What is my deed worth???

(*This may come across as a rant. If , like me, you too have very little tolerance for that kind of writing, kindly skip the post.)

One thought is using up a lot of my processing power these days. I keep thinking if I have wasted the first 25 years of my life and if what I have done so far is meaningful. To sum up the all these years, I have gone to school, earned an engineering graduate degree (which did not need 80% of what I learnt in school), worked for a couple of years as a software engineer (which did not need 100% of what I learnt in engineering), went to a B-School for my post-graduation (no engineering skills + no skill from the work experience needed), interned in an automobile group (which did not even need me going to the office) and landed up in an equity research job (which needs no engineering knowledge, but uses a little bit of what I learnt in the B School). So I have clearly run from pillar to post, searching for something I could not identify all these years.

The saddest part is I have not identified it even now. In the school days, I never was exceptionally interested in any particular subject. My interest in a subject during a year depended largely on the teachers. But when I was learning a few subjects (only a few!) in my engineering (Electrical machines, Power Electronics, Power System Analysis etc) I thought I had found my calling. I enjoyed these immensely and looked forward to the classes and the labs. While probably the right thing to do then was to take up a job in one of these fields, I was struck by the MBA Cupid and threw away my final year, when I could have done a useful project somewhere. To aid the so called MBA preparation, (basically going back to my school syllabus during my final year B.Tech!), I took up the first job on campus (a software company).

Again random learning there. Some ancient programming language, which was invented probably around the same time as valves was imposed upon me. I learnt the basics of that and SQL and became quite comfortable with my work and thought I was cut out only for that. MBA admission came knocking and once more left my terrain to enter a new one. And what I am doing after all this too does not evince much interest in me!! I am left high and dry and often wonder if learning itself is over valued. Most of what we learn is pretty useless for day-to-day-life or for work. Then why learn at all?? Learning is held at such a high esteem everywhere with companies stressing on continuous learning and what not, whereas in reality, our learning is limited to collecting an assortment of information with no use whatsoever. For example, I know mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell and how endocrine system is different from exocrine. So what?? Who cares? The next time something is wrong with my endocrine system, I need to consult a specialist who probably struggled in his school to do time-distance and geometry problems. Similarly I know how electric power is transmitted. Big deal! How does it matter as long as I cant do anything about the line losses? And how does knowing about it change anything I do?

The common explanation I get is we need to get exposed to all the fields, to be able to judge where my interest lies. Nothing can be farther from truth. Ok, after all these experimentation, I say my interest lies in agriculture research. What can I do about it?? I feel like Edison, having found 999 careers that don't interest me. But what is the recourse available??

I feel claustrophobic thinking. I feel my job is inherently meaningless. To me, today, the only criterion that defines meaningfulness of a career is what happens if I succeed/fail in the objective of my job. If I succeed, someone makes a couple of more millions, I fail and they lose a couple of millions. This is not something I care about. This is not something that I envisaged for myself. My definition may change, but, this is definitely not something that brings out the best in me. The worst part is more than 90% of the jobs I see around me are of similar nature. They have no bearing on anything material to human life or just life in general. If I jump from here, that would be mostly to land in one of those 90% jobs.

I know everyone gets into this Jerry Mcguire-ish situation, esp in the mid twenties. But the effect of this quarter life crisis is largely under-estimated and absolutely under-expressed. I am robbed of the interest to read/try anything new. A big "Why this?" flashes in my mind every-single-time I think of anything.

Help me do anything worth doing. Ideas invited! But please, no learning new things like dance, art and blah for the sake of over-rated learning. Also, do let me know how you are coping with your quarter-life crisis (Assuming you are single, otherwise, quarter life crisis would have been too-minor-a-distraction for you to have noticed!!)

The Wreck and the Steadfastness

As Japan battles the after effects of the disastrous quake and the tsunami, one cannot but wonder why nature chooses Japan to unleash her fury every now and then. As a country which worships nature, as people who revere everything from water to mountains to flowers, you would think Japan must be deriving a lot of benefits from the resources bestowed by nature. But facts point otherwise. Despite a 70% forest cover, this country decided not to exploit its forest resources for economic gains, may be due to its deep rooted Shintoism, and imports most of its food, energy and other raw materials. And from the rest 30% of its land (for context, Germany seems to have 30% forest cover, US 33%, India 21%, China is still hoping to reach 20%), Japan grew to be the second largest GDP in the world (until very recently) emitting 4.5% of the total carbon emissions of the world (2007 figure, but could not have changed much), against China at 22.3% and US at 19%. Must not be a co-incidence that the carbon emission protocol is named Kyoto protocol!

I am not aware of how industries in Japan achieve this, esp with the country among the leading automobile exporters of the world (I am actually hoping for a discrepancy in the figures, given I have taken it from various sources). But that cannot dispute how environment conscious its people are, for here is look at how most people live (from NPR):

“He and his wife, Hitomi, don't own a car. They have a solar panel on the roof. They collect rainwater in an old whiskey barrel to water the plants, and they don't use dish soap. Shibata's biggest luxury is a wooden Japanese soaking tub, which he built himself. He sits in the tub after he has thoroughly scrubbed himself. After the soak, the bathwater is recycled — and reused for washing clothes. The process is facilitated by a simple hookup. Shibata guesses that about 5 percent of Japanese use a pump to send water from their bathtubs into washing machines. After the clothes are washed, Shibata does what most Japanese do: He dries his wash on an outdoor clothesline. Most Japanese don't own clothes dryers. Their clothing hangs on television-antennae-like racks that twirl around on their railings. "You get to see lots of clothes hanging. ... Don't see that in America. Space is very valuable here. If you can do without something, you do without it.”

The philosophy of Shinto must be largely responsible for the consciousness of environment and minimalism in everything they do. Shinto in its absolute sense is not seen as a religion by many as there are no Gods as such and only spirits called Kami. They are sacred spirits which take the form of things and concepts important to life, such as wind, rain, mountains, trees, rivers and fertility. Humans become kami after they die and are revered by their families as ancestral kami. It is touching to see that among things important to life they count trees and rivers rather than iPad and Facebook. In fact there is a story behind origination of the well known word ‘Kami-kaze’. In the 13^th century, there were two failed attempts by the Mongolians to invade Japan under Kublai Khan. During the first attempt, close to 1000 vessels were sent to Japan with Mongolian warriors and when the Japanese Samurais were close to losing, there was reportedly a huge thunderstorm with torrential rains, which forced the Mongolians to go a little further into the sea to anchor for the night. In the morning, more than 300 vessels had drowned and the survivors turned back the vessels to their motherland. Not happy with the failure, Kublai Khan attempted to capture Japan once more, and sent around 3500 vessels to fight Japan for the second time. To be safer, this time the fleet was divided into two, one from Korea and another reaching from China. The Korean soldiers arrived first and were held back by Japanese for 50 days near the coast and as the Chinese reinforcement arrived to support the Korean fleet, a second typhoon lashed the coast and nearly all the reinforcement ships drowned again. Probably this was the last attempt by Mongolians to invade Japan, for they developed a fear that Nature Gods (Kami) were helping Japanese, and Japanese themselves called the typhoon Kami-Kaze, wind of the Gods.

But probably even nature suffers from certain fallacies similar to human beings – being lousy to those who love you, and realizing their value only if you are close to losing them! For no other explanation would justify why the nation suffers, time and again at the hands of mother nature. But I am sure its just me and not a majority of Japanese who must be thinking this way… I read Guardian’s blog, calling Nature cruel and insensitive, while the few Japanese reporters’ blogs I read said that they respect nature more than ever now, for it shows that how-much-ever footprint we claim to leave, her footprints are always larger and more long lasting. Revering what destroys you is unique and a not-so-human quality and puts them among the most spiritual people in the world. Probably this gives them the excellence they demonstrate in everything they do and admiring them is pretty much all one can do from here. Long live the nation!

Dhobi Ghaat - Depressing Diaries

The hottest topic doing rounds among the Hindi speaking and movie watching junta is "Dhobi Ghaat".

"Did you like it? What a trash", "Oh, you did not like it? I found it very touching" - I cant remember the last movie which polarized the audience to such an extent.

Its very tough to like a movie in which the director plays the least important part and the audience has the maximum work to do. It does not build the characters, it does not give the story enough circumstances to develop, it even does not give the actors enough lines to speak! As viewers we need to think and understand why someone behaves in the way s/he does. If Aamir keeps flinching every now and then and gives a very wry smile, we need to surmise that he is driven by angst. If the dhobi's client is jealous about him getting close to Shai, we should guess that her husband could not probably satisfy her and the dhobi is sleeping with her for money. If the investment banker in her sabbatical gets very emotionally connected to Aamir after a one-night-stand, you should think of it as a girl who probably never got any time to do it (but my my, isn't she an investment banker?That explains it!) and hence falls for the first guy, who despite behaving like a prick, manages to touch her emotional chords. Then comes the 'I-am-unhappy-with-my-marriage' female. She creates these random video diaries for her brother because she has nothing better to do and ultimately commits suicide before even posting them on the internet or wherever. Surely, this is realism in a cruel city like Mumbai, isn't it? I mean what are you living for, once you know you husband is straying?? If only the unhappy Indian women understood this simple solution!! And as if these depressing characters were not enough, we have a neighbor whose role is to sit on the chair and stare at the ceiling. Then the parents who come to meet their daughter once and are not concerned about the neighborhood she lives in. The brother of the dhobi who had underworld connections (don't all Mumbai slum dwellers have such connections? Surely they do!) and gets killed by a henchman. How did these people help in conveying whatever she though about?? Or did we go for an 'as-is' process mapping?? We could have as well stood by the window overlooking any slum in Mumbai and observed and understood Mumbai diaries better. Of course you cannot ask for explanations from her. She is too busy creating the next plot.

The only saving grace of this ill-conceived, ill-executed, but well - marketed film is the background score. It is very haunting and stays with you long after you leave the theater. To some extent, the dhobi guy too has depth in his character. Otherwise, it was not just Aamir who felt pained throughout the movie (and he did not even have a valid reason except for his self proclaimed, "I like pissing people off") , it was each and everyone of us for having wasted good money and time on something this amateurish.

As far as the media reviews are concerned, I m 99% sure they dont want to be the one who has not understood the movie. So like the stock markets "hoping for the last fool" the critics pretend to have understood what was never conveyed and pass on the risk to the unassuming audience, who largely are made to feel that they are not qualified enough to understand and comment about elitist cinema like this. The truth is, cinema is as non-elitist a medium as one could get. Everyone can surely understand it without the need for a guide.

The Cosmic Discotheque

There was a power cut yesterday night. Went to the terrace. The sky was a brilliant blue. More black than blue, but you could still make out the blue hue in it. No stars. no moon. No other light nearby. Felt extremely liberated under the cosmic canopy. Thoughts just got blocked out of my mind. I probably lost my comprehension. My cognizance. Felt insanely happy I think. Can't recall the last time something moved me so powerfully. So effortlessly. Wanted to run down and get my camera, but stood riveted.

Wind howled like crazy and then was the time for some brilliant fireworks in the sky. Purple light rays cut through the dark blue sheet; Mildly in the beginning and more savagely later. What started as a point of light in one corner became a silver bolt travelling monstrously across the expanse. Branches of white light appeared everywhere and it looked like a divine discotheque. Purple, white, blue and grey crackling the clouds all around me. Raw power emanated from everything above me! I found myself almost wishing for a lightning to come and strike me. Was thoroughly exhilarated by the dangerous beauty. Am now reminded of the disconnect I have with everything around me. Need to spend more time in nature's company :) ! That is my resolution for today.

Yet Another Day, Yet Another Walk…

It was a chilly morning. As usual I had got up in time for the morning walk. It was snowing mildly and I made a mental note to carry my snow umbrella as I unleashed Timmy. He snuggled against my legs to drive away the chillness. I bent down and held his cold snout against my face for a minute and gave him a peck on his forehead. I put on my muffler. We went out and locked the door behind us and started our walk along the usual route. The road was deserted as sun's rays had not yet penetrated the thick clouds to lick away all the snow.

I stopped at my favorite coffee shop to buy a strong cup of black coffee and a salt less croissant for Timmy. Obama was smiling at me from a wet tabloid and I gave away the change to get myself a copy. Timmy snorted. He knew that he would be on his own now as I would drown myself into the tabloid. He tried to release himself from my grip, but knowing him as well as I did, I had anticipated this and had tightened my fist around the leash. I let him guide me as I started browsing the front page. We passed the familiar smells of morning blossoms near the joggers' track and the sounds of the snow crunching under the spikes of the early morning joggers.

I kept telling myself not to expect him on the track. He had been married just for a week and there would be no reason why he would come out for a round in this hostile weather. Was it the reason for me to choose a walk now despite the cold? I did not want to answer it. I knew he was married but was just not prepared to meet him yet. I tried to read carefully what Obama planned to do with the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. I realized the futileness of the attempt and lowered my hand exasperatedly. Timmy gave an excited woof and got back an equally cheerful yap. My heart started racing. No! "Dear God, Let it not be Saber. Please", I prayed fervently. And uselessely.

Timmy freed himself in a flash and ran towards Saber. Both bit and smelled each other as if to convey how irresponsible we were to have kept them apart for more than a fortnight. I gathered my courage to look up and away from Saber. "Does the crooked grin ever leave his face?" I thought wearily. There he was, standing and smiling at me, as I wondered if he had been really away for fifteen days. The lines near his eyes were the same, the blue i-pod clipped to his t-shirt was the same, and the white tick mark on his black tracks was just the same… There was only one change though. He had company this time. From a little distance, she looked every bit as pretty as someone like him deserved to have. And I had no wish to observe her closely. Words escaped my mouth as I cursed myself for being so impolite towards his wife. "Hi!", I said feebly and extended my hand towards her. She smiled brightly as he introduced me to her.

I was afraid that the tears stinging would somehow escape my eyes. I looked away in the general direction of Timmy and Saber and remarked dumbly, "They have missed each other a lot, haven't they?". "Sure looks like it", he said. "Saber was terribly bored during the marriage too. No one could handle him smoothly. I managed to find some time for him in between the ceremonies, but I wished you were there."

I looked at his face to see if there was more to his words than what they conveyed. No clue. Inscrutable as always. "Huh-huh", I said perfunctorily.

"If it were not for the emergency bug fix, you know I would not have missed it for anything".

His face clearly showed that he did not buy one word of what I said.

Suddenly the alarm in his watch started ringing loudly. The same Sonata No. 28. He absent mindedly switched it off. My stomach lurched. Was he too unable to sleep? Or did he get up before the alarm to meet me? It would not have been difficult for him to guess the extent I would go to avoid him, at least presently. Or did he even realize that I had a reason to avoid him? I felt unsure as always.

"I have told her a lot about you" he said and put his arm on her shoulder lightly.

My shoulder seared like molten iron.

"I hope it was something nice!"I said.

"Of course!" he said. "I told her that you could beat me in the 800m dash we used to have sometimes".

I could not believe that it was all he could tell about me to his wife. I glanced at my watch. I could not bear to look at him directly.

"Let's give the dogs five more minutes and then we can move on" he said evenly. Damn! If he could understand the dogs so easily, what could have been so difficult about me??

The unspoken words formed a lump in my throat and obstructed my breathing.

"Is that all you could tell her about me?"

He beamed mischievously. Blood rushed to my face. I became conscious of his wife's presence. I did not want her to notice me. Him, he anyway does not…

Damn him.

He never extracted from me what he was to me. And he had always kept me unsure of what I had been to him.

He looked thoughtful. Probably he too was cursing me the same way. Or probably it was just wishful thinking.

"What are you thinking about?" I would have asked him under normal circumstances. But I reminded myself that he was now a married man and not eligible for receiving my un-identifiable passes at him.

"If you are free this weekend, why don't you join us for dinner?" his wife offered.

"Good idea. She will come. Wont you?" he said.

I felt like Scarlett O Hara for a minute. I was prepared to throw myself against a married man and ask what he felt about me. I gripped myself and said "I would love to! I will give you a call to confirm"

He looked sincerely happy. I felt sure this time that I had not mattered to him in that sense. Else would he not be experiencing the same conflict within? But here he is, genuinely happy about my coming.

It made me feel slightly better. After all, the decision not to open up without knowing his side was correct. I would have made a fool of myself.

"See you both then" I waved. He took out a hand kerchief from his pocket to wipe his forehead. It was the same he had picked up from my track pocket a few months back. Had he preserved it? Why? Was it his idea of some kind of indicator?

I felt dizzy. I was tired of such mental jigsaws.

"Come on Timmy", I violently pulled poor Timmy and started walking in the opposite direction, leaving him behind. His glance burned hot on my neck but I never turned back. Tomorrow is anyway another day…

To Be or Not to Be

"It was raining outside. There was not much for him to do. He was tired of reminiscing now. He wondered if he should go back to sleep. The nagging headache too was bothering him. Probably a visit to the doctor was imminent. He must tell his parents about it. Coming to think of it, he realized that he had not spoken to them for nearly a week. In fact he had not even been busy. They had not called him and he did not have anything important enough to call them up and tell. He was worried that it was fast becoming yet another thing he was getting used to.

Distant thunder brought him back to reality. He vowed to himself that he would find time somehow this month to make a visit home. He needed some space to clear his head. Wasteful thoughts had been practically clobbering him down. The glorified education was filling him with murderous rage. The futility of the learning, the philosophy behind the course, the vainness of the whole exercise mocked at him as they had been doing for a long time now. He did not want to know how to multiply money. He wanted to know how to create money. For those who did not have it. Reinvestment of the investment felt disgusting. It did not have the nice ring to as one meal-a-day to two meals-a-day. Rice with water to rice with dal was what he wanted to know about. But nobody near him knew about it. The course refused to talk about it. He wanted to kill himself for letting IRMA pass by when it came knocking.

He did not want to be a huge failure of an MBA earning peanuts when his class mates would be running corporations. He did not want to remain wistful seeing people LIVE life. But he did not want to work towards creating wealth for those who probably did not need it. Need it as in NEED and not WANT. He was torn between the niceties of life which come at a price on one side and the happiness which comes from obeying one's inner command on the other side. He did not want to travel the road not taken. But he knew he would have to return back to it sooner than later. What he would miss lest he treads the conventional path was clear to him but the question of whether he would miss them enough to give up the life he had dreamt of while growing up taunted and tossed him. He was troubled by his own double standards. He wanted to be rich but he did not want to do what pays money. He wanted to live in Mumbai but wanted to work for uplifting the villagers. He wanted to travel the world in a cruise yet wanted to make sure no kid goes to the bed hungry. If wishes were horses, he would have owned a million stables by then."

What I personally feel is that he is making the situation too complex for himself. He has a lot of time on his hand. All he needs to do is soul-search and come up with wishes which do not contradict each other. He just needs to steel himself and make the single major decision of his life: to be or not to be. If he decides not to be, he needs to have the maturity not to be guilty or attach any moral strings to it. If he decides to be, then it is important to stick to it and work smartly towards the cause, come what may.

To be or not to be??

What is luxury for you and me?

Two days in a workshop called 'Luxury marketing' has made a style averse me more averse to it! Though the seminar was supposed to be 'marketing luxury' in all the segments one can think of, it was very heavily dominated by this one particular brand - Louis Vuitton, towards which I was apathetic till a few days back, and towards which I am allergic today. Watches, Bags, shoes, perfumes, hand-kerchiefs, goggles and many such petty items took a disproportionately large amount of attention. I love all these, no doubt. But there is a huge question as to whether these deserve the money they charge from the consumer as well as whether it would at all give me any kind of satisfcation if I break my head to position them as a superior offering to the Cindy Crawfords ( for the sheer lack of knowledge on anyone more recent) or Mahendar Singh Dhonis of the world. Even if someone pays me my weight in gold as my monthly salary (which would leave them with no operating profits I am sure :)! ) I would never ever go into this for the simple reason that I can't convince anyone to be fooled by this when I am as unmoved after 16 hours of listening to this, as ever. I am not a communist, no way! But there are definitely a lot of better ways in which one can spray such money around. Though books win hands down, travel, photography, musical instruments, new gadgets are far better a way to spend money and reap benefits. Whether I keep my smelly leather wallet inside a Louis Vuitton bag or the fake Diesel bag bought near Andheri Station, it is not going to affect the way I feel about myself. Damn it! Why do you need a stupid bag or a shoe to give you confidence in yourself? Why do I need to announce that I have arrived, by tip toeing on a Prada Pencil heel?? How can I someone to define me by what they see on my body? Do you neot have anything to be proud of yoursrlf other than the shoe you own?? Is Paris Hilton the smartest person alive?? What has the world come to? HOW CAN ANYONE BE SO SNOBBISH & HOLLOW?? AND WHY?

I am not trying to act a noble soul, but it was just beyond my tolerance to sit through a thing like this, listening to people selling 3.2 lac watches. I felt cheated from within, when I thought, "Why did I CHOOSE to learn all these?". Learning new things are interesting, but this wasn't. If I have that kind of money, I know a hundred good ways to spend it. Thank God for the social consciousness my family has put in me. For all I care, 'Luxury' to me is having confidence in myself, irrespective of how I look or what I wear. And hearing the definition over and again that luxury is anything that is 'Exclusive', I really know that my self-image is a huge luxury. Not many seem to have it. At least, we were shown only those kind of people for 2 whole days. Sick.

My real luxuries are as follows:
1. Good books. Getting them as and when they are released.
2. Leisure time with your family & friends.
3. Being able to reach home whenever you are needed.
4. Knowing what exam you have tommorrow.
5. Coffee and Hindu in the morning.
6. A husband who loves literature. Tamil & English.
7. A healthy family ( a huge luxury. I know how an illness has an avalanche effect in terms of bad mouthing your family members.)
8. Good food.
9. A job which satisfies you by challenging you everyday.

That more or less covers most of my luxuries. Though not in the exact order they are in my mind. Of course, that would be too foolish to give the order ;) ! Knowing me in and out is a definite luxury I cannot offer to everyone !

Loan waivers - wisdom or whim ?

Long before Freakonomics became a rage, Swamionomics was quietly making waves among the TOI readers.. And I am reading a lot of stuff on what an election winning budget the FM has produced and how its a win-win for the government and the farmers. Is it really? Swamionomics begs to differ and I most certainly agree with him (I hate sops - whether on such big a scale or something as small as a new responsibilty without a pay hike :) )

Following are the points which do not justify the waiver:

1. It has grossly over estimated the number of farmers who are under debt. It has estimated that half of Indian farmers do not/cannot repay the loans, which can hardly be the case! Moreover, not everyone is fortunate to get a loan sanctioned from the government. There will be a huge percentage of farmeres dependant upon the local money lenders.The figure expected to be benefitted is 500% of the actual figure and hence will convert into only 20% of the votes it is expected to win!

2. Due to the above mentioned point, there is no relief for the farmers who are actually needy but have acquired money from the lenders. In fact, there is a potential danger of the these farmers turning their votes against the incumbent goverment due to plain resentment that the goverment has favoured a few over all of them.

3. Loans are written off only for small farmers, those who own less than one acre. Most of the Indian farmers stay in joint families and the land is jointly owned by everyone within that family. When calculated, this will turn out to be quite less than one acre/head. But this cannot be shown and utilised for the waiver due to which a large portion of the farmer population has been left out. This sector is also going to turn against the government.

4. Those who struggled to repay their loans regularly would feel cheated. Punished for their honesty. Need I say, whom these will vote for?

So all-in-all this budget has waived off loans without any foresight. It has not learnt from the previous lessons too. The last time this was done on a massive scale, farmers reportedly found it very difficult to secure a loan from any bank as banks wanted themselves covered from all sides, lest they see a repeat telecast of this!! Again, farmer dissent :) !

The bell tolls for thee !

One thing got me pretty interested last weekend.. And kept me thinking throughout this week too!

I got a chance to attend a concert by the Isha Yoga Centre's 'The sounds of Isha'.

This is not the run-of-the-mill music group who practise for a month before every stage performance and are so clearly aware which song would go for that coveted 'Once-more' chant !! They were all amateur singers who are mainly volunteers with the group and have a common interest but not traditional background in music. A mixed group with one from Lebanon, two from the US, two from North India, two from South India, and one from some Arab country. And their instruments too were created at their own backyard: the kitchen pots had become one or the other kind of percussion instrument (of course the string instruments were not created by them!).

Believe me when I say this amateur group churned out wonderful, wonderful music for two hours without once letting the tempo down. And the songs did not fall under any of the catgories you can think of:

1. One song was in Arabic thanking the Guru and celebrating the Guru - disciple relationship.
2. One song was in Tamil celebrating Rain and forests (a folk number)
3. One was in Hindi about rain and water again.
4 One was about train and journeys in general (named S3 after the compartment in which they created it).
5. A classical rendering on Lord Shiva (because he is the yogic guru)
6. The rest were instrumental not coming under any genre : folk or metal or classical or whatever it may be

I was impressed for many reasons:

1. They have not learnt music.
2. They do not get time to practise unlike the other musicians.
3. The diversity ofthe group and the way the the people from US sung Tamil songs without any accent you associate them with. Or the way the Tam guys sung Hindi songs again without any accent spoiling the song.
4.The theme of the concert. Revolved mainly around mother nature and rain and forests. A very interesting theme for a concert in my opinion.

As is well known, I am a pessimist and the biggest agnostic you would come across. I don't connect with people who believe in Gurus and human deities (inspite of (because of!) being brought up in Kanchipuram known for the Shankaracharya lineage). But Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev makes me sit up. I am stirred up by his speeches. His reasoning. His logic. His charisma is overpowering. It draws me to him inspite of my inner protests that I don't know much about his idealogies or philosophy. But my dreams were dominated by him for three consective days after the concert. I was seeing him play football, hearing him talk to the kids, seeing hime plant saplings !! And I wondered if he is a hypnotist.. Then I realised mass hypnosis works only when you hear someone's prolonged speech;that too only if you are made to concentrate on it intensely.

I now want to go to Vellinagiri hills. To see the Dhyanalinga he has painstakingly built. To drown in the experience as told by those who have visited it. When I think of what the group is doing, I feel belittled and worthless. There are so many of them working for the wellness of the society. Many of them are from abroad and don't even have any obligatiosn to give back anything to this community. Global warming is a every day terminlogy for each one of us but we wont raise a finger against it. And here they are planting 8.5 lakh saplings in a single day. In the quest to restore 30% of the forest cover of Tamilnadu by 2012.They conduct rural health camps to treat those who have no access to healthcare. They open schools in villages where children have to travel a lot to attend school.What do they stand to gain? Only the satisfaction of having done your best towards achieving what is good for the world.Probably that pretty much compensates for everything they are deprived of (If at all they feel that they are).

For once I think I understand what professional satisfaction means. Doing something which you not only find interesting but which also makes a miniscule difference to someone's quality of life. Not in terms of automating it or making it easier, but in terms of uplifting those lives where only your contribution actually made the difference!

I am having a strong urge to join hands but I have to wait and watch if this is going to pass or if it is with me to stay. If it does, my MBA would be put to a good use (assuming sooner or later I would be one) !!

What's 15 August for a Brit??

60 years of Independence !!!
A sure thing to celebrate considering the long way we have come..
But there is one small thing I always think about during our independence day.
The festivities of India on this day : What will be its effect on the Britons of today???
Will they feel ashamed? A whole nation celebrating this way surely must be reminding them that they are the hated lot here..
Or will they feel guilty? As a nation, their misdeeds all over the world cannot be ignored or forgotten that easily!!
I mean, Germany and Japan still live with the stigma that they were responsible for the World War II.
Why has Britain been spared of the ignominy it deserves? After all, Sun never used to set in the British Empire!
A General Dyer from my nation will make me wish I were never born in this country.
A Cornwallis' or Wellesley's atrocities will make me go red with anger and embarassment..

How is the today's generation of Britain handling this ? Maybe their history does not teach them what they are better off not knowing. Maybe they justify their acts telling that otherwise the colonies had no way of entering the industrial revolution !! That they actually have done us more good than harm! I would surely like to have a look at their history text books! To see if they have the guts to accept their mistakes (euphemistic??) Because we are taught to respect a Mr.Gandhi or a Mr.Patel because they helped us attain freedom.Those kids,what will they be taught?? One Mr.Dyer shot dead 300 unsuspecting individuals and hence was shot dead by one Mr.Singh?? Worth a thought!! I will search the internet and see if I can get their high school history curriculum...

Happy Independence Day one and all !!! Love this land for not giving us reasons to be ashamed of :) (Apart from so many other reasons, of course!)

Work is Worship ; ) !!

One year completed in TCS.

Lessons Learnt:
1.Things need time to settle down. You can't wield a wand and bring order in a second.

2.Living alone is not as tough as it is made out to be. Infact, its fun without people bothering you all the time.

3.Ignoring people and their comments is the best way to stay out of trouble.Its better than listening to them and not reacting.

4.You have nothing to bother about if you don't indulge in petty politics.Diplomacy would be your ultimate saviour.

5.Dieting does not have any direct bearing on your weight. In fact, people's comments on your figure more or less reflects their mood rather than your figure.

6.'Think horizontally' , 'Touchbase' , 'Full Ownership' , 'Professional behaviour', 'Increase Visibility' etc. are some of the words you hear ad nauseam without ever understanding their meaning. And presto! You come to know that no one else understands them either. The main point is to utter them every now and then.

7.The client thinks he fools the people.The company thinks it fools the client.The employees think they fool the company.. And everyone prides themselves for their ability to fool others!

8.This would be very important in an eyewash called appraisal. The factors taken into consideration will make your sides split with laughter. The ability to work satisfactorily is only as important as the ability to socialize. Wait before you jump to conclusions. Socializing here means sending mails to people asking them to fill their timesheets, taking new people to show them around the office, dropping an one line mail to people about some training you attended calling it Knowledge Sharing, distributing pamphlets asking people to switch off their monitors etc etc.

8.The year past always seems swift and the year to come always looms large!!!!!

Who will cry when they die??

Thanks to Mumbai traffic,my taxi had to wait in the signal for full five minutes.I saw a girl of around 13 years asking for alms from everyone.I could not help but notice the rags she was dressed in.She could hardly make anyone shell out a single penny for her and was visibly disgusted with us. 'Of course, she has every right be', I thought.How much do I spend on luxury in a month?

Dining in a fancy restaurant on weekends knowing fully well that the bills are nothing short of daylight robbery;
Movies in multiplexes when I have a hell lot of studying to do;
Travel by taxi when BEST buses and local trains connect virtually every corner of Mumbai;
Branded clothes from Westside and Shopper's stop and so on.

Sigh!'What a hedonistic Lifestyle!' If I want to, I can change the lives of such people.I can give them education or atleast two square meals a day.Is it not the responsibility of the society to uplift such people?If only each of us can spare 10% of our expenditure on luxury,it would spread joy in thousands of families.But, wait! Am I talking socialism here?Gosh, I thought I was against socialism because it makes people lazy.Coming to think of it, I am.My grandfather was pretty much in the same position 90 years back.He had no father to guide, no money to survive and no rich uncle to take him under his wings.But, he fought against all odds and became a rich landlord and single handedly uplifted his entire clan.

But, is it the girl's mistake that her grandfather was not industrious as mine?? In all probability, she does not even know who her father is.I know that in a year or two she would be begging in the same signal with an infant on her lap..God,this is indeed a vicious circle.I am not able to place my arguments correctly.Both sides are having some merit.May be I should help;If not for her sake, atleast for my sake;To get rid of the guilt I have to swallow with every gulp of Cafe Coffee Day's coffee...