I had been thinking about writing this one since a long time. It’s like one of your special suits that you would wear only if the boss who is supposed to promote you would invite you to dinner. Like one of the very few leg breaks that Kumble has in his repertoire or like one of the few legal deliveries Murali has in his armory.
This one’s a selected collection of the memoirs of my encounters with women. The endeavor is simply to unearth some of their mannerisms, recall some of the excruciatingly painful occasions when their sheer stupidity left me speechless and provide a handful of caveats for the simple and humble men-folk who’ve been traumatized to unfathomable depths of agony by women-kind since times immemorial. (Did you just notice? ‘Women’ and ‘kind’ did not sound nice together…) .
First of all, a quality that I detest in all women is their mushy, over-sentimental and overflowing love for kids of all ages. Picture this. You are taking out your gorgeous lady to a friend’s engagement and there is this supposedly cute new born doing the rounds at the party. No sooner have you walked in, that you are unexpectedly delimited by an entire brigade of women of different shapes and sizes because your lady has , out of nowhere, gone and picked up this little terrorist in her arms.“Aww.. shoooo cuuteeee”. Bang, comes the first salvo, followed by a barrage of similar such intonations , stretching each syllable in every word to follow and conjuring voices that resemble the sighs and cries of the wild. These women giggle and squirm, right in front of you with the joy of a flock of sheep who have just discovered an acre of their favorite grass to chew. The sight is quite unnerving to the most valiant of men.
I have never understood this undying fascination of women with kids. We men love our dogs yet none of us perform those rituals or exhibit those emotions I have just tried to capture. And doubly never so, may I add, in public. I don’t think men have half this fascination with kids, and those who do, simply toe the line of their betrothed. Confronted with a choice of either being seen as single or seen in the society as warm babies-loving men, our folk reluctantly accept the latter.
Next comes my failed research on the study between common sense and women. The results have thrown into sheer disarray all past theories of correlation, regression and all similar noteworthy statistical tools. These frightful discoveries have made renowned software makers Microsoft delve into the field of Statistical Software for the first time because the startling results have opened up an entire new market altogether. Have you ever noticed that how in a discussion, the first sign that a woman is nearing the end of her reasoning or logic, is not an acknowledgement of the same but the carefully placed punctuation of an exasperated, spiritless and sometimes nasal “Whatever….”. I don’t know of any weapon in recorded history that can counter their “Whatever...”
While I am on the topic of phrases, two more such powerful “Phrases of Men’s Destruction (PMD)” come to my mind. Right after they have unleashed a “…Whatever”, they do get a sinking feeling that they have been upstaged in the debate and women being women can’t just let things be. Can they? So they release another of those Here-I-am-listen-to-me-and-agree-blindly attempts and this one begins with: “Honey… ”. That sound, I can tell you my friend, is the first seemingly innocuous whisper of a mega-ton nuclear blast of nonsensical logic to follow, a sure sign of the impending doom of your mental faculties.
I could also never fathom how women and women alone could have the sense of moral and social responsibility to enquire about all and sundry. This , you realize when she begins her concern with the quintessentially intruding “Listen. Is it true…?” …All she wants to know is who that acquaintance of yours, whom you waved a genial Hi from a distance in that rain, approximately 5 months back , is going around with. This question, I have faced from women belonging to different status’ (Do we have a plural for status?). Spinster, Married, Just-broke-up, Just-broke-up-and single, Committed, all kinds have asked me this, about someone or the other.
Another phenomenon that I have found bafflingly inexplicable in women is their explicit denial or inability of the desire to love sports. Is it just my bad luck or is it a general rule of nature that women genetically aren’t programmed to understand and truly enjoy various sports like Cricket, Basketball and Football? On this planet, is there one and just one Sonali Chander? Give a man his daily dose of sport and you win his heart, pancreas and diaphragm. We don’t need to go to parties, malls, parks or multiplexes for our limited needs of entertainment. A television and a couch is all we need. Unpretentiously simple, I say!
Now once you are supposedly dating a girl there also happens to be this unstated and rather cold undercurrent of her ego. That you and only you have to face and that very germ called ‘ego’ always prevents her from making that daily stupid call that people dating each other keep making each other n number of times a day. And when you do take that apparently trivial step to call her, it inevitably boils down to the girl blasting you in the shrillest and
devilish of voices: “How the hell you didn’t call since so long?”
Has any well-meaning, civilized , elegant man ever ventured or deviated ever so slightly to even respond to that by retorting in whisper : “Err...What the hell were you doing all this while?"
Speaking of phone calls, I have observed those people in a relationship frequently call each other every couple of hours. I wonder how the conversation must progress:
Guy: Hey... What’s happening?
Girl: Heey… I told you right; we are going to Pune today. We are on our way.
Guy: Great. Let me know how it goes tomorrow.
A couple of hours later…
Girl: Hey…what’s happening? We’ve stopped for a break on the outskirts of the city.
Guy: Oh Okie… Will call you at night. Busy now.
An hour later:
Girl: Heey... Guess what?
At this point the guy remembers all he can to know about the city of Pune, maybe his girlfriend saw the famous monkey, or maybe she met someone famous and finally confesses in a hushed tone.
Guy: Umm...I don’t know. You tell me honey!
Girl: We reached!!! I
Inane might be a nice word to describe this syndrome but I guess it deserves something more hard hitting like maybe a ridiculously dim-witted attempt to appease your partner. Sometimes it gets me thinking how the conversation progresses further or does it? I have seen a number of these couples. These are the few instances when I think even the guy has gone out of his mind.
Nevertheless let me return to my subject for this post. I once took out a 26 year old lady (this one’s for all who believe that women are the more matured…) for shopping in Bangalore and we went to each and every apparel showroom (Weekender, Lee, Proline, Nike, Adidas and even the roadside vendors got a look-in) on M.G. and Brigade Road. Those familiar with the contours of the city would know that not only these two streets have more apparel showrooms within a space of less than a square kilometer than any other city in India but that these streets are also awfully crowded on weekends. Our sojourn must have taken us nothing less than five hours and after all those tried tops and trousers (… and even a pair of socks I think!) she didn’t buy ,forget a top, even a single shred of cloth… We broke up the next day!
And lastly I would like to know why women feel uncomfortable in silence and have to come up with something like a “Say something…” (PMD #4 or 5?) at that exact point when you have pressed the play button in the deck with the CD of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and you begin to think that you are finally getting to cherish her company.
You know, just at that exact point of time…
Women… Duh! For the time being bring on the beer and turn up the volume!
Spurs playing Kings on ESPN!
Cheers!
P.S.
Firstly: Ladies and Gentlemen who have made it thus far.No offence please. All in good humour... :)
Secondly: Inspired by fellow blogger and PG-ite, Mukund. Also known by the alias of Darth Midnightmare… :)
Friday, May 05, 2006
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
When will I learn?
I think there’s a beauty to knowing something new, delving into something unexplored and learning about something that you have never seen, heard or felt before. That’s why I have half a mind to do a PhD. someday in Contemporary Theater or Behavioral Science or maybe even Victorian Literature… (Yeah, I made that last one up…:D. Someday if some of us bloggers do go onto write for magazines or newspapers, I wonder how we would make our readers realize the occurrence of a joke or the failed attempt of one, without these irresistible smileys. Would we stand any chance with the editor? )
Nevertheless, when I was at SPJIMR we had a programme called ADMAP. Different brochures had offered different expansions of that acronym and since the ADMAP brochure itself has been in WIP since the last six years, we shall never actually know what it stood for. I am wont to believe though since I was personally involved in this committee that it stood for Assessment and Development of Managerial Aptitude and Potential. (Readers from SP are welcome to give me feedback on the different versions that they have heard of…). The concept of ADMAP was to simply take learning beyond the classroom. The first time I heard it, I was fascinated for I had always believed that the classroom learning is shoddily inadequate. All throughout school and college tomes of unnecessary bits of knowledge are shoved down our throats and we are required to barf it out in the exams that follow there from. I believe that education should apart from other things impart skills that lead to employability and if that is not a natural progression, our education system fails us somewhere.
A recent MeriT Trac survey conducted in 17 different cities states that only 1 in 10 graduates (Engineers included) who apply to BPOs are ‘employable’ and that the demand for quality personnel is already outstripping supply. As a result, companies are now even looking to recruit even under-graduates.
Now, there are further two aspects to it. If under-graduates do go on to make a mark in these BPOs , there is a likelihood that they are likely to drop their education further since they see easy money in a relatively easier manner. I am not saying all of them will but what they see is difficult to let go off. I myself have been in two world-class BPOs and apart from the fact that there is a fairly decent looking crowd of opposite sex around you, ( never mind their IQ levels…) there is good food on campus , pick-up and drop to your doorstep and a decent and an assured five-figure salary that’s credited to your ATM account every month. Add to it , your own cabin with a desktop in a swanky workplace that’s air-conditioned and serves unlimited soup ,tea or coffee and it’s an enviable job that you have on your hands.
Now picture a 17-year old in Bhubaneshwar (or any Tier-2 city) who has just finished his Senior Secondary exams and tell me which of these above benefits, would you say, will not appeal to this guy. He will see a world full of opportunities and try to convince everyone around him that he doesn’t need further education. Now, well meaning parents don’t have an option here but likely to counter the arguments of the son with one of the following clumsy arguments.
“BPOs are sweatshops”
“No work happens in BPOs, beta. They are sleazy places”
“How will we tell anyone that you are working in a call-center?”
Let’s take this story further. Now, 9 of those 10 graduates who don’t see themselves ‘employable’ suddenly find themselves competing with not only their own batchmates from Commerce, Arts, Science and Engineering but also from a whole new stream of undergraduates. And a feasible option that they see to wriggle out of this situation is for them to fudge their existing resumes and get those same jobs. So much so that the IT industry has even coined a new term - "padding" for the now prevalent practice of resume faking. We have been a country laced with scams and probably this was one time when the denizens themselves decided to go for the kill.
Let’s say, now a company called X, which until now was only too convinced that India is the hub of Outsourcing, stumbles upon a drop in productivity levels because they have either employed those undergraduates or those employees who have fudged their resumes. This company sees the demand-supply gap and decides to go in for no further investment in India and takes the first flight to Philippines, China or Hungary.
India, as all of us would like to believe is at the cusp of a corporate revolution and make no mistake it was kick started by the BPO Industry and is likely to be sustained by it for atleast the next five years. A chap from the senior management of a BPO once told me that BPOs will revolutionize the purchasing power of the non-engineering graduates, in the manner IT industry did for engineers. Prophetic!
If my fictitious story above comes true even in patches, there is a good probability that the climax would be as tragic and we would have our in-classroom lectures after lectures of boredom to blame. I can say for a fact that nothing that I learnt in my B.Com helped me get those jobs at those BPOs. In hindsight, nothing would have, I guess. The only thing that I did right was to do a bit of reading, keeping a tab on general awareness and meeting new people at inter-college fests. That’s precisely why I have a lot of faith in those Inter-College Debates, Quizzes Jam sessions ,Sports competitions and Art festivals that overtly seem waste of time but they are the ones that promote a process of thinking in your minds. Burdening those impressionable minds with the Directive Principles of State Policy, The Securities Contracts Regulation Act and the Indian Banking Act is, just not the answer to quality education.
While on the subject of Banking, we had this curly-haired professor (..All right that’s not a good distinction because every Keralite is, but he wasn’t worth a space in my memory anyway) who would religiously march into the class and launch into his absolutely stinker of a drone of a voice to give us notes on Banking. There is not a single new thing that I learnt that I didn’t know when he was teaching us that. I mean a VII Standard kid would know all that too! What I find amusing today is how, if we missed a word of his daily address while furiously writing, we would frantically look into our neighbor’s notebook to complete our education for that lecture. Then we had a subject called Capital Markets dealing with stocks. That should have been one heck of an interesting subject but this professor.. Well honestly speaking I don’t even remember his teaching style. Sad eh! Considering he spent an entire year coming to our class and my memory fails me even though I haven’t had any bout of amnesia in the recent past. I guess that just about speaks how significant his role in my college education was. What I do remember though is our XII standard trip to the Cochin Stock Exchange. That was education.
I rest my case.
Nevertheless, when I was at SPJIMR we had a programme called ADMAP. Different brochures had offered different expansions of that acronym and since the ADMAP brochure itself has been in WIP since the last six years, we shall never actually know what it stood for. I am wont to believe though since I was personally involved in this committee that it stood for Assessment and Development of Managerial Aptitude and Potential. (Readers from SP are welcome to give me feedback on the different versions that they have heard of…). The concept of ADMAP was to simply take learning beyond the classroom. The first time I heard it, I was fascinated for I had always believed that the classroom learning is shoddily inadequate. All throughout school and college tomes of unnecessary bits of knowledge are shoved down our throats and we are required to barf it out in the exams that follow there from. I believe that education should apart from other things impart skills that lead to employability and if that is not a natural progression, our education system fails us somewhere.
A recent MeriT Trac survey conducted in 17 different cities states that only 1 in 10 graduates (Engineers included) who apply to BPOs are ‘employable’ and that the demand for quality personnel is already outstripping supply. As a result, companies are now even looking to recruit even under-graduates.
Now, there are further two aspects to it. If under-graduates do go on to make a mark in these BPOs , there is a likelihood that they are likely to drop their education further since they see easy money in a relatively easier manner. I am not saying all of them will but what they see is difficult to let go off. I myself have been in two world-class BPOs and apart from the fact that there is a fairly decent looking crowd of opposite sex around you, ( never mind their IQ levels…) there is good food on campus , pick-up and drop to your doorstep and a decent and an assured five-figure salary that’s credited to your ATM account every month. Add to it , your own cabin with a desktop in a swanky workplace that’s air-conditioned and serves unlimited soup ,tea or coffee and it’s an enviable job that you have on your hands.
Now picture a 17-year old in Bhubaneshwar (or any Tier-2 city) who has just finished his Senior Secondary exams and tell me which of these above benefits, would you say, will not appeal to this guy. He will see a world full of opportunities and try to convince everyone around him that he doesn’t need further education. Now, well meaning parents don’t have an option here but likely to counter the arguments of the son with one of the following clumsy arguments.
“BPOs are sweatshops”
“No work happens in BPOs, beta. They are sleazy places”
“How will we tell anyone that you are working in a call-center?”
Let’s take this story further. Now, 9 of those 10 graduates who don’t see themselves ‘employable’ suddenly find themselves competing with not only their own batchmates from Commerce, Arts, Science and Engineering but also from a whole new stream of undergraduates. And a feasible option that they see to wriggle out of this situation is for them to fudge their existing resumes and get those same jobs. So much so that the IT industry has even coined a new term - "padding" for the now prevalent practice of resume faking. We have been a country laced with scams and probably this was one time when the denizens themselves decided to go for the kill.
Let’s say, now a company called X, which until now was only too convinced that India is the hub of Outsourcing, stumbles upon a drop in productivity levels because they have either employed those undergraduates or those employees who have fudged their resumes. This company sees the demand-supply gap and decides to go in for no further investment in India and takes the first flight to Philippines, China or Hungary.
India, as all of us would like to believe is at the cusp of a corporate revolution and make no mistake it was kick started by the BPO Industry and is likely to be sustained by it for atleast the next five years. A chap from the senior management of a BPO once told me that BPOs will revolutionize the purchasing power of the non-engineering graduates, in the manner IT industry did for engineers. Prophetic!
If my fictitious story above comes true even in patches, there is a good probability that the climax would be as tragic and we would have our in-classroom lectures after lectures of boredom to blame. I can say for a fact that nothing that I learnt in my B.Com helped me get those jobs at those BPOs. In hindsight, nothing would have, I guess. The only thing that I did right was to do a bit of reading, keeping a tab on general awareness and meeting new people at inter-college fests. That’s precisely why I have a lot of faith in those Inter-College Debates, Quizzes Jam sessions ,Sports competitions and Art festivals that overtly seem waste of time but they are the ones that promote a process of thinking in your minds. Burdening those impressionable minds with the Directive Principles of State Policy, The Securities Contracts Regulation Act and the Indian Banking Act is, just not the answer to quality education.
While on the subject of Banking, we had this curly-haired professor (..All right that’s not a good distinction because every Keralite is, but he wasn’t worth a space in my memory anyway) who would religiously march into the class and launch into his absolutely stinker of a drone of a voice to give us notes on Banking. There is not a single new thing that I learnt that I didn’t know when he was teaching us that. I mean a VII Standard kid would know all that too! What I find amusing today is how, if we missed a word of his daily address while furiously writing, we would frantically look into our neighbor’s notebook to complete our education for that lecture. Then we had a subject called Capital Markets dealing with stocks. That should have been one heck of an interesting subject but this professor.. Well honestly speaking I don’t even remember his teaching style. Sad eh! Considering he spent an entire year coming to our class and my memory fails me even though I haven’t had any bout of amnesia in the recent past. I guess that just about speaks how significant his role in my college education was. What I do remember though is our XII standard trip to the Cochin Stock Exchange. That was education.
I rest my case.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
A Question of Art
Three days! This was a first.
He could hardly remember a time when she had taken this long to call him. On a regular day it would never take even three hours before his cell would ring a familiar tune with the screen reading “Sonia calling”. He could almost predict it. Sometimes when predictability decides to go in for a siesta, one’s at a loss.
What was taking her this long?
He had sparred with her parents long back and there was no way he could call them to find out her whereabouts. She wasn’t responding to his messages either. Her cell seemed to be incessantly busy too. They had seldom mailed each other before but in desperation yesterday evening he had even mailed her and there hadn’t been a reply.
“Damn.” , he said to himself “Even when one has so many options to communicate...”
Sonia had shifted to Delhi for her Masters in Architecture only a few days back and he didn’t know anyone in Delhi he could call.
It was a rainy evening in Mumbai and Rajesh took a deep sigh. They say your life flashes before your eyes before you breathe your last and Rajesh could now see the days of his courtship with Sonia of the last 4 years in front of his eyes.
He never believed in love at first sight but this shook his belief. They had come seeking admission to the J.J School of Arts on the same day. They stood in the queue for only twenty minutes to collect their forms but Rajesh kept glancing at her. He wanted to ask her name but couldn’t bring himself to speak to her. He actually quite liked the way she walked- long confident strides, brisk and chin-up. He used to follow body language as a hobby and he knew this was one heck of a confident lady.
He was quite happy on the first day of college for he wasn’t expecting to see her. After all there were some seventy-five people in that queue that day and for 2 weeks J.J School of Arts has such queues from morning till evening. Fat chance. He had convinced himself that he was never going to see her again. But then inspite of all theories of probabilities – there could’ve been only two outcomes. And this was a favorable one.
They took a good 10 months before they actually started going out. She was the prettiest in the college and he knew it. He almost flaunted it in front of his friends. “You could be Tom Cruise and yet you would struggle to find someone like Sonia”, he used to tell his friends. Sometimes he even wondered if she would leave him for someone else. No one who saw them together though would doubt their fidelity for each other. They were inseparable all through the last two years in college.
He liked the way she used to glance at him during classes. Those eyes that never spoke a word yet conveyed an epic treasure of desire. Those lips that moved in a hushed whispering tone with those words he wanted to hear again and again in a class mid-way discussing Gothic architecture…
He was brought back to reality rather abruptly with the conductor announcing “Ghatkopar ala”. He alighted and the thought that had been bothering him the entire day returned… How could she not call him in three days? He should have done something today. Maybe he should have called her institute. Maybe even book tickets to Delhi. It was 9:50 p.m. by his watch now. It was late and he was tired too. His boss had given him two extra sketches to complete because a colleague had taken ill.
Rajesh had taken up work at a small architectural firm in Mumbai after graduation while Sonia wanted to complete her Masters before looking out for a job. While Rajesh always believed that the best way to learn was to work on-the-job with paper and pencil, Sonia was quite the opposite. She reveled in burying herself all day in books authored by past masters and perfectionists. This institute in Delhi that she went to was hugely respected in the student community and to get an admission there was one of her dreams come true. They even celebrated in grand style with champagne and a candle-lit dinner at “The Renaissance.” They had begun early at 7:00 p.m. He paused for a moment and smiled. It was quite a night. Her friends Archana and Bobby had also joined in later that night for the dinner.
“Archana.. I could call her.” .It struck him now.
Archana was Sonia’s friend from college. He convinced himself that this would be a good time to catch up and he could also slip in to ask if she knew about Sonia’s whereabouts. He hadn’t spoken to Archana for over six months now. “Truth be told, I don’t even know what she’s upto these days”, he muttered to himself. Hesitatingly he searched for her number in the cell.
“Ah there it is. Thank God”
“Archana… Hey...Whassup? Rajesh here… Are you about to hit the bed?”
The conversation went on for a good five minutes before he could ask the question he had called her for. It was playing on his mind all through but he couldn’t slip it in yet.
“Damn… She is so irritatingly talkative…” he was telling himself.
He could only ask her casually. He did not want her to know that he was worried about Sonia.
“Sonia…” she told him. “ Oh... she’s loving every minute of Venice...Err…Hello”
He could hardly remember a time when she had taken this long to call him. On a regular day it would never take even three hours before his cell would ring a familiar tune with the screen reading “Sonia calling”. He could almost predict it. Sometimes when predictability decides to go in for a siesta, one’s at a loss.
What was taking her this long?
He had sparred with her parents long back and there was no way he could call them to find out her whereabouts. She wasn’t responding to his messages either. Her cell seemed to be incessantly busy too. They had seldom mailed each other before but in desperation yesterday evening he had even mailed her and there hadn’t been a reply.
“Damn.” , he said to himself “Even when one has so many options to communicate...”
Sonia had shifted to Delhi for her Masters in Architecture only a few days back and he didn’t know anyone in Delhi he could call.
It was a rainy evening in Mumbai and Rajesh took a deep sigh. They say your life flashes before your eyes before you breathe your last and Rajesh could now see the days of his courtship with Sonia of the last 4 years in front of his eyes.
He never believed in love at first sight but this shook his belief. They had come seeking admission to the J.J School of Arts on the same day. They stood in the queue for only twenty minutes to collect their forms but Rajesh kept glancing at her. He wanted to ask her name but couldn’t bring himself to speak to her. He actually quite liked the way she walked- long confident strides, brisk and chin-up. He used to follow body language as a hobby and he knew this was one heck of a confident lady.
He was quite happy on the first day of college for he wasn’t expecting to see her. After all there were some seventy-five people in that queue that day and for 2 weeks J.J School of Arts has such queues from morning till evening. Fat chance. He had convinced himself that he was never going to see her again. But then inspite of all theories of probabilities – there could’ve been only two outcomes. And this was a favorable one.
They took a good 10 months before they actually started going out. She was the prettiest in the college and he knew it. He almost flaunted it in front of his friends. “You could be Tom Cruise and yet you would struggle to find someone like Sonia”, he used to tell his friends. Sometimes he even wondered if she would leave him for someone else. No one who saw them together though would doubt their fidelity for each other. They were inseparable all through the last two years in college.
He liked the way she used to glance at him during classes. Those eyes that never spoke a word yet conveyed an epic treasure of desire. Those lips that moved in a hushed whispering tone with those words he wanted to hear again and again in a class mid-way discussing Gothic architecture…
He was brought back to reality rather abruptly with the conductor announcing “Ghatkopar ala”. He alighted and the thought that had been bothering him the entire day returned… How could she not call him in three days? He should have done something today. Maybe he should have called her institute. Maybe even book tickets to Delhi. It was 9:50 p.m. by his watch now. It was late and he was tired too. His boss had given him two extra sketches to complete because a colleague had taken ill.
Rajesh had taken up work at a small architectural firm in Mumbai after graduation while Sonia wanted to complete her Masters before looking out for a job. While Rajesh always believed that the best way to learn was to work on-the-job with paper and pencil, Sonia was quite the opposite. She reveled in burying herself all day in books authored by past masters and perfectionists. This institute in Delhi that she went to was hugely respected in the student community and to get an admission there was one of her dreams come true. They even celebrated in grand style with champagne and a candle-lit dinner at “The Renaissance.” They had begun early at 7:00 p.m. He paused for a moment and smiled. It was quite a night. Her friends Archana and Bobby had also joined in later that night for the dinner.
“Archana.. I could call her.” .It struck him now.
Archana was Sonia’s friend from college. He convinced himself that this would be a good time to catch up and he could also slip in to ask if she knew about Sonia’s whereabouts. He hadn’t spoken to Archana for over six months now. “Truth be told, I don’t even know what she’s upto these days”, he muttered to himself. Hesitatingly he searched for her number in the cell.
“Ah there it is. Thank God”
“Archana… Hey...Whassup? Rajesh here… Are you about to hit the bed?”
The conversation went on for a good five minutes before he could ask the question he had called her for. It was playing on his mind all through but he couldn’t slip it in yet.
“Damn… She is so irritatingly talkative…” he was telling himself.
He could only ask her casually. He did not want her to know that he was worried about Sonia.
“Sonia…” she told him. “ Oh... she’s loving every minute of Venice...Err…Hello”
Saturday, March 25, 2006
The MBA Hitchhiker's Guide
The following post comes with an inherently flawed assumption - that I have received my PGDBM degree which is still subjected to the vagaries of nature and the powers at my institute. It is an attempt to demystify some of the myths surrounding MBA education and a guideline to survive a two year journey during which one not only undergoes an emotional turmoil, financial backlash but also a personal renunciation of joys like watching cricket 24/7.
I must confess that one of the most important reasons I wanted to do an MBA was to have the security of a solid six-figure salary in the shortest possible time. It was in Standard VII when I read an India Today cover story profiling some of India’s hottest professional profiles. All of them were MBA’s from India’s top institutes. I read about this chap called Rajeev Balakrishnan whose salary at the age of 24 read an eye-popping six-figure sum. I was damn impressed by our man’s grey suit and I told myself- “Gotta be like that , Issac, gotta be like that”. I don’t have that issue with me today but yeah the color of the suit was grey. I have a tremendous memory for irrelevant details. That was in 1995.
Today in 2006, I have a black suit and I am going to pen the following words with the limited wisdom of a guy who has had the pleasure and the pain to go through two years of MBA education at one of India’s top institutes. The following 9 points are some of my most treasured gems of learning I have picked up from my experiences of the last two years. They should be applicable to any wannabe MBA or anyone who is still going through the pleasure such an education bestows. Some of them have been acquired through personal application, some through observation and some have been passed on to me by some of my gurus at SPJIMR.
1.Play the game of Last Impression and not First Impression: In MBA, the rule of first impression being the best impression never applies. Do not ever attempt to make a point at the beginning of a class if there are CP marks. Make your point when the class is slow, drab and fatally boring. This is usually towards the end of the class. People who speak early lose their recall in the eyes of the professor. There will be a time mid-way when every CP desperate guy will attempt to make a point. During these times you should simply watch the fun from the sidelines. Do not attempt to break the clutter for you will be lost and loathed by those desperate around you. Go for your kill only in times of recession.
2.Find the goldmine but don’t dig it yourself: In times of exams and tests go to the specialist of a subject for advice. Every batch has an Eco, Quant, FM and Operations specialist. If you are the kinds who never bothered to attend classes or thought of Brearley-Myers as the updated version of Duckworth-Lewis go to that expert for that particular subject. Spend time in his company. Take tips from him including the syllabus for the test. These guys are better than textbooks. Often they might also tell you the exact question that’s coming for they spend a lot of time in the professor’s cabin.
3.Keep your ego at Absolute Zero- Feel at ease to be thought of as stupid or crazy. Your batchmate or even your professors are hugely unlikely to be your employer. So if you have a doubt, ask but in private. Never take the liberty to make yourself stupid in front of 50 others. That’s dangerous. Always approach the person one-on-one if you have a doubt and preferably don’t approach a professor. I learnt on an average atleast 60% more from my peers than from my professors. How I arrived at that figure is a mystery- even to me.
4.Keep your options open; all the time - This I learnt from my stint as a Placement Committee member in Second Year. There is a beauty in not committing to anyone, learn to admire it and exercise it. In terms of electives, minors, careers and dates always keep your options open till as long as you can. I never killed my alternatives even when I was always sure what I was going to do. This is an off-shoot of the best answer in any MBA class.
Professor: So should D/E equity ratio be low or high?
Dumb Guy 1 : High because blah blah blah..
Dumb Guy 2 : Low because blah blah blah…
Smart Guy: It depends Sir..
5.Be flexible to learn : In the last two years, I have developed a huge interest in Theater, Movies, Writing and Photography. This is only because I was willing to listen and spend time with experts from my batch in each of these fields with an eagerness of a beaver and the curiosity of a 3 year old. I realized later that whenever I told myself “That’s not for me...” I have lost out on something. Some of the things I learnt from my batchmates range from fields of Oil Painting, Yoga and Astronomy to Animation using 3-D Max. There’s no limit really.
6.Play to Peer Pressure most of the times: I had been told in school to carve my own individuality and not be guided by peer pressure. Conversely, in a B-School, I believe Peer Pressure is an element that one should exploit wisely. So if in a Costing Viva there are 110 before you who have told you that they have said that Cost Control is better than Cost Cutting and you have reason to believe them and you are the 111th, do not , I repeat do not take a chance and play the hero to say the converse. Follow the crowd for something called Relative Grading will plunge you to depths you would have never imagined existed. I used to do a quick poll before any individual assignment submission to gauge how many are actually submitting on time and if a substantial part weren’t going to, I put on my earphones back on for that Quentin Tarantino flick, I’d left mid-way.
7.Don’t take anything at face value: This I picked up from a Harsha Bhogle videotape in our library. If something is coming your way and it seems too easy, question its validity. So even if you are mid-way understanding a concept from the batch topper and you are grasping it easily, question him in between. If you thought you calculated the Black-Scholes with real ease in the examination don’t sit back and relax but speak to a few people around you .Chances are you screwed up big-time and that means managing better impression in the eyes of the professor from next class. (Refer Rule 1). I once thought I had a real easy Costing paper and came out half an hour before the allotted time only to realize later I missed out on the last Question that was listed on the second page of the question paper.
8.Speak it out in the hostel rooms: If there is something that you vehemently disagreed with in class, don’t let it play in your mind but speak it out in the mess, the gymnasium, the nearby bar or in your hostel room. I can never under-estimate the wisdom I gained from thrashing things out with my pals outside the classroom. We never reached a consensus and that’s exactly I value those heated discussions right up there in my takeaways from SPJIMR.
9.I am not like everybody else: I said play to peer pressure most of the times but when things were going to have a greater impact on me and these related to career choices, I was happy to let go of the crowd and tell myself that I wasn’t like everybody else. Placements are the craziest time in a B-School because the stakes are really high and you would see people around you apply helter-skelter to companies and you would be tempted to do so too. Know yourself well and when you feel like taking that step that 30 others are taking around you and you don’t have a reason as to why “ Me too?” pause a second and tell yourself “ You have a right to be different from others”. If that doesn’t still soothe your nerves go right ahead and as I said previously exploit the power of peer pressure. It never let me down. On an average people would apply across 4 different sectors and 12 companies for Final Placements. I applied to 2 sectors and 6 companies. 2 of the companies did not even shortlist me. I came out more than fine in the other 4.
“Truth be told,” Harsha Bhogle says “Management is fantastic general education”.
If you don’t try too hard, just let it be and have a smile on your face most of the times you will do great!
I must confess that one of the most important reasons I wanted to do an MBA was to have the security of a solid six-figure salary in the shortest possible time. It was in Standard VII when I read an India Today cover story profiling some of India’s hottest professional profiles. All of them were MBA’s from India’s top institutes. I read about this chap called Rajeev Balakrishnan whose salary at the age of 24 read an eye-popping six-figure sum. I was damn impressed by our man’s grey suit and I told myself- “Gotta be like that , Issac, gotta be like that”. I don’t have that issue with me today but yeah the color of the suit was grey. I have a tremendous memory for irrelevant details. That was in 1995.
Today in 2006, I have a black suit and I am going to pen the following words with the limited wisdom of a guy who has had the pleasure and the pain to go through two years of MBA education at one of India’s top institutes. The following 9 points are some of my most treasured gems of learning I have picked up from my experiences of the last two years. They should be applicable to any wannabe MBA or anyone who is still going through the pleasure such an education bestows. Some of them have been acquired through personal application, some through observation and some have been passed on to me by some of my gurus at SPJIMR.
1.Play the game of Last Impression and not First Impression: In MBA, the rule of first impression being the best impression never applies. Do not ever attempt to make a point at the beginning of a class if there are CP marks. Make your point when the class is slow, drab and fatally boring. This is usually towards the end of the class. People who speak early lose their recall in the eyes of the professor. There will be a time mid-way when every CP desperate guy will attempt to make a point. During these times you should simply watch the fun from the sidelines. Do not attempt to break the clutter for you will be lost and loathed by those desperate around you. Go for your kill only in times of recession.
2.Find the goldmine but don’t dig it yourself: In times of exams and tests go to the specialist of a subject for advice. Every batch has an Eco, Quant, FM and Operations specialist. If you are the kinds who never bothered to attend classes or thought of Brearley-Myers as the updated version of Duckworth-Lewis go to that expert for that particular subject. Spend time in his company. Take tips from him including the syllabus for the test. These guys are better than textbooks. Often they might also tell you the exact question that’s coming for they spend a lot of time in the professor’s cabin.
3.Keep your ego at Absolute Zero- Feel at ease to be thought of as stupid or crazy. Your batchmate or even your professors are hugely unlikely to be your employer. So if you have a doubt, ask but in private. Never take the liberty to make yourself stupid in front of 50 others. That’s dangerous. Always approach the person one-on-one if you have a doubt and preferably don’t approach a professor. I learnt on an average atleast 60% more from my peers than from my professors. How I arrived at that figure is a mystery- even to me.
4.Keep your options open; all the time - This I learnt from my stint as a Placement Committee member in Second Year. There is a beauty in not committing to anyone, learn to admire it and exercise it. In terms of electives, minors, careers and dates always keep your options open till as long as you can. I never killed my alternatives even when I was always sure what I was going to do. This is an off-shoot of the best answer in any MBA class.
Professor: So should D/E equity ratio be low or high?
Dumb Guy 1 : High because blah blah blah..
Dumb Guy 2 : Low because blah blah blah…
Smart Guy: It depends Sir..
5.Be flexible to learn : In the last two years, I have developed a huge interest in Theater, Movies, Writing and Photography. This is only because I was willing to listen and spend time with experts from my batch in each of these fields with an eagerness of a beaver and the curiosity of a 3 year old. I realized later that whenever I told myself “That’s not for me...” I have lost out on something. Some of the things I learnt from my batchmates range from fields of Oil Painting, Yoga and Astronomy to Animation using 3-D Max. There’s no limit really.
6.Play to Peer Pressure most of the times: I had been told in school to carve my own individuality and not be guided by peer pressure. Conversely, in a B-School, I believe Peer Pressure is an element that one should exploit wisely. So if in a Costing Viva there are 110 before you who have told you that they have said that Cost Control is better than Cost Cutting and you have reason to believe them and you are the 111th, do not , I repeat do not take a chance and play the hero to say the converse. Follow the crowd for something called Relative Grading will plunge you to depths you would have never imagined existed. I used to do a quick poll before any individual assignment submission to gauge how many are actually submitting on time and if a substantial part weren’t going to, I put on my earphones back on for that Quentin Tarantino flick, I’d left mid-way.
7.Don’t take anything at face value: This I picked up from a Harsha Bhogle videotape in our library. If something is coming your way and it seems too easy, question its validity. So even if you are mid-way understanding a concept from the batch topper and you are grasping it easily, question him in between. If you thought you calculated the Black-Scholes with real ease in the examination don’t sit back and relax but speak to a few people around you .Chances are you screwed up big-time and that means managing better impression in the eyes of the professor from next class. (Refer Rule 1). I once thought I had a real easy Costing paper and came out half an hour before the allotted time only to realize later I missed out on the last Question that was listed on the second page of the question paper.
8.Speak it out in the hostel rooms: If there is something that you vehemently disagreed with in class, don’t let it play in your mind but speak it out in the mess, the gymnasium, the nearby bar or in your hostel room. I can never under-estimate the wisdom I gained from thrashing things out with my pals outside the classroom. We never reached a consensus and that’s exactly I value those heated discussions right up there in my takeaways from SPJIMR.
9.I am not like everybody else: I said play to peer pressure most of the times but when things were going to have a greater impact on me and these related to career choices, I was happy to let go of the crowd and tell myself that I wasn’t like everybody else. Placements are the craziest time in a B-School because the stakes are really high and you would see people around you apply helter-skelter to companies and you would be tempted to do so too. Know yourself well and when you feel like taking that step that 30 others are taking around you and you don’t have a reason as to why “ Me too?” pause a second and tell yourself “ You have a right to be different from others”. If that doesn’t still soothe your nerves go right ahead and as I said previously exploit the power of peer pressure. It never let me down. On an average people would apply across 4 different sectors and 12 companies for Final Placements. I applied to 2 sectors and 6 companies. 2 of the companies did not even shortlist me. I came out more than fine in the other 4.
“Truth be told,” Harsha Bhogle says “Management is fantastic general education”.
If you don’t try too hard, just let it be and have a smile on your face most of the times you will do great!
Friday, March 24, 2006
A Shot at Time
19th March, 2006
It was a typical Second Year BH afternoon. Match on TV on 4th floor and a few guys were glued to the screen eating the best Vrindavan had to offer. A few others ought to have been roaming in Infiniti Mall around the same time and a few others must’ve been trekking their favorite hill in some God forsaken place on the outskirts of Mumbai. I deliberately choose to exclude the valiant eight who had courageously started music classes for they acted like misguided missiles for most of their initial classes for they were never sure which instrument to pick up for a start.
I belonged to the group on the 4th floor and food had just arrived.
“ I hope we have’nt ordered much” – Martin’ s typical concern
“ Nahi bey.. khatam kar lenge”- Gan’s typical reassurance
“ He has given some extra spoons” – Amitesh typically ogling at what’s extra and can be packed off to his room.
“ Oye .. koi nahi yaar .. rakh le .. aage kaam aayega”- Anurag Agarwal’s typical shooting off the hip.
Pause.
Anurag Agarwal hesitatingly … “ Par .. aage kab kaam aayega” ?
Our time at SPJIMR was gone.
It was the last lunch the 6 of us would have together and it had just struck us then. Everyone paused for a couple of seconds and at the same time Dravid pulled off a blinder at first slip and the conversation veered to how Ganguly was still a better captain than Dravid. Funny, sometimes how conversation changes gears more effortlessly than an SL 500.
Nevertheless, I was going through some early photographs of our lives here in 2004 and that’s when I got the idea of this post. (I was thinking about writing an SP swansong anyway. It just hastened the idea.) Photographs form a great way to treasure memories and I do this little exercise every time I look at one. I ask myself “What was I exactly doing then?” or “What I was thinking?” or “What did I do right after this photograph was taken?” I deliberately don’t do it every time because it’s amazing that when you start thinking about the context around which that photograph was taken you are drifted back in time. You start thinking “then and there” and in some ways you trigger off a time machine in your head and get a shot at playing around with something that always seems to play around with you.
There’s this wonderful quote about Time I read recently. It said- “Time is the best author of all times; it always has the perfect ending”. This brings me to the central point of this post and that is how our 2 years at SP were always challenged by time. Deadline for submissions, Deadline for GH (yes it did affect some of us at the BH), Last date for registration, Time limit for presentations et al.
Time seemed to have us in captivity for ever and we swung along with time. We swung wild and wise, smooth and hard, long and slow. Until 17th March, 2006 happened and suddenly, we found we were not being swung anymore by time. No need to rise up at 8:25 for that 8:30 test, no need to copy at the last minute from the Dataserver for the submission time that’s already past an hour and no need to bang on the bathroom door of the neighbor who has decided to use his time in the bathroom to clean an extra undergarment during his bath.
Every time I have slept during an afternoon in SP, I have had only two kinds of emotions when I woke up, either of dread or excitement.
Dread, if there were an assignment, presentation, test or exam the next day.
Excitement if there was a “Party”, AKB, Farewell, Spandan or Gasp meeting pending. When I woke up on the afternoon of 17th March, I had neither of these emotions and it didn’t quite feel right.
We still went for our evening stroll that always had the intrusion of a spicy Vada Pav on the way and we didn’t have an urgency to come back to the hostel. We were quite happy about not coming back in a hurry but I guess somewhere deep within we dint quite relish this feeling. There was no challenge of Time facing us.
Sachin might still bring about his sparkling century in Adelaide in a second innings where India is chasing 318 on the 5th day and India might win that game in 2007 but then his time would have gone by then. It pretty much has by now.
When Ivanesivic finally won his Wimbledon, he wasn’t crowned as the greatest player to have won it so late but as someone who’s had a dream fairytale end to his career. George Foreman inspite of having won a title at the age of 40 is remembered more for his brushes with Mohammed Ali in the seventies. Citizen Kane might still be given a Best Picture Oscar tomorrow but it will seem a mere consolation.
Hence I have begun to suspect that all accomplishments have a context of time and so do personal challenges. No one gives a dime if you become India’s best actor by 55, you earn that title by 35 and whole of India will stand up and applaud. It probably explains why Naseeruddin Shah never got his due recognition from the man on the street. I can watch a movie in peace at home nowadays but watching a movie within 120 minutes with an exam the next day was what gave an extra kick. When one’s accomplishments are crunched with the context of time not only is peer recognition supreme but so is personal satisfaction.
My belief is that if you want yourself to be the best you can be you should challenge yourself against time all the time. Having a time block is a sure means of giving in your concerted best within that time span. I can imagine that such a generalization would not hold true for all professions but I sure can say that limitless pondering over that piece of painting, that classic masterpiece of an ending and those nervous nineties hasn’t done anyone good.
It was a typical Second Year BH afternoon. Match on TV on 4th floor and a few guys were glued to the screen eating the best Vrindavan had to offer. A few others ought to have been roaming in Infiniti Mall around the same time and a few others must’ve been trekking their favorite hill in some God forsaken place on the outskirts of Mumbai. I deliberately choose to exclude the valiant eight who had courageously started music classes for they acted like misguided missiles for most of their initial classes for they were never sure which instrument to pick up for a start.
I belonged to the group on the 4th floor and food had just arrived.
“ I hope we have’nt ordered much” – Martin’ s typical concern
“ Nahi bey.. khatam kar lenge”- Gan’s typical reassurance
“ He has given some extra spoons” – Amitesh typically ogling at what’s extra and can be packed off to his room.
“ Oye .. koi nahi yaar .. rakh le .. aage kaam aayega”- Anurag Agarwal’s typical shooting off the hip.
Pause.
Anurag Agarwal hesitatingly … “ Par .. aage kab kaam aayega” ?
Our time at SPJIMR was gone.
It was the last lunch the 6 of us would have together and it had just struck us then. Everyone paused for a couple of seconds and at the same time Dravid pulled off a blinder at first slip and the conversation veered to how Ganguly was still a better captain than Dravid. Funny, sometimes how conversation changes gears more effortlessly than an SL 500.
Nevertheless, I was going through some early photographs of our lives here in 2004 and that’s when I got the idea of this post. (I was thinking about writing an SP swansong anyway. It just hastened the idea.) Photographs form a great way to treasure memories and I do this little exercise every time I look at one. I ask myself “What was I exactly doing then?” or “What I was thinking?” or “What did I do right after this photograph was taken?” I deliberately don’t do it every time because it’s amazing that when you start thinking about the context around which that photograph was taken you are drifted back in time. You start thinking “then and there” and in some ways you trigger off a time machine in your head and get a shot at playing around with something that always seems to play around with you.
There’s this wonderful quote about Time I read recently. It said- “Time is the best author of all times; it always has the perfect ending”. This brings me to the central point of this post and that is how our 2 years at SP were always challenged by time. Deadline for submissions, Deadline for GH (yes it did affect some of us at the BH), Last date for registration, Time limit for presentations et al.
Time seemed to have us in captivity for ever and we swung along with time. We swung wild and wise, smooth and hard, long and slow. Until 17th March, 2006 happened and suddenly, we found we were not being swung anymore by time. No need to rise up at 8:25 for that 8:30 test, no need to copy at the last minute from the Dataserver for the submission time that’s already past an hour and no need to bang on the bathroom door of the neighbor who has decided to use his time in the bathroom to clean an extra undergarment during his bath.
Every time I have slept during an afternoon in SP, I have had only two kinds of emotions when I woke up, either of dread or excitement.
Dread, if there were an assignment, presentation, test or exam the next day.
Excitement if there was a “Party”, AKB, Farewell, Spandan or Gasp meeting pending. When I woke up on the afternoon of 17th March, I had neither of these emotions and it didn’t quite feel right.
We still went for our evening stroll that always had the intrusion of a spicy Vada Pav on the way and we didn’t have an urgency to come back to the hostel. We were quite happy about not coming back in a hurry but I guess somewhere deep within we dint quite relish this feeling. There was no challenge of Time facing us.
Sachin might still bring about his sparkling century in Adelaide in a second innings where India is chasing 318 on the 5th day and India might win that game in 2007 but then his time would have gone by then. It pretty much has by now.
When Ivanesivic finally won his Wimbledon, he wasn’t crowned as the greatest player to have won it so late but as someone who’s had a dream fairytale end to his career. George Foreman inspite of having won a title at the age of 40 is remembered more for his brushes with Mohammed Ali in the seventies. Citizen Kane might still be given a Best Picture Oscar tomorrow but it will seem a mere consolation.
Hence I have begun to suspect that all accomplishments have a context of time and so do personal challenges. No one gives a dime if you become India’s best actor by 55, you earn that title by 35 and whole of India will stand up and applaud. It probably explains why Naseeruddin Shah never got his due recognition from the man on the street. I can watch a movie in peace at home nowadays but watching a movie within 120 minutes with an exam the next day was what gave an extra kick. When one’s accomplishments are crunched with the context of time not only is peer recognition supreme but so is personal satisfaction.
My belief is that if you want yourself to be the best you can be you should challenge yourself against time all the time. Having a time block is a sure means of giving in your concerted best within that time span. I can imagine that such a generalization would not hold true for all professions but I sure can say that limitless pondering over that piece of painting, that classic masterpiece of an ending and those nervous nineties hasn’t done anyone good.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Back to the Future
I walked into the Placom Office yesterday, January 30th,2006 at 9:45 a.m. and my Placom work has just got wrapped up for the day today on January 31st,2006 at 2:45 a.m.
Yeop.. I do think it's screwy but I also think I am loving it!: )
I would love to be this busy every day of my life , six months from now! :D
Yeop.. I do think it's screwy but I also think I am loving it!: )
I would love to be this busy every day of my life , six months from now! :D
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Still loving it!
Maybe , just maybe RDB was better than Goodfellas. ;)
I am kinda relating to a lot of things said and unsaid in the movie..
For instance..
Kya bataoon Maa kahan hoon main,
Yahan udney ko mere khula aasmaan hai,
Tere kisson jaisa bhola salona jahan hain,
Yahan sapno wala,
Meri patang ho befikar,
Udd rahi hai maa,
Dor koi loote nahin ,
beech se kaate na...
I am kinda relating to a lot of things said and unsaid in the movie..
For instance..
Kya bataoon Maa kahan hoon main,
Yahan udney ko mere khula aasmaan hai,
Tere kisson jaisa bhola salona jahan hain,
Yahan sapno wala,
Meri patang ho befikar,
Udd rahi hai maa,
Dor koi loote nahin ,
beech se kaate na...
A Puurrffeccct Ten!
It’s been a long time and I thought it won’t be until placements get over that I would get a shot at writing a post. The following post is more out of the kick and excitement of a day well spent and written just to record the fact that I really liked a Hindi movie today after ages and just when I had given up all my hope on Bollywood. : )
During my stay at S.P Jain I have graduated from an elementary education in movies to what I believe right now stands at a post graduate degree. Though this education has been mostly in English movies yet I have been fortunate enough to watch a few decent Hindi Movies on the way. And pretty much like an academic stint, the movie education journey has had both good and bad days. I happened to see “Rang De Basanti” (RDB) today and it’s turned out to be one of those days at the college that couldn’t get any better.
Sometimes I wonder what the objective of making movies really is. Is it for laughs, tears, wows, education, awareness, outlets for creative ideas or just for the personal gratification of the director? Like all good things in life often it’s a combination of more than just one of the above objectives. It’s rather difficult to achieve all of it together. Rather, it’s easier to achieve either of these objectives single-mindedly. Like a rip-roaring Golmaal that would have you in splits from the first scene till the last. Like a grim Ab Tak Chappan that’s replete with merciless killings. Like a tragic Black that made you thank God for the fact that you have eyes to see the things and people around you in the world. Each of these movies would make my top 10 list of best Hindi movies on any given day.
The essence in each of these movies lies in story-telling that's realistic. So much so that you could look at your own life and say : “I could make a movie on what happened to me/him/her/on that incident” or " That's happened to me" or " Shit! It could happen to me" . And often a good story is one that has shades of earnestness, solemnity and cheer. If success and good times are to be felt sweetest it better come post a battle, a loss or an anguish. A laugh that resonates loudest is often from the person who has been through the worst of times. Hence if I liken it to the art of story telling, a good story teller should be able to weave through as many shades of emotions as possible. And hence I think I have fallen in love with RDB. It’s got all the shades of an average 21-year-old’s life. Getting drunk, aimless, a passion for something , that something that one is always searching for but no one knows about, an apathy towards the system, a love for friends, a love lost, a will to win and an attitude to lose.
No songs and no multi billion business deals - there are none in real life.
Loads of mirth, togetherness and absence of parental restrictions- always the case in real life.
There was no protagonist in the story. Everyone was. And on top of replicating to perfection shades of the lives we are going through at this time of our lives, the story mirrored movie- making at its best. Slick cinematography, a stunning cast, undying lyrics, vivacious music and flawless direction. All of this sliced with a message, should you have time and breathing space to absorb it.
A movie with laughs, tears, wows, creative visuals and a treatment by the director that I truly loved and respect. A complete package and all of it in Hindi from the stable of Bollywood. Hard to believe but true!
I saw Aks a long time back and thought it was a poor imitation of Fallen. Now having seen Rakeysh Mehra deliver RDB, I badly want to revisit Aks. : )
During my stay at S.P Jain I have graduated from an elementary education in movies to what I believe right now stands at a post graduate degree. Though this education has been mostly in English movies yet I have been fortunate enough to watch a few decent Hindi Movies on the way. And pretty much like an academic stint, the movie education journey has had both good and bad days. I happened to see “Rang De Basanti” (RDB) today and it’s turned out to be one of those days at the college that couldn’t get any better.
Sometimes I wonder what the objective of making movies really is. Is it for laughs, tears, wows, education, awareness, outlets for creative ideas or just for the personal gratification of the director? Like all good things in life often it’s a combination of more than just one of the above objectives. It’s rather difficult to achieve all of it together. Rather, it’s easier to achieve either of these objectives single-mindedly. Like a rip-roaring Golmaal that would have you in splits from the first scene till the last. Like a grim Ab Tak Chappan that’s replete with merciless killings. Like a tragic Black that made you thank God for the fact that you have eyes to see the things and people around you in the world. Each of these movies would make my top 10 list of best Hindi movies on any given day.
The essence in each of these movies lies in story-telling that's realistic. So much so that you could look at your own life and say : “I could make a movie on what happened to me/him/her/on that incident” or " That's happened to me" or " Shit! It could happen to me" . And often a good story is one that has shades of earnestness, solemnity and cheer. If success and good times are to be felt sweetest it better come post a battle, a loss or an anguish. A laugh that resonates loudest is often from the person who has been through the worst of times. Hence if I liken it to the art of story telling, a good story teller should be able to weave through as many shades of emotions as possible. And hence I think I have fallen in love with RDB. It’s got all the shades of an average 21-year-old’s life. Getting drunk, aimless, a passion for something , that something that one is always searching for but no one knows about, an apathy towards the system, a love for friends, a love lost, a will to win and an attitude to lose.
No songs and no multi billion business deals - there are none in real life.
Loads of mirth, togetherness and absence of parental restrictions- always the case in real life.
There was no protagonist in the story. Everyone was. And on top of replicating to perfection shades of the lives we are going through at this time of our lives, the story mirrored movie- making at its best. Slick cinematography, a stunning cast, undying lyrics, vivacious music and flawless direction. All of this sliced with a message, should you have time and breathing space to absorb it.
A movie with laughs, tears, wows, creative visuals and a treatment by the director that I truly loved and respect. A complete package and all of it in Hindi from the stable of Bollywood. Hard to believe but true!
I saw Aks a long time back and thought it was a poor imitation of Fallen. Now having seen Rakeysh Mehra deliver RDB, I badly want to revisit Aks. : )
Friday, December 09, 2005
Booksie
I was never a much of a books guy. When I look back and think as to why I never read many books when I was a child it was simply because I hated sitting at one place. That’s why I was never good at Ludo, Carrom, Monopoly, Chess and reading books. We had enough of books at school; I mean really enough of them and with every year in school passing by, the pile on my study table used to get wider and heavier. So I did not read. I used to be on the streets playing Cricket whenever I was free. Or I used to do a Bradman knocking a tennis ball at the backyard of my home leaving stains on the wall which I am sure used to give more than just sleepless nights to our landlord. Those days the only books I read were Tinkle, Tintin, Super Commando Dhruv , Phantom and Mandrake.
But I knew reading must be good in someway or the other. Infact as I grew up I found myself surrounded by more and more people rattling off reading as a hobby when asked about their favorite pastime. I joined college and one fine day I thought I should start preparing for CAT. So I joined Career Launcher and then I got to know reading books might just help. It did not come naturally to me so I had to push myself hard, really hard to start serious reading. I used to think people who mentioned reading as a hobby had to be sissies. It’s a beautiful world out there under the sun. Loads of people to meet, things to talk about and places to go to. Why would anyone trade off all these things and read and only read inside the four walls of a house?
It used to darn painful for me to pick up a book and acknowledge that for a few hours I am going to give up so many things in my life. Most things in my life begin with Cricket, (most of my English essays in school did) so I thought I should begin reading books on Cricket and Cricketers. It would be less painful that way and the British Library in Trivandrum had a good collection. I told myself that the poison of reading I was about to unleash in my life would be slow and it would be easier for me to pick up this evil habit this way. I began with a few autobiographies. Allan Lamb’s took about a week. Jonathan Agnew’s less than that. Botham’s not more than 3 days. Sobers’ took 2 days. And then I picked up Sunny Days and then Idols and then Not Quite Cricket and then The Record Breaking Sunil Gavaskar and then Azhar by Harsha Bhogle and then Sachin by Gulu Ezekiel (he stars with Sachin in a recent MRF Ad). It was not so bad after all. The Cricket angle was helping it. I also congratulated myself in being smart enough to tide over this crucial decision in my life in a fairly elegant manner. And in between I came across Sir Neville Cardus. I still stop in between reading his essays and gasp for breath and resume reading. They are brilliant! Then I read a book called A Soldier’s Diary by Harinder Baweja, a first hand account of the Kargil war and that was something! We meet people who change our lives, we see movies that have an impact on the way we perceive things and we read books that change the equation of reading.
A Soldier’s Diary did it for me.
I started clinging onto fiction now. And since it was the CAT phase and you are not acknowledged well read in the management community unless you read it, I read the Fountainhead. I vividly remember sweating it out. It was terribly long. It took me a good four months to finish it. Never had I inflicted so much duress in finishing one book. Dominique Francon, Peter Keating , Guy something, Howard Roark and that verbose Ellsworth Toohey. One never meets people who can talk like Mr. Toohey in real life. It was fiction at its best in terms of language. But in terms of plot and the storyline it was only mediocre. The only fiction that I was really enjoying was Wodehouse and Conan Doyle’s. So I went back to autobiographies. Atleast, I thought I will get to know about something that truly existed. What fun in reading stories when you can watch them in movies? But the more and more I read about successful people I realized that all of them, I repeat all of them were voracious readers. All the impressive people I met were well read. And here I was still in college and still being such a whimsical reader. So I pushed myself harder to read more and it evolved into a love-hate relationship with reading. I loved it when I was not reading.
Everyone knows being vegetarian is good and smoking is bad. Yet the world has millions of smokers and non vegetarians. To me, reading posed a similar dilemma. I knew it was good but I had problems adopting it. And then one day I went to Higginbothams on M.G. Road at Bangalore and I spent almost an hour with Sandy that day flipping pages. I suddenly felt like buying some of the books. Part of the stimulus was the fact that the store had a cricket magazine worth 585 bucks. I began visiting it more often. And I started picking pirated copies off the streets in Bangalore and then I visited Blossoms a super duper book store again in Bangalore. It got me the one book called Spin and Other Turns I was looking for ages. I made friends with the owner and thus reading began.
I still am not a voracious reader but I guess I have come to the stage where I believe I am not missing out on much in the world when I am reading. I go to stores like Crosswords when I have not much to do nowadays and I almost wish Crosswords existed when I was a child. They have put up good sprawling stores all over the country and I think they are really doing our nation a favor by atleast getting some of the children and teenagers today off the internet, the video games, the saas bahu stuff and the absolutely crappy movies that Bollywood is dishing out. No Entry , Bunty Aur Babli ,Dhoom , Veer Zaara and Waqt were only box-office hits .Period.
If you think of it seriously as we are getting more and more advanced our means of entertainment are getting more and more gibberish. It’s a pity that a movie like No Entry grossed 40 Crores in India alone. If you look at the pie of a 16-25 year old’s spend on books in real terms today and five years back it would not be a surprise that the spend was higher 5 years back. I recently interviewed atleast 50 people in that age group from the cities of Chennai and Mumbai. 3 of them said reading was a top hobby. When I was in my college almost everyone said reading was a top hobby. It could be a small-town big-city comparison funda too yet I don’t think that is a statistic to be proud of. I think it was Francis Bacon who once said that reading maketh a complete man. I think the author was right. That credit should not go to Raymond Suitings.
I would not change many things in my life. It’s spanned out pretty well till now but if I were asked to go back in time and change one thing about myself, I think I would ask for a better appetite for reading. I think it’s beautiful. I would have also wished for more and more Crosswords. Nothing like reading a crisp new bestseller off the shelf for FREE! :)
But I knew reading must be good in someway or the other. Infact as I grew up I found myself surrounded by more and more people rattling off reading as a hobby when asked about their favorite pastime. I joined college and one fine day I thought I should start preparing for CAT. So I joined Career Launcher and then I got to know reading books might just help. It did not come naturally to me so I had to push myself hard, really hard to start serious reading. I used to think people who mentioned reading as a hobby had to be sissies. It’s a beautiful world out there under the sun. Loads of people to meet, things to talk about and places to go to. Why would anyone trade off all these things and read and only read inside the four walls of a house?
It used to darn painful for me to pick up a book and acknowledge that for a few hours I am going to give up so many things in my life. Most things in my life begin with Cricket, (most of my English essays in school did) so I thought I should begin reading books on Cricket and Cricketers. It would be less painful that way and the British Library in Trivandrum had a good collection. I told myself that the poison of reading I was about to unleash in my life would be slow and it would be easier for me to pick up this evil habit this way. I began with a few autobiographies. Allan Lamb’s took about a week. Jonathan Agnew’s less than that. Botham’s not more than 3 days. Sobers’ took 2 days. And then I picked up Sunny Days and then Idols and then Not Quite Cricket and then The Record Breaking Sunil Gavaskar and then Azhar by Harsha Bhogle and then Sachin by Gulu Ezekiel (he stars with Sachin in a recent MRF Ad). It was not so bad after all. The Cricket angle was helping it. I also congratulated myself in being smart enough to tide over this crucial decision in my life in a fairly elegant manner. And in between I came across Sir Neville Cardus. I still stop in between reading his essays and gasp for breath and resume reading. They are brilliant! Then I read a book called A Soldier’s Diary by Harinder Baweja, a first hand account of the Kargil war and that was something! We meet people who change our lives, we see movies that have an impact on the way we perceive things and we read books that change the equation of reading.
A Soldier’s Diary did it for me.
I started clinging onto fiction now. And since it was the CAT phase and you are not acknowledged well read in the management community unless you read it, I read the Fountainhead. I vividly remember sweating it out. It was terribly long. It took me a good four months to finish it. Never had I inflicted so much duress in finishing one book. Dominique Francon, Peter Keating , Guy something, Howard Roark and that verbose Ellsworth Toohey. One never meets people who can talk like Mr. Toohey in real life. It was fiction at its best in terms of language. But in terms of plot and the storyline it was only mediocre. The only fiction that I was really enjoying was Wodehouse and Conan Doyle’s. So I went back to autobiographies. Atleast, I thought I will get to know about something that truly existed. What fun in reading stories when you can watch them in movies? But the more and more I read about successful people I realized that all of them, I repeat all of them were voracious readers. All the impressive people I met were well read. And here I was still in college and still being such a whimsical reader. So I pushed myself harder to read more and it evolved into a love-hate relationship with reading. I loved it when I was not reading.
Everyone knows being vegetarian is good and smoking is bad. Yet the world has millions of smokers and non vegetarians. To me, reading posed a similar dilemma. I knew it was good but I had problems adopting it. And then one day I went to Higginbothams on M.G. Road at Bangalore and I spent almost an hour with Sandy that day flipping pages. I suddenly felt like buying some of the books. Part of the stimulus was the fact that the store had a cricket magazine worth 585 bucks. I began visiting it more often. And I started picking pirated copies off the streets in Bangalore and then I visited Blossoms a super duper book store again in Bangalore. It got me the one book called Spin and Other Turns I was looking for ages. I made friends with the owner and thus reading began.
I still am not a voracious reader but I guess I have come to the stage where I believe I am not missing out on much in the world when I am reading. I go to stores like Crosswords when I have not much to do nowadays and I almost wish Crosswords existed when I was a child. They have put up good sprawling stores all over the country and I think they are really doing our nation a favor by atleast getting some of the children and teenagers today off the internet, the video games, the saas bahu stuff and the absolutely crappy movies that Bollywood is dishing out. No Entry , Bunty Aur Babli ,Dhoom , Veer Zaara and Waqt were only box-office hits .Period.
If you think of it seriously as we are getting more and more advanced our means of entertainment are getting more and more gibberish. It’s a pity that a movie like No Entry grossed 40 Crores in India alone. If you look at the pie of a 16-25 year old’s spend on books in real terms today and five years back it would not be a surprise that the spend was higher 5 years back. I recently interviewed atleast 50 people in that age group from the cities of Chennai and Mumbai. 3 of them said reading was a top hobby. When I was in my college almost everyone said reading was a top hobby. It could be a small-town big-city comparison funda too yet I don’t think that is a statistic to be proud of. I think it was Francis Bacon who once said that reading maketh a complete man. I think the author was right. That credit should not go to Raymond Suitings.
I would not change many things in my life. It’s spanned out pretty well till now but if I were asked to go back in time and change one thing about myself, I think I would ask for a better appetite for reading. I think it’s beautiful. I would have also wished for more and more Crosswords. Nothing like reading a crisp new bestseller off the shelf for FREE! :)
Monday, November 28, 2005
Lately
Just happy that Brian Lara has got in right against Australia after 9 innings Down Under. Undoubtedly the best batsman of our generation, miles ahead of most contemporary batsman and a shade better than Sachin.
And wasting a lot of time at :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/issacmj
And wasting a lot of time at :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/issacmj
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
No, we dont allow
“We don’t allow this”, the assistant to the principal said.
“Oh Okie... Can I speak to her?” I asked.
“But she won’t allow. We don’t allow this”
“That’s fine. All I need is just to get to speak to the principal”
“I will ask her but as I told you we don’t allow this”. And she went into the Principal’s cabin.
This lady was getting on my nerves.
It was the all too familiar tone of negation and disapproval. I was outside the door of the principal of one of the more prominent schools in the city. And I needed permission to interview 3-4 students from this school as a part of my project. I had already conducted about 80 odd interviews by now. Consumers in the age group of 14-40 years were my target respondents and I had also interviewed 12 students from 3 different schools in the city of Chennai .With this school, I would have finished my quota of school interviews in Chennai.
The assistant went in with my college ID and my bonafide certificate and I saw her speaking to the principal from outside. She came out after a minute or two and said “You can go in”.
Okie, I said to myself. Here’s my chance to do it in style and rebut that assistant. Come on baby, let’s roll on, let me get my familiar pitch in place, get the approval of the principal ,get the students, make them laugh and smile at my questions and lets be done with these interviews in no time.
Sometimes I am too optimistic.
Surprisingly it always pays off. Well… almost.
“Yes, please come in”
“Thank you Ma’m. My name is Issac and I am from the …”
I generally take about 50-60 seconds to get the entire story in place; this was no different and I pause after that.
Pause.
“I see but we never allow this”.
Now this was different. I had been to 3 schools already and no principal gave me this. Not even an All-Girls school’s principal. This was a goddamn co-ed. I made an alteration to my pitch.
“This is for an academic project Ma’m and I have already been to other schools and...”
“We don’t allow such things. I am sorry”
Such things?!?
Her tone suggested that she was taking me to be a 22 year old assassin with a pen and a writing pad in hand.
“Yeah, we don’t allow any interviews with students”
“Ma’m, I would not take more than 15-20 minutes and I need only 3 students”
“We don’t allow. I am sorry”
I don’t know where exactly I picked up the habit but I love having fun while the situation is serious at times and this seemed to be a good setting.
“Well Ma’m, can you give me one good reason why you don’t allow such things?”
I loved that look that she gave me next. Priceless.
More so because I am sure she was not expecting a question like that. And now that I was rejected anyway, I was having my share of fun.
She gave me just what I expected as a reply, “No, we do not allow our students. That’s it. Other schools may do that, we don’t”
I really needed a reason though as to why I would not be allowed to interview the students. At times like these I wish the Right to Information Act be applicable to private institutions also.
It was not a surprise that I would not be allowed to interview the students. I too understand. They have their own right to reject but I was getting irked by that “we-don’t-allow” drone.
I came out, took a bus to another school and got my 4 interviews of school students completed. No harm done.
What happened though is, I think the symptom of a larger malaise (and unlike in other cities probably the only one) in Chennai.
We don’t allow.
We don’t allow to kiss .We will arrest you for vulgarity.
We don’t allow dancing in pubs. We are closing down the pubs.
We don’t allow screening plays like Vagina Monologues. We will burn the theater.
We don’t allow people to talk sex and virginity. We will take Khushboo to court.
We don’t allow newspaper editorials that hurt us .We will take N. Ram under custody.
Liberalism is a way of living not a fad. And it hurts far fewer people than the devils allow one to imagine. Forget the 21st century modern India talk and think about it.
Would you rather get summoned by a court for talking about virginity in a free nation that practices freedom of speech and expression as a fundamental right or would you rather remain silent and not talk about things that you think might be true. So if kissing, dancing, screening plays is not allowed let’s know why they are not allowed. And let’s also know why they can be allowed. Let’s talk about things and respect people who talk. Differ, Contest, Argue but respect people who talk and don’t slam a PIL for God’s sake because when you do you stifle the next voice who wants to talk.
We have always been a shy nation like our cricket team until Mr. Ganguly came out on the Lords Balcony in the summer of 2001 and took off his shirt. I think that day he also took off that shyness from every modern Indian cricketer. But everyday life is not like cricket and as a nation we need to talk more, we need to get ourselves heard, we need to shout. I love the fact that more and more news channels are sprouting up for these are mediums through which we can be heard and I love every time a sting operation is conducted. Someone is telling us that things are not right and the more we know things are not right we get a chance to correct them.
My friend Anish once came up with a gem in one of our everyday conversations. He said “I think there’s something screwed up with our value system; sex is a taboo for us and yet every single day we as a nation produce more humans than anyone else in the world”.
With things like these we confuse the world what we stand for. Thankfully we are still a fairly young nation and I think we really need to allow ourselves to talk to get rid of such contradictions.
“Oh Okie... Can I speak to her?” I asked.
“But she won’t allow. We don’t allow this”
“That’s fine. All I need is just to get to speak to the principal”
“I will ask her but as I told you we don’t allow this”. And she went into the Principal’s cabin.
This lady was getting on my nerves.
It was the all too familiar tone of negation and disapproval. I was outside the door of the principal of one of the more prominent schools in the city. And I needed permission to interview 3-4 students from this school as a part of my project. I had already conducted about 80 odd interviews by now. Consumers in the age group of 14-40 years were my target respondents and I had also interviewed 12 students from 3 different schools in the city of Chennai .With this school, I would have finished my quota of school interviews in Chennai.
The assistant went in with my college ID and my bonafide certificate and I saw her speaking to the principal from outside. She came out after a minute or two and said “You can go in”.
Okie, I said to myself. Here’s my chance to do it in style and rebut that assistant. Come on baby, let’s roll on, let me get my familiar pitch in place, get the approval of the principal ,get the students, make them laugh and smile at my questions and lets be done with these interviews in no time.
Sometimes I am too optimistic.
Surprisingly it always pays off. Well… almost.
“Yes, please come in”
“Thank you Ma’m. My name is Issac and I am from the …”
I generally take about 50-60 seconds to get the entire story in place; this was no different and I pause after that.
Pause.
“I see but we never allow this”.
Now this was different. I had been to 3 schools already and no principal gave me this. Not even an All-Girls school’s principal. This was a goddamn co-ed. I made an alteration to my pitch.
“This is for an academic project Ma’m and I have already been to other schools and...”
“We don’t allow such things. I am sorry”
Such things?!?
Her tone suggested that she was taking me to be a 22 year old assassin with a pen and a writing pad in hand.
“Yeah, we don’t allow any interviews with students”
“Ma’m, I would not take more than 15-20 minutes and I need only 3 students”
“We don’t allow. I am sorry”
I don’t know where exactly I picked up the habit but I love having fun while the situation is serious at times and this seemed to be a good setting.
“Well Ma’m, can you give me one good reason why you don’t allow such things?”
I loved that look that she gave me next. Priceless.
More so because I am sure she was not expecting a question like that. And now that I was rejected anyway, I was having my share of fun.
She gave me just what I expected as a reply, “No, we do not allow our students. That’s it. Other schools may do that, we don’t”
I really needed a reason though as to why I would not be allowed to interview the students. At times like these I wish the Right to Information Act be applicable to private institutions also.
It was not a surprise that I would not be allowed to interview the students. I too understand. They have their own right to reject but I was getting irked by that “we-don’t-allow” drone.
I came out, took a bus to another school and got my 4 interviews of school students completed. No harm done.
What happened though is, I think the symptom of a larger malaise (and unlike in other cities probably the only one) in Chennai.
We don’t allow.
We don’t allow to kiss .We will arrest you for vulgarity.
We don’t allow dancing in pubs. We are closing down the pubs.
We don’t allow screening plays like Vagina Monologues. We will burn the theater.
We don’t allow people to talk sex and virginity. We will take Khushboo to court.
We don’t allow newspaper editorials that hurt us .We will take N. Ram under custody.
Liberalism is a way of living not a fad. And it hurts far fewer people than the devils allow one to imagine. Forget the 21st century modern India talk and think about it.
Would you rather get summoned by a court for talking about virginity in a free nation that practices freedom of speech and expression as a fundamental right or would you rather remain silent and not talk about things that you think might be true. So if kissing, dancing, screening plays is not allowed let’s know why they are not allowed. And let’s also know why they can be allowed. Let’s talk about things and respect people who talk. Differ, Contest, Argue but respect people who talk and don’t slam a PIL for God’s sake because when you do you stifle the next voice who wants to talk.
We have always been a shy nation like our cricket team until Mr. Ganguly came out on the Lords Balcony in the summer of 2001 and took off his shirt. I think that day he also took off that shyness from every modern Indian cricketer. But everyday life is not like cricket and as a nation we need to talk more, we need to get ourselves heard, we need to shout. I love the fact that more and more news channels are sprouting up for these are mediums through which we can be heard and I love every time a sting operation is conducted. Someone is telling us that things are not right and the more we know things are not right we get a chance to correct them.
My friend Anish once came up with a gem in one of our everyday conversations. He said “I think there’s something screwed up with our value system; sex is a taboo for us and yet every single day we as a nation produce more humans than anyone else in the world”.
With things like these we confuse the world what we stand for. Thankfully we are still a fairly young nation and I think we really need to allow ourselves to talk to get rid of such contradictions.
Friday, October 28, 2005
A Few Good Jobs
The following post coming three weeks into my project could get you a lil worried about my state of mind in my incumbent company. To soothe the fears of my well-wishers let me at the very outset say that the following post bears no resemblance to any real life situation I am facing now. Any inference to such resemblance hence is purely coincidental.
I have tended to believe that for a job to be well done or for a relationship to prosper there is a spark that needs to be present. A job could pay you the best in the country but if that spark is absent it’s just another job. It could very well have been the filling of the petrol tanks of ongoing vehicles at a gas station at the same level of wages.
You could be out with Salma Hayek on a moonlit night but if her speech and manner makes you yawn you could very well have been out with a hag on the same moonlit night.
Not all of us are lucky enough to get a job with that spark and it’s not too unnatural for us to crib about it. Employee turnover (or attrition for the need to stay in vogue with the latest HR nomenclatures) is a reality every organization faces. And this is because of this spark that some people do not derive from their jobs. They get bored, fed up, disappointed, irritated and look for greener pastures elsewhere.
But if one does have that spark factor in his/her job it is unlikely that he/she will ever leave that job. Nothing else could explain M.F.Hussain still painting his canvasses, Dev Anand still directing movies and R.K. Laxman still drawing caricatures. Or Brian Johnston holding his mike for 48 years, or Sean Connery still acting or Madonna still singing.
Why even, Mr. Buffet still investing, Mr. Gates still thinking and Ms Paris Hilton still laundering. Okie, pardon the last one.
I have also tended to believe that whatever life offers you, there is atleast one soul who’s got a better deal and atleast one soul who’s got a worse deal than you in this world. So if you think you have got one helluva boring job, I thought it would be nice to know what could be the most boring jobs in India and presented below is my list in no particular order.
The Coast Guard: It’s in everyone’s best interests that he does not come into action. He spends his time gazing on the beach and watching hordes of travelers come and go by. Usually he has an umbrella to himself and every once in a while a kid waves him a Hi. I once observed him at one of the beaches in Trivandrum; he dint have a thing to do for the three hours we spent there.
The guy distributing pamphlets on the roads: This chap is handed a bunch of catalogues or pamphlets early morning by his employer for a day and he keeps handing it over to people walking by. Most people don’t even look him in the eye, worse - some do and take a copy and throw it on the road without a peek.
Mechanics who fill tires: I bet it should be interesting should he overfill any of those tires with loud consequences but these chaps are too efficient for that. It’s amazing how he never ever makes that mistake; another of those unnoticed operations that run at greater than Six Sigma. (Why dont we study them as a case study but will sure take notice should Prince Harry come and extol their capabilities is something I shall take up at a later date.)
Guy stamping envelopes with the P.O Seal at the Post Office: Seriously, one after the other, how can you keep doing that an entire day and for an entire week and then week after week!!!
The table cleaner in a restaurant: A dirty towel, his customary weapon along with a plastic or aluminum tray. Wipes in different styles, leftovers of different shape and sizes but that’s all his job description allows him to accomplish.
The doorkeeper at corporate offices: His job is to open the door every time someone comes or threatens to come his way. Since the door is a modern marvel he doesn’t have to push it back. The door automatically shuts in poetic motion and our man starts waiting for the next man to come his way.
The ticket checker at Multiplexes: This is an offspring of the increased spending of the modern Indian Consumer on watching movies in Multiplexes. With so many screens around no one ever knows which the right screen is .So we have an assistant in uniform whose job is to utter any of the following sentences over and over again."Go straight Sir, first screen on left”, “The Screen on your right Ma’m, once you reach the end of the alley” or “It’s the one on the left, besides the popcorn stall over there.”
The Driver: His skill in dealing with all the other vehicles on the road is matchless. But once he leaves his Saab in the morning at the office , he has to spend and entire day waiting for his boss to come out of the office. Worse still, Murphy’s Law tends to wreak havoc with him at times. His boss often comes out or summons for him at the only moment when he decides to go out for fag.
The HT ‘Let there be Light’ teaser campaign: This was in March in Delhi when I saw a chap on the bridge near the Sarai Kale Khan Bus standing blindfolded on a footpath holding a placard that read “ Let there be Light” . This was in the morning at around 9 a.m. on my way to the office.
On my way back at 5:30 p.m., I saw the guy rooted to the spot.
Thank God, you have got a great job and now get back to work! : )
I have tended to believe that for a job to be well done or for a relationship to prosper there is a spark that needs to be present. A job could pay you the best in the country but if that spark is absent it’s just another job. It could very well have been the filling of the petrol tanks of ongoing vehicles at a gas station at the same level of wages.
You could be out with Salma Hayek on a moonlit night but if her speech and manner makes you yawn you could very well have been out with a hag on the same moonlit night.
Not all of us are lucky enough to get a job with that spark and it’s not too unnatural for us to crib about it. Employee turnover (or attrition for the need to stay in vogue with the latest HR nomenclatures) is a reality every organization faces. And this is because of this spark that some people do not derive from their jobs. They get bored, fed up, disappointed, irritated and look for greener pastures elsewhere.
But if one does have that spark factor in his/her job it is unlikely that he/she will ever leave that job. Nothing else could explain M.F.Hussain still painting his canvasses, Dev Anand still directing movies and R.K. Laxman still drawing caricatures. Or Brian Johnston holding his mike for 48 years, or Sean Connery still acting or Madonna still singing.
Why even, Mr. Buffet still investing, Mr. Gates still thinking and Ms Paris Hilton still laundering. Okie, pardon the last one.
I have also tended to believe that whatever life offers you, there is atleast one soul who’s got a better deal and atleast one soul who’s got a worse deal than you in this world. So if you think you have got one helluva boring job, I thought it would be nice to know what could be the most boring jobs in India and presented below is my list in no particular order.
The Coast Guard: It’s in everyone’s best interests that he does not come into action. He spends his time gazing on the beach and watching hordes of travelers come and go by. Usually he has an umbrella to himself and every once in a while a kid waves him a Hi. I once observed him at one of the beaches in Trivandrum; he dint have a thing to do for the three hours we spent there.
The guy distributing pamphlets on the roads: This chap is handed a bunch of catalogues or pamphlets early morning by his employer for a day and he keeps handing it over to people walking by. Most people don’t even look him in the eye, worse - some do and take a copy and throw it on the road without a peek.
Mechanics who fill tires: I bet it should be interesting should he overfill any of those tires with loud consequences but these chaps are too efficient for that. It’s amazing how he never ever makes that mistake; another of those unnoticed operations that run at greater than Six Sigma. (Why dont we study them as a case study but will sure take notice should Prince Harry come and extol their capabilities is something I shall take up at a later date.)
Guy stamping envelopes with the P.O Seal at the Post Office: Seriously, one after the other, how can you keep doing that an entire day and for an entire week and then week after week!!!
The table cleaner in a restaurant: A dirty towel, his customary weapon along with a plastic or aluminum tray. Wipes in different styles, leftovers of different shape and sizes but that’s all his job description allows him to accomplish.
The doorkeeper at corporate offices: His job is to open the door every time someone comes or threatens to come his way. Since the door is a modern marvel he doesn’t have to push it back. The door automatically shuts in poetic motion and our man starts waiting for the next man to come his way.
The ticket checker at Multiplexes: This is an offspring of the increased spending of the modern Indian Consumer on watching movies in Multiplexes. With so many screens around no one ever knows which the right screen is .So we have an assistant in uniform whose job is to utter any of the following sentences over and over again."Go straight Sir, first screen on left”, “The Screen on your right Ma’m, once you reach the end of the alley” or “It’s the one on the left, besides the popcorn stall over there.”
The Driver: His skill in dealing with all the other vehicles on the road is matchless. But once he leaves his Saab in the morning at the office , he has to spend and entire day waiting for his boss to come out of the office. Worse still, Murphy’s Law tends to wreak havoc with him at times. His boss often comes out or summons for him at the only moment when he decides to go out for fag.
The HT ‘Let there be Light’ teaser campaign: This was in March in Delhi when I saw a chap on the bridge near the Sarai Kale Khan Bus standing blindfolded on a footpath holding a placard that read “ Let there be Light” . This was in the morning at around 9 a.m. on my way to the office.
On my way back at 5:30 p.m., I saw the guy rooted to the spot.
Thank God, you have got a great job and now get back to work! : )
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Home again!
Am kicked about this break after a breakneck last four months . :)
And am feeling bad about leaving SP again for even 3 days!
And rrreeaallyyyy looking forward to watching the Second One Dayer of RoW Vs Australia with my ol' opening partner Jubin at home.
And Sis is not going to be home...
And Dad isnt the greatest cook in the world. : )
And am feeling bad about leaving SP again for even 3 days!
And rrreeaallyyyy looking forward to watching the Second One Dayer of RoW Vs Australia with my ol' opening partner Jubin at home.
And Sis is not going to be home...
And Dad isnt the greatest cook in the world. : )
Sunday, September 25, 2005
A First!
Interviewed Subroto Bagchi in Room #223 , Hotel Leela ,Mumbai
My first big interview , caught on camera.
Lasted 10 minutes.
The kick of having done it still lingers. :))
My first big interview , caught on camera.
Lasted 10 minutes.
The kick of having done it still lingers. :))
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Gosh ! The World!
The world.. the world ...Ever thought about it?
It's so truly Goddamn funny!
Things that start and stop on their own, things you cant help and things you cant decide...
Funny, plain funny!
It's so truly Goddamn funny!
Things that start and stop on their own, things you cant help and things you cant decide...
Funny, plain funny!
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
On Cricket- I
Starting with this post, a new series of my views on the game of cricket, on some players, on some of the issues the game's facing and the never ending controversies. This is something I used to regularly do in college but got cut off for a while . Back on air now. : )
On Gilchrist:
Gilly has a style of his own. He would'nt kill you but just hit you.And for some of us that's a pleasure. Cuts,sweeps,pulls,straight drives and more cuts,sweeps,pulls and straight drives. Before you would even acknowledge his presence on crease, he would be on 20 odd and by the time you have a plan he's crossed 50. And by the time you figure the plan's not working he's making the common man on the ground outside the stadium find the red cherry he's just dispatched over square leg. A tremendous asset to any side with a lightning batspeed and an even faster walk to the crease and back when it comes to that.
He is acknowledged as one of the top batsmen today but contrary to what some seem to believe I dont subscribe to the view that he's the best around. Contemporary cricket does have atleast 4 batsmen who would rank ahead of Gilly in my book. I am a huge fan of his batting style but not his batting. For he can still be more menacing than he currently is.
He is mercilessly destructive for a bowler's morale and I said it elsewhere that where Gilly fails to make it to the top league in my book is because the bowler is always in with a chance with him unlike a Lara or a Sachin or a Dravid or Vaughan who once in for some time would make you toil for their wicket.
The recent Ashes Series was the first one where he failed throughout. And this was a quality attack he was up against. It would be interesting to see how Gilchrist deals with this failure at an age when many others think about quitting the game. Importantly , it would be interesting to know how the Aussie Selectors intend to deal with him, with Brad Haddin waiting to take off should the flight of Gilly be cut short by the selectors. This is pretty much a deja vu for me for not so long back I prayed that Healy make runs so that Gilly would'nt come and take his place. I dont think it is that stage yet when anyone needs to pray for Gilly but yes for the first time in his career Gilly will have to give 'hitting the ball' a thought , something he is not used to and something he should'nt do.
Gilly's batting has been, for the millions of his viewers, all about unadulterated joy, uncomplicated hitting and uncensored flamboyance. And I hope I dont have to start offering my prayers for him anytime soon. Over the years he has cracked some stunning centuries and here's my pick of the lot:
The one in Mumbai ,against India in the 2003 season shud stand out cos of the sheer devilry of heaving Bhajji over and over again against the spin on a dusty track.
The one in Hobart, against Pakistan because it came against a top class attack and because he was batting in the fourth innings and contributed to one of the highestrun chases in history
The one in Durban ,against SA for effortlessness.(fastest double in tests). I remembering him heaving one off Boje over midwicket, a wild sweep and then he stood up to push the ball suggestively in the air so that it could hit one of the billboards that could have earned him some rands.
Easily the most destructive in World Cricket, destructive to a bowler's pride, to a team's morale and injurious to the very health of a bowling team supporter
On Gilchrist:
Gilly has a style of his own. He would'nt kill you but just hit you.And for some of us that's a pleasure. Cuts,sweeps,pulls,straight drives and more cuts,sweeps,pulls and straight drives. Before you would even acknowledge his presence on crease, he would be on 20 odd and by the time you have a plan he's crossed 50. And by the time you figure the plan's not working he's making the common man on the ground outside the stadium find the red cherry he's just dispatched over square leg. A tremendous asset to any side with a lightning batspeed and an even faster walk to the crease and back when it comes to that.
He is acknowledged as one of the top batsmen today but contrary to what some seem to believe I dont subscribe to the view that he's the best around. Contemporary cricket does have atleast 4 batsmen who would rank ahead of Gilly in my book. I am a huge fan of his batting style but not his batting. For he can still be more menacing than he currently is.
He is mercilessly destructive for a bowler's morale and I said it elsewhere that where Gilly fails to make it to the top league in my book is because the bowler is always in with a chance with him unlike a Lara or a Sachin or a Dravid or Vaughan who once in for some time would make you toil for their wicket.
The recent Ashes Series was the first one where he failed throughout. And this was a quality attack he was up against. It would be interesting to see how Gilchrist deals with this failure at an age when many others think about quitting the game. Importantly , it would be interesting to know how the Aussie Selectors intend to deal with him, with Brad Haddin waiting to take off should the flight of Gilly be cut short by the selectors. This is pretty much a deja vu for me for not so long back I prayed that Healy make runs so that Gilly would'nt come and take his place. I dont think it is that stage yet when anyone needs to pray for Gilly but yes for the first time in his career Gilly will have to give 'hitting the ball' a thought , something he is not used to and something he should'nt do.
Gilly's batting has been, for the millions of his viewers, all about unadulterated joy, uncomplicated hitting and uncensored flamboyance. And I hope I dont have to start offering my prayers for him anytime soon. Over the years he has cracked some stunning centuries and here's my pick of the lot:
The one in Mumbai ,against India in the 2003 season shud stand out cos of the sheer devilry of heaving Bhajji over and over again against the spin on a dusty track.
The one in Hobart, against Pakistan because it came against a top class attack and because he was batting in the fourth innings and contributed to one of the highestrun chases in history
The one in Durban ,against SA for effortlessness.(fastest double in tests). I remembering him heaving one off Boje over midwicket, a wild sweep and then he stood up to push the ball suggestively in the air so that it could hit one of the billboards that could have earned him some rands.
Easily the most destructive in World Cricket, destructive to a bowler's pride, to a team's morale and injurious to the very health of a bowling team supporter
Friday, September 09, 2005
The Comeback of the First Ones
Everything in SP is coming right back at me.
It started off with AKB, then Freshers, then Teacher's Day celebs, then the Football Match, GASP and everything else. This isnt much of an exception, it is a way of the world.
In Evam's Indrajit, the recurring theme is that of how the world goes round and round and round and how people fit in patterns in their lives and go on to live happy with it. Some of them want to jump out of the pattern and form a pattern on their own but often it never works out. One tries jumping out of the pattern but its far too encompassing and comforting. Its tempting to stay in the pattern and dangerous to move out.And so life moves on , round and round and round
When you draw a circle there is a starting point and it meets that very point to complete it.Thereafter if you try using the compass to go all over it again ,it is'nt half as interesting as it was to draw and go through all the points the first time. For there's something about the first time...
The first rain of a season, the first century, the first kiss... everything about the first time is well... special! So when it comes all over again does it feel as special?
Probably yes is one view.
After all how can you explain people like me who still love it when it rains in Mumbai irrespective of the many first times, how can you explain Sachin (not until recently) still being as pumped whenever he scored a century and how can you explain Emraan Hashmi's kissing spree (pun intended) ?
Nope, the first time is the best one and diminishing utility thereafter is another view. How else can you expain breakups in marriages, how can you explain people sending their parents to an old-age home after a certain point of time and how can you explain Paes and Bhupathi parting ways after having won 4 grand slams. If for them, the subsequent ones would have been as special as their first one, they should'nt have split.
So which side am I on? Actually both of 'em...
The smell of my first salary's crackling notes that emerged out of the ATM when I put that rectangular card in the machine for the first time was unbeatable.No other subsequent withdrawal had that jazz to it.
The first four that I hit in every innings of mine on the ground in whatever level of cricket I play gives me that punch that the subsequent ones can probably match but not surpass.
The first pair of branded shoes I bought are still kept at home, they dont qualify by definition to be called a "a pair of shoes" yet they always stay near my bunch of CD's and Books.
If now I am asked what is that one thing that I would do over and over again and yet get the same spark, I dont have an answer. Infact I would'nt know until I go over it again and again.
But I assume there are some people with whom I can spend a lifetime and want to spend another,
I assume talking about cricket would be another vocation that I would want to be in over and over again.
Hence should'nt the ultimate purpose of our existence be to direct all our energies towards these assumptions that each of us has? If we are'nt, its probably because the pattern is indeed far too encompassing and comforting. Its tempting to stay in the pattern and dangerous to move out.And so life moves on , round and round and round.
It started off with AKB, then Freshers, then Teacher's Day celebs, then the Football Match, GASP and everything else. This isnt much of an exception, it is a way of the world.
In Evam's Indrajit, the recurring theme is that of how the world goes round and round and round and how people fit in patterns in their lives and go on to live happy with it. Some of them want to jump out of the pattern and form a pattern on their own but often it never works out. One tries jumping out of the pattern but its far too encompassing and comforting. Its tempting to stay in the pattern and dangerous to move out.And so life moves on , round and round and round
When you draw a circle there is a starting point and it meets that very point to complete it.Thereafter if you try using the compass to go all over it again ,it is'nt half as interesting as it was to draw and go through all the points the first time. For there's something about the first time...
The first rain of a season, the first century, the first kiss... everything about the first time is well... special! So when it comes all over again does it feel as special?
Probably yes is one view.
After all how can you explain people like me who still love it when it rains in Mumbai irrespective of the many first times, how can you explain Sachin (not until recently) still being as pumped whenever he scored a century and how can you explain Emraan Hashmi's kissing spree (pun intended) ?
Nope, the first time is the best one and diminishing utility thereafter is another view. How else can you expain breakups in marriages, how can you explain people sending their parents to an old-age home after a certain point of time and how can you explain Paes and Bhupathi parting ways after having won 4 grand slams. If for them, the subsequent ones would have been as special as their first one, they should'nt have split.
So which side am I on? Actually both of 'em...
The smell of my first salary's crackling notes that emerged out of the ATM when I put that rectangular card in the machine for the first time was unbeatable.No other subsequent withdrawal had that jazz to it.
The first four that I hit in every innings of mine on the ground in whatever level of cricket I play gives me that punch that the subsequent ones can probably match but not surpass.
The first pair of branded shoes I bought are still kept at home, they dont qualify by definition to be called a "a pair of shoes" yet they always stay near my bunch of CD's and Books.
If now I am asked what is that one thing that I would do over and over again and yet get the same spark, I dont have an answer. Infact I would'nt know until I go over it again and again.
But I assume there are some people with whom I can spend a lifetime and want to spend another,
I assume talking about cricket would be another vocation that I would want to be in over and over again.
Hence should'nt the ultimate purpose of our existence be to direct all our energies towards these assumptions that each of us has? If we are'nt, its probably because the pattern is indeed far too encompassing and comforting. Its tempting to stay in the pattern and dangerous to move out.And so life moves on , round and round and round.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Untitled
Introspection about people and things around me.
Whats changed and whats not?
One of those days when I am just happy to be alone.. : )
Whats changed and whats not?
One of those days when I am just happy to be alone.. : )
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Placed
We hit it big today!
Kaushal, if I write about you I could take a long time and I am sleepy. Should suffice to say that you are the best negotiator that India has right now.
Marketing Placom : I wrote you a mail.
The Batch : Thanks guys!
Abha: So you did admit that I am the best Company Co-ordinator. ; )
Cadburys: Here I come...
Kaushal, if I write about you I could take a long time and I am sleepy. Should suffice to say that you are the best negotiator that India has right now.
Marketing Placom : I wrote you a mail.
The Batch : Thanks guys!
Abha: So you did admit that I am the best Company Co-ordinator. ; )
Cadburys: Here I come...
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Moments
"Life boils down to a few moments and this is one of 'em"
Bud Fox in the the movie Wall Street
And today, there were four of 'em in one of the most amazing days of my life...
16th August ,2005
#1 : Megha and me at the Vivekananda Square at around 11 a.m. .. a tear or two on my suit and a tear or two on her shirt. Two sighs of relief.. and two chocolates down the drain
#2 : "Amitesh , HLL spot" . That was a kick!
#3 : Aparna,Aparna,Aparna... I think I got one of my best lines in with her today..
"So now whenever I look at you, I have a reason to celebrate... "
Seriously , I am kinda proud of my creation.. I should use this line more often ... : )
#4 : The Walk for Marlboro Lights.
Bud Fox in the the movie Wall Street
And today, there were four of 'em in one of the most amazing days of my life...
16th August ,2005
#1 : Megha and me at the Vivekananda Square at around 11 a.m. .. a tear or two on my suit and a tear or two on her shirt. Two sighs of relief.. and two chocolates down the drain
#2 : "Amitesh , HLL spot" . That was a kick!
#3 : Aparna,Aparna,Aparna... I think I got one of my best lines in with her today..
"So now whenever I look at you, I have a reason to celebrate... "
Seriously , I am kinda proud of my creation.. I should use this line more often ... : )
#4 : The Walk for Marlboro Lights.
Friday, August 12, 2005
Epitaph
It could be :
Issac,
Ex-Placom,SPJIMR.. :D
I am on a reaaaaallll high today!
I think about it and talk about it too but I think for the record:
I love my batch...
Moi reeeallllly on a moon tonight!
Issac,
Ex-Placom,SPJIMR.. :D
I am on a reaaaaallll high today!
I think about it and talk about it too but I think for the record:
I love my batch...
Moi reeeallllly on a moon tonight!
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Etched - II
Simply put : Stuck. Cornered. Grounded. Stranded. Can’t do a thing.
There was consensus though that man has been known to survive without food and water for 30 hours and with that in mind most of us retired to our beds. Those interested joined watching one of the two movies running on the first and third floor. Taking Lives and Sarkar they were I think. (In hindsight there seems to be brand fit between the situation then and the name Taking Lives)
I can bet my head on the fact that no one would have even imagined to grab a morsel that night. With waters neck deep high surrounding us who could even think of venturing outside?
Good Night Everyone!
12:30 a.m. 27th July,2005,301-A,SP Jain BH:
Knock Knock.
"We have Chapattis on First Floor. Go down and eat something."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah…"
12:32 a.m. 27th July,2005,First Floor SP Jain BH :
One table surrounded by 80 odd guys.
3 guys distributing something.
2 cellphones for candles.
160 odd folded hands.
1 Chapatti in each pair of hands, stuffed with rice.
The Mood: Sombre and Silent.
Need for Food: Right up there!
The Image: Etched Forever!
Sameer ,Vishnu and Sriram .. we can never thank you evermore.
We love you for putting us ahead of yourselves.
10:30 a.m. 27th July,2005,SP Jain BH.
A drizzle outside. The rains seemed to have stopped.
Water:Waist high.Manageable.Finally a trip to the mess again.
“ Dean and 6 other profs stuck at the insti still…”
“So what?”
Some things never change.
8:30 p.m. 27th July,2005,SP Jain Mess.
Our choice of music for the first time in the mess. Sounds splendid.
Ankur playing requests.
Dance for the first time in the mess. Feels splendid
The Mood: Festive, We survived. Partha lives on to tell the story.
Need for companionship: Right up there!
An unbelievable ride , an unbelievable batch in an unbelievable city.
P.S. - Mumbai- Rains,ONGC,Flights,Rumours and More Rains- you still dont crib and you get on with your work. I was on FM for 4 hours on the afternoon of 27th July and now I know why people say this city is special.
Quote of the day on 27th July,2005: On an FM Channel : A couple stranded in the car for 38 hours before making it to their home when asked to describe their ordeal had this to say:
"Faith ,Hope and Love gets you everywhere..."
Song for the moment: Who'll stop the Rain-CCR
Excerpt: Long as I remember The rain been coming down.
Clouds of myst'ry pouring Confusion on the ground.
Good men through the ages, Trying to find the sun;
And I wonder, Still I wonder,
Who'll stop the rain.
There was consensus though that man has been known to survive without food and water for 30 hours and with that in mind most of us retired to our beds. Those interested joined watching one of the two movies running on the first and third floor. Taking Lives and Sarkar they were I think. (In hindsight there seems to be brand fit between the situation then and the name Taking Lives)
I can bet my head on the fact that no one would have even imagined to grab a morsel that night. With waters neck deep high surrounding us who could even think of venturing outside?
Good Night Everyone!
12:30 a.m. 27th July,2005,301-A,SP Jain BH:
Knock Knock.
"We have Chapattis on First Floor. Go down and eat something."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah…"
12:32 a.m. 27th July,2005,First Floor SP Jain BH :
One table surrounded by 80 odd guys.
3 guys distributing something.
2 cellphones for candles.
160 odd folded hands.
1 Chapatti in each pair of hands, stuffed with rice.
The Mood: Sombre and Silent.
Need for Food: Right up there!
The Image: Etched Forever!
Sameer ,Vishnu and Sriram .. we can never thank you evermore.
We love you for putting us ahead of yourselves.
10:30 a.m. 27th July,2005,SP Jain BH.
A drizzle outside. The rains seemed to have stopped.
Water:Waist high.Manageable.Finally a trip to the mess again.
“ Dean and 6 other profs stuck at the insti still…”
“So what?”
Some things never change.
8:30 p.m. 27th July,2005,SP Jain Mess.
Our choice of music for the first time in the mess. Sounds splendid.
Ankur playing requests.
Dance for the first time in the mess. Feels splendid
The Mood: Festive, We survived. Partha lives on to tell the story.
Need for companionship: Right up there!
An unbelievable ride , an unbelievable batch in an unbelievable city.
P.S. - Mumbai- Rains,ONGC,Flights,Rumours and More Rains- you still dont crib and you get on with your work. I was on FM for 4 hours on the afternoon of 27th July and now I know why people say this city is special.
Quote of the day on 27th July,2005: On an FM Channel : A couple stranded in the car for 38 hours before making it to their home when asked to describe their ordeal had this to say:
"Faith ,Hope and Love gets you everywhere..."
Song for the moment: Who'll stop the Rain-CCR
Excerpt: Long as I remember The rain been coming down.
Clouds of myst'ry pouring Confusion on the ground.
Good men through the ages, Trying to find the sun;
And I wonder, Still I wonder,
Who'll stop the rain.
Etched- I
P&P was a funny subject for us in First Year.
No one worth his salt needs to apply those vague principles one learns in P&P for application in his/her corporate life. If anyone really does need to apply the principles and theories laid in those 3 text books and 11 handouts we went through for the subect in his/her professional stint, it would , IMHO ,be due to an acute scarcity of horse sense.
However , an oft used and abused theory from the subject is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Triangle. It is man's intention to move towards the peak of that triangle , so we are told. Or that the human self tries to eclipse the previous four blocks of needs to reach the "Need for Self Actualization "level. The whole thing does make some sense.
It made tremendous sense for us on the night of 26th July,2005 at the Boys Hostel at SPJIMR. India's heaviest rainfall in the shortest possible time flung us up and down that blocked triangle I just described. We were hurled around those five levels of the triangle , dealt with by nature like maggots and for once we thought we would be lucky to survive the rain!
It began like any other rainy afternoon.
And I was with RB catching up after a long time.
The lights went off in some time .. just like any other rainy afternoon.
In the course of our conversation we happened to see the tubelights kept on the GW Rooms floor floating effortlessly on the water that had gushed in. Well.. at this point of time we told each other maybe.. just maybe this isnt like any other rainy afternoon.
So we went around the campus and heard that the CRM presentations had been cancelled. We saw water in our domes till knee height and we went to the Bistro to splash water with Ronaldesque kicks .And on last count me and Morpheus were tied at 1-1.
At around 4 :30 p.m. while me and RB were at the entrance of our college wondering how to get back to the hostel , we were confronted with this sight of one of our classmates with slippers in hand striving to get some attention from this guy. While our man was in the Jeetendra mould- of all charm and poise the lady reflected all that I really cannot put in words now.
Nevertheless ,we started walking towards the hostel at around 5:30 and it wasnt as much of a walk as much of a float-and-wade that we employed. The ploy proved successful and once we were in the hostel we also ventured into the lawn with chest deep water in there for a fairly competitive game of Water Polo. We also mixed some volleyball and rugby rules and our Social Need for companionship was being met with some unexpected speed and success.
And then someone popped a question: What next?
Err.... cant go out , cant call anyone, cant be on the LAN, cant see the TV, cant heat the water for a bath, cant connect the lappies, damn cant even see anyone in this darkness in the hostel!
What next really?
"How about something to eat? "
"Who's got the stuff? "
"Jayaram's not here either?"
"Damn.. What /how/when /where do we EAT??? "
"Sleep man.. just forget about it. Things will be better tumro."
"Excuse me I was on FM .This rains not stopping in the next 48 hours! "
"Partha .. actually if this is true.. you will be the first in line to get butchered.. so do something"
No one worth his salt needs to apply those vague principles one learns in P&P for application in his/her corporate life. If anyone really does need to apply the principles and theories laid in those 3 text books and 11 handouts we went through for the subect in his/her professional stint, it would , IMHO ,be due to an acute scarcity of horse sense.
However , an oft used and abused theory from the subject is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Triangle. It is man's intention to move towards the peak of that triangle , so we are told. Or that the human self tries to eclipse the previous four blocks of needs to reach the "Need for Self Actualization "level. The whole thing does make some sense.
It made tremendous sense for us on the night of 26th July,2005 at the Boys Hostel at SPJIMR. India's heaviest rainfall in the shortest possible time flung us up and down that blocked triangle I just described. We were hurled around those five levels of the triangle , dealt with by nature like maggots and for once we thought we would be lucky to survive the rain!
It began like any other rainy afternoon.
And I was with RB catching up after a long time.
The lights went off in some time .. just like any other rainy afternoon.
In the course of our conversation we happened to see the tubelights kept on the GW Rooms floor floating effortlessly on the water that had gushed in. Well.. at this point of time we told each other maybe.. just maybe this isnt like any other rainy afternoon.
So we went around the campus and heard that the CRM presentations had been cancelled. We saw water in our domes till knee height and we went to the Bistro to splash water with Ronaldesque kicks .And on last count me and Morpheus were tied at 1-1.
At around 4 :30 p.m. while me and RB were at the entrance of our college wondering how to get back to the hostel , we were confronted with this sight of one of our classmates with slippers in hand striving to get some attention from this guy. While our man was in the Jeetendra mould- of all charm and poise the lady reflected all that I really cannot put in words now.
Nevertheless ,we started walking towards the hostel at around 5:30 and it wasnt as much of a walk as much of a float-and-wade that we employed. The ploy proved successful and once we were in the hostel we also ventured into the lawn with chest deep water in there for a fairly competitive game of Water Polo. We also mixed some volleyball and rugby rules and our Social Need for companionship was being met with some unexpected speed and success.
And then someone popped a question: What next?
Err.... cant go out , cant call anyone, cant be on the LAN, cant see the TV, cant heat the water for a bath, cant connect the lappies, damn cant even see anyone in this darkness in the hostel!
What next really?
"How about something to eat? "
"Who's got the stuff? "
"Jayaram's not here either?"
"Damn.. What /how/when /where do we EAT??? "
"Sleep man.. just forget about it. Things will be better tumro."
"Excuse me I was on FM .This rains not stopping in the next 48 hours! "
"Partha .. actually if this is true.. you will be the first in line to get butchered.. so do something"
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Of Missed Dates
Background : A very dear friend of mine recently could'nt digest a change in our academic schedule. The schedule had to be changed in view of the autumns placements coming up and the idea was to squeeze everything so that students have more time at hand to prepare for their interviews. There were 4 of us who were involved in bringing about the change and advancing a few exams so that we could finish everything well before companies start hitting the campus.
Of course, in doing so the four of us made a simple assumption , the assumption being : Students are unlikely to prefer going to an interview ( one that can potentially could define the shape of their careers) just a day or two after having written their 4th Trimester exams.
The Storyline : This dear friend of mine , who is one of the most soft spoken, nicest and innocent of all my friends was supposed to meet her boyfriend in a couple of days time and everything was well planned out. This gentleman had his leave approved from the top brass of his company after a fair bit of negotiations and this lady had planned everything from studies to friends so as to accomodate some time for themselves. Everything was in place for exams and dates.
The Twist : The schedule was staring at the four of us and was begging to be changed.
To give you an idea - The India divisions of two multi-billion dollar MNC's were slotted on the same day that the exams were supposed to end. So when faced with a difficult choice of asking the companies to come later or changing the academic schedule we chose the latter.
Everything was in place for placements.
The Climax : When plans go haywire especially the ones made you have with your special ones , you are likely to go slightly ballistic. And since I was in close proximity to this friend the first throttle was unleashed at me.
Perfectly understandable.
I did all I could to comfort her. Evidently , it wasn't working then.There was a five minute slight altercation after which both of us got back together .
Some movies leave a lot to open for interpretation by the audience so here's my take on the entire script.
#1: People seldom accept that they cant have the best of everything. They want the best of deals on roads, with people, with grades and with dates. I dont have a problem that they do.
I have a problem when they cant and and have to blame someone/something for it .
#2: Expect,expect ,expect and you have had it! The degree of unrest in one's life is proportionate to what one expects out of it. We attribute some of our failures to chicanery,unfairness in public life and misfortune. My question is why shudn't there be any of these. In life there are no rules for good . Things are meant to be unpredictable and it is better if they are unpredictable . Imagine knowing everything about tumro and a year down the line and planning accordingly.Would be such a mundane thing to know whats coming next.
The element of chance that has made so many lives is what makes many look forward to life everyday.
#3: How much is enough? Its been proved beyond doubt that there is a concept of Diminishing Utility in all that we use and consume. If I take "Time spent with Loved Ones" as a utility realistically speaking .. how much is enough really?
I cant take the argument that its unlimited cos at some point one HAS to get bored of the other.
And sometimes people say to this that "You don't know about it.Its different in our case " .
The fact of the matter is that they cant accept the fact that they are no different.
Having invested so much of time,money and energy in a relationship how can anyone acknowledge that its led to boredom? : D
Of course, in doing so the four of us made a simple assumption , the assumption being : Students are unlikely to prefer going to an interview ( one that can potentially could define the shape of their careers) just a day or two after having written their 4th Trimester exams.
The Storyline : This dear friend of mine , who is one of the most soft spoken, nicest and innocent of all my friends was supposed to meet her boyfriend in a couple of days time and everything was well planned out. This gentleman had his leave approved from the top brass of his company after a fair bit of negotiations and this lady had planned everything from studies to friends so as to accomodate some time for themselves. Everything was in place for exams and dates.
The Twist : The schedule was staring at the four of us and was begging to be changed.
To give you an idea - The India divisions of two multi-billion dollar MNC's were slotted on the same day that the exams were supposed to end. So when faced with a difficult choice of asking the companies to come later or changing the academic schedule we chose the latter.
Everything was in place for placements.
The Climax : When plans go haywire especially the ones made you have with your special ones , you are likely to go slightly ballistic. And since I was in close proximity to this friend the first throttle was unleashed at me.
Perfectly understandable.
I did all I could to comfort her. Evidently , it wasn't working then.There was a five minute slight altercation after which both of us got back together .
Some movies leave a lot to open for interpretation by the audience so here's my take on the entire script.
#1: People seldom accept that they cant have the best of everything. They want the best of deals on roads, with people, with grades and with dates. I dont have a problem that they do.
I have a problem when they cant and and have to blame someone/something for it .
#2: Expect,expect ,expect and you have had it! The degree of unrest in one's life is proportionate to what one expects out of it. We attribute some of our failures to chicanery,unfairness in public life and misfortune. My question is why shudn't there be any of these. In life there are no rules for good . Things are meant to be unpredictable and it is better if they are unpredictable . Imagine knowing everything about tumro and a year down the line and planning accordingly.Would be such a mundane thing to know whats coming next.
The element of chance that has made so many lives is what makes many look forward to life everyday.
#3: How much is enough? Its been proved beyond doubt that there is a concept of Diminishing Utility in all that we use and consume. If I take "Time spent with Loved Ones" as a utility realistically speaking .. how much is enough really?
I cant take the argument that its unlimited cos at some point one HAS to get bored of the other.
And sometimes people say to this that "You don't know about it.Its different in our case " .
The fact of the matter is that they cant accept the fact that they are no different.
Having invested so much of time,money and energy in a relationship how can anyone acknowledge that its led to boredom? : D
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
I am alive!
And my blog works.
Schedule . Its a burden when one has to stick to it. And the Marketing Schedule has been a stinker in the last couple of weeks. And it continues for people who have taken Fin Minor. They have a Mid Term tumro.
Thanks Shweta, for talking.
Will be back soon with a topic to write. : ))
Schedule . Its a burden when one has to stick to it. And the Marketing Schedule has been a stinker in the last couple of weeks. And it continues for people who have taken Fin Minor. They have a Mid Term tumro.
Thanks Shweta, for talking.
Will be back soon with a topic to write. : ))
Monday, July 04, 2005
Damn... I knew it would be difficult
Sis’ marriage.
Dad, you are an absolute gem.
A New Chapter begins for us.
God Willing, I should be back in institute tomorrow by this time.
P.S. : Kerala-the state- You are beautiful but you s**k.
You love it when things don’t move. You thrive on holidays and you are at your best when you have nothing to do.
In my five years of education here , I have seen more hartals, strikes and lockouts than in my other 13 years of educational and professional life elsewhere in India (read U.P.,Rajasthan,Assam,Karnataka and Maharshtra) . I don’t quite get it when for every issue that you want to bring to public notice you have to resort to stoppage of work.
I wonder how they do it in other states in India. On second thoughts I think I know how they do it in other states without disrupting normal public life.
Dad, you are an absolute gem.
A New Chapter begins for us.
God Willing, I should be back in institute tomorrow by this time.
P.S. : Kerala-the state- You are beautiful but you s**k.
You love it when things don’t move. You thrive on holidays and you are at your best when you have nothing to do.
In my five years of education here , I have seen more hartals, strikes and lockouts than in my other 13 years of educational and professional life elsewhere in India (read U.P.,Rajasthan,Assam,Karnataka and Maharshtra) . I don’t quite get it when for every issue that you want to bring to public notice you have to resort to stoppage of work.
I wonder how they do it in other states in India. On second thoughts I think I know how they do it in other states without disrupting normal public life.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
To a Halt
Life has been blinding fast in Second Year.
Come to think of it life has been blinding fast ever since I was born.
Shillong,Gauhati,Jaipur,Hapur,Ghaziabad,Najibabad,Ghaziabad,Punalur,Trivandrum,Bangalore and now Mumbai have been cities of habitat for atleast one year. As a result we were always shuttling places,homes and schools. Though I used to hate the relocation then , when I come to think of it now I think it was damn exciting and if I were to go it all over again, I would.
And somehow Second Year was a rewind in time if you replace those places with Dome3,Dome 1, NCR1, GW Room,Faculty Block B,Chandan and Bistro. Its been a lil more exciting and refreshing than first year.But its still been a grind.
And finally when I wake up tomorrow ,I wont have to think of any of these cos I am going home. Sis' marriage is gonna be a good break . A break from ambitions, perceptions and illusions of my own ...and others'.
Break in more ways than one. Growing up with someone and then letting go is not easy. And for someone like me who would'nt even let go of his CD's ,Books and Cassettes to anyone its gonna be a lesson in abstinence.
And its gonna be fun to get back home cos the last time I went ,it was for less than 60 hours!
Come to think of it life has been blinding fast ever since I was born.
Shillong,Gauhati,Jaipur,Hapur,Ghaziabad,Najibabad,Ghaziabad,Punalur,Trivandrum,Bangalore and now Mumbai have been cities of habitat for atleast one year. As a result we were always shuttling places,homes and schools. Though I used to hate the relocation then , when I come to think of it now I think it was damn exciting and if I were to go it all over again, I would.
And somehow Second Year was a rewind in time if you replace those places with Dome3,Dome 1, NCR1, GW Room,Faculty Block B,Chandan and Bistro. Its been a lil more exciting and refreshing than first year.But its still been a grind.
And finally when I wake up tomorrow ,I wont have to think of any of these cos I am going home. Sis' marriage is gonna be a good break . A break from ambitions, perceptions and illusions of my own ...and others'.
Break in more ways than one. Growing up with someone and then letting go is not easy. And for someone like me who would'nt even let go of his CD's ,Books and Cassettes to anyone its gonna be a lesson in abstinence.
And its gonna be fun to get back home cos the last time I went ,it was for less than 60 hours!
Friday, June 24, 2005
Spurrrss does it!
And I love it!
After 6 days of waking up in the morning at 8:30 and realizing that it was too late to watch the Game N (where 1<=N <7) of the NBA finals I was finally up in time for Game 7 today . What it did mean though was that I had to relinquish the Consumer Behavior class at 9 in favor of the game. It was'nt a difficult choice to make. A spot survey revealed that most of the guys were yet to wake up thanks to the absolutely gorgeous weather Mumbai has been blessed with in the last few days that keeps snugging you back to your bed.
It also brought back days of college to my mind when it was never too regular to miss class for a good game of NBA or Cricket.
Game 7 for Spurs , unexpectedly rather. They should have closed it in Game 6 having ridden on another of Horry's clutch rippers in Game 5 . The game was rather sober in terms of excitement.Pistons were never in it at any point of time baring maybe a phase in the third quarter.And Duncan made sure he did everything right from assists to rebounds to jump shots.
Just felt great to start a day with an NBA final after a long time! : D
After 6 days of waking up in the morning at 8:30 and realizing that it was too late to watch the Game N (where 1<=N <7) of the NBA finals I was finally up in time for Game 7 today . What it did mean though was that I had to relinquish the Consumer Behavior class at 9 in favor of the game. It was'nt a difficult choice to make. A spot survey revealed that most of the guys were yet to wake up thanks to the absolutely gorgeous weather Mumbai has been blessed with in the last few days that keeps snugging you back to your bed.
It also brought back days of college to my mind when it was never too regular to miss class for a good game of NBA or Cricket.
Game 7 for Spurs , unexpectedly rather. They should have closed it in Game 6 having ridden on another of Horry's clutch rippers in Game 5 . The game was rather sober in terms of excitement.Pistons were never in it at any point of time baring maybe a phase in the third quarter.And Duncan made sure he did everything right from assists to rebounds to jump shots.
Just felt great to start a day with an NBA final after a long time! : D
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
To Bro' ...
Cant recollect who called whom Bro first but it stuck on. And its been like that since quite some time now. The first time I saw him last June ,I found him to be very intense and focussed. Looking down on the ground whenever he walked, with a hunch ,a bag laden on his back sporting a ponytail, his hairlocks became a butt for all the ragging the seniors could unleash on him. He was too grown for some of the things they threw at him yet he walked through it all. Big steps and a cigarette would add to his mysterious demeanour.
Is he serious ? Is he studious? He must paint well, he had an exhibition in Bangalore na? Or is he a wannabe rocker who formed his own rock band that could not stand the test of time? He attracted people. You wanted to go near him but you dint know how he would react.
I was talking about Gallows Pole one day while coming back after one of those long ragging nights. And he overheard me and he started singing the song. Thus began a conversation that has not ended ever since. Another of those conversations ended 5 mins back on the phone yet you keep replaying what you spoke or what you heard ...in your mind.
Bro is like that. You can't let go of him. He would stand in a corner and you would walk up to him. It was good to be in his company.He cracked jokes out of nowhere, he narrated tales like he lived through them, he made you laugh on you. You wanted to be with him and be seen as " I was with him...". He had an aura unmatched by anyone. He stood tall , physically and figuratively.
He lived his life kingsize. Criticism couldn't scathe him , ridicule would'nt touch him and diktats never existed in his life. Often I have looked upto him and asked myself "When would I ever be like him? " . And I bet my head on this that there have been many who have asked themselves the same question. Stylishly fearless and boisterously upbeat about life,was he.
Bro had a close set of friends and he lived for them.I was one among those. And together we went through a lot in the first 3 months.Then things happened. Things that were and were not within our control.And those things that were within our control also started drifting away from us. It was evident.
We kept watching from the stands. Bro , meanwhile , found a new meaning for himself. He tried with all his might to stem the tide. He couldn't .He tried harder. He still couldn't. Nothing was wrong with what was happening.
Life sometimes simply disowns you. If you chase it , it runs away.
It could have fuckin' happened to me , to Rajeev , to Anurag, to Farhan, to Anish. It dint.
It happened to Bro...And today Bro is at crossroads. I shudder to think what goes over his mind when he travels in that train from Andheri to Borivali , sometimes 3 times a day. Bro still laughs , makes us laugh on us and criticism I hope won't scathe him and ridicule I know does'nt touch him. Today ,Bro is fighting the battle of his life and his friends are cheering him from the stands.
Bro , you have been one man all of us have looked up to for a smile , a hug , a pat on the shoulder, a "Go Suchi Go..." .
You've given us reasons to look at life and say " Yes, I love you Life.." ,you have given us times we will carry to our heavens and say with pride " Yes, I was with RB", you have taught us to take shit and say " Yes, I will fight it out" . You are going through this phase cos God wills it. You are the only one in this world who can take this and walk out of it with your head held high. Irrespective of what you decide today , it is a new beginning for you and it holds promises, that only you can fulfil.And all of us are with you all the way...
For us you are the world , Bro .And we love you!
It began that night ,last June and nothing has changed since then, nothing will!
Is he serious ? Is he studious? He must paint well, he had an exhibition in Bangalore na? Or is he a wannabe rocker who formed his own rock band that could not stand the test of time? He attracted people. You wanted to go near him but you dint know how he would react.
I was talking about Gallows Pole one day while coming back after one of those long ragging nights. And he overheard me and he started singing the song. Thus began a conversation that has not ended ever since. Another of those conversations ended 5 mins back on the phone yet you keep replaying what you spoke or what you heard ...in your mind.
Bro is like that. You can't let go of him. He would stand in a corner and you would walk up to him. It was good to be in his company.He cracked jokes out of nowhere, he narrated tales like he lived through them, he made you laugh on you. You wanted to be with him and be seen as " I was with him...". He had an aura unmatched by anyone. He stood tall , physically and figuratively.
He lived his life kingsize. Criticism couldn't scathe him , ridicule would'nt touch him and diktats never existed in his life. Often I have looked upto him and asked myself "When would I ever be like him? " . And I bet my head on this that there have been many who have asked themselves the same question. Stylishly fearless and boisterously upbeat about life,was he.
Bro had a close set of friends and he lived for them.I was one among those. And together we went through a lot in the first 3 months.Then things happened. Things that were and were not within our control.And those things that were within our control also started drifting away from us. It was evident.
We kept watching from the stands. Bro , meanwhile , found a new meaning for himself. He tried with all his might to stem the tide. He couldn't .He tried harder. He still couldn't. Nothing was wrong with what was happening.
Life sometimes simply disowns you. If you chase it , it runs away.
It could have fuckin' happened to me , to Rajeev , to Anurag, to Farhan, to Anish. It dint.
It happened to Bro...And today Bro is at crossroads. I shudder to think what goes over his mind when he travels in that train from Andheri to Borivali , sometimes 3 times a day. Bro still laughs , makes us laugh on us and criticism I hope won't scathe him and ridicule I know does'nt touch him. Today ,Bro is fighting the battle of his life and his friends are cheering him from the stands.
Bro , you have been one man all of us have looked up to for a smile , a hug , a pat on the shoulder, a "Go Suchi Go..." .
You've given us reasons to look at life and say " Yes, I love you Life.." ,you have given us times we will carry to our heavens and say with pride " Yes, I was with RB", you have taught us to take shit and say " Yes, I will fight it out" . You are going through this phase cos God wills it. You are the only one in this world who can take this and walk out of it with your head held high. Irrespective of what you decide today , it is a new beginning for you and it holds promises, that only you can fulfil.And all of us are with you all the way...
For us you are the world , Bro .And we love you!
It began that night ,last June and nothing has changed since then, nothing will!
Sunday, June 12, 2005
A Quick Recap
"Ready to go another night?" , I asked Aranyak , the master craftsman of SPJIMR
" I am ready to go till tumro night" pat came the reply.
This, after a 3 hour stint with an elusive Goddess called Sleep . And in it together were 5 of us at the Boys Hostel.Add to it another 143 of my batchmates in different hostels staying awake in the vicinity of the Bhavan's campus and you know have an assignment that was screwing you left ,right and center.
And it's such a relief now that it got over. I had mentioned in my previous post that the Media Project was gonna take a lot of time. So much so that I knew that it wud be impossible for me to post and now that its over, here I am.
The last four days have been boisterously loud and belligerent. And I am so so happy to be a part of this batch that eggs each other on , that trusts each other and that laughs,weeps and celebrates together.
Moreover not many people get that chance to celebrate with 146 others.. (yes.. Nishant was sleeping) . Try it some day if you can. Its unconventional but its good for your health. : ))
" I am ready to go till tumro night" pat came the reply.
This, after a 3 hour stint with an elusive Goddess called Sleep . And in it together were 5 of us at the Boys Hostel.Add to it another 143 of my batchmates in different hostels staying awake in the vicinity of the Bhavan's campus and you know have an assignment that was screwing you left ,right and center.
And it's such a relief now that it got over. I had mentioned in my previous post that the Media Project was gonna take a lot of time. So much so that I knew that it wud be impossible for me to post and now that its over, here I am.
The last four days have been boisterously loud and belligerent. And I am so so happy to be a part of this batch that eggs each other on , that trusts each other and that laughs,weeps and celebrates together.
Moreover not many people get that chance to celebrate with 146 others.. (yes.. Nishant was sleeping) . Try it some day if you can. Its unconventional but its good for your health. : ))
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Phew!
Two things:
1.Good things happening at too fast a pace .
2.Really having to compromise on my sleep nowadays.
Was a lil grumpy a couple of days back but learning to live with a lot of things-good and bad.
Have already thought what my next post would be but would find hard to find time until next week.
1.Good things happening at too fast a pace .
2.Really having to compromise on my sleep nowadays.
Was a lil grumpy a couple of days back but learning to live with a lot of things-good and bad.
Have already thought what my next post would be but would find hard to find time until next week.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Phat Phish Records
Its gotta have some intrinsic value ,a deeper connotation , a salvage value of some kind for them to have come out with a music production company named Phat Phish.
Anyway the company has hit it big with Rabbi Shergills' debut album. The company which is promoted by a former Channel V programme director Anand Surarpur and is a classic case of a company making news without any effort of trying to push itself. 2 days ago I would have dismissed Phat Phish as a non-descript endeavor by a miscreant to imitate the sounds of the nocturnal or the underwater.Today I am trying to find what's the company doing with a name like that only to realize that the company does not have a website.
.
But what really got me to write today is the stunning english version of lyrics on that album of the song ' Tere Bin' sung by the man of the moment Rabbi Shergill.
Producing an excerpt from the song:
Besides you my love,
I shant't find another.
Beside you, no one else
shall shade me in the sun.
I found today a note of yours
On which you had scribbled
A Varis Shah couplet.
Upon reading which a teardrop fell.
What was locked in my eyes
was revealed today.
That other than you
these tears of mine,
wont be kissed by none else.
That other than you,
these tears of mine
will wither in the dust.
- Rabbi (2005)
Anyway the company has hit it big with Rabbi Shergills' debut album. The company which is promoted by a former Channel V programme director Anand Surarpur and is a classic case of a company making news without any effort of trying to push itself. 2 days ago I would have dismissed Phat Phish as a non-descript endeavor by a miscreant to imitate the sounds of the nocturnal or the underwater.Today I am trying to find what's the company doing with a name like that only to realize that the company does not have a website.
.
But what really got me to write today is the stunning english version of lyrics on that album of the song ' Tere Bin' sung by the man of the moment Rabbi Shergill.
Producing an excerpt from the song:
Besides you my love,
I shant't find another.
Beside you, no one else
shall shade me in the sun.
I found today a note of yours
On which you had scribbled
A Varis Shah couplet.
Upon reading which a teardrop fell.
What was locked in my eyes
was revealed today.
That other than you
these tears of mine,
wont be kissed by none else.
That other than you,
these tears of mine
will wither in the dust.
- Rabbi (2005)
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Unrest Unjustified?
Its one of those days when you pause and think if you are going where you wanted to go.Coming back to that favorite movie of mine in which Jack Nicholson playing Col. Nathan Jessop menacingly declares :
"Son, we follow orders or people die.Its that simple. " leads me to think what will happen if I don't follow orders ,don't study and don't complete my assignments . Instead? And if I do all of that where do I land finally?Doing what?
Friends around me are talking about company and sector preferences and so am I and compared to most here I have set my priorities (read electives,sectors,specialization et al) right just like everyone else would like to believe! So lets say another year down the line all of us join the company that we want to . And work 9-5 or 5-9 as the case may be and watch movies on weekends or party the hell out and come back to work on Monday. And along the way build a home, buy durables , get a life partner and live your life thinking you have made the most of it and have been successful at that.
I can picture myself doing all of the above and it scares me.
To live my life in anonymity like millions others who save,invest,dine out,sleep,have kids and rot in their living mired by the trappings of a society that encourages survival instincts more than pursuit of excellence is not what I would ever be proud of in my grave.
So what do I do or what does anyone else who is not excited by all of this do ?
I thought of it and the answer unsurprisingly is zip. There must be many who would have thought of this before and been in a similar jam as to what would they should have done. As this is post is already replete with conjectures here's another one. My bet is there would have been two reactions from different sets of people.
One group would have laughed it off. They would have told themselves it is an output of the devil's workshop and that they would be of course happy with their lives post placements.They would be getting a plum post, plummer salaries, travel oppurtunities, plush accomodation and all of that would easily offset anything else that they sacrifice and that all of this would be an excellent ROI on their education thus far.
And what would the other group do?
Slip into oblivion?
Can't hazard a guess on this one because most of the people you get to speak to with belong to the first group .
You should not have free days in B-Schools. Am reminded of a song that was penned by the timeless Dire Straits in 1979 and all I needed to do was to substitute 'girl' in that song with 'life' to sum up what's going on over my mind right now...
"Where do you think you're going
Don't you know it's dark outside
Where do you think you're going
Don't you care about my pride
Where do you think you're going
I think you don't know
You got no way of knowing
You got no place to go
I understand your changes
How long before you reach the door
I know where you think you're going
I know what you came here for
And now I'm sick of joking
You know I like you to be free
Where do you think you're going
I think you'd better go with me, life "
If you ain't with me, life, you're gonna be without me!
"Son, we follow orders or people die.Its that simple. " leads me to think what will happen if I don't follow orders ,don't study and don't complete my assignments . Instead? And if I do all of that where do I land finally?Doing what?
Friends around me are talking about company and sector preferences and so am I and compared to most here I have set my priorities (read electives,sectors,specialization et al) right just like everyone else would like to believe! So lets say another year down the line all of us join the company that we want to . And work 9-5 or 5-9 as the case may be and watch movies on weekends or party the hell out and come back to work on Monday. And along the way build a home, buy durables , get a life partner and live your life thinking you have made the most of it and have been successful at that.
I can picture myself doing all of the above and it scares me.
To live my life in anonymity like millions others who save,invest,dine out,sleep,have kids and rot in their living mired by the trappings of a society that encourages survival instincts more than pursuit of excellence is not what I would ever be proud of in my grave.
So what do I do or what does anyone else who is not excited by all of this do ?
I thought of it and the answer unsurprisingly is zip. There must be many who would have thought of this before and been in a similar jam as to what would they should have done. As this is post is already replete with conjectures here's another one. My bet is there would have been two reactions from different sets of people.
One group would have laughed it off. They would have told themselves it is an output of the devil's workshop and that they would be of course happy with their lives post placements.They would be getting a plum post, plummer salaries, travel oppurtunities, plush accomodation and all of that would easily offset anything else that they sacrifice and that all of this would be an excellent ROI on their education thus far.
And what would the other group do?
Slip into oblivion?
Can't hazard a guess on this one because most of the people you get to speak to with belong to the first group .
You should not have free days in B-Schools. Am reminded of a song that was penned by the timeless Dire Straits in 1979 and all I needed to do was to substitute 'girl' in that song with 'life' to sum up what's going on over my mind right now...
"Where do you think you're going
Don't you know it's dark outside
Where do you think you're going
Don't you care about my pride
Where do you think you're going
I think you don't know
You got no way of knowing
You got no place to go
I understand your changes
How long before you reach the door
I know where you think you're going
I know what you came here for
And now I'm sick of joking
You know I like you to be free
Where do you think you're going
I think you'd better go with me, life "
If you ain't with me, life, you're gonna be without me!
Monday, May 16, 2005
Damn!
Finops was 5 runs close of pushing us into the finals and they could'nt.A truly wonderful end to the last of the league matches. The finals would be between Finops and IM.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Hands Full
Aakraman,Placom-2,Admap Report , Dada and the Marketing Project. I literally have my hands full.And as always only one among the above 5 listed are academic . ; ))
Having a whale of a time in the second year.DoCC was good but was missing the hecticskedasticity of SPJIMR and while others here think I am mad to say this but given a choice betweek 6 weeks at DoCC again and SPJIMR I would choose my institute any day of the week and twice over on a Sunday.
Just played IM in the second round robin game and couldnt pull off a win.We have played 4 games thus far with 2 wins and 2 losses. Fair result. We have beaten both the teams on the basis of simple good old classy cricket.Finops play IM tomorrow .If they win we move into the finals and there is the hitch. I know for a fact that Finops is much more wary of us as a team than IM and even in the match that we lost by 8 runs they were more relieved than happy to win the game. We had freaking caught them by the scruff of their neck and wrung them badly until the last three overs.So it could be touch and go tumro. We are a lil short of ability when compared to both the teams but we more than make up for it by just being there in the field.
Cant wait to get back right there in the middle.I want one more shot at Finops and I want it this Thursday in the Finals!
Having a whale of a time in the second year.DoCC was good but was missing the hecticskedasticity of SPJIMR and while others here think I am mad to say this but given a choice betweek 6 weeks at DoCC again and SPJIMR I would choose my institute any day of the week and twice over on a Sunday.
Just played IM in the second round robin game and couldnt pull off a win.We have played 4 games thus far with 2 wins and 2 losses. Fair result. We have beaten both the teams on the basis of simple good old classy cricket.Finops play IM tomorrow .If they win we move into the finals and there is the hitch. I know for a fact that Finops is much more wary of us as a team than IM and even in the match that we lost by 8 runs they were more relieved than happy to win the game. We had freaking caught them by the scruff of their neck and wrung them badly until the last three overs.So it could be touch and go tumro. We are a lil short of ability when compared to both the teams but we more than make up for it by just being there in the field.
Cant wait to get back right there in the middle.I want one more shot at Finops and I want it this Thursday in the Finals!
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Evening Samosas
It is one hell of a sexy evening in Delhi and since my DoCC report is nowhere remotely close to a point of completion I am at Cyril’s home listening to FM (the radio for Christ’s sake and not my favorite subject : D ) and thinking about what should go in the report.
I had experienced it before and it still holds true. If it rains on an evening in Delhi and you happen to be in the city you should thank your lucky stars cos it’s the best life can offer you on earth. It’s got a very earthy feel but it makes you believe heaven must be similar. And since typing a sad report wasn’t exactly my way of spending an evening like this I ventured out for a walk.
The drizzle, the breeze and the wet road! Truly truly romantic. Kinda wished someone were close and then shut it out. Couldn’t boil down that someone to one person ;)).
So what better way to spend an evening like today’s than devouring a couple of Samosas? My destination became the nearest sweet store and while I was feasting on them with a 7-Up in hand, a teenaged guy walked into the store and bought ten eggs. And suddenly I was taken back to my days in Ghaziabad when I used to buy Samosas by the dozens on such evenings and the entire family would sit at the dining table and wipe the plates so clean that they required no Scotch Brite.Hero, my dog would add to the fun by running around the table and end up not having dinner for a couple of days after such a feast.
Damn man... I was missing home! I have been in and out of home since the last 5 years and the last two years have been particularly bad in this regard. My calculation tells me in the last two years since May 2003 I would not have spent more than 30 days at home. Worse than an Army Officer maybe. The Samosas unexpectedly lost their punch and the 7-Up was no longer keeping me cool.
And then another guy walked in. This time a working executive on his way back from office- it appeared from his formal dressing. And he ordered – “Bhaiyya ek Samosa pack kar dena”.
“Life’s not bad”, I said to myself .And I smiled. The spicy punch in the Samosas was back.
I had experienced it before and it still holds true. If it rains on an evening in Delhi and you happen to be in the city you should thank your lucky stars cos it’s the best life can offer you on earth. It’s got a very earthy feel but it makes you believe heaven must be similar. And since typing a sad report wasn’t exactly my way of spending an evening like this I ventured out for a walk.
The drizzle, the breeze and the wet road! Truly truly romantic. Kinda wished someone were close and then shut it out. Couldn’t boil down that someone to one person ;)).
So what better way to spend an evening like today’s than devouring a couple of Samosas? My destination became the nearest sweet store and while I was feasting on them with a 7-Up in hand, a teenaged guy walked into the store and bought ten eggs. And suddenly I was taken back to my days in Ghaziabad when I used to buy Samosas by the dozens on such evenings and the entire family would sit at the dining table and wipe the plates so clean that they required no Scotch Brite.Hero, my dog would add to the fun by running around the table and end up not having dinner for a couple of days after such a feast.
Damn man... I was missing home! I have been in and out of home since the last 5 years and the last two years have been particularly bad in this regard. My calculation tells me in the last two years since May 2003 I would not have spent more than 30 days at home. Worse than an Army Officer maybe. The Samosas unexpectedly lost their punch and the 7-Up was no longer keeping me cool.
And then another guy walked in. This time a working executive on his way back from office- it appeared from his formal dressing. And he ordered – “Bhaiyya ek Samosa pack kar dena”.
“Life’s not bad”, I said to myself .And I smiled. The spicy punch in the Samosas was back.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Silent Valley
I grew up listening to stories of Kashmir at home. Words like Insurgency, militant occupation, the Hurriyat, Kargil, Nuclear tests, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif used to be buzzwords in conversations over coffee and dinner ever since I remember. They used to resonate in the drawing rooms of the houses I stayed in because Dad always took a keen interest in the happenings of that region .He used to be very vocal in discussions with his friends and relatives and for me Dad gradually became the symbol of the Great Indian Middle Class.
The Great Indian Middle Class (GIMC for purposes of this post) is the group that rules in India yet suffers the most. This group can unsettle politicians and cricketers alike. They are simple people, pay taxes regularly and more importantly stay away from ‘jhamelas’. In essence they follow the simple “Live and Let Live” policy in letter and spirit. And probably that’s why every time Dad heard of a bomb blast at Anantnag or Srinagar he would be a little disturbed. And this class can only think, talk, hope and pray that things be peaceful. They are found in the “Letters to the Editor”, on television chat shows and in drawing room discussions in homes like yours truly. And lemme also add they are the people who can rattle Indira Gandhi at her peak and more than two decades down the line allow her daughter-in-law to rule our nation when every opinion poll in the country thought otherwise.
Around 2000 Vikram Chandra (of NDTV) wrote a book called “The Srinagar Conspiracy” and we bought it. That made things easier for me to understand. The author had used a fictional plot to sketch Kashmir’s history and since then even I began to follow the saga called Kashmir in papers and news magazines. Soon I read my second book on Kashmir “A Soldier’s Diary”, an account of the Kargil War by Harinder Baweja, an India Today journalist and sooner than I realized I became the partner for Dad to discuss our country’s politicians tryst with Kashmir. I was glad at the promotion from a bystander to a participant in those discussions.
And then I left home in 2003 and whenever I went back home for a week or so we never found an opportunity to talk Kashmir. Things were relatively peaceful in the last couple of years compared to the tumultuous years before. However I and Dad did watch the results of the historic elections in J&K together and that was the last we spoke on Kashmir I guess.
And today a bus carrying 21 passengers from Srinagar and 29 passengers from Muzaffarabad set forth to Muzaffarabad and Srinagar respectively. The event was telecast live on all Indian news channels and since I had to work on my presentation I was at home fortunate enough to see the passengers from either side of the Loc across a Bridge painted in white at Salamabad. A truly momentous occasion cos for some for some of the passengers this was a trip after 57 years of separation. The two passengers from Pakistan who knelt and kissed the Indian soil symbolized the very fact that all this while this piece of land on the other side of the bridge had remained elusive for reasons unknown to themselves and their friends, relatives and acquaintances on either side of bone of contention called Line of Control.
Separation must have hurt some of those passengers. And when they heard of this bus service they would have thought - “You never know when either India or Pakistan would condemn each other and would call this off. Let’s book a ticket anyway. I might catch a glimpse of some of my nephews who have grown up to be grandfathers since I saw them last or (did I?)”
And so a handful of people on either side of the divide booked tickets and on our side we even had a hotel booked on the eve of the departure of bus for the tourists. And then some people for the cause of ‘freedom’ chose to bomb those very people whose cause they were purportedly furthering. Of course they thought in a minute would come the condemnation by India and the rebuttal by Pakistan and the engines of those two buses that were scheduled to leave the next morning at 11 from Srinagar and Muzaffarabad would remain cold forever.
So the Great India Middle Class again thought and talked and asked.
“Would the bus service go ahead?”
And a gentleman voted recently as the best parliamentarian ordered his men.
“Aye”
And a general from the other end reverberated. And so did his Deputy in between the border.
“Aye”
And the passengers on either side of the border said
“Aye”
And finally they arrived. They met their long lost brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, uncles and aunties and wives (Okie that’s a metaphor!) and they celebrated.
And the GIMC celebrated too by thinking, talking and writing to the editors.They don’t get enough reasons anyway to do all of that with a smile on their faces.
The last I heard from my sister was that Dad was on phone talking about it and watching every news channel of every fathomable regional language.
The Great Indian Middle Class (GIMC for purposes of this post) is the group that rules in India yet suffers the most. This group can unsettle politicians and cricketers alike. They are simple people, pay taxes regularly and more importantly stay away from ‘jhamelas’. In essence they follow the simple “Live and Let Live” policy in letter and spirit. And probably that’s why every time Dad heard of a bomb blast at Anantnag or Srinagar he would be a little disturbed. And this class can only think, talk, hope and pray that things be peaceful. They are found in the “Letters to the Editor”, on television chat shows and in drawing room discussions in homes like yours truly. And lemme also add they are the people who can rattle Indira Gandhi at her peak and more than two decades down the line allow her daughter-in-law to rule our nation when every opinion poll in the country thought otherwise.
Around 2000 Vikram Chandra (of NDTV) wrote a book called “The Srinagar Conspiracy” and we bought it. That made things easier for me to understand. The author had used a fictional plot to sketch Kashmir’s history and since then even I began to follow the saga called Kashmir in papers and news magazines. Soon I read my second book on Kashmir “A Soldier’s Diary”, an account of the Kargil War by Harinder Baweja, an India Today journalist and sooner than I realized I became the partner for Dad to discuss our country’s politicians tryst with Kashmir. I was glad at the promotion from a bystander to a participant in those discussions.
And then I left home in 2003 and whenever I went back home for a week or so we never found an opportunity to talk Kashmir. Things were relatively peaceful in the last couple of years compared to the tumultuous years before. However I and Dad did watch the results of the historic elections in J&K together and that was the last we spoke on Kashmir I guess.
And today a bus carrying 21 passengers from Srinagar and 29 passengers from Muzaffarabad set forth to Muzaffarabad and Srinagar respectively. The event was telecast live on all Indian news channels and since I had to work on my presentation I was at home fortunate enough to see the passengers from either side of the Loc across a Bridge painted in white at Salamabad. A truly momentous occasion cos for some for some of the passengers this was a trip after 57 years of separation. The two passengers from Pakistan who knelt and kissed the Indian soil symbolized the very fact that all this while this piece of land on the other side of the bridge had remained elusive for reasons unknown to themselves and their friends, relatives and acquaintances on either side of bone of contention called Line of Control.
Separation must have hurt some of those passengers. And when they heard of this bus service they would have thought - “You never know when either India or Pakistan would condemn each other and would call this off. Let’s book a ticket anyway. I might catch a glimpse of some of my nephews who have grown up to be grandfathers since I saw them last or (did I?)”
And so a handful of people on either side of the divide booked tickets and on our side we even had a hotel booked on the eve of the departure of bus for the tourists. And then some people for the cause of ‘freedom’ chose to bomb those very people whose cause they were purportedly furthering. Of course they thought in a minute would come the condemnation by India and the rebuttal by Pakistan and the engines of those two buses that were scheduled to leave the next morning at 11 from Srinagar and Muzaffarabad would remain cold forever.
So the Great India Middle Class again thought and talked and asked.
“Would the bus service go ahead?”
And a gentleman voted recently as the best parliamentarian ordered his men.
“Aye”
And a general from the other end reverberated. And so did his Deputy in between the border.
“Aye”
And the passengers on either side of the border said
“Aye”
And finally they arrived. They met their long lost brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, uncles and aunties and wives (Okie that’s a metaphor!) and they celebrated.
And the GIMC celebrated too by thinking, talking and writing to the editors.They don’t get enough reasons anyway to do all of that with a smile on their faces.
The last I heard from my sister was that Dad was on phone talking about it and watching every news channel of every fathomable regional language.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Summer of '98
Preface: This post is dedicated to the storm that unleashed its fury while I and Gaurav were cycling on our way back after our evening net practice and the cell diagram that I and Jaydeep drew as a part of our Biology internal exam for our standard X Boards. It’s also dedicated to the ‘Versatile’ Vijay, the computer geek called Ajith and a lady who can play my mother, sister and girlfriend all through my life-Ritika. Ritika is studying hard for her CA exams and I would not be able to refer anything about her without exceeding permissible lengths of writing on a single post hence this post will be restricted to the first two names listed above.
Prologue: All the proper nouns in the paragraph above are those of my friends during the summer of ’98. We had shifted to Ghaziabad in 1996 and I was admitted to the eighth standard in St. Mary’s School, the best school of that district. A district that was more popular for the exploits of its law breakers than anything else. This was the 3rd school that I was studying in that particular year and I decline to comment now the circumstances that led to me being the Rolling Stone for that year. It was in that very year of 1996 that I first spoke to each of these guys.
April 2nd, 2005: Nine years down the line I found myself walking on the same streets with Jaydeep and Gaurav, sitting on the same cycles that we used to race with, eating Aloo Ki Tikki and sipping ‘Chuski’ at the same Chaat Center, still talking about Sachin’s batting and wondering how on earth Deepti Dutta turned mother at the age of 22.
Deepti Dutta was then popularly referred to as “Metro”- a pun on her initials D.D. And the reasons for her popularity well…. I guess it should just suffice to say that she was my first crush in that school. Deepti’s marriage was something that I had laughed off when Gaurav told me in a mail about it but her becoming a Mom did catch me numb for a couple of minutes.
This was a snippet of the weekend that just went by here in Delhi. Had been to Ghaziabad after four years and I realized that some things just don’t change in life and you feel good when they don’t. It was one of those days when you want to thank your Lord for giving you friends who seldom “keep in touch” but don’t let you drown in the crowd, friends who argue with venom and compete with disdain and yet at the end of the day share that all of them did have a soft corner for “Metro” in the same good old Chaat Center called “Husband and Wife”.
Some things just don’t freakin’ change!
Gaurav is still the sophisticated simpleton while Jaydeep is still the firebrand aggressor. And I still play the moderator in the debates on the streets. When I left Ghaziabad on a sunny morning in the summer of 1998 Jaydeep, Gaurav and Vijay were at the door of my house at 7 in the morning to see me off. Gaurav had bought me a copy of “The Art of Fast Bowling” by Dennis Lillee as a souvenir for the trips that both of us had undertaken to parts of U.P. like Guldher, Sanjay Nagar,Roorkee,Muzzafarnagar and numerous other obscure places for playing cricket matches. I remember seeing all three of them in tears that day and I was moist eyed myself. It scared me to think what if I never see them again. And today as I write this I can only thank my Lord for blessing me with their presence in my life cos even today I am a lil scared of never being able to see them again in the rush of this mad mad world.
But for now I am only wondering how to convince them that my cricketing skills haven’t eroded in the last nine years. They seem to think otherwise after a couple of matches we played this last weekend on the same street that I used to rule as a champion.
Why do some things have to change?
Epilogue: Jack Nicholson in the movie “A Few Good Men”- “Wanna tell you something and listen up cos I really mean this .There is nothing sexier on this earth, believe me gentlemen, than a woman that you have to salute in the morning. Promote ‘em all, I say cos this is true. If you haven’t got a b*****b by a superior officer you are just letting the best in life pass you by. ”
Issac M. John in the post “Summer of ’98”- “Wanna tell you something and listen up cos I know this. There is nothing more precious on this earth believe me ladies and gentlemen, than your friends you have grown up with. Never leave them, I say cos this is true. If you haven’t come back with your decade-long friends on the same streets you used to once cycle with your childhood sweetheart with a ‘Chuski’ in hand you are just letting the best in life pass you by. ”
Prologue: All the proper nouns in the paragraph above are those of my friends during the summer of ’98. We had shifted to Ghaziabad in 1996 and I was admitted to the eighth standard in St. Mary’s School, the best school of that district. A district that was more popular for the exploits of its law breakers than anything else. This was the 3rd school that I was studying in that particular year and I decline to comment now the circumstances that led to me being the Rolling Stone for that year. It was in that very year of 1996 that I first spoke to each of these guys.
April 2nd, 2005: Nine years down the line I found myself walking on the same streets with Jaydeep and Gaurav, sitting on the same cycles that we used to race with, eating Aloo Ki Tikki and sipping ‘Chuski’ at the same Chaat Center, still talking about Sachin’s batting and wondering how on earth Deepti Dutta turned mother at the age of 22.
Deepti Dutta was then popularly referred to as “Metro”- a pun on her initials D.D. And the reasons for her popularity well…. I guess it should just suffice to say that she was my first crush in that school. Deepti’s marriage was something that I had laughed off when Gaurav told me in a mail about it but her becoming a Mom did catch me numb for a couple of minutes.
This was a snippet of the weekend that just went by here in Delhi. Had been to Ghaziabad after four years and I realized that some things just don’t change in life and you feel good when they don’t. It was one of those days when you want to thank your Lord for giving you friends who seldom “keep in touch” but don’t let you drown in the crowd, friends who argue with venom and compete with disdain and yet at the end of the day share that all of them did have a soft corner for “Metro” in the same good old Chaat Center called “Husband and Wife”.
Some things just don’t freakin’ change!
Gaurav is still the sophisticated simpleton while Jaydeep is still the firebrand aggressor. And I still play the moderator in the debates on the streets. When I left Ghaziabad on a sunny morning in the summer of 1998 Jaydeep, Gaurav and Vijay were at the door of my house at 7 in the morning to see me off. Gaurav had bought me a copy of “The Art of Fast Bowling” by Dennis Lillee as a souvenir for the trips that both of us had undertaken to parts of U.P. like Guldher, Sanjay Nagar,Roorkee,Muzzafarnagar and numerous other obscure places for playing cricket matches. I remember seeing all three of them in tears that day and I was moist eyed myself. It scared me to think what if I never see them again. And today as I write this I can only thank my Lord for blessing me with their presence in my life cos even today I am a lil scared of never being able to see them again in the rush of this mad mad world.
But for now I am only wondering how to convince them that my cricketing skills haven’t eroded in the last nine years. They seem to think otherwise after a couple of matches we played this last weekend on the same street that I used to rule as a champion.
Why do some things have to change?
Epilogue: Jack Nicholson in the movie “A Few Good Men”- “Wanna tell you something and listen up cos I really mean this .There is nothing sexier on this earth, believe me gentlemen, than a woman that you have to salute in the morning. Promote ‘em all, I say cos this is true. If you haven’t got a b*****b by a superior officer you are just letting the best in life pass you by. ”
Issac M. John in the post “Summer of ’98”- “Wanna tell you something and listen up cos I know this. There is nothing more precious on this earth believe me ladies and gentlemen, than your friends you have grown up with. Never leave them, I say cos this is true. If you haven’t come back with your decade-long friends on the same streets you used to once cycle with your childhood sweetheart with a ‘Chuski’ in hand you are just letting the best in life pass you by. ”
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