State of the Nation - A farce!

I am sick and tired of terror attacks. Yes, who likes them. But I am even more disgusted with sequence of events that follow. So damn predictable.

1. Immediate announcement of compensation to the kin of the dead and injured.
2. State government would blame the centre for not giving intelligence inputs
3. Center would claim that Intelligence was given, but local authorities did not act properly
4. State Chief Minister would appeal for communal harmony, would say that his government would do everything to root out terrorism
5. Intelligence agencies would blame groups with relations to either a particular community or support from other side of the border. They would also play the 'intelligent game' of asking people not to blame anyone without investigation, while we all know that all they are going to do is blame 'certain groups'.
6. PM would appeal for communal harmony
7. Home minister would say that terrorist attacks would not deter India from fighting terrorism and removing anti national elements. And that peace talks with Pakistan would go on
8. News channels would have a field day reporting LIVE. Each fighting with one another for 'breaking news.'
9. SMS poll in news channels... ' is India too soft on terror' with some 80% saying yes.
10. experts would write columns in websites and news papers on 'what the blasts mean'. All news channels would have talk shows calling one person from UPA, one from NDA and one 'independent' expert. UPA would blame the nature of terrorism, NDA would blame UPA for weak policies and removing POTA while independant expert would say we need better coordination, a joint task force, and systemic planning! Blarghk!
11. Countries from around the world would try to beat each other in being the first to condemn the blasts and call them acts of terror.
12. In all the melee, the masterminds of the synchronised attack would live happily ever after.

This is the story in Jaipur, in Hyderabad , in Bangalore and even freaking Mumbai. Security is a farce. All we can do is pray that we are not at the wrong place!

Mr. Prime Minister, I whole heartedly support you on the need for energy security, but do you understand that we need 'life security' first? Naxals? Terror attacks? Are there any other excuses that you can invent?

Rear view mirror

This is part two. Please read part 1 here.

It was a long flight back for Diya. She did not like long flights. She could never sleep. She always felt that if she dozed off, there would be no one to fly the plane. 'And anyways, all airplanes have this strange smell', she would argue. She would take longer time to recover from the airplane experience than even jet lag.

All the passengers were sleeping. Hers was the only reading light on. She was looking through pictures of her childhood. Those days seemed so far away in her memory. Everything was one big blur. Of course she remembered a few instances which were etched in her memory, like when she was 10 years old and was taken sari shopping with her mom and aunts. She had liked a bluish green sari and asked her mom to buy it for herself which she promptly did. Or this other time when she was 16 and her cousin who was 14 had just 'come of age' and was regaling her with 'non-veg' jokes, sitting under the shade of water tank on a hot summer afternoon. She remembered one and let herself give out a half smile.

But as she looked through most of her other old snaps, she realised that she remembered when and where the pictures were taken but nothing much beyond it. Maybe it was just her current state of mind. She fidgeted with her book, her ipod and her albums spending equally less time with all of them. She knew that soon, she would start thinking of her mother and how to handle/ react to whatever situation that she would face when she landed. It would have been so much easier if Dave was with her now. But she knew he was right. ‘It is your family and you need to confront them. Plus its the worst time for me to meet your family for the first time.'

She caught herself thinking that something might happen to her mother while she is on the flight? She quickly dismissed the thought, telling herself to think positively and quickly sent a prayer upwards to her 'ishtdevata'. She wondered whether the prayer would reach Him faster as she was already up in the air. Her mind quickly shifted to her father. How would he react? A quiet man, he was complete contrast to the other three members in the house. Her mom, brother and she were loud, always talking and gossiping. At nights, they would sit in the kitchen discussing and dissecting the events of the day while he would sit reading his paper or business magazine. He was unassuming and a man of few words. But off late she had started to realised that she seemed to be more like her father in her thought process. And the more she thought about it, she realised that her dad, in his own silent way, had left more impressions on her than she had earlier realised.

'We are now entering Indian airspace', the captain's voice suddenly crackled through the speakers. She could almost feel the 'collective homecoming' of all the passengers around. As the plane aligned itself for landing in Chennai, she could spot the coast line and outline of the Coovum river. Her mind immediately registered the Coovum smell. It was instinctive. Years of train travel had taught her that Basin Bridge and Coovum smell meant that Central station was just a minute away. But that minute would seem like eternity.

The sudden jolt of the plane landing reminded her to switch on her blackberry. She heaved a sigh of relief as she read 'Amma normal - out of ICU' in the subject line. She looked out of the window as the plane taxied itself to its bay. She couldn't control the stream of tears that were flowing down her cheek. And this time, she did not want to.

She let her suitcase fall as she gave her brother a big hug. 'She's fine?'

'Yes she is. No problem at all. Out of ICU - in regular room. Under observation for a week.'

'What exactly happened? '

'A not too mild but not too serious kind of heart attack. A clot. Plus her diabetes complicated the operation a bit. I don't know too many details. I landed from few hours ago myself. You can ask appa. We are going to the hospital directly.'

‘I don't know how to face him. Is amma conscious? I can't face both together.'

'Yes she is conscious, I spoke to her. And you aren't going back after travelling half way around the world without meeting them, are you? Things would be uneasy first; but they would be fine. Don’t worry akka, you are after all their daughter. So tell me, how long you here, how is Dave?'

But Diya was not listening. She was watching the streetlights in the rear view mirror, wondering if those streetlights were actually closer or in fact farther than what they appeared.

She sat at the common area of 4th floor. She made her brother sit with her, in silence. She did not know what to do next.

'Appa..' She stood up.

'Go see amma. She is awake.' There was no smile or anger in the voice or on his face.

She walked steadily towards the room, opened the door and walked in holding her brother's hand. Her mom lay there in her nighty. She was sitting up and looked straight at them.

'Amma..' Her voice choked as tears flowed down her cheeks.

'Why have you come now? '

'Amma.. I know you are angry.. and you are right. I am sorry... '

'You hurt us. And what you did embarrassed and disgraced us. And you turn up today, after you hear that I am in the hospital. Where were you all these months, when the heartache you caused hurt more than this silly heart attack? I want you to turn back and go away. '

'These are your first reactions. I will talk to you later. Don't get agitated now. It is not good for you. I'll go now.' Diya turned and opened the door.

'Diya..’

‘Yes amma..’ . Diya turned around, with a big smile. Her mom had called out her name.

‘Sometimes life never gives you a second chance’

Answering Machine

It was a chilly Saturday evening. It had been snowing intermittently for over two days. Diya thought that it was quite abnormal for November. The weather gods had decided to be more benevolent today. It hadn’t snowed since morning. The roads had been cleared, the snow shovelled neatly to the sides. Diya and Dave decided that they would move into their new house today. They had spent close to 3 months searching for a house till they had chanced upon this one. Dave could not fathom a life in an apartment. 'Where will I play with my retrievers?' and Diya wanted a house from where she could feel the presence of the sea. Having grown up in a small apartment just off Besant Nagar beach in Chennai, sea had been her constant companion of many a year. The closest they could get to these requirements was a villa that had a backyard from where you could see the lake at a distance.

'But Dave is a nice guy ma!'.

'He is not one of us. He is white. An American. We cannot get along with him.'

'If one wants, we can get along with anyone.'

‘Don’t give me philosophical and idealistic answers. We live in a real world. He eats fish, meat and all those things. How do you expect me to live in a house where such things are cooked? Diya don't tell me you are going to cook non veg.'. There was a look of disgust on her mom's face.

Diya had rehearsed all these conversations innumerable times in the 16 hour flight from Newark to Chennai. She knew her parents well enough to know that she had no hope in convincing them. She had met Dave in her second year of Masters. She had taken up teaching assistantship with the same professor under whose guidance Dave was doing his Ph.D. They had met at the professor's house for Thanksgiving dinner. It wasn't love at first sight, but there was something attractive about him. The dinner was followed by a Broadway show, couple of movies, lunches, dinners and in two weeks time Diya knew that she was hopelessly in love with him, despite of all her efforts against it. She would lie on the bed at night, her thoughts oscillating wildly between how girly she felt around him and what this would mean at home.

She spent that Christmas at Dave's home in DC and in three days time she was like a foster daughter in the house. Dave's parents doted more on her, and this made Dave envious. She found Dave’s envy cute but she ensured that she enjoyed every bit of the attention that was being showered on her.

All through her 16 hour flight, she rehearsed every possible conversation, opposition and all her responses. She wanted to be patient and not loose her cool.

Yet something snapped within her. It was not what her mom had said, but the look of sheer disgust.

'I rather sit out the next 5 hours at the airport than in a house where people do not understand me'. She walked into her room slammed her door and walked out half hour later with her suitcase. No one tried to stop her. As she dragged her suitcase down those stairs, her brother Deep ran behind her, snatched her suitcase off. 'Go tell a proper bye to ma and pa. We'll go to the beach and then I will drop you off at the airport.'

Diya's thoughts were broken by the creaking sound of the garage door. 'We need to fix that horrible sound, Dave.' She said almost involuntarily. 'Still thinking about your family? Cheer up! We are entering our new home now. Smile!'

'Yeah, I am sorry.' She got off the Prius, wiping her tears of her cheeks. She skipped across the porch quickly, opened the front door after fumbling a bit with the keys and took a few steps into the house and stopped. She could see the living room, the guest room and the winding staircase to the first floor. A bluish black light lit the house. It seemed to be a curious mix of light from the heavens and street light filtered through the glass ceiling over the staircase. It seemed mystical. Dave's footsteps over the gravel made her aware of his presence. She shook her head, forcing herself to break off from her thoughts, wiped her moist eyes, switched on the lights and turned towards the main door and forced a smile.

'You ran in too soon. Did you see how beautiful the silhouette is, and the light reflecting off the lake?'

'Stop. .. Step in with your right leg …… ' .Her voice trailed as she realised what she was saying. She looked up at Dave who stood with one leg in the air at the door. She collapsed on to her knees and broke down sobbing.

'Hey Diya, this is Priya. .. I didn’t know that you were in the marriage market.' Priya sounded excited, disappointed and was feigning feeling of being hurt. It was as though she had been purposely kept out of a secret dealing.

'What do you mean? What are you blabbering?' It was not even April Fools day. She could trust Priya to play some prank. Priya was Diya's cousin, just six days younger. They had grown up together in Chennai and now were in US pursuing Masters. Priya lived within a 4 hour driving distance.

'Don't feign innocence. My mom just called me and asked me to checkout your profile on the matrimony site. Because of you now my parents are asking me to put my profile up. When did you agree? What about Dave? '

'Send me the link over mail. I will check it out and give you a call back. Bye! '

Diya was fuming by the time she read her own profile. She reached for her phone and called up Dave.

'Hey honey, wassup?'

'Dave, will you marry me? Can we get married in August, as soon as I finish?'

'What? What happened, Are you alright?' There was a discomforting silence. 'I mean.. I don't mean in that sense of being alright... You know what I mean right? 'This is too sudden and surprising… I am so happy you are thinking in about marriage... but what happened? Are you alright?’

'Yeah I am. Let us meet today for dinner and talk.'

Three months later, on a Saturday evening, Diya called home. She had stopped calling home. Only her parents called her once a week. She did speak to Deep everyday online to know what was happening at home, but she never called. She knew that it was a Sunday morning and her folks would be out for a walk along the beach. Predictably, she got the answering machine.

'Ma, this is Diya. I know this is going to be a big shock. I just called to say that I am getting married to Dave tomorrow. I don't know if I am doing the right thing or not, but after seeing my profile on the website, I just felt that I did not have a choice. I will miss you folks .... And .. and.. I am sorry’. Click.

Dave kneeled next to her, put his arm around and whispered into her ear 'You should call up your mom and speak to her.'

'But what will I tell her? What would I talk to her about? How do I even start the conversation?' Diya was almost yelling. 'I just left a message last time on the answering machine. I did not even tell her myself that I was getting married.' She was now crying uncontrollably.

'Why don't you leave a message again in the answering machine? Pour your heart out. That’s a start. We'll take it from there. '

Diya saw merit in what Dave was saying. The answering machine enabled her to converse with her mom yet avoid a conversation.

She checked the time, it would be Sunday Morning. She called her home, with one finger on the disconnect button, ready to hang up if someone picked up the phone.

'We are unable to take your call. Please leave your message, we will call you back'. She recognised her own voice from three years ago. At least this one thing had not changed.

'Ma.. I don’t know what to say ... How to start’. She was sobbing. 'I am sorry.. really sorry.' The silences were broken by her intermittent sobs. 'Today, I have grown so big that I am setting up my own home ... away from home. I don't know when I grew up.. I know I have been a bad daughter.. I don't know if you would forgive me.. I hope you will.. I don't have the guts to call and talk to you.. or face you.. but i know that you will get this message.. Even if you don't forgive me... I want to talk to you once.. Just once.. '

Dave's mobile rang out aloud. He gestured to Diya that he was stepping out of the house to pick up the call.

'Dave speaking '

'Dave... Dave.. This is Priya here.. Where is Diya? I amr unable to get her phone.'

'She is here. . on the phone.. Can I take a message?'

'Dave.. Dave.. Its Diya's mom. She isn't well.. I don't know what happened.. She is admitted in the ICU since yesterday.. She may not survive.'

Phoenix

Those millions of conversation you have in your mind, sometimes they are words that you can almost feel and sometimes they aren't even thoughts, yet you know what they mean. Or atleast you think so.

They take the form of uncertainity - not knowing what lurks around the corner. Oh how you wish you could take a sneak peek standing 5 feet away.

You advocate that the choices we make determine who we are and where we are headed. But the choices you made don't seem to be taking you anywhere. You are lost.

In the milling crowd, you search for familiar voices. Suddenly, you decide to walk away. You have wonderful company for the evening but you are still alone. You quickly check for your shadow - reassuring yourself that your faithful friend is still around.

You used to advice people that change is good. Yet today you think that it is just a justification given when things don't go the way you want, but you are forced to reconcile with reality.

You involve yourself in mundane activities to keep you occupied and tire yourself physically just to escape the daily trauma of putting yourself to sleep or waking up in the middle of the night.

One fine day you decide that you've had enough. You want to break free and decide that tomorrow would be a brand new day. But that tomorrow never comes.

You act strong, invulnerable. Yet, you know that you are like the duck in the pond. People just see your graceful swim, not noticing the desperate pedalling below the surface that helps you keep afloat.

Then one day you get bored of being bored. You get bored of telling people that you have a routine life. You start surfacing. You don't know whether the choices you made are right, but you know that you would make the very same ones if you could go back in time. You realise that you are still lost, but you begin to look around and start thinking that the journey isn't as bad as you had thought. It could have been much worse. No one knows, but today, you are reborn. You are Phoenix.

Lets do something about it..

I am uncomfortable. There is a food crisis in the world today and it is only going to get worse. I am so lucky to be immune to 5-8% rise in food costs, yet for majority of my countrymen and the population around the world, 5-8% rise is a 'recipe' for disaster. It would push many below poverty line and those below poverty line into disaster zone.

I am uncomfortable because at a very personal level I am completely uneasy with the feeling of someone going to bed hungry while I (and people around me) waste food because they had ordered too much or cooked a lot. It is not like I woke up today and discovered that I was uneasy with this thought, but in the past with the progress we were making, conditions were improving and we were successfully lifting more and more people above poverty line. But with the current price rise and given that it is here to stay for a while, it only means that all our hard earned progress might be nullified. Our Prime Minister has rightly called inflation a risk against which most of our country has little or no protection.

I want to do something at a broader scale but I do not know what to do or how to help. I welcome any and every idea that you guys have where I can commit my time/effort to help the cause. And while I try and figure out what to do to help in the larger scheme of things, I make a few personal committments here

1. I shall skip atleast one meal a week (if not two).

2. I would under-order at restaurants and eat a little less than order in excess and waste food.

3. Finally, I would spread this message around hoping to influence more people to be conscious about food consumption and wastage.

Lastly, I hope the few readers who do read this blog, also take it upon themselves to help spread awareness and make some personal committments in whichever manner they deem suitable, to help the situation. Individually, our efforts might be small and isolated but few hundreds of us can make a difference.

ps: The Inflation is 5-8% on a basket of goods. Essentials like grains, milk etc have escalated in double digits.

Progress

I have been busy over the past few months working on a pretty interesting project or series of projects. Now after almost 10 months of work on it, it has gone live. Well, in my industry where we sell soaps and shampoos, going live means seeing stuff on shelves - yeah the good old brick and mortar stores.

It is an awesome feeling of accomplishment to see ones project in-market. It is a team working on it and nothing can ever be accomplished alone, but when you can see the part of the work that you had led - being played out in-market exactly as you had envisioned it couple of months ago.. It is an awesome feeling - of satisfaction. Ofcourse markets are cruel forcing only the best to survive - so keeping my fingers crossed. Wish me luck!

There is a new feeling of confidence. New because this was the first time that there was no clearly defined end point or a goal. We had a vague idea on what it should look like but as we worked more on the project, we could articulate it better, feel it closer and finally see it for real. And as a person who measures personal development on the basis of number of different skill sets acquired and diverity of experiences that I have had versus just salary and designation, I feel I have made good progress :)

Back to the Present

Back after a long hiatus. The break was both self imposed and as a result of what is popularly called the writer's block :) (Atleast I would like to think so).

Anyways, in the past 2 months, I have been traveling a bit.(yes, yet again!) However this time it was international. I had a official trip to Singapore in the last week of March and I combined it with the weekends on either side. So I was in Kuala Lumpur for 2 days of which one was spent watching the grand prix at Sepang.

Man, KL is beautiful. It is futuristic. (Atleast for an average Indian who has spent 99.99% of his life here) It is such pretty mix of heritage and modernity ( not that these two have to be two different things). And the best way to explore a place is by walking around, with no ipods, soaking in the smells and sounds of the city. (As cliched as it may sound. I am sure Mahogany would agree though!) So a colleague of mine and me walked the city starting around lunch time till late in the night. We covered quite a bit of KL through the walk.

Walking through KL starting from the National Museum to the old station to Merkara square to Petronas and KL towers was a brilliant experience. I observed that the people were disciplined in their driving and very courteous in their talk. (Except a minor altercation with a cab driver - who was an Indian - and was abusing us in Tamil. I guess some things don't change that easily.)
Through conversations I figured out that KL developed to what it was today because of wanting to be better than Singapore. A sense of competition can do wonders, even at such a macro level. Bombay should benchmark New York and London and Singapore if it wants to be anywhere close to be called a global city. And here is where I go back to my theory that we need leaders who can sell a vision and energize people. Today there are only two things that unite India - cricket and war. Nothing else. It is a sad state.

This was my third visit to Singapore in the span of 2 years. And each time I have stayed there for a week. First time I was wow'ed by the infrastructure and facilities and how smoothly the entire system worked. My first level of wow was that things actually worked. And then I realised that they were efficient. I could say that I was enamoured by the entire place. The second time I went in, I guess I was very critical - trying my best to find out what I could crib about. 'The trees are planted so neatly, and branches are all trimmed. All trees are uniformly shaped, just like the ones we are taught to draw as kids. Its not natural. Everything here is so artificial - 'man-tamed'' . ' There is a perpetual state of fear. You can't even express your opinions openly. It does not have freedom of speech ' .. And so on..

This time during my trip, I realised that the system working frees up a lot of time, effort and energy. I could traverse the city without feeling tired and worn out. I still crib about manicured trees and nature reserves but the convenience the city offers in phenomenal. I ate out every single day of the week and tried Egyptian, Turkish, Swiss, Mexican, Thai cuisines amongst others. I went clubbing one night and had an amazing time at 'Insomnia' where the live band totally rocked and then later at rupee room with some 'desi' music. Its a global city to state the obvious. And this was the first time I experienced this facet of it. So my feelings for Singapore are mixed. I am drawn by the diversity in experiences that the city can provide, yet somewhere I am unsettled by the negative vibes and messages that hit you from all directions.. 'Do not do xxxxx else you will be fined, if you do yyyy also you will be fined.'. Is that the only way system can be made to run efficiently?
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The thing about living in India is that you are exposed to paradoxes of affluence and poverty everyday. I am reminded every single day of how lucky and blessed I am. This constant reinforcement I am sure also helps a lot of people donate, get involved in charity or work for the underpriviledged. But in a place like Singapore, I doubt the fact that there could be external reinforcements. So charity, volunteer work would really come from within/ family. Narayan Murthy once made an observation that he admires Bill Gates' charity work a lot for given Gates' background and the society where he comes from, it is much more difficult to be so giving (on an average) than in India where you see so much suffering around you. I now understand what he meant. And a trivia for all of you - More money is spent researching Baldness than Malaria. We really need to get our priorities right!
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I had dinner with my friend this week and he reminded me of quote that I had mentioned to him long ago . I think it is pretty insightful.

Do not expect the world to be nice to you, just because you are a nice guy, It is like hoping that the lion wont eat you, just because you are vegetarian!

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Being this person who hates silences, I try to maintain constant conversations. Silences are discomforting. Or so I thought. In this Singapore trip, I spent a lot of time with a very close friend of mine. And we weren't chattering away into the night. We spoke and there were silences. And they weren't unsettling. I guess I had moved to the domain of comfortable silences. In the end, it left me with the warmest of feelings. Now I know that you don't need physical proximity to be at ease with anyone that you move into the zone of comfortable silence.

A day in Dilli

I was in Delhi last week, just like so many of the previous weeks. The difference this time was that I stayed back on saturday. A friend of mine was in Delhi too and we decided to walk the Red Fort, Chandini Chowk and Jama Masjid area. I have seen the Red Fort earlier, but not the rest.

The entire day was well spent walking at a slow pace, exploring the smallest of the streets in Chandini Chowk while discussing a few nuances of what I thought was an elaborate swimming pool in the Red Fort to cultural colonialism and so on. Some good conversations happenned.

There was enough time at hand to 'soak up the atmosphere' in each of these places (as cliched as it may sound!). While we sat in these places quietly, each to our own thoughts, I suddenly realised that my thoughts were influenced by the place I was in, subtly, but influenced none the less. Anyways here are a few pictures taken from my cell phone.

I made a trip by myself to the India Gate later that evening. Though I have driven around India Gate earlier quite a few times but had never stopped there. Everytime I pass India Gate, I get goosebumps. And this time as I stood there, watching the flame flicker in the gentle breeze against the backdrop of the evening sun almost kissing Rajpath, I was overwhelmed by the place. The weight of history was a heavy but joyful burden.

Ps: We really do not take care so much about our soldiers/heroes. We reward the unnamed soldier with 'Indian of the year' through SMS campaigns, yet there are scams in coffins, allotment of petrol bunks and so on. Damn!

Tagged

Its been a quiet period. Little activity in life and hence here on my blog. While I search for an inspiration to write about, I've been tagged by Unpredictable.

Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like). Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better. Now don’t forget to read the archived posts and leave comments.

Well, I am not too big on passing on tags, but well, let me atleast link up a few posts. This tag gave me a reason to read through my archives atleast.

Family: I haven't written too many on this theme. Here is one dedicated to my paternal grandmom. I wish I knew her better when she was alive. And here is one about my relationship with my maternal grandfather. Someday I will write more on my grandfather. He deserves a blog, all for himself.

Friend: I do not name people explicitly ( except ofcourse H & D here and here), but most of what I write is stolen from reality/ from life which revolves around friends :)

Myself: There is too much off myself all over this blog. hmm.. now that I think of it, I should probably do something about it.

My love: Well.. hmm.. Whenever that happens I hope its like this. ( In my defence, I heard 'Ondra Rendra' from Kakka Kakka and Partha Mudhalnaale from Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu back to back and was inspired!

Anything I like: Travel (1, 2, 3). Something for greater common good, hopefully. (The number in the link has changed!). Short stories. Nostalgic train rides I guess.

of Intent

After much travel, and lots of work (or so I claim - I hope my boss agrees!:)) I am now home on a week's break. And sadly today is the last day of that break.

Having nothing to do is thrilling for a while, but after the initial euphoria, the lack of activity has made me even more restless. My mood has transited through happiness, sorrow, matter-of-fact and tired-of-thinking-kind of fatigue. I guess I just can't lie around doing nothing :( . I atleast have to think.

I must have been a cat in my previous life. I just move from room to room, snuggle into a warm corner and sleep. All good things have to come to an end. Sigh!

I have been talking a lot to a friend on the theme of 'intention' and having an ' honest intent' being the starting step for everything. And today I read two posts back to back on Swetha's and Unpredictable's blog on the same topic. Guess a lot of us are thinking along similar lines currently.

Its back to routine from tomorrow.

Go Kiss the World!

' Life is a lesson, you learn it when you are through'

There is only so much one can understand and comprehend at a particular stage in life. The answer to some of the larger questions in life, I believe lies in 'wisdom' which is a combination of intelligence and experience. I strongly believe that as one passes through life and amalgamates different experiences into himself, he gets wiser. How he uses this wisdom is upto him, but experience and intellect (his ability to discern) together brings fresh perspectives and sometimes a new meaning dawns upon him.

When I joined IIM Bangalore, the inaugral speech was given by Mr. Subroto Bagchi COO Mindtree Consulting & Mr. Ramachandra Guha, eminent historian. Mr. Bagchi, gave a wonderful speech. It struck a chord, I guess with a lot of people in that hall, including yours truly. But the full purport and import of that speech never hit me on that day . I was excited on making it to the supposed big league, and raring to go, work hard to earn that degree, climb the corporate ladder and earn those big bucks. (I still am :P) But that speech remained lodged in somewhere in the recesses of my mind. I came across it again today. And now, I relate to whatever Mr. Bagchi said in so many ways. I guess this is because I have spent a couple of years working and earning and have a new set of experiences. It is such a humbling and inspiring speech. I am sure that when I read it again a couple of years later, I will relate to it even more. The last line to me sounds so profound yet simple. 'Extra ordinary achievements(success!) from ordinary lives'

I am copying the speech below. It is long, but I assure you that it is well worth the few minutes. Read it and let me know what you think.

Go Kiss the World
Welcome Address by Subroto Bagchi, Chief Operating Officer, MindTree Consulting to the Class of 2006 on July 2, 2004 at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India

On defining success.

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep -
so the family moved from place to place and, without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father. My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely defines what success means to me today.

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government - he reiterated to us that it was not 'his jeep' but the government's jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep - we could sit in it only when it was stationary. That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father's office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix 'dada' whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, 'Raju Uncle' - very different from many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as 'my driver'. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe. To me, the lesson was significant - you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors. Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother's chulha - an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman's 'muffosil' edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to
know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson. He used to say, "You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it". That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept. Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios - alluding to his five sons. We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, "We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses". His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant. Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father's transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, "I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited". That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life, I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My
mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness. eanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term "Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan" and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University's water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination. Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over the next few years, my mother's eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my yes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, "Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair". I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, "No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed". Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes. To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life's own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life's calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world. In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, "Why have you not gone home yet?" Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self. There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create. My father died the next day. He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the mimetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant's world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversityin the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions. In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said, "Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world." Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity – was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss the world.

Travel and Learning -3

This has been an unbelievable month for me... I think I have set new standards in travel and have lived out of suitcase the entire month... atleast almost..

I started the New Year in Bangalore and since then I have been to Madras, Bombay, Delhi/Gurgaon, Kerala, Calcutta , Ahmedabad and Lucknow. I will be making a trip to Bangalore again next week. My status line for the month has been ' Transiting Bombay for the month'. .I am in Bombay only for 7-8 days this month.. I think :) ... And I am totally enjoying the travels.

Kumarakom - Kerala


There is something tranquil about this place. I was there on an offsite. I did not have my camera with me, but here are some pictures taken on my mobile.












I am an early riser and all these pictures were taken during my early morning walks. First day, as I lay on that hammock near the water, the sereneness of the place was overwhelming. My mind, not conditioned to 'nothing-to-do' state, decided to roam free amongst my thoughts. After a while, I realised that I was so lost in my self that I had not 'soaked in' the surroundings. And thats what I consciously did.

I noticed that the sound in the background was not of one bird but now, I could clearly distinguish 4-5 different sounds. A crow, a mynah, duck and two more that I could not identify. It was early morning and yet the boatsmen had got into their routine activities for the day. One boat sailed past me. It seemed to know where it was headed. I could already see the sweat on the oarsmen's forehead glistening in the sunlight that filtered through the coconut trees. These fishermen had definitely been working from quite early hours I guess. At a distance I saw, a boat opening up its sail and adjusting it according to the wind direction.

Sometimes we are so lost in ourselves and our thoughts. Guess we start liking ourselves too much, or start believing that our problems are unique and most trying, or we are planning the next race to run or the next battle to fight. This has to stop! atleast pause!

In the many travels that I have made in past 3-4 months or may be even in the past 6-8 months, I never got a chance to enjoy the place as much as I did here in Kumarakom. This time I am thrilled. Happy.
----*-----

In Cal, this time I managed to lay my hands on a lot of street food. . The veggie that I am, I couldn't eat the fish delicacies and the limited time meant that I could not go to Sourav's (I wanted to do that!). Sadly, on the day that I am in Calcutta, Dada scores a duck. Irony!

Anyways I digress. On Russell Street, just of Park street in Calcutta there are a bunch of street hawkers who sport a board which reads 'Awarded the best puchka in town during Calcutta street food festival'. I was taken there by AJ who is non bong but a Calcutta afficanado.(Difficult to find combo!). There I had some amazing puchka's and I had an orange kulfi. In the orange kulfi, the inside of it was completely drained out by making a hole at the bottom, the orange pulp then mixed with kulfi and stuffed back into the orange. This was now frozen and served.

The kulfi was awesome. Unbelievably good. I then had the chikoo and the sitafal kulfis and both were really good. Think about them as equivalent to Bombay's Naturals, but only in kulfi and one notch higher :) If you are in Calcutta, definitely try it.

---*---
In Ahmedabad, there is this small shop which sells pani-poori with 5 flavours of paani .. tamarind, pudina and 3 more ;). And it was yumm! This was at Vastrapur signal in Ahmedabad. Managed to finish my work at Ahmedabad, grab a lot of plates of paani-poori, some nice aalu parathas and I am now all smug with satisfaction.

*Lucky is wondering whether the readers think that he is paid travel to different cities to eat. Sadly his current job is not that, but he is open to such job offers*

Of coffee and conversations

Sandeep sat alone, staring out, at the traffic. Sheets of water slid down the window pane, blurring his vision of the road with disconcerting regularity. There seemed to be a rhythm to the sudden Madras rain. The rain had caught people unaware. It was January for heaven’s sake. People were scampering across the road, to find themselves a shelter. It all seemed so chaotic, yet there was a purpose in everyone’s movement. A method in the madness.

His thoughts led him to the previous night's conversation. Megha was getting married. This was the first ‘news’ he had heard about her , ever since they had broken up three years ago. It was a strange feeling. He was over her. He was seeing Priya now and was quite serious. He had rarely thought of Megha in the past year. Yet, when he heard the news, he was at discomfort, to say the least. He registered no part of the conversations that followed on the dinner table for the next hour. He could only hear Megha say ‘Look, if you want to make it formal, then mark today August 29th, as the day we called it off’. She could never muster up courage to look into his eyes and tell him that she no longer loved him. He wasn’t the perfect guy ofcourse, but who is perfect these days anyway?

His coffee arrived, the aroma bringing him back – to now. The cream on his coffee had been poured in the shape of a heart. How ironic, he thought, for cream on coffee was never among his favourites.

He looked around as he sipped his coffee. The place had a nostalgic feel to it. It wasn’t too old, may be three to four years. But the dark heavy mahogany furniture, bound heavy books by the corner and smart white-clothed waiters moving around with slothful indulgence reminded him of a time gone by. The empty table next to him, with a cup of coffee left half drunk and a cigarette still burning away in the ashtray reminded him of half left conversations; of unspoken words.

While his eyes scanned the surroundings, his mind was populating the scenes the eye saw with known faces and replacing floating voices with recognizable conversations.

Sandeep pulled his cell out, paused and then dialled Megha.

‘ I am getting another call on my cell, I’ll call you back. I love you, bye.’ There was a click and then ‘Hello’.

‘Hi , Sandeep here’.

‘Oh’. The discomfort in Megha’s voice was palpable. She had been caught completely offguard.

‘I just heard about your wedding last night. Congratulations!’

‘Thanks!’. The 'thanks' was measured. The tone ensuring that conversation would end and not continue.

‘I am sure you have a great life ahead of you. All the best! I should hang up now…’. Sandeep’s voice trailed away. He was half hoping for a Megha to say, ‘ No, don’t hang up yet’. Just like the old times. He looked up from his feet. Priya had just entered the coffee shop. He smiled at her and raised his hand indicating that he needed a minute more. Priya smiled and sat, wiping the thin layer of dew that had settled on the chair.

‘ Ok Megha! Take care, Bye!’

‘Sandeep, Sandeep! No don’t hang up yet’.

‘Yeah?’

‘Sandeep, Thanks for calling. Thank you’ . The 'thank you' was measured. The tone suggested that the ‘thank you’ carried with it the purport of all conversations in the past and of the future; of all words spoken and possibly better left unspoken. The words ‘thank you’, had never meant so much ever before.

‘Sandeep, you take care too. This is not the best time for us. Our lives will cross again, I promise. Bye!

‘Thanks Megha. I would wait for that. Bye!’

He looked up at Priya. She was in the midst of an animated conversation with the waiter. Sandeep got up and walked around the table and hugged her as she got up and planted a firm kiss on her cheeks.

He held her around her waist as the separated, and whispered, ‘ Priya!’

‘Yeah?’

‘ Will you marry me ?’

A wedding, some dancing and a lot of merry!

Its a journey to which I have been a part of. In a very small, tiny but (I would like to consider) important measure. Last weekend, one of my closest friend H got married to D. I have mentioned about them here.

The wedding had all the ingredients. A party , mehendi, sangeet, the wedding and the reception. I can go on and on describing it all, but there are a few things which I have to mention here.

- I danced away to glory on many days and had a lot of fun. I have never felt this happy for anyone in such a long time. I can vouch today that it would be very difficult to find nicer people than H & D.. and even more so as a couple.

- Everyone who came to the wedding had a lot of fun. Everyone was smiling / dancing/ laughing etc. I could see and feel why weddings are called joyous occasions. Literally.

- I felt totally welcome, so much so that I felt I belong there. The warmth of the families was felt by everyone who attended the wedding. I was unceremoniously reprimanded in full view of public by H's dad for being an hour late for the Sangeet. ( In my defence, I was following Gujju Standard time, and I did not miss anything :) )

- H & D have been working hard on organising everything about their wedding for the past one year. From cards, to the 'setup of the place' to the caterers to logistics.. everything. The 5 day event was flawless. Executed to perfection. It was classy in design, look and feel. D is a designer par excellence and from wedding clothes to to decorating the place to the cards, she designed it all. I am going to attach three pictures here.. first one of the wedding place, second of the mandap at night or rather evening time and third of the reception. I am not going to even try describing the beauty, elegance and panache.

- Finally, here is wishing them a great life together, forever!

Crossroad

I stand today at a junction in life,

where important decisions have to be taken.

Where the past has to be shrugged off,

and it may not be necessarily for a better furture.

He scribbles on a borrowed piece of paper which has Rama Stationery store printed in small at the top. His handwriting has periodic wavy pattern to it. He thinks it is because of the to and fro movement of the train. May be.

He sits alone in the compartment. A boy, around 12-13 years of age stands at the door, his body half inside the compartment, half outside.

There is vast emptiness around me,

but my mind feels cluttered.

I don't know to where I belong, to the emptiness or to the clutter,

or may be its half here and half there.

He laughs at his own desperate attempt to create poetry. He should stop trying to do things that he isn't good at. He tells himself.

Friday Musings

Om Shaanti Om ...I managed to catch that this week. Total timepass I tell you. Shahrukh had a reason to overact (I do like him, and his acting occasionally) and he did that pretty well. I enjoyed the song with 31 stars and was so excited when it was onscreen. I am such a fimli guy :) The music is pretty nice and I have been humming 'Om shaanti Om' and 'Ajab si' songs..and ofcourse how can I forget Deepika Padukone..

I have to let you in on a secret. I have a knack of spotting talent you see. I spotted Deepika Padukone 2-3 years ago and predicted that she would make it big. She was in my top 5 long ago.. oh and that is the other secret.. my top 5. I have this top 5 list which is periodically updated.. right now there is Kiera Knightley, Vidya Balan, Deepika Padukone, Asin and Shreya. And I tell you what they made it to my list long ago.. Kiera with Bend it like Beckham (long before the Pirates series or Arthur). Vidya balan made it there with Parineeta, Deepika with her Close Up ads, Asin- much before her Gajini movie and Shreya.. well yeah.. she made it there after Shivaji only..

I take my top 5 list very seriously. I am planning a trip to London in the next year.. hopefully and one of my agenda items it to track and meet Kiera Knightley. So I am searching for her calender and ways to meet her. If any of you could help.. I would be eternally grateful :). I learnt that Vidya Balan was a second cousin of a cousin of my friend. I did convince my mom to talk to my friends mom if she could talk to Vidya Balan or Vidya Balan's mom.. but I guess it got lost at the first or the second cousin stage, I think. But hey, I did try.

So you see, the top 5 is a priviledged place to be :)

--*--

I had mentioned two posts ago that I would be attending Archie's wedding or rather reception this week. I did that yesterday. And it was fun. Well, not in the literal sense of fun but I had a different experience. The wedding was in Chembur in the Murugan temple (Or the Madarasi temple as the Autowallahs call it). This gave me an opportunity to visit this temple, something I had been wanting to do for a long time now. Anywho, the interesting part of the evening was that there was only one person that I knew in the entire gathering, and that was the bride. I had met Archie through blog and orkut and her circle of people had never intersected my circle of people and hence I was alone in that hall. And boy, what fun it was. It was a typical tam-bram crowd which had gathered there

- There was a group of people of elderly disposition (see I am polite ) sitting in the rows behind me, and I heard the quintissential Tam brahm names - Raghu thatha, Kittu mama and Ramamurthy uncle. Guess only an 'Ambi mama' was missing.

- I heard a mami telling her husband at 7.45pm ' Vango, kalambalam, naazhi aachu'

- I saw a group of mama's discussing the some article in 'The Hindu' and politics and staunchly supporting the BJP

- Some maami's sitting in a row just ahead of me had started their 'maami' work. 'Adhu Lalitha ponnu thaanai. avullukku pakkaralaa'. (But I tell you, weddings are great places to meet members of the opposite sex.. personal experience you see. )

- A mama was telling his group.. 'Maami, pannarai dosai odai bettera irukku'.

But something was missing.. it wasn't feeling complete till I heard one of the women say- 'Kolangal paathelono' . Thats it. How come a gaggle of women and no mention of soap operas or rather mega serials. I silently clenched my fist and muttered 'adhu!'

I had now had a almost complete tam-bram social event experience.. (well ofcourse I missed the filter coffee among a few other elements..but it was as good as it gets kinda thing)

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Tomorrow, saturday, I am going river rafting. So I am looking at an action packed weekend. Hope its fun. If I get some pics, I will put them up.

Being 'cool'

So this is how it feels to be independent. Having a house to yourself. No one to tell you how to keep it. No one tell you that you need to fold the newspaper back once you have read it or that you can't walk all around the house in your shoes. No one tell you that all things need to have a place to keep. No one to tell you, why you bought that extra pair of shoes or why you are gorging away on those potato wafers lying on the sofa. Shreya wondered why her mother couldn't be cool.

She had called home after buying a new leather clutch purse for herself with her first salary. It was a touch expensive and was worried how her mother would react. But her mother did not pass any comment on the price. Nothing at all. Shreya hung up the call, but was surprised. Her mom seemed excited that she had bought something for herself with her own money. That was it. It was her own money now. Shreya suddenly felt liberated.

--*--

Shreya had settled into her new job, new city and new environs comfortably over the past 6 months. But one thing that she had not settled into was sharing her apartment with her current flatmate. She could not understand why, the newspaper could not be folded back after it was read or why one could not remove their shoes before walking all over the house. The fans and lights would always be left on and the sofa would contain food pieces once her flatmate had finished snacking. Shreya wondered, why her flatmate couldn't be cool.

Anniversary - Another day

Today I celebrate my blog's second anniversary. Thank you. Thank you ! So I guess it is a time for a lot of reflection and contemplation. (So well, whats new about that on this blog, right?)

If you ask me today, why I write a blog, the honest answer is I don't know. May be I like a parallel existence. I think I started it because it was cool and quite a few of my friends were doing it. And as I started to surf, I figured out that blogs like people have a character and it needn't be an online diary. So, as I did some thinking about the identity of my blog, 'In perpetual transition' came to me instantly. I am that and a lot more. However, the name of the blog, Have-no-fullstops, is inspired by a book by Sir Mark Tully of the same name ' Have No full stops in India' which is a collection of 10 essays on India. I read that in my class 10, I think. It was then that I was drawn to non-fiction and I have remained a non-fiction loyalist ever since. Have-no-fullstops also symbolises what I believe in - there are no fullstops, some commas, some exclamation marks, some hyphens but full stops.. naa..

Anyways, if you guys think that I am going to say that its been one long journey over two years, where I have grown up, changed , matured, developed a world view and all that. Sorry. I am a little more pessimistic. Yes my life stage has changed and hence my experiences and world views have accordingly. But I do not think that I have changed, grown up, matured and all that. Its not that I have been perfect or totally mature that I did not have the need to grow up or mature further. Its just that I have stagnated at the place where I was and I still am.

Look at the themes in my post. I am an eternal optimist, or so I would like to believe, yet there is a distinct strand of melancholy. There are so many different forms of relationship that I experience first hand or see people in - like husband wife, boss reportee, brother sister, best friends, father son, and yet I have explored only one of them boy friend - girl friend. I feel that the posts in the first year of my blogs existence had some form of energy, which I guess, fizzled away. I think it is a reflection of whats happening in the real world too, I guess.

So, I set out on a mission to bring about change. Get my life to be more active, break the routine, the monotony. I made plans to do one new thing this year, or see two new places, read three new authors and so on. But every time I took two steps forward, I retraced three. And in these tries, you learn a harsh reality. The biggest and the toughest battles are those which you fight with yourself. And in contrast to this, it is so simple to overcome the biggest challenge the external world throws up in your direction.

But you know what. The very fact that I have realised what battles I need to fight within myself, is the first step. The fact that I am willing to fight means that I have a foot in the door, already. And trust me, this is just a comma, or at max a semi colon and if that has to change, it will be to an exclamation mark! :)

So much for an anniversary celebration, right? There have been a few of you I guess who have been reading my blog since its creation and a few who have hopped on somewhere in between and a few who just peek in occasionally and a few who have dropped off on the way. Well, whoever you guys are, and from wherever you are - Thank you.

By the way, I have some great news. Through this blog, I met a great friend and my circle of people expanded by one more nice person. And coincidentally, she is getting married this week. So 'Archie' a.k.a '@' - here is wishing you a very happy married life!

Friday Musings - You feel good?

What follows is a personal rant. Be warned!

Hi Ravi,

I know that you are quite busy these days and the next two to three months are going to be even more hectic, with almost little time to breathe. I also know that you are entering what is possibly the most challenging project you have handled in the past year and the expectation to deliver better than ever is even higher. And, that is the exact reason why I am writing to you today.

Your mind is already preparing for the next project and for the hectic few months that lay ahead. However, today I want you to pause, albeit even for half an hour to look back at your previous project and the past two months, and feel good about it.

Your job currently, if I may simplify , is to work on the big opportunities or the big problems, do some analysis, come up with recommendations and then sell your recommendations to everyone within the organisation. And, you have been reasonably good at this. However, given the fact that you work on the big opportunities or problems, your recommendations have a natural traction and people are willing to listen to you, even upto the top management level. They may not buy it, but they are willing to listen to it. This is not to belittle your efforts or to say that you have had it easy so far. I am just providing this perspective to highlight your recent achievement.

The last project however was your first external project. You had to not only understand the market, the competition, new categories, new business quickly but also the client's business and their organisational priorities and then make strategic recomendations. This time there was no natural traction for your recommendations. Infact, this time you had to compete with one other big organisation and an equally capable team, if not better, for winning the project. And you won. Congratulations!

Among the many good things that you should take away, the most important thing is that you were pushed out of your comfort zone and were required to adapt within almost no time which you did really well. So in the future, remember that you have demonstrated the agility to respond to change, and, whenever you feel a little apprehensive (like right now) , think of this.

Changing gears, I do have a big crib. You really really need to learn to accept appreciation and enjoy the good times. Philosophically you are stoic, and nothing wrong with that. When things are tough, you have a great attitude and look at the positive side. But then why, when the things are good, that you forget to cherish, celebrate and feel good. Remember how when you called up your friend for congratulating her on her achievement, she played it down to the level of rubbishing the recognition, that you felt let down for feeling so happy and excited for her. Don't you think others also feel the same way when they talk to you? Ok, you ain't that bad, but still you are no great either. Accepting gracefully is also as art and makes people feel great, just like giving thoughtfully does.

It is difficult to change but not impossible. Infact it just requires one thing - willingness to change. Are you willing?

Good luck on your next two three months for it is going to be one hell of a roller coaster ride.
Regards

Karthik

Connoisseur's Abodes in Madras

Guess I am back with more Chennai tales, and this time with some gastronomic ones :)

I suddenly seemed to be discovering brilliant food places in Madras that I am thrilled. So much is my penchant for finding out new places (in the limited vegetarian world) that I put a simple condition that I will meet you only if we go to a place that I haven't been before.

I had mentioned about 'Kafeoke' - the coffee bar with 'karaoke'. I was there with two of my B-school buddies. This place is pretty good. It is on First seaward road in Thiruvamyur and it is a beachside bungalow on stilts overlooking the brown sands and the blue expanse.You have a couch where you can lounge around, one huge screen where everyone can see you sing. This is the Western zone. There is another separate room behind sound proof doors for Hindi and Regional language songs. There is a sit out where you can sip your coffee, oblivious to all the singing happenning inside and just watch the waves try and climb the land.

We tried our hand at singing. The first attempt at 'American pie' gave us a score of 8/100. Then I moved to my so-called forte and attempted 'Roja Jaaneman' from Roja.. and scored 36/100. So there it is. I am now officially a better singer of Hindi Songs and hence being in Bombay I shall take my shot at Bollywood. Watchout Indian Idol, Voice of India, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Nee Saa and all such reality shows, here I come! Woo hoo!

Anywho, I was pretty pleased with myself with my effort. We met the owner of the place Swapna Abraham. She introduced herself to us and took us around the place. She is a leading gospel singer, having recorded over 18 albums. Now she runs this place which also has a recording studio. She takes singing classes too, for those who are interested. Here is her website.

She sang Careless Whispers on the Karaoke.. and whoa.. that was something. I am not gonna try and describe her singing but she scored 82/100. That should say it all :)

The place is done up pretty well and has a relaxed ambience where one just lounges around. Also while you are there, do not miss the omelette sandwitch. :). The food is not expensive at all and the cost per song on karaoke is Rs. 30. After all, how expensive can Chennai get! (except the auto rickshaws!)

Sorry, do not have pictures of this place.
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Amethyst needs no introduction to Madras. It is one of the many heritage buildings that has been converted to an art gallery. This one has a coffee shop and a restaurant too. The art gallery has designer stuff and is pretty-priced but wares that one gets over here is phenomenal. The food is not too expensive here. The best part about this place is that you can sit around and people will not bug you or disturb you. Waiters wont hang around you, making it uncomfortable for you so that you leave soon. Infact, you can go sit there, and till you decide to disturb the waiter, he will not disturb you. :)

Evenings and nights are the best times to go to Amethyst. If the weather is pleasant you can sit out in the verandah or even under the trees in the open. I have been to Amethyst three times in the last month itself :). One can just take a book, ipod, laptop or just decide to sit in one corner and stare at nothingness. It is a great place to catch up, even with oneself.

I was there yesterday catching up with my engineering college friends. The food is good. I wouldn't say exceptional for I've definitely had better. But put the entire experience together it is seriously one place one would enjoy lounging. Here is a picture of me at Amethyst. ( Poor quality as it is taken in my cell phone.)

I know its difficult to take eyes off the 'center of attraction = me' :P but just look at the background and see how the place has been done up. Don't you just wanna go there.. like right now?
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An finally, every meal has to end with a desert. So obviously a post on places to eat has to end with a post on a 'Desert Bar'. Sathyam Theatre or rather Sathyam Multiplex is like a landmark in this city for decades. But the new desert Bar in Sathyam complex called 'Ecstasy' is just that, pure 'Ecstasy'. This place was recommended to me by my friend, and the three of us decided to check this place out. We had kept enough space for desert.

First look at this place and we are like WOW. Sleek, sophisticated futuristic and a great combination of white walls, dark wood and leather sofas. The place is inviting in itself. It is posh , yes that the word , posh.

We look at the deserts displayed and we choose Tiramisu, lemonart and Crepes with Hazelnet sauce. We take a few snaps of the place and await our deserts. It finally arrives with home-made or rather shop-made ice cream. One bite into the desert and there is sereneness. The world is at peace. If you have seen Ratatouille movie, where the critic Anton Ego, remembers his mother, childhood and all innocence when he has the first bite of 'Ratatouille'. It was just that.

Yes I am exaggerating, but you should have seen us. The three of us sat there giggling, gushing and devouring, savouring the deserts. We were like a three year olds who had just discovered the existence of chocolate. The deserts were not too sweet. They were just right. They had the right balance of sweetness to tickle your tastebuds instantly and a brilliant after taste that ensured that I did not drink even water for the next half hour.

The chef is Michael Besse of international fame. Some enquiries later I found out that he has been around the world in many big hotels in different countries. I could not speak to him this time around, but next time, I will try and do so. I would very highly recommend this place to all and sundry. It is a wee bit expensive, but hey do pamper your taste buds once. A connoisseur's abode, you wouldn't regret it.

Guess, these days when everything is reduced to a come-wait-eat-go format, I am a sucker for a fine dining experience. I would love if you guys could recommend places that I can check out. A fine experience is all I ask for.