Gaddu called me up last week, to tell me a story which he read in the local delhi newspaper (or maybe it was national news, but since i rarely pick up the papers, i really dont know if it was that famous an incident).
The story was based out of a small village in haryana, wherein a boy & girl madly in love with each other were turned down for marraige by the girl's parents. Determined to unite & attracted by the idea of being paidby the govt of a social massacre, the couple considered & successfully killed 7 members of the girl's family. The accomplice of the crime was none other than the girl herself, and after the guy killed 6 members of the family & refused to kill the seventh- a child, the girl volunteered herself.
Coming from Gaddu, such a story wasnt surprising, considering he is famous for all kinds of wierdity.But what was important was the point he raised alongwith. What he insisted on was the passion that instigated the couple to take up an act as grave as this. I am sorry to say, that I did agree with him!!
Most people may say that we are saddists because we appreciate a story of this sort. But I must say, not appreciating this is like demeaning someone's passionate fervor. 'Passion' I believe, is the underlying word of this incident, and three cheers to it!!...If someone can go to such an extent for the sake of love...i think asking whether they deserve that love, is only folly...howveer, this world is full of fools and foolishness!!
There is ofcourse a practical aspect to it all, the fact that most probably the couple will have a lifelong honeymoon behind the bars...but if i were the adjuricator for this case, in my heart of heart i would have definitely granted forgiveness, though bound by duty i may have done othewise...
Where do people get so much passion from, what are these people composed of...and why is it that i have come across nearly none such people in my life (though good for my life, varna pata laga out of passion someone killed me too;))...I dont want to die out of someone's passion, but i want to be the sheer spectator of passion of this magnitude...i really wonder if it was only unique to this couple, or it does exists elsewhere too!!
Monday, May 26, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
My interpretation of tradition
For those of you who are guessing, that modern art has become indeed very modern, lemme eplain...
This was the diagram that i created for my niece's birth ceremony (called chhatti). My niece (cousin brother's daughter) born on the 18th of April, had to have a birth ceremony done to her. To mark the birth of a child, the child's paternal aunt is suppose to make this masterpiece and apply kohl to the new born. For the same purpose I flew into Bangalore last week and did the needful. This was indeed my maiden experience at doing this ceremony, and believe me I was very excited about both the application of kohl, and the creation of this piece of art (which is very evident from the fact that i have decided to dedicate a post to it).
For those of you (and I guess that's most of you) who dont understand the gibberish smeared on the yellow chart paper, let me bridge the gap between the traditional drawing requirements and my artistic talents.
To begin with, the borders' zigzag lines are nothing more than aesthetic designs. They have no significance whatsoever, they are just meant to beautify this piece of art, and mitigate the meaning engraved in it(not intentional though). Beginning with the distorted H like things on the top. They are seven in number, and are supposedly Siva mai's 7 houses (now please dont ask me what that means, i have no clue!!). I did try to find out who this siva mai was, whose houses i have been bestowed to architect. But i am sorry, i didnot get any conclusive answers from the elders around me who were chaperoning me to create this. Some hints that did come up were, that she is Lord Siva's mother, or may be Godess Parvati (Lord Siva's wife)...nobody could say for sure.
In the next line, there are a series of things, to begin with there is the moon & the sun (which is diagramatically not so difficult to decipher). The reason for making these is that it conveys that we pray to God that the light of the sun & moon always illuminate the child's future.
Shifting a little down from the line, what I made was a lipstick. Being a female child, all necessary accessories that she may need in the future are drawn, and God is prayed to make them available to her. Now I really wonder whether this Godess really knows what a lipstick is, and whether my drawing conveyed the exact message. If it didnt then i hope she is reading this post ;)
Anyways, even if she is not reading this, the girl may end up having ample lipsticks(its common these days!!), which can help her develop into a hot babe. Vaise I some times wonder if this prayer of making lipsticks available in order to make girl child babe types really works. What makes me doubt it is that, even my mom must have had this diagram made from my paternal aunt...then how come i never became the hot babe.....?????
Coming back to the series of items in the long line, the next is a vermillian case (sindhauda, as we call it), it is suppose to be a storage case of vermillion, which is suppose to be the most important accessory of a married Indian woman. Makes sense, to pray to God to make this available to the girl in the future.
Next, what looks like a sharp-toothed lethal weapon, is actually a comb. Again an accessory. Infact this time a unisex accessory, though more frequently and needfully used by girls.
Next, is an isometric view of a cuboid, with some ray-like things emanating from it. This actually is a mirror. I could have well put that as a question in paanchvi pass se tez, and had the contestant out of the competition!! But come to think of it, a mirror is difficult to depict diagramatically, lest it is concave or convex, and u have to draw some ray diagrams associated with it.
Right below the mirror is a palanquin (doli), which is usually associated with a girl's wedding in India.
Right of the mirror, is a kohl case (kajrauti, as they call it). Kohl is a dual purposed accessory for a girl in the Indian society. Not only does it beautify one's eyes, it also protects one from evil eyes. But i really wonder how many girls in our generation would use a kajrauti like that for accesorizing themselves with kohl.
The next is a flower, which most women like, so assuming the new born will have future liking for it, it is there.
The last two items are beetle leaf (paan)& supari. Now thats pretty contraversial. I mean, parents dont really want to push their kids towards any habit forming edibles. Having drawn this is like an open invitation to the new born to adopt habits of the nature of consuming tobacco, smoking, drinking etc. Anyway, why it is there is because a beetle leaf is considered very auspicious in hinduism. So hopefully if we manage to convey the message in the latter format, the child may avoid habit forming substances like beetle leaves.
Since I had ample blank space below these items i just made a garland, and i guess that did help beautify the whole chart.
All in all, I thought it was a very stupid exercise to do. Though I thank my niece for coming into this world and giving me the joy, along with the experience of something as stupid as this!!
Friday, May 2, 2008
Modesty vs. Arrogance
Today is my last working day at Bank of America. Usually a last day post will elicit the mixed feelings that one goes through, and how the past experience makes one feel heavy while the anticipation of a better future enstills excitement...and blah blah...but this wont be the usual last working day post.
I will tell you something very intersting that I am going through today. Each time I meet someone in office today, they ask me where am I moving too and what kind of role is it, some even went on to asking me what title I would be holding in my new position. Now the last part is where I got stuck with, when most people did the interrogation. Not that the title I am moving on to is not worthy of a public display, infact it very much is - it is Associate Vice president with HSBC bank (that sure sounds something!!) but I just didnt feel like telling this to everyone (there were very few people whom I told this to). One obvious reason I can think of, is 'modesty'. I didnt want to brag about my new title. But how come modesty struck me on this day when I should be flaunting my achievement. And in fact I am a pretty brash person, very arrogant at times too. As I wonder about all this, I am reminded of my own philosophy about modest & arrogant people.
I ardently belive that : Arrogant people know their worth, while Modest people always doubt it.
Delving into my own philosophy i realise that the reason why i decided to be modest about my new title is that, perhaps I am not worthy of it!! Which is not very surprising, at 25 years of age, and less than 2 years of corporate experience i am graduating into a managerial role, it is definitely an achievement worth bragging about(which i prefer to handle modestly). Infact when i was being interviewed for this role (the two rounds of interview i had), the main focus of the interviwer was on taking assurance from me that i will be able to handle the challenge of managing a team. They went about recurrently asking me "do u think u have the requisite eperience and ability to handle a team?"...when this question came repeatedly i felt like asking them if i was being intrviewed for the post of AVP or if i am being asked to replace Naina Lal Kidwai. Anyway, that doesnt look like the case now that i have thoroughly read the details in my offer letter. But i still thought both my rounds of interview were quite strange, in one of them the interviewer was trying to be sure if i would be stable in the role for the long run so he asked me "why i was looking for a change after only 18 months at Bank of America?". I thought that was stupid because in my opinion 18 months is pretty good time in an organisation (difinitely not questionable). On the lighter side however, i wanted to tell him in Bunty & Babli style, "ye jo world hai na world, isme do tarah ke log hote hain, ek jo sari zindagi ek hi kaam karte hain, aur dusre jo ek hi zindagi mein saare kaam kar dalte hai...i am the second variety, who wants to work in all kinds of banks in this lifetime"...thank God i didnt blurt this out or else the interviewer would have said, "Good, you are in the right city, but perhaps the wrong address, Goregaon film city is only a few kms from here!!"
Coming back to the point, i think i will have to part from my arrogance for some time in my new job, untill I gain complete confidence on myself that i am actually worthy of the title and role that i have been awarded. I dont think I should mind that, changing roles at times have their own advantage and own set of fun...so best of luck to me in my new endeavour....thanks!!
I will tell you something very intersting that I am going through today. Each time I meet someone in office today, they ask me where am I moving too and what kind of role is it, some even went on to asking me what title I would be holding in my new position. Now the last part is where I got stuck with, when most people did the interrogation. Not that the title I am moving on to is not worthy of a public display, infact it very much is - it is Associate Vice president with HSBC bank (that sure sounds something!!) but I just didnt feel like telling this to everyone (there were very few people whom I told this to). One obvious reason I can think of, is 'modesty'. I didnt want to brag about my new title. But how come modesty struck me on this day when I should be flaunting my achievement. And in fact I am a pretty brash person, very arrogant at times too. As I wonder about all this, I am reminded of my own philosophy about modest & arrogant people.
I ardently belive that : Arrogant people know their worth, while Modest people always doubt it.
Delving into my own philosophy i realise that the reason why i decided to be modest about my new title is that, perhaps I am not worthy of it!! Which is not very surprising, at 25 years of age, and less than 2 years of corporate experience i am graduating into a managerial role, it is definitely an achievement worth bragging about(which i prefer to handle modestly). Infact when i was being interviewed for this role (the two rounds of interview i had), the main focus of the interviwer was on taking assurance from me that i will be able to handle the challenge of managing a team. They went about recurrently asking me "do u think u have the requisite eperience and ability to handle a team?"...when this question came repeatedly i felt like asking them if i was being intrviewed for the post of AVP or if i am being asked to replace Naina Lal Kidwai. Anyway, that doesnt look like the case now that i have thoroughly read the details in my offer letter. But i still thought both my rounds of interview were quite strange, in one of them the interviewer was trying to be sure if i would be stable in the role for the long run so he asked me "why i was looking for a change after only 18 months at Bank of America?". I thought that was stupid because in my opinion 18 months is pretty good time in an organisation (difinitely not questionable). On the lighter side however, i wanted to tell him in Bunty & Babli style, "ye jo world hai na world, isme do tarah ke log hote hain, ek jo sari zindagi ek hi kaam karte hain, aur dusre jo ek hi zindagi mein saare kaam kar dalte hai...i am the second variety, who wants to work in all kinds of banks in this lifetime"...thank God i didnt blurt this out or else the interviewer would have said, "Good, you are in the right city, but perhaps the wrong address, Goregaon film city is only a few kms from here!!"
Coming back to the point, i think i will have to part from my arrogance for some time in my new job, untill I gain complete confidence on myself that i am actually worthy of the title and role that i have been awarded. I dont think I should mind that, changing roles at times have their own advantage and own set of fun...so best of luck to me in my new endeavour....thanks!!
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Context is Everything
My first year course at IITK, MBA611: Organisational Theory& Structure, introduced me to a saying by my professor which by far is my favorite of the several that I have heard from him. He said(not once but several times), Context is Everything. Several cases, several pieces of literature & many practical life situations thereafter went to bolster what he said. However, today I experienced something which made me add to this. Apart from the context, it is also composition of a person that defines his reaction to a certain situation. Infact, if we look at these two words deeply, we can easily relate the fact that somewhere both- context & composition can be traced back to the same meaning. Here, I am not eliciting the redundancy of the length of English vocabulary. Rather I am trying to drive to the fact that what a person is made up of (his composition), often becomes a part of the 'context' when it comes to dealing with him/her. There could be more to the context when you meet/interact or whatever with him/her, but one cannot deny that his/her composition is a subset of the context in which one lands up with him/her.
Where I am coming from is, a lot of times I rebuke people who are weak, I rebuke them for not standing up for what they believe they want. I think they are worthless, useless fellows because they just cant chase things with the same passion as I do. What I often forget is that my definition of 'wothlessness'or 'uselessness' is derived from what I think I am worthy of or what I think I am useful for. I think I am a strong woman, who has the desire & ability to chase her dreams, she can stand up for her ideas, her beliefs, and thats it!! In extreme times, I think everyone should be like this. What I dont realise is that these things are sure my strengths, but that doesnt mean that every strong person, every determined individual is worthy of life on earth; whereas every weak and not-so-determined person is worthless. We humans often, have the tendency of defining all good words in our dictionary in the same tone & magnitude of our personal nature/behavior - our composition, while all the negative words are meant for the things from which we are poles apart.
I came across someone who after having gone steady with a girl for two-long-years is soon getting into an arranged marraige. I always doubted if he had a real interest in the girl whom he was dating, but after having spoken to him I realised that perhaps it was love. What surprises me however is that, instead of standing up for his love and fighting it out to marry the girl whom he loves, he has chosen to live in remembering her every day of his life (I dont know for how long, though). He prefers to survive in a guilt of unfulfilled promises & anguish of unrealised dreams rather than come out in the open and say that he really wants to get married to her. I guess some people are just good guilt-managers than belligerent-social-fighters. How much i would have loved to tell that guy, "boss...u r wrong!...u must come out and fight for what you want". But just when I wanted to tell him that today, I realised that not everyone in this world is composed of the same ingredients, he & I for sure are not!! If I were him I would have handled this otherwise, but then I am me & he is he...and thats where the compositions play role in setting the context of a situation.
The intersting point here is however, how is life different for fighters like me and guilt-bearers like him in the long run. I am too naive to understand & assess if guilt is just a coward mechanism of avoiding social confrontation for him, for all you know things actually fall in place after some time. Also i fail to justify whether fighters like me screw up relations & good will for something that may recede & mitigate with the tide of time. The answer to this ambiguity lies in the adage 'wait & watch'...how long 'I dont know'.
However, without having to wait to watch, I can give a fictional example of what eventually happens... I read this book called 'Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini; he had these two characters Hassan- the fighter & Aamir- the guilt-bearer. Both were best friends. Hassan being the servant boy of Aamir was bound not only by duty to serve Aamir but also by desire. He would fight to the cost of small promises made to Aamir. And Aamir would not even come to his rescue, even if he were the silent spectator of sexual abuse on his friend. In due course of time, Hassan- the fighter owing to his low status is left to fight the trying conditions of a disturbed country while Aamir owing to his power & status flees to a life of comforts. Even as Aamir flees, he carries with him a baggage of guilt, to a new land where no one other than his own solitude could even have a whisp of what went wrong between Aamir & Hassan. But guilt accompanied Aamir all the way, to the extent of bringing him back to his home-land for what the writer claims is 'Redemption'. This is fiction however, where the guilt-bearer is designed to get an opportunity for redemption, and the fighter fights with valor all that he could.
They say, life goes a full circle, and as I see the real-life situation, the guy is still designing only a point and measuring its distance from the centre. His choice of surviving in the guilt of unfulfilled promises, looks like a dream of making several more equidistant points from the centre. Whether his life goes a full-circle or not, I dont know, what I know for sure is that people in this world have variagated compositions & assuming that you would bump into one of your kind is indeed a mistake. Thoguh we cannot bring everyone to a homogenous comosition, what we must learn & appreciate is the existence of the heterogenity. Just as each one of us is composed of different ingredients, we will all create different contexts of the same situation. Yes, Prof. Rahul Varman summed it right 'Context is everything!!'
Where I am coming from is, a lot of times I rebuke people who are weak, I rebuke them for not standing up for what they believe they want. I think they are worthless, useless fellows because they just cant chase things with the same passion as I do. What I often forget is that my definition of 'wothlessness'or 'uselessness' is derived from what I think I am worthy of or what I think I am useful for. I think I am a strong woman, who has the desire & ability to chase her dreams, she can stand up for her ideas, her beliefs, and thats it!! In extreme times, I think everyone should be like this. What I dont realise is that these things are sure my strengths, but that doesnt mean that every strong person, every determined individual is worthy of life on earth; whereas every weak and not-so-determined person is worthless. We humans often, have the tendency of defining all good words in our dictionary in the same tone & magnitude of our personal nature/behavior - our composition, while all the negative words are meant for the things from which we are poles apart.
I came across someone who after having gone steady with a girl for two-long-years is soon getting into an arranged marraige. I always doubted if he had a real interest in the girl whom he was dating, but after having spoken to him I realised that perhaps it was love. What surprises me however is that, instead of standing up for his love and fighting it out to marry the girl whom he loves, he has chosen to live in remembering her every day of his life (I dont know for how long, though). He prefers to survive in a guilt of unfulfilled promises & anguish of unrealised dreams rather than come out in the open and say that he really wants to get married to her. I guess some people are just good guilt-managers than belligerent-social-fighters. How much i would have loved to tell that guy, "boss...u r wrong!...u must come out and fight for what you want". But just when I wanted to tell him that today, I realised that not everyone in this world is composed of the same ingredients, he & I for sure are not!! If I were him I would have handled this otherwise, but then I am me & he is he...and thats where the compositions play role in setting the context of a situation.
The intersting point here is however, how is life different for fighters like me and guilt-bearers like him in the long run. I am too naive to understand & assess if guilt is just a coward mechanism of avoiding social confrontation for him, for all you know things actually fall in place after some time. Also i fail to justify whether fighters like me screw up relations & good will for something that may recede & mitigate with the tide of time. The answer to this ambiguity lies in the adage 'wait & watch'...how long 'I dont know'.
However, without having to wait to watch, I can give a fictional example of what eventually happens... I read this book called 'Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini; he had these two characters Hassan- the fighter & Aamir- the guilt-bearer. Both were best friends. Hassan being the servant boy of Aamir was bound not only by duty to serve Aamir but also by desire. He would fight to the cost of small promises made to Aamir. And Aamir would not even come to his rescue, even if he were the silent spectator of sexual abuse on his friend. In due course of time, Hassan- the fighter owing to his low status is left to fight the trying conditions of a disturbed country while Aamir owing to his power & status flees to a life of comforts. Even as Aamir flees, he carries with him a baggage of guilt, to a new land where no one other than his own solitude could even have a whisp of what went wrong between Aamir & Hassan. But guilt accompanied Aamir all the way, to the extent of bringing him back to his home-land for what the writer claims is 'Redemption'. This is fiction however, where the guilt-bearer is designed to get an opportunity for redemption, and the fighter fights with valor all that he could.
They say, life goes a full circle, and as I see the real-life situation, the guy is still designing only a point and measuring its distance from the centre. His choice of surviving in the guilt of unfulfilled promises, looks like a dream of making several more equidistant points from the centre. Whether his life goes a full-circle or not, I dont know, what I know for sure is that people in this world have variagated compositions & assuming that you would bump into one of your kind is indeed a mistake. Thoguh we cannot bring everyone to a homogenous comosition, what we must learn & appreciate is the existence of the heterogenity. Just as each one of us is composed of different ingredients, we will all create different contexts of the same situation. Yes, Prof. Rahul Varman summed it right 'Context is everything!!'
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