Here and There

The last one month has been hectic. I was in Palakkad, Kerala for a day for my cousin's engagement and my, what an amazingly pretty place it is. We took a train from Chennai to Coimbatore and drove down to Palakkad to a village called Noorani.

It is the monsoon season and it had been raining in Kerala for more than a month. The greenery around me was refreshing and the drive to Palakkad picturesque. It had rained through the night and the entire place looked fresh. I had a whale of a time. The engagement was in a small Aiyappa temple and was attended by what seemed like the entire village. I joked around that the situation reminded me of Alaipayuthey (original tamil movie of Saathiya – which was infinitely better).Maadhavan goes to a village for his friend’s wedding and he bumps into Shalini. Drawing inspiration from that, I was also on the lookout for Shakti (Shalini’s screen name in the movie). And what more, Madhavan's screen name was Karthik. Don't say it. I know what you are thinking. But I shall spare you the rest and sigh that is where the similarities with the movie ended.

Anyways the village was a small quaint place. It was the kind of place that one imagines when indulging in romantic nostalgia. Of an ancestral home where, when you visit, you feel you have discovered a small part of yourself. Nooraani was just that. Quiet place, where time flowed in joyful bliss.

Camera can often capture the moment and possibly the mood, but the combination of both is in the eyes of the beholder.

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Sometime last week I hurt my back. It was pretty bad. In the sense, I couldn't sit continuously for more than 5 minutes. I had a niggling back ache for over few weeks but never gave it too much importance. And by the time I went to the doctor, it was a sharp shooting pain that radiated away from the base of my spine. The doc advised my 5 days of bed rest and prescribed a few tablets. I was then asked to return after 5 days. If it situation did not improve, I would be subjected to X rays and MRI to check for slip disc.

With the scare of a slip disc, I dutifully complied with all the restrictions imposed. On the 5^th day I was dreading the visit to the Orthopaedic. After a few basic questions on my back pain that I answered with all sincerity, he summarily dismissed the slip disc theory. Yayy! Severe muscle cramps, strain etc was deemed to be the reason. A week more of no bending, lifting heavy stuff or sitting on the floor and I would be fit and fine. It has been close to a week after the second visit and I feel much better. Phew!

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Clicking Eagle (CE), who has been mentioned earlier in this blog, my (ex) roommate moved out a couple of hours ago.

His new assignment has taken him to London for a year, but I doubt it would be much more. Often riled as the 'Dostana' couple for sharing a room, CE and I had a blast over the year that he stayed here. So on Friday night, my other flatmate MV and I hosted a send off party at our place. There were 12 of us from campus days and we had a blast. We were in high spirits and soon the hall was converted to a mini dance floor. Good music, great conversations that lasted way into the night. As people left, MV and I decided that we would meet CE’s desire of a drive through the new Bandra- Worli sealink. So at 2.30 am we took a taxi across the sea link. It is truly a marvellous sight - the suspension bridge lit up in all its glory. Phenomenal. Once we had decided to succumb to our impulses, we decided to make our way to Marine drive at 3am. There was a slight drizzle and the waves lashing onto the breakers were spraying mist that left us slightly damp. A few snaps of the queen’s necklace and of the night skyline were surreptitiously taken before the cops asked us to leave and we headed straight to the TAJ for desert. The triple layered chocolate mousse (white, normal and dark) was sinful and we did get a glimpse of a few film stars there. We finally decided to head home and reached back around 4ish. A few hours of sleep and we were up packing and sending him off.

Three of us CE, tallboy and I hang out a lot together since campus days. CE and I have been in Mumbai for over 3 years and tallboy settled in Chennai a year or so ago. CE is irreplaceable (like he always says) and there is a void left behind by his move and that can be only filled by tallboy. And tadaaaaaa!!!, tallboy is moving to Mumbai and moving in with me by early September. Yayyy!

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One of my closest of friends graduated this year from one of the world's premier B schools in US. And she has not yet landed a job. It has been 3 months since graduation and close 6-7 months of job hunting and still she hasn't got what she is looking for. With a loan that runs into 6 digits (Dollar terms) and no job in hand - due to the downturn - which is no fault of hers, she has all the reasons to be gloomy, morose, anti social and the likes. But she is none of these. I am copying a small part from her most recent post.

It's funny how faith works. Oftentimes it is difficult for the rational mind to grasp faith as a concept. For it can seem rather blind, baseless and unscientific. The rational mind understands effort and result and expects them to be proportional to each other. It cannot settle for an aggregate but non-chronological reciprocity between effort and result. Neither can it understand belief without proof, or patience without progress. Rational as I claim to be, I believe effort and faith feed into each other. Faith induces effort even when the fruit is not in sight or within reach. Unrelenting hard work in turn serves to augment the very faith that one is constantly inching towards the fruit.

In principle, one could have faith in anything- in oneself, in instinct, in justice, in the ultimate reign of goodness, in the immutable laws of nature, in Time, in God. I think it is something, maybe the only thing, that protects our irrevocable right to dream, our sometimes irrational optimism, and our unjustifiable claim to lofty goals and ideals. It is what keeps the innocence in us from escaping.

Back and forth, back and forth, life will go on. I know. But right now, there is a breeze in my hair. The grass is young and green. The moon is high and blue. The world is picturesque. The idealist lives on...

She reeks of optimism and self confidence that is inspiring to say the least. In my peer set, I know a few similar cases and I know how they are dealing with the situation. Grim at worst and nonchalance at best. But here is a girl who refuses to let circumstances dictate terms. Atta Gal!

ps: If you haven't noticed yet, Thoughtsafari writes fantabulously. Her posts are sporadic, but you can read them all here.

Pps: If you can help with jobs in financial sector, please write in :D

Friday Musings and celebration

I don't know if anyone ever thinks of existential questions like the purpose or the raison d’être of his life or man in general, as much as I do. ( I mean amongst people like us and not philosophers). These thoughts are triggered for many reasons but this one picture which I took sometime ago often inspires many moments of poignancy.

It was taken in Kerala just off Thiruvananthapuram taken one late evening. I don't know if the picture makes it clear here, but it is the point where an estuary is flowing into the Arabian sea. I am standing on one of the banks of the rivulet looking towards the sangam and the sea. It is the point of ultimate confluence.

There are two ways of looking at the point of confluence. One is that if it is inevitable that the river will end in the sea then does she (the river) have any choice or control over her own fate. The second way, is to define the purpose of the river is its confluence with the sea (Matrix style) and hence do your best to fulfill that purpose.

My question is not which of the two arguments I believe in, but which I believe more in. Someone asked me why is it important to know the answer? Or why is it even important to think about these questions.

I don't have a clear answer? I think the answer possibly lies in our innate tendency to seek out the origins or the sources of everything that we observe around us. To understand 'The Why'.May be it is similar to the spirit in science where we all are in quest for finding out the most fundamental of principles from which everything can be explained. Or it could be explained better by our dogged determination to understand the Big Bang. While today we claim with reasonable certainty that we know what happened 1 picoseconds (10 to power minus 12) after big bang but still, we are not satisfied.Or maybe it could be likened to the countless yaatras we take to Gangotri, Yamunotri or Tala- Cauvery. (Sources of Ganga, Yamuna and Cauvery). I think it is not so much as to see or touch the source but more so in the philosophical hope that behind(or beyond) the source lies something so pure, so pristine that it is almost other-worldly.

Ultimately, I guess it boils down to one's curiosity (jigyaasa).

I am reminded of the opening track in Shyaam Benegal’s ‘Bharat Ek Khoj’ which used to be aired in Doordarshan in late 80s. The entire series is up on YouTube. I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to discover this. I am overwhelmed with Nostalgia. The link to the title track is here.

As an aside, the title track asks very interesting questions and the ending track here tries to answer them.

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Over the weekend, my closest friend graduated from one of the most prestigious schools around in the world. She is now an MBA. She is currently celebrating her moment of triumph, half way across the world and I can sit here in front of this laptop, only wishing I was there. But I can claim for sure that that I am happier than she is.

Almost half a decade ago, more than that, in fact 6 years ago, around this time, we started preparing for our MS/ MBA together. While we soon gave up on the MS dream, MBA and IIM was the only thing we wanted for ourselves. We would spend hours preparing, attending classes, writing mock tests etc. Both of us were driven by the fact that we knew that each of us were capable of so much more and nothing but the best was good enough for us.

I got plain lucky when I cracked CAT in my first attempt, grabbing admits from all IIMs and having the luxury of choosing where to go. She did not make it the first time around. She slogged her ass off for the next year CAT and missed out narrowly. Agony! She then decided to apply to the US B Schools along with writing her CAT. It wasn't the easiest of times. A job that she hated yet had to work 12 hrs a day and many weekends; GMAT, essays, SOPs, interviews and the likes. I remember that 2006 was a year that she strived and struggled. But, I guess it all worked out fine. She got to say no to Stanford and GSB Chicago (if I remember right) in favour of Wharton. And by the way, she was the youngest member of her graduating class.

She graduates this year with a finance major and finds herself right in the middle of this economic conundrum. Guess it is ordained that she can't get things on a platter, but I am not too worried. I know she will get that what she wants, albeit a couple of months late.

As for the reason why I say I am happier than her, I will paste an excerpt from the email that I sent her..

I remember fondly the days when both of us started our preparation for MS/MBA together. Those days were fun :). While I got plain lucky, you just made your own luck. So somewhere I feel that the little dream that we hatched out for ourselves, sitting in that Sanatorium house, has been achieved in full measure. The incomplete happiness that I felt when you did not make it to the IIMs has dissolved.

So I am celebrating this occasion and everyone is more than welcome to join the party!