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. 

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??

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