Stupendously Sublime

A journey of 2176 km....the journey of a lifetime

2012-01-21T01:54:00.000+05:30

The Praetorians, an elite band of soldiers dedicated to protecting the life of the Roman emperor , the elite guard of the king, the best of the best, period. When all else fails the praetorians don't and that is what we are about.

In servitutem MHROD, is our motto and our king is MHROD. we have have had shared glory, some for ourselves and some for our course, but sadness, sadly, is a 2 word sentence, we lost at Great Lakes Institute of Management, a loss that was a long time coming, because everybody loses and the law of averages has to come into play somewhere. The only regret is that we had to travel 2176 kms to experience the bitter taste of defeat. Frankly, the bitter taste lasted as long as i was in that campus after that what defined my time was a simple quote on the T-Shirt of one of the participants, it read "Excellence is a tradition" which made me ask some very difficult questions of myself.
Am I a leader?
Do I deserve to be a leader?
What have i done to motivate, mentor and coach those who need this?
Have i really done the most that i can?

These were some of the hard questions i asked myself and i asked my friend, that we ask what have the world done, but we have never asked what have we done? Have we led effectively, and have we created a tradition of excellence?

Sadly, all i could see was my own inability in doing so, a 1 hour drive along the beautiful coast of Tamil Nadu has made me realise that i have always expected the wrong things and asked the wrong people the right questions. It is time to change that, it is time to return to where i started, a little fanatical, a little obtuse but always dependable and always ready to help.

I have the intent, i have made the journey, now the time is to see whether they accept.

The above paragraphs are best summarised by Linkin Park "When my time comes, forget the wrongs that i've done, help me leave behind some reason to be missed"

As the Phoenix burns...

2011-12-31T23:33:00.001+05:30

We close another year of our lives and brace ourselves to welcome the new one, all i can see is the impending arrival of the year of reckoning,.
This will be my last year of study (fingers crossed :p), and i shall begin in earnest my professional life. which will be my identity for the next, i don't know, 20 something years and this will be if the worst comes to worst.
My dreams are known to those closest to me, and if you don't know them, then maybe i haven't found it in my heart to tell you. Ask me and i shall tell you...or maybe not.
I sincerely hope you would find it worth your while to keep in touh with me and if not, i really really hope that i will want to keep in touch with you.
Infosys BPO was kind enough to want me and i shall keep my intention of being with you, barring an offer which literally blows my mind...
This year brought its trials and tribulations and looking back i think i have acquitted myself well.
Resolutions for the new year: Be kinder to my juniors, help someone be a little better and leave something of value as i move on.
My only question to each and everyone of you as i stop this rather concise post.
"What are we leaving behind as our phoenix burns?"

The Fruit of our Labour

2011-12-30T23:47:00.002+05:30

Circa 28th December, 2011
With the placement of the 24th of us and a dear friend at that, we have traversed a great length in this action packed 2 months. I have seen personal highs and personal lows, i have seen the deserved go unrewarded and the undeserved being felicitated. I have braved grave colds, closed up throats, shortage of manpower and the odd recruiter who insists on showing up 30 mins before her scheduled arrival, without notice. I have seen joyous elation and i have seen dejection, i have seen sorrow so grave that even tears could not escape and i have seen happiness overflowing happily through eyes. I have seen made up thank you's and i have seen heartfelt silences. I have been sad when all were happy and been happy when all were sad. I have seen my teammates go from being the Harlem Globetrotters to the Ghatkopar Karamchari association XI back to being Barcelona. I have seen advice flowing thick, fast and hard with their acknowledgments equally vigorous. I have seen bemused expressions thrown about, innumerable cigarettes being smoked (majorly by only 1guy, yes i'm looking at you Kushalwati), uncountable tea's consumed, epic upon epic discussions from HR strategy to Atul and what makes him Atul (:p sorry had to do that).

The reason i'm writing this is because we've had one of the most enviable placement seasons in the recent history of MHROD, and i hope that we as a team have performed to the people's expectations. If not, well we are not looking for any affirming voice. Yet what disturbs me most is some of the feedback that i have gotten regarding the course, and what disturbs me further is the question that one of our esteemed alumnus asked me.

"What are you doing on a personal front, to make that condition better?"
It is a biting, stinging question and one that seriously needs to be thought over.
My fellow MHRODians Iam thinking, and i need you to think too.

Fun: A way of life

2011-11-18T15:52:00.001+05:30

We have got 6 offers now, only 37 more to get and the road is getting tougher by the minute, the moral quandaries are stacking up and we don' know where to bury our heads...Well enough of reality lets now traverse the realm of my ponderings, and it is a dark place indeed. In a recent conversation with a good friend i was told that he had had enough fun to last him a lifetime and that the time had come for him to get serious about his life, and that got me thinking that is there any concept of enough fun? does this quantity exist where a line demarcates acceptable and unacceptable amount of fun? My life was such that i had to grow up a lot, very very fast and my fun life came later, away from everything and everyone in the serene hills of the Himalaya's.

Reflecting further, i was hit by only one logical conclusion, that fun is not an amount but like spirituality, fun is a way of life. Being in a state of no responsibility, having few to answer to, and doing things you are most passionate about, without reproach or condescension. There is a popular term for someone who lives like this, BUM, yup such persons who do not conform to the rules of society and live for themselves are constantly judged as being no good, ridiculed and looked down upon.

Yet this attitude of society in general, i find richly ironical, it is completely acceptable to say that your goal is to "be happy" and yet here lies the fallacy of the statement, how can happiness be a goal, when happiness is a state of mind bound by no timeline, and yet when someone is practicing his happiness and is genuinely happy, he is called a bum. My judgmental mind gave me a crystal clear solution

"Zindagi mein kuch bhi karoge, sab gaali denge"

So, fun it is, till something better comes along....

The Fruits of our Labour

2011-11-05T15:03:00.001+05:30

4th November, circa 7:00 pm
The tension was palpable, you could have cut it into pieces and served it if it were any thicker, lets say by god's grace or by god's wrath, i was not in such a situation. But, all around the tension, the wait, the expectancy was lying thick like a blanket of fog, and in that fog sitting like a fool was I, the sheer emotions getting to me too.

This state above describes the scenes of the first company on campus, 4 people from my class got placed, they had the odds in their favour, and the thing with odds is that sometimes the high odds lose out too. The result was sounded out in a very pseudo funny manner, i mean take a hint from the faces of the students lady, they are not there to joke. The co. was a highly coveted one and as an MHRODian am proud that it came to our campus. What makes me even more proud was the fact that one of the selected was indeed a dark horse, the underdog (which reminds me of the kasabian song: "See the crowd loves a fighter, a winner to fall") and his was the victory that was greeted with the most vigorous applause, which should explain everything.

On that evening i saw all the ranges of the human emotion, anger, sadness, elation, joy and the warm fuzzy afterglow (agreed its not a certified emotion, but i saw it), now that we have 4 offers, its time to get 39 more, because this was the job that we were being groomed for, for the past 1 and half years, our low knowledge, our embarrassing attendance and our rarely seen face (just wanted to say how we have sacrificed a normal educational experience for the "greater good"). We are now seeing the result of our toil, the road is very long and we know that it will be difficult, full of obstacles and thorns, magar ladenge nahi to jeetenge kaise?

Hence, we begin in earnest to harvest the fruits of our labour.

PS: You will not be acknowledged so i will acknowledge you here, An absolutely wonderful job done by Ms. Annu Pandey, Ms. Mankiran Kaur, Mr. Pawan Dotania, Mr. Rahul Sharma, Ms. Rashi Bigghe, Ms. Smriti Sarpal and Ms. Shishira Saini (especially for her help), a jolly good show keep it up.

PPSS A wise man said on the placement day "Today egos shall be built and egos shall be deflated"

My First Step towards Corporate slavery

2011-10-21T01:06:00.001+05:30

To all my friends, i have spent the last hour using my considerable talents to write something that will eventually curb my free spirit, destroy my cognition and remove all originality from my thought process, i have used the most precious gift of my life to start something that will eventually destroy my life. Cheers for i begin my foray, competing with 42 of the best minds in the country for a goal that will lead to my slavery...Into that hell of corporate life my father let my mind awake

Consulting and the Light Bulb

A consultant (from Latin: consultare "todiscuss") is a professional whoprovides professional or expert advice

Light Bulb: “The incandescent light bulb, incandescentlamp or incandescent light globe makes light by heating a metalfilament wire to a high temperature until it glows. The hot filament isprotected from air by a glass bulb that is filled with inert gas or evacuated”

This is a standard definition that I copied fromWikipedia, which was the first link provided on Google, thus I have used 2 ofthe most widely available and versatile resources available to man, because tothe common man these are the consultants, subject matter experts of a staggeringquality (who don’t charge anything) and depth, almost answers all the daily andsundry questions.

The reason I have started with a definition of thesetwo separate entities is to build a context for what I will say subsequently,because a foundation is needed to begin any consultation, massive or menial,and the most complex of problems have humble beginnings.

The light bulb, a thing of such beauty, of suchsimplicity that it is hardly remarkable, of such utility that life cannot bethought of without it, the staggering knowledge that Thomas Alva Edison took 9999tries before he perfected the model and such was the influence of his inventionthat Edison is rarely remembered for anything else, the fact that he inventedthe phonograph, motion picture camera andseveral other devices, he still and will always remain synonymous with thelight bulb.

A light bulb’s strength is its simplicity, and thatis what a consultant’s strength is as well, the ability to study highly complexsymptoms, to cut through the mire and hullabaloo surrounding a situation and toreach the cause of the symptoms and to advise regarding the solutions in asimple manner so that maximum understanding is achieved and the time the clientspends with a consultant is productive, conducive and minimum. To take anexample from history, Chanakya was a great political thinker, economist,strategist and confidante of Chandragupta Maurya, under the rule of Dhana Nandaof the Nanda dynasty Chanakya vowed to remove him from the throne and installyoung Chandragupta there in his stead, the strategy he followed was one ofattrition from the nanda empire, where the areas away from the core of theempire were converted, conquered or eliminated and consolidated to slowly wrestaway power from the incumbent. The simplicity of this strategy was that it waslearned from a bowl of porridge, where the sides grew colder first and then thebulk of the porridge grew cold.

The light bulb’s utility is amazing and thus aconsultant’s utility is also vast in the types of project he undertakes, fromadvice on how to make a process better to designing the UID program of India,from the geographical manpower planning of the substations of Maharashtra, tothe organizational restructuring of a medical research body, consultingprovides answers to all sundry and gigantic problems. The leverage of resourcesto make businesses better, to make education better, to make anythingconceivable better, that is theutility of consulting. Subutai the greatest general of Temujin (Genghis Khan),made the Mongolian cavalry archers the most feared cavalry ever, because of theleverage of the simple fact that the Mongolians spent their lives on horses,herding cattle.

The light bulb stands for many things and much canbe derived from its characteristics, but the fact is “A light bulb removes darkness; a consultancy removes doubts and opensopportunities”

You know what, i don't blame you for not reading this...its crap anyways.

The Fallacy of life

2011-10-15T00:09:00.000+05:30

This post has been building up within me for a long time, nowadays most of my experiences are with my post grad mates, so if i'm not doing justice to my college days, i'm extremely sorry for that, but thus is the fallacy of life, "out of sight is out of mind", my case in point is that on two occasions i have sacrificed golden opportunities of being with them, my sincerest apologies to Jollinder, Tushar and robin-da whom i had to ditch because of the stupid symposia, and then because of my own ambition, but my ambition is not the subject of this post and neither is my remorse for missed opportunities, this post is the events of one night.

Sitting at Sudama Tea Stall (our hangout from 6-8 pm) we were as usual, having our tea (actually tea flavoured milk) with a great amount of repartee, which at times seems like all of us are on a mission to enter the non veg version of comedy circus (or other such raucous comedy shows), anywho, suddenly all of us noticed a very very pretty girl, i mean to say the reaction by everyone was *mouths open*, until one of us called out "Veerey, ekdum kainth hai" and yes i agree she was absolutely beautiful, so one of my friends said, "I'll go and talk to her on your behalf, you just raise your hand", a million assurances later, the friend started walking across the street to the 2 girls (yes they were 2, and the other one was good looking too, but all of us were blinded by the first one) and spoke with them, she said no (as if she would say yes), but this was not remarkable, what was remarkable was the fact that our friend had said "Seriously soch kar bata, kyaa hoga, wo na hi to bolegi na, waise kaunsi mill rahi hai", and this was the sentiment echoed by Ms. Ester Martinez of people matters, she said if you can reconcile yourself with the absolute worse that can happen, it does not remain daunting. But this lesson too is not what the post is about.

A little later as i was heading home, i saw a mourning family, their house open, all the men gathered outside and the women concentrated inside, and it struck me that no one is prepared for death, no matter how common the knowledge of one's mortality is no one is really willing to admit defeat in the face of death, but we die. This is one worst end which i think no one can reconcile with. Saying a small prayer of peace for the grieving family, i looked forward as the bus moved on, and such is the root that there are many many banquet halls on my way home and invariably i saw parties, revelry and weddings. Brides and Grooms, happily tying the knot and thinking of the utopian future they will have, such is the delusional nature of our life. A sad smile on my lips as i weighed the 3 contrasts of the night

Take those chances in your life, for you might not be able to take them again, because 1 day will surely be our last. The fallacy of life is the mortality of it and thus is the beauty of it.

Victims to our Overzealous Work Ethic

2011-09-04T15:35:00.001+05:30

There seems to be a serious dearth of blogging issues in my mind right now, i can barely churn out one post a month and even that comes after some serious pondering, after 2 years of blogging i can consider myself a veteran of sorts and re-reading my own works is one of the gulity pleasures that i like to revel in, but this post that i'm about to embark upon is something that is a change from my norm of non-serious works, ok not such a big change then :), it has been about 40 days since the junior batch i.e. the MHROD 2013 batch were admitted to our institution and they are a landmark batch of sorts, they were the first in our history to be admitted through the CAT route, and this fact in some converse way makes our batch i.e. MHROD 2012 a landmark batch as well, well more an "end of an era" batch, that students will no longer be from the entrance test mould. Era's and epoch's are meant to end if not today then a few years hence.

But to tell you the truth yours truly was anticipating their coming with bated breath, I had this picture in my head that these guys are 93 percentiles, i mean to say the the top 7 percent of all mangement hopefuls in this country and proportionately my expectations were massive, and not mine alone all of my friends had massive expectations, after the debacle with the senior batch and our subsequent seriousness in work, maybe somewhere we missed a step.

Let me elaborate (I apologise if you are finding this very boring, please bear with me, or if you can't you are more than welcome to navigate away, though i would request you to read on), our expectations were built on a score, a number and with that number we based all of our assumptions and calculations on what the work would be, we assumed that like our senior batch we would be great friends with our juniors as well, hence on our perceptions, we built every single relationship with our juniors and then the batch arrived.

Let me be frank here, the junior batch was far from impressive on the first day, they were insipidly average, not one character shone through, mostly what i saw was a hungover graduation attitude which was not helped by our pathetic teachers and their less than professional attitude. We tried to engage the batch with our extensive on boarding program. Their reactions to the pre-joining and onboarding was such that my first thought was "What the fuck am i doing wasting my time on such nitwits?", sadly this is the attitude that i still carry, Team erudition is proud of their juniors and am very sad to say that i'm still to be impressed by the CRT juniors, truth is a hard thing and admitting it here i am again realising that my perceptions are still colouring my interactions and expectations.

But one thing that i have come to realise without a shadow of a doubt is that the 2013 batch is a victim of our overzealous passion and work ethic, we as a batch or lets just say the majority of the convener's and their teams are passionately committed to the betterment of the course, we truly have the attitude that "if not us, then who?", and this attitude has seen us move from one conflict to another conflict, from one war to another war and when we feel we have done something right, we do celebrate, and right of the bat we expected the 2013 batch to share our passions, our zeal when they did not have the faintest idea what we are talking about, our seniors did two great things

Gave us some of the best friends one could ever hope for
By not working and making stupid choices, gave us the right attitude for our course

Yet, our attitude could inversely affect our junior batch and it could be another slide or our attitude can infect them and they could build upon the foundation that we are laying. Only time will tell and time is ripe for some observation and itrospection.

No offence to my seniors, this is a candid expression
No offence to my juniors, my perception is not a true reflection of your talents
No offence to my peers, "lyunki taali kabhi ek haath se nahi bajti hai"

Cheers...

Turning Point

2011-08-13T00:41:00.004+05:30

Today, well yesterday (after a quick peek at the bottom right of the screen) i was in a deep conversation with that bugger (Arijit Chakraborty: Auri), and we were talking about all the new stuff that is happening around us, while going medieval on 1 chicken burra, 1 chicken roll, 1 mutton roll, 1/2 a plate of Kadhai Chicken and a few tandoori rotis (the only reason for my listing our menu is that we can EAT), the next batch coming in has caused a major upheaval in our lives and all of my intent in showing them that they are in a professional B-School has sublimated faster than sodium (or does it spontaneously combust???), they have spectacularly smashed all of my expectations and not in a good way...but bitching about them will come in a newer post...

This time as i was filling my stomach, i was getting something off my chest too, and i have realised that Richa Bigghe is my favourite, whatever said, period. The knowledge that this has brought me is that sometimes our relationships are made, broken and set all on one particular incident. The phrase "Turning point" cannot have a more appropriate meaning, I mean there are points in a relationship that define it for all times to come and no matter what happens next, that particular action, act, deed sets the tone for everything henceforth.

Trust me i have tried my hardest to forge new relationships, start afresh but in the end it all came back to me, even after all the great times, that one particular moment comes back to me in full force to remind me that what happened once can happen again and thus my apprehension in making new friends, trust me, for all my bravado i'm a man of very few friends and even fewer are those people who i can count upon. The most astute observation made about me was "You have many friends and you will be there for them when they need it, but you will never count upon them to help you, when you are in need."

The irony is that those closest to me still do not realise this one fact about me, there is another very astute observation made about me by another stranger...but that is another post, and i leave you here with my newest status...

I have to forgive you for what you did, shame on you.
I forget what i forgave you for, shame on me...

To live and not exist...

2011-07-20T01:48:00.004+05:30

The world is full of rhetoric, spouted from the mouths of wise people who in their limited wisdom try to affect the choices of those whom they deem unworthy of intellectual equality, to put this simply there is a lot of intellectual discrimination going on and it is the educated, experienced and elite who look down upon others as unworthy of their attention. This in turn sows the seed of hypocrisy where certain people look up to these "elite" for guidance and direction and get "advice" on what they should and should not do. My point in bringing about this vague and convoluted context is that there is a lot of advice going on about how one's life should be lived, if one was to believe the movies life should be lived large and grand where every moment should be savoured like a fine french magnum, and if one were to believe the "experts" life should be lived in a prioritised way, where your family, friends and yourself are a priority and not your work, money and other mundane things...

Absolutely nothing wrong with this, this is pretty sound advice coming from people born with the privilege of not slogging it out for the money but for people born into poverty, for whom life "is" lived in every moment and that every moment is the worry whether I will be able to feed my family today, for the son of a peon whose only aim is to replace his father's cycle with a car, for the girl who lost her childhood when her father died and had to grow up then and there.

The life of moments is not for these people who battle everyday and sleep an uneasy slumber every night, for whom life is the proverbial race and those who stand still shall fall flat on their faces.

But once you achieve this....then what...and that is the paradox of financial security, you don't have to run after the money but you have this big gaping hole in your life that was previously filled with the race for money and you realise that these "wise" people, albeit hypocrites, advised you correctly. the void that has to be filled and that my friends is life...any fool can handle a crisis but it takes a wise man to handle day to day life...

Mixed emotions drove me to write this, a storm of ideas and conflicting voices in my head (no, i'm not schizophrenic) made the duality of this article possible...

A very happy birthday to the Father of my favourite subject: Gregor Johann Mendel

I Smile...

2011-05-25T15:58:00.003+05:30

Sadly this will be a pretty short post, my regular feature of long, boring, drawn out, self indulgent, self obsessed rants will resume shortly. There are 2 types of death:-

Sudden and violent/peaceful
A long drawn out affair where everyone dies a little every single day

Ahhh, i see that you are pretty shocked by the fatalistic tune my post is playing, and if you are not shocked, well sorry my bad.

You see i'm writing this because very very recently i went to see my brothers and our joint (sort of) dog Vendy, now the joint custody has a pretty long story so concisely put, i raised her, they have taken care of her since. She is the most wonderful dog, case in point even my mum lets vendy lick her. So whats the problem, hmmmmm, she is about to die. The last time i saw her was about an year ago she was hale and hearty, albeit turning old, her eyelashes were turning white and her coat was changing from stormy grey and white to a darker sunset gold. I had thought about this then, but i put it off for later, but this time that i saw her it was a completely different Vendy, all her fur has fallen off, her wounds are not healing and most upsetting of all, she doesn't have any energy anymore. That's when the realisation hit me, she is about to die. Even as i write this i remember all the times that she made me smile, and with a sad face and a very heavy heart I'm preparing to say one of my saddest goodbye's.

"Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back-Marcus Aurellius to Maximus Decimus Meridius"

Can't Escape those Lucknow-wallahs...

2011-05-08T17:24:00.009+05:30

Here my friends is a post that comes straight from the heart, a stirring moment of beauty and vulnerability where i reveal all the moments that i have shared with these guys. For, those who still haven't figured out my tongue in cheek humour, idiots, these Lucknow-wallahs have made my life "interesting," for the want of a better word. This story, as with all my stories start with my entry into college and my meeting with the first of this species. Again for ease of reference we'll call him LW1.

LW1: This particular creature (again, for the want of a better word), was one of the few guys whose intellectual level matched mine in my year, and let me tell you there were quite a few pretenders. He was nosy, incessantly irritating but a man of great drive and motivation. He took upon himself the unenviable task of trying to get me to work, which later compounded to hellish levels with the arrival of Messrs Zain Taha and Robin Chatterjee. Without the presence of this man there would never have been a Lashkar-e-Nautanki and hence an Al-Bakchod. A master of brainwash, he succeeded in getting many people to do many stupid things, Trust me I gave as good as i got, resultant being i had him almost tearing out his hair. But, as always his nuisance value was greater than mine.

LW2: The second person in this list is a very peculiar case, a guy right from the mould of an MBA, and he chooses not to do it, a fantastic orator and a very good actor. Har phatey mein inki ungli hoti thi. A man destined to be the president of the JYC, yet he chose not to be. Unconventional is the only word that comes to mind for this LW.

LW3: Here comes the most endearing LW, the one who always remembered to tease me about my habit of counting LW's. The one who coached me before i went on stage for the first time. The one who argued religion, politics, art, poetry, dramatics, and every other issue under the sun to its death. He trained me for the placement season, was the first to console me on my failure and the first to kick my ass on my success. A lifelong friend senior and Bio-LW.

LW4: This particular specimen, was a certifiable train wreck. Holds the distinction of behaving psychotically at normal instances. Goes hammered to the meetings of the club he leads, then to the negotiating table for prizes. Works incessantly for anything he feels good about, a most wonderful person and now soon to be phoren mulaazim.

LW5: This particular creature, is the most shameless of the LW's. He shamelessly blackmail's (emotionally of course, though i wouldn't put it past him to actually blackmail) his devoted friends, is constantly in the eye of one or another storm, abysmally hopeless, and goes to a top secret location to practice the art of "bull-shitting through life" aka Management. But love flows thick and fast from him too, and a wonderful attitude that puts everyone at ease even in the most dire of situations. Would love to kick his titanium ass.

LW6: This creature is called Lucknow's convener Chopra, party man, after party man, and then there is another party waiting. He is the monkey who shits on a ruby. Usually jumps the guns, fires off before thinking and then makes "The Face." But a wonderful guy to know and to love. As rightly said by Humanshu "Maar ho jaaye to sabse pehle ye ghusega, phir chahe pitt jaaye, magar ghusega ye hi"

LW etc. and there are many other LW's who at different points in my life driven me up the wall, but saying very truthfully, some of the most sublime people that i have met...
Thank you all.

ps All this talk about Lucknow Wallah's warrants the mention of one person. My beloved senior Nitin Tewari, those who know him, well they just know what he is all about (case in point: Tewari Sutta pilao), and those who don't know him especially the juniors...He was the biggest mindfuck to ever walk the halls of JUIT.

The Simple Teachers...

2011-04-24T02:10:00.006+05:30

If you are living in Delhi, and you have not been adventurous enough to try commuting in a DTC bus, then my friend you are missing something right out of the books of daredevil Evel Knievel, the DTC is a great teacher, how so? well in the next few lines i shall endeavour to explain how the toughest concepts in HR can be taught by standing in a crowded 778.

When i started MHROD, i was on a daily basis using the metro, which was uncomfortable, full of rash and unruly people, a long ways off from my college and my home, and which in general was a pain in the ass, so one day I decided with information gleaned from Nandini, to use a DTC bus from the Univ. to my home, now this may seem like a mundane change to the ordinary reader but to those who know me shall recognize how this change of routine has affected me. Strangely that day i did not get a single DTC, and let me tell you i'm no novice at negotiating through the blue lines of the world, so into a blue line i went. The journey itself was uneventful, comfortable and uninspiring but it was the beginning of a teaching so profound that i could only recognise it today after having read Organisation Development.

The route from my house to the univ. needs to be traveled in 2 buses, the first one is invariably route no. 778 from Mangla Puri to Inderlok Metro Station, and this is where i have learned some very important lessons.

Punctuality: You have to take the 8 am bus because the next one that comes at 8:07 am, well to say that you can't put a leg inside will be an understatement, you literally hang on by grabbing hold of the guys shirt, who is barely hanging on to the railing...
Balance/Dexterity: There is no place for your feet to maintain a low center of gravity and every single DTC driver is convinced that he is Aryton Senna reincarnated...
Teamwork: With so many people around, you can't move to buy your own ticket, so you hand money to the guy nearest to the conductor with the requisite instructions about the denomination of the ticket, and once your ticket is returned to you with the necessary change, you can see money being sent from all over the bus to the same person, who very patiently gets everyone's tickets.
Smell: Another thing that i have learnt is that smells have a funny way of sticking to you, you know the conditions, you know the crowd, imagine the smells....

These are just some of my learnings from the DTC bus...but the real profound HR learning is in the following, as Mr. Ranabir Chakraborty of TATA power told us OD is in the simplest things...here is my addition...

In a DTC bus no matter how full it is, more people will enter at new stops and will bring new forces to the bus, and the old passengers of the bus already have their comfort zones setup and feel no need to change just because new forces have entered the bus, now these new forces will affect the old comfort zones. But no one wants to move because that would mean leaving their comfort zone and there is no assurance of the same amount of comfort in the new position, so these old passengers fight vehemently, glare, and even tell off the new passengers, this can continue till the old forces are in majority, but when the new forces become too much, the old ones HAVE to change, me sitting on a seat know that if a certain no. of people move then all the passengers can stand comfortably, but there has to be adequate driving forces for change otherwise the restraining forces will not let the status quo change, and hence my analogy to the OD process, where for the better of the organization (BUS), everyone has to change and that change in position to accommodate the new passengers is the OD intervention...

Wow, I totally sound like a geek, and you know what...m proud to be so....

another post on wisdom gleaned from a bus will be up here soon....

ps: the metro has better looking girls travelling, but wo sukh bhi humse ladies compartment ne chheen liyaa....chalo bus hi sahi....

Context is decisive...

2011-04-14T15:36:00.003+05:30

There are a lot of times in your life, that feel like nothing can go wrong, the hits just keep on coming one after the other, there is just no dearth of successes , now here i've seen 2 types of people

One, Those who can't believe their luck and go with the flow, making hay while the sun shines brilliantly on their lives, just raking in the moolah while its coming
Second, Those who are highly suspicious of this purple patch, those who firmly believe that their life is such a complete unending tragedy that they constantly search for the shadow in the sunlight, start to second guess all of their decisions, start to expect and dread the fall when it comes;

Now these 2 POV's are very common, my inference being that life is a cos curve rather than a sine curve, I believe we don't start at 0 and then go on a high, but rather we start at the high and then subsequently we start tasting the lows and as we slide to absolute rock bottom, we recognize those dizzy peaks we were at, this slide is what i feel builds character and resilience, and also what destroys sanity and peace.

I feel a certain proverb coming on:
"A life not put to the test is not worth living"

Well one is just not enough, so here is another one:
"Calm seas never made a skilled mariner"

or in the immortal "word" of Homer Simpson D'OH

This cycle continues highs followed by lows, lows followed by highs what we can do is reduce the cycle time, such that the distinct highs and lows never seem the same. The aim being, to rise above the pettiness of situations dictating happiness to reach a point where we as a person dictate a situation's happiness.

This is what the zen shall dictate.
But sometimes Raph says to simply drift away,
to close my eyes and stop.

The Argumentative Bengali

2011-02-28T23:39:00.004+05:30

This May would make it my 5th year of knowing the "Argumentative Bengali", the man who taught me how to be insufferable, how to refine tongue in cheek humour and how to come day in, day out, and out of the sheer love one has, keep taking it...
We met very recently, and he again had to take a lot of "love" from all of us, but he always does nad boy did he have a story....

The story begins with a cousin of his asking him: "Bhai to itna khush kaise rehta hai"

at which point he looked at us and said: Ab isko kaise bataoon main kaise khush rehata hoon, daru peeta hoon, charas peeta hoon, ye poochta hai main khush kaise rehata hoon.

Girlfriend gift bhejti hai.....GHAR ke address par, apna perfume lagakar......aur log poochtey hain main daru kyun peeta hoon...

jiske haath wo gift nahi lagna chahiye, wahi mujhe phone karke kehta hai ki tera gift aaya, khushbu waala...aur log poochtey hain ki main charas kyun peeta hoon...

Ab batao...main ussey kyaa boloon, main itna khush kyun rahta hoon..
Truly said, at some point in our life, it just is not possible to maintain our sanity just by ourself..

Dedicated to the Director...

Yeh Jo halka Halka Suroor hai!!!

2011-01-31T00:59:00.004+05:30

The words of that singing maestro, Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, years since he must have sung this song and this song brings new meaning to all those that hear it, everyone who has loved and to all those who have loved and lost.

A not too cheerful beginning to the new year on my blog, which i have ignored for a long time now, and i'm really sad that one of the things that my post grad has taken away from me is the prolific quantity of my writings, yet it has given a certain fatalistic depth to my writings. New dimensions are always welcomed even though they might lead to the depths of Tartarus.

Bah! I rave on like a psychotic headcase, to my general indifference i have turned 24 and have to salute my friends who like clockwork kept calling till i spoke to them, a very very big thank you from my side, may the sun of our friendship burn through eternity. It was a most wondrous day and specially because i and my friends threw a bachelors for a dear new friend. I have been partying almost continually since the last year ended and this one began which has now started to get on the nerves of my mother and she lets me know in unequivocal terms that my new attitude is not appreciated(Awaara ho gaye ho tum). The partying for the month of January continued and reached its zenith with the birthday party that i threw for my new friends, it was a 6 man affair with me sharing the honors of bein the host with Neeraj Khatri, Naveen Khatri, Sumit Choudhary, Raman Choudhary and the Hostess of the night Nishita Bhasin (who, as is her want, again twisted her ankle), the night was absolutely rocking with the "teacher" lecturing profusely, and an uncooperative youtube acting as the DJ.

But, after all was said and done, after all the cheers and all the backslapping had subsided, after all the proverbial dust had settled, it ended up with the last people standing or sitting as was our case, and as the clock chimed 3, a gentle pattering of raindrops could be heard, a cold breeze started, there was an emptiness. The emptiness was accentuated by the others there who were trying to fill that emptiness with each other, their worldly masks stripped bare for a moment and in that moment the reflection of the glorious companionship they shared, the moment so glorious in itself that it seemed to radiate the love that must exist somewhere out there, and as we sang the most beautiful love songs ever written, the emptiness solidified into something so cold and dense that it chilled my being, and in one moment i could recall all i could about love past present and future.
Welcome 2011, you are here, you have brought luck, misfortune and fun.
Let this be the year of glory.

"Mere baad kisko sataaoge, maine milkar unke saamne to khanjar rakh diyaa, phir kaleja rakh diyaa, dil rakh diyaa, sir rakh diyaa, aur arz kiyaa, mere baad kisko sataaoge mujhe kis tarah se mitaaoge, kahaan jaakar teer chalaoge, meri dosti ki balaayein lo, mujhe haath uthaakar duaein do, tumhe ek kaatil bana diyaa" Utd. N.F.A Khan

The relevance of ragging: Another ode to JUIT

2010-12-20T12:56:00.008+05:30

Let me start off by saying that, i comment on the real essence of ragging, not that mental and physical torture that masqueraded as ragging throughout medical and engineering colleges, which i actually abhor and think that society is better without it. Now, onwards, ragging my trusty internet connection says is "the practice in educational institutions in India and Sri Lanka that involves existing students baiting or bullying new students" and yes the issue is calcitrant in the indian education system, we hear of deaths and suicides, true abslutely true, some students who don't deserve to be called humans, do indulge in such practices, but not all and somehow somewhere we are worse off without ragging.

Now that the politicaly correct stance is out of the way, i will just like to put a few pointers as to how and why, I being ragged helped me. I too went to an engineering college (most of those who read this will know) and like every single one of the freshers, i was scared shitless too, we were a herd of gazelle who couldn't run if they saw the cheetah, we just tucked our heads into our chests, put our hands behind our backs and in a ridiculous attire of track pants and full sleeved shirts buttoned all the way up, went to eat our meals, where expertly we were prised away from the pack to face our respective individual/group humiliations, made to do all sorts of mundane/perverted/simply strange stuff, but what this did for me, was made me open up to my friends, and come to rely on them for stuff i would never have asked them for, me and my roomie, particularly went through a rough time, our humiliation in a dark room with 7-8 seniors in retrospect was quite hilarious, we still laugh about it, the thing i'm most thankful for, was our seniors, though they did get kicks out of what they did to us, they never took it further than acceptable to the raggee, no one was ever forced to take off his shirt, but they were very particular about respect, you diss them and hell was waiting, which thank the lord very few of us endured that ordeal.

The lessons i take away from my days being ragged, was the awesome bonding that i and my friends had, we had a common enemy: the ragging senior, and in the face of that adversity our relationships of steel were formed, which i'm proud to say, have withstood the test of time.

The comfort level with the seniors: though they ragged us a lot, we were "kid loved" too, at a dhaba if we were eating with a senior, we never footed the bill, while sharing a taxi away from the college, we never paid, my smoking friends never ran out of ciggarettes to smoke (though, they did run a lot to get those cigarettes), the books that were given free and the advice with those books (another note, even though every senior seemed the least bothered with his own academic fate, he/she always was pretty serious in advising us), and to this day while travelling with one of my favourite seniors, while partying with two of my elder brothers, i still don't have to reach for my wallet, even though i know they are not that better off than me. It is the will and love passed from the first batches of our hallowed institution that exists in them, in us, and now in our juniors.

They stripped us of our apprehensions, our homesickness, our school mentality they gave us fear, sleepless nights, friendship, and sometimes love (usually expressed in drunken stupor).

Sitting on my computer in my first alien job (HCL doesn't count coz wahaan sab JP ke launde they), i recognized the fundamental basis of this tradition/act, it is to welcome and test the new recruit and to make sure he/she is a part of the new team, yet everyone is busy, and no one takes the time to meet the new guy, the onus is on him to form the relationships, thank god college in my time was not so, yet my juniors tell me, that now it is so, and if that is true i shall be really really sorry...

The Donkey-Horse Argument

2010-11-01T01:02:00.004+05:30

Talking today with my most revered and respected senior (tongue firmly in cheek), "His
Lordship". It was a weird talk to say the least, it started with him telling me that koko was the name of a monkey that was sent into space, i'm really sorry Kangkan but man that koko name is pretty catchy, but i digress, the fact is that he told me that a mule is born when a donkey and mare (female horse), "do it" (i kid you not this is what he said) and that he could not fathom the reason why a mare would agree or would be willing to do something like that, the point being that if a donkey has a chance with a mare, then it speaks of hope for our kind, you know the not so supermodel's, the average joe's of this world, the ordinary guy. The chance that the ordinary guy might get the chance to be with a woman, who is in another league, and this got me thinking, if 6's date 6's and 9's date 9's, why would this anomaly happen, why would a 9 date the proverbial 7 (I assume myself to be a 7, and i will not take any shit for that), and there is no logical answer that i could find, except for pure and simple "dumb luck". It is nothing but
luck and some very very fortuitous circumstances. Obviously, post initial attraction it is not, the
attraction but the person that keeps it going, but the initial "excitation energy" is so high that
most can't release any photons (figuratively speaking), there is just no way. So, i just hope for
the right radical to come along and help release the photons, pardon the pseudo science.

Another Interesting thing, His Lordship said, "The mule is always sterile, so this is nature's way
of saying, that this anomaly cannot continue", interesting to say the least, and frankly that
cannot be taken into comntext for humans, But maybe it can........

PS: A most wondrous Happy Birthday to my dearest Pratibha Sharma......you deserve all the happiness you get.....cheers

I wish i Could fly...

2010-10-04T21:13:00.003+05:30

Another haze of smoke clears from my face as i drag another lungful from the hokaah in front of me, i taste something delicious and look around to pass it to someone else, and all i see is strangers from a strange land, suddenly i realize i'm not in kansas anymore. These faces smile, joke and laugh, their eyes full of mirth, and i'm a stranger in their midst. I strain my eyes to see a familiar face, to see someone who is not an empty shell of existence, my gaze passes from face to face and i realise that i'm executing an exercise in futility, i break into sweat and in a most "inceptionesque" way wonder how i had gotten there, sadly it was not a dream and i had to live that moment for what it was. My sweat peppers my forehead despite the air-conditioning, i want to run from that place screaming at the top of my voice just to feel myself again, to convince myself that it is not a dream, but i control the panic and leave the smoke box to gather a precious few breaths,
again i see those faces staring at me, a smile playing on their lips, no not a smile....a smirk, yes it is a smirk playing on their lips, and then i'm reminded, one of the truest and purest memories, that this is the way a pack of hyena's look at their prey, judging, calculating, how many would be needed to bring it down, and i start to hyperventilate, the fresh air not doing its bit, the smirk still plays on their lips, moving ever closer for the kill, and i feel myself weaken, my breath coming in short bursts and the demons of hell come to drag me finally, into the depths of the inferno. I feel the terror clawing at me, i want to break off but they come ever closer, their faces not quite visible now, only a voice which says....."join ussssssssss, join usssssssssss, join usssssssssss, we will take your pain, we will give you power, join usssssssss" and through their words i see the truth, the eternal solitude that i have in front of me and the eternity of guilt, remorse and suffering.
I'm tired of fighting, tired of living this lie........

As i prepare to take this fight to its final insanity, she comes for me, wings blazing aura blinding and takes me away, i fly away from the hell from those demons, and to my own sanity i fly and i see how beautiful everything is, i drink in her aura and know that it will not last, i will be set down and then one day, the hyena's will get me and drag me down to the 7th circle of hell, despite this i fly and lose myself in the peace that i will never be able to keep, i cherish this little moment because i know my fate is to be the devil's guest, but not today........not today.

The pyre of Raphael, The rise of the Zen...

2010-09-14T20:49:00.003+05:30

"I have gone from the pyre of denethor, to the ashes flowing in time, from which shall rise The Zen.....this is my tao....this is my destiny....."- occasionaly Raphael, majorly The Zen

There comes a time in the life of everyone, where a major upheaval or change completely shifts your view of the world. This change is almost like viewing another spectrum, like a blue or red shift on the doppler, like the rose tinted glasses on your nose have been replaced by a murkier brown, enough similies....like black and white has had more grey shoved into it.....(well maybe just one more for old times sake)

The carefree wanderings and trust fostered over years, beautiful relationships wrought in gold, love given unabated, attention showered magnificently...that was the birth of Raphael. The will of fire passed down from the elders of a sublime tradition, then we became the inheritors of that will, to be passed on to the next generation, till we became the ethers and the elders of the hallowed halls, joined finally into the memories of nobody and to our destinies in that brief moment of time. Storms came and went, we withstood. Fires raged and waned, we bore. Winds howled and whispered but we were resolute. That was what characterised the life of raphael.

But time is the only God and his only doctrine, "change is mandatory, acceptance is voluntary."

Thrust into a new world, where the rules of nature are different, up is down, right is left, people are sweet and you're always stabbed in the back. There are rebels, there are conformists and some that just don't give a fuck, the common theme be that all are on their own, left to the petty devices of the crowd good is bad and change is warped. Thrust into this world is Raphael, lost like a little puppy, upset at the slightest slight, elated at the merest comfort. But the elders come to his rescue, the memories of nobody guide him through the chain of his misery, finally through the acid, he emerges, his will of fire intact, his body of water ready for all paths, the bends and the rapids, ready to be calm like the river or to unleash his fury in an overwhelming torrent.

From the ashes of raphael has risen the Zen Master, and with a mysterious smile on his lips he says only words 3
"We shall see"

I hate awkward silences... :)

2010-07-22T22:43:00.004+05:30

Silence rains down, like blood in an apocalypse, the poor mortal fears for his sanity, hiding in the vacant expression that he now portrays, looking at the equally vacant far-off expressions on the face of his companions, are they thinking the same, wonders the mortal, and then one of them looks at the mortal and says "did you say something?", "ummm, no" replies the mortal. Silence rains down again, like blood in an apocalypse. Suddenly a voice breaks the bloody silence "Agla station Rajeev Chowk hai, blue line par jaane waale yaatri daayin taraf se utrein"

Yes, my friends the above scene was not cut from a hitchcock movie, it was pure and simple awkwardness of 4 strangers, pushed together by fate, and traveling together because of convenience. The ice is hard as ever, all the niceties have been discussed, families have been discussed, personal lives have been discussed (till that permissible level). Yet the 4 are strangers, different, from different backgrounds, with different friends, different interests and certainly different thoughts. That is what the poor mortal thought, after 4 years of continuous company and now a lifetime of friendship in the bag, does he really need these new friends. Yes, oh hell yes, his conscience answers in a thundering voice, the poor mortal settles down cowed by such a vehement response and bravely tries another stab at conversation, "so have you seen kung fu panda"
"yeah it was a one time watch"
"yeah it was cute"
"no i don't like animated pictures"
and the conversation freezes over again, everyone phases out, so the poor mortal decides to phase out too, at least he can have a two way conversation with himself.....

The characters are completely fictitious though heavily derived from reality, bear this contradiction, or you can just eat my shorts.... :P

The Good and the Critical

2010-06-27T17:31:00.001+05:30

There is an oft repeated cliche "change is the only constant" and as is the case with all cliches, it is very true and i hate the sound of it. This change is a part of all our lives, the petrol prices, inflation, newer moral sensibilities, technology. You walk on the road and you will be assaulted by change from all corners and directions, the newer car model, a "baraat" band blasting away new hits, the newest fashion worn by the chic upper class and aped by the not so chic middle class. This juggernaut won't be slowed in an age of information overload.

As a lazy sunday moved along i engrossed myself in the feature story of today's Hindustan Times, Men of India, it is a great insight into the psyche of the urban indian male from sex to career and changing equations in the relationships between men and women. This came at a time when i was thinking a lot about the potential of arranged marriages over love marriages. The single most damning PRO in the case of arranged marriages is the 1.1% divorce rate in India as compared to the absurd 54% in that heaven of love marriages that is the United States of America. But statistics mean nothing in the case of an individual, for a population stats are more precise, but they couldn't be more wrong for a person, a fitness freak CEO dies at 45, and a corpulent, alcoholic, chain smoker usually sees his 80th. So with my usual pristine and precise logic i say stats can kiss my ass. What concerns me more is that it is up from 0.74% in the last decade, which might not seem like a lot, but any percentage in a nation of a billion has many many people. This increase i believe can be attributed to the change in the mindset of our urban folk.

The women are growing more and more independent, financially that is, and that has thrown the age old power dynamic of an arranged marriage into a massive upheaval, traditionaly the man of the family earned the money and thus had power, a single say over all matters of the family, and the woman would tend to the house, the in laws and most importantly the children of the house, objectively looked at, this power dynamic was skewed too much in the favour of the males and mostly women were hapless viewers to what their lives had become. But keeping that lens of objectivity firmly on my eye, this "system" maintained the stability of a household and children were raised by family not nannies. Subjectively speaking there was a respect to what men did, which today, frankly said, is pretty much absent, women earn and men earn, women can choose not to work but there is no choice of that for a man, as a society we may admiringly look at the women who earn and run the household but still look down upon a man who is not successful in the workplace. The power dynamic has changed but it has changed only for the women, the role of men is still the same and sometimes redundant. My views donot really match my bservations but i'm trying to be critical looking at situations, but it is in our inherent nature to resist change, and maybe this time it is not the old ideas of rigidity that scare me but the new ideas' promise of
anarchy.

The die has been rolled and we are on that unstoppable juggernaut called change, but will it all be for good, is all change good or in Katyayani Bhatia's words being correct is the tough path being critical is the easy one, and i believe feminists have taken the easier path.

Another blog post on power is in the works and that is gonna be even more controversial.....

The Lunacy Unites (As Quoted by Saurabh Bose)

2010-06-20T22:40:00.003+05:30

It has been another green period in my life, getting admission into a college that most have been congratulating me about (the jury is still out on this fact), i have been working hard and this i say without any modesty whatsoever because i have worked hard at my job, but i also have to say that I have partied pretty hard too, the main reason behind this is, Kava living so close to my office and Hundoo living with him we have been partying almost every night to the annoyance of my mother, which she states very unequivocally. But i have been escaping the wrath of my mum's superior logic, by some expert evasion tactics, i feel proud to have inculcated within me. I have been enjoying the money i have earned, so yeah it is a green patch in my life, and with the batch junior to me passing out, yeah folks it has been a whole year since me and my batch left JUIT, we have been having a lot of online presence of the passed out batch, this is to be expected that they are really missing the college and friends so they try to make themselves happy by seeing each other on Facebook, Orkut, various messengers, etc. the upside of this loneliness is the buzzing activity on facebook, where there has been a definite upswing in the creative posting department. I recently read a poem by Bose, titled "The Dummy" and another poem, whose title i don't recall, but the ensuing discussion was fascinating, he said that all of us are united by some lunacy or the other, that we will gather around anything and make it a "Panchayat", this had me thinking, that even though the rain falls, and even though the night comes, there is always the upside that it will end, and the upside of we can all be lunatics and take out time for such lunacy as a comment thread on FB, to be with each other, to savour each others presence even though we are separated by thousands of kilometers, this is the positive thinking that has me, a self proclaimed cynic, thinking positively, that even though we will be separated, and we might meet just once again in our lifetimes, we shall feel a warm glow in that corner of our heart, that despite the distance, one act of lunacy by any of us shall trigger the insanity of everyone else...and i feel happy in that one glorious, "looney" act...
Sheesh, That was too positive, time to torture my friends......

The Jester's view...

2010-06-06T23:11:00.003+05:30

Entertain me, said the King and so the jester did, entertain the crowd, and so the jester did, entertain the princess, and so the jester did, entertain the queen, and so the jester did... till the day, a new jester came and took his place, and the old jester was lost, into the shadows, his heart filled with sorrow and pain. The sorrow became too much, and it turned to anger, the anger became too much and it turned into cynicism, and the cynical jester armed with the experience of pain came back, and he taunted, and poked holes in big egos, regaled the king with stories from the personal lives of his courtiers. till a plan was hatched to silence the jester once and for all, and the assassin climbed to the jester's room to find him waiting... waiting and wanting.....wanting death....wanting to die....and he said "i lived for everyone, and when everyone was through i was alone, i was the best, and now i'm just one of the rest, used and thrown again and again, till i can't be used no more, so one last time i made, i went ahead and insulted one and all and then they hate and despise, the hypocrisy is clear as day yet all are blinded to it, so i will make sure that no one forgot what they did, and what happened to deserve humiliation is what they have proved....." and so he took his knife and plunged it in his breast...and so died the jester, who outlived his usefulness and came back full circle....

This boiling hate consumes me, i want to lash out at everything and everyone that is mine.....to hurt them, to make them suffer, to make them feel a quanta of pain that i hold inside...........but the dam holds stronger than ever.

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle

2010-05-10T01:18:00.002+05:30

Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions… M.K. Gandhi.
Then the father of the nation goes on to say that we will feel our doubts melt away, profound thoughts of a great man, and relevant more so today than any other time, I read a statistic a few months ago that in the world 28 million people commit suicide every year, that is about one person killing himself every 30 seconds, that means by the time I finish this article about a 100 people would have been dead. Yes, that would be a tragedy won’t it, this reminds me of another quote,”Death of a person is a tragedy, death of a hundred, a statistic” and that is what our country has been reduced to, statistics, here are some, from 1997 to 2008 199,132 farmers have committed suicide in India, Vidharba deserves a special mention here because it has been especially ravaged by this travesty, the bailout scheme that Dr. Manmohan Singh is vastly inproportianate to the underlying causes that have led to this situation, but I’m not here to argue against the policies of the government, I’m here to comment about the irony and the apathy that I have observed, India is moving forward, well technically only the urbanized India is moving forward, like an interesting example would be the Lakme India Fashion week, the celebration of youth and glamour held with much fanfare in India’s commercial capital Mumbai, the beautiful models walking in breathtaking clothes and not 200 kilometers away the man who has grown that cotton from which that breathtaking dress has been made is killing himself for growing that cotton.
To the technologically attuned and social networking savvy, while we manure each other’s Farms in “Farmville”, the real farmers are struggling to survive in Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and Kerala. As we lead our lives of comfort worrying whether we have enough money or not, do our insurance policies cover dental, and will we be able to afford a new car in this compact market, children are having their stomachs punctured with burning pokers, to rid them of PEM diseases. While we are growing fat, inconsiderate and pathetic in the cocoon of our trivial lives, our nation is burning in the fires of naxalism, their methods I certainly abhor, but their cause is a reflection of our failure as a nation. We have grown too lazy for our own good, the biggest threat to India and its “Golden” development comes not from terrorism, but from the apathy that we have so carefully cultivated over the decades, and surely it will rise, to one day bite us, and while we celebrate being Indian by the deification of our celebrities and cricketers and celebrate national pride by holding the commonwealth games, one more hungry child is taking up arms against India. Who is going to stop this, is it the impotent elders, the self obsessed youth or the ignorant children, who will rock the cradle of India, so that we may be at peace again.

The anatomy of Failure: Raphael

2010-04-09T16:20:00.002+05:30

My CV reads "Success is the ability to go from one failure to the next with equal amount of enthusiasm." This was said by Winston Churchill a flawed, war mongering leader but one who shepherded Great Britain through the most destructive war of the Modern Era, if it were not for his never give a shit attitude, Britain would have crumbled.
This is what i think, motivation when only for oneself, is brittle and transient (obviously my opinion) but the motivation that comes from a task that is bigger than any one person, that several people depend on it, that motivation is lasting, a soldier's life and his will to fight erodes slowly, and all the nationalistic pride is left on the backburner, but the fire to fight comes from those who are fighting next to him, the soldier fights for his brother, who would gladly take a bullet to spare his life, and he knows that if the time comes he would do the same, this is the passion and motivation that is lasting, personal gain and success, impetus like those rarely last.

But i'm here to talk about the anatomy of failure, i have seen that when you want something bad enough you almost never get it. The more desperately you need something to happen it never does, the case goes with me too, whenever i have needed something to happen something to go my way, at the very crux, the ultimate moment, my luck absolutely deserts me.

Failure usually starts with a task or an aim, lets say to scale a mountain in a day. The first enemy of success is the time allotted in preparation of the task, too much and you don't peak, too little and there is no preparation. Procrastination becomes a favorite pass time, and lethargy comes in to claim you. So firm the grasp of these two is that most don't go on to the next stage of failure, the jittery uneasiness, this happens in the case that one overcomes the lethargy, but this stage is advanced because the symptoms of failure start to settle in and start taking a toll on the mind and body. As time passes this unease turns into panic, and more than the actual act of preparation, the lack of preparation dominates the mind, which then turns the mind to find solace in the fantasies of escape, it numbs the pain, and gives a happy feeling, exactly like a drug would. But this drug is something that has withdrawal symptoms worse than heroin, you are trapped by your own mind in your own creation, if that isn't scary then i don't know what is.

The event is upon you, if you haven't lost your sanity to the panic or your mind to the illusion, there comes the last stage of failure, the fearless bravado, "jo aayegi dekhi jaayegi" and that my friends is an assurance so weak, that one cannot fool others leave alone oneself. You start to climb the mountain, poor conditioning eliminates your stamina halfway up, can't go down, can't go up, you try to get some help, but you can't, you try to reach a safe spot, but you can't, hanging in the middle of nowhere, you try to grasp one last foothold, your arms exhausted give way, you fall, break both your legs and snap your spine, dopamine has flooded your system, you don't feel the pain let alone anything else, can't move, and in the distance you see two glowing eyes death comes for you my friend...

ps: to fail is written in stone, to succeed, now that you have to write with your blood on the stone of your failure...

Inspired by Varun Chowdhary

The Reflection of Genius...

2010-04-01T14:58:00.003+05:30

This is an entry after 1 and a half months, it has been a tumultuous 45 days with a lot of exhilarating feelings, a little heart break, a lot of naughtiness, and a feeling of content no my friends i'm not speaking of the IPL, though i would love to slam the naked marketing and advertising bandwagon, but i won't, March has been the month that has seen me work, and work, and work, and then when i'm out of it, work some more. Though according to my manager(boss) what we are doing is not really work until we spend days in office. yeah right! This virtual mountain of work, it is virtual, has made me realize that when you deliver people expect more, and then you deliver more then the expectation moves exponentially, it is not until you disappoint somebody, that the level of expectation regains some sort of sanity, and this brings me to my topic, what is genius...

It could be a 16 year old walking in on a cricket field against some of the most hostile fast bowlers in the world, it could be a stocky short man talking with his feet and making blithering idiots out of the mighty Germans, it could even be a person who against the wishes of his own country just to prove his mettle went out to meet the checkered challenge of the enemy. It could be, what is genius, the saying goes "Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration," Dhyan Chand said genius is 99% inspiration and 1% perspiration. Which would you find more apt, the words of a poet talking about genius or the poetic words of a genius.

The fact is that to become a genius one has to phenomenally dissapoint, and then rise up from that misery to the vindication that one truly deserves.

The rise to the top on the shoulders of others is swift,
The fall to the bottom among smug smiles is sure,
To pick up your bleeding carcass from the bottom and inch back to the top, that is true Genius...

P.S this topic came to me after watching the display pic. of Palak Sethi
There is the Genius of talent, Genius of Thought, Genius of action and then there is the genius of hard work...

A Little ray of love....

2010-02-27T23:08:00.002+05:30

This is a budding writer who refuses to acknowledge her talent, has a blog, but i end up posting for her, so please read, a real gem is here.......
Raghvi:
Me and my sister Medhavi had gone out yesterday...
right after parking my scooty, both of us started off for our destination, a few feet away at the gate of the parking we heard a loud yelp of a dog. When we turned around we saw that a dog was trying to reach us, he had hurt his leg and it seemed he was in excruciating pain, though there was no external injury, he tried to stop a guy by showing him his leg, silently asking for help, but the cyclist got scared and ran away, then i went up to the dog and patted the dogs head once, he stopped crying and then i started caressing his head and even hugged him.....after a minute or so, he put his hurt leg down...me and my sister tried to make him walk and he walked away painlessly, We were amazed at what had happened.
All he needed was a moment of love. it stole his pain, maybe even his loneliness, i know from my personal experience its not easy to ask strangers for help, this was one experience that i would never forget....

Aarambh hai prachanda...

2010-02-19T22:13:00.002+05:30

In a post i had asked what is the difference between the king and the horse, if they had the same amount of power, skill, and intelligence, the answer was very simple, the instinct to rule, the instinct to crush all opposition with extreme prejudice and to prove without doubt that the king is the one who rules, unquestioned and unchallenged. The horse is the one that lacks this sort of instinct and thus in every battle it merely becomes a tool for the king to use, and not the ruler itself. Why am i saying this... well
1. Because i want to, and 2. Because i have been thinking about the world of power, it is very alluring and murky to say the least.

The quest for power is a path walked by many but nobody succeeds in getting to the end, there is no destination, just like there is no true perfection, there is no absolute power. THERE IS ONLY THE ETERNAL QUEST OF POWER. "Might is right" that is a saying and also a topic i was given to evaluate my GD skills, and obviously i was for the motion /*that is something that i do very often, play the devil's advocate, all of us are just so perfect in what we say and what we try to potray, but inside all of us know that we are extremely prejudiced against something or the other, nobody can boast of being totally neutral, show me the man/ woman and i will show you the truest hypocrite ever, alright moving on, defending what seems indefensible is what really turns my screw, or it may just be the fact that even if i lose in defending, it doesn't feel like a loss, more on this insightful crap later */, and what i said is that might is indeed right because it is might that decides what is right, look around,

the judge with the power to sentence people to their deaths, the policeman to protect the law can take away civil liberties, the army-man, can press a trigger and end the life of another soldiers,

and these are considered to be righteous people, why because they have the might to do those things hence they are right in the act they perform, leave aside the fact that these powers are given to them, the tiger has the power to end the sambar's life, and because it has the power to do so, we consider this to be the law of nature, the law of nature is, whoever survives or can survive with their powers, they have the right to live, and there are no exceptions, this is the cool ruthless logic of nature. KILL OR BE KILLED.
That was just the discussion of power, the thing that seduces me the most is the ruthlessnes that is associated with the act of power, absolute ruthlessness, the act of removing all sentiments and confusing subjectivity, the shortest route from A to B. The most tactically perfect act, minimum damage absorbed and maximum inflicted. The cold logic of Sun Tzu in the art of war, the ruthless extermination of rival leaders by Temujin (Genghis Khan- to the not so historically attuned), the decisive sinking of the Bismarck by 4 Royal navy ships. All great leaders were to a large extent ruthless, and that is what i find immensely intriguing, to act knowing that you might let your own be killed but with the conviction of the eventual gain.
Some say that true power is to control.
Some say true power is the power to take a life.
Some say that true power is to love.

I don't know the answer, but maybe some of think you do, i say think because nobody knows what true power is....

// Something completely unrelated, today i was having a dream, i dreamt that i was a leopard and i was sinking my fangs into the neck of a woman... If anyone has any idea i will be more than glad to hear it....

So Hard.

2010-01-22T14:57:00.004+05:30

This is a simple spontaneous post written from my office (i work now), I was having a conversation with gera babu, about idealism (yes, again) , he was talking about smiling a lot, and also to challenge yourself and a lot of motivational things, and me, well if you know me barely, then you might know that i hate anything remotely preachy, but when i gave him a piece of my mind, his answer startled me, he said that this was not for everyone, it was to lift his friends who felt lost, i assure you i'm not one of those lost people, but what disturbed me was the lack of sympathy that i felt for these guys, and this put me in a contemplative mood, hence the post, that why didn't i feel any sort of empathy or sympathy for the people who are struggling with their lives, why didn't i feel the least bit sorry for the people who are existing, am i the proverbial tin-man, who doesn't have a heart, no that doesn't feel right, i feel sorry for beggars all the time and for victims of injustice, and all the anti-establishment persons fighting to make themselves heard.

Then what is the matter with me, i thought about this for a long long time, and couldn't figure out what made me feel this way, 2 coffees later, i was none the wiser, so i let it go....
Then out of the blue it hit me, i didn't feel sorry for them because of the simple fact that they are not fighters, these guys are criers, life gives hard times to everybody but it also gives the strength to fight the hard times, i have been there and done it. So why is it that people fail to fight, the question of circumstances being supreme is ridiculous, that god wills it is even more absurd, and fate, oh fate, don't even let me get started on the fate crap. 90% of our life is in our hands and 10% can be attributed to luck, do the major chunk right and the chances are you will be alright, but screwing up the 90 and then blaming it on the 10, well that is human hypocrisy for you.

And it does not matter what the size of dog in the fight is, it is the size of the fight in the dog that matters. So when everyone says life is a bitch, turn into a dog.

Note from author: This time because the author has taken the higher ground and has become preachy, it will be impossible to remove the idealist opinion that he has expressed...so so sorry :)

The new TV: Misery

2010-01-09T19:38:00.003+05:30

Today, as i sat watching my mother's serials, i call it her serials because she is the one who watches them and i am forced to watch them, she uses some reverse reasoning like; because i'm eating i will watch my own show and the very same condition does not apply to me i.e her son. But i argue in futility, she uses her finely honed and masterful supreme logic (read emotional blackmail), and i end up watching whatever she is watching, but i don't give up at the outset, i try to make her watching those, inherently maddening programs, a most distsateful experience i'm at hand with all the sarcasm i can muster, so much so that, dinner becomes a contest between two ideologies, one is the world wise aura of a middle aged teacher who can make any student quiver in his/her respective boots, the other is the noveu independent battle hardened professional who wants his tv time. The effect is usually volatile but, i assure you no food has been flung, so far. But this post is not about the mindgames me and my mother play with each other. It is about today, and what she was watching, it was some serial called "Mahi Way" and i was sitting in my chair waiting for the dinner to arrive and preparing for the "baat-tle" ahead i was not really concentrating on the tv but then something caught my attention, it was a joke, a pretty decent joke in a soap, hmmm this might be interesting, and i actually started watching this show and believe it or not actually enjoying it, which led me to the instant conclusion that, this show will not be popular.

Why? this I will say later, first the praise that this serial deserves, it is a light frothy comedy about an overweight girl, who writes a column in a fashion magazine (ugly betty fame), it is tautly written, with witty repartee going on in the main protagonists head, very funny, her filmi family, her airhead best friend and her gay real best friend are the real cliche's here, but don't let these be a deterrent to your viewing pleasure, it is pleasantly filmi and quite likeable if you can gloss over some of the parts.

Now as to why this program won't work... it is a yash raj production, hence too filmi to be a real serial, it is about a young professional girl in an upper class modern punjabi family hence there is no identification with the core of the tv viewing populace i.e. middle aged, middle class house wives for whom young professional women are another india, and history is the biggest obstacle to them, remember how much we used to crib about Kahaani ghar ghar ki and kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi, how much they were parodied and laughed at, but that had no effect whatsoever on the ratings of the show, they were consistently the most watched shows on cable tv. Why is that?

I have a theory, you may agree with it, you may not, It is not that we don't like reality, we like a glorified sense of our reality, people like to look at these obscenely rich, yet absolutely traditional families, they signify an India which is rich developed yet standing firm on its beliefs, nothing can be more far removed from the truth. These serials show the suffering daughter in law, the tyrannical mother in law, the impotent men in the life of these power crazed women. All meant to strike a chord with the average woman, who feels as such and wishes for these things. The misery these serials potray, is such a brilliant hook, that people just don't get off it. They continually feel sad, sorry and bad for the main character and in the end when the main character lashes out and burns all her tormentors, the hooked viewers, feel a savage sense of righteousness and vindication, that after all the bad things the good side wins. Again a concept far removed from the reality. Young men and women fall in love and then get married instantly in huge lavish weddings, the scale that would make L N Mittal green with envy(ok maybe that wasn't such a good comparision, but hey in showbiz anything goes), yet these young men and women donot have an iota of sexual tension that is running so rampant today, it feels like our sense of romance has not evolved since the days of ramanand sagar's ramayan, where a doe eyed and shy Sita, fell in love with a NOT so dashing Ram, point being that we don't like our reality, yet we enjoy a warped twisted glorified sense of our own reality, but when that reality is provided in a different context we kick it away like some mangy pariah dog.

This is just the beginning of my ire yet i stop, becuase i know that this show will not succeed because it does not conform to the majority's warped sense of reality, it tries to break the mould and we can recall how our nation treats different thinkers, with disregard and sneering attitudes, only in 3 idiots will a father agree that his son become a photographer instead of an engineer, the second half of that movie still irks me. So my sincere luck to a surely doomed enterprise, for my hope please succeed.

We are truly a nation of Hypocrites and misery addicts.

The Delusion of Eloquence

2010-01-02T00:52:00.004+05:30

This title has been very well thought-out, and after much deliberation and pondering, i have decided that in the joy of a new decade beginning i will start a new blog, not on blogger but rather on facebook, (it saves you the trouble of coming to my page and i can get passing comments too), though i absolutely detest doing anything creative on facebook, for reasons i will never say, i have decided that this will be the title of my FB blog, and everything here will be sarcastic or an angry rant, or maybe some tongue in cheek humour, but that is a long ways off, i am writing this today because i want to fulfil the purpose of the title, for which it was first thought of. Phew, FINALLY, to the point this is a post dedicated to all those who "think" they are profound and deep and philosophical, it is precisely why i have titled this post the Delusion of Eloquence, and this has been in part, pardon, completely been inspired by the that abominable and insipid site FACEBOOK, that has its status updates, where people post things that are so absurdly mundane that i dearly wish that the poke i was sending their way would actually poke them or at the very least slap them around the head. But if wishes were horses i would have a stud farm.

I know as i have grown older(surely) and wiser(maybe) that i have have lost a lot of my patience (strange, i thought growing up gave one more patience), now this may be due to my extreme state of sobriety or maybe just maybe, it maybe due to the absolute dearth of creativity in the minds of all those who post status messages. The message is usually spelled wrong, is phonetically absurd and is grammatically offensive. But i think i can cope with these sort of shortcomings, only if they were original or thought provoking or just plain sweet. But no, we have to go and screw a perfectly good thought with our lol's, muhahahahaha's, xoxo's, luv ya's. My patience running thin is my problem but it is aggravated like a rash by just plain bad use of english, in hundoo's words "dil mein aag lagti hai"(very aptly put). I blame all of us and even i come under the purview of this criticism, because it conflicts with one of my base realisations i.e. WHEN IN ROME DO THE ROMANS.

But let me not waste a lot of your time in this fine and beautiful new year and decade. The thing that really gets under my skin is the thought of people that by using big words and sounding ambiguous they can become profound. I pride myself in usually always getting what the writer is trying to say, though it takes time , i can usually do it, but the load of garbage that i have to deal with while sifting through my home page......., simply put "you" don't want to be in my position and the way these self satisfied bull-frogs keep it up, like they are impressing everyone and gaining respect, your ideas are so vague that even a 5 year old can poke holes into your argument. This is the one thing i like about computer science, if your argument is wrong, you won't move any further. And if i start poking holes in these pop psychology lessons, then i will be as popular as, a serial killer, or Tiger Woods. So there is no moral to the story, i hate preaching and hate being preached to, so post responsibly, someone's sanity depends on it.

*Songs mujhe pasand aate hain to main bhi lagata hoon, original nahi hua to kyaa hua, accha to hota hai*

#3 Idiots go to watch the namesake

2009-12-27T01:38:00.001+05:30

Today was a very enjoyable day as one of my bestest friends came to visit me, well not really me, he just came to attend aayush's sister's wedding, but he is staying with me so it is all the same. Hmm so where was i, ahh yes i was explaining that why today was such an enjoyable day, it began with numerous frantic phone calls to friends about their whereabouts. Which having no discernible impact except for the rapidly decreasing balance on our already meager pre-paid accounts, made us realize that all of us take our own sweet time to do anything. So Theka showed up at 4 a good 2 hours later than he had promised, but that is a small matter to what happened later.

He had repeatedly expressed his desire to watch 3 idiots today itself, and thus began a hunt for tickets that were being gobbled up like hot cakes (sorry for the weak expression it is 1 in the night, tomorrow is a very long day and it is going to start inhumanly early) but theka with his belligerence and cunning grabbed us 3 tickets, enter the 3rd protagonist of our little fairy tail, Shiro chan (who has his birthday today so a very happy birthday) who made a long and arduous journey from a far off corner of delhi to join our fool hardy endeavour, yet he being the ever good friend, game for an adventure came and started a journey that only 3 friends who have gone through hostel in an engineering college can appreciate. But now a little about the movie so much has been written about it that i must add my own interpretation to it.

The movie is great, no doubt about it. Compared to the useless shit that is thrown our way, this movie performs magnificently and then some more. But what lets me down is the second half, the first half is so good, it perfectly captures the essence of an engineering college but with a few glaring, gaping holes. When a senior threatens you it is not usually pissing on your door, it is usually a good old fashioned beat down, till your ass is black and blue and you have a lot of respect knocked into you. I don't want to nit pick so i will stop here, the best moment of the first half is the suicide of the guy who makes the flying thingy (pardon me again), for the first time in the history of bollywood a college is shown as it is, not a place where overage heroes and heroines wear designer clothes and act like 19th century brahmins, this is a true representation with the anguish, rebelliousness, and foolhardiness that characterizes the best years of your lives. The song give me some sunshine is a real humdinger, no questions asked.
And then you have to sit through the second half the melodrama runs high, the cliches start coming thick and fast, and unbelievable situations are played out. I could have made my peace with all of this but for the simple fact: AAMIR KHAN, he is the only one i could not tolerate in the movie, he is the difference between a great movie and a historic one, he is just so perfect in everything he says, does, believes so much so that i was constantly searching for a halo that might appear any second above his head. He is the only filmi character in the whole movie, him and boman irani who i feel was a bit too filmi like aamir khan.
But don't let me take anything away from the movie, an infinitely entertaining movie, sure to become a cult classic like Munnabhai.

But this was a movie which was seen by 3 idiots who see the way life is but don't really want to live by its rules.

Idiot #1: This idiot is of a very rare breed, he understands everything and then he feigns ignorance and creates misunderstanding, he is a constant tormentor of all those close to him, his argument being that argument is the spice of life. He is the one who loves his friends more than anything and he is the one who needs his friends the most, and he is a true lover of women and a sucker for women if i ever saw one. His Idiocy : His generosity

Idiot #2: This Idiot is the most passionate man that i have ever seen, He does only that, what he loves, his love for engineering is legendary, has many acquaintances but few friends, And his bad luck is legendary, historical even. He loses, he fails, he suffers the consequences of others yet this idiot soldiers on knowing that there is gold at the end of the rainbow, and if there isn't, well it was a decent trek. His Idiocy: His passion.

Idiot #3: The most flawed individual of the 3 this is the poster boy for lazy arrogance amd loneliness, he has a simple approach to life do the bare minimum to get by don't attract unnecessary attention and live a life of anonymity. But this approach fails him many times, sometimes the situation or sometimes a mentor calls his bluff. An infernal believer of what is right, and what is right for someone else, his belief is his pride and that is what hurts others. His Idiocy: His love

And 2 of the 3 idiots love this phrase: "I did not kill you because it was my job, I killed you because you had the audacity to raise your blade to my pride- Kuchiki Byakuya"

Life from an idealist's Point of View:- Attitude redefined.......

2009-12-09T23:10:00.000+05:30

Thank you Gera babu, if it were not for your post and the following thought process in the replies to your comments i would never have been able to come up with this post. These thoughts have been in my head for a long time but they were morphing and mutating constantly, upto this point, now they are more gel like and moving around slower than usual.

These past few days have been some of the busiest of my life, joining HCL, sitting through almost 36 hours worth of presentations, and being brainwashed with a mental barrage of positive reinforcement, these guys are so damn peppy they would make cheerleaders look like sad, sullen and morose mannequins. What i like to hear are not far fetched scenarios of, happiness following those who have good attitudes, and having a positive mindset to create opportunities for growth, this is so cliched it makes me want to suckle at the mouth of a gun. But they are continually trying to emboss upon us their philosophy believing, in the process, that we are naive enough to accept that kind of bull shit, if it were as simple as they make it sound then suicide would be a word that we learnt only for CAT, all self help books would be going to the recyling bins, every single self help guru would be on the verge of bankruptcy and everyone would be successful...

Now that i made it sound like that it does seem far fetched and impossible, because we as a species are hardwired to not be satisfied, to be full of negative emotions over stagnation and sedentary ways of living. The day we are satisfied with what we have, mark that day friends, for i will send over your eulogy, because that is when you stop living, and don't give me a pop psychology lesson that hunger is a good thing and a positive emotion; it is not, hunger makes
you do stupid, selfish and abrasive things, breeding more negative emotions, and no positive emotion or action can bring such a negative response.

Positive attitude, what the fuck is that, people keep on saying that have a positive attitude, look at the positive side of it and what not and their favourite poster boy for this argument is Thomas Alva Edison failing 999 times and then inventing the light bulb. Friends i promise you positive attitude will, optimistically, get you to 290 times, the rest of the time, obsession is a much more potent drug, his inability to accept his failure (notice the fact that i have not used the word 'choice') was what came to his aid, not that attitude, inspirational bull crap. Friends let me tell you what they don't say about leaders, they are human beings not full of shining light but full of dark obsessive emotions that just don't fade away.
Margaret Thatcher: Insomniac, obsessive.
Eisenhower: Authoritarian
Hitler: Anti-semitic
Napolean: Over-compensating
Alexander: Questionable mother and very volatile.

The fact that the who's who of history is full of more negative emotions, that drove them to do great things, than the positive attitude a million people could gather and shine out of their asses.
Oh and I must add Mahatma Gandhi: a leader so rigid and obsessive in his belief that he drove us to our independence almost single handedly, and oh yes he didn't give a rats ass about anyone else's ideology or vision....

Try this for once, try letting go of everything positive, and let yourself be consumed by the dark side, it might not be good for you but it is the fuel that truly drives greatness......

As i just came up on Shruti Rawat's post "If you are on a highway to destruction, might as well drive a ferrari"

Raghvi Behl's First master piece....

2009-12-06T14:54:00.000+05:30

This has been written by Raghvi Behl and is her first serious attempt on doing something productive with her enormous talent, which she modestly does not acknowledge...but all those who are reading this do not be modest shower you praise in all its enormity-Raphael

Today i was stirred by this realization,
that life is unfair at times.
It is like a bad, spoilt friend.
who gives you happy little moments,
but doesn't care if you fall.

It will always be there to inspire you for all, good and bad,
But give it a chance, it will screw you real hard.
Still surprises you now and then,
But will never care enough to make you smile always,
It helps you realise, YOU WALK ALONE
Gives you your own share of tears.

But it inspires you too,
reminds you nothing is static.
It's really cool and can give tons of attitude.
Be nice to it!
It will teach you bitter lessons,
Test your luck
but it will hang around.

Love it or hate it, it's there for you
and like i always say....it teaches you....
that you need yourself the most in the hardest times.....

:- Raghvi

Cometh the hour...cometh the (wo)man?

2009-11-24T22:02:00.000+05:30

A few days ago, before the sugarcane farmers were defecating and urinating in the thousands at Jantar Mantar, protesting the control of sugar prices by the government, before the leaked liberhan report to indian express caused the Lok and Rajya Sabha to be ground to a halt, before the tabled report accused Vajpayee, Advani and Joshi of inciting communal violence. A much understated drama was being played out by the Air Chief Barbora when asked about the future of women in aviation and direct combat for the Indian Armed forces (women as fighter pilots and in the infantry) he said that he could not forsee a role for women fighter pilots in the near or for that matter in the far future, these comments were made on the back of India's imminent, 126 fighter mega-giga-tera-peta deal. The deal hopefully is in good hands, unlike the future aspirations of the women-fighters of India. He said that the government spends about 9 crore on the training of the pilots and they have a service bond of 14 years, *ok good enough, now where is the reason a woman can't fly?*, and only after 12 years in service can a pilot pay back his training costs to the force,*ok, we get the commerce but where is the reason???*, well yes a woman would have to sign the service agreement, she could be happily married but we say no to pregnancy,*that is all fine, well and dandy but where is the fuckin reason that women can't fly*, and that was the end of the interview. And i was left wondering that while Pratibha Patil hits the treadmill to get into shape for her maiden and hopefully last flight aboard a Sukhoi 30-MKI, the rest of Indian female population will have to wait to a long time before they see the inside of a fighter cockpit urrrr.... excuse me HEN-pit. The respected Chief said many things, but never gave a plausible or even an outlandish reason for this policy. I mean to say that if a suitable contract can be drawn and a woman after considering the restraints, wants to do this, what is the problem? Is it because the woman is not patriotic enough? or because they have lower brain capacity? the only credible and practical difference between men and women is the physical aspect. Yes, Men have the physical advantage when it comes to combat and extreme situations, but it would be hardly tedious work to draw up a suitable set of benchmarks for the physical qualifications for women. This is all fine and jolly if the whole armed forces fraternity were on the same page, but no sooner had the air chief given these statements, the navy commisioned its first 2 women aviators. I mean bravo, we really are the pastmasters of double standards.
Lastly, Just this one thing if a demure, average Indian girl can fly a Space shuttle, it must be soooooooooooooooooooo difficult for indian women to fly aircrafts....

I have a bone to pick with women too, but not today, not in this post which i have so carefully moulded to show them in good light...that one is for another post at some other time....

But it rained...and it was november

2009-11-16T22:43:00.000+05:30

When I look into your eyes I can see a love restrained But darlin' when I hold you Don't you know I feel the same 'Cause nothin' lasts forever And we both know hearts can change And it's hard to hold a candle In the cold November rain

The title is courtesy guns n' roses and parikrama. The rain is beautiful, there is no simpler word for it, maybe copious to the not so romantic, but the rain is definitely beautiful. It reminds me of a lot of things, very random and hardly coherent the only common thought being that they are all connected to me, i was just finishing my snickers when i heard a rumble akin to the one emanating from my stomach, let us not go into the unsavoury details of my digestion, but rather, that rumbling was thunder echoing its might to all across the land as if in a challenge to any who would dare. I went outside, my nutty snickers in hand and i saw the rain pouring merrily away at all giving out its love in equal measure to all who would embrace it. I saw the late shift workers hurriedly heading home to a tasty stew and a warm bed. And i saw a drunk who was moving at his own sweet speed, bottle carefully hidden in his pocket, taken out for a swig and then replaced just as quickly. And i don't know how that made me feel, i wouldn't know. But soon My mind was racing and i was imagining myself as the drunk moving slowly in the pouring night, in no hurry to get home the only friend with me was my trusty half of royal challenge...(obviously if i were he then i wouldn't be drinking lal quila)... and as the rain peppered me i looked back upon my life with cherishing eyes , saw all my friends, saw my loves failed and not successful, and the only sound in my head was November rain by guns n' roses and the haunting image of a bride throwing the wedding bouquet and that white rosed bouquet turns into a red one falling on her own grave, the sheer poetry of that one moment and the visual eminence of that one moment replaying through my conscience as i cry searching for what was missing, but the tears flow only in the rain, and i hunch my face into my own chest moving forward with my own lazy urgency. I come back to my own senses and see that i'm in my house on my chair. As i gaze unfocused at the ceiling i remember how the good times were so far away, and the bad times were nowhere in sight i'm numb and there is nothing for me to feel... so i get up and look at the cold november rain hoping it will wash away my sloth. But it sings its own merry song that flighty temptress that is happiness, it is a mirage made to fool, there is nothing but pain...
As i walked in the rain , my mind said hello i was surprised, do brains do so, hello it said again, and i said hello back who are you he said, i'm you i said back, but he asked who are you again, with more insistence i'm raphael... Not your name dumbass, that i know, i asked a very simple question who are you... and i realised what he was asking, i thought and thought and thought, and said.... i don't know the mind radiated joy, and said finally... Its not who you are that defines you, but what you do....

And when your fears subside And shadows still remain, I know that you can love me When there's no one left to blame So never mind the darkness We still can find a way 'Cause nothin' lasts forever Even cold November rain

and on 17th november is the birthday of my dear friend my brother, aayush...happy birthday man

Prey for Instinct

2009-11-09T17:41:00.000+05:30

And Deepankar said "Love (Non-platonic, that's you) is instinct. It can be only be countered by another equally strong instinct. Find yourself something for which you have a passion. Something primal, for which the you don't have to use higher brain functions. I'm good at trekking because I fell in love with it first, not the other way round. Find your _instinct_..."
And the beginnings of wisdom come from the word Instinct.
What is the difference between the king and the horse? and this is not a kids riddle where the answer would be one's a human and the other's an animal, one has two legs and the other has 4 legs. No, Assuming two existences had the exact same form,ability and even power. When one of the two becomes the "king" and rules over the battle the remaining one becomes the "horse" and amplifies the king's power. I'm asking you what's the difference between the two.
There's only one answer, It's the instinct, the instinct to seek battle, power, to crush your enemies without mercy. Whereas you try to defeat others with reason and fight battles with logic.
This is the instinct of the soul to gravitate towards the most primal of desires safety, lust, hunger. Let's just say that today the hunter/gatherer attitude of humans has been put on the backburner and anyone with that attitude is looked down upon by the society as an eccentric or a bum. But being instinctual is a freedom beyond any that one can feel. To go to your most primal tendencies, which in deepu's case is wandering with a goal, or in my case is writing, he is very true in saying that a person is good at something because he loves it and not the other way around. The instinct to write and do something that requires moving and action is my most primal tendency, this explains my inability to stay put in lectures.
But sadly this sort of primeval tendency has been put to rest with higher order brain functions taking a precedence over ones inclinations. Intangibles have taken precedence over tangibles, you are much more likely to have submitted an analysis on a project report rather than have fixed your car yourself.
This lack of actual stuff to do is the most disconcerting of all for a human, even though we accept that this as the norm today but inside we are just aching to break away and surrender ourselves to the rush of feelings.
What did the neanderthal doctor say to his modern interns?
Me-good doctor, you-bad doctor, me fix boo boo, you watch.

I believe now that finding and following your instincts is the only route to true happiness:
"Ever heard of the depressed caveman, Of course not"-my case in point.

In a limbo: between a rock and a hard place

2009-11-06T22:12:00.000+05:30

Again for my not so verbally attuned friends a limbo is "An imaginary place for lost or neglected things" which is exactly what my first love is, in an imagianry place in my head where i still cherish the desire for all the wrong things to be right again. I tried to objectively approach love in my last post where i realized that it is irrational, hurtful and imaginary but it would be conceited of me to say that it is all negative, it is lovely(tongue in cheek), empowering and very very important. But this is not a place to scientifically define and analyse love many have failed and many will fail in defining it, the most simple definition i can give is that it exists and at some point in everyone's life he/she/it will experience love. Which brings me to the reason why am i writing such a thing with the title as such. Well the reason is very simple my inability to meet a girl has given my frustrations a new voice, they used to whisper, when i said it is only a matter of time. But now they have found a new voice and they speak to me like a mocking peer and say that my inability to move on has set my fate in stone, what was barely registered a few months ago is now becoming the only voice of reason that i'm listening to. Hmmm, Moushi ma'am told me to be unequivocal in my posts so i will veer from the paths of the intangibles to the well beaten road of the verifiable.

Fact: i'm not in love
reason: i don't have a girl.
Question: Why don't i have a girl?
Answer: Because i'm scared of girls.
Fact: I have atleast 7 very very good friends who are girls.
inference: i'm not afraid of girls
Lame ass excuse: that was before january 9th 2007, i was not afraid then.
Interjection: Atleast 3 of those 7 friendships were made after that time.
Result: i'm lying.
Actual truth: i haven't found anyone because i'm in a limbo over the first one.
Interjection: You have told all of your friends at one stage or another that it was never there.
New actual truth: The logical part of me made those decisions. Hence cannot be admissible in the case of an illogical irrational emotion.

Summary: Jolly was right all along it will never be a matter of time, zain was right too, the name will always be controversial. These ravings will continue till the time....oh idon't know till when. Have i ever been good with stuff like this.

Reason for this post: Aaj tanhai mein phir unki yaad sata gayi, aaj phir unki yaad in aankhon ko rula gayi, bahut kaha tha doston ko ki bhool gaye hain hum unko, magar anjaane mein asliyat hamein phir unse vaakif kara gayi.

Why are we human?

2009-10-30T17:09:00.000+05:30

I'm writing, hence i'm sad. True, very true but i'm not truly sad, i'm sad and confused, i'm sad because many people in my life have decided to part company if not completely then atleast emotionally and this month has been the single most emotionally overloaded month that i've had for years, people grow apart slowly, they fall out of love over their own stupid realizations, they are ripped by distance and drift apart. While some just soldier on fighting and making up then fighting again then making up again in a cycle that keeps them sensitised to each other. While some go far away and some remain stuck in the moment that they just can't get out of. While only one type truly strive to understand each other, if they are doomed for the worse i don't want to know and if they are doomed to end up together i still don't want to know just that they are doomed either way should be enough. If you can relate to what has been written here kudos cause a lot of what i've written is very ambiguous.

I'm confused because why are we such suckers for pain, the irony is that when i asked someone that how is everything going she said it is good, and to that i replied "if everything feels good, be prepared for it to be screwed up soon" and then the calamitous incidents of yesterday happened. But i still don't understand that why are we such suckers for pain why is it that when we are happy and content it just doesn't work out, we always end up miserable if not instantly then gradually. Is it because it is in our 'screw the good thing' gene i shudder to think if that were to be present. Or it could be because we are indians that we can only understand the scorching temperatures or enough cold to make your fingers fall off, autumn is spent thinking of the winter ahead and spring is spent complaining of the summer to come.

Trust me i have tried to wrap my head around this concept as logically as my brain would permit but i cannot come to any valid conclusion that would be admissible to the sensibilities of my thoughts, maybe herein lies the futility of my actions i'm trying to logically analyze something that is in itself illogical and hence cannot be fathomed by logic alone i would have to travel to the depths of the chaos called love, lose my mind in the process and become an incomprehensible baboon. Now a stupidity of that level is not permissible by my current state of extreme sobriety. The question is why people fall in love and not why they fall out of love. The reasons i've heard are many, varied, far fetched, and absolutely flimsy and the universal statement "you won't understand what we have."
And now i scoff at these people who tried their luck, because they know it or not but they are doomed, for what i donot know but for certain i know that they are doomed.
And this is to my sane friends whose count stops at one. THIS IS TO ME AND THEKA cheers to being single for now. What, do you think i'm conceited enough to say that i'll be single forever? i laugh at you.

Just one last thought...maybe this can shed some light.
"We see the world as we are, not the way it is."

Loneliness-Calypso's curse

2009-09-27T23:51:00.000+05:30

My friends, i'm writing a raw emotional piece after a long long time, these sort of feelings used to come to me during my second year at college, where i was really struggling with my life. it was one of the darkest periods of my life, conversely i produced some of my finest poems during that time, i guess poetry does come from powerful misery when i look back at those lines i marvel the fact that i had such dark and brooding feelings where i could have taken any addiction to any length, but thank the lord i didn't. My junior recently asked me why was i so serious, i said i'm not serious, i'm sombre and yes that does seem worse because it is worse. This feeling originates from obsessive overthinking and trust me i have had a lot of time to think about the world, my friends, my life and what will happen in the future. And sometimes it feels that i'm just existing, moving through time as it flows past me and i'm trapped in my own lethargy which i can't seem to break, a prisoner to my own sloth, a victim of my own pride, a sufferer of my own vanity and a martyr to my own vengeance. It feels like i'm a hollow shell, a husk without a soul, my body turning to dust. Yet i don't feel liberated i feel the weight of two worlds upon my back. I feel its fell presence tainting my life, perverting my thoughts, wresting away my sanctity, pushing me to the brink of sanity. I feel the curse drawing closer with its rattling breath and its foul bearing, loneliness will soon have the better of me and i'm broken into two. As i grapple with myself i realize the futility of my own actions, i feel as if i'm fading.

Titans and other commonly used euphemisms that drive me nuts.

2009-09-22T21:09:00.000+05:30

Dear unfortunate reader, i am not in a good mood, no i'm in a possibly vile mood, no strike that too, i'm in a mood that will drive me to murder in a painful and excruciating way that society in general will shudder to think that a man can be so violent, yes that is the type of mood i'm in (perfect), i'm usually pissed at the use of cliche's while reading anything unless and until the particular piece is using cliche's to slam those dirty little buggers(cliche's). Yet i find that these sort of expressions are very commonly used and then overused to an extent where i find that i simply can't stomach them and i stop reading the aforementioned piece. But this overkill simply does not seem to penetrate the thick concretish skulls of our esteemed press, print or electronic media. They just keep on slinging that shit in our direction and because of lack of choice we simply wipe our faces and struggle forward in the storm of flying shit to the crux of the matter which is no more than a nugget of information that has been covered with so much rhetoric that it seems like a mountain while actually it is the size of an ant adding it's excreta to the mountain. My ire is directed less towards the serious journalists because obviously serious subjects don't really require a shit coating as they are already so very deep in their own shit. Shit man i've used shit too many times, shit! But my righteous and holy anger is directed at the not so serious reporting of the sports page and the entertainment section these guys for lack of content build up this hype around every single miniscule issue by saying things like, "we are ready for them, galdiators locked in combat, mammoth ask, sleeping giants, blazed a trail of fury, blew them away" and my favorite of all time a "A Titanic struggle, a Titanic clash." Now if these so called mythical creatures read these sort of things comparing them to mortals who by the mere whiff of their presence would crumble to ashes, i'm telling you there will be literaly hell to pay(another cliche i hate, include all other cliches about hell, devils and angels).

What really irks me is the beaten up cliche about the Titans, most of these so called journalists don't even know what kind of fear and awe these titan's used to inspire, Kronos the lord of time father of the olympian gods,Typhon the bane of the gods, Hyperion ruler of the east, Atlas the most fearsome warrior the universe had ever known, Prometheus, Krios and others elder and minor whose fear, power, and menace is beyond the comprehension of any mortal, yet these learned mebers of society continue to equate such trivialities as movie releases, cricket matches and elections. While the true Titanic struggle is to create love, save the planet and make the masses laugh. My friends these are tasks which are truly titanic in nature not the release of an Aamir Khan movie and a Shah Rukh Khan movie.

If i have used any cliche please inform me via your comments so that i may kill myself in a cruel and unpleasant manner, thank you for your patience in this very long and drawn out rant.

Hubris- overbearing pride or presumption.

2009-09-22T20:48:00.000+05:30

I have recently read an immensely enjoyable book by the name of Percy jackson and the olympians, it is a fantasy tale about a demi god, percy jackson who is the son of poseidon. Cutting a long summary short it is the typical fantasy, hero, prophecy, harry potteresque book. But the main crux being that it is immensely enjoyable, written wittily and with a tongue in cheek humour, the pages just flew by me and before i knew it i had read 5 books in about a week. The reason that i have written this post is not to glorify a book, but to tackle a concept which i had forgotten completely about- Hubris or pride. It is one of the seven deadly sins as identified by the church, and for a writeup on other sins do visit Pranav Hundoo's blog. But why this particular word caught my fancy was because of percy jackson and something that i had said to my mother today. " Once you make a decision, back it." yeah, i know you might think i have got a big mouth to be talking to my mother like this but she is a worrier, and always second guesses her perfectly made decision, which i have to hear about and which can be quite tedious. Thus the said line.

That pride or hubris is a fatal flaw, most of us know and we can identify it almost immediately in any person within the first few minutes of an interaction, but the most difficult part is identifying it in oneself, we can go to great lengths to justify something as not being prideful. Generating some truly ingenious reasons along the way. But the fact remains that we do ignore this and it is people close to us who usually have to bear the brunt of our behaviour and actions. I know for a personal fact that i have a lot of pride and this makes it all the more worse because i acknowledge the fact that i have a lot of pride yet do nothing about it, and there have been a lot of victims to my pride and ego namely one of my best friends, three of my favourite juniors one of my closest 'girl' friends(obviously i won't be naming them, if you want names then read a gossip column), but this is my flaw, atleast one that i know of. Yet self repentance is not the aim of this exercise(see my pride gets in the way again) but remeberence is, as i'm pre disposed to do these days i spend a lot of time reminiscing about my college life and somehow more often than not, when i try to remeber the good times in depth the bad and occasionally the ugly rears its head. I remeber the fights, the quarrels, the disagreements, the shouting matches and a lot of ugly stuff. Ahhh, days of sunshine were those days, but now that i look back on them there is a huge component of pride involved. It boiled down to the fact that two huge egos were battling it out to not lose face. And my friends will see exactly what i mean when they look back on these issues.

Which i sincerely hope they do because without learning from the mistakes of the past, we are but going around in a circle doing the same things. And Aaamir Khan said in his ad "Auron ki mistakes se kya seekhna, make your own," the point being that do learn from your mistakes when they happen. And a classic example of hubris from my side for a statement that was: Every realtionship needs a lot of compromise, you cannot have your way all the time.
To which i said-When a realtionship becomes a compromise to keep your pride, what then?

The Enigma: Woman

2009-08-15T20:13:00.001+05:30

The subject of my newest blog entry is something that has a hold over not just me but more than half of the world's population, and is about the other half of the world's population. There is just something about the fairer sex that continues to haunt the sleeping and waking dreams of us menfolk, epics have been written by our sheer infatuation with these venusians, and yet we are no closer to solving the conundrum of the 'woman' than disproving einstein's theories, on second thought we might be closer to disproving Einstein than understanding women. They excite, repulse, love, hate, torment, care, breed jealousy, inspire friendship, create longing, fuel desires, bring out the animal within or tame the beast, and we have been at their beck and call for millenia. They can make you feel like you are the centre of the universe and in the next second you could be made to feel like an insignificant speck of dirt on her shoe, the passions that a woman can evoke are unmatched, unparalleled, peerless, unrivalled or in simple words like no other. Man can capture cities, oceans, countries, glaciers even space but a being as simple as him is beyond his comprehension.
These words might sound like the musings of a lovestruck little puppy or those of a hormonal teenager, i'm neither of those, maybe a little of both, a more accurate expression would be "a serial fantasizer of women," but it is the truth and i'm not really ashamed of it, there is a reason that they are the fairer sex and that is because they are god's better creations and if not worshipped they must surely be revered because without them life would be really mundane and unsexy, something about only men inhabiting this planet gives me the proverbial shivers. Homer said of Helen in the iliad "Fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars" and i daresay an evening like that would never have elicited a similar response from homer or for that matter Paris, the greek queen's lover.
But i'm not here to harp on and on about cause and effect and i'm also in no mood to give all of you a lesson in history, though i'm tempted to but i won't i will not be speaking anymore of Helen, Cleopatra, Marie Antoinette,Draupadi,Hermione(of shakeaspeare not JK rowling) but rather i shall be writing on what i find beautiful in a woman. You see everything about a woman i love, i love their eyes: crinkled in amusement, wide with surprise, full of love or burning with hatred but their is something about the way they cry, i really understand now why Enrique said "i don't know why, but i love to see you cry" something about a woman crying is really beautiful. I love their hair long like a cascading river falling from a mountain changing its path, hiding, shimmering, teasing, fulfiling and their hair short exposing and framing their perfect faces, i love the nape of their necks a thing of such beauty that i'm struck absolutely by it. The shape of their face and how it moves so elegantly tilting from side to side while speaking, laughing. The grace of their necks as the taper gently into the torso and how it rests on the beautiful support of the twin collar bones. i love their perfectly rounded shoulders and their tiny ineffectual fists(though some of these girls do hit pretty hard). How the nape of their necks widen to the shoulders and then gently curves like a mountain path into their waists(which can usually be held in one arm, usually). The radiance of the ridges of her spine as it moves across her back. But nothing has captured the imagination of man like the bosom of a woman, from shakeaspeare to modern day filmmakers all seem to be obsessed with it and i can understand the madness behind them for they are the epitome of being a woman, that and giving birth. And oh i so wish that i could describe in detail the sheer delectability of the curves of a woman but that would require me to write a tome, for which i'm not prepared, but the most beautiful aspect of a woman is her smile, the curve of the lips that sets hearts aflutter and tears hearts asunder. One could spend a lifetime making a woman smile and it will be a life well spent.
There are many arguments against what i have just written but let me just say this is what i think personally i don't endorse this view nor ask anyone else to believe it. Just that even if i were a girl i know i would have still loved girls.

2009-08-03T14:36:00.000+05:30

The activities of educating or instructing; activities that impart knowledge or skill... this is the definition my trusty WordWeb gives of Education. I would like to further add that the current education system aims to impart knowledge as well as skill. I, proud of being from a very illustrious and privileged institution was always taught that overall growth mattered and not the sole ability to pass tests with flying colours, thus taking such a thing to heart i started playing a bit of sports started writing a bit, debating and the likes. But the time for disillusionment was not that far away. The 11th standard arrived and the rules of the game changed, sports and other activities were no longer encouraged, i being a science student with a double whammy of maths and biology to contend with was particularly flummoxed that the things which had me stood me in great stead were now being actively frowned upon. Only study was the new anthem of my great alma mater. In retrospect i should have studied more and participated less maybe then i would have landed the profession of my choice with the kind of job that would have encouraged me a lot. Sadly, as my school was, the indian education system is starting to become. My school did not accept mediocrity in any form, studies, sports, ex-curricular or for that matter anything worth being in a school. So, naturally i was one of the most mediocre beings in my school excelling at nothing but not really bad at anything. This is the state of the current affair of the indian education system, any sane normal student will never get an admission into any half decent college of his choice because his seat has already been filled with a person who has outscored him on one exam. it does not matter if you were a head boy, football captain, social service head and an NTSE scholar to boot, all rolled into one, your future depends on 1 round of examinations totalling 15 hours in all and they will decide your future. talk about pressure, no wonder the students of today are under so much pressure, these are worse odds than missing a penalty in a world cup final penalty shootout(Roberto Baggio and David Trezeguet). this is not a game it is your life. A lot of people have reacted in a very vehement manner concerning this issue. but will there be a change? No, not really because the system does not accept mediocrity. Let me help you by not sugar coating it, this will be the case for the rest of your life in whatever you do, mediocrity will never be tolerated. i would like to continue this rant into another 1000 words but i feel they will go out of context hence wait for the next article in the series.

Hajime

2009-07-14T23:14:00.001+05:30

The title is a reference to the Japanese program gera babu is undergoing, and because this particular article is being written for his blog, or to be a little more specific, one of his blogs devoted to the budding talents of his friends, now I will not endeavor to say that I’m one of his best friends but he is one of my favorite seniors and a person who I admire as well as despise. There are some of his habits that just drives me insane and gera babu that includes you dissing Delhi whenever you can, but I really love his style man he is one energizer battery. Now, this is starting to sound like a testimonial so I shall turn to the job really at hand that is writing something meaningful in his blog.
I’m a conflicted person, not in the emotional sense but in a creative sense, both serious and frivolous topics hold equal sway over me. That I tend to find misery in the best of situations and comedy in the most dour of instances. I would like to start this, hopefully long lasting, fruitful and intellectually stimulating relationship with gera babu by something that usually tugs at my conscience a lot these days it is the matter of the recent high court judgment decriminalizing consensual intercourse between two men. Hallelujah the last vestige of the British raj has left India claimed one daily, the archaic law is pulled down claimed another news channel and this has been repeated so many times by our overzealous media that all its value as a landmark judgment has been lost and now it is turning into a farce, the same kind of farce the Indian film industry has made of homosexuality, bobby darling, kantaben and dostana my case in point. My thought being that when people stop and think about it not much has changed, the law still exists, all the cases that were already lodged in court under this law shall continue as they were, the judiciary has simply said that this particular interpretation of law is unconstitutional and the ball is in the legislative’s court. Which if it sees fit in the name of public morality may decide to reinstate the law in its entirety and we will be back to where we began, that being gay is criminal. But in this I would also like to congratulate the naz foundation for taking up this petition in the high court and those brave and hardworking lawyers from an organization whose name eludes me right now, these are the people who have done a magnificent job in bringing equality to a hidden section of the society. But if you look a little closer into the matter not much has changed, will we as a society suddenly turn around and find homosexuality acceptable, will we stop making jokes about gay people, or will we now be more sensitive to this community just because it is legal to be gay now. Look deep inside of you and the answer will be clear that we as a society are not ready to embrace homosexuality as a part and parcel of life when we have problems with woman empowerment and casteism. Not when a yoga guru can go on national television and claim that homosexuality is a disease and that he can cure it with yoga, which is just like saying that people who don’t like chocolate are diseased and they can be cured, I know it is a very absurd analogy but that is the complete point, a thought so absurd deserves an analogy equally idiotic.

The memories of nobody...

2009-07-14T14:56:00.000+05:30

This is the article i wrote for my college yearbook "Alvida" and it was so long that i had to cut it short but here is the full version and as one end is another beginning so why don't i start with an end and signify a beginning, so here goes.

This title has been stolen, thank you very much. My purpose for writing this article is very convoluted and vague, be sure it will not be a tribute to my 4 years in college and surely it won’t be a glorified remembrance of what happened and what our future’s hold. I’m sure that many will attempt and will write on this subject in this very magazine. Trust me; I don’t think any less of their work just because I don’t write about it. Hmmmm, now to the subject matter, I ripped off this title because I think it is very apt for our time here at JUIT or at least for those who don’t have a special one with them, because I believe that our time here is a memory, a memory as short and transient as a grain of sand that the wind has blown with itself. Our time here depends on what we are feeling at that point of time, example: when there are a lot of fun things to do, it seems that we have been in this college for a mere days, not years and when something like boredom or exams or presentations or assignments and so on and so forth comes up college seems like a long dusty path that we have traversed and still have to traverse. Lovely, the way the situation moulds our thought process. I’m finally passing out after 4 long years, 4 long, painful, joyous, successful, regretful, surprising, predictable, lovable and despicable years. People ask me what will I miss most about this place (well not people, but persons) this put me in a bit of a spot, and I’ve realized that over the past 4 years I’ve missed a lot of things: my home, my innocence, my seniors, sometimes even myself. But what I will miss most will be the constant motion that this place brings with it, whenever we thought, it couldn’t get any better, it did. And whenever we thought, that it could not get any worse, promptly, it did. Writing this I’m suddenly overcome by a million thoughts, some pleasant and some disturbing and I’m unable to continue in the same vain. How would I summarize those thoughts, maybe with this line which I said in a class not that long ago “Life (college) is a constant struggle, everyday it will beat you down to a pulp and then it is up to you to pick yourself up and ask for more. Never backing down (another film title).” Man this place gives a person a love for the movies and series, and for a little more adventurous people; Anime (Japanese cartoons). These are the things that have kept us alive over the past 40% of the decade (please note my clever use of percentages; thank you). All this apart, I remember a short little something that I had written about this place when I was in the first year, now when I go through it all, it comes across as an immature, brutal yet honest assessment of this college by a freshie. Man, I’ve lost my brutality. In this respect as a person I have matured beyond my years, but one statement in that little paragraph which holds so much truth even today was that JUIT offers unlimited pain in love, but suffering is optional, according to the management. As compared to many of my batch mates I have had absolutely no luck in love but this has given me a new outlook on life, HUM HONGE KAMYAAB, I’m hoping and someday I will succeed. There is a very popular line in technical circles, that engineering colleges have 2 types of people a. Mard and b.Non- Mard. Very much false I have seen so many pretty faces here that I thank god every day that I came to JUIT to study, thinking about it, this was said by Palash Sen(Euphoria), I also loved his joke about the barrier between boys and girls at Le fiestus ‘08 being a contraceptive. At least someone can see the humour in it otherwise all the people here take themselves too seriously. Talking about people taking themselves too seriously, recently the university was host to an art of living course which caused quite a stir in the normal lives of us hostellers with so much enthusiasm flowing I was being my typical and very magnificent, cynical and sarcastic best, to the point where I told a friend that you eat, you sleep, you breathe hence you live. True that I don’t really think that there is any art in living but this is again a symbol of the constant change that is happening I certainly could never have imagined that there would be any such sort of thing here. I have seen a lot in my time here, the highlights would be the freshers at our time which got delayed over and over again, all of the JIIT noida fest that I attended and won a lot, the pseudo strike in our 2^nd year, the 3^rd^th year fight last year(not really proud of it), the placement time when we were so scared but pretended that we weren’t, and now in the 4 year wishing that I could relive it once more. To my juniors whom I have seen go from scared little things in their 1 year to self confident mature people and most of all friends which I know I have made for life, thanks to them this highlights package called a college life had so many ups and downs. A toast to my enemies whoever you might be, because my stature increases with the stature of my enemies may you live well. Now that I have said all of this, I’m really not a fan of talking without saying anything so I’ll just say, remember the part in the beginning of this article, that it won’t be about remembrance and blah blah blah, well folks I lied, deal with it. This article is called memories of nobody because nobody is perfect and I’m nobody. No actually it is called memories of nobody because they are not the memories of any one person they are memories of many and thus no one can claim them as their own so the memories of nobody dedicated to all who made them come true. Tearing your hair out, my mission here is done. To leave all of you I would quote a few lines from my favorite band u2 “all that you fashion, all that you make, all that you build, all that you break, all that you measure, all that you deal, all that you count on your fingers and all that you steal. Leave it behind you gotta leave it behind, walk on” and in the end you have to leave it behind and walk on. Love you all.