Got a Detonator?

This was hardly the topic that I had planned to post on, the chosen one having been quite different in nature, but then I happened to glance at the headlines of this morning’s paper and suddenly, it was like a valve popping. At first, all I noticed was the name ‘Jessica’. It was an immediate conclusion for me, that this must be yet another article screaming that the murderers of the lady be brought to justice…but it wasn’t.

For those that are still unfamiliar with the J case, she was shot in open view of over a hundred people, at a party where the former model was acting as bartender. She refused to serve a man a drink and he shot her dead. The courts have acquitted the guilty parties around seven years after the incident, citing a ‘lack of evidence’ as witnesses turned hostile…the police were criticized and the investigating officer, after he was transferred has revealed that his superior asked him to substitute bullets and do all in his power to help the well-connected accused.

This morning’s paper carries the story of another woman, Meher Bhargava, who lies in a hospital in critical condition after being shot in the neck thrice. She’s also largely paralyzed by the injuries and remains in a critical condition and on a respirator. This happened 12 days ago. The reason she was shot? She objected to eve-teasing. The suspects are still at large and the police are not just dragging their heels, but seem to have dug them right in…

The suspects in this case already have cases of loot, arson and attempted murder lodged against them. Once again though, being well-connected to a person in Mullayam Singh Yadav’s government (this has happened in Lucknow), they’re likely to escape scot-free! One of the prime reasons I stopped reading the newspapers here was just this…that here, anyone connected with MSY can very literally, get away with murder. Why just here though, history shows that this is the case right across India.

Circa 1984, the riots that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Rajiv Gaand comes out openly and proclaims that “when a great tree falls, the ground will shake”, thus very clearly authorizing this party-men to cut loose without fear of punishment. It turned out exactly like that. Faces seen clearly on television leading killer mobs, went on to occupy ministerial berths, rather than prison cells.

Cut to a bit later and the Bofors controversy. Rajiv and Sonia Gaand were clearly guilty as was the ever-so-nice Mr. Q. Everyone knows what followed. Cut a bit later and you have the fodder scam involving our ever-so-honourable Railway Minister. Yes, that’s what you get for embezzling over INR 5 billion. It’s India, after all. A land where getting seen with Dawood Ibrahim is considered a status symbol and where, rather than offer a defence, people can question the means used by people to ‘sting’ them.

The first time I heard of the means used in a ‘sting’, I did wonder about the legal aspects, sure. But, one does ask the question of just how easy it is to buy these people. Apparently the ‘sting’ teams succeeded in proving that if someone was to try, it would prove ridiculously easy. So, now the question is not so much of whether the person is guilty or not, but of how corruptible the person is. It may be nowhere close to a legal case, as this operation proves no culpability or any illegal act in the past, but it sure does make me question the integrity of people who are supposedly ruling our Fate as well as that of the nation. All this of course, is followed by the revelation that the ‘sting’ team was sponsored by the rival political party, at which point the entire debate goes off at a tangent and ends up becoming just another pile of muck.

I often question articles and posts that merely rave and rant and present no solution to the problem. That, quite honestly is the reason that I have never posted on this topic – that of justice or the lack of it in India. Somehow, the closest I came to a solution was a course of action that started with simultaneously blowing up every single Legislative building in the country (at a time when they’re fully occupied). This of course, is beyond the realms of even a Mithun feature and even then, this would just be the start. The disease now is linked so inextricably with the system that it appears to have become a part of it.

I am also sick of hearing people say how ‘the people’ are the ones that will end all this. Bullshit! Sad to say, 90% of the people of this country – if not more – don’t deserve the right to vote! If they did, how could you justify any of the political leaders of this country? Mind you, I don’t even need to take a name!!! Name me even one!!! Sorry, democracy may flourish here…but that’s such a damned farce.

It’s a disturbing thought to know that the Fate of the country is largely decided by people who sell their vote for a bottle of country liquor, have little idea of what a vote is and an even smaller idea of whom they are voting for or what the issues are. Politicians know that their fate can be determined by the level of rainfall in election-year. And here, I am not even touching upon the communal, pseudo-communal, hidden communal, caste-based, poll-rigging etc etc.

Equal voting right is a stupid thing in India and I don’t care if you brand me arrogant or a supremacist for saying so. I truly believe that the vast and overwhelming majority of people do not deserve the right to vote. If you’re an Indian, ask yourself if you know the name of your local Municipal representative. If you don’t, well, then it shows you just how responsible a citizen you are.

Solutions for this one? Frankly, I’m fogged. I can’t think of one other than the fact that the right-minded people should get into the system and cure it from within (something that would take a century if not more), but who would enter all that filth, knowing that it could cost you your life? I thought of it too at a time, but it takes more than just the urge to do something. It would take a complete lack of fear regarding a certain bullet to the head. Is it sensible? Can it actually be done in the realm outside the ideal? I was too weak to find out. Who knows? Maybe someday someone will try. Maybe some already have. We’d never hear of them…not in the days when even the bloody media is just the extension of the political system and inches are bought rather than made.

Oh and yes, I too do not know the name of the local Municipal representative of my locality…

In a Group, I'm Individual...

Slot 1 of placements ended today (1AM) and to be frank, ended very nicely for me personally. Of my four applications in the entire process (yes, just 4), I had 2 shortlists and converted both and accepted the offer that paid the lower salary…the profile doing the trick for me. A way better profile.

The results were amazing in the sheer volume of the offers that were made in Slot 1 this time. But, even as I stood there, listening to the last of the names being read out, while enveloped in the euphoria of knowing that I had achieved what I myself had considered very doubtful at the beginning of the placement season, I happened to glance at the face of a person I know very well.

Smiling and congratulating another person, X looked just like one of the other people in that room; celebrating what I call the raison d’etre of the IIMs and all B-schools, Engineering colleges etc. in India. It was a sight that immediately took away the emotions I had been going through and replaced them with the thought that life is indeed so damned unfair.

Come to think of it, the entire placement process is very unfair and frankly, very silly. Let’s see how a typical multinational bank that wants to recruit people for its Treasury function recruits. They shortlist the top 40 students or something in the batch and then subject them to that arbitrary horror called the Group Discussion – the habitat of the terrifying GD-killers, the loudmouths who seemingly know not that a Group Discussion by definition should have more than just the one person speaking!

I would really like to question the very basis for the existence of this phenomenon. Just why does this GD exist? As per the panellists of course, it exists to illustrate just which people ‘can work well in teams or groups’. What a load of crap! Having been through a fair number of these, I think I can say with a fair degree of confidence that all that a GD does is weed out the people who are not too fluent in English, not too aggressive, not too damned loud and essentially the ones who are content to discuss rather than fight! Seems rather to defeat the purpose it set out to achieve, when you consider that last point in particular!

I, personally have failed just once to clear an elimination GD (in five attempts) and this is something I put down to the fact that I generally bide my time and speak but little, preferring to think up a point that nobody else has brought up and bringing it in nicely at the point that even the panellist will notice that I contributed quality rather than quantity. I do this twice and then remain silent unless the panellist decides to ask everyone to conclude in turns or asks me to summarize.

Yet, I have to admit that this is in no small part also attributable to luck! I have never applied to the FMCG companies; and those that have assure me that those firms never fail to select solely those people who never stop talking, preferring a fish-market scenario over allowing the others a chance to speak. This though, is not just restricted to FMCG companies it would seem.

Banks somehow seem to have acquired this fetish (so to say) as well! In today’s day and age, most if not all, banks recruit for multiple functions spanning both consumer banking as well as corporate banking, the former being more of a Marketing job with little or no Finance knowledge required and the latter being the opposite. Now, I really fail to understand why a candidate applying to the latter really has to demonstrate how good he is in a GD!

Why should communication skills and teamwork be qualities you look for in a person, who is after all, just going to pore over numbers and figures all day, compute solutions to very complex equations and all in all, work individually to reach certain objectives? Just why should this person be great in a GD or exceptionally good in his fluency in the English language? Why should he be the sort who is necessarily grammatically correct all the time and who speaks accent-less English?

A number of people say about me that once I get a shortlist for an interview I will almost certainly clear it. I do take this as a compliment, yet I do not consider this to be a reflection of my true abilities. I take it purely as acknowledgement of the fact that I am perhaps more fluent and more ‘glib’ a talker than several of those around me. I do not for a moment though, believe that these qualities will in any way enable me to be superior in my work to those around me who are not so good on those parameters. Far from it, I believe that a number of them are in actual fact, far better equipped than me to excel in most fields! Through hard work, dedication and knowledge of the field, all of which I sorely lack.

It sickens me to think that the person that taught a number of people Finance could fail to reach the interview stage for any of the major banks on campus in Slot 1. Yet, the way things are structured in the placement process, this is a very real possibility. It sickens me to contemplate that one of the most intelligent people on campus could be rejected in interviews for Treasury and Corporate Banking roles because his communication skills are not ‘up to the mark’. Just what is the mark? Work skill? Or glib talk?

These people are too good to not get jobs. They are too good to not be the top performers among their peers within the next two years. There is no doubt that they will indeed be the stars that shine brightest in a very short while. Yet in the meantime, I must say that their loss is also the industry’s loss and in particular the loss of the organizations that choose façade over matter, style over substance and glib talk over real knowledge.

Yet, this thread is about more than those few. This is about those that somehow fall through the holes in that web called luck. Through no fault of theirs but merely through that fact that is fortune. There are those that somehow are missed because they state plainly who they are, rather than type the same in words designed to mislead. To those that have qualifications that set them apart from the rest in terms of true knowledge who are still considered as being not good enough to merit an interview as the course is not one that requires the top percentages.

At the end of the day, what will show is just true ability. So X, this one’s for you dude…

I chased what could do without,
You follow with the blade landing on the thorn,
You saw it not; you’ll see it once more,
The blind can’t be warned; wisdom’s never inborn

Of Calamities and Misinformation

If I were asked to name the two biggest natural disasters ever to hit Indian shores, I would have no hesitation in naming the horrendously overhyped and much lied about duo of J Nehru and MK Gandhi. Whether evaluated from an economic, foreign-relations or human perspective, these two did all in their power to cripple the country and leave it in a total shambles by the time they were through.

Let’s just look a bit objectively at the oh-so-great Mr. N then for starters. Power hungry as he was, his first act was to ensure, with able assistance and ultimate guidance from Mr. G that the Congress’ decision of appointing Patel as PM was shot down and he was to lead the nation. This decision of course, led to Jinnah asking for Pakistan, since his only condition was that Nehru not be made PM. A secular Jinnah, when rebuffed by Gandhi on this demand immediately turned to hardline religiosity and ultimately this led to the infamous rioting that left thousands dead and the populations of two nations scarred.

This however was just the precursor to what Nehru truly aimed to accomplish. Jinnah was perhaps the wisest man of that time and I base this opinion purely on the fact that hindsight shows how right he was to demand that Nehru not be made PM. Just after Independence, with Pakistan mounting an attack on Kashmir, the then-ruler of the independent State rushed to Delhi and signed an accession treaty with India. As part of the country, perhaps I am not being too demanding when I state that India’s duty was now to retaliate to uphold sovereignty – a suggestion that Patel (Home Minster) made.

Yet Nehru in his infinite wisdom chose to rush to the UN with this issue rather than use force. The result? A total fiasco with India rejecting the UN’s decision, an International Border that is non-existent and much-debated, a ‘Line-of-Control’ that is farcical and ill-defined at best and of course, the wonderful gift of terrorism that shows no signs of ceasing.

But Nehru was an all-rounder, to be sure. India was a newly freed nation and this of course afforded him with ample elbow-room to wreak all the havoc that his mind dreamed up. Economically, he imposed on the country a model more incompetent and ridiculous than any could have imagined. A similar model was tried and immediately rejected by China, but Nehru of course knew better.

So, we had regulations that ensured that there was no private sector at all, we had a monolithic public sector that apart from boosting the employment figures provided little productivity and ensured that incompetence, corruption and red tape became inextricable parts of our industry and culture. The growth rates under Nehru was not just laughable, but contemptible and the economy hurtled quickly towards the crisis that would envelop it in the 1970s.

Foreign affairs though, was the field for which Nehru reserved his best. He started this little baby called the Non-Alignment Movement. Fantastic as it may sound, this joke not just survived its ill-conceived inception, but lasts to date!!! This despite the Cold War itself having been over for well over a decade. Oh well, since we can’t blame the last bit on Nehru, I will just leave that as a pointer to how ridiculous the concept was in itself.

NAM of course meant that the member nations of this organisation aligned with neither the United States nor the USSR. It’s perhaps the easiest fact to point out that none of the NAM countries achieved anything significant in terms of growth during the Cold War era. India of course, was to play an even bigger clown under the expert guidance of the highly esteemed Mr. Nehru.

While a leading light of NAM and one of the founder nations, India was quite obviously cosying up to the USSR. This of course was hardly invisible to the USA who quite nicely formed an alliance with Pakistan. (It took massive efforts to shrug off the effects of this phase and Indian relations with the USA did not improve till ABV's reign... Even now of course, the astoundingly stupid Left and their cronies are creating a ruckus, but then again, they'd do that anyway.) Yet India was never really assured of overt Russian support anyway, since we were, ostensibly at least, a part of NAM and therefore could hardly afford to support one of the Big Two on any public forum!

Yet Nehru’s biggest showpiece, his grandest moment and the culmination of all his efforts on these different fronts was the confrontation with China. Much is made in history texts in Indian schools of the fact that the Chinese were the aggressors in this conflict. This of course, is a vicious campaign of misinformation used by the Congress to sweep under the carpet all the horrendous mistakes that Nehru made in the lead-up to the conflict.

The great statesman that he was, he deliberately redrew the maps and asked the Indian forces to proceed further and further, assuming that the Chinese troops that would inevitably be returning to their outposts would not care to fight and take back what was theirs, as the land in that region was hardly fertile (Wonder why he wanted it then, but then I’m not as smart or as much a visionary as he was).

Nehru then repeatedly ignored Chinese pleas to withdraw and the result of course was the war itself. This is where Nehru’s other achievements came into play. Where the maps and the records showed bridges and roads that the exchequer had paid millions for, there were in reality none present! And Nehru being the tactical genius and the geography master that he was, asked the Indian soldiers to march into combat in the Himalayas, wearing no more than a sleeveless sweater. Perhaps his assumption was that the firing would keep them warm. Who knows? Perhaps he was right. We’ll never know the soldiers’ perspective of course as they were all massacred on the battlefield…

As an illustration of the truth of all this, consider that China, having marched well into the disputed territory and being in a fantastic position, unchallenged and facing pressure from nobody, unilaterally declared a ceasefire as well as a withdrawal of troops and returned vast portions of the disputed territory to India. This is after the fact that their initial offer for a ceasefire in September (all they asked in return was that India agree to negotiate on the issues that Nehru had so far ignored), was rejected by Nehru even before he read it!!! This of course sparked off the combat in October and November that claimed over a thousand soldiers.

Nehru showed his tremendous respect for the fallen men with his stunning statement regarding how ‘not a blade of grass grows there’, to illustrate that the loss was not anything he considered major. And this man is considered our greatest leader? The maestro of foreign relations? The only foreign relationship he was good at was the philandering with Lady M.

In true Nehruvian style of course, there was a report written on the War and the reasons for the loss. There was also a Committee instituted later that was asked to see if the report could be released to the Indian public. That of course, has not happened and possibly never will… To do so, would destroy in one blow all the myths that the Congress has worked so hard at spreading, about the most vile person ever to occupy any nation’s top office.

To those that may contest the facts I present regarding the China War, please visit this link. It may enlighten you…and trust me, it makes for a depressing read, particularly if you are a Congress-loving person who believes in that web of lies and deception about Nehru…

Someday I’ll write on Gandhi’s other failings, but perhaps the biggest of them all, was that he shoved this man down our throats… It’s enough to make a grown man cry to hear people praise those two bastards.

Dustin' Up Reality

I don’t normally watch movies, considering the activity to be rather a waste of time, particularly considering that this time could be so much more gainfully employed in writing or at least listening to some songs. It was therefore something that caused me no little chagrin when I was literally forced to watch a movie tonight.

In a way that I find quite typical though, I managed - with some effort mind you - to shrug off my tormentors so to speak and was sitting in my room sipping the vodka when it suddenly struck me that it could surely not be that bad an idea to watch, or should I say re-watch a movie called The Graduate. I settled down therefore, comfortable in the absence of the newly-removed plaster and watched a movie that quite frankly, I expected to bore the wits out of me.

When I first watched the movie, it left me quite untouched. It struck me more as a movie that may have been relevant in parts to the audience of the 60s, feeding on their anti-establishment feelings and their rebelliousness, but one that with the passage of time had not just been eroded in the connection that it could establish, but also one that was retrograde and quite comical in its attempt to be a mature movie-watchers feed.

Watching it tonight though was a quite different experience to the time almost a decade ago when I viewed it for the first time. For starters of course, I no longer had that adolescent thrill at the prospect of watching a movie that was ostensibly all about sex and attaining sexual maturity. What started a couple of hours ago as a mere exercise to prove the veracity of my aversion to movie-watching turned quite quickly into an absorbing exercise that made me think even after it was, for all practical purposes, at an end.

How many people in my batch or the next truly know what they aspire to become – apart of course from the time-honoured ‘successful career’ myths? How many truly understand the life that faces them? How many are equipped mentally and emotionally to handle all that life will inevitably throw their way? Why them, a vast majority of even the supposedly mature adults I meet, despite their decades of working life, seem to be quite at a loss when confronted with these questions.

Most people would prefer to flow with the tide, so to speak. Few, if any, of us have ever contemplated the ramifications that our actions at this age, or any before this, will have or have had on the lives that we shall lead in the future. The emptiness and desolation that oft seem to accompany middle-age are perhaps a direct consequence of this. Then again, when have we ever been granted the time to think of such things?

As things stand, a few days prior to this post, I found myself staring at a list of company names. A number of them – and I am not ashamed to say this – were names that I had never heard prior to setting my eyes upon the list. My task was to rank these in order of my preference – were I to be offered a job in each of them. This task that seemed so infinitely easy did not really take me a short while to complete mind you, despite the fact that I only ended up ranking around 10 of the companies in that entire list of well over a hundred. And trust me when I say that the number of applications I have made falls well short of even that number, which when compared with my colleagues seems so paltry.

When have any of us really had the time to ponder over those myriad questions that confront us in the forms? ‘What are you short-term and long-term aims?’, ‘Where do you see yourself five years from now?’ Quite frankly, while a few may have found the time to contemplate these, the vast majority are, at least in my opinion quite clueless about the true answers that they hold to these questions.

When thought about at even the slightest depth, we have never really made the choices that we seem to have made. As a high-schooler, it was ingrained in me that the intelligent and the performers chose to do Engineering or Medicine by default rather than design. Little wonder then that I, like the vast majority, ‘chose’ one of those disciplines. Post-Engineering, it was quite clear to me that my heart did not lie there and once again like the majority of the populace confronted with such a situation, I chose to pursue an education in Management.

I truly believed that the two years thus spent would give me the opportunity to not just look at who I was but also give me the time to evaluate where I stood and where I really wanted to head in life. Most people in my position do the same and quite frankly they are hardly to blame – if at all. Asked myself, I too would advise a person facing that crisis in life to do exactly as I did.

And yet, as I stand today, I feel that most around me are truly lost – too caught up in what we are doing to ever thing properly about exactly what we are doing and what ramifications our actions hold for ourselves. Aversion to taking risks has become so deep a part of us that we rarely seem to be able to tune into ourselves. The truth about us becomes a part of the great unknown and like the leaf in autumn winds, we too get swept with the tide…moving towards our destiny with scarcely a thought about what that destiny is.

I can hardly boast of being a thinker or even one who knows the answer to any of the questions that haunt my existence. However that is hardly an excuse for being who I am. Will I ever have the courage to pursue the dream that I saw emerge today? I know not. I have no idea quite frankly about what direction I will ‘choose’ to take at the end of this phase of my life…and yet, that one phone call today wherein I stated what I believe in and met with an empathetic response seems to console me that the path I choose will not really be as tough as things have seemed thus far.

My aim is neither of chastising, nor of demeaning those that surround me. I merely say what I do because I am perhaps more clueless than most…because I know just how clueless man can become. Dustin Hoffman, take a bow… Truly, the sounds of silence are deafening.

Farewell *Yawn*

It is the time of the year that several IIM bloggers and of course, other B-schoolers post about how they are getting sentimental and how much they would like to make the most of the days that they have left on campus, since by the 20th of March, even the convocations will be over. Classes are over everywhere as are exams and it’s just the placements and convocation that remain.

I find myself amongst the minority that is not in this category though. Far from being sentimental, I find myself almost relieved to be at the end of my stay here. It is not because I like to work, as that is the only thing I dread. I hate working hard and though I have never faced a problem thus far in the two years of work-life that I went through prior to this place, the prospect of working for the next thirty odd years does leave me a bit cold to be honest.

Yet, even this dread is not enough to make me feel sentimental about the place – not by a long way. For the most part, I will be glad to be out. They say that people make the place, but to be quite honest, I am not one for getting attached to people and the one thing I hate most is a crowd, which is exactly what you are faced with in a residential campus. A crowd of nitwits that it is well nigh impossible to get away from. People have a habit of being irritants and this place is no exception, whatever the general populace may make of the intellectual capital!

In the last 18 months or so, I have had a number of opportunities to see specimen from all the IIMs and also other B-schools during the summer internship as well as at the sundry B-school fests, yet they have, one and all, left me quite unimpressed. I find myself far more at home speaking to the people I know in the outside world. Yes, there are definitely a few people on this as well as other campuses that I would like to keep in touch with, but those are folks that I am pretty sure I will be in touch with even years down the line…and without the baggage that a campus bears with it.

Campus life is essential in my opinion, particularly at the Undergraduate level. It exposes you to the widest possible variety of idiots and teaches you how to handle nincompoops of all kinds. It also teaches you to fend for yourself even when surrounded by these duds and also how to work your way to success despite and occasionally because of these obstacles.

So, here are a few things I hate about campus life:

People expect you to know their names. Get this folks. Being in the same batch or class as me does not entitle you to my brain! It’s up to me to decide if I want to remember you. If I don’t then live with it! It’s not like I demand you to know me!!!

People expect you to talk to them nicely. Being on the same campus as me does not entitle you to my time. If I don’t want to speak to you, it does not mean I’m a snob. It just means that I don’t want to speak to you! If the converse is fine with me, this should be fine with you!!

People who think they’re entitled to know you. Somehow on a campus people think you should be open with your personal life. Get a life folks. Be happy I don’t burden you with my problems. Be happy that I’m not as weak as you!!!

The one thing that appeals to me the most about life after this place is that I will be able to lead a life where I can actually decide when and what I want to do. The very thought of not being forced to obey ‘norms’ and not being a ‘forced friend’ as I call it, is so attractive!!!

Yes, in case you are wondering, I do believe that 99% of this world comprises a bunch of morons (the remaining 1% read my blog ;-) ). That does not imply that I assume a person I meet for the first time to be one. No, I don’t and as I have mentioned a few times before in my musings, I like to be totally unbiased and unprejudiced about people I know nothing about. Yet, I still believe that 99% of the overall world is a bunch of morons from my perspective!

Nothing I have seen so far has given me any reason to make me rethink this. Here’s the rider. Everyone in the world could follow this philosophy and they could all be right! After all, someone may be a moron for me and me for him! It’s all a matter of individual perspectives and they, by definition vary from individual to individual.

Bottom line: I’m glad I won’t be forced to be in a closed place with a closed set of people. I’m glad I will be free to interact when and in the manner that I deem fit. I’m glad that even the forced interactions will end after office hours. I’m glad I will have a social life again of the type that I myself want. I’m glad I’m leaving…

And What Is Your Point?

Sitting today as I do, I find myself in a strange place within and without my surroundings. There is a palpable air of calm and yet I find myself unable to rest for the mind is in constant turmoil. The thoughts that race through my head are incessantly changing in colour and depth and they refuse to slow down to the point where I could endeavour to decipher, savour or even float within a single one.

Perhaps the closest that I got to coherent thought today was while writing my exam when I saw the question, “Justify: Interview situations inevitably create a conflict between truth and self-projection”. It is quite a strange question if you ask me. I do not question its veracity as it is quite evident. What makes it strange in my opinion is the fact that this is true not merely of interview situations but of each and every interaction we have whether with those around us or even with ourselves.

I have frequently dwelt on this fact and quite frankly upon seeing this question I was quite tempted to insert the line that even writing this answer could in a way become a conflict between what I truly believed and what the examiner wanted to know. When you speak to your parents it is a conflict between what you want to say or do and what you know they want you to say or do. Indeed it’s about who and what they want you to be.

It has been a strange sort of week for a variety of reasons and continues to stay weird. There are those write-ups that need to be sent to the committee that will publish the memoirs for the outgoing batch. While it seems like such a great idea on the surface, I see quite a few flaws in the entire thing that render the entire exercise quite meaningless in my opinion.

The write-ups are written for each person by another person whom the committee deems to be best placed to know the person in question. This to my mind is quite senseless. After all, shouldn’t the person be allowed to choose who knows him or her best? The committee obviously knows precious little about me, since I don’t even know who is in the committee and therefore of course, the person who has been allotted the task is my neighbour, who quite frankly, knows as little about me as the chaps who were last with me in kindergarten.

Then again, why should only person contribute? How much would this person be able to encapsulate and quite frankly, would it really matter? After all, for every single person on campus, I am somebody else. Ask 50 people what they think of me (or anyone else for that matter) and you are more than likely to have 50 different opinions. None of them is right and none is wrong, for quite simply, to quote Roger Waters, “I am you and what I see is me”.

Anyway, quite pointless to think about it, because frankly it does not make a difference to me and I could not really care less about the entire thing right now. There seem to be far better things to think about, if only I could identify just what my brain wants to do at this juncture. Quite frankly, it seems to have taken off on its own and that has left me a mere shell of a person who is seeing a complete blank all drawing more blanks when trying to come up with something or indeed trying to find my brain.

The entire exercise though has made me see things around me in a new light. All of a sudden there are now even more questions and proportionately fewer answers. When asked whether he was feeling bad about leaving this place, a person replied that he’d never felt worse and that he was leaving so many friends and stuff like that. It surprised me because the last time I felt such an emotion was when I was forced to change schools in my second grade! Evolution and change seem natural to me and more than being inevitable, to me they are essential!

It made me wonder how any person could ever mature if we were forever in the same company; if you were never made to move out and find your feet in a new environment. Mind you, I am of the type that is most averse to experiment and yet, I realise that unless I am faced with fresh views, situations, ideas and thoughts, I would never be able to grow in the truest sense of the word, as a person! Sentimentality is a sign of weakness and nothing more than that.

Yes, I do admit to having fond memories at times and there have been times when, even as I moved on, I knew that what I left behind was far better than most things I would come across later. Even today, I can identify those times and reaffirm that those were indeed great. However, that does not mean that I ever feel the urge to return to those times, nor do I regret where I am. They form beautiful memories that still make me smile and for that reason alone, I do not wish I could change what happened. That may perhaps just take the joy out of the entire situation.

Deep within each person knows the truth about change. Yet we’re almost always unwilling to let go and always attempting to hold on till the last possible moment. For some reason most people are loath to accept that parting is but a natural consequence of meeting and that nothing in the world is permanent except for a memory. Memories…why can’t we just aim at creating and retaining the best of them? Why hanker for living on in the same moment? Why not just live life as one collective memory where each scene is as beautiful as we choose to make it? I shall never know, because quite frankly, I too am human…

Sentimentality though is not restricted merely to people or places. What about thoughts? How many people are comfortable in stretching the boundaries of their imaginations? How many like to break free of the fetters of conventional thinking? Most of the time we can’t even bear to hear someone else speaking of something that goes against our thoughts. How could we tear ourselves free of our own thoughts all by ourselves? It is possible, but let’s face it, most of us will not do it, simply because we are too attached to what we already believe in. Questioning ourselves without any influence other than ourselves is not something that most of us can claim to be capable of.

Hanes - Tagless Comfort I Seek...

It seems that whatever I do, whichever direction I turn in and however deep into the sands I bury my head, there is always someone around that manages to spot me despite my not looking at them!!! Strange, but at least I now know what an ostrich feels like. Funny that I should say that because I’ve always found that the old ostrich trick works pretty well, whatever the old hats might say about that…

I mean, let’s think about it. You’re sitting in class and the prof asks you a question. What do you do? Well, the smart thing is to just not look at the prof and keep your head buried in the textbook/notebook/porno mag that you are carrying with you. Chances are that even if it is indeed you that the prof is referring to, a few moments later, the prof will sigh, give up on you and move on to the unsuspecting smarty-pants next to you who thought that the old hats were right…

Trust me, there is no better way to get asked a question by a prof than to look straight at him when he asks it!!! Anyway, I think I’ve veered way off course here, which of course is pretty natural considering the inhumanly torturous task that I am left confronted with. Twice I managed to do my Teflon-imitation and avoided the silly thing, but now I find that I have been firmly tagged… No amount of squirming seems to enable me to be rid of this, so here goes…

Well, this tag has really got me squirming. The requirement you see is that I write down the 8 top qualities that I wish my ideal woman to have. Now, quite frankly, this tag must have been made by a woman because most guys can’t think beyond three or four qualities and that is after we have dissected (literally) women into various parts and decided how we’d like each one to be… It’s like that old joke about the prayers of the sexes goes (Ping me if you have not yet heard that one ;-) )

So, I shall now put up a ‘façade’ once again. This time, I shall pretend to be this unique guy who actually does expect some intangibles from his women and then I am going to think even harder to come up with 8 of them. The end result of course will be aimed at making all the women that read this wonder how nice and sensitive and immensely dateable I am, while of course all I will actually be doing is sitting and praying that some dumb cluck actually falls for it all, goes to orkut, takes my phone number and calls me up saying how much she’d like to sleep with me ;-).

Anyway, enough of the beating around the bush part. Oh and in case you people are wondering, it was the exams that caused the delay in me posting this one, not the time that it took me to come up with these 8 lies…oops…qualities I want in my women…sorry again…woman:

1. She should be shorter than 4’1”. Quite simple really since I am 4’1. And no, it’s not about the ego thing here. Look, if the kids are short and the two of us are both short, at least they will never be able to blame just me!!! Whereas, if she’s 6’ tall and I’m just 4’1 and they’re all pygmies, well, I don’t think they’d let me off alive…well…let’s just say that it’d give them yet another reason to want to tar and feather me before they lynch me…Add to this my “marry at 50” theory (ping me if you don’t know that one) and you have the recipe for disaster. Tens of those monstrous kids chasing me down the streets! *shudder*

2. She should have a sense of humour that forces her to laugh at each and every one of my jokes, thus at least boosting my ego! This of course, is substitutable with a sub-30 IQ (not too difficult to find in women ;-) *Ouch!!!* Kidding!!!). That extremely low IQ of course would make her feel that I am sooooo smart with my 45 and she’d believe that it was a funny joke and she was just too dumb to get it (which most women are in any case *Owww!* OK, OK, I get the point. No more, no more…). Anyway, bottomline – whether it’s coz she’s smart or dumb, she should laugh at my jokes!!!

3. She should hate Sachin Tendulkar, Barcelona, Thierry Henry, Kimi Crykonnen, Glenn McGrath, Abhishek Bachchan, Leo The-Crap-rio, Fartstreet Boys, Cryin Adams etc with the same intensity as I do…no, no compromises on this one whatsoever!

4. She should be the type that considers it a sin to buy clothes that are not by good designer labels and that do not cost a bomb. I think that is the only way I will ever be able to own a designer outfit. While she’s at it, she can also teach me how to dress right and how to knot a freaking tie!!! (OK, that’s a lie. I can tie a double knot, it’s the single knot that she’ll have to teach me!!! Really…)

5. She should not think even for a moment about tidying the ‘mess’ that my house will be in. I don’t want her finding my ‘black book’ after all!!! That’s secret!!! More importantly though, I hate the thought of anyone mucking around with my diapers or teddies!

6. I am a moderate person with few - if any - mood swings. Normally, I am either a tolerant, easy-going person who is willing to compromise or I am a cold-blooded, premeditated murderer. I don’t believe in violence, breaking limbs or in mindless killing. So she should not think of me as a schizophrenic psychopath or something. And I am a vegetarian to boot!

7. She should not suffer from headaches at night. This one is imperative. There is no single line in the entire history of mankind that frustrates us as much as this one!!!

8. She should be able to constantly provide me with ammo for my Mars posts… (Yes, this one shows you the depths that I have had to plumb for this post…)

OK, that’s done then…and I hereby tag Neeta and request each and every one of the people that reads this to go and put in a message on her Shoutbox that she needs to do this tag!!! Grrr…

OK. Now that that's done, well, you see, I'm through with two exams and going by my performance, nothing can now stop me clearing this course now, so please do forgive the words that may offend you :D. And yes, like all men that walk this planet, the credo is, "Show me a woman. Then I'll decide what makes me like her!!!" Tags like these are meaningless for guys. What are we supposed to do? Be honest? That would be like... "Oh! I dunno...she should be good I guess...hmmm...whatever!" :-). But please, please please, do message that lazybones Neeta!!!

The Future is My Past - IV

Today, I extinguished a fire. Or perhaps all I have done is stoke the flame for one last time, to see it leap and rise to lick the skies one last time before an ember is all that slowly flickers and then fades into the night... On a different note, today will see me attend my last ever day of classroom education in a residential college...at least, that is the way the plan seems, although judging by the way things have been before, I could perhaps be further from the truth than I have ever been before... Here I am then...unedited and uncut...

Far behind this curtain call,
In a place that I never saw before,
My waking dream merges into a part of folklore,
That these children will dance to,
While an eye bleeds and sees,
The tearing of me that desire wrought,
Perhaps the bending of a rule,
Was all that cheating life was about

Forever hidden away in the lap of death,
The secret of a life eternal,
But how could I consider leaving behind,
That without which no man could ever climb,
The stairs seem too high,
My foot withdrew before I started,
But when the maze of lies is the only truth,
Which reality do I deny?

If from above I could see me,
Would it still seem to be a lake of fire,
Or in the test each of us take,
Will it be the moment they lift my wake?
For sombre though the day may seem,
It’s not serenity I seek in me,
Nor was it on placid seas,
That maelstroms chose to forget the meek

Darkness that we strove to find,
With torches lit and flames unashamed,
But of what I left behind,
That last vestige is what today I blame,
Drag it under, kill it now,
Or stay where dead memories belong,
Or walk on by and light the way,
To where on me, eyes I shall lay

Today we run under sheltered sky,
The same which every attempt at flight denies,
But that which I seek far and wide,
In the darkest dungeon I’ve left behind,
Still the years will roll on by,
Raising hopes, provoking sighs,
For the curtains I part when I die,
Close as the newborn opens his eyes…

The Future Is My Past - III

Found this among some old papers while I was having my room cleared. A strange coincidence that I should find it today, but that of course begs the question whether there is any such thing as coincidence, which again leads to another train of questions and thoughts that is best left for another day...

Seeing what you never saw before,
That déjà vu you have once more,
Walking off but never turning back,
No helping hand or devil by your side

Buried under the weight of grief,
The smile that breaks brings to the mind,
The stabbing memory of a life,
That happiness strove to leave behind

That footprint on snowy ground,
Impressions never made upon the idle man,
Fingers shake; rings tremble and rise,
And disappear before reaching the sky

You thought you knew but were too wise,
No want required one more try,
Why chase what I never had?
You never lose if you never fight

Lying beside that which never rise,
The death you see was just in my eyes,
When birth’s a myth and life’s a lie,
What can you seek? What could you find?

The doors are closed into the mind,
Don’t care to ask for I know not why,
Just quietly pass and walk on by,
And leave the dead to lead their lives

The foe that rose to slay the lie,
Killed by the fear that walked by his side,
The friend is dead, the foe alive,
Or are they just one in the mind?

The breaths are dreams that froze the day,
And words unsaid hidden awake,
Are these all we’re meant to forsake?
From this sleep no more will you awake

Ruins Build the Dreams You See...

I wonder at times why the things that one seems to want the most never seem to happen, while the ones that one dreads the most, seem pre-destined. On the subject of the latter, I once surmised and still stand by my thought process, that we dread them so much, only because we know that there is a great likelihood of their actually coming to pass.

It’s only logical. Of all the things that you really dread, having an airliner crash onto your head while crossing the street in the morning, is hardly likely to top the list. It’s far more likely to be something much more personal and something that a part of you realises as being somehow likely to happen, however much you try to deny it consciously.

On the getting of things, I started off thinking that perhaps it is similar. Perhaps the things one hankers for the most are the things that you are least likely to be able to get. That actually didn’t make much sense though and it fails to stand any scrutiny from any angle. After all, I know people who seem to have both feel almost rooted to the ground, and yet events unravel in a way so as to deny them something they desired and something that everyone recognised as being immensely achievable for them, even if not their right, so to speak.

It made me question the very nature of desire. The things that seem to make a desire strong or weak. What are these factors? Do they stem from the situation and the likelihood of our attaining these dreams? That’s true for our fears, but not desires surely. Desires, to me, represent you in the most obvious way. If I know your dreams, chances are, that with a little bit of thought, I’d know most facets of your personality. When I think of the stuff that I really yearn for, I know that it tells me a lot about myself.

Why then do we so often fail to attain what we want? If I think about desire the way I described it above, it leads me to just one conclusion. We fail because we don’t really know who we are. And if I look around, it seems to stand up to an initial scrutiny. The people I see who fall short the most, seem to be the people that overestimate themselves the most and vice versa of course.

Now, I speak not just of materialistic things - or MasterCard items as I like to call them - when I say all this. It’s true of the most intangible things as well. There are times when we fail to read a situation properly and start expecting something. There are moments when you are so sure that you know something to be a certain way that you ignore all the signs that point to your being wrong.

That brings me to another point. There are times when each of us passes through a situation wherein you can see what is going to happen to someone and are still powerless to do anything about it. It happens in front of your eyes. And you wonder why the other person did not see it coming. You wonder why despite seeing even more than you perhaps, the other was blind to the outcome that seemed so obvious to you!

That’s where the judgment has come in. You read the situation correctly since you did not have that much at stake. You read it in a more unbiased way and the other person did not. You knew the other person in a better way, because being in a particular situation distorts one’s views, not just of the situation, but also of themselves. That’s what I meant when I said that in every field of life, my belief is that we fail to achieve a desire purely because we make errors in judging the situations and our selves.

Also wanted to say something about fear. I remember mentioning once that fear is perhaps the deadliest emotion that can possess you as it cripples not just your thinking, but every single faculty of yours and ultimately ensures that you lose…no matter what your abilities are, no matter what your mental faculties are, if you’re scared, you’ll lose.

I’m not saying that one needs to be fearless. No human being in our materialistic world can ever be fearless. The battle therefore is not so much to quell it, but to overcome it. You’ll never kill fear, so don’t try. So, then do we all lose because we all feel fear? Yes and no actually. No, I’m not contradicting myself. If you’re scared, you’re sure to achieve less than you could have. That way you lose…so no matter how positive the outcome may be, you could have done better all the time.

A small example of this could be a game of cricket. If the batsman was not scared of getting out, he would chase more balls and perhaps score more runs. He may still score the fastest 100 of all time, but unless he reached that 100 in 17 balls with 17 sixes, he could – technically speaking - have done better. Yes, I have played the game and no, I am not drunk or anything. I just pulled an example out of nowhere to illustrate a point!

The other day I heard of something that happened with someone I know, and I was quite honestly flummoxed at how it happened. It made me look within myself too, for I know that something along the same lines, although in a totally different way, happened with me once. While not saying exactly what, let me just say that it was a case of someone’s fear preventing them from trying to achieve something.

It’s sad when such things happen. It’s even worse knowing that someone’s fear stopped your getting something that you felt was really beautiful or caused you to lose something that was really beautiful. It’s weird. And no, I don’t believe in the theory that everything happens for the best. It’s untrue and you can’t make me buy that…

Anyway, amidst the dreary darkness that seems to have engulfed life these days (what with no rock shows scheduled, exams around the corner and a quiz tomorrow), the bright spot remains that five people who really matter have got things that mean a lot to me. Five down, five to go… Naah! Make that more…