Pertinent Observations

When you think you are down and out in life… when you think Captain Murphy is in his best form… when you can’t think of any other point of time in your life when you felt so miserable… your natural tendency is to crib… some great person (i forgot who) has said that cribbing does help you relieve your tension. but before you crib, just think for a minute…

just think about the face of the poorest and weakest man you’ve ever seen. and think if your situation is better or worse than him. in most cases, you’ll realize that you have so many things that he doesn’t have. and does he go around town cribbing that he’s the weakest man you’ve seen? in most cases, not. he just puts on a smile and goes about his duties.

so when this person who’s much much more miserable than you can just get on with his life without cribbing, what right do YOU have to crib? i have seen the phenomenon on LJ/blogger also. lots of comments to ‘crib posts’ are “maan, i’d give anything to be in the situation you are in now. chill… “. given all this, do i have a right to crib when i feel bad? NOT AT ALL.

What is the implication of this? that i should NEVER crib. but what happened to the words of the great philosopher who said that cribing is very good for health? well, it may be good for your health but it’s at the cost of others. you don’t have a moral right to crib so you can’t. people don’t care whether it is good for YOUR health or not. it is somewhat akin to “drinking human blood is good for health. but since it’s wrong to kill someone, you can’t drink human blood even though it’s good for you”.

the next time you feel miserable in life… the next time you feel life couldn’t have been worse… the next time you think you need to talk to someone about one of your problems… just remember this post… and also the face of the poorest and weakest man you’ve seen…

you’ll feel EVEN MORE MISERABLE

Have you ever felt that someone or something has just intruded into your life? The phone ringing when you’ve just settled on the couch with a good book… That far-flung relative of yours deciding to drop in just when the cricket match has reached an interesting stage? Or when you’re nicely settling into a nice conversation when someone suddenly comes in and changes the topic…. Or when you are lost in your reveries while sitting in class and your neighbor says, “Hey, look at this problem raa… “.

God has given us many skills. Unfortunately one skill he hasn’t given is to read other people’s thoughts. Can I butt into this conversation without being considered an intruder? Can I join this group of people at the dinner table? Will he mind if i decide to drop into his house now? Unfortunately, we don’t have the natural means to answer these kinds of questions, unless of course we know the person(s) in question REALLY well…

One can think of two ways of solving this problem – the optimistic and pessimistic. The optimist believes that he NEVER disturbs anyone. He believes that everyone has the right to listen to him. If anyone has any problem with his presence, he’ll be told so explicitly and till then he can do whatever he wants. The better optimist soon learns to read people’s minds and can, with respect to a few people, predict pretty accurately whether he is intruding or not.

The other kind of people are always of the opinion “lemme not do this as if i do i’ll be disturbing him”. A good example will be the character of Seethapati (played by Umesh) in the movie Golmal Radhakrishna (*ing Anant Nag and Chandrika, 1989 or so… ). I assume that you’ve watched the movie (if you haven’t, do so asap. it’s one of Anant Nag’s best comic performances), so I don’t need to elaborate on this kind of character.

In my not-so-humble opinion, the successful one (in networking atleast – not of the Tanenbaum type) is one who can quickly learn when he is intruding into someone’s life and when he is welcome. I have been striving for the last 5 years to reach this state but haven’t made TOO much progress. Have been just shuttling between Seethapati and extreme intruder….

As i was peacefully writing this post, in total bliss, i got this arbit phone call from ICICI about some credit cards. I told them “If you keep paining me like this, cancel my card” and slammed the phone down…

once again, it’s that part of the year when we have to go through something called “end-term exams”. for the first time in four years, I have finished all my submissions well before the exams and the only thing left to do is to mug. everyone else seems to have started in right earnest. they seem to have polished off both the ‘investments’ binders, including the hundred papers written by our own prof, and have started mugging the law.

I hate exams, though on any given day i would prefer them to projects. you can fraud your way through an exams but not through a project. and in a project you end up with freeriders, slavedrivers, etc. (for more, see my other articles). in an exam, you’re the master of your own destiny (??!!?!!?).

exams make me feel lonely. make me feel that there’s something somewhere that i’ve missed out. even when i know that i know everything in the syllabus (the probablility of this has been quickly falling to zero over the years), there is this niggling fear that creeps up because the guy next door mugs all day and night. you feel like taking a break but have nothing to do (except maybe blog) since everyone else is buried in the books. there’s this guilty feeling when you do things you like but not connected to exams.

i also have this habit of getting a fever during exams. started during my tenth boards. continued to haunt me through my twelfth boards and then right through my stint at IIT. actually in a way it’s good to get the fever. you worry about it so much that you tend to take your mind off the subject in question and the pressure on you to perform is that much lesser. you know that you have the excuse “mom, i had a fever that day” just in case you tend to screw up (which is happening very frequently nowadays).

then, there’s this phenomenon of the last paper. i have NEVER turned in an average performance in the last exam of the term. it’s either totally out of the world (‘S’ level) or totally woresht (‘C’ levels). has been happening for the past few years. once again, ever since my 10th boards. would be interesting to sit and figure out why…

anyways, i’m preparing myself for a hectic week. apart from preparations to go abroad, i have to mug for my exams also. at least the time table is good: i have exactly one exam a day, starting thursday…. here’s wishing myself all the best for the exams…

I’m supposed to be leaving for London next Sunday. Tickets have been booked. So has accomodation. All the shopping has been done. There remains just one small hitch – the visa.

The people at my office there applied for the work permit REALLY late because of which they got the work permit real late and it is yet to reach me. and with the spate of holidays (today – good friday; tomorrow – holi; day after – sunday) i can’t expect to get the permit before monday. i had told my HR to send the thing by express courier but unfortunately that hasn’t happened. so my travelling to england is now contingent on getting the visa on time…

nevertheless, i’m assuming that i’ll be getting the visa on time and am looking forward to the journey… first time i’ll be leaving indian shores… pretty excited about that… i know working in an investment bank doesn’t give you much time… still hoping to have fun there… more than a dozen of us from IIMB will be there…

when i started writing this, there was so much i wanted to write… but somehow i’ve forgotten all of it now… more later…

PS: (Courtesy Chinmay and Doofoo) the term “Blighty” comes from the Hindi word “Vilayat”

feeling so good now…. had a couple of assignments to submit today… the last two of my first year in IIMB… yuddhakaale shastraabhyaasa (start practising your weapons during the time of war). i started on these assignments a couple of days back…

ah! the last two days… of SPSS and writing and googling and Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V and iomanip.h … of dealing with different kinds of people… freeriders… fighters… slavedrivers… a sehwag who slams a century and gets out on the last ball of the 15th over, saying “i’ve finished my part… now i’m out of it”…

and i must dig it out… play out the 50… shield strike from the freeriders… take all the singles while batting with the fighters… and attempt to get the slavedriver run out… whatever the others do, i must stay right until the end… till the target is reached… and now that it’s been reached…

the assignments are behind me… feels so good… to be able to sit down on the armchair with my feet up and reading the times of india… to realize that i don’t have any assignments to do for another three months (i mean academic assignments only)… but the nightouts are still there… exams from next week… i’m yet to start mugging for them…

but who the hell cares… lemme enjoy the moment while it lasts… and watch that replay yet again…

why is it that i always end up pissing people off? why is it that people can’t take my intended jokes in a lighter vein?

some people get pissed off because i’m too nice to them… others get pissed off when i’m too rude to them.. . at a great dilemma. and i’m supposed to want to be an i-banker! dunno what to do…

some people say i’m too modest… others say i’m too arrogant… some say i lack confidence in myself… others say i’m overconfident… some keep flattering me and raising me to the sky… others treat me like a piece of shit…

life is a bundle of contradictions…

can you plzzzzzzzzzzz spare a minute and fill up this questionnaire?

http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=219452

won’t take more than a minute… need it urgently for a project..

thanx.

it seems to be a long time since i put my last post so i thought i would put in a line or two… just finished doing it…

I used to hate writing. Maybe it was because my handwriting was bad. Maybe it was because I was bad at English – it used to always end up pulling down my averages by a ong way. Maybe because I somehow got this feeling that writing is for girls. I did enter the odd creative writing competition just because my friends were entering, and write some juvenile rhymes. A couple of those rhymes were rewarded also. However, they didn’t spur me to write more.

Cut to Jan 2003. Saarang. Happened to have a long chat with a distant cousin whom I met after a gap of nearly six years. She is a big time writer (unfortunately doesn’t maintain an online journal). Writes all kind of serious stories and poetry (maybe because her sense of humor is lousy). Has published her stuff in the Newsletter of the Association of Descendants of my grandfather’s grandfather (phew!). She was fully engrossed in cracking the Saarang Creative Writing contest. Me happened to put in my two naya paise which she said she found inspirational. And she popped the question.

“SK, why don’t you write? I think it’s simply because you’re too lazy. I’m sure you can write really well if you can put in the effort.” I decided to give it a shot.

I enrolled myself as a correspondent for “the fourth estate”, the then students’ magazine of IITM. Was asked to cover some student elections. Article turned out to be highly scandalous. Me was branded as the “biggest yellow journalist in IITM”. Volunteered to do the newsletter at the following Saarang. Got the job. Continued writing for ‘the fourth estate’. One of my articles succeeded in splitting the editorial board. Me joined the breakaway faction and wrote for the “total perspective vortex” (at last count both these journals had shut down). And came to IIMB.

The great Kodhus (of the shorts fame)started “Twisted Shout” here. Its first article happened to be on me. Me decided to join the journal. Was made “head of political bureau”. Struggled initially. Kodhus wrote a story in four parts. My first contribution was to write the fifth part. Wasn’t so successful. Was asked to report on some internal literary events. Me started a tirade against the organizers. Even caused the cul-sec to make a drama of resignation. Of course, before putting in his papers, he had made sure they’d be rejected. Thanks to me, Twisted Shout lost all its contracts.

We continued to write. And I opened this journal. Other clubs gave us a few contracts which were duly completed. We got “footage of the year” award. I wrote my first independent article. After this came the “valentine’s day special”, a story in two parts written by Kodhus and myself. No other Twisted Shout publication had generated so much public adulation. I followed it up with two other stories in quick succession. Again ‘bestsellers’. And we continued to get the contracts.

Hit the pinnacle yesterday when I got the first contract by myself (all earlier contracts were due to Kodhus and swaadisht). Was asked to draft a press release. As I finished doing this, there was a special sense of accomplishment. I had come the whole hog. From someone who hated to write and thot he was lousy in English to someone who was the first person in campus to be approached when something had to be written…

Had been to a cousin’s wedding today… after a long time I was witnessing the wedding function… met many long-lost relatives, and a few others whom i didn’t recognised came adn talked to me as if they’d known me for ages…

My father’s native village is close to the border with Gultland (AP for the uninformed) and hence many of our relatives are from across the border. Gults’ fondness for foreign shores is well known. There is this story that a gult working in Burkina Faso earning one-tenth as much as one in Hyd gets ten times the dowry. (unconfirmed reports say that a Reddy IITian living in the US is ‘worth’ INR 10 million.)

Given this fascination for vilayat among gults and pseudo-gults and half-gults and one-millionth gults, the way I was introduced around at the wedding was damn interesting… especially by certain uncles who hail from places closer to the gultland border than my dad does…

“Meet Karthik. Son of Shashidhar. He is going to London next month”. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing in life. It doesn’t matter what I’ve done in life. Father’s name is just for some reference or ‘handle’. All that matters to these people is that I’m going abroad. And the typical response to this from the person I was introduced to ranged from “my neighbor’s cousin’s uncle’s son works abroad. he’s doing this…” (goes on for around 5 minutes) to “… .. .. .. ” (i forgot what i wanted to put here, sorry )…

I’m going abroad…. hence I’m great…