Introduction to Communication

Origin of Communication can be traced back to the beginning of the universe itself.  The Bible says, “In the beginning, there was Word and Word was God”. According to the Indian tradition, the world emerged from‘Om’(Word) and it is equated with ‘Brahman’. Communication is one of the elemental and primal factors connected with the universe and human existence. As such, it is a universal phenomenon.  It is not limited to human beings alone. All living things communicate to one another.Animals, birds and all types of creatures communicate with one another through their own modes. The chirping of birds, the croaking of frogs and the visual and olfactory signs and signals like the dance of the honey bee are different forms of communication. All living creatures from worms to apes do communicate and it is vital for their existence.

Though Communication is a universal phenomenon, generally communication is referred to as a human activity.Itis an indispensable part of human existence. The need to communicate is as essential for man as his need to breath, to eat, to drink, and to sleep. A secluded existence without chances and facilities for communication, is the cruellest retribution that can be meted out to anyone. He can never live in isolation like a Robinson Crusoe. More than mere exchange of messages, Communication is a socio cultural necessity and function.

Communication in its simplest sense is the exchange of ideas, facts, feelings or impressions. In general, communication is defined as the transmission of message or idea from sender to receiver. Thus the process of communication involves three basic elements: the sender, message and the receiver.The sender may be a person or a group who exchanges thoughts or ideasto a receiver. The receiver may also be an individual or a group of individuals who receives the message. Communication inevitably comprises a message that is sent, received and understood. If the receiver does not understand the message, there is no point in communicating the message. So, for a communication to take place, the message should be clear and it should be understood by the receiver.

Sender → Message → Receiver

The word communication is derived from the Latin noun ‘communis’ and the Latin verb ‘communicare’ which means ‘to make common’. The very purpose of communication is to establish some kind of commonness among the participants. Through communication, both sender and receiver enter into an agreement or consensus and they fulfill a purpose or goal, which may be transmission of an idea or a fact. Communication, thus helps to develop, maintain and improve relationships. Though communication is often interchangeably used with information, they are really different concepts. Information is just a unilateral transmission or translation of a message from an emitter to a receiver. It can be a component involved in the process of communication. Communication, on the other hand refers to a human relationship and an experience. 

Coffee with Yummybay

Coffee is a great drink and most of us consume it every day. But when it comes to the variety of coffee options, we are totally ignorant. Especially when you go to a coffee shop, we will be wondering what to order from the large menu in front of us and will be breaking our heads to decide the right coffee option. It is an easy task if you know the ingredients. Have a look at the different types of coffees and you can try this next time when you are at a coffee place.


Black coffee: Coffee served straight, with no milk.


White coffee: A coffee with milk added.

Espresso: a drink made by forcing boiling water under pressure through finely ground coffee beans. Typically, espresso beans are roasted dark.

Cappuccino: A coffee drink prepared with espresso, hot milk, and steamed-milk foam with cinnamon or chocolate flakes sprinkled on top.

Iced coffee: coffee served with ice, and sometimes milk and sugar.

Flavored coffee: syrups, flavors or spices are added to give the coffee a touch of something else.

Caffe Latte: a single shot of espresso in steamed milk. The ratio of milk to coffee is 3:1.

Cafe Macchiato: A shot of espresso in steamed milk. The ratio of coffee to milk is 4:1.


Frappe: Actually a cold espresso, it can be made by adding 1-2 teaspoons of instant coffee with sugar, water ice and milk.

Indian filter coffee: Indian filter coffee is made from rough ground, dark-roasted coffee beans. It’s drip-brewed for several hours in a traditional metal coffee filter before being served. The ratio of coffee to milk is usually 3:1.

Instant coffee (soluble coffee): is a beverage derived from brewed coffee beans. Instant coffee is prepared by either freeze-drying or spray drying, after which it can be rehydrated. Instant coffee is for those that prefer speed and convenience over quality.

Melya: coffee with unsweetened powdered cocoa and drizzled honey, sometimes with cream.

Mocha: a Cappuccino or Latte with chocolate syrup added to the mix.


Hammerhead: A caffeine fix consists of a shot of espresso in a regular-sized coffee cup which is then filled with drip coffee.

Dry Cappuccino: A regular cappuccino, only with a smaller amount of foam and no milk.
Cafe au Lait: made with brewed coffee. The ratio of milk to coffee is 1:1.


Double Shot: two shots of espresso mixed in with the regular amount of additional ingredients.


Espresso Con Panna: Your basic standard espresso with a shot of whipped cream on top.

This post was actually written for yummybay.com, a food ordering portal. Log on to yummybay.com for more details.

Why Twitter Works for News???

I am an active tweep and do tweet every day. I tweet a little bit of quotations, thoughts and some interesting things. Even though I track my fellow tweeps’ tweets, I never realized the active participation of most of them till last week. Some of them tweet regularly and others will be idle for all the day. (Sometimes, I too belong to the idle group who just reads others’ tweets)

One day, I happened to see Burkha Dutt’s tweet on Hyderabad Air Crash# and did retweet it. It amazed me that suddenly people started asking me questions related to this incident as if am reporting from the accident spot. I waited for other authentic tweets to answer my fellow tweeps’ queries. Also the # tag helped me to track people who were tweeting on this particular incident. The period of diffusion of the news was unbelievable. I checked a few news website out of curiosity, but the tweet world was ahead of them with new updates. I realized the factor that, more than a status application, now it is being used as a first alert mechanism for the dissemination of news and for immediate discussion surrounding that news.

Next day it was nithyantha# ruled the twitter world. I just clicked on nithyantha# and it led me to whole lot information which will be difficult to collect in a limited period of time. People were retweeting the scandal with an urge to inform the world about such fake saints.

The twitter world amazes me a lot by its over growing popularity and people adapt it so quickly. When I was actually introduced to twitter by Ganesh, I found it as an arduous task to understand and recognize the features and functionalities of twitter. Now it has become the trend and other social sites were beaten by twitter because of its simplicity. There are plenty of desktop and mobile applications which will help you to tweet according to your choice. The interesting thing is that it won’t consume much of your time, also help you to develop your multi tasking ability :)

Actually what I wanted to share with you is that rapid dissemination is occurring through twitter these days. It has become a serious platform for discussion and news dissemination and it does get a great amount of coverage. I was just wondering why???

Why Twitter???

Quick: The information will reach you fast. Actually you can find most of the journalists, bloggers, writers and even big companies in twitter and they do maintain a twitter account and tweet actively and disseminate information. I am sure they are going to push twitter to mainstream soon.

Simple: the 140 characters make it simple as a text message. Tweet gives you the chance to listen to the news in context.

Easy: Twitter has smartly developed a large set of tools that help people use the service. This makes it easier for people to get content on Twitter in the manner most convenient and most comfortable to them.

Interactive: unlike any other medium it allows conversation. It does encourage feedback. Most of the political leaders and celebrities are interacting with people without any hesitation.

I would like to borrow Ruffini’s thoughts as my closing thought, “Twitter is built for the new news cycle. Traditional news operated on a 24-hour cycle. Blogs shortened this to minutes and hours. Twitter shortens it further to seconds," he writes. "It's not right for every piece of information. It's certainly not well suited for longer analysis. But when it comes to instantly assembling raw data from several sources that then go into fully baked news stories, nothing beats it."

you might also like: Twitter Killed Jyoti Basu

The five point THREE IDIOTS!!!

I recently watched the block buster flick 3 idiots. I can say, this is one of the over hyped movies which met my expectation. This is again an adaptation from one of Chetan Bhagat’s chicklits called Five Point Someone. This was his debut book and a best seller. Usually the ‘fiction to film’ stuff irritates. But, this one......Good work Mr. Hirani!!!

I read the book as soon as it was released, good, funny and light stuff. I really wanted to see the book on the reel. At last that did happen in a grand way.

As everyone knows, recently the movie and its creators were hit by a credit controversy. The so-called percentage controversy did a great job to boost the movie and book sale. 3 idiots interested the media for quite some time. It did get a wide reach than the promotion stunts. Easy PR ;)

Even though, the director said the movie is an adaptation (now they want to call it as initiation) of the FPS, I felt that only the thread was taken. Off course the main characters added and some eliminated. That’s the way it is for any adaptation. The hype was really high to promote the movie. Print, broadcast and online ads were flooding. I don’t think there was any need to publicize it so much coz movie goers always accept good movies whole heartedly. You would be thinking why I am talking about promotion which is a universal practice. That’s true, but the buzz is that, to diminish the Chetan effect, they publicized it in a larger level. This caught the media’s attention beforehand and when the controversy actually hit the roof it was a hot cake for our country’s fourth estate.

Mr. Bhagat penned in his website that "The setting, characters, plotline, dramatic twists and turns, one-liners, theme, message - almost all aspects that make up the story are from FPS. Yes, there are some changes, any adaptation requires that - but it is no way an original story. Leading movie critics have privately admitted to me that the film is 70% the book. Still, don't take my word for it - go read the book, watch the film." We tend to believe him when he comes up with the minute details. But when you read the creators’ point of view, you will nod for their arguments too. The spectators like us just take it as an instinct to watch movie/read book. What else can we do?;)

Anyway, the media, creators and the author utilized the percentage controversy. But was he really trying to take away the credit? The media came up with all possible answers. I strongly feel that it was a publicity stunt. Nobody defamed but profited in a larger level. The movie hit the box office and the book is out of stock.:) All is well!!!

Lucky / Unlucky???

Luck??? I always wonder what it exactly means. My wiki hunt led me to a statement which is not at all compelling, “A belief in good or bad fortune in life caused by accident or chance which happens beyond a person's control”. Sounds interesting but don’t you think it is too much for a customary word?? (personal opinion). I agree with the belief part alone coz belief is the property of oneself. Your belief is you, you are your belief. Keep believing! (Courtesy: Ganesh)

Hmmm...It’s so easy to justify things on the basis of luck or bad luck. (Kind of escapism, right?) But people do take it granted. I am quite unsure about the existence of luck. Rather, I don’t want to believe that. My rational mind forces me to consider that luck is just a state of mind coz I am known for my bad luck. Many of us worry a lot for the unstable and unexpected causes in our life. Is it really an outcome of luck?

I tweeted my query regarding this and did receive many interesting replies. All replies were confirming to me that luck does exist. I never thought it in that way. One of my tweeps pointed out that many people are not worthy enough for what they get. That’s true…so I have been forced to believe that luck exists. Otherwise what we call this phenomenon??

Luck happens when opportunity meets preparation. How can we prepare for luck? Difficult question……. I don’t think any preparation is really going into luck. Probably I can say, it just exists now and then to remind us its existence!!!

Love you Mom!!!

I miss you mom.... I miss you so badly.....

I never thought you will leave me and go....

Why did you go so soon from my life???

When I saw you still, I was broken and I cried hardly to make you awake from your sleep. But you never heard me. You didn’t respond to me. You were asleep. I could hear the funeral song which was playing in that eerie atmosphere. I tried to understand the meaning of the song. It sounded to me like a story. An angel came and asked my mom to follow him; he didn’t even give her the time to prepare. She begged him saying about her husband and kids, but the angel was so cruel it didn’t allow my mom to say good bye to us.

My tears became meaningless when I understood that you will never come back. I felt my life came to an end. Then I realized I am still living without you. I never thought about death so seriously. I have witnessed deaths of my relatives, friends, and strangers. But I never thought this monster will come to my family.

Now I am realizing the instability of the life. We are running behind so many worldly things without understanding our destiny.

Mom, I want you....

Please come back...please...coz I love you so much...

TWO STATES!!!

I am an honest fan of Chetan Bhagat and his writings. More than an Indian English Writer, I would prefer to call him as the king of chick lit novels. Chick lit novels actually gained their popularity only after Chetan’s Five Point Someone was released. I can say People developed a liking for this genre through his books. The “shift from classics to light stuff” really happened during this time. Many people like me started picking his books for leisure reading.

I read his TWO STATES recently. This book is the latest to his list. A blurb in the back side of the book caught my attention. Probably I would have related it to my life ;)

Love marriages around the world are simple:
Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy.
They get married.

In India, there are a few more steps:
Boy loves Girl. Girl loves Boy.
Girl's family has to love boy. Boy's family has to love girl.
Girl's Family has to love Boy's Family. Boy's family has to love girl's family.
Girl and Boy still love each other. They get married.

I would like to add one more point to the same.

Boy and girl should be from the same religion/caste/state/family background :)

Even though, this book touches only the family affairs, it made me think a lot about our current religious and community norms existing in India. Religion is not our choice, it has already decided by our folks before our birth. However, our constitution gives us the privilege to choose our religion; it is always elders’ choice. By the way, don’t think I am blaming our age old practices.

I would like to borrow a thought from Ganesh and Savi. They believe that religion/caste is a system that is created by our ancestors to keep us in the social order. This would give meaning to the practices we perform under an extreme power, the God Almighty. Sometimes, I too like to believe the same. If caste or religion doesn’t allow you to think like a human, then better believe this concept.

Along with the author, I wish a change in our current scenarios. Why religious and state boundaries restrict us from the existence. Don’t think I too fell in love with a North Indian Guy like the protagonist. (See, I am also stigmatized).

I was just wondering, when we will make it to the normal concept of marriage ;)

Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy.
They get married. ;)