Railway station, Name Board and a Red checked shirt…!

Have you ever seen people holding boards with some names in the airport receiving area, and wondered if you would ever get to be received like that?

Have you ever thought more and asked yourself do they have the right names? What if they had something like “Hell …Welcomes.. Moron of the millennium” or something stupendously funny!
Well a guy asked me to such a thing once.

This is about one of those guys I knew from Cookeville. .....

have to edit some super mean lines by the author who later thought it needs to be deleted..appreciate for pointing it out.....

... and this happened in one of my high on ego days....so bear with me!

It was sometime in November 2003 when he stopped me on my way to my apartment and was for some reason….he was overtly nice asking about how and whereabouts. I was almost thrown back to rethink about his sexual orientation for such a display of his new found affection. I thought….

Is he all right…I don’t know about you buddy…but am straight…don’t friggin hit on me!

Then a day later, I was walking the same way…. again this guy stopped me….this time he wanted a favor….

Now I think I can pattern recognize….

“So what can I not do for you….oops I mean what kind of a favor you want”

“Dude you are going to India this December right, could you be of any help to me there?”

Well yeah…. I can teach what life is all about and let you know how to live….atleast in my own idiotic way….

“Yeah! If that’s something that I could do…sure why not”

May be he wants me to get some package to or from India….Oh God …these package monsters have already started their killings…even a month before my trip…..I am going to be victimized now…how many…3, 4 or 5 lbs of chocolate and FedEx….not again….why are these people doing this to me in spite of me not telling anyone to deliver or bring anything to me…save me...!

“I am coming to India sometime mid December…..”

Ahh! Thank you God …he is not one of those folks with their humungous packages!

“….I will be flying in to Chennai ….I have a friend who is coming from Hyderabad to receive me in the airport and go with me to my home town….he is new to Chennai and he is my best friend …..he comes sometime in the morning and he does not have any place to go to in Chennai …would you be with him and entertain him for the day…I would be taking the train that night to Hyderabad …if my flight comes on time…else I will have to take the next day morning train….”

Did he say entertain?

“What do you want me to do exactly?”

“Well…basically….”

I don’t know what is that almost every other Indian (including myself sometimes) use this basically word to begin a sentence…. why would everything start from a basic level…even if you are in middle of the conversation…is it just an Indian thing?

“…you will have to receive him from the Central station and take a car from a local travels….put him in a lodge closer to the airport ….take him around the city …show him places…wait for me to come to the airport in the evening and drop us later in the Railway station that night else next day morning….that’s it!”

That’s it!? Then you should wake up and go back to school starting all the way from kinder garden…

“Dude…are you high on dope or something…you realize what you are asking here right….you don’t even know me that well….and I am going there for a mere 20 odd days and you are asking me to spend a day with you and your beloved friend…? Are you out of your mind?”

I was not able to bear a face of disappointment.

“Okay…I can do a part of it…not all …I can receive him from the Railway station and may be drop somewhere closer to the airport the same morning after breakfast or lunch…I cant spend the whole day with him…Honestly I don’t foresee having anytime …you can try other people who are coming to Chennai and ask if they are of any help”

“I did…and Balaji said he could be of some help”

I don’t understand this …I don’t know why people ask a same favor to two people and not let the two know about it…

A couple of days later….

“Barath…I spoke to my friend ….he said he is glad that you are coming to receive him…”

“Do you have ticket details and such?”

“Nope”

“How am I going to know who is he?”

“Do you have his picture or something?”

“Nope”

“You don’t have a picture of your best friend..?”

“No….May be you can do this…”

“What? Take a picture when I meet him?”

“No....Can you have a Name board with my friend’s name and stand in the Railway station so he can come by to you directly?”

“Are you kidding me? What do you think am doing for you….a favor buddy…remember that…am not going to go and hold some board with your friends name on it!”

“Okay…okay…I understand”

Then he asked me that….I don’t have a clue what his thought process was just before he was telling this…..he was god damn serious….

“Can you do this then?”

“What?”

“Can you hold a name board telling that your name is Barath? So he can find you directly and talk to you?”, he was drop dead serious….!

There are several moments in my life where I was completely bowled over by someone’s thought process…. this is certainly in the top 10….

Did he just say what I think and heard as what he said?

After few moments of silence and shock, “Dude…WTF is your problem man….do you expect me to hold a board with my name on it….so everyone on their way out of their train…come to me and congratulate me for being the Barath I can be?…..!!@&^#(*&@", he reacted in a..May-be-you-are-correct way.....

What is the reaction...? Dude...you need some serious help!

If I do what he had told me to do...

What would I look like… May be like this?








Then I suggested that his friend would wait for a while in the same platform as the train arrived….and come with a specific shirt color of his choice and let me know about it earlier….the point was to go a little later so he would be all by himself with the shirt I know…so would be easy to get hold of him…..sounded like a fool proof plan…

The day before he called me to say that it was a 4 30 am train.! I had to say no to the previously arranged temple visit and was bored of getting all the thrashing from parents for not visiting god for a guy I don’t even know and like..

The day came and I was told he would come with a red checked shirt….twice… I was told red checked shirt…..

I drove to the station around 5 with my friend….and went around looking for the man with red checked shirt …..and no where I found anyone of that sort…The central station was huge and after an hour of search in vain I called it quits….These were the days with no cell phones and stuff….so I have no way of communicating to this guy!….All that guy had was my home phone number….so I called my folks to see if someone called for me …and Nope… was the answer….. I was pissed to the core….

I was reminded of the quote that goes on the lines like…."Tell me about your friends …I will tell about you”…!

May be I should have guessed it

I guess I will have a long day… I thought to myself before heading back home

I stepped back in to my home and the phone rang…the guy calls me from the station and after waiting for more than 2 hours…I told him to get an auto and reach my place….

Cirrreeeeeng! The calling bell cracked….

I opened the door and there was this guy……

“...Hey.....You are Barath….I saw you in the station”

“What? You could have stopped me!”

“You were running up and down …looking for someone….I never knew it was me you were looking for”

I was even more pissed…!

Then he took his books out of his small tiny bag and asked me if I could tell him where the library is as he intended to pursue some reading before meeting his friend….!

That was the most simple looking person I have ever met.

I was dumbfounded again …in a nicer way…he did not ask about food…shower…what do we do next…anything…..Library!…that’s the first thing he asked!

He stayed there at my place for a few minutes and he said he had coupled some important academic things so he wanted to visit the Egmore library and left soon after the shower and breakfast. While he was leaving, I asked him…..

“What happened to the red checked shirt?”

“No…! He told me blue checked shirt…..Twice…he insisted blue checked shirt….”

I was dumbfounded again

Now I am sure that quote is not exactly true in all cases….!

Chennai.....Cleaner?

A quickie!

Recently, I have been (y)telling to my folks about how I miss Chennai...I have been rambling all over about how I get a chance to talk to my parents every weekend ...but not to the city....so on and so forth...!

Then... I stumble upon the news on Making Chennai Cleaner and the subsequent blogasms about it...! A step towards cleanliness that is well taken! If the implementation turns out to be as good as the idea, I am sure Chennai will be a much cleaner place to live!

Also, Google found another piece of news (ibn link not working) stating that last year Chennai was rated as the cleanliest metro in the country...which was quite an interesting fact. I never thought Chennai could be right there, but then my 4-1/2 years of virtual vision holds no justice to this end. On the other end...will the cleaner Chennai with these restrictions would be as good as the Chennai I knew? A toughie.. I should say...but I am sure Chennai will find a way to save its originality in spite of the innumerable transitions...positives and negatives!

All said, I guess the days when the lyrics of "Sorgame endralum..." turning out be appropriate to our very own Chennai is not far away...

An affair to remember!

“You spend the entire day with me…looking right into my eyes most of the time …running your fingers all over my body…. glancing every inch of it…and yet…..and yet you say…. you want to spend the weekend without seeing any of me?”, she was furious.

“Yep. Pretty much!”, I said.

“Barath, I am having serious doubts about us”, she was concerned

“Listen…there is someone else..... as well”. I did not know where I had the guts to tell that to her

She was dumbfounded! She did not know how to react…!

She pulled herself together and asked me!

“How long has this been going on?”…She wants to know how long more than why and who? …god I cannot understand them. I thought to myself.

“I saw her a long time after I met you…she is nice and very….”

“Does she look better than me?” she jumped in without letting me finish the sentence

“Well…what kind of a question is this? You can’t compare yourself with others…why are you doing this?”

“Answer the question! Who is better?”

“I don’t know…you are different and so is she...…but she is definitely smaller than you!”

Oh my god! I can’t believe I said that….

Well…. folks…its been a good life so far…see you in next life…I am sure she is going grill me…

Aaaah! Surprisingly she did not react…

“Do you really mean it?” she asked with her voice shaking!

“Do you want the truth?”

“Yes”

“Yes!”…now I have handled the bigger issue …I might as well be more honest with her….I told that to my self…as I started saying….

“Listen…what I have with you beautiful…I agree…but with her its different…..with her…it feels like …am not the only one in to this whole thing…there are things from the other side as well…whereas with you…it feels like you are doing only what am telling you to do!?….I don’t know how to put this together…”

“So you are saying its over?”

“No baby…With you …it can never be over!…I can't imagine a life without you!”, I really meant that.

“What about her?”

“That’s the problem…she is getting important as well…I think I will want both of you to co-exist”

“Do you really mean that? Because it sounds crazy to me…and I don’t know why am not getting furious even after hearing what you just said”

“Honey…. you will have to understand…there are certain things in life that one need to know how to share and create harmony…I guess this is one of them….This weekend... I really need to go and spend some time with her…! I was with you all week…. I was with her as well…however I need to give this to her…. please understand”

“I guess don’t have an option here…do I?”

“I guess not!”

Then I had to do it…it was one of the most difficult things to do this weekend…!

I turned my computer off in pain…. but then I looked at my cell phone…and said we have the weekend for us sweetheart!


p.s. This is what you do when you have friday evenings all to yourself

Aggravating Acronyms

“Is this your first meeting on the HS’s”

“uhhhh...Yes…”, I said with a pause! I guess I know what he is talking about…hmmm…do I?… What is HS?..…but before my brain cells Googled…

“You should have been for the JHS meeting man. These THS are kind of advanced you know, and is certainly not for a newbie. If you had been to the JHS, you would have understood the concepts much clearer…Never mind you will have your way through…. but am saying man ….I did not know that the DUDs and DURs means the same thing until I attended these JHS meetings…Anyways as you move on to the DHS you will know what we are talking about”, he said as he walked towards his cube.

“Did you realize that this is my second day at work and you are throwing acronyms left right and straight at me….”, I was yelling…well to myself!

Well, at that time, whatever you got from the earlier monologue is literally what I got as well. However, now, it’s different! As you work on.. you get the hang of it. But it makes one wonder. Why would we use acronyms so often?

Now with stores almost starting to sell Textotine patches for avoiding addictive text messaging, the use of acronyms is getting worse. To a certain extent, I understand the use.

Well, when you write a formal letter/report/article and you foresee using something quite frequently at a later stage…you parenthesize the acronym in the earlier stage and let the reader know this is what it means… In essence you do the same thing while you talk in business/working terms…you assume that the paranthesization stage has been crossed and that the person you are talking to, understand what you exactly mean when you say XYZ. Unfortunately that’s not the case all the time!

Now, even in the non-professional environment! In a room with people who might not have any clue on your daily routines! Dialogues like these do fill up some folk’s days!

“Machan…what about TOC?”

“Table of contents?”

“No. Taste of China”

“Okay…GTC?”

“Good ‘till cancelled?”

“No. General Tso’s Chicken”

“By the way AT&T is not working today”

“What?…that’s not true…! I just called…may be they are not working just for you! Did you check others?”

“No. They are not working today…I met them home…Aarthi, Tara and Tarun are not taking a break today”

“Dude..this is confusing. Lets go eat. On our way back, you wannu hit SBC for a HB?”

“Southern Baptist Convention? Why there now?”

“God! I meant Starbucks for a house blend…. Come on we need to HB soon?”

“You are so addicted to coffee bud”

“I meant hurry back soon”

Sure! These does happen in some of the folk's life ..the people I almost know/ew

For those who come to me in a non-professional environment with bundles of acronyms like Karan Johar movie titles…I politely let them read between the lines…. of a little more than half of my handful of fingers! Whereas in a professional environment … you sometimes don’t have the liberty to be yourself…in this case smudged with profanities…..so, I say…..I don’t know and I do not understand. By the way, that is very difficult!

Anyways, as we progress through time we need to realize that using an acronym is fine as long as it holds its value! If using them only leads to confusion and eats more of your time and brain cells…..a couple of seconds more on a conversation would certainly help.

All I am saying is bear with me..I am bored! :)

Am I up yet?

Beep…Beep…Beep….My eyes were frozen at the Couch as I let my brain roll back.

“Barath! Are you up? Its 4.00 am”, Appa started his day.

As I got up and thinking about walking, I also thought, what kind of a biological alarm this man should have to get up like this every day and act with such high levels of energy. What motivates him is what I was thinking?
“Chemistry” he said….

“Isn’t that what you were supposed to work on today?” he asked.

“Not decided pa”, I murmured as I stepped in to my morning premises.

How in the world does he knows what am I going to study. Well, I guess chemistry is what I like the most, so I will go with it.

As I stepped out, thinking what is ahead of me that day, I heard him say “Coffee!”.

I have to give this to him, I have never had a better coffee than what he makes. No Starbucks! No Seattle’s best. Nothing whatsoever. May be its because it was what I was brought up with. It certainly does not taste or look like a traditional coffee, but it has the something of its own that none can come near to.

The next 120 mins, just breezed away with me talking aromatic and aliphatic hyrdocarbons and responding to the early birds chirping.

"Take your shower and get ready! its time", he said.

In few minutes,

"Bring in your plate, guess Amma has some curd rice ready for you", he said.

By then I was uniformed getting set to grab the day by its horns.

"If I see a bit of lunch back in the box you know what would happen. And Do not dare to throw it on your way here", he sure can get loud.

"Coffee?” he asked as I entered back, after a proclaimed long day at work…. come on it was 3 pm.

"Yeah, of course! I thought you will have it already", I hated waiting.

"No, I was bored to do it all alone, I thought you will come back and we shall have the coffee together", he was genuinely bored.

After all, he was so lucky that his workplace was home, as he had to manage the entire South Indian Market via phone and other modes of communication. Man! He was and is lucky. But he also had no colleagues working at his workplace! Poor guy gets to meet them once in a while during his bi/annual meetings! Nevertheless he was bored.

"Its 4.30, let me make some curd rice for you before you go to the tuition at 5.00" he was just informing and not proposing, while I was wondering, why my life is filled with only curd rice, which is what I had for lunch as well...in any case I had better things to think about. Tuition girls and chemistry...!

"Hey...Barath is here. You will have to make him some dosas now" he was telling my mom while watching his 9.00 pm news.

Dosa? sounds nice.... and the intensity of that... of course could not even come closer to its taste. May be its because of my curd rice exposure all day, Dosa, chutney (molagai) powder and Sambar was terrific! Dinner is probably the heaviest meal of the day for me.. I am always stuffed with a full course meal.

"Dei, its time for your Badam milk!” …..He did not quit.

Is there any difference between offering and ordering in this world?

At the end of the day, I was just tired to hear anything related to food. As a matter of fact all day I was hearing only one thing...its something that’s related to food.... Whatever! Go ahead and drink...you have an hour of Math ahead of you at 10.15 pm I told to myself…

“Barath! Are you up? Its 4.00 am”, I heard him say again.

Beep…beep…beep. The microwave reminded me about my Quaker oats.

1995! sure does feel like a long time ago. Lots of things have changed. I learnt to interact with and through machines, learnt to live without constant intake…and lots more.

Father! …Sure! He was annoying sometimes with too much caring…! At the end of time, I guess he really don’t care….may be he knew that there will be days, when he had to give up his son to machines…..

Most of the times we talk about time flying and things changing so fast…. but there are only some times we wish for it to be frozen…. and it almost never happens when you are on it! Memory is something I bow down to! …I think I should remember his birthday tomorrow and wish him! I will call him on his cell phone and wish him is what I promised to myself...After all, I have learnt to survive through machines. When would I learn to live through it? Is a question that will never be answered?

“Its 7:30 am, and I am ready for breakfast” I told to myself. …But am I up yet? I questioned.

Modeling Human Behavior?!

Last week, I got a chance to meet a couple of my well-wishers who were blessed to begin their process of enjoying the world a few decades earlier than the day I started...They were almost as old as my aunts and uncles. The two have been introduced well to my antiques, way ahead of time and they certainly had an idea of what they were going to witness. Unfortunately, they were also exposed to the common (mis)understanding of the generic behavioral pattern of a PhD, and obviously was entangled in that line of thought as well. The fortunate part for these people is that I have never met them personally, but I was introduced and been taught about them well enough, so meeting them on a personal level was just a formality.

Now, the meeting part did take place. Yours truly took a few nano seconds to gel in. Upon completion of the few formalities, I was all myself. Spoke to these people non-stop for almost an hour. Made them come outside for a drive in to the town along with a bunch of my friends whom they already knew and have gotten comfortable with, even before they had met me..... Ended up in an icecream joint in a winter evening making sure to show that the world around one can be wilder with just icecreams.... All these time I was ofcourse talking (being myself) and when I was outside in a place with rhythms all over, I took a dip in to the music left straight and right by responding to the beats now and then.

So at the end of the hour long stint, the aunt said that that was somewhat in the grounds like....'oh my god....I really didnt know it was going to be this intense...If you go to India, people wouldnt believe that you have a graduate degree...'

Now, that is almost everyone's comment after they spend few mins with you-know-who in a non-professional environment. Why would that be? Why would we frame preconceived notions that are based on traditional generational behavior of human kinds of different ages. I am glad that the notions that the people I met that day conceived were volatile in a few moments and the folks were versatile and wise enough to comprehend that 'understanding and expecting something that are based on rules that were set from a sample space of diiferent aspects could be absolutely wrong'.

If we move a step back and take a thinking pill we would understand that everyone of us have been there and done that. We expect something based on what we know and told upon. Even sometimes through our own experiences but there are several instances we witness that our expectation have not penetrated the complete sample space.... Sometimes we even comfortably sit back and say 'exceptions are not examples'....

Well to preach the least, I think it would be reasonable to say that it is ideal to use the knowledge that we have gained through pattern recognition and our own personal experiences. However, to extrapolate that to every set of conditions and call the ones that does not fall well with in the predicatable error limits, as abnormalities would be absolutely wrong. I don't think modeling human behavior with high predictability is an easy task to accomplish. Even if that is possible, I would rather stay away from that equation and enjoy the limitations of accepting and appreciating people the way they are!

I guess I am trying to say that Sky is Blue :)

Nothing

1981

Nothing in the world could have made me happier than the cream-and-red-plastic-duo, outsourcing noise to develop love and skills in peace and harmony.

1984

Nothing in the world could have stopped me from spending eternal hours of sheltered rubber and wood workouts rendering support to the search-and-extraction of the best from within.

1987

Nothing in the world could have been better than those few minutes of extended sunlight that would have led me to spend those unfinished businesses as priceless moments of glory.

1990

Nothing in the world could have hurt me more than that last sphere that was lost in the air to end the day of fun and frolic.

1993

Nothing in the world than you could have woken me up at those early Saturday hours to cycle all the way and do what I was doing as I was born to.

1996

Nothing in the world could have distracted me so much more than you from my devastating attempts of exploring my post high school educational adventures.

1999

Nothing in the world could have possibly even brought into the vicinity of the same feeling as holding a virgin to start the blissful few-hour celebration of pure passion.

2002

Nothing in the world could make me believe that there is one other thing than you that is holding my country of such diversity, together in such a tight union.

2005

Nothing in the world could have made me realize that winning in union is more powerful than just winning, and winning is not everything!

Now

Nothing, I repeat, nothing in any form has been with me all my time than you, and I am still searching for that one thing in the world that could possibly fill the voids you have created in my life now.

Cricket. I miss you!

Choices

Recently, I was in one of the situations where I had to make a decision from an available set of options. That situation actually magnified the positives and negatives of having two seemingly right options.

I think I am paraphrasing Rishi Kapoor (or Kunal Kohli) from Fana (Thanks for subtitles). “The choice isn't between good and evil. That's easy. The real choices of life are choosing between...the lesser of two evils, or the greater of two goods”. In a polarized environment I was thinking that I would not have anything to learn from a movie of that caliber…. A Hindi movie of all cases…?! Well, another lesson from the invisibility!

Unfortunately, most of the time, we are not in a planet where we can differentiate options as good and evil. It is possibly a no-brainer when you have to make an option between two choices that are right and wrong. However when it comes to two right (or wrong) options, your choice is all about your character. Again, calling it right or wrong is completely ones own personal perspective…!

But after going through such a state of mind, I can now say that it is definitely not easy to stay focused and believe in what you believe. Especially, with all these different levels of distractions that one is exposed to. But it is certainly achievable. The path that led to my decision sounds pretty simple but in reality it was not so. I laid down all the possible pros and cons of both options. I compared both and the better one of the two wins…! Ala la la la…! I wish it was that simple. The positives and negatives that I had were on a different plane of perception in a way that I could not possibly fathom. Segregating them was a totally different ball game that I did not step in to. Two right paths that would lead to two different destinations of similar caliber.

Well, one of the major factors that helped me pursuing in the direction that I am now, is the feeling called ‘regret’. I have never believed in the word “regret”, not for once I want to go through that in my life, as it would never let me appreciate the experience that I went through, the way I want to perceive. I stood back and asked myself if I would regret making the decision if I am going through the other one..! In one of the options that I had, there was a tinge of that feeling based on ethical arguments. However, the difficulty of the situation was on a standpoint of definitions of ethical guidelines and who is the author of those? Is that ruled by morals or predefined set of rules framed by someone that you have never seen or will never see in the future.

Well, let me not bore you with ‘what’s going on with my life’ post. The take home message from the experience I went through was this,

Taking a stand in your decision defines what you call for yourself as a character. While doing so there could be several distractions that would obstruct your decision pattern. Stick on to your fundamental feeling of righteousness and win the pride of doing the right thing, at least for your own self.

Update!

Folks...

Looks like time has showered some positivities across and hence I have renounced some of the tags that I possessed (or the ones possessed me) for a while! For instance, the “Student” and “no- time” tags. Now that I absolutely have only knowledge transfer and vacation to be pursued for the next few weeks….I thought I should get back and do what I like to do when am running short of things to do……Blogging is what I proclaim that as.

It’s been ages since I shared the air in the blogosphere…and it looks like the air is being polluted in the absence of personal consistency. I see a whole bunch of people writing personal diaries online …and randomly ctrl+c and ctrl+v forwards and pictures. .. and calling them blogs. …Well, let me not be judgmental here…all am here to say here is that the air that I shared in the sphere a few months ago has been modified in a way I cannot digest…! So here am trying to do the MJ thing by coming back…not as a Wizard …but as a Bull though!

Thanks for those who kept pushing to write more and visiting. See you all soon with more words!

Now what?!

Image source: Phdcomics

To a certain extent....this is why this space is not updated! ...yet!

Trying to Graduate!

Busy to blog?....Naa...Guess I'm Lazy...Will be back soon before graduation!

Thanks for visiting!

Mono or Di(e)alogue

Let me see if I can articulate what I am thinking now!

Is it possible to talk and make sure that we are not boring the other person by talking whatever we wanted to talk?

Did it come near to what I wanted to say…?

Naaa - not exactly….it's confusing!

Okay…once again!

Is there a faint possibility to talk and not bore the person that you are talking to!!

Now?

How about a ….NO!

Okay…last attempt!

Can I talk to anyone, whatever I want to talk, and can I do that in a way that I don't bore them?

Well! To hell with this!

Why don't I take a post to do this?…Okay..! here I go!

Everyday, there are quite a few instances…I have people talking to me for a while and all I can see is there mouth moving! Because, what they talk is no way related to my vicinity of interest, inclination, knowledge, affinity…or whatever it is. They would just talk and talk and talk without even paying attention to the fact that I am not listening to them!!

I used to scream….

"Oh God! Can't you instill some slightest amount of sense in to this people's brain cells? Can't you see that my responses are just smiles, sounds and start-and-end with just one-word most of the times!"

For once, God laughed the heavenly a** out and said "Try listening to yourself"!!

May be I sound like that to a lot of people! "HELL! YEAH!" ….a crowd shouted right behind me!!!

Good that I have that infinitesimal sense to acknowledge it.

"Could it be possible to change?" I asked myself…!

"Why don't you write a blog on it? May be you will follow atleast for the heck of it once you post it …" said the idealist in me!

A few sensible moments on anything would lead to decent way out of a tough situation.

What do we have here?

Target: Conversation

Constraints:

1. We need to make sure we don't bore the opponent (sometimes it could be a crowd)
2. We need to gain something out of it.

Every situation in this world is not a win-win kind. However, we can try our best and proceed to the maximum extent we can!

The solution here… obviously lies on the Topic of conversation!

The key to talk and not bore someone is to engage them on a topic of their own interest….! The most amazing thing about people around you is that the area of specialization and knowledge is markedly different from one soul to another. And the best part is that, to a certain extent it would overlap with yours, depending upon your versatility and tolerance limit….Well, in this case even if you are not knowledgeable on their interests, you would end up learning something from them…there you go…you gain something.

Now…am I missing something here….if I keep on talking about their interests…? What about mine? How in the world would I get to talk what I want to talk? I mean my interests my hobbies…my inclinations…affinities etc.

I have one word for you! Reciprocation!

Most of the people reciprocate when you listen to them. When you talk about their interests, find a way to connect to your passions, your interests. When you do so? It's easy for the other to respond and react to your affinities. Don't you think? Or am I missing something?

What about the people who don't reciprocate and not listen to your interests and talks? Well, you know what? They really don't know what they are missing! And after all you have gained something by listening to them…don't you think?

Life is simple! All you have to do is to acknowledge your likes and dislikes and practice it on others as well. Once you know how not to something that you dont want to see from others, its get beautiful!

And the next time I bore you…make sure that the sounds, one-word responses and "get the hell outta here" looks ….as obvious as you can!

Educate your way out

A few weeks ago I got to see an ABC episode on India rising, which is pretty old and popular in the blogosphere now. Though this episode had its own pluses and minuses, I liked it! Especially some parts where, the Sardar's response to the host's "Is India catching up?" question, and a don't-judge-the-book-by-its-cover person asking for an email address, so on and so forth! A patriot's view I guess!

The final few seconds of the show is what I was gripped upon.

"In India, education is worshiped…. and parents will skip meals to send them to private schools…."

How true!

A few years ago, a group of us had a discussion on this same issue. So, my connectivity-speed to those lines of thoughts was obvious and immeasurably fast.

To reiterate, in India, it is true that the middle/lower class families, in a way, skip meals to provide a reasonably high quality education to their kids. It is true that the reverence to education and educators are injected into each and every kid's brain from infancy. It is true that education is worshipped!

I was brought up that way! I saw and lived a life where people were sent to schools that were beyond their quality of lifestyle. Most of the time, the monetary struggle to make this happen was transparent that the responsibility automatically seeps in. At that age, with that brought up, the best thing that the kid can do is to educate their way out! The kid without his/her knowledge realizes this at a very early age. A single digit class rank is the most important thing in the world for almost every responsible student in the class. If parents skip meals, students skip fun, sometimes. As I said earlier here, there are a whole bunch of students who did not do what they wanted to do just to fit in this 'educate your way out' lifestyle.

Is this good? Are we in the right direction?....are the obvious questions that pop up. One of the dangerous byproducts of education is sensibility. Well, with exceptions apart, it's simple! Education breeds sensibility and in turn results in responsibility and growth in the right direction. So, a better educated society will proceed in a progressive direction much faster than the one which is less educated!

Presently, the society that we live in is afraid of being left uneducated! The spirit of competitiveness is so strong that we are just doing what we are supposed to do without thinking about what we deserve! "Once you start thinking what you deserve you become soft - Greg Popovich". Do what you are supposed to do and do that in style, what you supposed to get will automatically fall in! I am not talking Karma theory here…! What I am trying to say is to stop cribbing and start living!

This argument may have a completely different perception if you take the reservation issues into consideration, which I don't want to delve in to. Nevertheless, we are going great guns on the first step! Educate yourself first to start fighting the next step…!

As I said earlier, lot of people did not have the luxury to do what they want to do to fit in and live a life devoid of mediocrity. We have loads of Sachin's and A.R.Rehmans living a mediocre lifestyle instead of taking the road that's less taken! But education and the fear of it in this generation is a beautiful progression that's going to lead the next to take the leap in what they don't call as just survival. From there may be we can see our way out and talk about other plausible deficiencies, if any.

Hilarious!

How I wish I could!

How I wish!

Dance like none is watching you

"Teach me dancing?" He was in his late 40's, "I have never been a dancer in my life and for some reason it is tougher than getting a PhD. Would you help me sometime?", and did sound sincere.

Two mistakes, I thought. Phd is not tough and I don't dance.

"I just flex something based on the beats, if you call that dancing, you must be kidding", it was something that I know….What I do, cannot be termed as dancing.

"Yeah that's what I call as free style", he said. "Teach me that! Not the steps….Teach me how to loose your mind to the beats"

I still don't know if he was serious or sarcastic. Well, coming to think of it (I don't know if I was doing it the way he thought) but it's not easy to dance that way, especially when you are in a place where you get the feeling that there are a bunch of eyes looking at you. Particularly the mistakes!...Nevertheless, when you lose your mind to the beats and let your body react to it, the product could some times be termed as dancing, for atleast a few in your vicinity!

Dance like none is watching you, lose your mind to the spirit of music and care less on the world that's attempting to see what you have in your moves!

If you are a frequent visitor here, you must have guessed where am going with this.

Life!

The whole "dance like none is watching you" thing goes with our life as well. Recently, a close friend of mine said that her blogs, to an extent, were turning out to be readership based. She had to fight and throw those thoughts that popped up to say "What would so and so think if I write something like that". Well, of course she won those fights. But sometimes most of us lose those without even knowing that there is a fight to be fought. I mean in our lives.

We tend to change our ways of acting, reacting and living for trivial reasons. "What would the world think if I do something like this" is the question that we ask quite a few times every day. The world could be a single person or even a group of people. Sometimes these are the people that we know and most of the other times these are the people that we don't know. And as a matter of fact we quite often even answer them, without our knowledge, by merely reacting to those questions.

The world has too many things to think about and we are certainly not in its priority list. But for us, it's quite different. Sometimes we unfortunately set high priority to the world around us and forget to live our own life. We fail to realize that we are taking those decisions assuming it really matters to the world around. But as I said before, the world has too many things to think about and you are certainly not in its priority list.

To a certain extent, I can agree on improvising our acts for one person or for a bigger act, which has a proportional response to a group. Note that, I use the word improvising here and not changing. In the former case, we do it for Love/affection/concern. In the latter case, we do it for the people who would be directly affected because of our acts. In both cases, it's a privilege. So, the changes that we offer to make to our ways of acting, reacting and living are certainly a privilege that we should give to only the chosen few. If one starts to think of changing what he/she wants to do to every Tom, Ram and Som, we would be losing something that's termed as "individuality".

Is it easy? Certainly not! I have been trying this, but have succeeded only to a certain extent. So, yes, it is tough to follow, but if we do, we would enjoy even the regrets.

Trust me! We would be happier if we do what we want to do rather than thinking about other's thought process on our actions.

Well, someone already said this in a much better way "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony" Can you guess who this is? Hint: Everyone knows Him.

Idealist Vs Pseudo realist

An excerpt from a conversation between an Idealist (I) and a Pseudo Realist (PR)….


Idealist Vs Pseudo Realist
Image source: modified.

I: Love is in the air

PR: Yeah I can smell it! Did u flush?

I: You are fooling yourself

PR: Well, am I? Enlighten me!

I: Love is everywhere. Love doesn't need language, culture, country etc. Without Love there is no human existence.

PR: Where did u pick these lines from? Each and every thing you just said goes well with Sex as well.

I: You can never live with your own self for the rest of your life. You definitely need some one to reflect yourself to, at the least.

PR: Yeah. Okay! Where does love come here?

I: You aren't enjoying the beauty of this world by being single.

PR: Well, singleness and sickness are two different things that people sometimes confuse themselves with.

I: Fall in love you will know the difference

PR: I will, if you tell me what love is?

I: Love is like god. Incomprehensible yet experiencable, Intangible yet achievable, unexplainable yet agreeable!

PR: Wait… wait… wait! You mean to say one can't understand it, but can just feel it.

I: Precisely.

PR: How typical? So you are advocating something that you don't understand?

I: Yes. That's the beauty of it.

PR: What's your name and where are you from?

I: Idealist and I' m from the inside of you.

PR: Just stay there.

I: Come on. At least wish people! You don't have to be in Love to wish people on the day they celebrate love.

PR: Thanks for pointing it out. I'm neither a fan of St.Valentine nor a lover of Roman or whatever traditions. So I will stay put. It's just another day.

I: Forget Love, celebrate people at least.

PR: Okay! If this is the only way to send you back in. May be for the people who believe in all these! I am sure they will have a great day! Because and only because they believe in it and I believe in them.

Decisions after school

"Students have unenviable task in hand as examination nears"

Public examinations! Standard XII

Couldn’t resist walking down the memory lane to revisit some of the most important decisions!

Regardless of the maturity level, or knowledge, the decision that you take-in at the end of your final year of schooling (or may be even by the tenth grade itself) sort of defines the rest of your life. Some of us have the guts to change the course of action completely even years after the so-called life-time decision was taken. Some of us just branch out and do what we like to do with just a few changes, sticking on to the same field of expertise with the fear of not losing the few years that you had spend in learning something. The rest of us like me, stick on to the thing that started to do, then.

1996- I was given the freedom to choose what I want to do……well, not literally!

“Barath, what you want to do is up to you. You have two options in Engineering now, Chemical or Computer sciences, which one is yours?”

I remember reading a similar kind of a conversation in one of those blogs talking about collegiate education. Whatsoever! This is reality. I was given the freedom to choose one of the two that they short listed from the gazillion ways of living…! Not that I was forced in to this completly without my knowledge....nevertheless my knowledge was less then.

To my parents, the world was so easy then. The options were very simple. All they wanted me to have is a professional degree! The professional degree at that time, for a typical middle-class family, starts with a MBBS degree and ends with an Engineering one with none between them. In my case, there was a little consideration on Architecture, based on my drawing skills. Nevertheless, I was too lazy to write a separate entrance examination and that displayed my motivation to find the Howard Roark in me!

Anyways, the options that they gave me, sure does sound like I was a born engineer or at least a brought-up one. In reality, I was a born slacker and a brought-up idealist. Like most of us, I was good in a lot of things. I am not sure if engineering was one of them, because I never knew what it was, then. So, I still can’t comprehend the reason behind their thought of me being an Engineer. Call me slow, but in 1996 my decision making capabilities were solely parental and peer pressured….well let me digress from the autobiography!

There are quite a few things that we wanted to do in life. For some of us, it keeps changing, as we progressively learn new things. We like adapting and deriving love to the new-found infatuations and misinterpret those as things that we want to do for the rest of our time. Say, your new found love to sport, dance, a music instrument, reading, reviewing, writing etc. We do the same thing to career as well. Sometimes, half the way we realize that we are in the field that’s not ours and we trace back and go to interest motivated areas. Sometimes we keep doing it more than once, like dating a whole bunch of people until you get to find the love of your life.

It would be idealistic a case if every one of us knows what we want to do for the rest of our life at the age of 17. Most of us are not exposed to the interest derived areas, but are to the purpose derived ones. Just because a parent wants to tell that their son or daughter is an engineer or a doc, doesn’t mean the offspring should be forced to do that. External force is there from the age 15, when they get to choose their group, a math and science with computers or the one with biology. (that sure does sound like an engineer, considering biology less of a science compared to phys and chem) Do we have more groups? Oh.. may be commerce. That’s it. Well, some of us are not even exposed to the options. What the heck happened to art, fashion design, film education et al? It’s certainly not because of the educational institutions but the institutional families that pressure them.

The pressures are sometimes not just from the peers, it could be of any type. Birth may be. How many hereditary doctors do we get to see everyday? Family of engineers! Or may be even actors/actresses now! People sometimes choose their profession, just because their parents were successful in that.

Well, stop for a moment! Let’s see from the parent's perception. Of course the parents are equally concerned on not forcing the kids to take a wrong decision. They are knowledgeable on their age and the exposure. So, when there is a time that the kid needs to take a decision and when they feel that the kid is not matured enough to decide. They take the step for you. Beautifully balanced and amazingly bullet proofed, because their decisions are sometimes based on the successful clan of the then-current era. If they hear success stories on Engineers and doctors only, they will obviously be forced to surrender to their derived urges. On the other hand if they hear only sorry stories of people in the areas that their kids assume to be interested in. They would never want to step in and gamble. After all, we are talking about a life and career here. Hence, most of the people who get to choose a career through parental pressures are in a group that is successfully living or at least thinking so. Doesn’t matter you love it or not because most of the time we quantify success by monetary outputs, rather than personal satisfaction.

There is a big difference between doing something you love to do and trying to love something that you get to do. I was lucky, or may be smart to understand and to have found my love in what I am working on. But lots of people aren’t like that. They would be, if they had taken the right decisions at the age when they were not educated to do. Well, as I said it’s too idealistic a case, you cannot make the right decisions when the knowledge is less. Well, if you let me go back and make those decisions again, may be I want to be counselor or a people-analyst instead of a chemical engineer. Nevertheless, if I get to this same position, where I am now via that parallel universe…may be in that universe, Iam writing a blog that’s saying otherwise.

At ~17 you can’t expect every one of us to be the knowledgeable about the future interests. I know a lot of people who started somewhere and ended somewhere else. The decisions that are made for them did not materialize and hence they moved on.

But if you think more, it’s just not about doing what you love to do or trying to love what you do, it’s about how do you define your love to it. You don’t love something, just because you are successful in it. A beggar is a typical example of that statement. You love something, because you enjoy doing it and because it makes you appreciate and reinvent yourself in all possible ways. Again, as I said earlier, success is not defined by the amount of money you get out of it. It is by the unquantifiable satisfaction you derive out of it.

Had Ramesh and Savitai Tendulkar forced Sachin to take up engineering or something else at his age of debut, do you think we would be watching Indian cricket with this unquantifiable passion? I don’t know about you, but I’m skeptical on the unquantifiable part.

Acclimatization

Apologies for not being able to share the air in the blogosphere for a while. Work has been keeping me busy off late. In any case, better late than never!

Acclimatization! (process of adapting oneself to a new temperature, altitude, climate, environment, or situation)

May be I shouldn't use this word here, as in more cases it just signifies the physical changes that one should get used to rather than the cultural differences. Nevertheless, I liked it, so here I go!

For the past few weeks, I have been thinking about the acclimatization issues that one had to go through in the process of finding peace and harmony, along with monetary pleasures, across borders. One of my friends is going thro' it as we speak. May be that prompted me to write this. Anyways, when I decided to go thro this acclimatization path, years ago, it was not as difficult as I thought it would be. May be I was exposed to the western culture through friends, books, movies etc., and hence no shocks awaited me. Ofcourse, there was a great deal of things that I didn't know. From where I was to where I am now, I should say it's been fun learning and understanding this style of living.

Certainly it would have been much tougher than what it was, if I was not exposed to a lot of things prior to coming here. However, if one has an open-mind and the willingness to learn, I guess anything would be easy.

As I said earlier, learning different cultures and lifestyles is always fun, but,

Do you have the time to learn it?

How important is that to your life?

Most of us want these questions to be answered before even attempting to learn.

From a common person's perspective (not an idealist), if one's chances of working with something is 0%, why waste time in learning it? This theory is sometimes extended to people and culture as well. That's the very reason why most of us don't know a lot about Somalian lifestyle except for the obvious fact that they starve. Who cares? As long am able to help them and do my bit in stopping the starvation am good. This thought certainly beautifies pragmatism, but blocks people comprehension. By this, I mean that some of us don't even attempt to understand some things, just because it appears to be of no direct use to your way of life. But if you think, you would agree that most of the life-lessons that one learn in their time would most probably be from an unexpected source.

Well, I am not suggesting that one should have to learn all kinds of cultures and lifestyles before death, regardless of their connection to it. What I am trying to say here is that one needs to have an open-mind in learning everything, including people/culture/lifestyle.

Confronting ignorance is the best way to start learning. Understand the fact that we don't know a lot about the place, which makes it easier to acclimatize.

People, cultures, lifestyles are like Time. There are no constraints in learning them and it's almost impossible to know it all completely. Unlike Love, Acclimatization gets easier with understanding. The best part about this is that you learn from what you see and understand, not just by assumptions and imaginations. Hence, I guess acclimatization is probably one of the best things that one had to go through in life, so why wait for it?

Media - Credibility

This is not a political article

It is almost impossible for me to start work without updating myself with what's going around. News! Every one of us is so used to reading something that entertains our quest for knowledge. It varies as we grow up! I still remember the days when I wake up and go directly to the sports section in "The Hindu" even before sipping my first morning coffee and would finish the whole paper with just a glimpse on other sections. And it changes as we progress. We include entertainment, national politics, international relationships, book reviews so on and so forth. But we almost never think on the credibility of the information that we read and share.

Well, credibility is not a big deal when it comes to perceptional articles. A book review, a movie review, a sports column (except for the statistical information) etc are all perceptional articles. But when it comes to information transfer with or without a mere thought transfer, credibility is the most important concept that sometimes we fail to recognize. We just believe, blindfolded by the reputation of the source.

Dramatization and hype brings in money for newspapers as well as other information portals. I'm sure that Aamir Khan's 2nd wedding had more hits than Narayana Murthy's blasts on the corrupt politicians today in Rediff. I wouldn't blame Rediff for that. Its just readership! I still remember this on the e-magazine that we started for the Indian community here in Cookeville. A column on the local gossips was more popular than the other sensible sections. We, as the editors of that magazine, took a while to take that section off, until we gained some readership. What entertains one doesn't necessarily have to entertain other. Readership is an important issue that cannot be understood until we are in to that business. So, as of now, I don't understand the general readership, as chemical engineering doesn't offer me that chance. But the most important thing is honesty. The readers should get information that is credible. Regardless of what section it is. Entertainment, business, sports or anything for that matter!

Now, what made me write this article is a small incident that disturbed my respectful thoughts on the magazine journalism! Let me be concise!

I think it was during the 1991 state assembly elections in Tamilnadu. My mother's school was one of the election booths. The counting was over and Dr.Jayalalitha, the present chief minister of the state, had won the elections by a huge margin. Days after the election, my mom, to my father, handed over a ballot paper that she found in her class room. The ballot paper was valid and a vote was casted to the obvious rival of the winner. Now, from what I overheard then, I may be wrong as well, according to the constitution, an incident like that could even push to an extent of canceling the results and order another round of election in the same constituency. My father couldn't think of going to the police without enough knowledge on the political influence that could change the course of action. So, after some shrewd thinking (!) he and his friends contacted a local political Tamil magazine, Nakeeran, and consulted the issue. The next week Nakeeran's issue had this ballot paper as its title cover, and the story explained that they found this ballot paper in one of the Minister's, Mr.S.D.Somasundarm, garden. I was shocked to read this. Yes, of course my parents would be concerned in publishing the sources, so may be they had some constraints on that. Nevertheless, how can someone write something that's totally not connected to the truth? As I said, dramatization! That helped! What did the magazine earned out of this? A huge increase in the circulation number, at the expense of masking the truth! We can argue on the already tarnished image of the minister. Or the ways the journalist fight to display truth that cannot be revealed. All that is fine! But how someone like me would ever believe a magazine from that instance. I understand that we cannot talk/write truth all the times, but a lie would always be a lie no matter what good or what bad it does.

It's even worse with the advent of online media. Blogs and all! People talk about plagiarism on one side, credibility of the information on the other. Well from what I see, if we are married to online media, spend some time before you give birth to trust. Not just based on reputation but on consistency and confirmation! Media is powerful, so is knowledge. As Uncle Ben says in the First of the Spidy series, with great power comes great responsibility, when you think you acquire power through a powerful source, make sure you know that it is the truth and not a perception! If you can't, just don't trust. Accumulate it as just knowledge with a tinge of skeptical illusion before conclusion!