With marraige issues lurking all over the place, discussions though not very pleasing on the subject are often indispensible. I dont think I am complaining about it as such, because more often than not a discussion on this dreaded issue ( I wonder if the issue in discussion is so dreaded, how it would be in experience...but anyway...dont have the time to think about that) brings to the table an important aspect of the dynamics of marraige, and forces me to think about it. The result is a clearer picture of what i want from marraige...and whether my expectations & desires are in sync.
Someone asked me yesterday, whether the guy earning less than me could be an issue in the relationship. I cant comment about the relationship part here, because that depends on two persons' mutual consent, but my personal view in this may have a big role to play in what the mutual consent may finally be. Of course, my first complaint about this question is that it is a very hypothetically designed one, because it enumerates no other features of the guy who earns less than me. I mean, its not that he is going to be my husband only for the pay-day in the month. I mean I still have to live the other 29 days with him. Though this day is an important one (atleast in my current life i am perpetually waiting for it, whether it is the day prior to pa-day or the day past pay-day, i mean for next paycheck of course!!).
Firstly, I was forced to think of the origin of this idea. I mean, why is it that a guy has to be earning more than the girl in a marraige..I think the reasoning to this is pretty deep-seated, coming from several aspects of life, be it social, biological, tempramental, and many others that I probably havent delved into.
Socially of course, our society is in a state of flux and so while the conventional set-up expected only the man to earn, the new developments are a compromised version of the old ones. So the sweet compromise suggests that if the man cannot be the only one earning then atleast he should be the one earning more. Fair enough!!
Now thinking of this biologically...as a woman I see the man as a bigger entity than me, I mean in the physical sense he is gotta be taller, he has to have bigger arms ( that can fit me well & give me the comfort & sense of security), so when we imagine him physically bigger than us, we simply extrapolate the bigness to his pay-packet also...that is a shady bit of analysis...but nevertheless, everything is open to moot, and to tell u a lot of things are so subtly ingrained in us that sometimes we dont like any logics (like this one) explaining it...
Tempramentally, I think a lot has been said by the wise men/women, it has a lot to do with the male ego not being able to accept that his wife is contributing more to the household's financial statement. ( I mean on the income side, of course all women contribute more to the expense side ;))
Having analysed the origin of this, in my plausible capacity, I go back to the hypothesis. Of course, I need more data, as in what is the guy's background, what is his qualification, what he is upto in life. So while, I ask so many questions, I was supplied with a live guy to use as a guinea pig for the sake of understanding this issue. I wont go into the details of this guinea pig, but I will sure tell you what my conclusion was when I thought about him & his earning less than me.
I found that in a vibrant economy & job-market that we see in the current day scenario, one's job & salary is a very volatile measure of the person. Thus, it becomes very important to go back to the person's educational qualification to judge his real worth. Thats where I nailed my conclusion, I said to myself, what they say about cricketers:
Form is temporary, class is permanent!!
A boy's current job, his current salary is only his form. The class that he exhibits has a lot to do with what made him get the job & why he is with a certain pay-packet. What a guy is making on the pay-day is a display of his form; what he once studied at school will all along life exhibit as his class.
While a lot of people may not agree, many may even be offended, I knew my audience last evening knew what I exactly meant. He being from IITK just knows how valuable his base qualification is, immaterial of the job that he is in. And this coming from someone who had spent a couple of years at IITK herself, only added to the veracity of his & my confidence in our education.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Keeping busy could take several forms..
I had a very long day yesterday. Entered office little after noon, and left at 6 am today. the interesting thing about the day was the variety of things that kept me busy:
Firstly, I had some work. Now thats really unusual, having work in office, that too work worth mentioning on my blog is just something out of the box. Well, I had to build the interpretation & presentation of the an analysis that our team has been doing for a couple of months. We had hoped that the project would have got wrapped up yesterday, but looks like its gonna haunt us for as long as we are around in Bank of America - which I hope is not very long. With offers being rolled out to me thick n fast , doesnt look like converting this hope into reality is much too difficult, but if only I can settle things on my personal front can I think of settling into something new on the professional. Looks like I am running a dasa wherein everything seems to be stuck. Happens sometimes, and the upside of such situations is that it teaches u the virtue called 'Patience'. I sure needed a primer on that!!
Secondly, I denied credit to someone. Well I had my genuine reasons for that & though saying 'No' is something I just hate doing to someone, I guess practice has made me perfect. With having said 'No' to a couple of consultants after job offers were rolled out. And with now saying 'No' to my colleague for credit, I think I am only getting better with the art of saying 'No'. And just as I write this I said 'No' to an ICICI bank health card insurance tele-caller. Oh my God!! with me saying 'No' so often nowadays I am beginning to wonder if very soon I would begin introducing myself as Shubham No, instead of Shubham Nath. Good Lord, save me!!
Thirdly, I procastinated the decision of alliance with a guy, who has quite shown interest in me over the past few weeks. Now that was a real difficult one, it was almost like the art of saying 'No' which I have been practising, but it had to be done very tactfully. There seems to be the involvement of some emotions in this one, so I just wanted to make sure that the 'No' always sounds like a'no' and not a 'NO'. It was tough, and though I know, in the heart of hearts it is 'NO', I really wonder whether I will be able to make him feel the 'NO' politely or without hurting him. It really bothers me , this 'No' business. But I guess thats life, and thats how languages were created with antonyms. Hopefully I will be able to use the antonym to my recently acquired habit very soon. It never feels nice to get & remain in the habit of negative words.
Fourthly, caught up with Mayank after a month. He returned to the city on Monday after having got married in his hometown- Kanpur on the 1st of this month. It was really nice conversing with him. Especially him being from IITK ( though he was a 2001 batch btech) allows me to take the liberty of connecting with him, in many several ways. Also with him having worked on the same team as I do, we always have a common topic to talk about. We had wanted to catch up for dinner/coffee late last evening but didnt work out. Anyway we ended up talking on phone for more than an hour, till we were interuppted by his newly wed wife's( she is still in Kanpur) phone call. Will meet up with him some time during this week. I have to do some interrogation on Ayon;), though I know he is a hard nut to crack. Infact I fear being interrogated back...anyway, we'll see!!
Next, was Sweta di, she called me up after nearly 15 days. Sweta di was my wingmate in IITK, & also my accomplice in the several mischiefs that we did in IITK as a wing. She was a Ph.d student then & now a prof in HR in IIM Kozhikode. She called to tell me that she is leaving for Sweden next week, where she is going to stay a couple of months on an exchange program. After returning she is gonna resign from IIM Kozhikode, and join Fore School of management in Delhi. Now, any sane person on earth would ask me, why on earth is she doing that?...the answer is she is married, and married to a guy who lives in Delhi, and the guy is not willing to relocate anywhere in the world without his parents. And his parents are not ready to live anywhere in the world except in Delhi. So poor Sweta di, after having stayed away from husband for a couple of years already, she has had to decide to be a dutiful bahu & a dutiful wife. God bless her, & God bless me too, I just hope I never have to make such hard choices in life between family & job. People like Sweta di & situations like the one in which she has been for the past couple of years only go to prove how hard it is to be the modern Indian woman!!
After all the chit-chatting which my atmakaraka chatty Mercury had put me through, I sat at my office desk to listen to Visti Larsen's astrology lecture series. Just when I was brushing some concepts by looking at some sample charts, Gaurav Singh of CDP(corporate debt products) team caught view of the chart on my monitor. He was quite surprised that a modern, smart girl( i guess thats what he thinks about me) like me indulges in the so viewed dhakyanusi science of astrology. Anyway, he came upto my desk and started elaborating on some astrologers he has known in his hometown- Banaras, he mentioned about some accurate predictions that they had made. He even claimed that he was a palmist himself, and then as the conversation materialised, he read my palm too. He mentioned a few things about my temprament, quite correctly; a few things about my past, quite bang on target; but he didnt say much about my future. He said by principle he doesnt tell people about future. Now wasnt that the whole purpose of astrology/palmistry??...i mean if not the whole, atleast part of it, sure is!!...Anyway we discussed a lot of things from all around the globe, till it was very late in the night & nearly the entire office had emptied. He decided to take leave,I dont blame him, he doesnt live at stone's throw from office, like me. So I let him go, but i didnt leave!!...I lingered around in the silence of an empty office, and when I had thought I had spent enough time with myself, I turned to write some memories from IIT days.
At 6 am I took the office cab back home, actually on second thoughts I should have waited another half an hour & walked back home in the dim dawn light. Maybe some other day...I dont know if I will be able to do it again. In IIT I did it almost everyday ( in summers specially). At 5.30 am I used to go for a swim at the instt. swimming pool. That was some swimming experience, with the enitre olympic size pool, all to yourself.
Anyway, once home, I was reasonably tired. I had thought I ll go to the gym before sleeping, but then I just lazed away. I had been awake nearly 20 hours by then. On days when you havent slept for that long, sleep just caresses you with its welcoming arms, and your mind gives in guiltlessly, for it knows this is the 'sleep' you deserve!!
An excuse to remember IIT days
I had a long look at my photo on this blog. Hey, I look pretty!! dont I??
This pic was clicked on the day of GH's Diwali function...now what was it called...I just forgot...I dont believe...has it been so long that I have started forgetting things at IIT...or was it that i never stayed there long enough to get used to the names...but anyway...that day was also the eve of my birthday. I still remember Neeraj having sponsored my birthday cake that we cut in the basky court that night. He just sponsored the cake, and never even came for a bite. The reason was evident when we all tasted the cake...it was far from great!!
Coming back to the pic...it was clicked by Arpit Srivastava..he was a third year b.tech student...whom I had scowled at, at the photo exhibition of antaragni. Reason being"I wasnt even clicked in a single photograph" ( Arpit was the photography club coordinator or something of the likes). Since I bandifully shouted at him, he agreed to click my snaps on some other occassion. To ensure that he doesnt procastinate the issue & get away with it, I told him to do it on the GH function (i am still not able to recall the name) and click my snaps. To that he replied that he wasnt invited. Now, I have this soft-corner for boys@IITK who didnt get a chance to attend these events at GH. So my first reaction was that I invited him over as my guest for the evening. So I had one more guest in the long list of guys whom I had already invited over. Occassions like the one I am talking about made girls in IITK really regret the skewed ratios. Because a girl had to invite several if not numerous boys, which ended up being an expensive affair. In case of the MBA girls, 7 of us were inviting the 40 boys of our class + some other personal guest, which in my case were Arpit & an alumni called Rajendu who was in campus for a visit at that time. Neeraj & Pathak were already invited by Urvashi ( they all belonged to the same deptt. - Civil). For the batch of 2006, it was famous that all notorious people on campus belonged to the Civil Engineering department- Urvashi completely lived up to it; and did I forget to mention that Neeraj & Pathak were the definitions of 'notorious people'!! More on the 2006 Civil Engineering deptt. some time later...
I could hear the gleeful thankyou from Arpit when I extended the invitation. He was pretty overwhelmed at the prospect of being in the midst of girls in GH. And for that, being someone's personal photographer was very little price to pay.
Arpit's first time at GH, was not so eventful, atleast thats what i felt! I dont know what the videoscope of his eyes had to say about the whole evening. He sure was at task, he had borrowed a digi-cam from somewhere, to make sure he justifies the cause of the invitation. He clicked me on several occassions throughout the evening, and everytime he would go 'clik' he would explain (read caveat), "photographs from digi-cams are never too good!!". By the end of it, I wanted to tell him that I wont mind taking the blame of bad photos on my average looks, but him blaming the digi-cam was something I wasnt really appreciating...anyhow I didnt tell him..because I thought he really was obliging me by clicking me when he could have well treated his visual senses to much more...
Next day was Deepshikha ( yes I remeber the name!! this was the Hall-2 diwali function, I also remember the name of the Hall-3 diwali function - it was Deepanjali). Since I had invited Arpit for the GH function, it was obligatory for him to invite me to his. So I was invited to Deepshikha. Now I really appreciated that because Arpit by virtue of being a hall 5 resident, wasnt entitled to invite me to deepshikha. However, his roots were hall-2, so he had asked one of his bachchas to arrange for a dinner coupon for me. Not that I had to feel so thankful, because even if he wouldnt have done that, Neeraj or Yash or someone would have taken me along, and have me have their dinner coupon( which they got by virtue of their executive member status in the Students' Gymkhana). Oh ok, so it wasnt Urvashi who had invited Neeraj & Pathak...tabhi main kahoon Urvashi itni dildaar kab ho gayi!!...One thing about Urvashi -She was quite a 'Lala', I mean not only by virtue of being Urvashi Srivastava, but also in the true sense of it...but I wont elaborate too much on that because I am one too...though not in the true sense!!
Anyway Deepshikha was far more entertaining than was the previous evening in GH. I had always heard in GH that Hall-2 skits are very famous (rather infamous) for their notorious content. Infact Urvashi had told me that in the first year the hall-2 guys had named some girls(Ruchera & Vindhya to be precise- who were the babes of 2006 batch) as part of their script. Also it was said that Vindhya had apparently walked out after seeing such a direct onslaught of her identity. Also there was quite a hype & hoopla about the whole thing, which had branded the hall-2 guys as being the more indecent lot of their batch. And as if that wasnt enough, Neeraj once told me that in the first year they had reared two puppies in hall 2, one of whom was called Vindhya & the other Ruchera. Of course Vindhya was Neeraj's favorite...I mean the puppy Vindhya ;), so I had heard more about Vindhya(pun-intended). So in the 2006 batch hall-3 guys had the 'decent nice guy' image. I guess that is where my prediliction for CMT (over Neeraj) had taken birth. I mean girls always prefer 'decent nice guys' so no matter whom they hang out with. Hall-3 guys always evoked in me 'more sense of respect'.
Since I had heard so much about the hall 2 skits, I was fancying the chance of being audience to one of them. And I must say the Hall-2 guys didnt disappoint me in terms of the content. I dont remember much of it, but I remember a boy in shorts(read underwear) & vest (he was a shaktimaan alias), who entered the scene, rotated on his feet yelling 'fak fak fak fak fak' ( pun-intended). That was just amazing!! I mean I was rolling with laughter, no matter how hard I tried to act like the decent GH junta. Arpit, who was sitting next to me during the course of the skit, I must say was then the most uncomfortable boy on earth. One because his experience in girl's company was limited, and two that too on an occassion when a boy would just want to be a pervert boy...... I am sure he was regretting having brought me along.
What made the evening even more memorable was that it was my Birthday, and just when we were heading for the dinner area, I heard an announcement that said "President Neeraj Kumar wishes the girls respresentative Shubham Nath a very happy birthday!!". My first reaction was shock, in front of a packed hall-2, that was the last thing I wanted lest I wanted rumours... My second reaction was this couldnt have been done by Neeraj, but before I begun to guess, the culprit confessed his crime - it was Haria's idea ( yes the games & sports secy, whose name was indiscriminantly used to describe someone's foolish behavior- "Arrey, tum Haria ho gaye ho kya!"). My last reaction, on this issue was, "its ok". And now when I look back my reaction is "a memorable birthday!!"
Not that today is my birthday....
Sometimes I think, I just need excuses to remember IIT days. So coming back to why I created this post, I mean the pic. That pic was clicked by Arpit Srivastava in VH ( when we went to drop Rajendu) on the day of....i have still not recalled the name of the function - but i guess everyone can live without it, now that the article is getting over!! Out of the 50 odd pics that he must have clicked that day, only two were worthy of maintaining in my pictures' folder. I mean Ankit had told me digi-cams never produce good pics...so that was ok ;) Out of the two pics, One is this one & the other is the thumbnail of my gtalk - Thanks Arpit!!
This pic was clicked on the day of GH's Diwali function...now what was it called...I just forgot...I dont believe...has it been so long that I have started forgetting things at IIT...or was it that i never stayed there long enough to get used to the names...but anyway...that day was also the eve of my birthday. I still remember Neeraj having sponsored my birthday cake that we cut in the basky court that night. He just sponsored the cake, and never even came for a bite. The reason was evident when we all tasted the cake...it was far from great!!
Coming back to the pic...it was clicked by Arpit Srivastava..he was a third year b.tech student...whom I had scowled at, at the photo exhibition of antaragni. Reason being"I wasnt even clicked in a single photograph" ( Arpit was the photography club coordinator or something of the likes). Since I bandifully shouted at him, he agreed to click my snaps on some other occassion. To ensure that he doesnt procastinate the issue & get away with it, I told him to do it on the GH function (i am still not able to recall the name) and click my snaps. To that he replied that he wasnt invited. Now, I have this soft-corner for boys@IITK who didnt get a chance to attend these events at GH. So my first reaction was that I invited him over as my guest for the evening. So I had one more guest in the long list of guys whom I had already invited over. Occassions like the one I am talking about made girls in IITK really regret the skewed ratios. Because a girl had to invite several if not numerous boys, which ended up being an expensive affair. In case of the MBA girls, 7 of us were inviting the 40 boys of our class + some other personal guest, which in my case were Arpit & an alumni called Rajendu who was in campus for a visit at that time. Neeraj & Pathak were already invited by Urvashi ( they all belonged to the same deptt. - Civil). For the batch of 2006, it was famous that all notorious people on campus belonged to the Civil Engineering department- Urvashi completely lived up to it; and did I forget to mention that Neeraj & Pathak were the definitions of 'notorious people'!! More on the 2006 Civil Engineering deptt. some time later...
I could hear the gleeful thankyou from Arpit when I extended the invitation. He was pretty overwhelmed at the prospect of being in the midst of girls in GH. And for that, being someone's personal photographer was very little price to pay.
Arpit's first time at GH, was not so eventful, atleast thats what i felt! I dont know what the videoscope of his eyes had to say about the whole evening. He sure was at task, he had borrowed a digi-cam from somewhere, to make sure he justifies the cause of the invitation. He clicked me on several occassions throughout the evening, and everytime he would go 'clik' he would explain (read caveat), "photographs from digi-cams are never too good!!". By the end of it, I wanted to tell him that I wont mind taking the blame of bad photos on my average looks, but him blaming the digi-cam was something I wasnt really appreciating...anyhow I didnt tell him..because I thought he really was obliging me by clicking me when he could have well treated his visual senses to much more...
Next day was Deepshikha ( yes I remeber the name!! this was the Hall-2 diwali function, I also remember the name of the Hall-3 diwali function - it was Deepanjali). Since I had invited Arpit for the GH function, it was obligatory for him to invite me to his. So I was invited to Deepshikha. Now I really appreciated that because Arpit by virtue of being a hall 5 resident, wasnt entitled to invite me to deepshikha. However, his roots were hall-2, so he had asked one of his bachchas to arrange for a dinner coupon for me. Not that I had to feel so thankful, because even if he wouldnt have done that, Neeraj or Yash or someone would have taken me along, and have me have their dinner coupon( which they got by virtue of their executive member status in the Students' Gymkhana). Oh ok, so it wasnt Urvashi who had invited Neeraj & Pathak...tabhi main kahoon Urvashi itni dildaar kab ho gayi!!...One thing about Urvashi -She was quite a 'Lala', I mean not only by virtue of being Urvashi Srivastava, but also in the true sense of it...but I wont elaborate too much on that because I am one too...though not in the true sense!!
Anyway Deepshikha was far more entertaining than was the previous evening in GH. I had always heard in GH that Hall-2 skits are very famous (rather infamous) for their notorious content. Infact Urvashi had told me that in the first year the hall-2 guys had named some girls(Ruchera & Vindhya to be precise- who were the babes of 2006 batch) as part of their script. Also it was said that Vindhya had apparently walked out after seeing such a direct onslaught of her identity. Also there was quite a hype & hoopla about the whole thing, which had branded the hall-2 guys as being the more indecent lot of their batch. And as if that wasnt enough, Neeraj once told me that in the first year they had reared two puppies in hall 2, one of whom was called Vindhya & the other Ruchera. Of course Vindhya was Neeraj's favorite...I mean the puppy Vindhya ;), so I had heard more about Vindhya(pun-intended). So in the 2006 batch hall-3 guys had the 'decent nice guy' image. I guess that is where my prediliction for CMT (over Neeraj) had taken birth. I mean girls always prefer 'decent nice guys' so no matter whom they hang out with. Hall-3 guys always evoked in me 'more sense of respect'.
Since I had heard so much about the hall 2 skits, I was fancying the chance of being audience to one of them. And I must say the Hall-2 guys didnt disappoint me in terms of the content. I dont remember much of it, but I remember a boy in shorts(read underwear) & vest (he was a shaktimaan alias), who entered the scene, rotated on his feet yelling 'fak fak fak fak fak' ( pun-intended). That was just amazing!! I mean I was rolling with laughter, no matter how hard I tried to act like the decent GH junta. Arpit, who was sitting next to me during the course of the skit, I must say was then the most uncomfortable boy on earth. One because his experience in girl's company was limited, and two that too on an occassion when a boy would just want to be a pervert boy...... I am sure he was regretting having brought me along.
What made the evening even more memorable was that it was my Birthday, and just when we were heading for the dinner area, I heard an announcement that said "President Neeraj Kumar wishes the girls respresentative Shubham Nath a very happy birthday!!". My first reaction was shock, in front of a packed hall-2, that was the last thing I wanted lest I wanted rumours... My second reaction was this couldnt have been done by Neeraj, but before I begun to guess, the culprit confessed his crime - it was Haria's idea ( yes the games & sports secy, whose name was indiscriminantly used to describe someone's foolish behavior- "Arrey, tum Haria ho gaye ho kya!"). My last reaction, on this issue was, "its ok". And now when I look back my reaction is "a memorable birthday!!"
Not that today is my birthday....
Sometimes I think, I just need excuses to remember IIT days. So coming back to why I created this post, I mean the pic. That pic was clicked by Arpit Srivastava in VH ( when we went to drop Rajendu) on the day of....i have still not recalled the name of the function - but i guess everyone can live without it, now that the article is getting over!! Out of the 50 odd pics that he must have clicked that day, only two were worthy of maintaining in my pictures' folder. I mean Ankit had told me digi-cams never produce good pics...so that was ok ;) Out of the two pics, One is this one & the other is the thumbnail of my gtalk - Thanks Arpit!!
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
'Almost Single'
In this era of fledgling writers, I came across Advaita Kala whose book 'Almost single' is a rib tickling roller coaster ride. Even in this hilarious ode, she manages to convey some heart touching feelings(in her own unique humorous style). One such was:
"Sometimes, I feel that the desire to love outweighs the desire to be loved. This has to be the reason why so often, we continue to love those who dont deserve to be loved. It helps us feel emotionally employed. 'Amour' becomes a career, a vocation. So we continue to draw from our depleting inner reserves while steadily moving towards emotional bankruptcy."
I thought that was a nice excerpt.
Just completed reading the book, was a nice time-pass read altogether!!
"Sometimes, I feel that the desire to love outweighs the desire to be loved. This has to be the reason why so often, we continue to love those who dont deserve to be loved. It helps us feel emotionally employed. 'Amour' becomes a career, a vocation. So we continue to draw from our depleting inner reserves while steadily moving towards emotional bankruptcy."
I thought that was a nice excerpt.
Just completed reading the book, was a nice time-pass read altogether!!
Monday, March 24, 2008
men vs. MEN
There are men, and there are MEN.
The former refers to those who are men by virtue of:
the double x chromosome in their genes,
the gender column that they tick in any official document, &
the razor & cream they use every morning.
The biological, legal or day to day science associated with manhood when galvanized by character& nature of the individual builds the latter category called – MEN. These are species that have more to manhood than just the above mentioned attributes of science.
The birth& development of either off-shoot cannot be explained lest we delve into the classical debate of nature vs. nurture.
I mean, to be born with certain physical & sexual attributes is one thing & that is what I refer to as the nature aspect of the debate. But how the subtleties of these attributes are manifested ‘in society & by the society’ is all about nurturing MANhood. In the male-dominated, patriarchic society that we belong to, often the birth of an individual with the sexual & physical attributes of a man are enough. Both parents & society don’t feel the need to value-add the individual to grow into a MAN; which is what leaves me wondering if nature is all that is important for the individual to be defined as him, or does society at large have the responsibility of nurturing him into a MAN.
Either ways what prevents me from giving a man the status of a MAN is, if he is 'weak'. What I mean is that if he cannot stand up for what he believes, then he is ‘weak’. If I don’t see men strive hard enough for what they think they want ( and to begin with know what they want) then I believe they don’t have the requisite strength. And mind you this is not the strength that can be attributed to the physical and sexual vigor that the male gender is born with. In fact it is the strength that society nurtures in a man so that he grows up into a man who can take hard, challenging and strong decisions in life. Decisions- which not only propel his own good, but the good of society at large. Such men are not born from their mother's womb, such men are nurtured outside in this big bad world!! I like Khaled Hosseini’s version of what carves out such men. He says:
'A boy who cannot stand up for himself grows up into a man, who cannot stand up for anything in life'
While Hosseini had his own situations & interpretations to justify what he said. For me the first time a boy doesn’t stand up for himself - he has expressed his weakness to do so, and very soon the once shown weakness gives into another such occasion, and a string of such occasions just makes a man get into the habit of being weak – a vicious circle where one weak step leads to another, the other ends up justifying the first & so on. The peril of such a vicious circle is that it keeps churning you round & round without much effort. Breaking the shackles of the leisurely pace & the rhythm of it all, requires some exceptional effort on ones part. Very similar to what happens in rotary motion, the centripetal & centrifugal force once synchronized to each other; make it hard to break the circular motion. And settlement in such a motion is what I refer to nurturing against MANhood.
A boy pushed out of a playing field by his fellow playmates, may walk out thinking that the bigger boys will crush him if he retaliates. I say, getting crushed once is better than carrying the shame & hence the habit of walking out of a playing field for the rest of your life. Boys who do not fight playmates on a playing field, get into the habit of walking out of challenging situations unperturbed & unabashed. Not only do I blame the boy who walks out of the fear of being crushed, also I blame the doting parent who discourages the boy from ‘getting into trouble’. What the doting parent doesn’t realize is that encouraging weakness in one aspect of life, will soon translate into the boy being weak in other aspects too.
They say the first time is always the most difficult, and it is as true about being ‘weak’ as it is about anything in life. In fact, the first time well combated could well mean strength for a lifetime. So, for all the men who want to grow up to be MEN, its time you avoid the first weak step, and for those who have already indulged in that one weak step, its time to fight the forces which are forcing to keep you in the loop of the vicious circle. While its difficult, it surely will help you, and for those who are hoping that God will send that dramatic opportunity for you to show your strength; Let me tell you, God only helps those who help themselves.
I know I have probably not been able to express my acute dislike for ‘weak’ men with the greatest élan. But for those who really want to know who I am talking about, you have to know Amirof ‘The Kiteruner’ & Jalil of ‘A thousand splendid sons’. Amir whose weakness in not being able to save his friend from abuse, leaves him in guilt & a spree of ‘weak’ actions for the rest of the life. While Jalil whose weakness of not accepting the woman he impregnates as his wife, leads him to build a relationship of lies & treachery with his illegitimate daughter- Mariam. God save the Hassans, Mariams & myself from being around men who are weak!!
The former refers to those who are men by virtue of:
the double x chromosome in their genes,
the gender column that they tick in any official document, &
the razor & cream they use every morning.
The biological, legal or day to day science associated with manhood when galvanized by character& nature of the individual builds the latter category called – MEN. These are species that have more to manhood than just the above mentioned attributes of science.
The birth& development of either off-shoot cannot be explained lest we delve into the classical debate of nature vs. nurture.
I mean, to be born with certain physical & sexual attributes is one thing & that is what I refer to as the nature aspect of the debate. But how the subtleties of these attributes are manifested ‘in society & by the society’ is all about nurturing MANhood. In the male-dominated, patriarchic society that we belong to, often the birth of an individual with the sexual & physical attributes of a man are enough. Both parents & society don’t feel the need to value-add the individual to grow into a MAN; which is what leaves me wondering if nature is all that is important for the individual to be defined as him, or does society at large have the responsibility of nurturing him into a MAN.
Either ways what prevents me from giving a man the status of a MAN is, if he is 'weak'. What I mean is that if he cannot stand up for what he believes, then he is ‘weak’. If I don’t see men strive hard enough for what they think they want ( and to begin with know what they want) then I believe they don’t have the requisite strength. And mind you this is not the strength that can be attributed to the physical and sexual vigor that the male gender is born with. In fact it is the strength that society nurtures in a man so that he grows up into a man who can take hard, challenging and strong decisions in life. Decisions- which not only propel his own good, but the good of society at large. Such men are not born from their mother's womb, such men are nurtured outside in this big bad world!! I like Khaled Hosseini’s version of what carves out such men. He says:
'A boy who cannot stand up for himself grows up into a man, who cannot stand up for anything in life'
While Hosseini had his own situations & interpretations to justify what he said. For me the first time a boy doesn’t stand up for himself - he has expressed his weakness to do so, and very soon the once shown weakness gives into another such occasion, and a string of such occasions just makes a man get into the habit of being weak – a vicious circle where one weak step leads to another, the other ends up justifying the first & so on. The peril of such a vicious circle is that it keeps churning you round & round without much effort. Breaking the shackles of the leisurely pace & the rhythm of it all, requires some exceptional effort on ones part. Very similar to what happens in rotary motion, the centripetal & centrifugal force once synchronized to each other; make it hard to break the circular motion. And settlement in such a motion is what I refer to nurturing against MANhood.
A boy pushed out of a playing field by his fellow playmates, may walk out thinking that the bigger boys will crush him if he retaliates. I say, getting crushed once is better than carrying the shame & hence the habit of walking out of a playing field for the rest of your life. Boys who do not fight playmates on a playing field, get into the habit of walking out of challenging situations unperturbed & unabashed. Not only do I blame the boy who walks out of the fear of being crushed, also I blame the doting parent who discourages the boy from ‘getting into trouble’. What the doting parent doesn’t realize is that encouraging weakness in one aspect of life, will soon translate into the boy being weak in other aspects too.
They say the first time is always the most difficult, and it is as true about being ‘weak’ as it is about anything in life. In fact, the first time well combated could well mean strength for a lifetime. So, for all the men who want to grow up to be MEN, its time you avoid the first weak step, and for those who have already indulged in that one weak step, its time to fight the forces which are forcing to keep you in the loop of the vicious circle. While its difficult, it surely will help you, and for those who are hoping that God will send that dramatic opportunity for you to show your strength; Let me tell you, God only helps those who help themselves.
I know I have probably not been able to express my acute dislike for ‘weak’ men with the greatest élan. But for those who really want to know who I am talking about, you have to know Amirof ‘The Kiteruner’ & Jalil of ‘A thousand splendid sons’. Amir whose weakness in not being able to save his friend from abuse, leaves him in guilt & a spree of ‘weak’ actions for the rest of the life. While Jalil whose weakness of not accepting the woman he impregnates as his wife, leads him to build a relationship of lies & treachery with his illegitimate daughter- Mariam. God save the Hassans, Mariams & myself from being around men who are weak!!
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Post Mahabharata
All of us remember the great war of Mahabharata, some by having rigored through the pages of the epic, while others having enjoyed it as a sunday morning TV serial. Most of the limelight was stolen therein by the panadavas & kauravas and their differences. To top the glamor quotient of the story was Lord Krishna, whom because of Godhood status none of us could ignore.
The battle of kurukshetra, namely Mahabharata is often camouflaged by the valor & events that took place prior & during the war. But i was really wondering how many of us belonging to this age actually know about what happened thereafter, and moreso what happened to the victorious pandavas. Was it really, another of those all's well that ends well kind of stories?
The answer to this was not known to me myself ( me belonging to 'this age people' that I am talking about). so I did little bit of googling to find out this:
In the years that follow the war Dhritarashtra and his queen Gandhari, and Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas, lived a life of asceticism in a forest retreat and died with yogic calm in a forest fire. Krishna Vasudeva and his always unruly clan slaughtered each other in a drunken brawl thirty-six years after the war, and Krishna's soul dissolved back into the Supreme God Vishnu (Krishna had been born when a part of Vishnu took birth in the womb of Krishna's mother). When they learned of this, the Pandavas believed it time for them to leave this world too and they embarked upon the 'Great Journey,' which involved walking north toward the polar mountain, that is toward the heavenly worlds, until one's body dropped dead. One by one Draupadi and the younger Pandavas died along the way until Yudhishthira was left alone with a dog that had followed him all the way. Yudhishthira made it to the gate of heaven and there refused the order to drive the dog back, at which point the dog was revealed to be an incarnate form of the God Dharma (the God who was Yudhishthira's actual, physical father), who was there to test Yudhishthira's virtue. Once in heaven Yudhishthira faced one final test of his virtue: He saw only the Dhartarashtras in heaven, and he was told that his brothers were in hell. He insisted on joining his brothers in hell, if that be the case! It was then revealed that they were really in heaven, that this illusion had been one final test for him. So ends the Mahabharata!
source(http://web.utk.edu/~jftzgrld/MBh1Story.html)
Interesting I thought!!
The battle of kurukshetra, namely Mahabharata is often camouflaged by the valor & events that took place prior & during the war. But i was really wondering how many of us belonging to this age actually know about what happened thereafter, and moreso what happened to the victorious pandavas. Was it really, another of those all's well that ends well kind of stories?
The answer to this was not known to me myself ( me belonging to 'this age people' that I am talking about). so I did little bit of googling to find out this:
In the years that follow the war Dhritarashtra and his queen Gandhari, and Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas, lived a life of asceticism in a forest retreat and died with yogic calm in a forest fire. Krishna Vasudeva and his always unruly clan slaughtered each other in a drunken brawl thirty-six years after the war, and Krishna's soul dissolved back into the Supreme God Vishnu (Krishna had been born when a part of Vishnu took birth in the womb of Krishna's mother). When they learned of this, the Pandavas believed it time for them to leave this world too and they embarked upon the 'Great Journey,' which involved walking north toward the polar mountain, that is toward the heavenly worlds, until one's body dropped dead. One by one Draupadi and the younger Pandavas died along the way until Yudhishthira was left alone with a dog that had followed him all the way. Yudhishthira made it to the gate of heaven and there refused the order to drive the dog back, at which point the dog was revealed to be an incarnate form of the God Dharma (the God who was Yudhishthira's actual, physical father), who was there to test Yudhishthira's virtue. Once in heaven Yudhishthira faced one final test of his virtue: He saw only the Dhartarashtras in heaven, and he was told that his brothers were in hell. He insisted on joining his brothers in hell, if that be the case! It was then revealed that they were really in heaven, that this illusion had been one final test for him. So ends the Mahabharata!
source(http://web.utk.edu/~jftzgrld/MBh1Story.html)
Interesting I thought!!
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Valmiki Jayanti @IITK
The write-up includes certain objectionble content, which maynot be suitable for people under-18 years. Reader discretion is warranted!
An idle sunday afternoon often muddles up thoughts of various kinds in your mind, some of these might be deep & provoking while others just reminiscence of times you cherished. While some reminescences could be painful ( but that doesnt mean I cry; I am a grown up girl, remember!), the ones which were fun never fail to put a smile back on my face. One such fun incident from my second year at IITK flashed across my mind today.
Late in the evening (not so late by IITK standards though), around 10 pm the gymkhana senate meeting got over. I was part of the meeting by virtue of being the girls repesentative (for those of you who dont know, since girls in IITK are a minority community they get a special quota representation in the students' governance body- the students gymkhana). While walking out of the meeting, some of us decided to catch up with coffee at the academic area nescafe. The cultural secretary Pathak and the president Neeraj, who were then great pals of mine decided to join me for the same.
As the farewells were being bid I heard one gentleman (atleast thats what I thought about him till then) shout out to all others( all of whom there were men, except me!), "aaj valmiki jayanti ka samaroh hai, bhoolna mat!". What followed were a few giggles & promises " haan haan, nahi bhoolenge!". I was quite dumbfounded on having learnt that there seemed to be a high profile cultural program on campus, the posters of which I had missed. 'Never mind!' I thought, since pathak - the cultural secretary was going for a cup of coffeee with me, I could always find out!!
Pathak & I began to walk towards the academic area, while Neeraj who had got stuck with some junta ( nothing new for those who knew Neeraj, and hung about with him) promised to join soon.
On my way to the academic area, I inquired from Pathak what the samaroh was all about. Pathak very non-chalantly described it as a cultural program that took place in Naankari, once every year on the occassion of Valmiki Jayanti. Since Pathak himself was wearing a smirk & I had already heard the other guys in SAC giggle about it, I was convinced that there was more to it; and of course I was determined to find out!
Here I will like to describe a little problem that I have in me- if you describe something to me in straight n simple words, no matter how indecent that maybe I will accept it without any further inquiries or suspicion, but the moment you try n fob me in words, you have just stimulated my inquisition cells. So here I was interviewing Pathak for the rest of the details & hence the complete story.
On asking him what kind of a program it was going to be, he just fended it by saying that its gonna be some dance prepared by the local inhabitants of Naankari village. Ok! I knew the keyword here was 'Dance'. So the inquiry went a step further, "all the guys seemed pretty excited about the dance, so who is the dancer going to be?". "I am not too sure!" said Pathak. I knew he was more than sure, but that jerk-n-half wouldnt let it out to me. So I said "seems like its gonna be fun, can I please join u guys for it?" At this, Pathak was completely taken aback, he gave me one of those expressions " do u have any clue, what you are talking about!" and i gave him back one of those looks "perhaps I do, but I want to hear it straight from you!". when he saw that expression he started his fobbing tactics "dekhiye Shubham, wo na.... ladkiyon ki jaane ki jagah nahi hai". To that I knew all I had to ask was "why, why & why?" till the time I had got a satisfactory answer. But Pathak, in matters of speaking straight is a hard nut to crack . In situations where he knows that his image of a 'decent nice guy' is under threatening, he would just beat around the bush till eternity or till someone came to his rescue!!
Just when I had pestered Pathak enough, Neeraj biked into the academic area, to join us for the coffee which he had promised us both. An irritated Pathak, on having failed to satiate my inquisition of their coveted Valmiki Jayanti samaroh, decided to blurt out the situation through & through to Neeraj. Neeraj began to laugh & Pathak joined him too. Poor me, had to wait till the two of them had done with their laughing. Neeraj, though not a very direct person himself, thought directness was the only way he could have avoided any more questions that could have embaressed both Pathak & himself. He told me that since Naankari isnt such a safe place to go to & since some of the dancers could well be hookers, it is hence not advisable for me to go. Now see, it was that simple, but if only Pathak understood the importance of 'simplicity as a virtue !'
So I went back to the hostel, having left them both to plan the rest of their evening. Of course I waited all evening thereafter, till I thought would be the appropraite time to call up Neeraj & find out about the proceedings of the samaroh...
what?? u thought I would leave it only at a point of knowing what might happen at the samaroh, and wouldnt delve into what actually happened!...rubbish!!
So a little after 1 am, I called up Neeraj, "so gaye the kya??", and he answered "nahi, bus sone ja raha tha!". Liar!
For those of you who dont know, a little piece of information about Neeraj. This guy was famous in the campus as a big liar, he was believed to be an amazing manipulator of words, and he was of course quite big a politician (a lot of b.tech students hated him for his political acumen owing to which he ousted CMT-the har-dil-aziz & my-dil-aziz too ;) candidate, for the post of President of student's gymkhana). But in the midst of all this negative imagery, he had managed to portray himself as someone who would never lie/manipulate/politicize lest it does good to someone else. Anyway, those are just euphemisms of defending: just as a pagal would never concede to the fact that he is a pagal; a liar would never concede to the fact that he is a liar. Pretty natural & justified too!!
Coming back to my phone call to Neeraj, I began to dig out the details. He told me that two prostitutes from Naankari village namely Komal & Kesar were protagnists of the show. I asked him more about the proceedings, he described not in so much detail, but he did repeatedly mention that Kesar danced pretty well. I could make out that he had developed some soft-corner for Kesar ;). So I asked him what kind of songs were playing. He told me that Kesar's dance on Kajra re was pretty good. And what followed was a 10 minute long amorous description of what an excellent dancer Kesar was. On the lighter side I wanted to add, " should we ask Pathak to make her the dance club coordinator of IITK". But his heart-touching description of the woman & her dance didnt permit me to make fun of anything. I must confess he described it more decently than a prostitute in any walk of life can be described. I dont know if he really meant it or was he just using Pathak's tactics of maintaining his image as a 'decent nice guy'.
Whatever it maybe, but I must say IITK guys have this knack of making even the gravest act of perversion sound like a noble deed of patronage.
Hats off to them!!...the JEE surely judges something successfully! ;)
An idle sunday afternoon often muddles up thoughts of various kinds in your mind, some of these might be deep & provoking while others just reminiscence of times you cherished. While some reminescences could be painful ( but that doesnt mean I cry; I am a grown up girl, remember!), the ones which were fun never fail to put a smile back on my face. One such fun incident from my second year at IITK flashed across my mind today.
Late in the evening (not so late by IITK standards though), around 10 pm the gymkhana senate meeting got over. I was part of the meeting by virtue of being the girls repesentative (for those of you who dont know, since girls in IITK are a minority community they get a special quota representation in the students' governance body- the students gymkhana). While walking out of the meeting, some of us decided to catch up with coffee at the academic area nescafe. The cultural secretary Pathak and the president Neeraj, who were then great pals of mine decided to join me for the same.
As the farewells were being bid I heard one gentleman (atleast thats what I thought about him till then) shout out to all others( all of whom there were men, except me!), "aaj valmiki jayanti ka samaroh hai, bhoolna mat!". What followed were a few giggles & promises " haan haan, nahi bhoolenge!". I was quite dumbfounded on having learnt that there seemed to be a high profile cultural program on campus, the posters of which I had missed. 'Never mind!' I thought, since pathak - the cultural secretary was going for a cup of coffeee with me, I could always find out!!
Pathak & I began to walk towards the academic area, while Neeraj who had got stuck with some junta ( nothing new for those who knew Neeraj, and hung about with him) promised to join soon.
On my way to the academic area, I inquired from Pathak what the samaroh was all about. Pathak very non-chalantly described it as a cultural program that took place in Naankari, once every year on the occassion of Valmiki Jayanti. Since Pathak himself was wearing a smirk & I had already heard the other guys in SAC giggle about it, I was convinced that there was more to it; and of course I was determined to find out!
Here I will like to describe a little problem that I have in me- if you describe something to me in straight n simple words, no matter how indecent that maybe I will accept it without any further inquiries or suspicion, but the moment you try n fob me in words, you have just stimulated my inquisition cells. So here I was interviewing Pathak for the rest of the details & hence the complete story.
On asking him what kind of a program it was going to be, he just fended it by saying that its gonna be some dance prepared by the local inhabitants of Naankari village. Ok! I knew the keyword here was 'Dance'. So the inquiry went a step further, "all the guys seemed pretty excited about the dance, so who is the dancer going to be?". "I am not too sure!" said Pathak. I knew he was more than sure, but that jerk-n-half wouldnt let it out to me. So I said "seems like its gonna be fun, can I please join u guys for it?" At this, Pathak was completely taken aback, he gave me one of those expressions " do u have any clue, what you are talking about!" and i gave him back one of those looks "perhaps I do, but I want to hear it straight from you!". when he saw that expression he started his fobbing tactics "dekhiye Shubham, wo na.... ladkiyon ki jaane ki jagah nahi hai". To that I knew all I had to ask was "why, why & why?" till the time I had got a satisfactory answer. But Pathak, in matters of speaking straight is a hard nut to crack . In situations where he knows that his image of a 'decent nice guy' is under threatening, he would just beat around the bush till eternity or till someone came to his rescue!!
Just when I had pestered Pathak enough, Neeraj biked into the academic area, to join us for the coffee which he had promised us both. An irritated Pathak, on having failed to satiate my inquisition of their coveted Valmiki Jayanti samaroh, decided to blurt out the situation through & through to Neeraj. Neeraj began to laugh & Pathak joined him too. Poor me, had to wait till the two of them had done with their laughing. Neeraj, though not a very direct person himself, thought directness was the only way he could have avoided any more questions that could have embaressed both Pathak & himself. He told me that since Naankari isnt such a safe place to go to & since some of the dancers could well be hookers, it is hence not advisable for me to go. Now see, it was that simple, but if only Pathak understood the importance of 'simplicity as a virtue !'
So I went back to the hostel, having left them both to plan the rest of their evening. Of course I waited all evening thereafter, till I thought would be the appropraite time to call up Neeraj & find out about the proceedings of the samaroh...
what?? u thought I would leave it only at a point of knowing what might happen at the samaroh, and wouldnt delve into what actually happened!...rubbish!!
So a little after 1 am, I called up Neeraj, "so gaye the kya??", and he answered "nahi, bus sone ja raha tha!". Liar!
For those of you who dont know, a little piece of information about Neeraj. This guy was famous in the campus as a big liar, he was believed to be an amazing manipulator of words, and he was of course quite big a politician (a lot of b.tech students hated him for his political acumen owing to which he ousted CMT-the har-dil-aziz & my-dil-aziz too ;) candidate, for the post of President of student's gymkhana). But in the midst of all this negative imagery, he had managed to portray himself as someone who would never lie/manipulate/politicize lest it does good to someone else. Anyway, those are just euphemisms of defending: just as a pagal would never concede to the fact that he is a pagal; a liar would never concede to the fact that he is a liar. Pretty natural & justified too!!
Coming back to my phone call to Neeraj, I began to dig out the details. He told me that two prostitutes from Naankari village namely Komal & Kesar were protagnists of the show. I asked him more about the proceedings, he described not in so much detail, but he did repeatedly mention that Kesar danced pretty well. I could make out that he had developed some soft-corner for Kesar ;). So I asked him what kind of songs were playing. He told me that Kesar's dance on Kajra re was pretty good. And what followed was a 10 minute long amorous description of what an excellent dancer Kesar was. On the lighter side I wanted to add, " should we ask Pathak to make her the dance club coordinator of IITK". But his heart-touching description of the woman & her dance didnt permit me to make fun of anything. I must confess he described it more decently than a prostitute in any walk of life can be described. I dont know if he really meant it or was he just using Pathak's tactics of maintaining his image as a 'decent nice guy'.
Whatever it maybe, but I must say IITK guys have this knack of making even the gravest act of perversion sound like a noble deed of patronage.
Hats off to them!!...the JEE surely judges something successfully! ;)
Troy & mythology in general
For times immemorial, the world has fought over religion; they have all vouched the veracity of their myths and tried to impose them on others. The greats said, there is only one God, others said we are all child of the same Almighty; but none could resolve the dispute, which continues till date. Perhaps the shortcoming of the greats have been in the fact that they have not been able to prove their beliefs, and the big question is that how can one fetch an explanation for “myths”. I am not trying to compare to the greats nor am I claiming that I have an explanation for the fact that there is indeed a single God and that our ancestors’ struggle to prove the veracity of their religious myths have been a waste. All I am saying is that no matter what religion or what be our origin, almost all ethnographies have their myths revolving around the same concepts.
Since I am not a research scholar in history or mythology, I would like to amalgamate both to prove my point. And for this purpose I would want to draw an analogy between the history of Greek Trojan wars and the Indian mythology of Mahabharata. Many concepts may sound fledglings but when thought in deep does have a basis somewhere.
- Women is the apparent cause of war: though ulterior motives of the war vest in the greed of one of the parties of the war.
- Ulterior motives of greed for kingdom are exposed: Dhritarashtra’s settlement to distribute the kingdom between kauravas and pandavas is not accepted by kauravas - Menelaus urge to settle the war in a fight with Paris was rejected by his commander in chief - Agamemnon.
- The apparent immortality of Achilles vs. that of Duryodhana: In the end Achilles' weakness in the form of his heel( which his mother did not immerse in the holy river of immortality) is exposed and he perishes just like any normal human. On the other hand, Duryodhana whom Gandhari had viewed naked and hence made each part of his body anasthetic to pain had weakness lying in his theighs, which was ultimately used to persih him.
- Walled city of Hastinapur vs. kingdom of Troy behind walls: But I guess this is typical of most kingdoms defined by mythology & history, so it isnt after all that big a similarity.
- Cheating as a means of attaining victory: Chhal- hitting duryodhana on the theigh(which isnt allowed in the form of war that Bheem & Duryodhana were indulging in), when no other means of ousting him were left. Entry of Greek warriors in the city of troy by means of the Trojan horse, when all other means of fighting it out were eliminated.
- Dilemmas: Dhritarashtra’s limitation of visual impairment leading to the arguement of succession and heir to throne. While Dhritarastra was only being fair to his sons. Paris was only justifying the blessing having been granted to him - Paris’ dilemma of marrying the fairest woman(as granted by Venus) who is the wife of Menelaus.
I am sure there must be several other similarities and differences, these are the obvious oes which struck a layman like me.However, the end of both these odes are very different. While in mahabharata the pandavas- who are deemed to be the followers of dharma emerge victorious; In the battle of Troy the better side ultimately perishes. I guess that is the reason why Mahabharata is remembered and studies as an epic whileTroy is mere history!
Whether to discuss or to not…
From a mere methodology of eliminating candidates in the selection process of a B-school, to a strategic tool of team work, my perceptions of the need of a group discussion have undergone immense metamorphosis. Whether my opinion of group discussions has alofted or abased, I perhaps would never be able to figure out; for the moot remains as open ended as group discussions themselves .
Five months into a B-school, I see myself use this tool as often as my lungs (if I had the permission to exaggerate a “little”!). The indispensability and ubiquity of its existence in a B-school environment forces me to delve into its usage and role in my pre- MBA life.
So a Back gear applied to time tells me that a very raw form of such group discussion did exist in the face of an overnight “bulla session”* at a pal’s room. So the value addition to my previous skills since I joined MBA, is that I have learnt to structure my “bulla sessions”, jargonize them as group discussions, and tomorrow in the corporate I would further jargonize them as the strategic meetings!
Well, that was my take on group discussions, analyzing what my peers have to say about it, I would like to quote my recent visit to IIM-Lucknow and my introduction to their local terminology called “globe”. The aborigines of the campus explained that this term describes the speech of a person who knows nothing about the issue and goes on and on with his gibberish. I could immediately relate the above-told definition to certain people whom I had worked with in groups. It’s not uncommon to find people coming to group discussions without having done their homework and then they “globe” away to glory!
From the reaction of those who introduced me to the term and my own personal experience, those with this appellation are neither appreciated nor respected. That further brings me to analyze the motivation behind “globing”. And I once again apologize for introducing yet another jargon – “Intellectual Masturbation”. This jargon explains the act of satisfying one’s ego by making statements intended to show off one’s intelligence. Issues having the remotest correlation with the agenda at hand are ranted to win the attention and appreciation of group members. Acting like a know-it-all jerk is indeed a unique characteristic of an intellectual masturbator, although everyone wishes these souls would just shut up!
Now the big question is, in such a structured bulla session where intellectual masturbators globe around, what happens to the decision to be taken??
Well, the answer is plain and simple nothing!
While one member tries to shut up the intellectual masturbator, the other makes a point which is opposed by another member and yet again intruded by some globing, finally taking the discussion from nowhere to NOWHERE!
But observation and experience tells that the outcome of group activities is more often than not “not NOWHERE”. So how does this outcome miraculously appear from nowhere??
The answer to that as most managers would put “depends…” It depends whether there exists some hierarchy of authority within the group or is it just a group of peers. In the former case, let us say is a senate meeting, then in the end the word of the convener shall be the word of the senate. In the latter, the most powerful and verbatim voice emerges as the ultimate voice of the group. So conclusions come either by the authority or the heavy-voiced or in absence of both from the most patient person of the group, when all others have drained in energy and patience to argue out further.
The above didactics give a picture of hopelessness and forces one to think, if this is all about group dynamics and there is very little that can be done, then why live this entire exercise repeatedly, day after day?? Why not allow dictatorship of authority and heavy voices do the needful??
Well it’s all done to make the junta “feel good” that at least they are heard. The entire exercise is an attempt to give the “opinion of one” the legitimacy of being the “decision of the group”. To introduce group members with the hard facts that suggestions are suggestions and may never get the status of being more than suggestions – but well-tried lad! And that’s what keeps the vicious circle of making and pursuing suggestions by means of globing or other legitimate techniques.
To elaborate on the irony of the vicious circle I quote Eisenhower, “Though nothing comes out of planning, but nothing would go on without planning!”
* In IITK lingo chit chatting is referred to as “bulla”!
Five months into a B-school, I see myself use this tool as often as my lungs (if I had the permission to exaggerate a “little”!). The indispensability and ubiquity of its existence in a B-school environment forces me to delve into its usage and role in my pre- MBA life.
So a Back gear applied to time tells me that a very raw form of such group discussion did exist in the face of an overnight “bulla session”* at a pal’s room. So the value addition to my previous skills since I joined MBA, is that I have learnt to structure my “bulla sessions”, jargonize them as group discussions, and tomorrow in the corporate I would further jargonize them as the strategic meetings!
Well, that was my take on group discussions, analyzing what my peers have to say about it, I would like to quote my recent visit to IIM-Lucknow and my introduction to their local terminology called “globe”. The aborigines of the campus explained that this term describes the speech of a person who knows nothing about the issue and goes on and on with his gibberish. I could immediately relate the above-told definition to certain people whom I had worked with in groups. It’s not uncommon to find people coming to group discussions without having done their homework and then they “globe” away to glory!
From the reaction of those who introduced me to the term and my own personal experience, those with this appellation are neither appreciated nor respected. That further brings me to analyze the motivation behind “globing”. And I once again apologize for introducing yet another jargon – “Intellectual Masturbation”. This jargon explains the act of satisfying one’s ego by making statements intended to show off one’s intelligence. Issues having the remotest correlation with the agenda at hand are ranted to win the attention and appreciation of group members. Acting like a know-it-all jerk is indeed a unique characteristic of an intellectual masturbator, although everyone wishes these souls would just shut up!
Now the big question is, in such a structured bulla session where intellectual masturbators globe around, what happens to the decision to be taken??
Well, the answer is plain and simple nothing!
While one member tries to shut up the intellectual masturbator, the other makes a point which is opposed by another member and yet again intruded by some globing, finally taking the discussion from nowhere to NOWHERE!
But observation and experience tells that the outcome of group activities is more often than not “not NOWHERE”. So how does this outcome miraculously appear from nowhere??
The answer to that as most managers would put “depends…” It depends whether there exists some hierarchy of authority within the group or is it just a group of peers. In the former case, let us say is a senate meeting, then in the end the word of the convener shall be the word of the senate. In the latter, the most powerful and verbatim voice emerges as the ultimate voice of the group. So conclusions come either by the authority or the heavy-voiced or in absence of both from the most patient person of the group, when all others have drained in energy and patience to argue out further.
The above didactics give a picture of hopelessness and forces one to think, if this is all about group dynamics and there is very little that can be done, then why live this entire exercise repeatedly, day after day?? Why not allow dictatorship of authority and heavy voices do the needful??
Well it’s all done to make the junta “feel good” that at least they are heard. The entire exercise is an attempt to give the “opinion of one” the legitimacy of being the “decision of the group”. To introduce group members with the hard facts that suggestions are suggestions and may never get the status of being more than suggestions – but well-tried lad! And that’s what keeps the vicious circle of making and pursuing suggestions by means of globing or other legitimate techniques.
To elaborate on the irony of the vicious circle I quote Eisenhower, “Though nothing comes out of planning, but nothing would go on without planning!”
* In IITK lingo chit chatting is referred to as “bulla”!
People: Self-realization in new forms of enterprises
Webster’s Dictionary defines self-realization as the ethical theory that the highest good for man consists in realizing or fulfilling himself usually on the assumption that he has certain in born abilities constituting his real or ideal self.
As Saint Shankara of Indian origin says that the knowledge of self cannot spring up by any other means than the inquiry –‘Who am I?’ And no matter what context the individual may be in, his search for solutions, and the coherence of their answer must always be embedded in the back of his minds.
To understand how can an individual’s search for himself/herself be quenched, one has to understand the essence of the modern enterprise, and the various possibilities it in stores for its greatest resource-it’s people. An enterprise is a business developed by the people of the country rather than the government; the word itself is an adjective, which describes the capacity of an individual or a group of individuals to implement the creativity, and innovation that is inherent in them. An enterprise is simply the analogy of the politics of democracy, which claims to be by the people, for the people and of the people. That is the kind of power people have in an enterprise!
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely!
So, what is that keeps a check on the corruption predicted by the above adage?? Is it the hierarchy of a tall organizational structure? Or is it the fear of punishment-centered beurocracy?
To the surprise of everyone the new forms of enterprises are far from beurocracy in their organizational behavior. The more popular form of the modern enterprise is ‘organic’- A flat structure that is large enough to be resourceful and small enough to foster creativity and innovation. Here the prime emphasis is on the parity of people and judicious use of their energies. Implementing the goal of the enterprise rather than paying for the beurocratic costs and complexities of a multi-tiered organization is the prime emphasis of such an organizational structure.
But in such organizations, who checks the potential threats caused by free power and who is answerable to the abrupt and exploitative use of resources?
The answer to this lies in the art of self-realization, or in terms of modern jargon called the “people centered approach towards management”. In this approach, organizations treat people both as the means and ends of running the organization. From being the basic resource to processing of these resources, then leading, criticizing and appreciating to finally succeeding in achieving the enterprises’ goal – people are THE all and END all of the organization. With their brain and unique characteristics they form the heart of the enterprise, constantly molding themselves to the changing environment, adopting and recreating organizational culture and answering the science of change in real time.
People in the modern enterprise are the biggest resource; they are the basis of creativity and innovation that the modern organization boasts of. Without them the enterprise would become a Robot, who would just do as much as it is programmed to do. It is thus the onus of the enterprise not to mechanize its employees to become robots, and for this they have to implement the well-known tool of self-realization- perfecting it to their context and environment. Such perfection in self-realization will imbue in the employees a spirit of creativity, and the so-called jobs will no longer be jobs but an implementation of every individual’s unique capability.
Creativity is priceless and so is the creator.
An enterprise’s respect towards its creators is thus another factor that fosters the concept of people as a resource for their organization. Since time immemorial, creators have faced the problem of demotivation and demoralization. There was a time when character of strength (in order to avoid getting demotivated) was a prerequisite for being at the helm of innovation. Those who exhibited this prerequisite succeeded in creating while the others got lost in the oblivion of trying. Edison succeeded in making the electric bulb after a thousand failures, but for every such Edison that we know there must have been thousand others who gave up midway. Learning from history, such that the modern enterprise ensures innovation, constant motivation and imbuement of a strong character in its employees is of utmost importance.
Man is nature’s machine and none can compete with nature’s creativity.
Technology might be the buzzword and also the source of cutting down on the number of people in an organization, but no matter how advanced technology gets it may never be able to undermine the role of people in an enterprise. One might argue that advances in technology are challenging the human intellect, but the argument falls flat if we take into account that not more than 20% of the human brain is functional in a given period of time. So as the lesser mortals offend the human brain’s capability vis-à-vis modern technology, one must consider that advances in human technology would accompany advances in machine technology. Thus the gap between technology and humans shall pervade even with science showing remarkable success.
Technology is only an aid for processing information and can never undermine the vast human capability of processing variegated information. The enterprise is thus responsible for not only exploiting this unique capability of the humans but also to make its people feel confident that as long as they are not brain dead, they are the soul of the organization and technology can only support this soul and not challenge its essence.
Monitoring is a very fundamental way of attaining discipline
How often a class of fifth graders is seen turn into hooligans in the absence of the ‘class monitor’. But comparing fifth graders to people in organizations is not fair, for they are not just grown-ups but as per human nature are big protestors of a sword hanging on their neck. This sword may take different faces in an organization-bosses, deadlines, resource constraints, bounded rationality in decision-making. These contribute to potential impediments in pursuing creativity, which is the fuel of an enterprise. To avoid such impediments monitoring the ‘self’ becomes very crucial. Adopting the organic structure and removing the position and need of a boss is the answer to fostering a culture of innovation. The lack of bosses not only eliminates fear but create a search for a boss within the self. The advantage of this internal boss is that apart from dictating it also acts like a mentor- criticizing, appreciating, applauding and encouraging the individual to earn further laurels for himself. Also the voice of the boss from within ensures that the individual and the people around him/her are protected from making any moral compromises or hazards.
Jay Earley says, “Each of us has a special function to perform in the world, based on our unique talents and personal qualities, our lifetime learnings, and our heartfelt concerns and passions. When you discover these gifts within yourself and create or uncover your purpose in life, you will have found the key to a meaningful, happy life and to making your greatest contribution to healing our planet.”
As per Jay Earley’s concept of self-realization: the modern enterprise is a platform for performing a special function that has been assigned to one. To guide people in doing this there is no external mentor but one’s talent, personal qualities, lifetime learnings and heartfelt concerns and passions. It is this process of using one’s self to perform special functions that discovers the gifts within an individual and uncover’s his/her purpose in life. This is indeed the path to a meaningful and happy living both for the self and for the enterprise.
Sky is the limit...
published in Avant Garde
At one point or the other in our life, almost each one of us must have cursed our work and desperately hoped for a change. I wonder if all hopers against hope ever analyzed: “why is it that they can never retire themselves from the idea of cursing their work, while in this same very world exist some others who don’t retire from the work they have done all their lives.” Well, the answer is suggested by the following quote:“Make your passion your profession and you shall not have a single working day in your life”
In simple words, those who don’t retire, never worked at all…Now, don’t get me wrong here…I am not elaborating on the social problem of unemployment, rather I am talking about people who employ/engage themselves with work, which to them is more of passion than a mere means of finding the ends to life. And this piece of writing talks about my encounter with one such passion-infused individual.
Tall & lanky, he could well be mistaken for the unkempt school boy, who after a busy day of feuds and quarrels rushes to his workspace to shed his residual energy. But this guy was neither school going, nor finding a vent for his residual energy; to my surprise he was an engineer from the prestigious IIT, and what he was up to was his primary passion and not a residue of what his effort after four rigorous years at IIT left in him.
An entrepreneur by profession, Mr. Bramh Awasthi is presently the cent percent equity holder of his one year old startup ‘Whirlybird’. The organization, by virtue of its age may sound a fledgling, but has enough passion infused by its proprietor to show promise both in terms of its present performance and future prospects.
As a child, Bramh was a big time techie and dreamed of being in the IIT in order to pursue his passion for technology. He pursued his passion while in IIT Kanpur, by being on the lookout for entrepreneurial avenues in the area of technology. As a student of the aeronautical engineering department at IITK, Bramh found the right elevation to fly his air vehicle of dreams and as a byproduct of his departmental endeavors was born the backbone of ‘Whirlybird’.
As a third year student of B.Tech, the visage of Bramh’s entrepreneurial venture looked like a ‘rotary wing unmanned aerial vehicle’ (in simple words an automatically driven helicopter). His vision, expertise and passion took him to the USA for a summer internship, where he not only gained the appropriate exposure to kick start ‘Whirlybird’ but also brought back the requisite raw material unavailable in India for operational-zing his vision. After very little encouragement from the faculty community, Bramh and his friends created their dream helicopter as a partial fulfillment for the requirement of his degree of bachelor of technology. The prototype that he thus created was perfect in every sense except for the presence of an important component called the inertial measurement unit which Bramh owing to cross- boundary laws could not bring back from the USA. This unavailability of the IMU was what changed Whirlybird’s first product from a rotary wing UAV to the Inertial Measurement Unit.
In 2004, after passing out from IITK, Bramh (all alone) began the operations of Whirlybird under the aegis of small industries development bank of India (SIDBI). Today, one year later, the IMU made by Whirlybird is in its second version and catching the attention of the Indian defense’s military applications need. Having started as a one man show, its small successes managed to attract more people to Whirlybird and its present strength stands at 6, whereby it employs 5 others who toil day and night to make this technology startup into a name that would someday put Whirlybird in juxtaposition with the Boeings and the Rockwells of the world.
Apart from like mindedness, technological inclination and passion the core philosophy of the company is also to delve into products of non-military application which make use of high end cutting edge technology, and for this simple reason the next possible product that Whirlybird is looking at launching is an electronic stethoscope. According to Bramh, while the IMU is a product that satiates his patriotic feeling, the stethoscope has the potential to cater to a social concern. And it is this non-monetary purpose of making a product that drives the present team of Whirlybird to strike more wonders in the future.
Bramh believes that not each and every individual in an organization can be equally motivated and that the motivation of the entire organization can be built on the edifice of the extremely motivated few, who in turn motivate the others. Thus, Bramh is on a lookout for people like him who share a similar passion to create a healthy and passionate platform from where he could challenge the limits of the sky!!
Friday, March 14, 2008
My Videoconferencing experience
I experienced videoconferencing today...
In this shrinking world,I know I sound archaic, when I express excitement about something like 'videoconferencing' . But the fact that people treat videoconferencing trite enough is in itself an achievement for the generation that we are born in & the age in which we are living.....
I still remember, 10 years ago when my sister had relocated to Banagalore for her education, my parents used to call her up from Delhi every third day, early in the morning at 5.30 am, so that the charges for an STD call would be half or one fourth or some fraction which I dont remember and dont even think is worth remembering, given the ease with which I can call anyone in Bangalore without hurting my pocket too much today. Its amazing that our society has undergone such an amzing technological metamorphisis. Things like video conferences are fixed at the blink of an eye!
We sometimes take things so much for granted, but when I delve more into my own lifestyle, I see my whole existence runs on the backbone of technology. Infact the industry in which I work relies so heavily on this, that if it crashes I can lose my job at the blink of an eye. Telephonic conversations with my boss who lives half way round the world & desktop sharing with my line of business partners are some common activities which if I miss, my existence in the organisation & the existence of my organisation in the first place become so unjustified.
Infact technology has transcended such leaps and bounds that till 5 years ago you were still hearing about scoop/gossipy news of the first internet marraige or internet dating that turned into marraiges. Such things have become such common phenomenon nowadays that they dont even form part of news. The autorickshaw driver who rode me down to office in the morning was merrily conversing on his mobile phone (I have to confess here that I was a little embaressed when he took out his phone because he had a better model phone than I have. And for those of you who think, this woman is not status conscious at all, let me tell that the organisation that I work for doesnt allow me to be status conscious - I mean camers phones are not allowed in my office...:(...all BACS employee will empathize with me on this...for the rest of you...u can laugh...i wont mind it!)
Coming back to technology, i must say that there still exists some bit of a mental blockade with its usage. I mean atleast with the usage of some advanced forms like VC which I did. When i came out of the videoconference, I wanted to do some sundry grocery shopping, but i refrained by telling myself "what if the guy whom I just met, saw me doing this, what would he think", and so I procastinated the plan...the moment that thought flickered across my mind, the next was a laugh on myself which said "arre stupid, he was sitting in bangalore, he cannot catch u doing sundry grocery shopping in Mumbai, lest the VC camera is still following u"...hahahaha...i thought!
In this shrinking world,I know I sound archaic, when I express excitement about something like 'videoconferencing' . But the fact that people treat videoconferencing trite enough is in itself an achievement for the generation that we are born in & the age in which we are living.....
I still remember, 10 years ago when my sister had relocated to Banagalore for her education, my parents used to call her up from Delhi every third day, early in the morning at 5.30 am, so that the charges for an STD call would be half or one fourth or some fraction which I dont remember and dont even think is worth remembering, given the ease with which I can call anyone in Bangalore without hurting my pocket too much today. Its amazing that our society has undergone such an amzing technological metamorphisis. Things like video conferences are fixed at the blink of an eye!
We sometimes take things so much for granted, but when I delve more into my own lifestyle, I see my whole existence runs on the backbone of technology. Infact the industry in which I work relies so heavily on this, that if it crashes I can lose my job at the blink of an eye. Telephonic conversations with my boss who lives half way round the world & desktop sharing with my line of business partners are some common activities which if I miss, my existence in the organisation & the existence of my organisation in the first place become so unjustified.
Infact technology has transcended such leaps and bounds that till 5 years ago you were still hearing about scoop/gossipy news of the first internet marraige or internet dating that turned into marraiges. Such things have become such common phenomenon nowadays that they dont even form part of news. The autorickshaw driver who rode me down to office in the morning was merrily conversing on his mobile phone (I have to confess here that I was a little embaressed when he took out his phone because he had a better model phone than I have. And for those of you who think, this woman is not status conscious at all, let me tell that the organisation that I work for doesnt allow me to be status conscious - I mean camers phones are not allowed in my office...:(...all BACS employee will empathize with me on this...for the rest of you...u can laugh...i wont mind it!)
Coming back to technology, i must say that there still exists some bit of a mental blockade with its usage. I mean atleast with the usage of some advanced forms like VC which I did. When i came out of the videoconference, I wanted to do some sundry grocery shopping, but i refrained by telling myself "what if the guy whom I just met, saw me doing this, what would he think", and so I procastinated the plan...the moment that thought flickered across my mind, the next was a laugh on myself which said "arre stupid, he was sitting in bangalore, he cannot catch u doing sundry grocery shopping in Mumbai, lest the VC camera is still following u"...hahahaha...i thought!
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Another busy day...this time tiring too!
I hate days when I am so busy that I dont find time for myself...I just hate them...I think more than the tiredness of busy days...what kills me is the guilt that I didnt find time for my own self...Today was not only a busy day...it was very long....it started at 7.30 am, and would last another hour or so...and the fact that I didnt have time to think about my own self makes it feel even longer...
Writing this piece is all the time I have found for myself since morning. My need to find privacy with myself sometimes worries me, and to top it all it makes me feel, how long it will last. They say enjoy it as long as it lasts, but my worry is what I am treating as enjoyment may just turn into a habit- riddance from which may be far too difficult, and maintaining it may just be too costly in terms of my social ties & my marital life in general.
Today- Talking of social ties, a lot of my time once again was spent on phone, meeting a friend to solve his love life problem - apni to koi love life nahi hai dusro ki solve karo!! to be honest I enjoyed helping (or atleast what I thought was helping!) him, but now taht I rrealise that it didnt leave any time for my own self, its making me feel as if I didnt set my priorities right...dont know...i am not too sure...but right now I know I am feeling very low...very tired...and even the thought of anything that causes the adrenalin to flow (like my niece back home) is asqueezing too much energy out of me...
Planetary positions may have a role to play in it...it could well be the position of Mars in Cancer where it is weak and debilitated. If you havent met me, you wouldn't know how well I exemplify the marshian energy. My confidence is the edifice of the valor that a marshian warrior exhibits, my excitement level is an indicator of his eagerness, my extremism represents his patriotism, and even my speech has the boldness & promise of his words......
Off-late i have developed the habit of relating a lot of events to planetary positions...i think they do have a role to play...orperhaps they only have a role to play on my mental make-up...reading about planetary positions I guess is causing a psychological synchronization of me with how the stars cause people & surroundings to behave. Anyhow, I am sure all planets dont show such strong influences in my life...well if they do then I will get to know it tomorow because thats when Venus enters Pisces. When Venus is in Pisces it is very happy & exalted...they say it accentuates your desire to love & be loved ...hehehe...i wonder what effect that will have on me...if it has some effect on someone else please do let me know....i really want to know how venus in pisces manifests its effects...
Writing this piece is all the time I have found for myself since morning. My need to find privacy with myself sometimes worries me, and to top it all it makes me feel, how long it will last. They say enjoy it as long as it lasts, but my worry is what I am treating as enjoyment may just turn into a habit- riddance from which may be far too difficult, and maintaining it may just be too costly in terms of my social ties & my marital life in general.
Today- Talking of social ties, a lot of my time once again was spent on phone, meeting a friend to solve his love life problem - apni to koi love life nahi hai dusro ki solve karo!! to be honest I enjoyed helping (or atleast what I thought was helping!) him, but now taht I rrealise that it didnt leave any time for my own self, its making me feel as if I didnt set my priorities right...dont know...i am not too sure...but right now I know I am feeling very low...very tired...and even the thought of anything that causes the adrenalin to flow (like my niece back home) is asqueezing too much energy out of me...
Planetary positions may have a role to play in it...it could well be the position of Mars in Cancer where it is weak and debilitated. If you havent met me, you wouldn't know how well I exemplify the marshian energy. My confidence is the edifice of the valor that a marshian warrior exhibits, my excitement level is an indicator of his eagerness, my extremism represents his patriotism, and even my speech has the boldness & promise of his words......
Off-late i have developed the habit of relating a lot of events to planetary positions...i think they do have a role to play...orperhaps they only have a role to play on my mental make-up...reading about planetary positions I guess is causing a psychological synchronization of me with how the stars cause people & surroundings to behave. Anyhow, I am sure all planets dont show such strong influences in my life...well if they do then I will get to know it tomorow because thats when Venus enters Pisces. When Venus is in Pisces it is very happy & exalted...they say it accentuates your desire to love & be loved ...hehehe...i wonder what effect that will have on me...if it has some effect on someone else please do let me know....i really want to know how venus in pisces manifests its effects...
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
A busy day...
There are days when you dont even get time to breathe. And more the number of occassions for oversleeping, more are such days in my life. Anyways, today was one such day.
Woke up at 11, rather should say was woken up by priyanka. The meat of the conversation was the usual, discussion on some woes of our not so exciting life, gloomed by the rigor of arranging each others' and our own marraiges. While talking to her I missed 2 calls on call waiting. Once my 30 minute conversation with Priyanka was done, I decided to rush to the gym without getting back to the missed calls. That is what happens when u hadnt gone to gym for 5 days and have had a weekend of hogging in your hometown- gym becomes utmost priority...which u wont miss even if that means missing office...while in gym i kept the phone with me, lest I miss any more calls. Not that it would be any delight to answer calls while panting on the tread mill. But nevertheless, having missed 2 calls already since morning I didnt want to repeat it. But then Sir Murphy does his tricks, when u dont want things to go wrong they surely will!!
While in the gym i didnt get a single call, but the moment I went home and rushed for a bath, the phone began to beep again, when I returned- another 4 missed calls, out of which 2 were from my sister...she has an amazing sense of timing!! While in the auto I got another 2 missed calls from her, so the moment I reached office( which was few minutes past 2pm, and look at my cheek, I still had personal errands to finish) I gave her a call, lest she would go to lodge a complaint about her absconding sister in the local police thana. I just hope she knows that she would have to do that in a Mumbai police station and not in Pune (which is where she lives). She rejected my call...which meant she was in a meeting....I told you, she has an amazing sense of timing!!...just when I get free( or rather just when i find the time to revert her call) she decides to get busy...anyway thats how she is...and she is my sister...so i have to live with this fact, and with her presence in my life!! To top it all, guess what was my sister's 4 missed calls since morning were about...sundry haal-chaal. Though there were a few updates interpersed too, but largely the call was about haal-chaal.
Once on my desk in office, I checked my mail, nothing special there though. I knew from last evening, I will have to show some work on a dataset that my boss & I had discussed last evening. So all I had to do was to compile something on that end and send it across before he would come online which would have been after 5pm. Curse this daylight saving, now my boss comes online an hour earlier than he used to last week. So on days when I come into office late, I lose out on that one hour advantage. Though that also means that I can now get home an hour earlier than I was till last week. For all those who are still aweing my cheek of entering the office so late, let me tell u my official office timings after DST are 11.30 am to 8.30 pm. So I wasnt that much late after all. Ok I was late never the less!!...But chalta hai...mere office mein ye sab chalta hai!! Infact I remember one of my ex-colleague in this team having said that its the best job you can have if you are newly married, it gives u all the liberty to devote more time at home. Pitty, he got married after leaving this job... For me- shaadi or no-shaadi, a late-riser & oversleeper like me enjoys it for reasons very obvious !!
Knowing that I had a good odd three hours to finish what I was suppose to, I decided to get back to all other missed calls I have had since morning. None very exciting though. One was from my school days childhood friend Prateep, he is looking out for a job change, needed some help from me. Others were some job placement consultants, not that i was very actively interested in them- who would be after having a cushy job in which you come into the office at 2 pm. Another one which I never called back, looked like ICICI bank's Chennai call centre. Good Lord, i wish i miss it again, the next time they call!!
All in all, a busy day, by the way, my boss just liked what I showed to him an hour ago. He thinks its a 'good start' to the project. In my case starts are always good, the end of those projects, I really dont know if they ever end, most of those projects get scrapped, and for my team mates who have seen it happen...know how much exactly to laugh at this!!
Woke up at 11, rather should say was woken up by priyanka. The meat of the conversation was the usual, discussion on some woes of our not so exciting life, gloomed by the rigor of arranging each others' and our own marraiges. While talking to her I missed 2 calls on call waiting. Once my 30 minute conversation with Priyanka was done, I decided to rush to the gym without getting back to the missed calls. That is what happens when u hadnt gone to gym for 5 days and have had a weekend of hogging in your hometown- gym becomes utmost priority...which u wont miss even if that means missing office...while in gym i kept the phone with me, lest I miss any more calls. Not that it would be any delight to answer calls while panting on the tread mill. But nevertheless, having missed 2 calls already since morning I didnt want to repeat it. But then Sir Murphy does his tricks, when u dont want things to go wrong they surely will!!
While in the gym i didnt get a single call, but the moment I went home and rushed for a bath, the phone began to beep again, when I returned- another 4 missed calls, out of which 2 were from my sister...she has an amazing sense of timing!! While in the auto I got another 2 missed calls from her, so the moment I reached office( which was few minutes past 2pm, and look at my cheek, I still had personal errands to finish) I gave her a call, lest she would go to lodge a complaint about her absconding sister in the local police thana. I just hope she knows that she would have to do that in a Mumbai police station and not in Pune (which is where she lives). She rejected my call...which meant she was in a meeting....I told you, she has an amazing sense of timing!!...just when I get free( or rather just when i find the time to revert her call) she decides to get busy...anyway thats how she is...and she is my sister...so i have to live with this fact, and with her presence in my life!! To top it all, guess what was my sister's 4 missed calls since morning were about...sundry haal-chaal. Though there were a few updates interpersed too, but largely the call was about haal-chaal.
Once on my desk in office, I checked my mail, nothing special there though. I knew from last evening, I will have to show some work on a dataset that my boss & I had discussed last evening. So all I had to do was to compile something on that end and send it across before he would come online which would have been after 5pm. Curse this daylight saving, now my boss comes online an hour earlier than he used to last week. So on days when I come into office late, I lose out on that one hour advantage. Though that also means that I can now get home an hour earlier than I was till last week. For all those who are still aweing my cheek of entering the office so late, let me tell u my official office timings after DST are 11.30 am to 8.30 pm. So I wasnt that much late after all. Ok I was late never the less!!...But chalta hai...mere office mein ye sab chalta hai!! Infact I remember one of my ex-colleague in this team having said that its the best job you can have if you are newly married, it gives u all the liberty to devote more time at home. Pitty, he got married after leaving this job... For me- shaadi or no-shaadi, a late-riser & oversleeper like me enjoys it for reasons very obvious !!
Knowing that I had a good odd three hours to finish what I was suppose to, I decided to get back to all other missed calls I have had since morning. None very exciting though. One was from my school days childhood friend Prateep, he is looking out for a job change, needed some help from me. Others were some job placement consultants, not that i was very actively interested in them- who would be after having a cushy job in which you come into the office at 2 pm. Another one which I never called back, looked like ICICI bank's Chennai call centre. Good Lord, i wish i miss it again, the next time they call!!
All in all, a busy day, by the way, my boss just liked what I showed to him an hour ago. He thinks its a 'good start' to the project. In my case starts are always good, the end of those projects, I really dont know if they ever end, most of those projects get scrapped, and for my team mates who have seen it happen...know how much exactly to laugh at this!!
Monday, March 10, 2008
How LOW is your cost of travelling by air?
Back in June of 2005, was the first time I flew a low cost airline. The concept of low cost air travel was fledgling at that time, and a lot was done to create an attraction for it. But since that journey I think most of my travel has used airplanes in part or whole( btw travelling to Pune from Mumbai is not counted as travel by me!!). Infact in recent times i remember having dropped travel plans altogether if I dont find good air connectivity to my desired destination. Not to forget, after my first low cost airline travel, I lived in Kanpur for a whole year and travel from Kanpur to Pune (my home town) was always partially done by air. Reasons were simple:
- Far too convenient: For the very short vacations that I used to get in IITK, it made very little sense to train from Kanpur to Mumbai and then change trains to pune ( there werent any direct kanpur -pune trains then). Travel time by using air partially, was reduced to one half. Thus increasing the time I spent with family at home!!
- Safety & Security: The sleepless nights that my parents incurred owing to my long( mumbai to kanpur by pushpak express was approx. 22 hr long journey) train travel to notrious UP, had no other solution except changing the mode of travel from train to plane - at leaset partially (though from Delhi I always had to take a train).
- Low cost wave: For middle lass families like mine air travel on the low cost airline could well be juxtaposed to AC 3 tier train travel, and hence had become warrantable.
Time passed and the last of the three reasons for choosing air travel just kept diminishing. The taxes on low cost airline when they started out was approx. Rs. 500, and today they are more than Rs. 2000. Which is clearly more than 3.5 times, even if I adjust for inflation in the 3 years, that have passed since the advent of the concept. But factor one clearly outdoes this 3.5 times increase in costs, so it doesnt bother someone like me to drop travel plans for the sheer limitation of available flights.
Am i only complaining about the increased taxes in airfares, or is there more??
Well, where I came from was that on Friday I happened to visit the Chhatrpati Shivaji international airports' domestic terminal. For all those, who have already begun to guess that it was another of my 4 am ventures, lemme tell u, how i wish it was, and infact the last time I did see-off someone there, I walked all the way back to my house (which must be a good 6-7 km from the domestic terminal) at 10 pm( only wishing had it been 4 am instead of 10 pm). Believe me, the 7 km stroll was extremely invigorating, introspective & inspiring; reason being i was all alone with myself, there was a relative lull on Mumbai roads that day & I did manage to make up for bunking gym & eating mysore masala dosa that day.
Coming back to why i was at CSIA on Friday, I had to pick up Dad & join him in his cab to Pune. Daddy was coming from Delhi, and since Pune airport is functional only between 11 am & 5 pm, his meeting which got over well past 4 pm, didnot permit him to catch a flight direct to Pune. He took a flight to Mumbai instead, and had wanted himself driven down to Pune. That was incidental expense #1 of those dependant too much on air travel. Here I would like to highlight another peril that too many airlines & low cost services have posed to smaller city airports like the one in Pune. Pune's airport orignally belonged to the IAF & wasnt used to the amount of wear-n-tear that it has undergone in recent times, so in order to keep its rigor under control, while preparing it for more rigor, the Pune airport doesnot function round the clock.
For the information of all those, who have never visited the CSIA domestic terminal or for those who had visited it more than a year ago. Mumbai dometic airport has broken all bounds of imagination in terms of the infrastructural poshness. The CSIA which was a once a near to ordeal experinece has now transformed into sheer delight!! However, that doesnt reduce the woes of air travellers who anyway pay the incidental expenses of airtravel.
So on Friday, i was one of those who was paying the incidental expense of my dad's travel by air. I took my office cab towards andheri station, which dropped me on the western express highway. I tried to hail an auto towards the airport, only to be told that he maynot be able to take me all the way into the airport area because then he will have to qeueue up in a long line to get his next passenger. So it was time to pay incidental expense #2. I thought to myself that the airport was only 2.5 kms from where I was standing, and I can never discount the idea of walking a km or two on days when I bunk gym. So I began to walk towards the airport, also relieved by my Dad's phone call which said that his flight had just landed. I made it just in time, when my Dad appeared at the arrival gate. As we walked through the spic n span pathways of the airport, my dad's attention was occupied in figuring out his cab driver's arrival status. When he informed us that he would take another 20 mins to make it to the airport, Dad & I decided to do petpooja at the pristine Balaji restaturant(though veg. restaurants are never our choice, we didnt have much choice then), right next to the arrivals. that is where we ended up paying incidental expense # 3. While most of the food felt slightly over-priced by the standards of the restaurant, the tandoori roti was just not acceptably priced. For Rs. 25 a roti, I thought we had the most average tandoori roti of our life. Anyway, that is what a "shanghai-style" city airports will charge u. And now i know why GMR doesnt advertise carrying lighter wallets, to those who are "getting ready for India", because they are "getting India ready for them" instead. ;)
From experiences on different occassions, I can tell that incidental expense #4 could well have been paying autowalas, more than the meter suggests. For all Delhites, who have done this all their life, and are thinking what is new about paying more than what the meter reads, or rather for the very typical delhites 'meter-ye kis chidiya ka naam hai', let me tell u, in mumbai except while travelling out of the airport, you shall never ever be asked for more than what reads on the meter. I pay autowala bhaiya a ten rupee bill every morning while coming to office, and he most sincerely returns the 1-rupee for my 9-rupee ride. i am often embaressed taking the 1-rupee from him, because what follows 'walking into an MNC bank's back-office' just doesnt justify it. But then thats Mumbai!! They say, you hate it as long as you are here, but you just dont stop missing it once you are gone from here.
Well, in my case the first line of the saying is for sure true, for the second i am desperately waiting for the opportunity to experience what happens when I am gone from here. Dont know when that would happen, but I know that there are quite a few incidental expenses associated with air travel, which is what this article was suppose to be about....sorry, i wandered a bit too much :P
Friday, March 7, 2008
Feasting Fasting
1 can of Baked Beans in tomato sauce
3 slices of Toasted Bread
loads of water
Some orange juice
...is all I took to break my mahashivratri fast this morning....feasting after fasting is a very big incentive that prompts me towards fasting in the first place...
Mahashivratri is one fast that I have kept eversince I was a little kid...my mom encouraged both of us ( sisters) to keep it...when i started keeping it...i was too young to question its significance...but now as I understand the fact that it God Siva & Parvati's wedding anniversary, I see very little reason for having kept it in the first place...i mean wedding anniversaries are times to party & make merry...you probabaly go out and dine instead of starving for food & shrinking of moisture....
I mean in future whenever I have to, thats how I would celebrate my wedding anniversaries...i.e. if I ever get married ...;)
3 slices of Toasted Bread
loads of water
Some orange juice
...is all I took to break my mahashivratri fast this morning....feasting after fasting is a very big incentive that prompts me towards fasting in the first place...
Mahashivratri is one fast that I have kept eversince I was a little kid...my mom encouraged both of us ( sisters) to keep it...when i started keeping it...i was too young to question its significance...but now as I understand the fact that it God Siva & Parvati's wedding anniversary, I see very little reason for having kept it in the first place...i mean wedding anniversaries are times to party & make merry...you probabaly go out and dine instead of starving for food & shrinking of moisture....
I mean in future whenever I have to, thats how I would celebrate my wedding anniversaries...i.e. if I ever get married ...;)
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Resilience in love...
I thank God for having made me a woman. Women they say have immense resilience, and i appreciate my capacity on the same.
I have felt great eversince i resurrected the habit of writing. I dont know why & what forced me to do away with it, but eversince i have returned to it there has been a spring in my stride, a jingle in my voice, a gleam in my eyes & to top it all, an awareness of who am i. Over the past few days I have written nothing that could propel a rocket or shake this world, infact if I were to categorize all my recent writings in one word, i d rather say it was 'folly'. But the myself in me would never discount even an act of folly, because all big things begin very small. I dont know where this second life in writing will lead me to , but I can sense round the corner some big time awareness about my own self.
For the past two years (or maybe the time since I came to Mumbai), I have been running after one thing or the other, and if I were to enumerate what these things were, I would probably spend all day thinking about it and yet not come up with anything concrete or worth sharing. The conclusion is simple, while Mumbai nagariya which can easily be epithet as mayanagari, has had no concrete development to offer to me, all it had me grow in was maya. All people here run after maya, and involuntarily I too had joined the race, not realising that the love that is such an inherent need of me was taking a back seat. And now I know that expecting love from someone else was maya again, and so if at all I need something, I need to love myself.
Marraiges they say is all about Falling in love with the same person over and over again, several times. I say the same about one's individuality, one's confidence, one's personality. To encourage an integration/a marraige between what you want to be, and what you are, you have to fall in love with yourself over & over again. The last time I was in love with me was when I was in IIT, when my solitude was of utmost importance, my ability to converse with my own self, all alone, at a time of the day when the campus was all asleep was what led me to the realisation of what shubham was all about. I still rememeber the deserted streets of IITK, at 3 am, when all hall canteens closed, the roads had nobody walking on them, yet there were the few bustops where the love couple found sweet refuge ;). that was the time when me & my bicycle raced on the roads unbridled.... someone who would have seen me speeding then, would have coined me a 'rash' rider, but for those lesser mortals the realisation of how aware I was about myself was unfathomable, and for me its unmatchable till date.
And now I know why then i had so many admirers of my confidence, my abilities, my personality: because I knew who I was!!
I tried to keep my awareness of the same alive for as long as I could in IITK, but the practical considerations guiding my whole purpose of being in an MBA program ( i.e. finding a job), just pulled me off it. Though people like me never doubted a goodjob for themselves, and even when it happened i was more proud of how it shaped up than how skeptical I had been of it. My subsequent life in Mumbai didnt help the cause of bringing self-awareness any bit.
Though I was involuntarily pulled into the sundries of life in mumbai, on occassions I did make attempts to break the shackles. I still remember my 4 am tryst with myself at Marine drive. I, lying on the pavement next to the sea- gazing up at the starlit sky, with the breeze offering the same sparsh which a husband exceptionalizes for his wife, when they vow in marraige. All those who came to know about this excursion(excursion for them, tryst for me), could just not fathom that I used something as utilitarian & torturous as the mumbai local train to reach a place which had an idle waterbody, and that too at 4 am in the morning!! They made me feel more foolish, than i felt aware of myself thereafter!!
I never did that again...not that had I done it everyday, would I have derived the same pleasure. Because, after all, the effort of getting to marine drive from andheri(where I live) every morning is quite a lot, if not gargantuan.
Recently, a friend of mine called me up to discuss the instability that he was facing in his current job. From what I knew about his job, I knew this would have come up sooner or later. He used to take his job very lightly, and I knew he could enjoy it as long as it lasted, but the day it would be over, the realisation that 'job is after all rozi-roti and you cant mess with it' will have to don on him. I advised him to be a little more serious about his job. When I look at my life over the past couple of months, I see incident very similar to what happened to my friend. And I think its time for me to take the same medicine which I prescribed to him. While such incidents can seem scarily destabilizing, their purpose is not to break us but to shake us into a new level of awareness. And as I graduate to this new level, I know I am falling in love, once again, all over again, all with myself, and I thank God for having given me the resilience to fall in love again and again.
Recently someone, who was very awed at how arrogant I am about my own self, asked me:
"Tum apneaap se bahut pyaar karti ho na?"
Though sounding filmy, I didnt hesitate in answering "Haan, main apni favorite hun!"
P.S. Lots of thougts, but same theme, all bundled up together, i am not sure how much justice have I done to the basic theme after all!
I have felt great eversince i resurrected the habit of writing. I dont know why & what forced me to do away with it, but eversince i have returned to it there has been a spring in my stride, a jingle in my voice, a gleam in my eyes & to top it all, an awareness of who am i. Over the past few days I have written nothing that could propel a rocket or shake this world, infact if I were to categorize all my recent writings in one word, i d rather say it was 'folly'. But the myself in me would never discount even an act of folly, because all big things begin very small. I dont know where this second life in writing will lead me to , but I can sense round the corner some big time awareness about my own self.
For the past two years (or maybe the time since I came to Mumbai), I have been running after one thing or the other, and if I were to enumerate what these things were, I would probably spend all day thinking about it and yet not come up with anything concrete or worth sharing. The conclusion is simple, while Mumbai nagariya which can easily be epithet as mayanagari, has had no concrete development to offer to me, all it had me grow in was maya. All people here run after maya, and involuntarily I too had joined the race, not realising that the love that is such an inherent need of me was taking a back seat. And now I know that expecting love from someone else was maya again, and so if at all I need something, I need to love myself.
Marraiges they say is all about Falling in love with the same person over and over again, several times. I say the same about one's individuality, one's confidence, one's personality. To encourage an integration/a marraige between what you want to be, and what you are, you have to fall in love with yourself over & over again. The last time I was in love with me was when I was in IIT, when my solitude was of utmost importance, my ability to converse with my own self, all alone, at a time of the day when the campus was all asleep was what led me to the realisation of what shubham was all about. I still rememeber the deserted streets of IITK, at 3 am, when all hall canteens closed, the roads had nobody walking on them, yet there were the few bustops where the love couple found sweet refuge ;). that was the time when me & my bicycle raced on the roads unbridled.... someone who would have seen me speeding then, would have coined me a 'rash' rider, but for those lesser mortals the realisation of how aware I was about myself was unfathomable, and for me its unmatchable till date.
And now I know why then i had so many admirers of my confidence, my abilities, my personality: because I knew who I was!!
I tried to keep my awareness of the same alive for as long as I could in IITK, but the practical considerations guiding my whole purpose of being in an MBA program ( i.e. finding a job), just pulled me off it. Though people like me never doubted a goodjob for themselves, and even when it happened i was more proud of how it shaped up than how skeptical I had been of it. My subsequent life in Mumbai didnt help the cause of bringing self-awareness any bit.
Though I was involuntarily pulled into the sundries of life in mumbai, on occassions I did make attempts to break the shackles. I still remember my 4 am tryst with myself at Marine drive. I, lying on the pavement next to the sea- gazing up at the starlit sky, with the breeze offering the same sparsh which a husband exceptionalizes for his wife, when they vow in marraige. All those who came to know about this excursion(excursion for them, tryst for me), could just not fathom that I used something as utilitarian & torturous as the mumbai local train to reach a place which had an idle waterbody, and that too at 4 am in the morning!! They made me feel more foolish, than i felt aware of myself thereafter!!
I never did that again...not that had I done it everyday, would I have derived the same pleasure. Because, after all, the effort of getting to marine drive from andheri(where I live) every morning is quite a lot, if not gargantuan.
Recently, a friend of mine called me up to discuss the instability that he was facing in his current job. From what I knew about his job, I knew this would have come up sooner or later. He used to take his job very lightly, and I knew he could enjoy it as long as it lasted, but the day it would be over, the realisation that 'job is after all rozi-roti and you cant mess with it' will have to don on him. I advised him to be a little more serious about his job. When I look at my life over the past couple of months, I see incident very similar to what happened to my friend. And I think its time for me to take the same medicine which I prescribed to him. While such incidents can seem scarily destabilizing, their purpose is not to break us but to shake us into a new level of awareness. And as I graduate to this new level, I know I am falling in love, once again, all over again, all with myself, and I thank God for having given me the resilience to fall in love again and again.
Recently someone, who was very awed at how arrogant I am about my own self, asked me:
"Tum apneaap se bahut pyaar karti ho na?"
Though sounding filmy, I didnt hesitate in answering "Haan, main apni favorite hun!"
P.S. Lots of thougts, but same theme, all bundled up together, i am not sure how much justice have I done to the basic theme after all!
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Sex, Guys & IIT days
Was remembering IIT days once again....the 2years just flew by... but the memories they have left me with will probably last a life time...i guess thats the peculiar thing about good times...they seem to get over before you realise they were good...and once over, you are left behind with reminiscence...
The most standing out memories of IIT are the ones that have to do with gender dynamics. I think there is a lot of awareness amongst general public about the skewed sex ratio in IITs. IITK in my times was no exception. Infact guys in IIT would not only complain about the general paucity of 'womenfolk' but also their quality in general. Though a lot of girls in IIT are going to hate me for making this public in writing, but i cant resist sharing what Yash- my batchmate in MBA, once commented with reference to girls in IIT. He said "There are only two species in this world, where the male is more beautiful than the female. One is the peacocks & the other is IITians". Now this pithy reflects two things about gender dynamics in IIT, one being very obvious and the other being the arrogance & audacity an average IIT male develops. From whatever experiences I have with the opposite sex in general, I know that men categorize women on the basis of beauty as follows: One set of women being 'beautiful' & the other 'very beautiful'. So an IIT guy claiming that in their specie IIT boys in general are more beautiful than IIT girls is indeed an arrogant & audacious claim. Nevertheless, women in IIT just grow upto live with such remarks , no matter how audacious they are.
I happened to meet Neha ( another batchmate of mine from MBA) on the weekend that went by. While remembering our MBA days, I talked about this comment from Yash, and to most people's surprise, both of us rolled with laughter thereafter. I can tell my reasons for feeling so tickled, and I assume Neha's was no different. I still am chuckling while I write this, I dont know what makes the IIT guys feel so frustrated about not having beautiful women all around them. It not only has to do with IITians but the male specie in general. Their need to have beauty around them seems to be so pressing that Neha & I couldnt resist laughing at the very thought of them living in paucity of the same. I mean look at us girls who lived in IIT, with water water all around but not a drop to drink. If Neha & I were to begin complaining, we could well get frustrated about the guy who Neha looked blankly at when he tried to impress her by talking about exotic financial derivatives, or the guy who attempted a pass at me by expressing his desire of learning how to communicate effectively in English language( thank God i could read his ulterior motives because had I accepted him as a student I would have forgotten English myself).
All I mean to say is that while the dearth & low quality of girls in IIT is quite evident, the abudant availability of the other sex doesnt ensure a reasonable qualityof the same. However, considering that the 'more beautiful sex' of the IIT specie clamors, I cant resist sympathizing with them...
sorry guys...you got to live with this one!! ;)
The most standing out memories of IIT are the ones that have to do with gender dynamics. I think there is a lot of awareness amongst general public about the skewed sex ratio in IITs. IITK in my times was no exception. Infact guys in IIT would not only complain about the general paucity of 'womenfolk' but also their quality in general. Though a lot of girls in IIT are going to hate me for making this public in writing, but i cant resist sharing what Yash- my batchmate in MBA, once commented with reference to girls in IIT. He said "There are only two species in this world, where the male is more beautiful than the female. One is the peacocks & the other is IITians". Now this pithy reflects two things about gender dynamics in IIT, one being very obvious and the other being the arrogance & audacity an average IIT male develops. From whatever experiences I have with the opposite sex in general, I know that men categorize women on the basis of beauty as follows: One set of women being 'beautiful' & the other 'very beautiful'. So an IIT guy claiming that in their specie IIT boys in general are more beautiful than IIT girls is indeed an arrogant & audacious claim. Nevertheless, women in IIT just grow upto live with such remarks , no matter how audacious they are.
I happened to meet Neha ( another batchmate of mine from MBA) on the weekend that went by. While remembering our MBA days, I talked about this comment from Yash, and to most people's surprise, both of us rolled with laughter thereafter. I can tell my reasons for feeling so tickled, and I assume Neha's was no different. I still am chuckling while I write this, I dont know what makes the IIT guys feel so frustrated about not having beautiful women all around them. It not only has to do with IITians but the male specie in general. Their need to have beauty around them seems to be so pressing that Neha & I couldnt resist laughing at the very thought of them living in paucity of the same. I mean look at us girls who lived in IIT, with water water all around but not a drop to drink. If Neha & I were to begin complaining, we could well get frustrated about the guy who Neha looked blankly at when he tried to impress her by talking about exotic financial derivatives, or the guy who attempted a pass at me by expressing his desire of learning how to communicate effectively in English language( thank God i could read his ulterior motives because had I accepted him as a student I would have forgotten English myself).
All I mean to say is that while the dearth & low quality of girls in IIT is quite evident, the abudant availability of the other sex doesnt ensure a reasonable qualityof the same. However, considering that the 'more beautiful sex' of the IIT specie clamors, I cant resist sympathizing with them...
sorry guys...you got to live with this one!! ;)
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
'Mercurian Thoughts'
Recently someone asked me why my blog was named 'mercurianthoughts' and not simply shubhamnath. For those of you who are thinking i like to use fancy names instead of straight and simple ones, you are wrong!!. Infact i would probably never use anything that can possibly replace my name, where otherwise it would be most apt. I mean, i really have to have a strong reason for using something instead of my name. I love my name!!...and inspite of recurrent remarks like 'shubham is a boy's name', 'it could have been shubha instead', i still love it!! And having lived with it for 25 years already there is no chance i consider it unworthy of me or myself unworthy of it!!
So where does 'mercurianthoughts' creap up from??
For those who havent kept in touch with me in recent time( or rather for those of you, with whom i have lost touch in recent times - and i know the list of such people is quite long- sorry :P), off late i have developed 'reading horoscopes' as one of my hobbies. Now wait a minute, i am not heading towards becoming Pt. Shubham Nath. That sounds quite LS to me!!
but its just an interest that i have developed, I dont read any books or anything, I just do case study analysis of whatever charts i can put my hands on, and when i get stuck with some interpretations, i just google out!!
I have become reasonably good with it, though i am sure it will be years of study before i can qualify as a full-fledged astrologer. As of now, i have become reasonably good studying my own horoscope, and from whatever i have interpreted from my horoscope i realise that in my chart Mercury is the strongest planets - its exalted, its the atmakaraka, it is in the trine, it reflects upon my house of communication which is what Mercury is best at: chit-chatting, communication (this sentence was only for those who understand horoscopes and planetary dynamics a little bit). Also mercury in my planet gives me the opening of becoming a thoughtful philosopher. so when i created this blog i had wanted to use it to outlet my philosophical thoughts, which is why i called it 'mercurianthoughts'. For a lot of you, who think like shakespeare - 'whats in a name?', this explaination may have sounded futile. And for those others who are still in awe, that an educated, modern girl like shubham is wasting her time on a packet of kaju ka barfi: 4 of which look uneaten and the other 8 half eaten, let me tell u, not only is it my hobby, i quite ardently believe in it too... what to believe in it and to what extent i believe in it has a lot too do with how much confidence i have on the person who is doing the interpretation. A good interprator can make all the difference in my willingness to believe in the interpretations & predictions. How to be sure, how good an interprator is, is another subjective issue. Its an amazing science u see, there are more exceptions than there are rules...has to be...life is like that!!...and which is why the experience, an interprator carries with him in terms of understanding life & people has a lot to do with how well he/she will be able to interpret the chart. Its almost like an advanced OB course. The only difference is i dont have a professor like Rahul Varman teaching me ....ok, that did hurt somewhere...and for my batchmates who had seen my passion in his classes( and off them)...they know where ;)
Coming back to my belief in horoscopes, in recent times thanks to this new shauk of mine, i almost advised someone to call off their wedding because their compatibility behavior as per the chart wasnt convincing!! I am sure the guy in distress, who had come to me in hope of finding encouragement to go ahead, must be cursing me now.The wedding isnt called off yet...but one more time the guy comes to me, it sure would be!!
Even though my new shauk has begun to show casualties already, I insist on pursuing it & its genres. Vaise, I dont think anything in the genre of astrological sciences is as convincing as is horoscopes using the packet of kaju barfi. There are others like tarot, which are pretty much in vogue...not that i would chase the fashionable, but most astrological websites that I google out often bundle up these two sciences( if i can call the latter a science...i m not too sure!!), so in the process of learning charts I have also begun to learn tarot. As I always say, I dont follow fashion, but it seems fashion cant stop following me! ;)
So where does 'mercurianthoughts' creap up from??
For those who havent kept in touch with me in recent time( or rather for those of you, with whom i have lost touch in recent times - and i know the list of such people is quite long- sorry :P), off late i have developed 'reading horoscopes' as one of my hobbies. Now wait a minute, i am not heading towards becoming Pt. Shubham Nath. That sounds quite LS to me!!
but its just an interest that i have developed, I dont read any books or anything, I just do case study analysis of whatever charts i can put my hands on, and when i get stuck with some interpretations, i just google out!!
I have become reasonably good with it, though i am sure it will be years of study before i can qualify as a full-fledged astrologer. As of now, i have become reasonably good studying my own horoscope, and from whatever i have interpreted from my horoscope i realise that in my chart Mercury is the strongest planets - its exalted, its the atmakaraka, it is in the trine, it reflects upon my house of communication which is what Mercury is best at: chit-chatting, communication (this sentence was only for those who understand horoscopes and planetary dynamics a little bit). Also mercury in my planet gives me the opening of becoming a thoughtful philosopher. so when i created this blog i had wanted to use it to outlet my philosophical thoughts, which is why i called it 'mercurianthoughts'. For a lot of you, who think like shakespeare - 'whats in a name?', this explaination may have sounded futile. And for those others who are still in awe, that an educated, modern girl like shubham is wasting her time on a packet of kaju ka barfi: 4 of which look uneaten and the other 8 half eaten, let me tell u, not only is it my hobby, i quite ardently believe in it too... what to believe in it and to what extent i believe in it has a lot too do with how much confidence i have on the person who is doing the interpretation. A good interprator can make all the difference in my willingness to believe in the interpretations & predictions. How to be sure, how good an interprator is, is another subjective issue. Its an amazing science u see, there are more exceptions than there are rules...has to be...life is like that!!...and which is why the experience, an interprator carries with him in terms of understanding life & people has a lot to do with how well he/she will be able to interpret the chart. Its almost like an advanced OB course. The only difference is i dont have a professor like Rahul Varman teaching me ....ok, that did hurt somewhere...and for my batchmates who had seen my passion in his classes( and off them)...they know where ;)
Coming back to my belief in horoscopes, in recent times thanks to this new shauk of mine, i almost advised someone to call off their wedding because their compatibility behavior as per the chart wasnt convincing!! I am sure the guy in distress, who had come to me in hope of finding encouragement to go ahead, must be cursing me now.The wedding isnt called off yet...but one more time the guy comes to me, it sure would be!!
Even though my new shauk has begun to show casualties already, I insist on pursuing it & its genres. Vaise, I dont think anything in the genre of astrological sciences is as convincing as is horoscopes using the packet of kaju barfi. There are others like tarot, which are pretty much in vogue...not that i would chase the fashionable, but most astrological websites that I google out often bundle up these two sciences( if i can call the latter a science...i m not too sure!!), so in the process of learning charts I have also begun to learn tarot. As I always say, I dont follow fashion, but it seems fashion cant stop following me! ;)
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