A sigh of relief!

One of my most hated places in Mumbai city is the American consulate. Not that the rest of Mumbai is any more lovable for me, but this is definitely not the place i would crave for, and especially if its early morning office hours. The scene outside the consulate on the main road can be described as a swarming beehive, with all aspiring applicants buzzing in anticipation to be mated with the queen bee aka 'the consulate interviewing officer' - the only difference being that there are multiple queen bees (interviewing officers) instead of the single one in the actual beehives, and to make it worse - i have heard that in recent times the consulate has undergone expansion, meaning more queen bees, hence more drones and the worst - more buzzing!!
A typical writer would describe to u the anxiety of the applicant and how overwhelming the crowd over there makes one feel, but i guess i have something more interesting to tell - so let me detour. My recent visit to the consulate was in mid-December - while most parts of the world look forward to festivities at this time of the year, we Indians enter the sabbatical from one of the biggest festivities of our lives "weddings" - actually between the mid of December and mid of January due to Hindu calendar showing inauspicious dates weddings get stalled in India. But the brighter side of this period is that you get to see many more newly weds (those who got married in the pre-sabbatical wedding period) or newly engageds (those who are waiting to get married in the post-sabbatical wedding period)- whether you bump into them doing the new household shopping at supermarkets or in the finger-lock around the malls and movies - they seem to be ubiquitous. The American consulate on that morning was not spared of this ubiquity either!
Right in front of my eyes was a newly wed, wherein the woman's bangles were shinning so bright under the scorching sun, i almost felt i would turn blind if i looked at it for too long. I guess the idea of donning them was to just shove it into the interviewing officers' face and ask him to approve the visa as a ransom...lol. But as i said, i could not strain my eyes looking at the lady's bangles for too long, so i just bowed my head trying to spot some pebbles to trot, just then my eyes paused at another newly wed's footwear - it had some kind of mirror or reflectors (to be precise), believe me they were causing such great reflections of the shining sun that i thought when she enters the consulate office she may set the fire alarms ablaze and may give rise to an emergency situation. As it is the consulate is such a sensitive area, i thought this was the minimum precaution madam should have taken when cladding herself. Anyway, the visa rules don't make any allusions to the loud dressing sense of applicants, so the newly weds can take all liberties...and boy they were really taking liberties!
Right at the beginning of the line was a lady- who looked like she hailed from south India - i could tell from her south silk Saree - bright maroon with the golden zari conveying her newly wed status loud and clear. I wandered my eyes on her for some time - observing her obsession with the crisp pleats that she had set around her waist and bosom. I think she wanted to enter the consulate in the most prim and proper saree the interviewer would have ever seen ...as if that was the basis of getting her visa approved...lol
All around me I could see every third woman carrying a huge file like looking thing, which after a few glances around i realized, were wedding albums. They are gotten to the consulate to show the interviewer authenticity of the wedding status. As most of these ladies who travel to united states after their wedding travel as Dependants of their husband, it is an imperative to prove as much of the dependency as one possibly can. While getting bored, in the long ever-lasting queue outside the American consulate, I actually wished that one of those ladies would offer to run me through their albums - u know wedding albums are real good time-pass activities.
Looking for more entertaining stuff i ran my eyes across the length of the line to see what proportion of interviewees were newly wed. They say - Indian weddings, no matter in whichever part of India, never disappoint u with their celebration. Even, as the celebration of weddings died they echoed in 70% of the interviewees that day at the consulate. What a statistic: Nearly 70% of Indians entering USA in the next few weeks will be newly wed!! - and we though the great Indian consumer growth story was limited to India alone...we forgot about the diaspora!!
The entertainment i had that morning was good...and it also brought back the memories from my Visa interview some 3 years ago. Of course those memories werent as entertaining because i was not applying for the newly wed dependent visa myself and neither was it the post wedding season of India (although few newly weds were still seen- u know na recession ho ya inflation India mein shaadiyan to hoti hi hain.
When i had awed at the album carrying newly weds 3 years ago, my coworker had mocked me then - he said "Don't laugh at them, for all u know u could be standing here in this line in the next few months, carrying the load of your wedding album"...I had laughed at his comment resenting it from my heart and shrugging off at it because you never know what the future has in store for you. Three years later, i was still laughing at that comment, only much more confident this time and sighing relief at the fact that i never got into that queue again!!

Searching for passion!!

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!!

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!!

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!!'

Adding legitimacy to bride-hunting

If I keep talking about marraige & related issues, my age and that of my friends' circle is to be blamed for it. Also the unique phenomena of arranged marraige (unique to the Indian culture vis-a-vis cultures over the world) often creates interesting material for writing, which is another driver for me for writing on the subject of marraige so often.
Recently, I was talking to one of my friends, with regards to a guy whom she had met for the purpose of matrimonial alliance. She had complained after the meeting that the guy was too shy and probably didnt match upto her. She also mentioned that the guy rejected her even before she could use his shyness as an excuse to reject him. Shyness I thought, that was a lame excuse to reject him considering that first meetings could be pretty unnerving for many guys. Especially those guys who arent used to talking to girls, and i must say such a segment in our society is indeed a majority if not available in ubiquity. Shocking but true, that inspite of the era of liberalisation, the men seem to be still living in a cocoon while the women have hatched out & going guns over the cocooned specie.
Anyway coming back to my friends and her opinion about the guy whom she met, I granted her the fact that the guy didnt match up to her for the sheer reason that even other than matrimony, a lot of guys that we had known in our MBA days stood no chance in front of her flair & smartness.
Probing her further on the issue, on another follow-up call, she told me that the guy whom she had met in the one-off date which was suppose to materialise into life-long matrimony, had recently got in engaged to a batchmate of his whom he had been seeing during his college days. She also added, that his apparent shyness was owing to his non-chalance for materialising the meeting into anything beyond, and also the fact that he didnt try and match up to the girl he was meeting(inspite of being MBA from one of the top institutions in the country) was a deliberate attempt to look and seem dumb. Reason for all this was now clear and obvious - he had already had his heart fixed, so rejecting my friend inspite of her drop-dead gorgeous looks & amazing personality didnt sound so shocking. What shocked me though was, why in the first place did he come to meet my friend? The answer to that brings me to the main issue that I wanted to highlight in this post.
I think the answer in some small ways is connected to what came up in my previous posts too. The fact that our conservative society still considers love marraige a stigma, has a lot to do with the point I am driving to. The point being, often girls & boys who have already decided on their life-partner from amongst their colleagues, batchmates or acquaintances, find it difficult to confront their parents on their choice. To simplify the confrontation process what they do is ask the parents to find someone for them, whom they would pre-decidedly reject, and after having met a few they can easily blame that their choice isnt being met and hence they offer their pre-decided partner's proposal. The whole drama just adds legitimacy to the process of chosing a bride who was once your girlfriend.
This is exactly what happened in my friend's case, the guy already had someone in mind, and was using my friend as a tool to make his parents realise their incompetency in finding the apposite life-partner for him. I appreciate the fact that he had at least made up his mind on whom he wanted to marry, I also appreciate the methodology he adopted in making his parents approve his choice - which was not by imposing it on them, rather allowing them to grow upto the concept that they are not able to find the right match for him, and it is best for him to chose his partner himself. It often unjustifies the stigma factor associated with the journey of transforming love into marriage.
Now what I dont appreciate here is the fact that he had to make use of 'rejection' as a means of getting his point across. I still cant fathom how easy it was for him to make use of some third party to get a message across between himself & his parents. There are two contentions that I have in this whole situation. One is the fact that the guy made use of a third party. A party who is foreign and very liable to feel bad for being used i.e. if she realised that she has been used, which in my friend's case she did. I didnt like the fact that someone was dragged into this because you had politely convey a message to someone who is dear to you without hurting them. The second issue is very grave -'rejection'! How many times has a guy complained about having proposed a girl whom he has been secretly admiring for a long time & having being turned down after pouring his heart out...more often than not you will hear a guy in situations like this, and thank God it is guys who are in this situation more often!!...because women in general have bigger egos when it comes to being rejected by the opposite sex. And even if we look beyond how each gender takes the issue of 'rejection', one would agree that 'rejection' for any living creature is not the best of feelings to cope with. Whether it happens in the process of establishing a matrimonial alliance, or can be guessed from the sullen face of an orpahned kid vis-a-vis a chubby gay face of a doted only-child of parents, so much so a domesticated pet vs. a stray animal. Each of these are intense examples of rejected living creatures. Thankfully however, of these two contentions only one can happen at a time, because if you are feeling bad about being used by the guy, then you know you havent been rejected. Or else if you think you have been rejected, then you dont know that you have been used.
And while every person can have his/her own unique style of conveying harsh messages across to their near & dear ones, all I would request for the general betterment of the society is that dont make use of rejection routed through a third party to get your message across to your loved ones. Remember, what goes around, comes around, you could do this to someone today, and end up having this done to you some time later. Be careful, the most precious smiles are not only of those who are yours, someone who is not yours could look much more beautiful smiling than frowning!!

Its in the air !!

Today I happened to speak to someone from good old IIT days. This guy Yash, graduated from the bachelor's course in the same year as I did from MBA. After graduation he joined ITC, while I moved on in the banking domain. In IIT, we were introduced to each other by virtue of him having been the coordinator of the English Literary society before I was. I remember having interacted with him for a lot of reasons other than the ELS. One such was the protest on George Bush's visit to India, which I was almost dragged into because my beloved Prof. Rahul Varman had taken a lead on it. Anyone on campus knew that I could be lured into anything in which Prof. Varman was party. And I have strong reasons to believe that Prof. Varman knew that himself. Anyhow...that shall be a different piece of analysis...that requires more data and hence I shall refrain from doing....
Coming back to my telephonic conversation with Yash today. So far there have been several occassions when I resurrected contacts with some old pals from campus ( considering I have a habit of losing contact easily), but never did the experience feel so unique as it felt today. The primary reason for that was the industry in which Yash works - manufacturing!!
In today's world the manufacturing industry though has not lost importance but sure has lost mention. With the services sector booming, and India haing been labeled as the next big place for churning & exploiting human capital in an intellectual arena, the mention of the manufacturing industry seems to have thinned down. Not only that, with most of our generation(those with our kind of educational background) choosing the services sector over manufacturing (i guess the choice for most of us in our generation is pretty easy & obvious,looking at the abundant availability of jobs in this sphere) availability of people who could even give a fresh perspective on what the industry looks like & where it is heading towards is not ample. Looking at the dearth of such people, my conversation with Yash was rather refreshing.
Though the kind of problems that Yash mentioned existed with his job, were pretty much similar to what any youth of the services industry would also portray but the flavor & light in which he portrayed those experiences were unprecendented to my knowledge.
He mentioned about the level of excitement in his job during the inital days, when he was being trained & the process in which he was working was being established. He mentioned having reared the process right from having to buy the machinary, getting it installed, having it run, and then graduating into the mundanity of monitoring it. I dont think these sequence of activities are any different for anyone in the services sector. I myself have been in Bank of America since the inception of my process, and have seen the same steps happening in the flavor of 'services'.
He mentioned considering the option of doing an MBA in order to break the cycle of what he is currently doing. Very similar to what any engineer who has got into the cycle of software engineering would want to do. But the different flavor to his reasons for doing an MBA was the unavailability of ample jobs in the market, which is pretty understandable, considering that this sector is very mature in India, and place for today's youth who is constantly looking for a challenging role is scarce.
He mentioned about politics at work place, and I think the unanimity of that can be felt right from service to manufacturing to home as sectors. So nothing much to elaborate on that.

All in all, during the course of the conversation we came to a point wherein we said that though the problems that we both were talking about have similar underlying principles, another major problem that we have had is that after having spent time in IIT (me for 2 years & him for 4 years) our definition of intellectually challenging jobs had changed leaps & bounds. Which was also one reason why we were in the state of believing that our jobs have an element of mundanity. I confessed that my demand for intellectual challange had changed so much in the 2 years I spent at IIT & I wondered what it did to someone who spent 4 years there. To that Yash made a very unforgettable comment. He said " It wasnt about 2 or 4 years, It was all about the air we breathed. It was about the air of that place that made so much difference in the way we think & percieve challenges". I couldnt have agreed more!!
I told him that last week was MBA alumni meet at IITK, and I didnt go. One way I had convinced myself on not going was by asking myself whether I had achieved enough to go back & stand proudly in my alma mater. But the truth remains my alma mater doesnt ask me that, my alma mater is indiffferent to that, my alma mater is off the rat-race of assessing someone by their resume, their visiting card or their payslip...that is where I know that my alma-mater has more substance, and there is something about its air that makes it overlook so much in me and still consider me a part of it.
Even across sectors - manufacturing & services, there seemed to be unanimity on the fact that "There was something unusual in the air of IIT..."

Guy/Girl's plight??

On request by anandable.......this post is with reference to the comment made by anandable on my previous post.

First & foremost, my previous post was in reference to another post by an author called Nishant. I limited myself to the situation posed by Nishant (though I did assume certain things here and there), now what anandable has asked me to think about is a diametrically opposite situation, some assumptions of which are as follows:

• The girl is a small town, not so independant girl.
• The guy is willing to marry the girl, and so are the guy's parents willing to accept her.
• The girl's parents are not in favor of this marraige, on account of caste & status issues.

Before I begin to analyse the various variables that I have mentioned in my previous posts, I will talk about some inherent loopholes of these assumptions & also my limitations in understanding these assumptions.
I think the first & foremost loophole in the assumption is that while in the previous post both parties in love looked like matured & independant people, here atleast one party is not. Previously, we were talking about people who were capable of taking decisions by themselves, and also assess the merits & shortcomings of those decsions. In case of a non-independant girl such levels of maturity/independence cannot be expected, due to the sheer lack of exposure that dependency creates. Also in the previous posts both parties being the decision takers, the assumption was that they have a fair understanding of the fact that the accountability of the success or failure of the relationship lies on their shoulders. However in this case where the girl is not so independant, I am not too sure if she will be matured enought to shoulder the reponsibility/accountability of her relationship in the future. What i mean is that if god foresaken tomorow some mishap occurs in their relationship or in their lives, is the 'not so independant' girl, capable of handling it? The answer is perhaps no, and that is what brings me to the third assumption: the girl's parents' opposition to this proposal is not so unfair after all, except that the pretext that they are using to oppose it (i.e. caste & status) is probably not the best explainations of why they should be rejecting the alliance.

Another loophole of the assumption, and this time it is also a limitation of my understanding of small town girls. Arent small town girls the introvert kind of females, who rarely talk to guys, and probably are very well aware of their family & the social environments' condescending disapprovals of romantic reltionships?? Then how come they fall in love, I mean love can happen to anyone...thats fine!! but how does the mechanism of love unfold in such cases. I mean to ask, she atleast has to have talked to the guy a few times to really fall in love or after falling in love...or wait a min!!...are u talking about the love that she experiences by virtue of sight ...love at first sight!! If thats the kind of love u are talking about then believe me thats not love...its infactuation...or in my langauage 'stupidity'...and all i will recommend is...it is not even worth a fight!! So chup chaap se listen to what the parents say...

I know that it is a harsh suggestion for someone in love...but all i mean to say is that the assessment of whether something is worth a fight is very important...cupid may strike in several forms- love at first sight, crushes, friendship, sex...and many more....but the assessment of whether the form of cupid can be extrapolated to the sacred knot has to be a very prudent decision. And this process of extrapolation shouldnot be confusd with synonymising: love & marraige are not synonomous. They are two different things, if what you call 'love' materialises into marraige then you are damn lucky!!...but if it doesnt it is an important lesson of life, and you should 'by heart' it and move on in life!! However, I do believe that love is an integral subset of married life but that doesnt mean 'marraige = love' or vice versa.

Coming to the point of parents of the girl opposing the girl's marraige. In case of a non-independant girl, parents have to be very instrumental in chosing her partner, because the age in which a girl may have fallen in love could have been very impressionable, and love by its very nature makes someone very silo in their thinking. Owing to this, assessing the entire merit of the proposal keeping in view factors that will play an imporatnat role from time to time in life, becomes imperative for the parents. On judging these factors, some of which may revolve around the financial or social status of the guy's family, if the parents oppose the proposal...i dont think there is anything wrong with it.

Now, one would argue that I was harsh on the guy's parents opposing a proposal on the basis of the same factors, while I am supporting the girl's parents. I have logic to support that too, the reason being, once married the girl moves from her home to the guy's home. Assuming that the financial or social status of the guy's family is not equivalent to the girl's then there are chances that the girl may have to live in lack of resources which she was used to, to the extent of taking for granted in her own family. This may be the cause of discontentment for the girl, and she maynot be able to cope with the lack of resources. In such cases the girl's family may have to come to her rescue to make her life comfortable. From the perspective of both families this may not be a very desirable situation, the girl's family maynot want to own up the burden of their daughter's comfort after they have married her off, and even if they do, the maynot appreciate his wife's family helping out, because then it proves his inefficacy to give his family a comfortable living. Here the assumption is that the financial status of the guy's family is lower than the girl's family. However, in cases vice versa, it maynot be so difficult after all...its always easy for anyone to move from a lower starta of living into higher one, rather than do the vice versa. So what I am saying is, that parents rejecting a proposal on account of status is purely justified, however on the basis of caste....i dont know...i am not too sure...actually casteism is a very sensitive issue...and its an issue of mindset...though i myself believe that i should marry someone from my caste...when i ask myself 'why?', i dont having any rationale to support my belief...this is one terrain wherein i refrain from commenting...i dont know why...

Talking of the guy's parents, I think they are on the same page as their son, simply owing to the fact that they know their son is an independent entity with personal desires, and they respect it just as the girl's parents in the previous post must have. So they are willing to accept the girl, believing that their son has taken a matured decision, and that he has a fair understanding of the fact that the accountability of that decision rests in his own hands.

That brings me to the point of drawing an analogy of the proposed situation with the one in my pevious post. Just as the affected parties in the previous case were three, here too they are three. One is the girl, the girl's parents & the guy( i eliminate the guy's parents angle because their viewpoint is in sync with the son's)

Now lets look at the girl's perspective first:

I think she suffers from exactly the same problem which the guy suffered from in the previous post. She just lost track of the reality of her background & didnt think it was important to judge the guy's background, when she pursued her love.

Of course, she is a small town, not so independant girl so standing up and fighting for somethng she really wants is not something we can expect of her ( anyways, i am not even sure if she has a strong conviction on whether she really wants the guy, i mean on the basis of love on first sight no one can be absolutely convinced).

Also I would want to introduce another angle to the girl's perspective, which applies only to girls. Girls, who dont have an independant standing of their own, often equate their standing in society to their beauty, their physical appearance. And at any point in time, a patron of this beauty induces in the girl a feeling of self-worth. The feeling of self-worth is important for every individual, and for an unmarried non-independant girl this can be derived from the appreciation that a lover offers. This source of self-worth looks all important till the time the girl is not put through to think about marraige, once married she has her husband to derive this feeling from. So the incentive of a girl to fight her parents to get married to a lover, is lower than what it would be for a guy.

Now from the girls' parents perspective:

Of course peer pressure is important here too, with the girl's peer group getting married to NRIs and IASs which other girls' parents have chosen for them, this girls' parents dont want to be left behind in the race by hitching their daughter with someone whose primary vocation seems to be falling in love (thats what it looks like to the parents atleast!!).

Thier ego ofcourse takes a hit, they dont want to confess that they werent keeping a close eye on the movements & heart slips of their daughter, that would raise a finger on their upbringing scheme.

Parent's insecurity in this case comes from whatI mentioned earlier, the fact that they would have to marry the girl off in a family which maynot have as much resources or social recognition as theirs.

From the guy's perspective, I guess its the same as was in the girl's case in the previous post. I mean he just has to cope up with the feeling of despair & loss...i guess thats how life is ... unfair, but simply 'life'......

Iin the conventional love stories like this one its the guy who takes the brunt...and in modern ones like the ones i mentioned previously its the girl...

Though I think I have done a better job of explaining the perspective of the not so independant girl than I had thought...in case of any aberrations, do grant me the limitation of not knowing what small town girls are all about or rather not knowing how it could feel like being a non-independant girl. The smallest towns which I have experienced in my life have been Ludhiana, Kanpur & Patna ( and I am sure they dont even qualify as towns...all three were cities, I believe), so my perspective on small town girls is a little silo-ed. Though i did have interaction with a few small town girls in my engg days, but they were all far too soaked in inferiority complex, that most of their claims of love & boyfriends looked like desperate attempts to be on par with the metro-girls than actually an explaination of their true personality.

I hope i came close to looking at the problem with the perspecive that anandable expected, in case not...comments & castigations are most welcome....

Girls' Plight

http://read-nishant.blogspot.com/2008/02/guys-plight.html

The author of the above article i thought has raised a very critical issue, which is constantly biting our hypocrytic, yet developing society.

I would like to scrutinize the issue that he has mentioned a little further.


In the above said situation the affected/involved parties are three in number; and it is very important to understand the psychology & repercussions of the situation on each of the three.

First is the guy, whom the above author has very conclusively adjudged as the one suffering the plight. Though I honestly believe that the other two parties are the ones that are more touched by the situation: the girl(Payal in this case) & the parents of the guy.

Looking at the guy's situation first & foremost:

Love vs. Reality: This guys seems to be someone who has probably missed out on the reality of a 'conservative family background', when he fell in love with Payal & began to go around with her. Well if conservatism is not something that can fully explain this (considering that is developing India), then i have another terminology that can be more explicable of what the guy failed to assess and i.e. his 'egoistic parents' ( I will elaborate on this when I come to the parents' part of this analysis). So point number one is that guys who end up in situations like this one, probably lose track of their reality or maybe misjudge it. One typical problem that I have noticed about guys in relationships is that they often lack foresight, they are never able to foresee what they are getting into or where they shall be heading towards in the medium-term or may be long-term( like in this case). When they fall in love, they are soaked solely in love, not realising that apart from loving their sweetheart they need to multitask and assess that they may never be able to fructify the situation into anything meaningful altogether. This problem is very rampant with the male gender, and with the live for moment attitude of the newer generation this attitude is quite often seen with the fairer sex too. But only if the newer generation turns heed to the old virtues of planning & preparing can situations of the like be avoided.

Strength of love vs. Weakness of the individual: Guys in our modern society are facing a decline in the rate of growth of their strength. While on the other hand, girls are showing a rapid growth rate in terms of developing strength. You know what I mean, I mean that though women in today's time arent as strong in upholding their views as men are, they are showing a rapid increase in the growth rate of ability to stand up for things. And inspite of the head start that our patriarchical society has given men on expressing & upholding their views, women are catching up soon. Also attributed to this rapid growth rate in strength development of women, the mood in the female sect is upbeat, while for men the declining growth rate suggests a mood of recession owing to which a guys are often not able to gather the courage to fight out for things they strongly believe they want. So even though the guy has the heart to fall in love, he may lack the heart to fight out for it. Or so to say, when it is you sweetheart on one hand and your beloved parents on the other. Its always easy to say 'sorry' to the sweetheart & break her heart, than rebel against parents & hurt them for a life time. The results of situations like this often go to prove that adage, 'blood is thicker than water'. And it takes lot of strength & attitude to fight what old adages suggest with reference to societal norms. And of course, a community(the male gender sect) which is weakening day by day & is going through the low of the recession, expecting an exhibition of strength of the order of rebelling against parents would be like asking for too much.

As a result of his misjudgement of getting into a relationship which could never fructify, & his inability to gather the strength to fight it out, he may never be able to fulfill his desire to marry the woman he desires to.

Now coming to the parents of the guy:

Peer pressure: We in India often talk about the ever increasing population & the competition it induces amonst individuals in the society. This competition takes various facets, from creating a healthy competition to a mere rat-race; what is interesting to see here is that while we talk about our generation bearing the brunt of this competition; our previous generation doesnt remain untouched. Parenthood as an arena of competition is as much an arena as is any JEE or CAT. While a lot of parents transalate their children's success in these arena to success of their parenthood, the highlight that emerges is that Indian Parents in todays times are under immense pressure to prove to their peers how sincerely & intently they have reared their kids. In the process of trying to be the best amongst peer group, parents dont hesitate from dictating their children into chosing a line of career, or an institution of education, or the eventual job & sometimes altogether the path of career. With female children getting equal encouragement from their backgrounds, the competition in parents' peer group has rocketed several folds. As a result of all this, many parents just dont want to risk their child's fture by putting it in his/her own hands. Also the child following parents' directions in terms of what he does in life makes the parents look good in society- it just proves that the child has good sanskaram to follow his/her parents' will. The risk involved with children taking their own decision combined with the unsankared syndrome motivates parents to reject what the child proposes he desires to do.

Parental Ego: To all this, I would also like to add the angle of what i call the 'egoistic parent'. In the case mentioned by the author above, had the guy's mother accepted the guy's idea of marrying Payal, what is the answer that she would have given Mrs. Tiwari who offered the proposal of a gem-like girl. Ofcourse she would have to tell her that her son has chosen someone on his own. Now to do that a lot of parents would have to take a hit on their ego. confessing that your son is taking his own decision means that you arent playing enough role in your son's life. Which eventually transalates into the credit of his successes also going solely to him. No matter how much of a 'developing nation' we may be, our society hasnt attained the maturity to accept that the child's success can be attributed solely to him/her!!

Insecurity: I dont know about both parents, but mothers in general like to have control of their son. Infact not only mothers, women in general like t have control of men in their life. And easiest prey to such a control is your own son. Losing control on your son is very hard to cope up for a woman. This is also another reason why a mother may never permit her son to choose a girl of his choice; because popular beliefs suggest that a girl of the guy's choice usually gets an upperhand in his priority of attention scheme. Now thats quite a popular belief of our society, and believe me these popular beliefs though extremely baseless, are so subtly ingrained in us(and especially mothers) that any deviation from them is like inviting too much risk, which mothers are just not willing to take.

As a result of the peer pressure in parents' arena, parents' ego & the mothers' insecurities; the parents blackmail the son into chosing between the desired sweetheart & themselves. The choice is obvious, because after all 'blood is thicker than water'. And it takes a lot to shake the societal foundations of this normative adage.

Now coming to Payal & the real plight: ( now I am going to make some huge assumptions, because very little info on Payal has been provided by the author in the excerpt)

Payal kind of girls of course belong to very progressive families. Families that encourage their daughters to study, encourage them to stand at par with the society, and empower them to take both big & small decisions in their life ( I am assuming all that because Payal has reached the level of working in the same office as the guy himself). For a girl like Payal, it is not very hard to fructify her desire of marrying the guys she wants to, primarily because just as the family has given her the liberty to chose her career & pursue it, they would do the same for her life-partner.

Now, look at the irony of the situation, the one who has the liberty to take decisons liberally, is afterall the puppet of the situation. I mean, what can she do, she is helpless, she fell in love with someone she thought loved her (which is not a bad assumption to make given that the guy after all thought of taking the proposal to his parents). So she was right there & then she lands into an awkward situation wherein she is being dictated by the guys misjudgement & weakness, the parents' ego & insecurity. If it were her own parents, she could have probably explained to them. But she cant explain, argue or fight with someone else's parents. Parents who arent hers & probably wont even consider any explainations from her because she is both a aforeign party & the party with the highest stake( hence likely to have a biased viewpoint to what is more a game of egos & weaknesses than LOVE).
The result is a situation of helplessness & despair, a feeling of 'how terribly wrong a decision did I take in the first place?"( when I got involved with this guy).

So while the author of the above post talks about the guy's plight, I think the real sufferer is the girl in this situation. And though we live in a developing society, these are some perils of living in an age which talks more of flux than development. I think our generation will have to bear the brunt of it...and hopefully our coming generations will reap the fruits of our hard times.

I know I have made several assumptions in the above article...the data that was available in the author's post was very little to build on the kind of conclusions that I have...my apologies to the author incase the conclusions I have drawn are not in sync with the point he was trying to make...but i have added a little more to the situation in order to understand the dynamics of such situations and the plausible causes & motivations of such situations in this developing society of ours.
I know a lot of things that I have spoken about are extremely contraversial, and maynot even apply to the society as a whole, but my judgement is based on a small sample of a segment which has seen itself in situations like the one mentioned by the author.

Constraints of Independence

in·de·pend·ence –noun
1.Also, independency. the state or quality of being independent.
2.freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others.
3.Archaic. a competency.
When i look back at my life, I see that this word has had a lot to do with how I have lead my life(especially in the last 8 years). My childhood was spent in a cosmopolitan culture, owing to which I thought my measure of exposure& hence independence was relatively more than would have been of any small-town child. Though Delhi had a lot to do with shaping up my idea & need for freedom, my parents did their bit by making me realise the need & importance of being on my own ( independent as i may coin it). Once I moved to engineering college, my father who had forcibly stuck to job opportunities in and around NCR( because my sis & I were in school till then), began to explore opportunities out of town, and in no time of me having assumed life in college, did my parents move out of Delhi. The cessation of my parents' chaperoning the and the beginning of life in hostel gave me a greater chance to explore life on my own.
Though I talk about having grown independent in the past 8 years, I do beleive that it is much more deep-seated, and though the journey towards being independet can be prominently traced back from the times my parents left me on my own in Delhi, I am sure the seeds for the same were sown by my parents long ago when they were bringing me up.
While I dont want to take away any credit from my parents on the way they brought me up, I think it wont be fair if I dont mention the other side of the classical debate of nurture vs. nature. Yes, all I mean is that by nature I am someone who likes to be independent, to be on my own, to make my own decisons, and take responsibilites of both success and failure. I remember having made some of my biggest decisions in life all on my own. My decision to do an MBA immediately after engg was just one of them. And I thank my parents that they never questioned or imposed their opinion on me. I still remember when I was filling up forms for MBA entrances, I had decided to appear only for three exams, and that too no addendum applications to them. I had kept my options extremely niche, I knew if I dont make it to one of the three I dont have to do an MBA in that year. As a result of my decision I sometimes do feel that I should have done an MBA after acquiring some work-exp, but then the amazing experience of IITK just justifies the loss (if at all) I may have incurred by doing a back to back degree. At the end of the day, the blame is mine, the praise is mine...and I am glad both are mine!!
One of my friends once said: 'I want my wife to be as independant as you, shubham'. I remember having chuckled at that!! Reason being, independence is not a potion that you grind and push down someone's thoat, its a state of mind, its your attitude, and to top it all its a result of years of nurturing; also it takes the kind of toil (which I did voluntarily), that I once undertook in life.
While I have intelligently and responsibly exercised freedom in every aspect of life, both as a student & now as a working professional, there was one aspect which was always a source of both concern and pride in my life, that was my financial independence. As a spendthrift, independence of this sort was not only an achievement for me but also a necessity. Since life in Delhi could get really expensive when it came to enjoying, I made sure whatever I spend on my enjoyment/luxury should be my own hard-earned and not my parents' sweat-n-toil. That way I knew I would realise the real cost of every bit of enjoyment. And mind you, its not that my parents didnt have the resources, they posibly had more than was required to support two children. But their money was hard-earned, and in order to develop the respect for the same, I decided that any splurge that I did would be with my own money.
Here I would like to define two things which already people must be controversially guessing. One being, what was this 'splurge' that I wanted to do. Mind u, my definition of splurge was very simplistic, far from what a notorious mind can think. It meant buying a pair of branded footwear every weekend ( i love footwears, i own more than someone can possibly tolerate) & a luxurious spa at a nice up-scale salon, in those days (and still) VLCC. I mean this is luxury, and for those of you who are looking at this with the looks " Weirdo, do u even know what luxury/splurge means??', well in my definition it meant what i just mentioned. And thanks to this definition, in my hostel I used to be famous for having the maximum number of footwears(though I was famous also for an ever-bursting wardrobe of clothes, but my liking for clothes never till date have matched my fetish for shoes) and often girls borrowed a pair to match with their dress for the odd date that they went on. Also talking about the pampering VLCC spa...... boy!! nothing matches that feeling, and even till date there are a lot of working women professional who maynot have the heart/money for a splurge like that. The pride with which i mention these things here is not because these were upscale & fashionable things to do ( in fact there were far more fashionable things, like going to discotheques, which believe me i have done on count of fingers, and that too the counting finishes just as it begin i.e. my whole life experience at a discotheque has been once, though i was an avid dancer at JAM sessions in college fests!!).
The second contraversy that I think I should be clarifying here is, what was the 'source of money' for all the splurge that I did. Well, doesnt sound extraordinary but it will as and when I go into the mintue details of the experience. I used to teach 10th standard maths tuitions to a student in kashmere gate (very close to my college). I have always loved Maths as a subject. But the irony that I was caught in in my chosen vocation was that if I had taught that student for long enough I would have begun to hate the subject. That guy was 'dumbness' personified!! My hostel wingmates had given him the epithet of 'dumb-head', and nothing could have more appositely & simply described what he actually was. My dissemination of any mathematical knowledge to him made me feel guilty of my liking & knowledge for the subject.
To elicit more on his potential, let me tell you that his claim to fame was that he had already flunked 9th standard, so my task was to help him clear the 9th standard compartment exams(which I successfully did - and for that u really need to pat me on my back) & then prepare him for the 10th standrd board exams(wwhich...ok, never mind!!). After paying me Rs. 250 per hour for several months, all he could manage was a 8 on 100 in the final board exam. Can u imagine 8 on 100!! oh my GOD!! which soil did GOD use to carve his brain or rather I should say what was the quality of fodder filled into his brain... While the whole experience of making money from teaching tuitions was exciting & richening, the end result was putting off enough. When I heard that he flunked with 8 on 100, I felt like nick-naming myself 'dumb-head' for the fact that I accepted him as a pupil, and ofcourse for not even having had him get 33 on 100. Was 33, so much of a task?? I guess not, but yes I am sure it wasnt as easy as 8, which you can easily get for the sheer cleanliness & neatness of blank white paper on your answer script (if I were the examiner I would awarded 8 marks by looking at 8 blank sheets...which is what I am sure the board examiner did too!!). And as if this shock wasnt enough for me, his mother had wanted me to teach him for his compartment exams too...oh my GOD, I said, I couldnt have borne the trauma of putting him through trauma for another 3 months. So I quit that job, though I would love to take up teaching Mathematics as a vocation (I shall use my past experince as a caveat in selecting my pupil). Though the source of income stopped, I had other things to keep the money flowing in, I did oriflame network marketing for some time, only to realise that marketing was a tough task ( kudos to my DAD who has done it for nearly 30 years now, pitty i wasnt cloned with his gene in this aspect...I really appreciate these marketers).
Of course, all this stopped once I went to Kanpur, but believe me in Kanpur I had many more enriching experiences so the need of for richening diminished. I was a restraint spender in the 1st year. But in the 2nd year, after my Bangalore stay for my internship, there was just no looking back. I was spending in the 2nd year as amuch as I was spending in the internship days. Those were the days that hit my Dad's pocket the most...anyway that's history now...and here are the days when I am earning & the days when I am suppose to be earning.
Reiterating the financial independence part, I exhibit utmost pride in flaunting my financial independence. I am never perturbed to pay the bill of sitting out at a coffee shop with a friend, because it just gives me a kick, a reminder "Shubham, you are fiancially independant". And though I dont want to publically promote this, lest all coffee-cravers would soon be inviting me to cafe coffee day all the time; the point that I am trying to put across is that financial independence to me has been not only the achievement of my life, but has grown into an inherent need of my composition in terms of my self-esteem & ego.
Where I am coming from is that if suppose I get married to a guy who is filthy rich & hence asks me not to work, my sheer problem is where will I get the money to justify & splurge limitlessly. I mean, though he could have a big bank balance & I would be the beholder of several add-on credit cards, but then thats not my money & for the money that doesnt belong to me, I dont think I have the liberty (all by myself) to decide what all I can spend on. What i might do in a situation mentioned to me, is still not conclusive, simply because it is hypothetical & hence a lot of parameters stand missing.
So I just leave this as an issue to be pondered on...if ever required. And the clue to reaching a conclusion on this issue lies in what Professor Rahul Varman once said(I am sure it wasnt his orignal, but it was him that I had first heard this from). He said:
Freedom lies in realising that constraints exist.
My pride in my independence & the irony it bestows on me suggests that while I bask in the glory of my paycheck & bank-balance, I have to realise that this freedom is costing me my ability to accept someone else pay for my needs. While it does disturb me, I am optimistic that togetherness may change/tweak a lot of ideals & principles of my life. And i am sure they will be for the better!! I have heard that relationships make one very accomodative, and hopefully they not only make people accomodative in the intangibles/ tacit behaviors of a partner but also in the material attributes that are showered on you as a result of him/her. My guesses are that dependence is an integral component of building closeness in the kind of relationship that I am aspiring to get into. And the crux to getting into a relationship & maintaining it successfully shall lie in my understanding that: independence cannot be completely/wholly determined by financial independence. And somewhere I know that devoid of the financial independence, I still shall be 'independent', because it is second nature to ME.

Marraige, Money Matters

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.

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!!

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!!

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.

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!

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...

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