Do Farewells really Fare-Well these days

The motivation for this post must go to recent spate of farewells that i was really seeing all around me. People all around me started criticizing the cause of poor farewells to lack of cohesion and unity. True, i must agree that factions and small groupisms do have a negative role and it is always human tendency to form groups within groups. (About groups - A Tale of two groups is one post coming up soon on this blog)

Well ... Modern Technology does have a major role in which farewells fail to evoke the same kind of sentiment that was there much earlier.

The pervasive nature of Mobiles and technology such as "Chat", "Orkut" and Email really have brought people much closer than they ever imagined. Separation was no longer a hated word. People stay connected right throughout .. Even taking mobiles to their bathrooms was being considered a status symbol. Under such a situation, how can one feel the emotion and separation in a farewell function ? All such things happened during my good old days as there were no mobiles at that time and email was expensive. Being in touch by the friendly postal department was the one and only way of being in touch. The farewell function brought back memories and the mere feeling of being separated in days time brought tears to some of the eyes.

The second might be the "AGE - factor" . It is time that due to global climatic conditions (i have been working hard on my kyoto project lately :) ), people are ageing rapidly. The trend is disturbing because it is "More in the mind these days and less in the body". Once you come to an MBA, this trend is even more seen .. People are 28 at the age of 23. Everyone tries to be a manager and the presence of youthfullness is seen as a sign of weakness and immaturity in such a world. The younger you are, the more passion, love and exuberance that you might have for such functions. Age drills in a lot of useless notions and impurity in one's head and teaches one to remain as un-emotional as possible.

The third and the final one has to be presence of faculty. Somehow at MBA level faculty, barring a few exceptions, have just been mere facilitators. The student - teacher interaction at an informal level was non-existent for most of the cases. A faculty presence in a farewell at times brings back memories of his or her class at that particular moment and transports your mind back to those good-ol days ... Bottom-line ... We all missed our dearest Prof. A Parasuraman in the farewell. A farewell speech from him, would have really made us feel that we are going to miss IIT for a long long time.

Somehow, i still remember my 10th class farewell till date. I knew that i would be moving out soon due to my Dad's umpteenth transfer to another place (Some how he still continues to do so). Some of the skinny faces i saw then have turned out to be fine young men to date. Infact, the skinniest bespactled fellow joined a gym after that and now can give a model a run for his money. The females have turned out to be the same .. (Dumping people then .. and doing the same now . hehehehe !!!) ... Your's truly was the fattest in his batch and has done a lot of work over the years to stay in shape ...

Some of the faces of year 1997 were

"Kunte Karate" - An engineer with Infosys now
"Rocky" - Again an engineer with Infosys
"Alampalli/Bandar" - Unable to locate him these days . He's somewhere in US...
"Moti" - Last heard, he was toiling in some auto company in US
"Doctor Bhalla" - She's delivering a baby a month now ... hehehe .. chill !! she's a gynic
"Padu" - A CA rocking toiling hard for his clients
"Gauri" - An MBA somehow trying to break even in Finance
"Sallu Bhai" - A politician joining the footsteps of his dad
"Battery" - A person hell-bent on accumulating degrees to date.

Anyway, some of the faces i hope will rock in the year 2017 in addition to this list

-- The bearded One - Paramjit Singh
-- The one and only fashion icon / The elvis of my batch - Sudhanshu Diwakar
-- The Gult with a Mallu Moustache - Ravindra Bob or rather Bob to everyone
-- The CEO - Shreevardhan Kabra
-- The Net-worker ( Shared by Aravindan and Mohit agarwal )
-- The Topper - Amrutaunshu
-- Mama and Mappilai - Aswin and Ashok
-- Youth Icon - Arun V
-- K7/Poet - yours truly
-- MOJO - One and only Mandar Suhas Joshi
-- NAWAB - Kumar Abhinav Srivastava - Man of vast untapped potential

That's it from me right now .. More posts on the "Top - 5 topics" that one might discuss in a future alumni meet after 10 years ...

10 things to show ...

The credit to this post must go the inspiration from a couple of friends around me. The character "Barney" in 'How I Met your Mother' (a soap on which there would be an entry later) has provided the due words at suitable places for it though....

I donned upon the observing hat and here it is ....

I call this a match between a committed individual Vs Die-hard single ... Now there can be exceptions too and confused idiots who often waver between the two are not handled in this blog ....

Presenting here are the 10 things that show that you are committed Vs 10 things to show that you are single:

1. Your phone book and mailbox contains entries/mails from a single person

Vs

Your phone book contains entries of people all over the world - could be the
person you've last met on train to a wrong number which you received just days back ..

2. The phone is not over yet. It is the biggest attachment that he/she has in life. You can never see such people without a phone. They get mysterious phone calls especially at night. A typical fellow wanders aimlessly with something stuck in his ear right through out the night

Vs

A person who doesn't even know to use the full features of his phone. Never without a phone as well as a balance. (why do such ppl need balance on the phone ?? )


3. (reason strictly for males, females are difficult to predict)
You suddenly become the darling the all of the girls of your class

Vs

All the girls always start becoming a darling to you, the moment you see them ...

4. Your favourite line - " come on !! Grow up Man ! They are not my type. " This gets so over that at times it leads people to comment that you are gay

Vs

" Hey !! Man !! did you see her *** .(there's a long dialogue and list here but i leave it open to interpretation... (Finally it ends as ...) Girls are either good or too good "


5. When your friend asks you out, you first choice would be to go to a place for worship like temple etc. or in other words you prefer to hang-out in such places. Somehow a family maturity begins to set in you

Vs

You tend to go to adventurous places ... ahem !! Can't name all of them here and age somehow starts reversing for you.

6. Mood swings begin to set in .. Such species are often found irrascible (too much effect of biodiversity assignment for me these days ....)

Vs

He swings "it" in "Moods" (pun intended)


7. Movies in your PC tend to be: "You've Got mail", "When harry met sally", " serendipity", and the rest organized in Romance, comedies, oscar winners, documentaries ...

Vs

(reason strictly for males) Movies tend to be well... Ahem !!! . he watches movies of languages mainly russian, italian, arabic .... and they keep changing as they are often deleted after being viewed once ...


8. Is always logged on the net as outside activies do not excite much

Vs

You find him on field right next to his/her potential target ..

9. You usually prefer to move usually in pairs ...

Vs

You somehow manage to find large groups of singles with you at all times ...

10. You suddenly start liking KIDS around you

Vs

Kids suddenly start liking such kind of people (hehehehehe) ... Proven by observation.


That's it from me .....

Nothing is Mine, Everything is thine

The poet is back after a brief hibernation. The hiatus was due to the lack of an inspirational topic for quite sometime. A recent Poornima night in IIT-B campus brought words to my mind. I simply sat gazing at the full moon and was struck by it's grace ... The following lines came out spontaneously ...


Splendour of full moon makes a treat for my sore eyes,
"Who/What could have created it ?" I then soon begin to sigh,
Was it the stars, Was it the sun, A question my mind can't miss,
The scene makes me forget the creator, i simply revel in it's bliss ...

The night seemed dominating and tried to spread it's cloak,
The moon was mischeavous and tries to hide in the leaves of oak,
A celestial spectacle is created by a friendly tussle,
"Who wins at the end" is really an unsolvable puzzle ...

I had seen objects but nothing seemed as clean and white,
I only pray that the blind could see such a sight,
The moon is untouched and strives to remain pure,
For fools like me, it brings romance for sure ...

I rush to the room, to capture the cosmos in my lens,
Hoping not to lose it to the clouds, makes me soon feel tense,
But there's more to this picture, the poet soon begin to sense,
As the noise of crickets lends a beautiful rhythm to the silence ...

Soon Hours pass by and i simply spend time admiring it,
The movements around me doesn't bother me a bit,
For such sights, it is strenous to string a rhyme,
The only thing my mind seems to do is to thank the creator of THINE ....

Amen.

What is in an Image ???

I have been listening to a very wise man lately. Offlate, one of the profound statements which he has made has really provoked my inner echleons of conscience and thought. The statement goes this way - "Image is your greatest strength and your greatest enemy". I had been a strong believer only in the first part of this statement... but the 2nd part somehow stirred and shook me. My mind again went into an introspection mode for really figuring out this conundrum and i must admit that it really took me a sleepless night to figure out what really it meant ..... Hope the following paragraph might save another night for you :-) (i can't gurantee though)

The first part of the statement is really a GANDHIAN statement and requires no explanation. Image is a greatest enemy ... Well !!! Truly speaking i could really look at my own life backwards and could really interpret it's true inner meaning. People took me for granted at every point of time. My life started moving from One Certainity to another certainity to another certainity. My choice of clothes, choice of books, choice of foods, choice of activities and everything was more or less decided ... There was absolutely no fun .. People would predict what i would do next and albeit most of them were really successful at it ...

Then came a time of my freedom ... I was away from home for about 6 long years .. enough to shatter all images at all points of time. My Mother saw a different Keshav each time i came home. .. I must affirm that the goodness remained at all points and at no point i compromised on something wrong ... It was just that i started beginning to discover that i could do a lot more than what i or a matter of fact others traditionally believed ...
This started a powerful process of introspection .. A tool for which i again profusely thank a wise old man for initiating it ... I could talk and almost easily converse with any tom,dick harry on street and this led to some interesting incidents and stories .... (obviously for my grand-children in the future !! :-) )

I started dabbling into various activities .. .My good-ol friend lamented on the fact that i am although full of energy but i lack focus .. i again went into introspection for this answer and the answer itself came to me that i was focussed in what i was doing .... i gave 120% in every activity that i indulged into (Even ;-) at one point of time ... i think other people can affirm this fact .. hehehehe ) it's another matter that it might not have given any intended results .. but the experience is worth more than anything else put togethar ...

to put it short that's life. .. NOBODY or rather Noone should bind you or lock your potential and capabilities ... As it is rightly said " You only think what you are and you can do what you think you can really do " ....

My life has changed from unpredictability to unpredictability to unpredictability .. Several things happened ... People never believed that a fat old person like me can run ... I tried my level best in finishing the 21Km marathon ...End result !! I was far too slow .. but the finish gave me immense confidence ... People gave me a slim chance in other sports ... i really feel i do a decent job than most others .. My own folks felt i was an introvert ... things changed over a period of time ...
Somehow only Music eludes me during all this time .. Inspite of having a trained carnatic singer as my mother .. i still am not able to grasp it at a higher level .. This is my next venture now ....

Believe me .. i cherish and enjoy every moment of it ... I somehow revel these days in unpredictability .. I simply say WOW at it and !!! and move on ....


PS: My attempt at writing philosophical stuff for the first time .... Let's see . poetry's next as and when a suitable inspiration arrives ;-)

An Indian Lover Boy

I have been in existence since 1982 but spices of life all around me have shown as to how the lover-boys of the generation have evolved. I expect the feminine gender to tell their perspective from the other side as i have been unable to observe much in this regard.

The turning point was a friend whom i never expected would go in for a love marriage but finally ended up with one. This has set my thought process rolling and i am beginning to see how lover boys have evolved over the years. A small peek into my father's diaries by chance have shown me the world of 70's and 80's and how love progressed during that era ... { Don't worry dad !! I knew that you had expunged all crucial entries :-) }


Lover Boy of the 60's: This was the time of Dev- Anand types ... Any bloke who had a good sense of humour could manage to attract most of the chicks around him. Love was much closed and took place in full privacy unlike the later years. Shakespeare and keats provided the much needed fodder for the words. The pick-up lines started from here which even some of my friends use the same today. For example: The practice of gifting Teddies,key-chains ... started way-back here and some of my friends even continue to do so. Come on mates !!! Evolve ...


Lover Boy of the 70's : The era of the angry young man ... Any man fitting description of Amitabh would do for females and likewise any female fitting description of Rakhee gulzar would do for most males ... By Amitabh i mean, the person should have a Rajdoot or bullet, should be tall, lanky and should have that anger in his eyes ... Not much comments here except that anger was very positive "TURN ON" point for males and for females it had to be "SHYNESS".

Lover Boy of the 80's and 90's: This was the time when being rebellious was rewarding Anybody with long hair, tatooes, ear-rings would be called as lover boy .. the shirts would be like the one which one of my friends wears even today ... Elvis types ... any fella looking different from the crowd would create his market demand .. this applied for the geeks too and for the first time they came in contention during this era ...

Lover boy from 1995 onwards : This was the time of "Sensitive male" .. Actually concept is bull-shit except that the male was less chauvinistic than his earlier seniors. Frequent calls to females enquiring about her welfare and especially " aaj ka din kaisa raha ??" was seen as a quotient for sensitiveness .... although personally speaking i feel that there is nothing else creative to talk and hence this concept emerged ... People remained sensitive towards "their females" and were suddenly rebellious at home with other females like mothers and sisters.
Places like Mumbai and Delhi became really the hip-hop places to be and it was not common to see people romancing other people much much senior to them. Now don't you think "This is sensitive".

Lover Boy of Today: Now this is the icing on the cake .. With the evolution of intelligent systems like the chat-rooms and social networking sites .. people who were extremely shy suddenly found a way to beat all others in the race. Such people discovered talent which was in much demand - The Talent to spontaneously write and express the right feelings by writing. Geographical distance became no longer a constraint and a boy from jammu could easily date a girl from the south all within the confines of his room. In short, "Any fellow who could type and write decently could afford to have a girl". An online friend suddenly became the best thing which one could possess.... Things like Smartness, beauty, poise, grace, elegance, finesse, dexterity, artfulness took a backseat and an abstract concept emerged called as " The beauty within ". I am not saying at any point that something is amiss here ... It is just an evolution.

This was the era of the IT fellows .... Being in front of computer right through out the day robbed them of their time which they would have spent outside ...By the way, don't be surprised to know IT guys have the 2nd best hook-up quotient (the best ones are the NRI's dear .. Nobody can match them ) these days as they have the money as well as the necessary time to spend time (online time :-) ) with their females ....

Some of the professions which i might have missed out would be doctors, lawyers, scientists and consultants (yours truly) .... It would not be wise to comment about doctors and a waste to comment about lawyers but consultants ... yes !!! People who are on frequent tours right from the day they start ... More nitty gritties on this after i actually start working though ... Maybe some one would write a blog by then too ....

The Power of Huddle

Cut to a time in 2004 December ... A small lab in DRDO with just 50 scientists working were attempting to form a cricket team to represent in inter-DRDO cricket tournament at hyderabad. Yours truly was in full enthu to put up a team to atleast represent the lab and looked forward to this as a good team building excercise in the laboratory.

Nobody gave us even an inkling of chance of winning a match. But the eleven that we had were a determined 11 lead by Rahul Kumar and ably supported by Naresh, Gopi, Balaram, Ravi, Shofiqul, yours truly, Abhinav, Balaji, Anil Terkar and Bhowmick. This 11 created shockwaves in that year by reaching the semi-finals and beating big-shot teams like RCI, DLRL, ASL before finally losing to DRDL(eventual winners of the trophy). I felt proud at being a part of such a performing team and almost building it from scratch by approaching each and every person to practice for the game and so on ...

Cut to 2007 ... six determined boys .. Arun, Timmal, Ananth, murali, vaibhav and yours truly were again on the verge of achieving immortality for sjmsom by reaching the semis of basketball. The team was written off even before they played their first match and the day they played .... rest was history ...

Now all this key-strokes is not to illustrate the roller-coaster ride that i was having over the past few years ... i.e motivating people and making them perform the max ....

The common points between both these events was the GREAT INDIAN HUDDLE ... We used to huddle before each match. The huddle used to instill a confidence and motivation which hithertho would not have been possible individually. The huddle dissolved all our fears and brought in a synergy which we never imagined. The huddle psychologically empowered us to clear our obstacles and pushed us to the limits which we never foresaw. It made us realize the individual unused potential that each one of us had .. be it while playing cricket or playing basketball ..

I salute to the Indian cricket team who made this powerful psychological team building and motivating tool of which i have been a beneficiary ....

Life is Beautiful

A Movie !!! What should i say ? It is not a movie, it shows a way of life. A poignant relationship between a father and son that brought tears to my eyes at the end. This movie has shaken, stirred the emotions which i have and has brought forth a simple topic in a very elegant manner.

A Father who inspite of the most gory situation is in full humour in front of his 7 year old son. In the first half of movie, the father or the central character Guido is shown as a flirtatious happy-go-lucky individual who at all times says to his "would-be" - " Bon journ !! Pricipessia " ...
They finally get married and have a son name Joshua in the movie.. The father & son are of jewish descent and hence are sent to a concentration camp in the fascist regime of Italy.

Here, young people are brutually killed in the camp. The father uses all his humour to keep his son engaged and doesn't for a moment make him realize that there is death in every corner of the camp. The child consistently asks a lot of questions to his father as to why other kids are dissapearing ? People are telling that they burn people here to make buttons and son ... But the father manages to bring a humorous answer to every question posed by his son... He remains cheerful in all moments of the movie and it is this character which made me feel that yes .. I should be like him .

You better watch the movie to get a full grasp of the way in which the father engages his son.

In the movie it is said " This is a simple story - but not an easy one to tell " .... Hence this blog is about this story - but definitely not an easy one to write.


PS: Along with 12-angry men and shawshank redemption, this movie too ranks right up there....

The Winner's Curse

After a long time, i found something interesting to write upon . This concept was witnessed live during my trip to Matheran. A phenomenon exists in economic theories often exemplified as the WINNERS CURSE. Here the winner in a group event may end up being worse off than others. This is more common in auctions but it is even more popular when a group of friends embark upon a trip.

Scene #1: We are all sitting in a hotel in Matheran ready to have breakfast.

Aravindan : Hmmm ... Lots of south Indian dishes here .. I think i will order Idli ..
Pamma & Me: 2 Aloo pohas for both of us ...
Karthik: Well ... the cheapest here seems to be idli -vada .. I will order that ...
Pamma: Don't worry karthik .. Whatever the bill ... it is to be divided equally .. It is very difficult to assign individual bills to persons ..

Rajasekar: Wow !! One masala dosa .. with Amul Cool for me then ...
Gyan: I think Puran Poli will do better for me then ...

Karthik : Hey !! What is this ? I think i better have a 75/- Gujarathi thali for breakfast ....

Suman & Aravindan: Wow !! Man !! Aloo poha is fundoo ... another aloo poha along with idli for breakfast..
Myself & Vikas : Wah Gyan !!! Pooran Poli badhiya hai ... bhaiyya !!! do Puran Poli aur lana ...

Everybody started ordering now all exotic dishes because everybody felt as the bill was being shared .. it was useless to optimize and hence the entire breakfast bill ended up as 500/- for our group ....


Scene #2: In a Nimbu-Pani stall in Matheran ..

Sujay : Hey !! I am feeling thirsty .. Anybody in for a lemon juice ?
Karthik, Aravindan, Suman & Myself: Hey Sujay !! Count us in too ...

Soon others joined ... and the bill was shared in common ... Now one of us felt of having a 2nd glass .. the moment he said he wanted to have a 2nd glass ... 5 others who simply jumped in as they did not want to be affected by winners curse ....

Thus in this winner's curse ... each person does not see as personal optimization of expenses as a way of reducing overall expenses .. The truth is each person simply does not want to subsidize the expense of some other person .. As a result he ends up enjoying himself to the maximum possible at each point ... He might not want to order a dish but as soon as he sees others ordering.. he feels why not give a try ... Anyway everything is gonna be shared and thus this results in him/her trying dishes which he otherwise would never have during such occasions .....

I know that i would not do justice by simply writing a paragraph on it but it is really fun in watching such an event live and often ends up in a lot of jokes and fun all around ...

Suicides Revisited

A small piece of thought was raging in my mind for the past couple of days. (Only few people would know what the real thought really is ... but chill fellas ... this time for blog records it's something else .. hehehehe :-))
Only small pieces make a lot of noise in your brain. This thought has then manifested to become a blog due to a small discussion in front of my B-school campus. (i guess people will now stop discussing things with me hence-forth .... as i would seem to write their thoughts as well)

There were a couple of suicides in my campus and the it would not take a rocket scientist to figure out that "South Indian" students were the ones committing this grave act... It really shocks me .. there are better, painless ways to kill oneself but hanging from the ceiling .. Oh my gosh !! It is this way which causes maximum pain to the fellow as he sees and feels his own death in every second of the act ..

I was thinking what would lead a person to such an act ... where his brain snaps and logical mind stops working ...

In South India, people place a lot of importance to academic curriculum. As young colts, one is often expected to excel in his studies and secure atleast 90-95% marks in each subject. Even language subjects are not spared as it is not common to get 95% marks in English and Hindi... Even discussion between people ranges in this subject only .. "Oh !! My Boy is extremely sincere in his class ... Secures 95% each time and manages to be in top-5 ..." Another mother would remark " My son always comes from school and starts reading newspapers as his Dad !! " A quick glance at the son would reveal that he is just 8 year old toddler .... On the contrast two north indian mothers would discuss in a following way .. "My Son has two-two girlfriends" .. " What !! Great .. My son has learnt to play Guitar " ... "My son even helps me in cooking...."

This slowly deprives him of other good habits like music, debating, sports, Dating (hehehehe !! as in my friend sudhanshu's lingo .. "Going Around" ),. Thus these students on growing up become one-sided and siloed in their personality and when they find that things don't go their way .. they have nothing else to take recourse to. Unrelenting parental pressure and peer pressure simulataneously stretches their brain and forces them to commit such an act ..

Even take my own case ... I ran marathon, climbed mountains , wrote poetry (hey !! i wrote humorous ones .. serious ones are reserved for future) and blogs , avid swimmer, played basketball and a host of other sports, travelled across countries ... but at the end of the day .. my parents/grandparents (esp grandfather) keep worrying .... " Kanna !! Why do you get involved in all this ??? Study well By the way, Intha sem la mark- evolo vanthuthu .." meaning " How many marks did you score this sem??"