So Little Time, So Much To Do

I've always got the feeling that, I have a lot to do, but dont find the time. How true is it? To an extent it is, but its also true, that by scheduling it, one can achieve it. But its a Monday morning, and with the excuse theme, I'd like to say that a lot of activities are mood based, and only when done in the mood, can you actually enjoy and do it, as opposed to doing it like a task. It could be reading Lonely Planet's travellogues, or researching a place on the Internet, or reliving some old cricket scorecards, but it requires the right mood to really enjoy the activity. When I have time, I am looking to complete some task that has a defined completion time, as that wishlist backlog is huge. I then need to start prioritising my hobbies, which is bad, as hobbies are not meant to be slotted and calculated in time spent. Its about meandering aimlessly and enjoying the journey as opposed to running to reach a destination. Yet another week, starts. Lets hope I am able to balance sanity and insanity.

The New Life Begins!

I've been largely quiet on my blog since the time I joined B school, and even more quiet once I had passed out. I took a while to understand my motivations and where I spend my time, and what I'd like to do. I had for a while, forgotten the who the 'real me' was, and it took my blog to discover myself. It feels good to start afresh, having sorted out priorities and committed to a long term plan. The lungs feel free, now that a mental insurance deal has decided to have a better filter to the putrid air. I am beginning to enjoy a few things that I have conciously missed over so many years.


Facebook, has taken a lot of my time, but this is my real identity-My Blog, My Thoughts unaffected by what others say, irrespective of a 'Like' or a 'Comment', and staying undiluted.
These days life is good with a new Digital Camera that I have purchased. Nikon D3100 was gifted by Janani to me, and it feels lovely with the power to capture some compelling images.

So the last day of my old life is in the twilight period with the beginning of the life with a newer perspective. Hope more such changes happen, and life is beautiful as ever.

The Good Life

I was just asking myself, what I wanted to do with my life and sometimes when I am honest with myself none of the answers match with the job description of my job. I admire the myriad consumer insights that my mind dissects whenever I am on the road, or watching a commercial, but what has really interested me is the spirit of long time world travel. Sometimes I ask myself, when is a good time to quit the job and do that, I realise that as long as I keep working, Murphy's law will keep giving you expenses and make you greedy with your money.

Secondly, What would be the impact on my career of a break for 6 months/year for activities that the world dubs 'frivolous and crazy'? Would it be tough for me to get another well paying job?

Thirdly, Do I need shitloads of Money for world travel?

Looking at these questions, I sense that somewhere down the line, education instead of enabling my mind, has actually blocked my thinking when it comes to a vocation. I guess when faced with a crisis, people innovate and try to find disruptive businesses that generates income. Why cant I think of what goes on in the mind of someone who has a food business, some one who is a bartender, some one who is a tour guide? I guess education has blanked me in making me a product manager who apart from high end systems, cant really think about what other facets in life can offer. I was thinking of the above 3 professions as avenues for meeting various people and also earning, and all of these 3 could be done while I am travelling. Living like a local in a different part of the world each year.

Do I really care that I dont have a house or a car of my own? Do I really care what my neighbour or relatives think of me? I probably dont and thats why I see an oppurtunity in chasing the life that one wants. I am beginning to get the feeling that the Life one wants is never far away. We just get entangled in the cobwebs of the mind, which has been trained to ignore thoughts from the heart.

In today's time, there are the outliers who have done this and are succesful in their lives, and given that the web is a lovely resource for connecting with people and shedding inhibitions, it shouldnt be a problem in finding such people. Its never too late to start living the life one wants. Myabe I should put faith in intuition and the heart a little more than the brain.

Yuhi Chala Chal Rahi, Yuhi Chala Chal..Kitni haseen hai ye duniya..Phool saare jamele, dekh phoolon ke mele...Badi rangeen hai duniya


Thhandi hawa hai thhandi chhaaon hai...Door woh jaane kiska gaaon hai....Baadal ye kaisa chhaaya....Dil ye kahaan le aaya.................................

Estimation of Work

Its amazing, to realise how much enthusiasm can dictate the way we think about work. I've had this problem for a while, where I estimate that a particular work would take 'x' hours to completion, then realise that I didnt budget a couple of other factors, and that 'x' is now 1.3x in terms of time. Over a period of time, when the effort put to output obtained doesnt show a steep increase, we start to over estimate the task at hand. I've seen an example of that with my friend who was to send his wedding invite to our batch, but didnt do so, as he was waiting to scan his invite and get a nice byline in the email invite. He took 2 weeks to scan, and was still sitting on his invite in his draft folder. I realised this, when I spoke to him. All it took was an email from me, helping him out on the content, and lo, in an hour, his marriage invite was complete.

I see that a lot of such tasks have mentally acquired a lot of imaginary cobwebs, and I need to spend sometime, blow them off and stop worrying about the cobwebs. Life is calling, I am on my way :-)

Nice Ad about Overcoming Odds

Liked the Haywards 5000 Ad where the hero of "Aamir" says.. " Jab faslon se zyada ho Hosla, toh Life Banta Hain". So true.. we should not allow situations to define us, but must allow situations to become better by conquering it. The last 1 year has been one such learning.

Everytime I am about to throw up my hands, I remember this AD and get back to work. Life is one nice strategy game where you need to keep traversing through the maze, and absorb your surroundings, adapting to the needs of the environment.

An Active 'Volcano' experience!

Today it rained, and it rained cats and dogs. Had lovely weather, but the mood was offset by the continuous power outage. The transformer next to my house seemed to burn even more, as the rain kept on pouring. Its scary to see the transformer burn and fume about. Its a bit like living next to a volcano, you never know when the next interruption is going to impact your daily life. Being disconnected from the internet because of the frequent outages seemed to irritate me. A lot of that feeling has gone away now. The 'volcano' is quiet, and the rains have stopped, so I have taken the brave step of switching on the television to entertain me for night, until the rains start again.

Baby Shower!

I had been to a Baby shower party today at work. It was a lot of work by the organising team in arranging decorations and planning the event by inviting and reminding everyone, but somewhere the cynical me, thought it was boring. Nothing against the party, but in a corporate setting, it somewhere loses its sheen of a nice get-together. I felt sorry for the organiser, who spent a lot of her busy time in trying to get this done by doing all the coordination. I hear she is the party organiser for most of the parties at work. Just shows the importance of passion over coming all other hurdles. Wish I get to that state. A lot of my passion for doing a bunch of things are in semi dormant state, due to the demands of corporate and family life. So the not-so-interesting thing was the dull event, but the thing that shone like a diamond was the lady's attitude in continuing with the festivities and planning games for people who had assembled there. I admire her passion for doing things inspite of a busy schedule. That's the way to livev life. One lesson for life learnt!

Time to Scale Up

Over time, I have never realised that I have grown up. The last 3 years, I have seen too many processes, loved quite a few, and was dissapointed with not being able to lap up as much as I wanted. Some due to laziness and some due to lack of discipline. If things were lapped up, only by periodical revisiting does it stay in the mind, so I lost out slowly on that front also.

Major Lesson- Learn to keep what you have, maintain a process and learn to scout for new additions. I havent done either of the three activities well, and thats why I sometimes get disillusioned with life. People sometimes, think me to be either a superman or a dumb ass, and getting to the extremes just means that all the buzz inside my brain needs some organising. I need to find which buzz inside my brain is worth listening to. I guess I got all excited that from no buzz, I suddenly have so many things working and buzzing, but now, I need to deal with the problem of plenty.

Just started making a mental map, of what all I do, and whether I can categorise it into buckets. A little bit of organised life and disciplined life, I feel, would help me in the long run. Whats the point of being the big lorry which transports water, but has a gaping hole which leaks the water as it travels? I am just getting to that stage, where adhoc planning needs to take a back seat, and I start to recognise that this is the next stage of life. One needs to scale up planning, so that every activity can go seamlessly and its easy to change things.

Festive Times

The last 1 week has been a crazy week with post marriage festivities and my wife's cousin's marriage and a trip to her ancestral village, with the whole family. So much of attention and feasting over the week, that my paunch is threatening to blow up. Had a nice time visiting a few villages, and enjoyed rural Tamil Nadu, near Kumbakonam. We had also been to many temples and bribed god to give us a good view of his idol, and pray for good health/wealth. Its a little sad that I had to miss Saarang 2010, for this trip.

For the next few weekend's I am out again, either visitig relatives, or attending parties with friends. I am yet to get that 'Me bonding with my soul' time, thats neccesary to check if 'All Izz Well' in this mad life that I run everyday.

An interesting travellogue on my Kumbakonam trip should be on its way soon enough. This has been the first trip(oops, second) with the trip tracked by GPS and geo-tagging. So its easier to describe, where exactly I took the photos. Will add all of that in a while.

Its been a manic monday which has been painfully slow. 6 o clock is taking a while to come, like Windows Vista loads on a 500 mb Ram cache! Waiting, Waiting, Waiting!

Introspection Time!

This weekend, since my mother-in-law is in town, my wife is to go visit her mother, and as a result of that, I don't have any plans to go out as such. Probably the first weekend, that I haven't made any plan(oops, I forget...meeting my wife's uncle on Sunday). But apart from that, I don't haven't made any plan for going out or visiting relatives. I seriously feel the need for introspection in life and setting a few things in order. I feel like a can of water(with a hole) that is full upto the brim, and is always overflowing, and is also losing water through the hole. Water is largely analogous to my mental space,as I am involved in too many things on the periphery and I need to sit down and look at how much I am actually processing. I need to sit back and organize email/files and do a bunch of things that I have postponed indefinitely. I am in the process of jotting down the specifics, so that I am able to measure the extent of content I will have post completion.

I have put my attention in too many baskets and need to prioritise the attention levels and involvement levels. I seriously believe I can don many hats and do them well, its just that beyond the level that I am in, enthusiasm alone doesnt work, it needs some organised planning and honest answers to move ahead.

So till Saturday, I'd be busy trying to see what are those things that I avoid, what are the things that I forget, what are the things that would make me breathe easy and feel better.

Need the Backpacker Breath!

Earlier, Whenever I used to feel worn out with work, I planned a trip in a jiffy and was out breathing the air of a backpacker, who absorbed every new experience that came exploring the unknown. That high kind of annulled the impact of stressful work. Now when you have more stress coming in from other quarters(work/home/ambitions/commitments) and backpacking not being possible, due to various reasons, the outlet for letting steam out is blocked. Waiting for an opportunity to do solo travel, where you don't have to worry what dress you wear, how much money is there in the purse, where you stay...and a 101 other mundane things. I just realize that corporate life, married life and a travelers life are like 3 different axes, and the solution to a satisfied life lies at the vortex of the three axes. If you go ahead in one axes, the lack of travel in the other 2 axes, would make you worried, and sometimes worries compound faster than bank loans :-).

2009 Shall Pass, So Shall my Lethargy

2009 marks an important year in my blogging history. I have only penned 46 posts, and most of them have been travelogues or ranting on my busy state of life. This year I truly became 'just-another-average-workaholic-B schooler'. I must have hardly made an effort to go beyond work. Maybe It had to do with a bad team to work with from January to April, and then from May to December, I had to commit to Airtel and Vodafone, an average of 3000 minutes of airtime in the name of my wife :-).

I even stopped putting the effort to follow/watch cricket, and that is quite a change. 2009 made law of diminishing marginal utility of cricket attack me. I have hardly been the guy I wanted to be this year. 2009 signified a year, where I just lived, vegetated and observed life as a spectator. The general enthusiasm I carry has been lost, and I sleep more at home. When I sleep, I just cant respond to an alarm, and a year of sleeping in simulated 18 degrees centigrade has made me fear the night more and take refuge in sleep. Its strange to see the changes that have happened in my life.

I guess whatever happens, happens for the better. I have grown sick of my lethargy, and have started to search for the enthusiasm levels, that I have generally grown up with. I am searching for the old me, with a few changes. Hope 2010 looks up, and I get past the mental block of just being lethargic and being the 'average joe' who worked,slept and ate.

An ODE to the 47th post of the year, and this actually is the lowest number of posts in a calendar year. It was 62 when I started penning my blog in 2002.

The 7 stages of a Tam Brahm Life!

Somebody at work, asked me to write a piece on 'Transformation', and while I was at it trying to put something sensible, the other thoughts that I had to forcibly put in the bin, are strung together as an article and penned below.

KEY

Tam Brahm è Tamil Brahmin

Kartik è Hypothetical Tam Brahm Character

When I think of transformation, my seventh sense works overtime to also throw synonyms called Change, Matram(Tamil) or Parivartan(Hindi). During my childhood days, having relied on too much on Wren and Martin, the difference between synonyms never existed. On getting slightly evolved in my journey from school to B school, I vaguely understood that ‘transformation’ was a wow word used along with Jargons to create an aura or awe, while ‘change’ was what dull commoners used. 5 years into corporate life and 26 years into living on earth, I will pass on my judgments on the way I see ‘transformation’. Given that I have 40 minutes and not 40 years to present my research and findings, I will stick to the sample size that I have abided by the last 26 years. Yes, I will deliberate on what ‘transformation’ does on the life of a 20 something Tam Brahm from Madras

Lets take the hypothetical case of one Mr Kartik Santhana Gopala Iyer Kannan, who is born into this world, being taught that life revolves around sambhar and curd rice, and learning which ‘amman’(Goddess) signifies what.

Now, given that Kartik is your average Tam Brahm, lets apply the theory of transformation to his life .The inflection points in the life of a Tam Brahm pretty similar to Shakespeare’s 7 stages of life are

a) His admission in School –LKG to Class 12

· As soon as Kartik is handed over by his parents, to the premises of a school, he no longer needs to recite slokams and alphabets to every passerby who comes. That’s the first transformation. You don’t need to offer unsolicited slokas and nursery rhyme bravado’s to every Tom Dick and Harry. The key take away or transformation is to SHUT UP, with pleasure!

· The second transformation is when the hormonal invasion happens within his body, he starts observing Gayatri in isolation, than the Gayatri Japam he was taught to chant thrice a day.

· He is taught to wake up at the strike of dawn when the sunrise gleams into his face, and hold his hands to a white thread, like bryan adams did to his guitar while humming ‘summer of 69’. Once he observes this parallel between his sacred thread and the guitar, while watching MTV, he takes a secret oath in his bathroom to reach the forbidden fruit of MTV. Thus begins a ‘transformation’ to access all forbidden fruits.

· The 4^th transformation is when he gets inspired to do weird things with the upma his mother has left him to have while she is at work. He is obviously ‘transformed’ by coming of age movies like American pie, which he downloaded via a Torrent for a week, on his princely dial up connection!

b) His admission to an engineering college

· All through school, Kartik was taught to believe that vertical growth happens through systematic consumption of Sambhar,Rasam and Curd Rice. But he now ‘transforms’ himself by expanding ‘horizontally’ by getting a beer belly, after exploring the forbidden pleasures of alcohol.

· Alcohol was never on the Good Boy’s list of items. Back in class 9, if Kartik’s mother quizzed him on what connects Sex, Baywatch,Alcohol, MTV,Raavan,Dushasan, Gabbar Singh and last benchers, the answer would come in a jiffy as EVIL. In engineering you get all and more of that and when the forbidden fruit is no longer forbidden, nothing seems as evil.

· Kartik, for the better part of his life used to hang out at Kapaleeshwarar Temple and drink the degree coffee in Jagadamba Mess. But given that he needs to engage his hormones with the opposite sex, he decides to ‘transform’ himself to hang out at CCD, having cappuccino all by himself, in a morbid attempt to show that he has some style and spunk left in him to get some attention from the opposite sex.

· He learns that a ‘Joint’ doesn’t necessarily have to be the J in the JEE (Joint Entrance Examination). His next ‘tranformation’ J

c) His inclination to write GRE/GMAT/TOEFL

· By his third year in engineering college he has realized that the only way to escape the nagging tyranny of his parents and live a bohemian lifestyle is to write the GRE. He ‘transforms’ himself to a studious guy, who puts in hours of research after curd rice dinners to mug all the words in the newly discovered dictionary from Barrons!

· He ‘transforms’ himself to the status of a ‘Peter’ by writing emails like “ I wish to Procastinate the Conundrum , as I am Peregrinating the apostles of Storydom on Celluloid”, which otherwise loosely translates to “ I am bunking the boring class discussion, as I am hanging out in Sathyam Theatre”

· He realizes that the time spent on Shaadi.com and fropper was not worth effort, as educational coaching centers like the TIME’s and the IMS’es would actually do well in ‘connecting people’. This transformation applies strictly to people who show their nerdly and virtual skills off as mating signs to attract females.

d) His Job Offer in the IT company on OMR

· His life transforms for the better, once he has a campus offer from an IT company and by the time he joins work, he realizes that this is far more fun than college. The company pays you to enjoy 5 months of honeymoon nestled in the quiet woods of Mysore with chicks sampled from all over India. This phase of life ‘transforms’ his national integration skills and helps him connect with his failed class 8 geography lessons.

· He ‘transforms’ himself to be this night bird ogre who develops an intense fascination for foreign chocolates and midnight ISD calls with his officemates who seem to be enjoying a bohemian lifestyle in the name of an onsite trip!

e) His first and many Onsite Trips

· No other event can transform the tam brahm as profound as an Onsite trip. They ‘transform’ to hardcore multitaskers as they balance the support calls along with their las Vegas weekend trips. Even as they spend the time in the clubs in Las Vegas, their eyes are also on the Blackberry that reminds him of the tickets pending with his clients

· The Tam Brahm who was conditioned and made to believe that Pamela Anderson was this lady in red, who appeared in TV, is now ‘tranformed’ enough to believe that she can be his, for 10 minutes and for just 20 friggin dollars!. Now the Tam Brahm, changes his stance and declares vociferously ‘I’m Possible’, from the loser line of ‘Impossible’

f) His admission to B school

· After having spent the better part of a bohemian lifestyle in Phoren lands and wanting the same salary pay scales as his onsite salary, the Tam Brahm decides to ‘transform’ himself to a leader in a B School.

· ‘Transformation’ is shown immediately when the dear Tam Brahm learns that life at a B school is all about Managing relative competition. Competition is all over from Grades, bidding on electives, chicks, coveted million dollar jobs and even competition in standing for lunch.

· The next ‘Transformation’ comes visible in his CV, during placement season when his core motto changes from “ Best Pay Packet” to “ Best Profile” to “ Decent Company” to “Job in Hometown”, across employers at the same instant in time.

g) His Marriage

· Having got a good Job, a great B school on his CV, and a Green card, (apart from the free Red color ICICI card) he hunts for a bride with a few parameters which go pretty similar to the SQL query learnt in engineering

· Choose female from ‘List of Iyer Brides” from “ Vadama Subcaste Only” living in “Triplicane/Mylapore/Matunga/Karol Bagh”, having Gotharam “ Kousika” and Nakshatram as “ Rohini, having dad employed in “State Bank” and Blah Blah Blah…….until he finds his ‘soulmate’ through the databases of Bharatmatrimony.

· The Tam Brahm becomes a father, and starts behaving like how his dad behaved, so that he is accepted as part of the conservative society of Mylapore, and the same cycle repeats when next lineage of Tam Brahms are born!

· And beyond that Life never “Transforms”, it only changes..and then the Tam Brahm realizes that “ Change “ is the only thing that’s constant in life. The problem is that law of dimishing marginal utility caused ‘transformation’ to seem like ‘change’ and after 20 years of marriage and 2 kids studying in the US of A, he gets back to agreeing with the Wren and Martin guide that Change and Transformation don’t seem to be different after all!

What do you want to become in Life?

When this question was asked to me, by my Vice Principal,while I was having dinner in a forest at Kangra Valley in 1997, I was taken aback. Nobody had asked me that question. I didnt know what to answer. How would I know that or even thnk about that when I am on a summer holiday Nature camp trip to the Himalayas, in the chill of 3 degrees? I looked at my dinner and the rock on which I was sitting. I thought being a vagabond exploring new places seemed great, because in my non detail english reader, adventures in far-away lands brought me far pleasure than sucking up to Axioms and Theorems. I also thought being a cricket commentator was fun, as it meant watching cricket all day long, and visiting new places. BUT, was that an answer you could tell the Vice Principal? NO, not when the kids around me in class 9, were rattling off words like NTSE,BITS,IIT M and Blah blah...

I didnt want to think too much, and I said "Engineer". I knew heart of hearts, it wasnt something I wanted to be. Secondly I had not faced too much success in life. So I didnt even know whether my brain could take me to the path of being an engineer. I suddenly felt that I was carrying loads of guilt by giving that answer and that guilt carried all the way till my engineering.

Today I look back, and ask myself what would I want to become, I still no have answer. I still like being a Railway station master and a vagabond traveller, but thats probably a phase of life that I might enjoy.

So is the answer to the question always a profession that would yield money and keep you secure or that would give you happiness? I seem quite lost. One thing I see is its never to late to keep asking this question, as long as you dont carry guilt with the chosen path. Lets see how life progresses!

Twitter is spoiling me

Its ages since I wrote on my blog. Twitter and Facebook have me hooked on. I still havent settled into Chennai. The house still needs a lot of tweaking in terms of books/clothes racks and it badly needs a dose of painting. Since my purse theft, and salary dues from Mumbai, I have already flooded my credit card limit, so suddenly I feel restrained by the slow pace of life. Itching to do lots of things, but dont have the mood nor money to immideately fuel my interest.

I have started hating Google Tasks, as it keeps popping to remind me, how many activities still remain unfinished/unaccomplished. I'd love to set some order in life, but life rarely goes on in the way one plans it, so I guess Life is what you do when all plans flop.

I guess the post is getting too random. Time for some siesta!

Panting for Breath!

I notice whenever I run a little fast for more than 20 seconds, I pant and I struggle to breathe. I feel I just need to rest for a long while to get my breath back. I feel the same happening with corporate life. Right now, even though the running generates a sense of excitement, its the moments when I pant,  that a lot of questions hit me. Do I mutely ignore and start running or do I spend more time waiting for breath to catch up? 

I feel I know where the answers will come from, but I just dont want to face the answers, as the questions itself seem to have made me uncomfortable. 

Conventional life is boring, and when you try and break away from the routine, there's always something at the back of your mind asking you to return back to your convention. 

I guess I will go through such moments as I am slowly getting exposed to the realities of life. The time for pausing life  just got over, time to hit the play button and RUN home.... Byculla-Thane Fast Local chalo chalo!

Kabhi Kabhi Zindagi Mein Yuhi....

One of the things with working hard, is that you forget that there's a world outside of work, and you start feeling that indulging in other hobbies starts looking like a crime. My house is messed up as usual. So I am tryng to quickly restore santity by washing clothes, sweeping the floor, purchasing basic furniture for the house, and other domestic pending tasks(Like..... collecting my ironed clothes after a week). I guess life would start being a lot better, as I would start feeling good, of having the innocuously small joy of properly managing a house, if not a business :-)

Zindagi Train Hain, Waqt ke track pe!

A few minutes back, as I boarded the train from Bandra to Lower Parel, I was listening to the audio track "Zindagi Train Hain, Waqt ke track pe " from the movie "The TRAIN" on my mobile, and with each passing station in Matunga,Mahim,Dadar and Elphinstone Road I felt as life was passing away like the Mumbai Western Line. Suddenly with the over cast clouds and wind in the air, as it swept across the western line, I asked myself, why is that central element of contentment missing in life. The anxiety increased with each passing station. It was like each station was a junction in life asking me to get down and do something, and I was mutely travelling in the train. Each station seemed to say, you may not be cushily travelling, but there's a lot that you can do to be content in life. I have never felt this lump feeling as the stations passed by and the song playing on my earphones reinforced the thought even more.

As I got down from the station amidst the industrial revolution of masses getting down and walking at neckbreak speed from the platform to catch the taxi to work, I asked myself what were the things that could make me happy, or in Management Lingo, what was Brand Kartik standing for?

1) Being somebody who just had holiday trips like that on impulse
2) Somebody who could find some amazing places on earth and be fortunate to have holidayed there.
3) Somebody who does something as an alum of school, engg, and b school
4) Somebody who got lost in an amazon jungle, and lived the life of a robinson crusoe. Tired of watching re runs of Jurassic Park and Anaconda, time to live moments like that.
5) Somebody who keep in touch and meet up regularly with the circle of close friends, irrespective of geographical distance.
6) Somebody who could just talk at length about cricket and analyse it with an intelligent bunch of folks.
7) Somebody who never had to dance according to falsity of the people in the corporate jungle.
8) Somebody who could attend music fests on impulse
9) Thinking...........................................................................

Ten on Ten for Aamir Khan

Taare Zameen Par was one of the best movies seen in recent times. The movie connected me with my childhood days and it was like going through a time machine.When the movie starts, the teacher spells out marks and when Darsheel Safary's marks come out, It was a surreal experience travelling back a few years to my life. It wasnt a long time back, that my report card had not so great marks, and my parents wondered why was that I never managed to excel in subjects of logic like Maths Physics Chemistry while I weathered the storm of Biology(slowly getting better), and rode like a colossus in language based subjects like Hindi and English at School. Single digit marks out of 25, seems like rewinding 10 years back.

TAARE ZAMEEN PAR when advertised, looks like a kiddo film, but as the story unfolds, you realize that the story peeps into the mind and heart of a kid, his interests, his hobbies, his strengths and weaknesses. If you have ever been like that before, It makes an ever bigger impact on you as the movie unfolds. I will give a detailed review in the next post, but for now am delving into a bit of the connect I saw between my life and the movie. Dont expect anything great below, just a few ruminations from my side, on my life so far.

As a kid till class 12, I had been a latch key kid, and being alone most of the while, I experimented with a lot of naughty things in the house, from innocent things like wanting to feel how an electric shock looks like, to pointing a topless picture in a magazine to my mother and asking " why is she puppy shame" ? My world was always a make believe world that was either playing book cricket, playing cricket with a plastic scale and a miniature rubber ball, or immersing myself in THE SPORTSTAR. I never cared for what others thought of me, as my hobbies and needs were different. Folks in school found me funny and an object of laughter as I innocently seemed the first guy to get involved in any kind of comic trouble. Why did I never care? Probably it was the impact that make believe world had on me. I would feel itchy, if I didnt play my dose of vernadah cricket, and those were the days when India woke up to flood lit cricket and third umpires, and I switched on 5 of the neighbours 60 watt bulbs to make the light for night cricket with Green and Red cardboard cut outs for third umpire. People thought I was a mad kid, with misplaced priorities.

My parents would be most worried that their son, was not going anywhere towards being a top ranker or someone who even seemed studious. They had their reasons for being cross, as I never seemed to put efforts towards studying for Maths or science, as I dreaded them. As soon as I started studying I would see crazy dreams of theorems and axioms coming and asking me to chase them around my apartment. The problem started to happen when I realised that my interest in cricket was also taking me nowhere as I didnt get selected in the under 13 Tamil Nadu Trials. I was a decent pace bowler, who was just too innocent for the hard competitive game of cricket, and some of my cricket team mates took advantage of this, by taking most of the oppurtunities leaving me little laurels except a honest love for the game, but that doesnt take you anywhere, so I decided to opt out of cricket and concentrate on studies.

I was in this huge fix, on what to do, and when I made a trek to the Himalayas in 1997(Kangra Valley) with my classmates, I found that even though I was skinny, I had more energy to trek through the mountains day long, and when I saw that I was better than a few of my classmates on that trip, I asked myself how could this be possible...that I was better than them in any field, and it was then that we had a guide who spoke about mental attitudes and toughness required to climb mountains. I dont clearly remember what got into my head, but I decided that I will work harder on the dreaded MCP trio, and with concious efforts in class 10, I managed decent marks in the trio, and suprised quite a few people. That was my moral first victory in life, and as life moved on, I realised that quizzing was also my forte, winning many quizzes in 11th and 12th and that added a lot of confidence to life, and also discovered that public speaking was also an area of strength. Life just needs one instance of "confidence boosters" to try and enthusiastically start looking for more such instances. One led to another and life changed over the next 7 years, until I landed in Infosys as a Software engineer.

My greatest respects for the company, but as time moved on I realised that I couldnt code for nuts and when coding assignments were given, I usually finished last in completing my work. I was willing to put efforts to get past this barrier in life, but the stress factor of doing something against the will of the heart was too much for me. Every day while travelling in the Infy bus, I was staring bleakly outside the window, feeling guilty that I was in the best Indian company, but couldnt code for nuts. Every Tom Dick and Harry seemed to code, and I could hardly do that. This led to a phase where it started eating into my confidence, and with an absolutely selfish team that I landed with, they made sure my mental state went from bad to worse, when they tried playing politics at work. Life probably was not so rosy, in a software company unless you enjoyed the work. Comparing it to Taare Zameen Par, it looked I had coding dyslexia and could never figure out how to get around the problem. I distanced myself from most friends, as they would talk about their coding adventures at lunch, and thats the last ting you want to hear when your confidence is like a weak flag about to be uprooted in a storm.

Was there something wrong with me? Hmm possibly yes and no.. I had won a few intra BU events and that seemed to convince me that I was still normal, and not mentally unstable as my team lead pointed out :-). Add to that the pressures of competing for CAT, I had virtually no time for spending a few minutes with myself. Somehow over a cup of tea, by accident, I met the CEO of Sulekha.com and got a job at Sulekha as a Channel Manager, and did things that I had only dreamt of in the last few years. I was back to my creative best, and enjoyed working long nights as work was more about enjoying the moments there. I lived every moment until further roadblocks came...but that changed my life for ever. After that quite a few things have happened that in some small way have given me fame and respect, and I am fully aware of my strengths and weaknesses today and thanks to the MBA program, you start realising the power of attitude in taking where you want,as you nose your way through the maze of ego's and networking to the top. Life is good, and feels even better when I see Taare Zameen Par, which seems in a small way, a reflection into my troubled past :-) and I keep reminding myself, however ordinary I am, I must believe that doing the extraordinary is possible. Life is looking good :-)

Hooked on to the Following Songs

Work seems all the more interesting when some lovely songs play in your ear on a cloudy afternoon, when the sky threatens to cry.

Device- Sony Erricsson w 550 i Walkman phone
Medium- Fever 104 fm- Bangalore
Venue- My office where I intern
Nature of work- Analysis on the web

To Phir Aao-(Atif Aslam) The Remix from Awaarapan
You know what it feels like- Enrique Iglesias
Teri Aankhen Bhool Bhulaiya- Bhool Bhulaiya
Yeh Jo Des hain Tera - Swades
Dil Ne Tumko- Shaan from Jhaankar Beats
Saawariya Saawaraiya
Ajab Si Om Shanti Om

and another song called " Kya hua ki Jivan Chooti" from Ek Chalis ki last local...on right now!