The pleasure in pain

Isn’t it ironic. The title I mean.

 

But looking back at my history, it seems that pain is always what ive found pleasure in. its like pain is an aphrodisiac, a stimulant and a well earned smoke at the end of a long and hard day.

All of us have come across people who although (our perception) are in a decent position in life, always look pensive, serious and ready to explode. We sometimes out of sympathy try and talk to them so that they feel better but for some strange reason, it never seems to help.

I heard it from someone that some humans had this ability to bring physical illness upon themselves just by thinking that they were ill. Psychosoma I think it was called.

If, we delve deeper into our own psyche, somewhere, hidden in a dark corner is a masochist hiding. He/ she is waiting to pounce on us at the slightest chance. It may be the sudden remembrance of an old lost friend, an old love, a longing for known faces or any of the innumerable reasons that can trigger pain in a human.

Some of us get drunk, others listen to songs which talk about suffering and a few others do things which to put it mildly, are plain unlawful. just to get away from that feeling. But these things have an inevitable impact of aggravating that very same feeling that we wanted to get rid of in the first place.

The best part is that we know that none of the solutions would work, and yet we always opt for them. Its like a wound which we give ourselves and start crying the moment blood starts spilling out.

In the movie ‘The Matrix: Reloaded’, when the character Neo meets the architect, the architect explains to him how humans always consider pain and misery a part of their lives. He explained how his first  program which was designed to make people believe that they were happy always ended up becoming a disaster, just because people were not ready to accept a life that didn’t make them unhappy once in a while.

And yet, in spite all of these, those of us who pray always ask god to remove the misfortune that has been wrought upon them.  Those of us who don’t,  always remain cautious not to utter a wrong word here and make a wrong move there, lest their life become full of hardships.

 Its time now, for us to think that whether we really need to eliminate pain from our life? Do we really need to feel happy all the time? Isn’t it good that we become sad once in a while, just so that we can get over it and move forward. Is it really worth going that extra mile just to be on the ‘safer side’?

PS: it ain’t about how hard you can hit, but how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward- Rocky Balboa

PPS: things might seem a bit unclear for the uninitiated. For those who know me well, excuse my lack of clarification. But I’m sure you’ve got the point. Haven’t you?  

Change Management

As I now prepare to leave for the place I call home, I can only wonder, if the meaning of the word ‘home’ itself has lost relevance.

Four years I spent in a place, an average joe at Hyderabad would not even recognize. Always, when I told some person who was either a friend of a friend or a friend of my father, that I study in BIT mesra, an incredulous look preceded the question “Do you study at BITS pilani?” and then I would do all the explaining about how BIT and BITS were actually sister colleges (a slightly more palatable lie) and that they were established by two brothers of the same family.

When I joined this college, it was the farthest I had gone from home. A different culture altogether. People speaking a Hindi dialect we had only heard in movies and television. It took me some time to get accustomed to that place. And when I did, it became dearer to me than Hyderabad. Every break, be it the winter or the summer or that of the puja, I used to think of ways and means by which I could come back to Ranchi. And always, since no one else was there, I had to stay back in Hyderabad. This feeling was there beginning the third semester. I used to go home and each time I felt I was becoming more and more distanced to my home. I had no friends save 2-3 school mates with whom I spend most of my time there and are my only contact to that place apart from my parents. Everytime I stepped out of Godavari express at Secunderabad station, it was as if I was back to an alien planet.

Don’t think wrong of me. My parents still reside at that place and (un)fortunately that is the only place on earth I can go to if I am kicked out elsewhere.

This increasing gap became more prominent when I joined this company. After more than three years here. Pune feels more like home than Hyderabad. But still, it is to Hyderabad I always go when I can manage a break.

Of cultural adaptations, I have never found it difficult to intermingle once I was out of my college. Be it my initial days at Pune or my period which was spent at Singur or my coming back to Pune, mixing amongst people was never a problem. But then, may be it was the chameleon in me that has led me to this ‘lost’ identity. I have shape-shifted so much now, that I belong everywhere and I belong no where.

Its as if, to mix with the people, I always kept changing and now there is no part of the original me left to recognize.

What should we hold on to if we are to keep our identities intact? Should we face or do we deserve to face the problems which crop up if we take a stand and stay firm on some grounds. How much of our identity, our culture are we willing to compromise to achieve material success? Who shall ultimately win the war called life, will it be the guy who always intermingled and ultimately was left with no identity or would it be the guy who always was the place where he belonged to? Wherever his endeavours took him, he always managed to carve a niche thanks to his firm stand. Is change good or bad? Change is practical they say and yet oppose it in certain respects. Who decides what can be changed and when can it be done.

Maybe these questions shall remain unanswered forever. Maybe fifty years from now, in the twilight zone of my life, I shall be able to understand the bitter truth. Maybe, I will end up on the wrong side. Maybe, I shall change somewhere in between and maybe, a very little but existent chance, that I end up winning the war though I have lost this battle. 

and then….Atlas Shrugged!!

Dear Ayn didi,

I want to clear this right at the beginning, I love what you write. Nevertheless, here goes…

Imagine a person who joined Rearden Steel or D’Anconia copper as a low level employee. He is a regular, sincere employee, the kind of which  are commonplace in corporations. He knows he isnt great, he knows he cant alter the course of history and neither does he want to. He is just a guy who does not want to be late for work. He wants to put in his best efforts and see his company succeed. He wants to be proud to be an employee of Rearden Metal/ D’Anconia copper. He wants to get back to his wife and kids at the end of the day. He doesn’t mind putting extra hours of work when the job demands it. He is concerned about his performance appraisal, his next promotion and his festival bonus. One day, he wakes up in the morning. He gets ready, has his breakfast, kisses his wife good-bye and leaves for work. When he reaches the factory, he finds that it has been blasted!! Not only the one which he worked in, but the others which belonged to his company. He is now jobless. A few months down the line, he does odd jobs, his family are in a state they did not deserve and then, there is an announcement on radio by a guy called John Galt who tells him “People, your mines and factories had been blasted to nothingness by your owners. They did that so they could satisfy their egos. They did not want to create money for the ‘Collectivists’ and so, they are not sorry for what they have done’

Imagine now, what would go through his mind.

Another story goes somewhat like this.  This guy had been working for 20-25 years as a low level clerk in some PSU bank. He earned about $50k a year. He and his wife were saving to buy a house. One day, he reads about this project called ‘Portland Homes’ which advertises itself as a low cost housing project. He doesn’t know or care which school of art the building followed. He is not interested if the building used baroque or roman style pillars in the foyer. He only knows now that he can buy a house for his family. He books a flat in this project and is promised delivery 6 months later. Just before the inauguration, he learns that the project has been destroyed. He attends the trial in the court and comes to know that a guy who claims to have made the original designs of the project destroyed them because the houses did not look the way he wanted them.

What would he think?

Dear didi, these guys are people like us. We may not be inventors/ scientists/ architects but we are sincere. We do what we are told and we try do it as best as possible. We may not have conceived Rearden metal or generated ideas to make the company as big as it is today. But we know, we contribute to every dollar the company earns. We could have been nothing without D’Anconia’s ideas, but his ideas would not have been implemented if not for us. We may not know much about the railroad business, but we can build roads and rail tracks to the best of our ability. Surely, Ms Taggart could not have laid all the tracks her trains run on or build the coaches by herself. Surely Mr. Roark could not have made all the drawings of the projects himself. He would need people who were draughtsmen and who would make his secondary views. Surely, Mr. D’Anconia could not have mined all that copper by himself. He would need people to run the blast furnaces, keep stock of the copper and ship it.

But, what if our only source of living was snatched away from us because our owners did not want to live in this ‘collectivist’ world. What if, in spite of our best efforts, we are rendered jobless….just because Atlas Shrugged. 

Wake Up Sud!

Sorry for the appalling display of plagiarism…

The title nevertheless has been kept for a reason, it is because watching a movie with a similar sounding name served as the ‘big bang’ for this post….

What is a good life?  This is a question I have often asked myself. I am sure, most of you might have asked this question yourselves to the little remaining piece of junk that is the conscience (or in case of Ayn Rand’s fans..the ego)

Is is doing what you love that constitutes a good life? Is having a perfect partner be it a friend or a lover that makes life good? Is having all the right material benefits such as a house, a flat or a car and the right amount of cash inflow that make life worth living? Or is it the ability to have three square meals a day and a fourth too if time permits that maketh a person happy?

I was in this farewell party of a guy from work today, and we had this small (actually mini) feedback session where he told each one of us present, what he thought was their nature. I as usual was given the feedback that I do not live my life to the fullest. This acted as the final nail in the coffin.

The movie from which this title has been borrowed, showed a filthy rich guy, who had no interest whatsoever in the ceramics (for the lack of a better word) company owned by his dad, his mom was supposed to knock on the door of this guy’s room when she entered. She had to actually invite him to have dinner with herself and the guy’s father and the best of the best was that this guy’s dad promised him a Porsche SUV if his son worked in his company for 3 months which was great since this guy already owned a Honda CR-V.

This guy ends up becoming a photographer for a local magazine and the first salary that he earns, a measly Rs. 15k  is very sentimentally presented to his dad. The logic that we are provided is that this was the true calling of the guy.

Now, imagine a scenario where the guy was actually expected to complete his degree, get a job and feed his family. His parents were poor and could not afford a rented house forget a huge bungalow that the character’s father owned. What would be the scenario then?  Would he still become a photographer when a job he personally disliked offered him a salary of Rs. 40k??

That my friends is reality for you. People who never try and pursue their dream most frequently fall in this category. They can’t do it because..well they can’t  do it. They have their parents and siblings to look after who are looking upto him/ her for their daily bread. To keep his/ her parents alive, this person has to earn. He/ she does not have a choice of careers. They are just living their parents’ dreams.

You can find many such examples, everyday in the tabloids or the TV news channels, there is this story of how a son of a janitor in a government school secured a full scholarship in a medical college, how a daughter of a guy who sold Idlis is the state topper in the engineering exam but cannot join as she does not have enough funds to support her education,

And in the midst of all this, there are the well to do guys who crib about the fact that they are not living a life that they deserve. Have we ever tried to judge what the people who make rags to riches stories actually wanted to do with their lives? Do we ever question the life goals of a person who expressly did what he did just to feed his parents?

Who now has the right to be happy? who is not living his life to the fullest? and who now should wake up??

(Fake) Pride and (Illogical) Prejudice….

This thing was bound to come up.

Considering that I’m in the heartland of the erstwhile Maratha Empire, and for all the constant bickering about the pride and honour of this region as well as the country in general as a precursor to the CWG ( I wont judge if you came to know about this acronym only because of a scandal and not the actual thing)…

Yesterday was India’s Independence Day. A national holiday for all and hence some time off for yourself. It all began very normal and very routine. Me getting up late. Going out for breakfast and on the way, the same old Hindi songs about 'deshbhakti' whose CDs are probably worn out because they are used only twice a year.

As I was having my morning tea, a general habit of observing people led me to deduce this.

Why are we even celebrating I Day? What is so special this day? Does playing these old songs stuck somewhere in your basement (or in your attic if you will) make this day special? Make you realize the true value of independence? Are we a complete Nation yet?

Maharashtrians hate Biharis and UP walas. Delhiites ( a self proclaimed term by all people living in a 200 Km radius around the India gate) hating Biharis,  South Indians hating Delhiites. Bengalis hating Maharashtrians, MP walas hating everyone around them. The North-eastern people not cared about in general and hating everyone else.

Hindus hating Muslims, Muslims hating Christians, Hindus hating Christians, Parsis again not cared about by anyone and leading a sedate life of their own. Sardars made fun of wherever they go. Brahmins hating the Marathas, Marathas hating the Dalits, the Dalits turning to Christianity so that they don’t have to face these vagaries of a Caste Violence. Shias hating Sunnis. Catholics and SDAs hating Protestants.

This is not all. The very people who made us independent are now dependent on the government for a Rs. 500 pension scheme every month for which they have to shell out Rs. 100 as a bribe. In worst cases, even these amounts are not dispensed and the ‘Freedom Fighters’ die a death no better than a street dog’s.  No one knows them, no one cares. His medal and his ‘Freedom Fighter’ I-card is used by his family to buy cheap Rations and Bus passes for the City buses.

And we have politicians claim that the national pride is at stake if the CWG is not held in a manner befitting an event of such stature. Such is the paradox.

People who have had the fortune go on a foreign trip face similar treatment, this time for their nationality. The Australian case is not a one-off thing. It happens everywhere. And yet these people who come back to their homes facing all this ridicule do this to fellow Indians?   Being the first hand victims of racism, these people come back and inflict the same thing on the lesser mortals.

These musings brought a very lopsided grin on my face. And yet just as any other day, I put out my cigarette, paid the Chai wala and left. It was only when I came to my room, a thought occurred that I atleast should let go of the Fake Pride and Illogical Prejudices which I’ve had. And I will try from now on to be a human being first, an Indian next and a Hindu if time permits.

PS- Yes, I too have my prejudices. These, however are mostly directed on my own caste and my own religion. I will probably never completely be able to let go of these, but to try nevertheless is in human nature. 

A Life Less Famous…

Sorry.

The delay can almost fully be attributed to a persistent disease called ‘lethargy’ which (if you know me well) has been a congenital condition with me.

A few days back as I went to the railway station to drop off one of my friends, I noticed a couple on the platform. Both were low income, both not very good to look at (considering the normally acceptable but highly variable tastes). The wife sat in a cross legged position which might be more familiar to Indians and the husband  was lying in her lap, with a towel beneath him so that his clothes wouldn’t be soiled. Amongst all the bustle at the station, this sight gave me a feeling of tranquility, of calm. The wife slowly caressing the husband’s hair and the husband apparently in a deep sleep. I didn’t know them and I think no one else at the station did. But it was like a sweet melody sung in a very low voice amidst this cacophony.

Cut to last Saturday, when I was at Ahmedabad and returning by the 5.30 pm bus. I had this beautiful scenery to look at of the village side. There was nothing but greenery around. Fields where everything from paddy to wheat to potatoes was sown. The village was just like any other. A pan shop at the corner, a bus stop where the state government buses came carrying and dropping off people from different parts of the world and the same filth which is characteristic of any Indian bus station (or a railway station for that matter). I was day (or was it evening?) dreaming instantly (without the help of the hyper electronic device now made famous by ‘Inception’) of my days at my granddad’s (mother’s side).

How people would live simple lives. Wake up early morning at go into the nearby forest to get wood for the house chulha, the train from Goa used to come at 8 am carrying fish which was sold at dirt cheap rates, how a small 4 feet x 4 feet screen sufficed as a movie theater for the entire village.

We living in cities, have become monsters in comparison to this. How desperately we try and crave attention when we go out- either by wearing flashy clothes or laughing out loud at the stupidest of jokes just because a hot chick is standing nearby looking elsewhere. How people as young as 10 participate in reality shows and mouth dialogues I could not even dream of when I was their age just to grab attention. How could talented people judge the voices of these little halflings. How we always want the most cozy, air conditioned and high leg room seat when we get tickets to a movie theatre and even if that’s not enough, people like James Cameron have made the biggest blockbusters by selling ridiculously expensive 3D experiences.

But then, I am reminded of a session which we had when we had freshly joined. The guy said “It is these complications that make life worth living. It is these desires that keep you going for more. It is these wants that you will go any lengths to satisfy. It is this confusion that you should revel in”

Inspite of this, every once in a while, however brief a time, whether it was a passing glance from a moving train or a view from the balcony on a day when there is a light drizzle, I dream of a hand which caresses my hair when I’m asleep, I dream of a day where I could afford a stroll through the forest and the field without worries, I dream of a life less famous.

PS- yeah I know..too many brackets... and also that this might just be another ranting of mine....

Why The Sky Went Too Far….

I was a part of this conversation….a lot of conversations recently coupled with the equally tedious and fruitless task of pondering and came out with this..

There was this lesson in Moral Science I learnt at school. It said that once the sky was very close to the earth. It was so close, people could actually touch it. It was also said in that story, that the sky was the major source of food for the people. People used to break chunks of the sky and eat them and the sky was only pleased seeing that it satisfied these people’s hunger. But soon, people started taking the sky for granted. They said “the sky is infinitely vast, and we are too few. So how does it matter if we waste it” ; and so it began, people started taking bigger chunks of the sky. They ate when they felt like eating..otherwise they just threw it away. The sky now was starting to feel troubled, seeing people whom it fed for so long now taking it for granted.

One day, a small boy, took out a huge chunk of the sky. He just licked it on the surface and then threw the entire remaining portion on the ground. The sky became very angered at this. It thundered and roared and cursed the entire human race that it would go so far that no human could ever touch it again, let alone waste it. It then started moving upwards. Far, far away it went…and till date no human has ever touched the sky again. Needless to say, people died because of the hunger, not only those who wasted the sky but also the few that actually cared and loved the sky.

It has now become fashionable for people to criticize and waste their skies. These skies may be jobs; these may be precious natural resources like water, fuel, food grains all because they can do so. They have taken their skies for granted,

People in my company (and I’m sure, your company too) always say “yaar..is company ka to culture hi kharab hai” or “Is company me to aisa hi hota hai”  or “koi ownership hi nahi leta is company me” or “is company me mere liye kuch nahi rakha hai” or any of the other nothings that people blabber during those ‘intellectual’ discussions.

I think now, what right do you have to say this? Have you ever as an individual taken ownership of your own? Have you ever tried to change the culture of the place you worked? Have you ever, nevermind in however small a way, tried to think that this company was yours too?

I have seen many people come and leave this place during my stay here. People have always contributed, no matter how small an amount to make this a better company. But what about those people who came and they went and did nothing? What about the people who only kept chanting these lines and fleecing the organization by means of allowances or even their not so commensurate salaries?

It is these people who make all the ruckus. It is these people who make this company go farther and think lesser and lesser about its employees. It is these people who spoil the so called ‘culture’.

I remember now, that a guy at a very senior position once commented- “why take /GETs? They only leave. They do nothing all the time and one fine day, they resign”. I used to be flustered whenever I heard this comment. But now, after spending this time, I cannot help but agree. These people have been my seniors, my peers and my juniors and I am ashamed seeing them do these things all in the name of short term financial benefits.

People, if you don’t like it here, you have the freedom to leave. But as long as you’re here, do something. Be a motor, a prime-mover, the engine of however small an activity, however small a function, however ‘unimportant’ a profile. In the end, it is the motors who will rule the world.

PS- there is only one kind of guy whose life is easy, he is called the victim.

PPS- I love this company. This company has given me things, IT guys can only dream of. What I don't like is what some people have done to it today. 

PPPS- Special thanks to a guy who made me feel this way. Whatever good, I shall be from now on, a portion of it will always be attributed to him.

Star Wars- A Delayed Dissection

So, I decide one day, that I need to watch Star Wars. I thought it was the pinnacle, the ultimate source of inspiration for all fantasies…

How wrong was I?

I downloaded all the six installments of this ‘epic’ and started right from the start. That is ‘The Phantom Menace’ and proceeded to watch all that this series had to offer over a period of three days.

I gave the movie one chance, then two chances and three chances and then ten and then I lost count…as I delved deeper and deeper into the crap that the entire series was.

Darth Vader, a character who could have been immortalized had it been penned by someone of Tolkien’s or Rowling’s or Ayn didi’s caliber for that matter was turned to an obstinate fool. The slight amount of respect that I gained for him in ‘The Revenge Of The Sith’ came crashing down once I saw the sequels. A character so complex, he would have been the next Severus Snape or Sauron or Ellsworth Toohey. But all he remained at the end of the series was a character you would see in any of the countless Mithun movies. His aura was butchered and hacked. His charisma had been reduced to zilch. He became one of those ‘also rans’.

Obi- Wan Kenobi, who was rated 37^th amongst the list of AFI’s top 100 heroes of all time was an aberration to be extremely polite. He had nothing to offer. As the ex- mentor of Anakin Skywalker/ Darth Vader, he was shown to possess no special skills except his belief in the Jedi value system. He did not even deserve to mentor Luke for that matter if his characterization is anything to go by. You were expecting a Dumbledore and all Lucas handed out was a ‘Muggle Studies’ professor.

Of Luke and Leia, the little said the better.  In one of the sequels, Leia is shown kissing Luke and right in the next movie, Leia feels his brotherly bond calling out asking for help. 

A character who could have been more used was Yoda but he too fell to the absolute lack of imagination of the authors.

Coming to imagination, the light saber battles were only short of Dandiya/ Raas Nights which we get to see during Durga Puja.  The enemies displayed no emotion as they engaged, the held their sabers as if they were holding a fishing rod…and they killed as if killing people was a duty they were paid monthly salaries for like the Govt Babus. Its as if one had to offer a bribe to get emotions on their faces.

The few positive things I had to take…I saw Natalie Portman for the first time and I loved her. She looked so beautiful; it was almost a sin to touch her. The Jedi farewell ‘May the force be with you’ was decent enough. Jabba the Hutt was lovable. Darth Sidius was OK.

George Lucas invested so much money in creating this universe and did nothing when it came to the characters or the story. He killed my dream. He made me think my life as a low level manager was more exciting than to be a Jedi warrior.  

I cannot help but delete the movie now and find consolation in LoTR.

PS- George, next time you make a movie, please please invest more time and money on the characters. It is them who breathe life in a fantasy, not space ships and robots.  

The Future I Always Fear…

Today was a rather mundane day at office. Being a Thursday, there are only a handful of people who work. Chance or luck or any other fancy word invented by Paulo Coelho brought me upon this magazine. Its actually a monthly published by my company. The very last page of this magazine had an interview with one of the senior guys at my place. I saw it and imagined myself sitting in his place 35 years from now….this is how it goes….

Down Memory Lane

Sudhakar M Kamath
Deputy General Manager- Planning,

Q. How would you describe your journey in this company?
I feel I have been very lucky (?) to join this company. I remember the day I heard the news that I had been selected in the interview. (reminiscing) It was a dream come true for me to join such a prestigious organization. I was very lucky to have joined a world famous project in the initial phase of my career and I have never looked back since then.

Q. What has been your most memorable moment?
There have been numerous such moments. One of the special ones was in Singur. There due to some politician’s hunger strike, we had to take a route which took 5 ½ hours to complete a bus journey which otherwise could have taken only 45 mins. I remember how the bus used to stop every 10-15 metres due to a traffic jam. That whole period of 15 days was like a new revelation for me.

Q. What do you think sets this company apart from others?
This company has given me the freedom to take decisions right from a very young age. I was exposed to various facets of this company very early which is but a utopian dream in other companies. (Excitedly) Forget a job switch, I did not even make a resume after I joined here.

The other side of Mr. Kamath (Yeah Right!)
Your Hometown-
Hyderabad …no wait!!. I think I’m from somewhere in Karnataka…but I definitely think it is Goa…oh hell!! I’ve lived half my life here…I think Im from Pune.

What are you currently reading?
The Ramayana, The Mahabharata and The Bhagvad Gita (Do you expect me to read Playboy at this age???)

Where did you go for a recent holiday?
Croatia. I especially like the Croatian version of Vada Pav that you get over there.

Your Favourite Cuisine- 
I am a huge fan of Ecuadorian cuisine. They have a national dish called 'Chicken Ecuadori' which is prepared only on special occasions like someone's marriage.



Your Favourite One-Liner
I don’t enjoy other’s failures and I don’t like others to use me as a scapegoat for their failures (Killer Punch!!)

Just imagining myself there, answering these pointless questions put jitters in me. The truth is that people who stick around here for long are here because this company pays people to do what they enjoy most- leisure. People from around here make this company their last one because here, they can happily retire doing nothing all their life. Whoever, has joined this company as a GET has always left it. If he didn’t it means

a. He didn’t get admission to any MBA/ MS college
b. His hometown is only an hour’s drive from here
c. His girlfriend/ boyfriend lived here and they got happily married or the last
d. He just didn’t have it in him to go higher

Will I really answer these questions 35 years from now? I definitely don’t fall in the first three categories. Am I the fourth kind?…Only time can tell….

PS- May turn out to be less fun than the previous ones. But I'm sure you've got the message that is 'Don't ever become this'.

Quarter Life Crisis

Uff…what a great amount of trouble I have gone through as I begin this…was struggling to find something to write about something which I myself would like to read…which reminded me of the fact, that this was a blog not a newspaper column where I have to ..as the term goes “cross my t’s and dot my i’s”.

Now that all the hoopla surrounding July 2nd is now over, maybe its time I thought about what ive gained or lost during this period.

Three years is generally the time when people leave their jobs, switch to other companies either because of the pay or that their girlfriend works there or because they want to stay closer to home or the latest trend that is higher education. New recruits who stay behind after this period are generally only superannuating.

I remember I once commented about a friend who has been in this BPO since five years..that he had reached his retirement age and should now quit the job and switch to some new place.

The problem with staying too long in a company is that the experience you gain starts turning into baggage. And baggage my friends is expensive to carry about. There are limits to the period people don’t get influenced by the culture of the company they work.

There is another problem of juniors joining your company. I as a person have always valued intelligence more than experience. These new recruits display more intelligence and suddenly all the thought that I was young and better than most of the other people around vanishes like a puff of smoke. You are left lingering and pondering over your future as these people steal the day right under your nose.

Yesterday, as I was having lunch in the company’s canteen with a few colleagues, one of them remarked that I was actually four years older than her. I until then was living in a false hope that I still had many years to go when this comment came and I realized that I had actually spent three years in this company. And the more disturbing thought that I was now even closer to the ‘marriagable’ age when mindwise (as most of you will agree) I have not yet reached that peak from where things only start to go down.

Sometime back when I was watching this Friends episode where all the characters turn hyper on turning 30. I thought 30 was not too old, why are all these people feeling this way? It now dawns upon me that I am not getting any younger.

I just feel that there should be some thing you could drink or do or eat to stay young or atleast feel young. The company does value your experience but it is the intelligent who will solve problems and move ahead. It is that age should not play a role in affecting your mental faculties. I would definitely want to wear the clothes that I’m wearing now or the thirst for knowledge that I have now or have the miniscule amount of intelligence that I display now when im 10 years older.

Why should people become this boring and ‘bhai saab’ like when they get older and reach this age? Why should they start talking about the ways they can save their money when they should be living life to the fullest? Why should you try and be responsible when you actually enjoy the irresponsibility in your personal life? Why should you let go of all your friends with whom you’ve spent so much time when you get married? Why isn’t life simple like it used to be in the older days?

Someday, these questions haunt everyone and for most the haunting might have already started. But the fact remains that all of these are going to happen no matter what…

PS- 'There is no off position to the genius switch'- Anon

An Ode To My Abode....

Yeah! I have conceded/ acquiesced/ whatever to the requests and comments made by the avid readers (who by the way number less than the atomic number of beryllium) and will try and write about something which is actually good.

Its very natural for a person to get adjusted to a place when he/ she has lived there for a considerable time. It is a law of nature. If animals and plants can do it..we are humans after all. But what if you fall in love with a place the very first day you enter it and that love only keeps increasing? Its one of those satisfying relationships where you discover a new facet of your partner with each passing day and you also love each of the ones which have been bared in front of you.

This is a place which was ideal for me when I was missing my college. Lots of greenery around, well laid roads, everything within reach and most importantly the weather here is awesome. Its always cool at nights, so cool that in the month of May, I actually had to use my sheets to keep myself warm!!

There is a school nearby which was founded by the earlier management of the company where the children of the employees can study. It is undescribable, the feeling that you get when you are leaving for work and the children come dressed in colourful attire for their annual sports day, when their parents come to collect the report cards or the everyday thing of parents coming to the school to drop or pick up their kids.

There is also a small scale industry here where the wives of the employees can work and become independent. They make all kinds of stuff here…pickles, masalas, papads and even make small relay systems that are used in our products!! But the silent winner of all is the chapati centre, where women make an average of 2.5 lakh chapatis per day which go the canteens of our company as well as 15 others around here. Now that my friend is called CSR. And all of this was started before CSR became a cool word for companies to throw about.

About 20 minutes walk from here is the famed lake house. It is said that you can actually see peacocks here in this season if you are awake at around 4 am. The beauty of the lake house can be summed up in a single fact. Every year, thousands of migratory birds come here to pune and most of them settle at the lakehouse. It has been claimed that the birds haven’t left this place in the last 3 years because of the weather and the continual feeding that the horticultural department ensures (yes people, there is a horticultural department!!).

The room where I live in is a nice cozy little one on the first floor of a building which is located bang in the middle (geographically) of this place. But inspite of living here close to 2 years I cannot claim to have seen everything here. There are still nooks and crannies of this place where ive never been to..sometimes due to shear fear and most times because I was just doing my routine. Almost reminds me of the lines “What is this life full of care…no time to stand and stare….” Written by a poet whose name I cannot recall now.

But one thing which has grown over the time is my love for this place. Now, its almost like I have become this Telco Colony!!

PS- I know I should have uploaded some pics…but I guess if you want to see something badly..you are never ever satisfied by just the photographs!!

The Music That Maketh Me

An old saying has been modified as “a man is defined by the type (called ‘genre’ by the GenY) of music he listens to.” I haven’t heard nor read this quote anywhere so I can safely assume that this is my creation. And there are reasons enough for my creation..

Back in college, there were three basic categories of people.

Type A- People who listen to hip-hop, death metal, punk or thrash or crap or garbage metal which the average Indian male would not even know the name meant.

Type B- People who listened to hindi songs almost 99.97% of their time. The only English songs they knew were sing by Celine Dion (or) Bryan Adams (or) Linkin Park (Now you know what songs these were, right!!)

Type C- These guys were completely undecided- they would listen to Kumar Sanu, Pink Floyd, Sonu Nigam or the countless number of Punjabi songs that they could lay their hands on.

The type A guys were the ones who were considered the hippest guys in college. These guys had long hair, facial fur ranging from a stubble to the infinitely outrageous and wore jeans that were at the tipping point ,that is to say a small shove could land them in a huge trouble. The type A guys ruled when it came to getting the best girls in college because ‘arey yaar! Do you know, he listens to Dimmu Borgir! Isn’t that cool!!!!’ or ‘He plays such beautiful guitar. He just sang a soulful rendition of Eminem’s Slim Shady just for me!!!” kind of responses were elicited for them.

The type B guys were just plain losers in the eyes of the A-listers. “Chee! He listens to Manna Dey! He’s light years away from being modern” or “ Wo to aise gaane sunta hai jo truck driver log chalaate hai”. These guys would just roam about in the hostel lobbies playing the song in full volume and presenting shaayaris from these and getting the customary “Waah! Waah! 's” from equally “Medieval” guys. They got girls who were mostly local and whose expectations from their boyfriend being a show off material was quite low. For these girls, having a boyfriend in itself was enough of an achievement!!

The type C guys were well- to put it mildly- nothing. They did not create any flutter..neither in the guys or the girls. They ended up lonely in their rooms with people similar to them or would go about their routine life as if nothing ever mattered. They were equally at ease in the eastern as well as western section in the Music Nite at Bitotsav. And yes- they got nothing.

Several movies I saw recently put this startling fact to light. In one of these movies, a character lambasts at Konkona Sen-Sharma’s character that she did not understand what true music really was! The peace and the solitude one could find in Jazz was unmatched. And Konkona Sen Sharma – a typically type C girl was left speechless.

Are people who listen to Mohd Rafi or Kishore Kumar fools or ignorants? Are people listening to “Cradle Of Filth” just the best that nature has to offer? In what way are they any better than the type C guys? Why is memorizing a song in a language one barely understands and singing it with a voice that’s not your own so cool? And why is dressing up like a total ‘Gangbanger’ hip? Why should people be looked down upon just because they do not like Metallica and/or have not even heard of it?

I want to say this now, we are as good as the type A guys if not better. We who belong to the type B and type C categories do not feel such pain as the type A guys do (since they claim to relate to these songs which only talk about pain). Please do not judge us from the kind of songs we listen to. If given a chance, we can beat the type A guys at their own game.

PS- if you have not already guessed, I belong to type C and have my own choices when it comes to listening. I listen and respond equally well to a Telugu song as I do to the ones sung by Pink Floyd.

Emosanal Atyachaar!!

I want to kiss the hands of the poet who coined this term. Seriously!! This guy should get the nobel prize for literature for inventing a word which captivates the mind of a billion people today and has become the new ‘in’ word to say after a very long reign of the f word.

Was watching this program on TV, actually two programs which were running. One was the program whose name I have maligned intentionally in the title to avoid trademark issues and the other was a program whose aim was to solve relationship issues between couples.

I, being the highly imaginative person that I am, I ‘lagech’ derived several conclusions and observations after only 10-15 mins of watching this crap.

Let me just start with the first program whose name is phonetically similar to the title. There is a guy and a girl. They have been going out for quite some time.Everything is rosy, the guy claims to love nothing in this world but the girl and the girl claims to have had wet dreams about this guy. Butt (pun intentional), there is the Hindi movie twist to this story. The boy is ‘gareeb’ ghar ka ladka with no ‘gharana’ to speak of and the girl is filthy rich whose father confesses to have bought 500 pairs of shoes just because the daughter wouldn’t wear them a second time. There is every chance that the guy or the girl are actually cheating on each other?????? This is where the program comes in as a life saver. Oh! What if the program had never been there? The girl could never have known that the guy was actually after her ‘daulat and jaaydaat’ . The guy was actually in love with the ‘tapri’ wala’s daughter but since he had no cash to support her, he used this rich girl as the source of steady income.

The second program asks people to send their relationship issues and the host and the hostess (who are no authority on relationships btw, the girl is just another girl in a mini skirt and the guy’s Bollywood career is defined by a single movie in which he played the role of a sidekick!!) solve their problems in matter of micro seconds. There was a complaint from a housewife saying that her husband had off late begun to ignore her and the root cause was she found out that she thought she was gaining weight and was pestering him with this constant question everyday “is dress me main moti to nahi lag rahi hun” or its thousands of manifestations. Then there was a query asking the hostess “ I am a 22 year old guy and am in love with a 26 year old woman? Can this relationship survive? “ to which the hostess gave a very ‘mod’ answer that what mattered was whether you two guys love each other, age is just a number, blah blah and more blah!!

These and similar other programs which are currently now on air or have been aired in the past, are actually most watched by the single and hopeless guys like yours truly!!

I wonder, which guy who is in a relationship with a girl actually wants to conduct a loyalty test on her. And he doesn’t stop at that. The test and its gory results are made public. The public which by now has had more than its share of bullcrap laps it up like vada pav!! Same goes for the second category of programs!

People and Channel walas, let us normal people live the way we are. Please don’t teach us how to maintain relationships. That is the last thing we want to learn abour after ‘Artificial Neural Networks’. We have enough headaches of our own apart from these relationship fundas that u smother on our faces.

People who think that a particular relationship is important to them, maintain it at all costs. They call each other, they message each other and they also go sometimes and meet each other. We know what it takes to make a relationship work. Our parents have done that for ages. We do not want your advice/ help on whether our girlfriend will like us more if we wear crotch-tight jeans let alone checking where her loyalties lie.

PS- at the risk of sounding..very 'not me'. i have experimented with my writing style. I guess only time and comments will show if it was any good!!

The company of ‘giants’

Pathetic title this. Even more pathetic is the thought process that is going on in my mind right now.

Fyi.The title is actually taken from a quote by Jack Welch, the ex- CEO of GE.

When I joined this place where I now work, all of us were equal or so it was made out to be. But in the past three years everything has changed. Everything except me. I still am at the lowest rung in the management ladder. Had the misfortune of getting a below average appraisal and while everyone around me kept moving on. I stayed back. Most of the times on purpose and the other times, I was just plain unlucky.

How wrong was I? What was I thinking all this time? These thoughts come and haunt me now. The worst questions are yet to come. But I have this ability to run away from things I don’t want to face. So, safe for now.

In the final year of my college, I joined a CAT prep course, and I did not attend even a single lecture, did not appear for any of the mocks and took a loan from a friend so that I could go to Jamshedpur to write the exam. I of course, spent a major chunk of that cash on liquor.

My thoughts at that time were simple. I am in the final year of one the best periods of my life. Should’nt I be enjoying this with my friends? Why waste this period studying for MBA? And so year one was down. And I joined this company.

I joined this company and I thought, since I have joined, I should atleast stay for one year and gain some experience. And worked like a maniac, when my friends came home early and started preparing. I always told myself, this is work. I need the experience. I need to become a man now before joining an MBA. And year two was down.

In the third year, I was shifted to one of the worst places I could have been, I thought this should teach me a lesson, and I started studying but a little too late and a little too less. Nothing happened. I mean of course, if you see the end result, I still was at the same place. And so passed year three.

Now in the fourth year, when I was just thinking that it couldn’t get any worse, a torpedo, the intra company selection of the crème-de- la- crème happened. And I didn’t appear once again, thinking I was not ready yet. Not now. But the selection happened and I still am at the same place. year four down.

I read a quote written by Fyodor Dostoevsky sometime back. It offered a solace, yes. But, it was not to be there forever. If it had been, I wouldn’t be writing this piece now. Would I?

All the people who were with me during this period have now gone on to become giants. And here I am. Lurking in the darkness called ‘routine’ which is consuming me by the minute and now it feels even I don’t want to face the light of the day.

The worst questions have now been asked. And I shall do now what I have always done... Run away.

P.S- pls do not offer your sympathies. This was written because I wanted to accept the mistakes I have made.

The ToI trilogy- Part 3- The Return Of The Kings (and Queen)

Today is Sunday, an ideal time to write this post. There are two reasons- one is that I am (sort of ) free and the other because it is the day when I suddenly start liking the paper, ….until tomorrow.

Swaminathan S Anklesariya Aiyar (uff!!) ,M J Akbar and publish their weekly columns today.

The first guy could be an Indian equivalent to Steven Levitt, the author of ‘Freakonomics’. His writing does not mask the sarcasm and the pure hatred for the foolishness that goes around in the world. Today he wrote a column about how the death toll caused by Mumbai suburban transport system is easily much higher when compared to that of the Bhopal Tragedy. No offence is meant here for those who lost lives and their kin in this one but the hue and cry raised over Bhopal is infinitely higher when compared to the ‘sighs’ one usually hears when a railway accident occurs. He has also given figures (actually collected!!) to support his view. His discourse on the upcoming Iran-Pakistan pipeline and many more before that have always kept me spell bound!! His columns are tight, no flowery words, no beating around the bush.

The other guy M J Akbar, normally writes about Muslims and other minorities and their hardships but occasionally does divert and yet produces splendid columns. His columns have their own style. He will first build a background to the problem and then start attacking it. His words are not as sharp as Swami but are words of a moderate guy who is just plain frustrated with the way things work when it comes to the bureaucracy. He is not a Ninja like Swami who kills everyone within reach but a saint who has had long penance and is yet to see the fruit of it.

Both these columns are the single most important reason I turn to the editorial page on Sunday. Else, my life would be equally unaffected if I was to read the comics and the fluffy Times Life supplements.

I am not including Chetan Bhagat or Shobhaa de in this list as they somehow are not upto the scratch when you compare them to these guys. Chetan Bhagat is a wannabe, Shobhaa de is too much page 3 compared to these rockstars!!

You must be now wondering, if Shobhaa de isn’t the queen, who is? My friends, it is another columnist called Bachi Karkaria. She is not so regular on the Sunday editorial but tidbits of her do appear on weakdays as well. She is the perfect woman you should go to if you have to know the proper usage of the words. She uses the perfect mix of English and Hindi (and Gujarati) which is fun to read. In the middle of all this fun, she talks about her issue which ranges from the very serious to the very frivolous.

Then there is a steward of this kingdom called Jug Suraiya. This guy although more popular than most of the writers I mentioned above, does fall short on content. He too, has a strong command of the language. His writing too is fun to read just like Bachi’s and gives you a very different outlook on the problems we face today as a nation. Be it potholes or Bofors, his writing style is very different from the others. But inspite of all this, the kings are kings!!

Well, I now come to the end of my trilogy. Hopefully, someday, I will be back again with the sequels to this trilogy. I just wish ToI does give me enough reasons to like it more. I hope that you, give me enough reasons to write more on ToI!!

“The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it”- Elizabeth Drew

The ToI trilogy- Part 2- The Two Columns

Turn to the editorial page of the ToI.

It is a page second most frequented by me (of course after the pune times).
Statutory Warning- If you for one second even compare it to the editorial of ‘The Hindu’, you are actually comparing Bappi Lahiri to Pink Floyd. So, don’t do it!!

If you bring your eyes to the lower side of the page, on the extreme left and the extreme right, you will find the columns which I’m talking about. One of them is a column written by every Tom, Dick and Harry which would make you think if this is really an editorial or is it a blog like this one, where everyone posts everything for millions to read!

On the right side you will find another column that calls itself ‘the speaking tree’. This one claims to bring the readers to a spiritual enlightenment and one of its many contributors was the ex-Swami Nityananda- whom you know better as the guy who was caught on video with a lot of naked women!!

These two columns are not mere columns, they are the pinnacles of stupidity to which a newspaper which has taken its readers for granted can reach.

The column on the left recalls stories of how a women now in her forties lost her pens frequently when she was at school, people of a colony getting the municipality to clean the garden in front of their houses just because “ooh! It stank so much…” or how a guy whose daughter was about to get married faced the difficulties in arranging for the ‘shamianas’ and catering. I sometimes feel like asking the editor, “Is there nothing better to write about in the whole world than the price of chingri maach or the number of calls one had to make to get his TV repaired just so he could watch the T20 world cup??”

People like us face these kind of situations every day, the only problem is that we are not ‘accomplished’ writers to figure in your editorial. We know how many calls it takes to ask the APSEB guy to come and fix the broken meter, how many applications one has to forward if he just has to get his house registered, how many potholes are present on which road and why they were created in the first place. What we want to know is what is happening in the country and how the country is being affected by it. We want to hear people considered learned enough to talk about the subjects they are good at, not an economist talking about religion.

Coming to religion, we now take on the column on the right. This one talks about How doing pranayaams can help increase our life span, how the peace of mind is the only way to reach ‘moksha’. How we can only dissociate oneself from material gifts and be happy. C’mon guys, you need the material benefit that’s why you are running the paper. You need the material benefit and that’s why you print so many ads. You need the material benefit that’s why the world runs the way it does.

Just like Gordon Gekko said “Greed is good…all the greatest things achieved by men were achieved because they were fired by greed” and now just because you say so, do we give it up and become saints and go about our daily lives feeling nothing, earning nothing, living nothing? How relevant is your word in today’s world? There are people who lived for short life spans and achieved all the things people who led an uneventful 130 years!! Whom do you consider greatest? Whose legacy will be followed?

But then, there are reasons stronger than the irrelevance of these columns which force me to read this paper I just scorned..

The ToI trilogy: Part 1- The Fellowship Of Page 3

I had always wondered what the term Page 3 meant.

When I first heard the term, I used to look at the 3rd page of the main paper, which would generally consist of the local news. Powercut today in Shaniwarwada, Local boy abducts minor, MLA of the constituency at a grand opening of the new Sulabh Complex opening etc etc. I thought if these were ‘page 3’ guys, why was the term considered derogatory?.

That was until I chanced upon the supplement. When I opened the supplement called Pune Times here, the levers of my brain started unlocking and I found myself staring at the answer.

Celebrities, as most of the journos (or us) would call them come dressed to parties in clothes costing cash which could well be equal to the monthly salaries of middle class guys, all for one party!! And in most of the cases the dresses are never repeated!! Infact, it is an ‘original’ sin to wear the dress twice or if misfortune has it, seeing another person turn up in the exact same attire.

Initially, I used to wonder who these guys who get their photos eagerly snapped are. I am still wondering now as I write this. One of the page 3 ‘regulars’, I found out today was a director of some Serum Institute whereas in the past one year (since I had been following this guy), he would only turn up on the Race Course cheering for some horse. He would wear the best suits, the coolest hats and would invariably have either a glass of champagne or white wine in his hand. Never in my dreams could I imagine that this guy was actually a geek!

Of similar nature is another guy’s story. This one is not so ‘classy’. Whenever this guy attends a party, he is always wearing the same shirt which he had wore for the previous one and the caption reads ‘Honaji Sanas with a friend’. I thought, didn’t these friends think low of him as he had only one shirt and had come to show it off!! It is only 2 days ago, that I came to know he was a hotelier. Now you know how ToI is don’t you? The guy must be the owner of a vada pav tapri near Taj Blue Diamond considering his dress sense!

Imagine the pathos, I go to the same places these guys go (different days of course) and yet I have never gotten clicked!! There has been no photo till date with a caption reading ‘Sudhakar Kamath with a friend’.But when a girl turns up in a micro mini skirt with leopard prints…that makes page 3. The caption reads. ‘Beautiful girl enjoying the do’ ….

What do these guys do with these expensive clothes if they can only wear them once??? Do they throw them away? Do they mix and match? Do they donate it to some charity considering that is the ‘coolest’ thing to do? Or do these clothes turn up at auctions..saying ‘This is the saree which Dolly Thakore wore at Jackie Shroff’s Party’ and common people coughing up their hard (or not so hard) earned money to buy this priceless possession? Do they actually buy them or is there a store which rents out the latest in fashion may be at Rs. 15 an hour?

I cant even imagine seeing girls in these party dresses walking about on roads buying ‘aata dal’. Do they even know the current price of onions??

I put down the paper and start doing some other thing and these ramblings are put to pause; Until I read the Pune Times again next day……

A farce called ‘love at first sight’

Does love ever happen at first sight??

I had a pretty boring day today (nothing unusual about that) . was lazing around all day plaiying games and watching movies; that was until a friend of mine called up. We had this long chat from which the following post is derived.

He says.that when you’ve reached the slog overs of your life, the person whom you want to be at the runners end at that point is the person you love. Do all the couples going out today claiming that they love each other….think about doing that??

I absolutely second this thought. I said that the people who say ‘I Love You’ to each other have already assessed their partners to be of this level. But how can you assess if you have only just seen the person? Do you pledge a lifetime of togetherness based on one look at the person? Without even exchanging pleasantries? Does this ever happen?

One of an indirect contact of mine…exclaimed once that ‘if an attraction lasts only upto 3 months, it is an infatuation. But if it continues beyond that , it is love’. Is it true that love can be measured by definite time periods. There are people who live their entire lives together but still cant claim to love each other and there are few who only take a few months to do so. But the common thread connecting these people is that they have spent time together. They have tried to explore each other. Not some childish wish list saying that I want to marry this person if I marry at all. Mr. H Roshan made this claim on a talk show saying that when he was twelve years old, he just had a look at the now Mrs. H Roshan and decided that she would be his partner for life. Either the guy was mature way beyond his years or as is the usual case, he just had had a bout of first attraction.

There was this person, whom I claimed to love sometime back. But some days back, when I was pondering over my relationship to this person, the first thought that had occurred to me was that what was this feeling I had for her then? What would you call it? I decided to call it an infatuation ( the politically correct term). But then I thought I have been following and unconsciously thinking about this person for quite a long time. Would that be called love? Then the next thought was ‘Okay! Lets look at the person she is now’. I studied and made my permutations and combinations and my probability analysis. I discovered that this person had entirely changed from the image I had in my mind. Do I still have the feelings for her. The answer was ‘yes and no’. Yes I had feelings but no I do not have the same feelings which I had back then.

I am still confused about a one line summary. But what comes out of the whole exercise is that I had to spend time and think before I could decide that I love the person or not. It is only foolish that I say ‘I love you’ to a person without understanding her.

Love is never spontaneous. Love is never knee and jerk. Attraction is so but not love. Love only comes when people spend some time together. Love is a thing that grows. It doesn’t just appear!! You don’t love a person because her face is beautiful, her figure is a perfect hourglass or that she has a perfect ‘package’. You love someone because you want to be with them for a long time. And that feeling never comes at the first sight.

P.S- thank you guruji!! for stimulating my grey cells for the day.

the ring, the deathstick, the dollar and 42

As most of you might have guessed by now (how would you??the last one’s quite a bit of a toughie for newbies!!) these are the heights or depths or widths of my reading…

I am actually a fan of fantasies..although sometimes in an elite group that I would admit that I actually like to read non-fiction/ biographies/ autobiographies/ self help/ nothing and I am presuming that none of those elite get to read what I write now.

The primary reason is that in a fantasy novel, there seems a reason for me to go on…I want to know what happens next!! In a non fiction novel read in a very non fictitious kind of a way…there is nothing!! And these fantasies mind you are no work of nitwits like Sidney Sheldon, Tom Clancy or for that matter the booker of bookers Salman Rushdie.

Let me begin by the book that I read first- codenamed the dollar:
The books description talks about a dystopian (whoa!! What??) world where the people who created wealth destroy their earthly possessions and let the world go to ruin. They then come back and rebuild the world as they would like it to be. I would like to state here for the record, that this is my most favourite book till date. I kind of idolize this book and the suthor!! I have gained lots from this book. You can say that it has shaped almost 40% of my thoughts. Whenever I encounter a situation closely resembling the ones in the book…I say to myself….I am the motor of this world. If I stop, everything stops and that has helped me avoid lots of nasty memories.


The second book – codenamed 42:
This book is actually a comedy or as I found it while reading, a sarcasm on most of the more mundane human habits like queuing, following cricket, deodorants, restaurants etc etc etc. without going back into the details of why or when I bought it, I would say that it was the most humorous of the books I read!! Of strange creatures in strange lands- people claiming that earth is actually a computer made to understand the meaning of life, that the mice are actually very intelligent creatures and that they are experimenting on them. That earth was actually a very boring planet according to the guide and that robots who could think would curse themselves for being made to do such boring activities like opening a door!! Nothing to take from this one…this was just pure fun.

The third one- codenamed Deathstick:

This one blew me off!! Quite simply the best of the lot penned by the author. One of the characters especially intrigued me. The one whom I thought would be a villain was shown as the hero at the very last and how!! Things to take away…unending love. Love which could make you lose your life and yet you stick on to it. Never letting the other person know that you were actually his benefactor and stoically going on through life. Some would comment that it was afterall a fantasy, but my dearies…it is fantasy that we should strive to achieve. Who wants to achieve the possible?

And the last and yet unfinished- the ring

This is quite simply as fantastic as fantasy can get. The author invented a language, to support the language he created people. For their staying he created kingdoms. For those kingdoms he gave rivers, deserts, mountains and roads. And for those kind souls who created all that was good in the Arda, he created the Undying Lands. The story of the book is not as fantastic as the mythology. It is exactly this reason why I have put this one and all the others related to it in my sixth five year plan. Hopefully, five years down the line I should like to write a critique on the author in Sindarin and not in English.

PS- I wanted this post because I thought I was really becoming a victim. I hope I shall not be so from now on.

The Scientific Superstition

Most of us have come across these reports of various scientists who have carried out ‘research’ in each and every field under the sun.

There are reports of scientists researching the effect of smoking on pregnant women, the effect of mobile phones on our..uh..virility, the effects of eating oranges and lemons and ginger and turmeric and fenugreek and so on…

I sometimes (okay, a lot of times!!) read these reports and I am awestruck at the variety and the depth up to which the talented scientists are researching the subjects the world wants to hear about.

Sample this article which appeared in ToI sometime back, “Scientists tested a group of 100 women in the age group of 25-40 and showed each of them a picture of Brad Pitt and a bar of chocolate. Almost 78% of the women found the bar of chocolate to be more desirable.” The scientists then are said to have come to the earth-shattering conclusion that women preferred chocolate to Brad Pitt. Einstein would have ‘ROFL’d (sorry for using this internet slang, but I found its usage more appropriate considering the tone of the post) hearing this and would willingly forsake his Nobel Prize for this theory!!

Another similar article which was a lot less ‘scientific’ reported that a sample survey of people in Indian cities showed that Idly and Dosa were a preferred dish for Breakfast. These compared to aloo parathas were a much healthier and a tastier option. On one hand, a report indicates Garlic is a very good antioxidant, a must in our everyday diet while on the other hand, we have another report suggesting that men who had just eaten garlic were 64% less likely to have sex later!!

Another one on chocolate indicates that some chemicals in chocolate induce testosterone flow and hence act as an aphrodisiac while a report published just a week later indicates chocolate to be one of the major causes of some heart or liver disease.

Dagny Taggart, one of the characters in Ayn didi’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is shown to turned her wrath upon a scientific institute which could not/ did not report the merits and demerits of ‘Rearden Metal’ accurately. Accusing the institute for blasphemy as it did not carry out its function of accurately determining the properties of that metal. But of course, that was fiction!!

Laymen like myself tend to take all this research outputs to be true and try to change our lives until another experiment proves that oops!! That was wrong. I begin to imagine what it would be like if a man would believe every report ever published. What kind of life would he have. Would his life be just the number of breaths he’s taken??

More important is the question which kind of researchers research the ill effects eating burgers at midnight!! Who supports and funds this frivolity masked by the term science?? And why do papers publish this crap being dished out from these so called scientific institutes?

Science was supposed to be exact until a Mr. Heisenberg turned up. But scientific reports still have to be holistic and not contradictory. The issue at hand is supposed to be viewed from all angles until a report is published and dished out to morons like us. If you cannot predict the exact results atleast, give the band in which the results are going to lie. But the bottom line is give us the whole picture when you are hell bent on dishing out your “Research Papers”.

Happy Reading!!

Of 'Movies' and their 'Stars'....

Inspite being bitten by the ‘movie’ bug quite late…ive nevertheless seem to have made it in the who’s who of movie watchers in my circle. Ive tried my hands or shall I say eyes at almost everything I could lay my hands on..from the very cheesy Rajnikant and Chiranjeevi movies to the most ‘niche’ ones like the Quentin Tarantino or Shyam Benegal films.

“Some movies are to be tasted, some are to be bitten and some movies are to be chewed and digested” says yours truly when it comes to watching them. Theres so many movies around that you will probably die before you run out of watching movies churned out from Bollywood, Hollywood or South Indian Cinema every year.

But one thing that unites all of these movies is crap. There is crap in bollywood, there is crap in south Indian cinema and (yes my angrez loving friends) there is crap in Hollywood too.

You find movies which are poorly made, have no semblance of a story or a backdrop, have actors look like fools, pathetic comedy, even more pathetic melodrama and the worst climaxes. And yet some of these movies end up recovering their money or worse, becoming hits.

Ive watched probably every Akshay Kumar film since I joined my job. Each and every one of those movies had all the above characteristics and yet the truth is Akshay Kumar is now one of the highest tax payers in the country, is being pursued by every major director for his film. The same goes for the Rakesh Roshan films since Koyla. Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai, Koi Mil Gaya, Krrrrrrriiiiisssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh (pun absolutely intended!!) or the most recent form of torture he invented, Kites. These movies had no good stories to tell, not one of them had decent songs save KNPH and all of these movies had fiascoes for climaxes.


This takes even a more serious turn when it comes to Hollywood. Avatar, now officially the biggest grosser ever had nothing going on for it on the story front. All it had was the visual effects. I sometimes feel why do actors get paid so much if the real ‘hero’ of the movie was the VFX guy!!

Nagesh Kukunoor (the guy who made Hyderabad Blues) once commented at a famous award show, “We have a 1000 million people here in India, there is no need to look west for stories”. Yet all we have to offer to our people is bull dung like “De Dana Dan”, “Singh is Kinnnnnng”, “Chandni Chowk to China”, “Om Shanti Om”?

Of Indian actors and actresses (nay they are not actors, they’re just ‘stars’) the less said the better, we have idiotic looking people like uday chopra, jackieeee bhagnani, Harman baweja, Twinkle Khanna, Sameera Reddy becoming stars. There is nothing these people can do save show off their six pack abs or ignorant smiles. Imagine this, Aishwarya Rai, with a false American twang, with a face that could well be called a doll's for the fact that it can display no emotion and B grade Jag Mundhra type films to show for her Hollywood 'career' is the face of Indian Cinema , even India itself to the world. Guys! She’s just that : a face. An expressionless, false but nonetheless beautiful face.


The worst of all are us, the people who watch these movies and help people like Akshay Kumar become highest tax payers or an unknown entity called Barbara Mori to become a household name.

People! Grow up! There are people for whom movie making is a passion and they make good movies but are not able to recover their money just because they don’t have a starcast or are not able to market the movie well or plainly cannot include songs in them!!

Movie making is supposed to be an art! Acting, Music, Lyrics etc are all contributors to each movie. Let the purity of the art remain so and not let it become a business people like the ones cursed above have made it out to be.


I melain berio le.

The ‘Khatta’ Identity

My intention in writing this post is very noble. This post should serve as a ready reckoner to all my ignorant north (or west or east for that matter) Indians about a seemingly difficult topic- South India.

What I would be writing is pretty basic, but should be able to drive through a point through the thick skulls of some people; One point-WE ARE NOT ALL MADRAASIS. Period.

There are 4 major states comprising the south of India- Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The IPL teams from these states too are different- Deccan Chargers, Bangalore Royal Challengers, Chennai Super Kings and the yet unnamed team from Kochi respectively. So 4 states, 4 teams- once again my friends- WE ARE NOT ALL MADRAASIS.

The English accent of the people of all the four states too is different. The AP guy would pronounce ‘your’ as uuuuur and ‘sure’ as ‘shooooor’. The kannadiga would add an extra vowel to the end of each word which ends with a consonant. E.g: what(e)? night(e) and the like. The e at the end sounds like the first e of ‘elephant’. The tamil guy will try very hard but ultimately fail not to put the suffix ‘da’ at the end of each sentence E.g: “Whaat are you doing da?” “Its not my fault da!” “I love you da!” They also are sometimes prone to play a little verbal football (pronounced futbaal) with the Ss and Zs. The kerlaite on the other hand would say sumthin like this “hi! My name is sam Jonny” (the jonny is pronounced like the second n of the hindi word mani” So four states, four different accents- WE ARE NOT ALL MADRAASIS.

Some myth busting about “Typically South Indian” things-

a. Our Cuisine is not limited to Idly/ Dosa/ Vada. We normally eat these things only for breakfast. There are other things that we eat for lunch/ dinner. So, if at any restaurant, they serve you dosas at dinner saying that it is a south Indian culture- you know u r being screwed!!
b. We do not add ‘Imli’ to each and everything that we cook. And the tamarind used is in general a substitute for the north Indian tomatoes which bring a tangy taste to the dish. We prefer eating tangy/ spicy food. Our food has a predominant taste unlike east Indian food which mostly comprises water and vegetables with about a milligram of spice thrown in with a kilogram of vegetables or north Indian food which comprises huge dollops of ghee/ butter or west Indian food which has tonnes of oil and quintals of red chillies (marathi)/ sugar( gujju) and nothing else.
c. We do not understand each other’s languages. This is the most important/ prevalent myth. Hence I need to assert once more- WE ARE NOT ALL MADRAASIS.
d. Our film stars are different. Although there are people who dabble in more than one language, it is mostly Chiranjeevi for AP, ShivRaj Kumar for Kannadigas, Rajnikant for Tamils and MohanLal for Mallus. I would very much like you people to google these names so that you get a clear idea who/ what I am talking about.
e. Not all south Indian women have the so called ‘thunder thighs’. It is for the masses that women like these are put to use just like the lewd songs in bhojpuri/ hindi/ Punjabi.
f. Our filmstars perform the seemingly impossible stunts only to please the masses (who else). The next time you think south Indian movies are cheap for this reason or the one above. Pls go watch Mithun Chakrborty/ Kanti Shah/ Ravi Kissen (Bhojpuri) or the endless B grade Punjabi pop singers.

So, the end approaches for this post. And Pls people- WE ARE NOT ALL MADRAASIS!!!



Navaer Im Mellon..

Middle Class Me!!

I don’t seem to understand this culture (for the lack of a better word, thanks to my miniscule vocabulary) that is gripping most of the people I see.

People visit spas, beauty salons every weekend, wear all kinds of outlandish clothes to malls, movies and the like. I don’t seem to get why people send thousands on a massage using exotic oils when I can get the same done for ten bucks at my local barber shop using nothing less than Navratna thanda tel. Why attend dance classes when youre over 30? And bang comes the answer…”uff! You’re so middle class!!”

A few years ago, when I first visited Pune, my friends and I went to this (then) swanky mall called the SGS. I was then wearing some cheap local tailor made half sleeve shirt and trousers. Wearing footwear of some cheap brand of which I cant even recall the name, I stood in awe of the crowd over there. Girls and guys wearing the best brands, flaunting oversized glares and swiss made watches. I used to think, my time will come. Soon, I will have a job, get decent money and will be able to wear the best brands, flaunt my glares and my watches and my shoes et al.

Today, Im earning decent cash for people my age. I am wearing nothing less than Reeboks for footwear, fastrack glares and branded Tshirts and denims. But inspite of all this, whenever I visit that mall, hoping to make some mark, I stand dumbfounded right at the entrance. People still wear better clothes, have still got the whackiest hairdos which other people take notice of, the hottest girls going around with good looking guys and I as is usual, stand alone. Even my batchmates, those I could crush (intellectually) way back in school or in college are going around flaunting the latest in fashion. These people are my age, earn more or less the same amount that I do, if not less. Then where is the difference? Why am I supposed to look like this stupid ‘gaonwaala’ in front of these ‘mod’ guys?

I cant seem to put the blame on either my college or my school background or my hometown as the same people I used to hang out with have moved way up on this ‘social’ ladder. Who am I supposed to blame then? Why should we bear the brunt of having to look so ‘out of fashion’? why should we be looked down upon as idiots who don’t seem to understand this culture? Why should I be treated as an outsider in my own hometown? When will I be able to join their league? Wouldn’t I be too old to do this stuff?

These are questions which remain unanswered. I have tried expressing this irony to those who are close to me and they either don’t seem to care or are in the ‘elite’ league already.

I still try and retain my hope but it isn’t going to stick around for more time……..