Friendship

My frequent travels  in last six months generated many stories and almost all the stories extracted similar kind of responses from listeners. “How can you do that?” “You are an a***” “That’s so stupid.” So this time when I decided to pack my luggage for a ten days vacation I spent  2 hours on packing my luggage. Created a To do list on my phone with alarm and made sure that I did the needful for my early morning flight. Books (only 2, unlike earlier trips when I used to pack seven books for a three day trip), laptop charger, mobile charger, shocks, deo……. I ensured that my laptop was plugged in for recharging so that in morning I could use that on plane.

In morning I rushed to airport and when I walked out of cab, carrying my overused and abused laptop backpack, I was feeling happy and patting my back for my judicious selection of items to be packed for this trip; the laptop backpack never felt so light. There is a lot of sense in traveling light.

Fighting morning hebetude and distractions in form of leggy lasses (personally selected by certain Mr. Malaya) I rushed to check-in counter and then to security area. Once I reached the security check up point I flipped open my backpack to bring out my laptop, suddenly my heart sank. Shit, there is no laptop. Yet, I tried searching stupidly in those inner pockets of bags which can hardly accommodate a paper back book.. forget about laptop. I had left my laptop at home, plugged in for recharging. Damn..I have no laptop for next ten days. Those who know me can understand the pain. I tried unsuccessfully to console myself.. I can use the desktop when I am at home. Oh.. but what about the infamous erratic supply of Bihar State Electricity Board..
Once I boarded the plane, I thought of sharing my pain..I texted a few people about latest episode titled “I left my laptop” of mega serial ‘I am an idiot’. I was not expecting a reply at morning 7 am. For most of my friends morning arrives around 30-40 minutes prior to office time. I switched off my mobile phone as soon as the scolding voice of grand-motherly airhostess asked me to do so.
3 hours later I arrived at Delhi airport and started moving towards exit.. I had a connecting flight to Patna in 40 minutes. I switched on my mobile phone, there were 3-4 smses in reply to my text message. But there was this message.. “I am coming to airport with my laptop, you can use it for your homestay.” Before I could think anything.. my phone started ringing. The sender of the above sms was calling me.
“hey I am standing at the right side of the exit..”
“Why did you come to airport?”
“You need a laptop na.. How will you manage without a laptop”
“But…still.. don’t you need this laptop?”
“no, I do not use computer that much at home, and in office I have a workstation.”
“But still… you will need it na..”
“No, I know you need it more than me.” I cannot argue, she knows me quite well.. we have been best buddies for years.
“Now I need to go.. I have to rush back as it will take at least one hour to reach my office.”
I looked at her.. Thanks seemed a very very useless and irrelevant word.

Transfiguration

Something which started at my one week stay at Auroville (or probably germinated years before that when I was a student in one of nondescript schools of Jharkhand) got me to think again and forced me to act on that while I stayed for a week in my hometown in Bihar. The zillion swirling questions which were subdued by a number of personal and professional decisions suddenly became potent and got their fangs back. They demanded a transfiguration, yes transfiguration of the very core.
There were a few instances when I came very close to renunciation of everything and moving on, but that seemed more of an evasive action or escapism. But, thanks to the the strands of warrior’s ingrained in my DNA.. sanity prevailed, I retracted and did not resort to escapism. Now, this time I need to equip myself to take things head on. Redefine priorities, assess the resources and move on. Both on personal as well as on professional front, though more on personal front. For some friends, this is going to be a welcome change, for others..not the same shit again. And yes, this is a personal post on this blog after a long long time. I am back again to think aloud on this blog. Kick some ass and get some nasty comments.

Confessions of a ‘brand slave’

A few months back a colleague of mine termed me as a ‘brand slave’ and I just laughed it off as I did not see any truth in it. Just possessing a few ‘decent’ shirts and some gizmos does not make someone a brand slave. But his remarks made me think for a while and there were some specks of truth here and there.
Some introspection, retrospection and inspection of credit card bills confirmed that I might not be brand slave but I share many common characteristics. Recently I have been shopping like a maniac and shopping from the big brands..paying some extravagant amounts for things which could have easily been acquired at half the prices. Though this has more to do with my laziness and propensity to visit only a few locations (read shopping malls in Chennai) on weekends and most of the things catching my fancy there  (hmmm .. do not get me wrong most of the time I am looking for things I really need .. no clean clothes.. presentation in morning hours.. no option other than buying some new clothes..) were having tags from big names. I cannot recall how many times I wanted to buy just a book but ended up buying which I never intended.
So what now… the last two months I have completely curbed by desire to shop (though the I had already made up my mind to get MacBook for my personal use so I am not counting that … anyway a Mac is a necessity considering the terrible to Windows Vista) and realized I am far better off this way. It is not long enough to conclude anything, but I realized that I never wanted to go for brands, it was just that whenever I decided to buy something I was at places which were dominated by big brands. Probably if I had lower priced alternative that prominently  registering their presence I would have gone for that. Moreover I realized that I am in bad habit of not looking at price if something caught my fancy.. thanks to ICIC Bank and their pestering tele-callers who pushed three credit cards in my pocket. I don’t want to tell you how I felt when I used to get the credit cards bills. But thankfully things are under control.

On other front, I am halfway through two books and hope to finish them once I get some breather from these couple of hectic work weeks. Both the books are quite interesting.. hope to write about them in details once I finish them..

• “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” by Murakami, and
• “Kill Your Friends” by John Niven

Ranchi Trip

Last month, I visited  Ranchi for a couple of days almost after

the water tank on hilltop

23 years. I was so excited to visit that place, to see my school and go to those places which were slowly getting eroded from my memory. But the menace of ‘Naxalism’ completely ruined my enthusiasm. We could not go to remote villages and surely not in a ‘car or jeep’ as they generated extra attention, and one local naxalite expert told me that in election time Naxals do not think before bashing up any outside face. Their policy.. first bash them up.. we will see the other issues later.

Though Ranchi city seemed quite peaceful, I ventured out on bike to find my childhood school and all I knew about that school was that there used to be a small hillock near the school and at top of that hillock there was a water tank. I called my mother to get more info, she told that the school was near a Hanuman temple in Harmu. We drove in and around Harmu and were able to locate almost 4-5 temples but the hillock was nowhere. That means there was no way to get to my school. New constructions and other developments  made this place completely different from the image of this place I had in mind.
So came back to guesthouse, disappointed and full of thoughts. Naxalism, Development, Urbanization etc.. My plan to take a road trip to Daltonganj, Garhwa and Ranka stood cancelled. I wanted to use this weekend for that. It would have been an experience to visit these places but the fear of Naxalites and poor connectivity to these places have left me with no options. Probably I will dare again, after the elections when the naxal activities subside.

my school

Next day I as busy in my official chores and I had given up on finding my old school in the concrete jungle, but a local resident and employee of the host organization here in Ranchi, blessed me with his local knowledge. He knew the location of the hillock which has a water tank on top. I realized I can still see my school and I ventured out. He took me near the hillock, in front of a very big nice looking school, St. Francis High School. He was sure that this was my school, but I knew I was not that lucky to have studied in schools like these. But I could still see the hillock and the water tank on top, our favorite place for having lunch around 23 years ago.
I wanted to go there again on the hilltop and somehow I found a way to go there and on the way I could see a almost dilapidated building and here I was. That’s my school, I shouted. Rajkiya Krit Madhya Vidyalaya, Harmu – 12. Suddenly those faint memories became vivid. I could remember the place I used to stand for morning prayers and the school gate and numerous related incidents. School gate was  a common factor in most of the incidents. I jumped the wall to go inside the campus (once inside I realized there were numerous ways, and surely not intended ones, to get inside the campus, the surrounding wall was broken at many places) and saw menu of the food served under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan painted on  the wall.
I pulled out my cam, wanted to capture these moments of relived, realized nostalgia. Great feeling to be there. If I look back on my school days, the biggest complaint (apart from not being able to study in any ‘decent’ schools) is my fathers job forcing frequent school changes for me, that means I could never have those childhood friends. All gone. No trails.

Starting afresh

There were so many things happening around me or with me that nothing was happening on my blog. No time to blog. Finally things seem to get normalized and I am back on my blog.

Last quarter of the gone year was a really chaotic one, both on personal as well on professional front. I tried my best to grab attention on professional front and more than my best to avoid ‘unwanted’ attention on personal front. I seem to be successful to some extent on both fronts. .

A few months (and around 15 kgs) back, I used to wonder how people gain weight so fast.. why these people are not doing anything about the visible paunch…  I got the answer. At the beginning of 2008, I started to get conscious when I was getting clicked. The reason, visibility of my incipient paunch from certain angles and in certain type of attires. By the end of 2008, the incipient paunch was no longer ‘incipient’ and now it was proudly registering it presence in all camera angles and in almost all kind of attires.

Book reading continues to take back seat with every passing months though every now and then a typical bibliophilic guilt results in some intense (but often transient) activity on this front. The frequent visit to different shopping malls and unabated desire to possess books is causing my anti-library to grow. I am yet to count the number of books I have read this year (many books are still unfinished with colorful bookmarks stuck in …waiting for their turn..); I am sure the number is nowhere near the usual number. Most of the reading this year happened either on airports waiting for the connecting flights or on the upper birth of railway bogie coping with intruding requests ranging from ‘Garam Chai/Coffee’ to ‘hero /chikne jaldi nikaal….’ from ilk of Bobby Darlings. Since  I am traveling for entire first quarter of this year, I hope to utilize these train/air travel time to the max. I would love to read some good Hindi modern classics this year. (I already started Raag Darbaari by Sri Laal Shukla).

There were no new year celebrations, I had promised my friends to join them but somehow I could not do it and decided to enter into new year sleeping peacefully. No visits to temple on the first day of the year. No new year resolutions. No big plans for this year. Just go with the flow.

Stupidity??

I have five days to pull something off and everyday I have something around 3-4 hours available after my office hours. I cannot go on leave and focus on my preparation as I have already given consent for some deadlines. One of my friends told me its sheer stupidity or hyper confidence. But I will say it is a gamble. And I have to wait for sometime to see the outcomes.

I have done it in past with fare amount of success but if I have to compare this with my earlier feats. They are nothing compared to what I am trying to achieve. (At least for me, this is a big challenge, I know guys who have done with fair amount of ease, but I am not a super genius.). I know some of my friends are wondering what I am talking about. The next few posts will tell you the whole story. . I hope the story has a  happy ending. Amen.

Chennai 3.0

Chennai celebrates its 369th birthday. Though my professional commitments and other constraints  deprived me from participating in the celebrations, I did get a chance to attend ‘Chennai 3.0′ organized by Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). The theme of the conference was “Chennai – Evolution Today, Revolution Tomorrow”.  And, I have no doubts seeing the growth plans and the people behind the evolution, revolution is bound to happen.  CII did a great job to get industrialists, city planners, bureaucrats and politicians all on the same platform and talk different aspects of Chennai today and tomorrow.

While everybody presented their vision for Chennai and how ‘the Detroit of India’ should move forward to become the world class city, it was intriguing (and one of the speakers highlighted this) that none of the Chennai based industries/business houses came forward to sponsor the event. I was bemused seeing most of the speakers talking about inclusive growth and sustainable growth but they did not highlight any of concrete plans to give any indication how they are going to achieve that. Though we had detailed plans on how to solve problems of Car Parking, Shopping Space, satellite cities and how to make Chennai Airport a world class airport, but somehow problems of commoners living in Chennai took back seat like the commoners present in the TAJ Conference Hall. But probably this was not primarily intended to dwell upon that, it was more of a celebrations of achievements of this city and setting up the context for future growth and expansion.

My personal experience with Chennai has been really wonderful, earlier I was a bit hesitant to think Chennai as the preferred workplace, but after my fieldwork in Tamilnadu and now more than one year in Chennai I love the city.   

Celebrating Friendship

“You seem to have a lot of friends.” a ‘friend’ commented seeing some of my photographs. She was looking at a picture in which I was surrounded by some people and unsuccessfully trying my best to time my smile with the click of camera .

“Yes, almost two hundreds as  per Orkut/facebook/MySpace records. It requires only a click to be my friend.” I think since friendship has reduced to going out together for shopping, coffee shop, movies or having a common connection (like same colleges, same city.. etc..), then number of friends is bound to be like that only. Probably if you are not my enemy and I know you or you know me.. you are my friend.

But the ‘real friends’ are a tiny subset of this big group, most of the time they just never come into the picture unless you have goofed up big time.  Fortunately I have quite a few who turn up when I goof up ( though most of time they are the reasons behind the goof up..;-). )

Happy Friendship Week.

Twists in the tale..

Three sleepless nights and restless days, an endeavor with odds heavily against it but as usual I was optimistic. It could have been one of those situations in the past which turned out to be in my favor. Contrary to what people suggested, I went ahead, I proved them wrong. But a silly mistake and now there is a big question mark on the whole thing.  Yet, optimists are optimists.

But the mistake has taught me some lessons. Though on professional front, I do keep track of everything and assess myself pretty well, yet when it comes to my personal life most of the things are left on its own. So I was not that professional with my personal endeavor and the result, a costly .. very costly mistake ( and for those friends who are jumping to any conclusion it has nothing to do with girls/pyaar/ishque etc.). But here are some lessons if you want to learn from other’s mistakes.

• If you think that you have even a remote chance, give your hundred percent. Failure hurts, but what hurts more than the failure is knowing that a bit more effort and you would have been there.
• Before you make the final move, you ensure that you have verified each and everything yourself. It is almost certain that nobody will be as meticulous as you can be, if incentives are coming to you only. Almost everyone is fallible but people who are not gaining anything out of something, they are more prone to fail, they are more prone to overlook the errors.
• Deadline should always be one day earlier to the ‘deadline’.  I could have written here “do not meet the deadline, beat the deadline.”, but somehow I always go for meeting the deadline.
• You might not be as bad/good as you think of yourself. Reality check helps.

So those who are wondering, what mistake I committed can sense from the above things. Though mistake is big, yet I always believe almost all the mistakes can be rectified huh.. Optimists.

End of many dreams….

Many people die everyday and  life goes on. We move on, a few moments of ‘oh, so sad, how tragic’ and we change the TV Channel, flip the newspaper page. But think again. Things do change but most of the time,  for some people the world stops. It is the end of many dreams.

As usual at 10 o’clock I stepped out of my office and headed towards the coffee vending machine in the next block of our office building, on the way discovered that the person who used to serve us coffee died a tragic death this morning, ran over by a lorry. A zillion thoughts swirled in mind and I was taken over by  a momentary aphasia. Being one of those guys who need 5-10 cups of coffee keep to themselves going, I used to see him more than anyone else.  We (I was with some of my colleagues) stopped for a while, then somebody suggested the other place where we can get coffee. Life moved on. But some questions/thoughts are still bothering me. How tragic death for a nice person.. and I mean it he was really a nice person. What is going to happen to his kids/family? Their life is never going to be same again. Was he insured? Who will take care of his family, it is good that we still have a joint family system. Someone will take care of his kids and wife.

There are some traces or anger as well, but subdued by other feelings. Chennai seems to be full of rash drivers. Why cannot they drive properly? I don’t know whose fault it was, but surely it made many people’s life hell. …………………………….

One of friends replied on gtalk (I was discussing these thing to that guy) ” come on, these things happen everyday. Many people die everyday.”

He was right. Many people die everyday. But, it was end of a person I knew and used to meet more than five times a day. May his soul rest in peace.

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