Just a wondering…
wondering… self control, probably the most crappiest concept ever!
Imagine having something so tantalising and so tempting that it would make you want to sin… lying right there.. in front of you!
Damn!!!! its only when you are adviced not to eat a zillion things, that everything seems so sinfully alluring.
blah blah..
“This is for you, because Today’s youngsters have enough opportunity!” That was the concluding line that some one whom I met two days back told me. This person is a sexagenarian and is very actively participating in a lot many things, and focuses primarily on the academic circle and research.
I do not dare to disagree. Most of his points were truly valid. He takes orientations for vice-presidents and managers, teaches behavioral sciences and strategy management to MBA candidates of prestigious institutions in the country. Do not ask how I know this person, the answer is obvious – Dad.
After all these points that he told and all his narratives, I have but one question to ask – if we are such a brilliant lot, and genetic mutation does make us more intelligent, and we are making a meager 100000 or 2 a month, and have all the resources and are mostly the best of the lot – how come there are not many innovations from this generation. How come the only revisions to the text books have been geographical and illustrations related to changes brought forth by the govt. and not in the science and math books.
Now for the IT geeks do not get me started on the topic. How come we only have version releases, and mostly come up with things that are built on something else, like renovation and not innovation. For that matter anything on the web, would not have been possible if not for some sexagenarian or then maybe even more older.
Do we really think there are more intelligent people in the work force now than were may be ten years before?
For starters, my fathers colleague said, that the first important thing for achievers is that they do not go around telling people about what they achieved, but instead made it a point to think of the next achievement and formulate the basis for that. Hmmmm… now I know, for a fact that people as old as me are still around and want to get a better raise for something that they did in the past.
Now this is something that annoys me the most. The people who told me all this, this person and most of the friends of dad’s who are involved in teaching to people who score a 160+ on an IQ scale fail to think of the average human, or the average Indian workforce. And it is this seclusion and deprival from intellectual exposure that makes the average person much more backward than they think. It’s not the way the look or the accent that you talk with, it’s all about what you think, what you want to do and your perspective on life – that’s what matters. I can not conclude that this lot of people is wrong or the other. I am just glad that I can get such exposure and would gladly share it with who ever is interested in it.
Something about Love
The last time Frost wrote about something romantic that she felt from her heart, it was vey widely spoken about. And it happened on a night, which would have passed off as an ordinary night, but I had laid foundations to something big, although it did not have anything to do with love.
Tonight as well, technically last night, watching this movie about adolescence and how love in itself gets interpreted made me realize how good it felt(notice the tense is past here and therefore do not even dare to bring up a name!). The absolute sheer force of something called hormones, triggers some of the most important emotional outbursts that man can comprehend and thus has led to the most appreciated works of art, be it the Taj Mahal or poetry or simply just a whole liner that your loved one likes.
This is not something that I feel or felt or would feel. It is a simple story. Something imaginative, some thing I could have read, something that could have happened or might. Absolutely fiction!
It smelt familiar – like the smell of home. For a place so far off, the smell of wet earth makes one happy. It reminded her of her parents home – the place where Tulsi spent her life, until now. As with most families, Tulsi grew up in an Indian nuclear family, the elder sibling, lots of love and lots of happy memories. And with time, Tulsi is married into a family equally suited. Tulsi’s husband, Neeraj, works as a consultant in the States. After a happy wedding and tearful farewell to homeland, the hormones start working. And this is Tulsi’s letter to her friend.
Dear Anu,
I miss you and the rest of the lot dearly. I cannot help but reminisce about all the good times we had there. The first few weeks were fun and settling down kept me busy. Now it’s become more of a drag. I can’t help miss home, family, you and the gang. There are some things that are best understood only by friends. I do hope that all are well back home.
I did get to check email finally last night and got replying to you today after I am done with all the chores and get Neeraj out of my way, so to say. Most of my time during the day is spent in chores; normal people like us cannot afford domestic help in this country. And until I find myself a job here, think I will have to stick to this routine here. Neeraj does try to cheer me up, his best efforts are to get me to go out and explore the city. It’s so not like there, I want to eat masala dosa and I get a Mc chicken here. I know you are laughing out loud as you read this. I must have taken your advice and followed you as an example and found myself a guy from Chennai itself, life would surely have been better. But I have no regrets, except may be the food (will use the opportunity and start up a kai yendi bhavan here.)
I wouldn’t have thought that I would say I had no regrets until last night, for I was most apprehensive after relocating to this country. Everything is here, but it’s still as alien as alien can be defined. And Neeraj… I do not know what to say. Guess getting to know him will take time. There was all this tension in my mind and I was probably getting grumpy with the work permit getting delayed. Your email was a welcome relief. I still ended up crying though. Not something I would do, but I did, until he came home.
You have always told me that you would realize it when some one loves you… guess it’s true. You all have been there when I most needed you. But last night after the email, life felt so hollow. I realized that you would still be there but I couldn’t come running to you when I wanted to have rasam! Life felt like shit! And I couldn’t help but carry the mood with me wherever I went.
That’s about life as it is, married life well, it’s a total different thing. Neeraj is a nice guy. Not like me at all. He is a lot more decent. Tries to keep me occupied with things to do and plans on trips and all that till my work permit gets through. And he keeps me engrossed in conversations – the best part of marrying a well-read person. Unlike any of the conversations that we had, the one we had after your email was the best.
Absolutely depressed from being away from you all, I retired to bed early. Don’t know how he could sense it, must be the stupid grumpy look I had, he kept asking if something was wrong. I told him its nothing and went to bed. A little while later when he came and put on the reading light and started reading, he asked me if I missed home and friends. Words really didn’t make it past my throat. It was as stifling as it could get. He enveloped me in an embrace so tight and yet so gentle. With my heart beating abnormally, and all those pent up words in my throat, and the tears that were flooding my eyes, I was sure I heard him give me assurance and all that. I so did not want to cry or create a scene, for I was sure talking about any of you all back home would make me wail like a baby. And I tried my best to suppress it. He told me, how it was when he came here, just a college grad, no experience in life, or in life away from home, no one he knew, and how he got to this point in life. He wanted me to know he would be there by my side. He wanted me to know that the embrace would always be there. He told me that he would be there!
I slept rather well last night, do not let your perverted brain ruin the flow of thought here. I felt secure, I felt cared about, and I felt loved. I felt a thousand times light hearted and felt a degree of warmth all around me. And this morning I thanked him for all that he had said and done, although we both knew that neither of us spoke a single word, we had the most amazing conversation, one that we could forever cherish.
It’s a rather long mail now, will write to you sometime soon.
Miss you!!!
It was as she felt Neeraj’s stubble on her neck, could feel his hear beat so close to hers, could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin, that Tulsi realized that she was in a distant land, far from her loved ones, with someone who would love her so much more, someone who would hold her closer to his heart than his life, someone who promised to be there for her. Lying there on that bed, with Neeraj’s arms around her, she came to know what it felt like to be loved.
I do not know how Neeraj would have felt, mostly because its almost dawn and way past midnight and my brains have shut shop.
As for the mundane stuff – the only resemblances in this story are the names of the characters, Anu, who is a very good friend of mine, and I couldn’t find any name more apt for an email as such; Neeraj, my youngest cousin, who turns two this October – we all like his name(the kid is brat!) a lot. Tulsi, well, Tulsi leaves are lying around in front of me as I began writing this.
So much for writing, I retire into the warm embrace that my bed entitles me to for now. 
one man’s mistake, another man’s success.
Well, the author is quite widely known and has been declared as young India’s rising and best selling novelist. His third book – the three mistakes of my life has been receiving good reviews and I decided to try it out.
The book is all about the major three mistakes that a person makes in his life. As usual the protagonist here too is male - a twenty something youngster, probably as old as you and I.
Chetan Bhagat is a very promising author and I loved reading his first book - five point someone, for it inspired me to chronicling most college stories and sharing it with those who were written about. His second book was not as appreciable, as far as my tastes are concerned. But his third is quite on the same lines as the first. Three guys, one story, narrated by the protagonist, a love story, a tragedy. Oh, and it also is on the same lines as the second book, in the second it is a chance meeting with a stranger in the train, here it is the last email of someone who tries to kill himself. If I have to put it in better equivalents, I read the first, skimmed the second and perused the third. If it is a true story, I would say you have no scope to improvise, since it is someone’s life that would be altered – sometimes life can be boring. If it is purely imaginative it can be fun, let your imagination run wild, and you get the most amazing works of art – be ambitious, be creative, be dreamy. Dear Mr. Bhagat, if you chance upon my humble blog, please do make a collection of short stories next.
This is the second IIT-IIM grad that I know of who’s a published author – and a good one at that. Most of us work for the pass outs from the Ivy League colleges in the country, can you imagine, your boss writing something like this. If you were a literature grad, and love English, you probably cry everyday for the torture and brutality that English goes through, even on my blog. There must be something somewhere which makes us want to write. And it pops up somewhere sometime. Of course in the era of the web, it is more about writing for money, primarily, with all the ads by the internet companies.
When I quit Google last week, most of my ex-colleagues mentioned I monetise on my blog. This is something that will not happen for sure. Some of my principles are not meant to be changed(the changeable ones are ruled by science). I took this decision a long time ago, when I got to know how people make money of blogs and how the business model works. And there will be no monetising because I am selfish – yes selfish enough to not make money. Writing is my passion, and a hobby. I can make money by writing for newspapers and magazines, but the blog is something else. There is a place where the family goes to un-wind, quite far from the city and hence not possible to go there every weekend. It is quite amazing and is an exclusive to the family. So a lot of things would have to make up for it, music, reading, and writing. And I intend on not monetising on any of them. It would be like renting out the vacation home to some stranger. And especially when the concept is that the stranger makes money by staying in your home. And more so because everything I write about here is a part of my life, love, friendship, poetry, madness etc, its not like one of the current trends that are going on in the world or the world wide web, it’s the current trend of my mind – my state of being. Monetising on this would actually, morally, be equivalent of trafficking.
It amazes me how some people think that it is easy to make money online through placing ads on your blog/website. There are probably a million people who are writing the same thing as you do at the same time for the same reasons.And for the same reason most blogs are outright boring. But in the past few hours, I learnt that coming up with a lot of posts or even writing for a profession is extremely demanding, for I can’t use the internet and search for current trends that people would read, or the fact the I can find inspiration outside my head. Oh and then there is the plot – and my brain almost dies of exhaustion.
I wouldn’t criticise authors who sometimes make pages which you tend to skip, it is due to this exhaustion I figure. But they are creative people and will probably have a dozen ideas at the same time, sometimes prioritising it differently. No wonder there are so many books and papers to read.
For all I care, give me a book, good or bad, as long as it is in a language that I can read and comprehend, I would appreciate the author for his work. After all there is nothing that is badly written.
High School Reunion
Yet another change in the story. I had to move back to Chennai. Lovely!!! Now, well after a while maybe, I can get to go the beach and then there are all the other hangouts and the bunch of my friends.
So then there has to be the status update to everyone interested. After conveying the message to most of the junta (the others mostly were aware of it) I got to talking to a lot of the junta, incidentally mostly from school.
However, the whole time there was this one ‘want’ that every single one of them had in mind – that of meeting up with the whole batch of us. This happens to amuse me to a great extend. It is a very genuine desire to meet and catch up with friends and renew relationships and all that but at the same time the thought of meeting people whose names I cant recollect or even can not even recall as a class mate was intriguing. Let me tell you how the last couple of ‘bumping ins’ happened. This is not a first hand account, and is all hearsay but if you have any other version of it go ahead and leave you impression. And there is no naming here, its all people I studied with in school at one time or the other.
You know how we associate a certain trait to a certain person in college and he/she gets to live with it the whole of their life in school, like the bookworm, or the cricketer or something like that. I am sure I had one too, only I do not know what I was called, except for basketball by our physical education master(he, however dumb he was, was extremely prudent and still is very much working at school). So again perceptions- they have to change. I remember the time when the current railway minister announced his first railway budget and most critics had proclaimed it as a disaster, but he gave them all a rude shock. It’s similar to the kind of shock that I am referring to. This guy, whom you always have known like the alpha male of a certain cluster of people is spotted by another guy in a pink tee and several other not-so-alpha male kind of characteristics. Ofcourse the latter escapes un-noticed I presume.
And the girls… they are a different tale in all. No major changes here. Mostly happily married and commited. But then, it so happens that I play agony aunt to a couple of men too. And this made me realize that girls who were in the past solely responsible for an “argh!” now are responsible for a “sigh!/phew”. But some men tend to still respond with the argh.. some boys never grow up I guess.
The most interesting thing among all the conversations was that most people think of you as the kid you were once and have not realized that you probably have also grown up. One schoolmate told me he wanted to know how a certain “god only knows” character was right now and if she “got to know things”.
Its been seven long years since school and 9 long years since a bigger lot of us parted ways, even more for some others. I do not know if the re-union is feasible, definitely not all of us would be interested or not all of us will make it, but some where down the line, to put it in the words of another friend, it is just the need to see and thank the person who played a small part in making you who you are today. Extremely dramatic I thought, then there was another extreme. This other classmate wanted to know if the others were balding or had plugs!
To think anyone would be disinterested. Looks like a lot of my batchmates have extremely unique reasons to want a re-union.
After writing so much about school, I found this iconic photograph.. Circa 1997-98.. the Agra trip!!!!
hee hee.. I cant stop laughing at myself.
Smaller wonders
Sometimes change goes un-noticed, so does innovation. When it comes to business it is even more evident. If an Ambani or a Birla or a Mittal, nah… I don’t have to go into hypothesis for there is an excellent example of the recent past. TATA and the nano car. Lots of articles and lots of opinions on the car and a huge hue and cry about it.
Now think of a co-operative society in the remoteness of Tamil Nadu. Would you like a “nano” like concept from any of these villages, and more so will you endorse it? Can you imagine that the society churned out incredible sales and also made a turnover of more than 50% YoY. Even more mind blowing is the product – ties… silk ties and you can imagine from where – from the district of Kancheepuram.
Kancheepuram is known for its weaving and looms. Kancheepuram silk saris are a must have for any Indian woman and is also quite a range globally. And it caters to all budgets… from a meager thousand to a couple of lac rupees. On an average it’s about a 40 crore rupee industry in the districts, and makes almost three times that when it comes to selling prices in the showrooms. And as always any woman looks gorgeous in an authentic Kancheepuram.
So what could be the innovation in business here with ties? Silk ties… are a rage. Having seen my father and his collection of ties, it is no wonder that the co-op is striking gold. A silk tie is one of the male essentials. Of course some of you may disagree stating climatic conditions, but you have indeed, possessed one of it. The engineering college I went to have a rule that male students had to dress in formals, inclusive of ties, when representing college. And then if you went to a business college, you definitely had more than one of it. And if you work in a corporate with a dress code, then you obviously had a handful of ties. (Having worked for a company, with relaxed dress code, I have learnt that dress code is necessary –they make the others who Have to see you, more comfortable )
And if you price ties in the 400-500 you obviously get the whole lot of people of use the ties, compared to the “brands” which price them at around 800+. Quality!?!? – Its from the handlooms of Kancheepuram, anyone who knows about the tradition and is aware of the reputation would not think twice.
Why writing about all this now, you ask? Well its just guilt. My father happens to visit the University in Kancheepuram one weekend of every month, and I got to know of these happenings through him as this was an example case study. And more so, his love for the accessory has developed into a collection of ties from various parts of the world, one even from Kancheepuram. It never struck me that I like many others, did not pay attention to the smaller innovational changes in the world, until it got published in the news paper this morning. Shame on me!
Two years!?!?!
Am happy that I am done with my second year of not so serious blogging. no celebrations though.. just another experience on the day.. and endoscopic examination! wouldn say it was traumatic and all that, but it helped find out more about what ever is happening inside my stomach
am a happy puppy now that i am getting a lot more strength and on the road to recovery.
