Ego… that’s enough and all

Ego is a just a three letter word that can make a hell of a difference to a person’s life. A little less can crush you and a little more can be too much which may once be deadly. When ego measurement in an individual just falls at the right balance, it is noted to be self esteem. My experiences with Ego have been great – very learning and hard ones. If you analyze very carefully every statement that begin about our own self reflects a certain amount of ego. How often do we hear the statement “It hurts my self respect to do that” – that’s a true display of ego. Sometimes we do or we do not do things only on the basis of how our ego should respond.

As a matter of fact, ego sells specifically in youth and when you look at a country like India comprising a huge proportion of youth it sells like chowpatty chaat. I see ego flaunting as soon as I switch on the idiot box – what else is MTV Roadies, Stunt mania, and scores of other such shows. All through such discussions there would be a few malefactors you would want to punch in the face and a few low lying tom’s you want to give some pep talk. I don’t know how much money advertisers, film makers, and the entire media world is making only on the basis of a single statement – “I am better than the rest, I am the best”. Well this doesn’t directly come out so fluently, every time this is said with a few beeps from the censor board – it helps the ego of one and punctures the ego tire of twenty others and inflates ego tension in a hundred other viewers. Play it on, I’d say one serious marketing concept – EGO MARKETING, and we definitely don’t need a Drucker or a Kotler to explain that, it is implied but at times not realized. Anyways this is a never ending saga!

Ego is not only taken on as a tool by the advertisers and marketing men of media, but so much so by the pot bellied politicians of our beloved diverse country. They can be so powerful to easily turn on the ego of violet in the rainbow against the red, crazy enough to separate them. Well malefactors are abundant in our economy and culture. I saw this nice movie Yeh Mera India a couple of days back, the director possibly casted the finest of all B-class actors to perfection. Very delicately it showcased the diversity of the country and the prejudices conceived in our minds by politicians like Raj Thakrey. I have been in this state for almost six months now, I see an inseparable culmination of cultures, dialects, and faiths here. Isn’t it ego when some one fights with the other over calling the city – Bombay and not Mumbai. I always felt it was the same – were we not hurting the egos of a million marathis when for close to half a century after the brits left we called it Bombay. Where are we… going this way we’d be split like the tiniest granules of ocean salt which dissolve and become indistinguishable yet some one can still call it a molecule. We are the molecules in the atoms that Dalton never thought of. It may hurt his ego today…

I won’t recommend starting a Ego Day celebration…possibly because I fear a backlash from not the average manoos on the street but the one who smells beer in water, spews only venom – the man with the Tiger ego sitting high on his chair wishing to squash the average housefly.

Change is challenging!

Life is slowly changing… as we learn during MBA change is often the most difficult thing... However what is very ironical is that even though change is very exciting and almost each person on the face of the earth wants to feel this excitement we all are so precautious about it. Such a livid approach to what comes new in your life…but even so I am a little discomforted by it.

Last few days I have transitioning from one role to another at workplace; this has required me to double myself into working on Business as usual at one end while training myself on the other role. Even as I am enthralled by the technicalities of the new role, I am so attached to the previous one that I find hard to let go. Humans like me can get bored and attached to the same things at the same time. While in college, I always complained of the oil dripping chhole bhatures served every Tuesday dinner time, I now miss the forsaken ritual.

Sometime I feel the fear myself, if i would be defeated by the unknown and the unexplored. But even then I reform my opinions to the fact that to be successful in life one need to look for challenges, and by challenge I mean what discomforts each droplet of me. I am my greatest challenge at times, which to me betters the benchmark theories of GE. What can be written down or expressed cannot be impossible, infinity exists in our minds and not on paper. We can strive to create our own challenges, burn ourselves day and night. I am enchanted at the thought of the fact that daVinci could write with one hand and paint with the other at the same time. God blessed him with two parts of brain much like any of us but he trained them while we keep one in the store for neverday.

I was reading a nice blog piece by Sadia Dehlvi on www.thedelhiwalla.blogspot.com, about Ramzan fasting. More nicer than the entry were the numerous responses put up by the readers. No doubt fasting in Ramadan is auspicious and one of things every Muslim needs to undergo to be called one, never-the-less it is quite a challenging experience. I mean it can be relatively easy for people working on an EMEA shift but to someone working 9 – 6 it requires patience and devotion. Compulsion sometimes and also to be among equals as better drives people, one reason due to which some of us mortals give in to hunger while on the outside we may be fasting. Purely speaking it is our soul that should fast, not the liver. Soul fasting can mean abstinence from some but not renouncement. One can express his devotion by giving up something he dearly loves for a month. I am no one to question a religions long surviving practice but yes we have to think hard as times are for sure changing. Compulsion should drive donkeys not humans.

Well said by Anatole France, “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” The perils of change often lead to the making of a tougher individual, while I am changing on a personal and professional front I hope it does some good to my future. I pray to be placid in mind and gullible to new knowledge. For now I feel like the slim matador on a new mucho grande hot headed bull, I cant fall off the back for I fear the stampings while I am conscious that the bull will for sure throw me away…Cheers to life!

Seeking solace and salvation within...

Last two days were spent finding inner peace...when the outer world changes the inner tries hard to strike a balance...and sometimes it is only in the unknown that one finds true peace... and I have tried hard to get busy living. People often become your greatest source of knowledge but the challenge is uncover the information from opinions that all of us carry inseparably in our souls.

Chowpatty on Saturday evening, after a long (2.5 km) walk on Marine Drive was quite an experience only because the beach was colourful with people coming in hordes for the immersion of the Ganesha idols into the ocean. People played in colors, chanted the beauty of their beloved elephant god and finally went thirty feet in to the water to give him away to eternity. Simply sitting on the beach and watching this ritual made me unquestionably emotional. Bringing home your lord for a few days and then celebrating his departure with equal jest and celebration. I also visited a gujrati colleagues’ home for the ganesh pujan... the entire atmosphere of the house seemed so pious and pure, the beauty of the idol and lots of family and friends visiting to pay their greetings and visit the homecoming of the god was an enchanting experience. The family had called over a small troupe of shehnai and table players who lit up the environment with classical play of melodies like Ragupati raghav and Vaishnav Janto... I will not forget to mention here that these were a few of Gandhi’s favourite recitals and I had then clutched in my hands a copy of “The Men who Killed Gandhi”... I had intended to stop only for an hour but the mesmerising shehnai (and two cups of nice homely tea) ensured that I was fixed to the chair...ah! How I wish I had attended the Spic Macay concert of Ustad Bismillah Khan sahib back in college... Sometime we unknowingly miss simple pleasures of life...

I also spent some time in the lanes of Zaveri Bazaar on Saturday evening, which I must say are very much like the lanes of chaandani chowk in Delhi. Passion fruit (called papnas) was something new I got to see here amidst scores of jewellery and electricity shops. I felt closer to Mumbai for sometime which was for a change a nice feeling... I finally ended up near Masjid Bandar where I purchased a pair of brown leather shoes (something I have done first time in my life). The market sense has gone so weird that the shop keepers don’t seem to have respect for the old fashioned... for the first 15 minutes I had to convince the shop agent that I do not want “noke waale joote” or ones with ugly designs or sequins...I just wanted a plain pair of shoes which after much haggling I managed to get off his inventory, however no nonsense or bargaining was nice despite me being a bania. Anyways, I do not know if the weekend was a happy one, but it was definitely one which gave a lots of peace to me.

Quoting Rumi “I went to the river to quench my thirst, and there I drank the moonlight”, I am in search of such a river that expands before me the true reflection of whatever I experience. I would just say “What I do not know is what that fails me today, but what I intend to know is something that makes me tommorrow..” To find inner solace is a challenge, because complacency becomes tangentially related. And then when it gets too difficult Salvation lies within...

Carpe Diem...Peace to one and all..

Today..more intriguing than any reality show?

Finally 4 months after landing in Bombay I do get time to start over blogging once again. Mumbai (or Bombay) is a very similar city as compared to Delhi, only slightly faster and the fact that it sleeps lesser than its political sibling. If Delhi is the City of Dil-wallahs then Mumbai is the city that never sleeps. If delhi is home to the politicians then Mumbai is no less housing the stars of bollywood. Never-the-less Delhi will always be home for me, and home is where heart is.

Bollywood city always reminds me of TV, and the numerous reality shows that have started crowing on the various channels. Sarkar ki Duniya coming on a channel named Real. Nice way there, maybe they should pitch in to make the channel for reality shows only. I don’t know why but Ashutosh Rana looks really devilish, if I’d ever watch it would be to add on some new hindi vocab from Rana impress my Hindi teaching mum. Sach ka Saamna picked from a similar concept from the west is another show that made the headlines in the past few weeks or so. Looking so similar to KBC, only difference is that questions are so beautiful that if you do not want your life to ever be peaceful, then go ahead be a part of it. Every Tom who looks like your next door neighbor Harry turns out to be Dick on the other side of the show. Damn it, the host gets so ridiculous when somebody actually walks out with cash and without ruining his/her life. I guess Rakhi Sawant should be brought on the hot-chair and asked a few quick ones, and the prize should be a nice 200 volt if you get it wrong and money if u can manage the truth. Rakhi made a sure shot donkey of the poor fellow from Canedda (it’s a part of our beloved Punjab much like Southall). I am sure he’d be raising kids on TV next. Anyways enough fun has been made on her, on MTV already and Ilesh is already bald!

Then there are some catty shows like Splitzvilla, which is possibly based on a concept synonymous to inflation. Too many boys chasing too few good looking skinny girls. Psycologists need to figure out a solution for Anorexia amongst North Indian women, my fellow madrasi flat mate always can find chubbier and better looking actresses in his vernacular movies. Another show is about selecting a couple of pit-stoppers for dear mr. vijay mallaya’s Force India F1 team, I am sure if they are going to conduct such national level screening for selecting these girls the entire race track would stop. If some manage to hit the gas pedal, they’d be up in flames before they know. By the way, Mr. Mallaya when is the next Kingfisher Calendar coming out?

And finally there are some dudes and dudettes battling it out for a chrome Pulsar bike doing all sorts of stunt mania to impress kiddos. I say come to West Delhi, or to DND flyover at mid-night and you can see GODS racing..Arre nahi bhai! its not Indraji racing on his elephant but Group of Delhi Super-bikers. Every possible stunt fails when they claim to reach Jaipur from Delhi, have breakfast and come back all in six hours on their vrooming Honda’s and Yamaha’s. What a waste of time, trying to win a bike by trying all death defying stunts, ask your mum and dad to get you a tri-cycle instead.

Jungle Raaj hai!... finally Is Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao scores over the rest. Once again copied from the west. I am really not sure and possibly support every person who thinks that the show is shot in either Sunderbans in Bengal or in the Veerappan jungles of Karnataka. No ways they’d go to film 10 donkeys yelling at each other, eating crabs and snakes and insects in Malaysia. They can’t even go hunting, had they been in a true jungle, they could have atleast butchered a baboon or atleast a teetar-bater. All the failures on the Tier-2 shows on TV come to participate for money, which they eventually don’t win. The truth is “Jinko Koi nahi puucchta unko reality show wale bula lete hain”.

Anyways, don’t you think I am loser following these shows on the Idiot box. It just that you cant escape from brief moments while switching channels at night, while the other truth is that every other channel has one such show running incessantly. If not then you can see repeat telecast with detailed analytics on any News Show. Thanks specifically to Rajat Sharma’s India TV, which is more entertaining than the antics of Mr. Bean.

Seize the day… make more reality of your life than watching some one else’s reality because while you can never figure out if the other person is actually faking it or not, you definitely can draw some sense into your actions.

Slipping Sands of Time...

If you noticed the anguish in reading my last few blogs and now didn’t get anything to read like that, then the reason is that I was home for the last two months. Nah! I wasn’t given the pink slip on day 1 at JPMorgan, my joining got delayed so I happily got to stay at home for 60 days. These holidays gave me a lot of time to think about family, future life and need to work. No matter how much I slept back at IBS here I had a schedule, woke up at 7 in the morning and slept at 11 pm. Frankly even a Slumdog feels like a millionaire when home, two square meals cooked by mum is more than any Oscar or Bafta…

One of the best things ever happened in my life happened just as I quit IBS and came back…I got an i-lasik done to remove my long distance vision. I am no longer handicapped with a pair of glasses shielding my corneas. The operation took about 8 minutes and just as I appreciate the small things in life, I could appreciate the beauty of clearly pointing out (to my awe struck parents) the number of holes an electrical socket had with my bare eyes. And don’t you try wondering if I had taped eyes for days and I couldn’t see for the first few days…I could see right after the operation and neither did I yell “Mirindaaaa” on seeing my mum, well she wasn’t in a orange saree either…I was awake throughout the operation and only my eyes were numbed, I spoke to the sardarji doc (he was a Padma Sree awardee) and could move my hands and feet while the laser beam did its work. So powerful is the technology today I wondered…it is mighty no doubt. I wondered can a laser beam modify the contours of Taliban infested Pakistan just as it did for my eyes.

Another new thing that appeared in my book of life was I started stock trading…Having spent a magnanimous amount on my education and the following surgery; I was lent a sum of 10000 bucks to try my luck. It wasn’t a free economy I traded in, I mean it was heavily regulated by my experienced mum and dad who would look into what I planned to buy in the intra-day….at times the opportunity was lost while communicating my intention and getting their approval…never mind I managed to retire with a decent profit (read ROI, man I am a financial analyst) of about 30%. Still cant be compared to many folks back in college who could churn up ten times each month...Frankly it requires a lot of courage, and if any Security Analysis student of MBA feels its equivalent to Moneybhai.com then he should try shitting in a glass walled toilet and say it feels the same…

Goodbye to IBS wasn’t tough at all finally, I managed to graduate with a fairly decent CGPA though I was unhappy with my final semester marks given my efforts…I managed an A on my dissertation which was very pleasing. Atleast researching Carbon credits got me something better than the rest. I heard about a lot of folks still being in campus till mid-april trying for placements. I wish them luck and early departure from Hyderabad…

Rendezvous with Mumbai begins in ten days and I am all anxious to peep in the new kaleidoscope, smell the fresh vada-paos and swim in the famous rainfalls. Delhi 1-99 (not only 6) will have to wait for me for quite some time…I wish the Dariba’s paranthewallas and jalebi wallah, the kachchoris and chhole bhature of Kamala Nagar a tearful goodbye… You can only wish the people you love a teary goodbye for the ones its bilateral you can only smile and say I’ll be back soon…Words have deeper meanings which at times are best left unexplained. I wish I had a pause button on life but cant help it even SRK promoted Dish TV cant give me what I want…I could have stopped Shoaib Akhtar from dropping the ball and the Black knight running in the gymkhana but what cant be stopped is the tiniest granules of the sands of time that slip more the harder you grasp them….Peace to one and all…Jai Ho!!

The Last Goodbye!

Just about a week away from my final semester exams here at IBS Hyderabad nee Dontanpally, and a fortnight away from possibly leaving this place to never see it again. 21 months in to the MBA program, and let me tell your frankly I am not going to reminisce these days save for the enormous sleep hours they gave me. Someone here may call me insane, but if so insanity has been my virtue all this time here and surprisingly brought the most unbelievable changes. I have found myself to be transformed from a fun loving, extroverted and cheerfully well behaved boy to an anti-social, bookwormish grizzly looking man. Ask me what I’d miss most when I go back home from here or to Bombay, and I’d say two things – fresh air and the looking into a million starred clear sky each night. Possibly you may have counted me into being a cynical idiot by now and frankly I do hope that this piece of blog is not read by my employers to be.

I have grown much fatter than I was before coming here, a realization that only happens once a couple of days when I decide to bathe and look into the mirror. That’s purely thanks to my regime of no exercise, frequent trips to bingers bliss and to the canteen and precisely with thanks to RKHS - the greatest mess caterers in India. I can survive on biscuits, cake, and bread and cheese every meal of the day which frankly that makes me the most suitable candidate for a job in the western world. I wear possibly the worst lot in my wardrobe, most of the good part has already been kept away in suitcases and almirahs back home for better days and better occasions.

And to talk about celebration would be a simple joke as I had decided to abstain myself from any months away when I had come here. I do not wish to carry any memories of a wrong decision on my way back to where I came from. What I have gained here are three initials that I may use after my name having purchased them on a 12% bank loan of a million rupees. I am to go back precisely where I came from, to what precisely I would have been had I not come here. Surprisingly I have not attended a single birthday party, the college fresher’s welcome, the two annual fests, my farewell and other festival celebrations excluding a single Diwali when someone threw a cracker bomb on me and caused my departure in less than 5 minutes. Finally I strongly believe that I wouldn’t be here for my convocation ceremony as well. As can be said “There’s going to be no looking back”….

To this point one must be finding all faults in me, and the truth is that even I find myself to be a natural failure here. Like an American president once said “Ask not what the system can do for you, but what can you do for it”, precisely I haven’t done a wee bit to make these two years a better part of my life. I have cursed and cursed every element and entity surrounding my existence here not purely because I despise them but for I despise the relationship that was built on a regretful decision. I have been extremely temperamental and pugnacious in my behavior. This blog was made during my time here, so I find it to be a place to keep the blatant thoughts ploughing my cranium for long. I am thankful to my family for standing by with me at all times of my desperation, and hope to give them a better and a more considerate me from now on provided the head on my shoulders finds peace, respect and trust within. I have changed to be a person of a quiet taste and high aspirations, doesn’t mean I do not like to speak so opportunities like this come along every now then when I find a blank word sheet. I am a ship anchored on the shore raring to hit the seas again; Thomas Edison once said “There’s a great virtue in failure: You get to start all over again”, maybe I just need to make peace with myself and gear myself up for the tides would never stop coming.

I am also thankful to this place as the fresh air and sleep gave me enuff time to structure myself in peace, its like chiselling the wood finely to bring forth a beautiful sculpture. Often before i sleep i would listen to the song from Guru:

Jaage hain der tak, hamein kucch der so lene do
Thodi si raat aur hai, subah toh hone do
Aadhe adhure khwaab jo poore na ho sake
ek baar phir se neend mein woh khwaab boune do

Finally, I feel like a 8 year old who packs his bags and waits for the school bell to ring so that he can shoot off his desk and run to his home. Farewell for once isn’t a difficult word to say! For myself, I would only say "I am going to Kiss the World". Cheers to Life, Goodluck & Godspeed to fellows at IBS.