Swades Mera...India - Built to Last

Nor is this blog about the book by Collins & Perros or the movie Swades. It not about anyone but us…us Indians. Makes me wonder at times how should I refer to myself, to the core I am nothing more than a Dilliwalla but doesn’t that count me in to be an Indian. I never got a reserved entry into Univ of Delhi despite having being born and brought up in delhi, so I cannot even be referred to as a domiciled candidate as my friends from other states were at different engineering colleges in their states. I am not writing this to object to any reservation funda brought up by Shriman Arjun Singh or anyone, I am doing this to express my anguish at the state of affairs in Mumbai. The difficult life that not only Mumbaikars but each and every citizen of India has gone through in the past three days.

Can I tell you the sinking feeling in my heart seeing the Taj Mahal Hotel in flames, hell! It was and I couldn’t go to sleep till long. Maybe each Indian those three days lived up to the character of the city – Mumbai the city which never sleeps. NSG didn’t sleep, Barkha Dutt didn’t sleep, Toral Varia didn’t sleep, ATS didn’t sleep, my hostel didn’t sleep, even the scores of pigeons fluttering over the Taj day and night didn’t but maybe one person slept all through this…need I say his name aloud…RAJ THAKREY. Where is the messiah of all the Marathi manoos has vanished, where did his clairvoyance disappear when 12 devils were ravaged Maratha’s Mumbai in a dastardly act? NSG commandos more Indian than Marathi in blood saved the city from the clutches of paranoid terrorists. We do not need any reassurance from anyone today to say we stand united nor do we need to light any candles at Gateway of India. We are wide awake…and we can tell this to numerous politicians who do not even have the balls to hang Abu Salem who has been in their custody. It didn’t take America more than 10 months to bring the noose up on Saddam Hussain, and what are we doing here – feeding umpteen insurgents enjoying in our gaols. I say this country needs to treat the barbarians as the law in their times existed – eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. I must appreciate the messages sent out my Suhel Seth and even Harsha Bhogle, for they have been very truthful in their remarks. The youth of India (mind it as Rahul Gandhi said makes up the 70% of all Indians) do not need a Sangh Parivar, MNS or Shiv Sena to tell us the law and we do not want hypocrites for our leader. When would we stop fooling ourselves and elect a PM who has working knees and jaws to stand up for us and voice us. When would the day come when we know we are electing Mr. X as PM and not that we vote for Sonia Gandhi as PM and Manmohan sits on the chair. The world knew Obama, Bush, and Clinton as President much before they became one with democracy.

We can deal with terrorists coming from Karachi but we cannot deal with the shenanigans put up hypocrites (read politicians) who cause trouble in the form of internal insurgency. Man! We do not even have state emblems like US does, we do not have state citizens, we are nothing more than Indians and that doesn’t tell anyone the color of our skin or the language we speak or the race or state we belong to. I am not an anti democrat but probably what this country needs today is a military leader who has the guts to drive out insanity in here. After all the common man is not Amitabh Bachchan to buy himself a mauser and keep it under his pillow before sleeping. A genuine gun costs more than the per capita income of ten Indians put together so logically we can rule that out.

You know what I salute those men in black – NSG commandos who do not have a religion above the tricolor which doesn’t prioritize saffron from green..what it captures in between is peace in white and ashok chakra which is the mantle of forgiveness, of faith, of truth and of resilience. We are built to last, and have shown that to the world for ages and now we only need to project this self belief a billion times over. The destruction of Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan did not wipe out Buddhism from the face of the earth what was gone was two pieces of stone….thats an answer enough to the barbarians who do not have any race, religion or nationality….

Today lets sing the song Rev. Charles Tindley gave us and ignite the lights within us for the truth is out there…..We shall overcome, we shall overcome, someday..deep in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome someday…

Is life a Zero Credit Course?

Another day, another semester and a whole set of new courses to study. The problem is not coursework but what is to be included in the course. I chose my electives, do I care to study why Dove launched a certain marketing strategy or do I study why Tata took Corus or should I be studying why Gold follows a certain price trend. So little time and so much to absorb before I leave this place in about four months now, I worry thinking what will do when I won’t have a sound 12 hours sleep or what will I do when I wont be going home every 4 months.

No matter how aloof you want to remain, the truth is that hostel life teaches you a lot something’s directly onto you whereas something’s subtly but certainly. I couldn’t have imagined spending days holed up in a 10*10 room but I do now and much to my enjoyment. I care about my own soap and shampoo supplies and food too. I have to take care of dirty linens, even though my room looks much like a bachelors abode I try incessantly to clean it. And more so I am responsible for my own security and safety, specifically I would like to remind you at this stage that one of rooms here had a problem of the ceiling fan dropping down every now and then because of poor plastering. Given the size of the room and mine and the fan, I would prefer to sleep in the balcony even if the college provides me a life insurance of a million dollars.

One of most interesting financial and operational activities in a hostel is “Borrowing”, well no one wants to lend but still borrowing happens – don’t ask how. Whether it be your best pair of shoes, your business suit, your t-shirt that your girl gifted you or even some green backs from your wallet, they always disappear into the crowd and the next time you meet them you may not even be sure if you have met them before. Let alone the petty stuff like matchboxes, cigarettes and other food stuff specially sweets. I don’t smoke but still I have been asked so many times for a matchstick by my cigar smoking neighbor that I actually started stocking matchboxes. One of my friends stocks sweets but keeps an empty sweet box to show people who come asking for a fatty recharge. While some also manage to bring cartons and cartons (I am not exaggerating) of aloo bhujia of a specific halwai in Calcutta, some barely survive on the monotonous flavors in the mess. No matter what the mess cooks, it all tastes the same.

Half past the night, when the actual life in a hostel begins you may have a buddy coming over to ask for some alcohol or some chakna to go with it. And to tell you the truth, this happens most on the days when the night café inside the hostel is closed. At two in the night if you manage to walk past the warden’s room you can still hear the photocopier buzzing, and the printer running. From morning ten to night ten, the barber never stops shaving and cutting. Doesn’t he get bored, its his job I am told but then I wonder is mine going to be similar in terms or routine, I hope not. I would like a lot of movement within and outside the office, flexi-hours, lots of good stuff to eat and loads of time to sleep.

And one of the best things to learn from is the travel back to hostel, it takes me two hours to fly back from Delhi to Hyderabad and almost similar duration to travel from the Hyderabad airport to my hostel. Even if I come by train which takes 26 hours the journey only ends after 28, I constantly view city followed by a village and jungles and is the same pattern here. And what to say about learning when you meet 40 national level athletes in your train bogey travelling without a confirmed train ticket, its like a track field you can see long jumps happening, track and hurdles races and relays. As much as three managing to sleep on a single seat wasn’t a demonstration of a gareeb rath that lalu started, but it was definitely showcasing the poor halaat of sports authority of india. One of the fellow grumbles “Just once let me get a medal, I will teach the f****** system a lesson”, and I only guess his agony and help him onto my berth for a few hours of sleep before he runs for the medal. Probably his innocent eyes can see the difference between the sweet lime soda he gets and the two glasses of fresh juice his coach gets paid for him...

I am learning all this apart from the electives and I don’t get credits for this in my GPA, when I pen this down I am merely writing a dissertation on my life and times for which I have no one guide assigned to me. Better be back to my books or they will find other readers, hang on and shout your thoughts for I will be back soon….

Redemption in the Pursuit of Happyness

Often have I felt my grip loosening over the thing I have wanted the most for the moment. What we call as fate or destiny most often comes forth once the failure happens. Last one and a half years I had been living a life completely reliant on fate, but to be true with time your faith in yourself reduces so did mine. The things I thought I was much capable of were now turning to look alien to me. My outer self projected a confident personality but within I was a scared individual who was waiting for opportunities. Now opportunities mean results in the end, and what I was most scared of was failure as I am sure most of us are. While most of my colleagues at the b-school were reading through newspapers, magazines and economic journals I was preparing myself mentally. I did not hesitate in sharing this with anyone I knew in return for some general knowledge; the exercise was always good as the other party felt mentally strong while I had figures and numbers to talk of. When I saw motion pictures like "The Pursuit of Happyness" or "The Shawshank Redemption", I felt motivated but the truth was that I wasn't in the protagonists shoes.

One thing I had judged from my past experience in appearing for interviews was that the panel looked for smart talkers who could be trained and molded as per their requirements. The more I entered the room the more I knew what made a perfect disposition. I could pleasantly say no to things that I wasn’t aware of, and possibly diverting their interest to things that I was more confident with. One question I always asked myself before entering the interview room was “Am I supposed to know everything??...” If the answer ever came “Yes” then I told myself that I have no reason to be here….I came here to learn and will learn for days and times to come. I recalled what my boss during my summers always said “It’s not about putting forth the right answers, it about asking the right questions”. And to be truthful I stuck on to this, while my peers learnt answers I prepared myself for asking the right questions.

This alone did not mean that I wouldn’t ever lose. Infact to my utter dismay I finally wasn’t selected in my first application to one of the most coveted i-banks of the world after several rounds of selection process. The first response one gets from everyone he/she knows after the failure is “there are better things in store for you”…were there or not I wasn’t sure, but definitely I wasn’t dying and there was another day and another battle. This time around I was to appear for the strongest and the biggest bank in the world. I took a cue from the Director of the company who came for a brief talk, he said “Most of us can get away from the hardest situations if we know how to speak and how to react”…It was again learning till he said “but not here in our company”…. I wasn’t sure if I would succeed given this time the battle started with a situation where I considered myself weakest. None the less after 10 hours of process and constant pep talk by other interviewees I was able to convince myself to settle for nothing but the best. The announcement of success was not at all scintillating; I sat on my seat, no tears of joy or no shouts in excitement. The glitter was more felt in other's that in mine. Probably I was just numb, well I wouldn't say that I could not absorb the success…I had but certain times in life you just fail to equate what you lost to what you regained. Redemption is not all that easy…In my heart I thanked my family, I thanked my girl and I thanked all who believed in me but yet I guess there are there are more mountains to climb, more chasms to jump across and more dreams to relive before I rejoice this moment. Good luck to all my friends and peers who still await a worthy challenge…

The Jungle Diary...

Again I’d begin this piece with a question.Which animal do you like?..Dog, Lion, Gorilla or Monkey??

This entry is not an outcome of a visit to the Nehru zoological park or an Animal Care center but a result of the last 15 months spent in a jungle. They call it a village but I am more content at heart calling it a jungle. You would ask Why? Well, how often do you wake up to find a chameleon sharing the bed with you…Hey don’t laugh, I actually meant a ominous looking younger brother of an alligator and a cousin of our house mate lizard. I did sleep with it a couple of times. And spent another few days living with a mouse in my room, bathed in a shower accompanied by a species of frog that could climb the wall, and shared reading the newspaper while sitting on the pot with another frog. For some reason I have had a testing time with them, not to mention that I am a great lover of dogs and want to co-direct a documentary on the dog habits in a b-school which a close friend is working on. Again I am referring only to dogs – as in the four legged ones…

Spiders often come out of my trouser pockets which were left hanging by the hook in the cupboard and an odd visit by a dragon fly or a cockroach is enough to send me running for my slippers. I am saving the Economics Times for my placements, otherwise what better purpose could it have served. To top it all I say the morning greetings to atleast a million centipedes and crickets while on way to the academics block every morning. I had the pleasure of sighting a kingfisher, a raven and some wild hens some days back while going to the nearby shack restaurant “Sardarji da dhaba”. And the last time there was a powercut and I was walking on the highway, I could spot some glowing flies too. Some of us friends had a jolly time chasing a mole in the hostel corridor for two hours past mid-night last semester, it was an awesome break considering I had a Economics exam the next morning. One of the female batch mates had a baby monkey sitting in her balcony which was enough make her go bananas. Buffaloes, Goats and Cows are a common sight anywhere in India so I’d discount them from detail.

After all this I wonder that living in a city that boasts of India’s largest Cobra (snake) population I seem to have come far from just being a management graduate…maybe they could do with introducing an extra elective on Zoology or even veterinary science. We have a vet doc and lotsa zoology grads here who can oblige with a few lectures. I can’t say much about going to a zoo but atleast I save time from spending on the Reptiles show on Discovery…. I must confess that this place is not much exciting for ornithologists as it has been time since I looked at a pigeon or a house sparrow.

I guess I saw something scampering across the rough patch near the drain, guess it is a goosebump…while I shut off my doors ‘cos I sure don’t wanna sleep with this one, you make sure your pockets have only what you have put in and not something which may have crawled in....ha ha ha

Catch me if you can.....

What do you see when you release a mouse off from the trap? Ever felt the agony and trauma of getting locked up in a 3 sq. ft. box room...all you want is to get out..and once you get out you just never want to get back, the sheer memory of the incident pinches you down in the heart. I came across a book in which a disciple of Socrates asked him “What do I do for success; I don’t seem to feel motivated?” Socrates takes him to a river and goes with him waist deep into it, and then plunges the head of his disciple in the water forcibly. He doesn’t pull him out until he is out of breath, does this again and then asks the disciple how did he feel? The disciple replies I just wanted to get out and could do anything for it. That was the answer that Socrates wanted him to realize. When you want something then it should take each bit of your best effort. Similar is lore about Arjun seeing only the eye of the clay bird on being asked by Dronacharya.

“Never settle for anything less than the best you can do and the highest you can reach”….is the lesson I get from it. There may be hundreds of stories like these if you actually start searching for them. The task is not to do that, it is to make the realization in our souls happen. We fail in our goals due to lack of effort, sometimes due to luck and sometimes we are cheated but someone who remains his composure through all this has probably learnt the Art of Living. You need to beat the hell out of life before it beats you. But do respect the fact that until you get beaten the feeling never comes, we get beaten by margins of time, money, effort and what not but not until tears wash out our corneas we just don’t get the rush.

I want to rush with my dreams far ahead of others…I want not just to run but to do a “Usain Bolt” and just like him I would want to slap my chest and feel the wind before I hit the finishing line. Now for all of you there who have ever tried to pull someone down, I’d say “Catch me if you can” for I am going to beat living daylights out of you and beat the cheetah within me this time....

Complexity of life....

One thing that has always intrigued me is that we try to escape from whatever is destined for us. The basis why I write this piece on my blog is that this time I came across the wallpaper above. Though I do not consider myself old enough to comment on the topic at hand, however the 23 springs my life has seen do have some reflections on the basis of my experience. When I was doing school I enjoyed the timeliness of things but always thought what it would be like to wake up an hour later each day and have a hearty breakfast. This happened because school started early and I was always rushing out grabbing a jam toast to catch the bus. And I couldn’t do much but comply with whatever went on.

Finally I went to college after 12 years of structured learning. Now I study what I wanted to, even bunk classes and watch a movie with friends, get up late and skip a class, more so I even could have a girl friend – a possibility either I never thought of or more honestly I let fate have the say. Though I enjoyed college, I somehow was raring to enter the corporate world. I provided tuition's to senior classes for mathematics to fund my pocket expenses. I enjoyed the economic freedom from home which reduced accountability. The first few positive cash inflows meant more than money, like a pair of branded sneakers, a new sling bag and more. Then I started working with an internet based firm only to spend a lot of time before the computer. I even skipped classes at times and was considered a bit geeky by my friends. More I worked more I wanted to, I just wanted the remaining months of college to rush by. Finally I did get a job a month before I finished college. Work brought money, creative satisfaction and happiness. But one off sad incident in office would make me say “It was better back in college”, somewhere within I had started missing college. I was out of touch with a lot of old batch mates. It was now that I started considering seriously my prospects of doing a masters degree. In a year from when I began, a lot happened and finally I found myself sitting in front of the chief bank manager requesting a massive loan. My economic freedom was to end, I would be paying off my hard earned money for more than 3 years. But then I looked forward to some enjoyment in college.

Once I was here at my second college, I did enjoy attending business lectures, participating in intellectually stimulating talks and more. As I found time I would dig into books, movies and almost ever overcasting sleep. On days I slept 4 hours and sometimes even 15 hours!! I saw some unprofessional attitude unbecoming of b-school students each day. The picture I had drawn of Mona Lisa wasn’t even what Picasso could have done. I was overjoyed when I was taken in for an internship with a consultancy. I loved being back to work (though it meant sacrificing sleep!). Three months sped by in an incredible hurry and I was back to school. Some days of the internship when the manager wasn’t happy with the deliverable it came into my mind that school was better, you had the freedom to experiment and explore but here you had to be bang on.

Now still at school, half my days are spent applying to jobs, searching on job portals and talking to people to build corporate contact. Somewhere in all this I have missed sitting back to enjoying life – if that ever was an opportunity. I could have done so much while I kept myself so complicated. I try to convince but more often than not counter arguments win. I let myself sleep a lot, you’d ask why….not because I have time but because if I cant see the light with my eyes open or rest on the bondi beach then why not in my dreams. I sleep to structure my dreams, my visions are taking shape atleast somewhere. I am not missing life…I am living each moment even if u may call it virtually. I may be losing but may be I am just raring to hit back with a big bang….complex isn’t it?....leave it..have a nice day…

Life goes on...simple isn't it

What is your favorite tea time discussion topic? I have always believed that no matter how faint hearted a man is, he comes up with the most gut wrenching intense topics to discuss over a cuppa. Be it polical issues like Should Sonia be considered Indian?, should Kashmir succeed to Pakistan? Or slightly lesser intense topics like if Sachin should retire, or the Bombay train blasts, Richard Gere kissing Shilpa Shetty…it never ends and the numerous arguments one can give never suffice to bury the discussion. You don’t believe me, then take a few minutes off and search a road side tea vendor and sip and cup of tea. And just listen to the news he has, or the men have who for god knows what reason are always found at his shop. I guess their appetite for tea is bottomless. No wonder our country has been identified with Tea as a geographical indicator.

I find the city life very interesting not only because I have spent 22 years living in the capital city but more so because now that I sit in Dontanpally which is an unknown little village 40 km away from Hyderabad main city. It is here that I have learnt to appreciate the beauty of a city. Well you could for once say that I am saying this as I am starved of urbane exposure, but nah! I guess it’s because now I understand that what it is to like stop in the middle of the road and wait for traffic, what it is like to wait for the electricity to return after a power failure. The only difference between a city and a village is time, time that separates them and also its availability. Once I asked my parents to send me a parcel through Speed Post (courier boy finds it unprofitable to deliver here), since the parcel was large I had to go into the village to collect it from the post office. Now for city grown up lad, Post Office sounded to be a modest establishment with a few workers. I negotiated my way and was directed to a brick and mortar hut shaped house which doubled up as the postman’s house and also the post office. And I waited for the post man to come and give me the parcel, it took him three hours to return and on being asked why he said simply that I had gone to deliver posts and I ride a bicycle. Had I been in my home waiting for a courier boy to deliver an expected package, I might have called its office atleast 10 times in 3 hours but here I was just thinking how clean and simple life is without motor driven technology like a mobile phone or a scooter. I loved the serenity and simplicity of the moment.

It is often said that a city like Delhi never sleeps, life never stops…no matter what. I remember when there were a string of bomb blasts in Delhi, Mumbai and more recently Hyderabad some time back. I got numerous calls enquiring my stay and safety but did I stop. One can stay off the roads for an hour or two but not for days. I shudder when my father tells me that the day Indira Gandhi was assassinated there was no public transport, the roads were deserted and he had to walk back 20 km from his office in the evening. So what stops…a few hearts that were ticking moments ago shut down by the exploding splinters that possibly were Alfred Nobel’s most unwanted invention. Tears dry up after a day or two, smiles go off the faces for a day or two but memories never go down. Blowing a few buses or planes or trains off stop the transport system and more importantly it doesn’t stop the mankind. Communal tensions would always but that doesn’t stop me from going into the lanes of Chandni chowk to savor Karims delicacies. I asked my best friend from school who visited Lahore several times during his graduation days – whats the best about the city? He said that the best would be the fact that it’s very much like Delhi plus the people are very helping. I ask myself now How many people would not want to go to such a city after listening to such an answer…The greatest thing I have learnt from any city in our country is simply “Fight…Fight back….don’t stop” . No wonder if you enjoyed reading what I said you would enjoy this song….

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=6INOamqU7xs

For you, a thousand times over....

Friend….I wonder about the magical meaning this six letter word carries in our lives. More than often this word outweighs the four letter word “Love” in more than one ways. I know you may not agree as the two are so very intertwined but the fact remains I have always loved my best friends and always tried to find a friend in the person I love. I remember my childhood as not a very colorful one but one in the company of people I called friends and my family called friends. The three such people I associate the oldest memories of my life carry a lot of meaning to me. I don’t remember saying them to ever that they were my best friends or are, I don’t know if they feel the same for me but I do know that I have them etched permanently on my heart..

I have always believed the best lessons in life come from books (and movies inspired of them). One such book I recently went through was “The Kite Runner” written by Khalid Hossieni, heard now there’s a movie on it too. The story set in the rugged lands of Taliban infested Afghanistan, is more a story of two friends who inherit a part of their friendship in legacy. One ‘Amir’ the lad of a rich man and the other ‘Hasan’ the boy of his Hazara servant, growing up together they discover their friendship and the loyalty the latter has towards the other. Towards the later half, the grown up Amir traverses half the world from the US to Kabul to search for Hasan’s son Sohrab, as he discovers Hasan was not his servant’s(Ali) son but only the illegitimate son of his father from the servant’s wife. He decides to go back to Kabul and fetch Sohrab and make sure what happened to Hasan does not happen to Sohrab. Amir himself being childless does all he can to bring back the boy and succeeds. In end comes the most heart melting part, when Amir runs a kite for Hasan’s son and says “for you, a thousand times over”…a phrase that Hasan used to say to Amir and probably overwhelms the audience completely. And the movie does give a nice picture of the Afghan Community in the USA..

It’s one of the most beautiful stories I have read in my life and probably the reason is that we all at some point in our lives wait to say this otherwise so common sentence “for you, a thousand times over”…It’s like telling someone you mean the world to me. I am thankful to god that I have people in my life to say these lines to. We have all grown up on a diet of Best friends stories, of Jai & Veeru of Sholay and more but this book goes out to say much more – a mixture of emotions that can be evoked by Love; love for one’s motherland, a partner, a friend, a parent, or a your child to say the least the book is all full of them. Hasan named his son 'Sohrab' - the name of the character liked by Amir, again it was an unsaid dedication to their friendship. In essence the book also captures the timeless nature of friendship. You may not meet or talk to a friend so often but feelings are beyond words and meeting…so just hang on to your emotions.

I have always wondered what if the person I call my best friend met me on a small journey of 10 hours from Delhi to Lucknow, life would probably have been very different that what you see as of now. We say our destiny is already written “Makhtub” but then every man on the street says “Insha-allah” – If god wills, are we not trying to ask god to erase a few lines off our life books and replace them with our own?

As a philosophical theory, man is always wanting to be loved and wants to be in company of people who love him so desire for friendship is incessant. Life is a short one so make as many friends as you can but remember the number would never matter what would matter to you most is to how many can you turn back in life and say “for you, a thousand times over”…..To all the people not only friends you love - express your feelings now…there’s never been a better day than today…….Godspeed.

Leave no man behind..

The reason why I write seldom is because it is only once is in a great while that you get to see something that evokes your thought, makes you listen or stand up…..Of all the easiness we spend our lives with living off Bacardi, Levi’s and behind Honda wheels we fail to acknowledge that infact our craniums have been pillaged of every gottdamn grey cell that could make us feel for the unprivileged sections of our own society.

Humans are by nature social beings but how much of a society is quantifiable in his nature. I was watching a movie “Black Hawk Down” which is about the US forces going into Somalia to counter internal terrorism, and Eric Bana (Aussie Actor) when asked what makes him go back again into the war site even after being injured replies “It’s about the men next to you”…..Is it only about that?

Lately I saw a very different Hindi movie “Summer 2007”, starring Gul Panag amongst a few other new actors. The movie is about five close med school friends – Mother T, Rahul, Pepsi, Kats and Bangani who are in the final year at college. Rahul plans to escape with his friends so as to evade the ongoing elections by taking a 1 month rural stint near Goa. The idea was to purchase their training certificates from the center incharge and then speed off to Goa for a month. However the story takes a very interesting turn after they meet Mukhya (Ashutosh Rana) – the incharge who wants ten grand a head to let them off. The five smell troubles brewing in the village, and themselves get a flavor of it time to time. Though it takes time they get to know that the villagers are pillaged and their women folk raped for not repaying petty loans taken from the village lender. The revolt churns up as a Bengali man Sankhya comes to the village to educate the poor villagers of the concept of micro-finance and the fact that they pay as much as 3000% as interest p.a. on the principal to the lender is purely a tact to keep them paying till eternity. Sankhya is often targeted, beaten up and at one point interacts with the five friends. It is then that meds understand the work Mukhya & Sankhya are upto, and start helping them. Finally, they manage to save Sankhya at the cost of Mother T’s rape, Mukhya’s death and four murders by Rahul (whose life changes forever). Infact the last twenty minutes sting the audience and as conclusion the movie tells the number of people committing suicide or being forced killed due to hefty loans and the torture by moneylenders.

For the odd bloke in the movie hall, this may seem to be only a drama to assess the potential of Micro-Finance, a concept by Nobel Laureate Md. Yunus however the impact that lingers on our minds is that there’s a different story behind every grain that goes down our food pipe, a tale of misery behind every rural produce. It’s not always naxalites, LTTE and Maoists who kill sometimes people who are educated like us kill for the greed that takes us nowhere. So simply said “A man comes with nothing and leaves with nothing” is an intricate theory to be memorized by us, no one asks you to give up material desires but flame within a desire to help mankind which starts with “the men next to you”….Lets make a change….Lets kill the tumours in our heads that cause more violence and terror than any arms or ammunition known to man….

Irony of life...Beauty in the beast

Isn't it strange that we all live in the world which faces irony in each of its facet. We can observe the diversity of life and the myraid opinions people have about its creations - living and non-living. I listened to this song "Gin Soaked Boy" by Divine Comedy in 1994 when I was a small school going lad, I fell in love with it for times to come. Though in those days I couldn't comprehend much of the sense it said or the meaning it conveyed, the music and the B&W picturisation appealed. The last line "Who am I?" left a lingering mystery to the lyrics and began to add lines to it...It was never a difficult song by the way as I could always add few made up lines which were ironical. The rediscovery of the song happened a few years back with all credits to the man who invented the necessity of Youtube. Here are the lyrics that I hope would ensure some self reflection to every person who reads/listens to them:


Im the gin in the gin-soaked boy
Im the ghost in the machine...Im the genius in the gene...
Im the beauty in the beast..Im the sunset in the east...
Im the ruby in the dust...Im the trust in the mistrust...
Im the trojan horse in troy...Im the gin in the gin-soaked boy...

Im the tigers empty cage...Im the mysterys final page...
Im the strangers lonely glance...Im the heros only chance...
Im the undiscovered land...Im the single grain of sand.....
Im the christmas morning toy...Im the gin in the gin-soaked boy...

Im the world youll never see...Im the slave youll never free...
Im the truth youll never know...Im the place youll never go....
Im the sound youll never hear...Im the course youll never steer....
Im the will youll not destroy...Im the gin in the gin-soaked boy...

Im the half-truth in the lie...Im the why not in the why...
Im the last roll of the die...Im the old school in the tie...
Im the spirit in the sky...Im the catcher in the rye...
Im the twinkle in her eye...Im the jeff goldblum in the fly..

Who am i?


for the benefit of all, here's the link to the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXP1oLtPyDA

My first day......at IBS Hyderabad

Following is what I wrote last year after spending my first day at IBS...a lot has changed and a lot will never change....I relentlessly pursue my destiny and as they say its written "Makhtub" ...

Having given up all desires to pursue a corporate life without a management degree, abdicating from the royal throne of a research analyst in the world finest consultancy firm, my walk to Hyderabad began….more so only to discover it as a modest Dontanpally village. The rubric sands determining the campus could only make me feel more docile, having been separated from all familiar civilization. Standing on the giant doorway to the IBS campus, far from appreciating the beauty and silence of the surroundings, I went about probing myself if I had been too much an optimist. My senses came back with the loud appearance of the taxi driver who asked if I wanted to left inside to the hostel, I mumbled the obvious answer while keeping an eye on the gigantic suitcases that undermined my herculean powers. The campus looked like a morose construction site, years after having buried the desire to be an architect I felt as if I was here for it. Realizing my qualification as a B.Sc., I shrugged cursing the factors of judgment in life. I had wanted to be a Bus conductor collecting cash, a pilot soaring skies, an armyman and the more realistic engineer. None became of the above choices when I ceded to fate and pursued statistics in degree. My mind went back to the board that I read in the cantonment while on way “ There are no better judges in the world than guns”, I felt I could have made far better decisions had a brigadier installed a 0.33 mm bore rifle fully loaded on my temple.

Signing heaps of sheets of instructions that provided me against destroying any minutest detail of this hostel, I walked towards my room pondering over such possibilities but the strong smell of the veneer coating constricted my nose and thoughts. My parents always said that often our pleasure is derieved from the most insignificant of things in life; I could feel overjoyed noticing the paint color in the hostel room was the same as at home, probably it sparked a nostalgia that made me feel humble. The room had a metal chair, study table and a cot and the USP of the hostel “a balcony”, surprisingly all 2000 rooms had one. Didn’t I tell my father there were great prospects for an architect! but he felt that the initial struggle as a draftsman wasn’t worth it. I felt lethargic and dizzy having spent 26 hours in a sleeper compartment of the train and 2 hours in the rickety autorickshaw, except for a couple of hours of suburban viewings more the time was spent watching the rural India – diversity at its best. Not to forget the road to Dontanpally, which took me back to physics class learning the crests and troughs in a frequency curve, the subtle relation was crazy as there could be no way Thompson or Hertz could have designed the contours of this village. Unbundling the mattress drained of all possible glycogen storage and I retired to sleep dreaming of consuming Idli, Vada and Rasam all square meals but the thought made me feel overdosed. For an evening walk I decided to explore a cent of the 100 acre, over to the academic block where the only population could be found in the IT room trying to find the opportunity to connect with friends and family. I went over the “White House” (No goras no Bush only phone connections and cold drinks) to purchase a local sim finding a gecko on the mango tree gazing at me..I sped away to my room now to find a couple of crickets bordering and guarding my balcony, I muttered and squashed the mortals under the seemingly divine powers of my new rubber slippers. I was reminded of a cousin who had a nightmare of a cockroach crawling up his nose, bah!!

A day was over …but the journey had just begun and this time it was to be for a huge 700 days. I had read a hindi novel “Jungle me who do din” and much did I want to christen the memoirs of my stay in IBS on the same lines, I felt the difference was a little too much. My discoveries were to progress with knowledge expansion, I was here to be an MBA those words did sound big and going by the reputation IBS enjoyed I felt much greater. With many plans, dreams, desires and visions the fairy godmother put me to sleep till dusk….

Bandya Ho

A soulful rendition in the movie “Khuda Ke Liye” caught my attention recently. I must say this has been one of the most inspirational as well as musical heard recently. Pleading to Bulle shah to change his actions, his family tells him that he has brought disrepute to the family. They urge him to act as per his din, to which he considers himself to have reached a higher platform than the caste system. The movie has a larger part shot in Lahore, bordering Afghanistan and remaining in the US. The movie is centered about two parts of a Pakistani Muslim family, one settled in London and the other in the suburbs of Lahore.While the theme is the effect of Mujahideen and its beliefs on the common and surprisingly educated people living in Pakistan, and also the post 9/11 treatment of Islam community. The movie has captured the attention of the audience with great music scores which are a fusion between the light English pop and the sufi strains written in Punjabi and another native lingo. Painful to a certain extent if you are a woman (and more necessarily human) but a recommended watch definitely. Great for Pakistani and Indian audiences although the latter does find a dialogue by the protagonist Mansoor regarding Pakistan having built Taj Mahal and having ruled India for over 1000 years impossible to digest. Interestingly, the protagonist sings an Awadhi (pure Hindi) song while terming it as a Pakistani music. Otherwise very pragmatic in its flow, the movie stands out from the usual run around the trees crap our Asian audience is accustomed to, so I won’t be surprised if it goes unnoticed on the box office like logical movies like Water which have been subjected to delirious treatment in the past. As u read this, the movie has been issued Fatwa's and has been regarded as blasphemous by a certain Ghazi. The whole movie in my perspective can be made to stand on three pillars of human actions
**We care more about what society thinks about us and at times this hits our own self too hard.
** We tend to generalize the act of one man to his/her complete community
**When we are in dark (uneducated) even the bleakest source of light makes us follow it. Its like made to believe in a black hole as a star

Our identity is created by the society but we have every right to define ourselves and make our own moves. Religion and cultures cut across geographic boundaries and we need to respect if not love the neighbors culture. Can it be justified that America’s attack on Taliban post 9/11 is justified or not but I’d surely ask aren’t we murdering an eye that had already been blinded for an eye?A fanatic is like a blind man who knows how to throw a grenade but forgets that it bounces back when it hits the wall….All I will say in the end is that after reading books like “On the road to Kandahar”, “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini and “The Fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hameed, I sometimes feel like starting an NGO and taking it to the bordering areas of Pakistan where a lot of so called madrasas survive only for militant training. To fight in the name of god is one thing and to destroy humanity is another. Again this strengthens my belief that we survive for the society. I could never have an answer to a self created question “If all religions preach that god lives in each of its creations, then isn’t killing god himself in his own name ironical?”…Perhaps the world needs another Bulle Shah to preach the lesson of congenial living to the society and to tell them to move beyond the principle of our god…God is there and isn’t that just enough…believe in him or not are only two different ways but at least we should not divide his disposition in the name of our beliefs…He may just have one belief regarding all of us i.e to treat us all equal as children…..a man made labyrinth of cultural beliefs is what seems to have trapped god…. Think about it, the world needs to and I am….Meanwhile I continue listening the calling “Bandya Ho”, I hope no freak stops me from singing my heart out....