earlier than that you may not be efficiently using the Tax Policy. Go back and try to reduce the tenure of the loan (or take a larger loan) to get higher tax breaks.

You might also want to see how post tax effective interest rate changes as the Tax Policy changes in the future or the tax rate that is applicable to you changes.

So there you have it! Saving income tax by taking a home loan. Works like a charm I'm told, although I have to give it a try soon myself...

KLPD

Q. What is the Police Department of Kuala Lumpur called?
A. KLPD

Before you start ranting about PJs n all, let me give credit where it is due. To Siddharth, cos this was his PJ. Which brings me to the point. I'm back from a two week sojourn in Kuala Lumpur / Putrajaya, Malaysia. I was there on a training (can you believe it?). This is known as the Core Analyst School and brings analysts from all over Asia & Australia together. Needless to mention it was one BIIG party. I made friends, tried to learn Japanese, worked hard(ly), partied harder, shopped for fake Tag Heuer watches & Mont Blanc bags(hard to tell the difference!) and had a whale of a time. I have since sobered up from the Hangover I got last Thursday.

Have no idea what all to document here but it was a rocking experience. Some frozen moments from this trip are here; most of the others can be seen on my Facebook profile. I promise to divulge more later.