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.

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…