The humble lads who took India on to the world stage

I have been wanting to write about these three for a long time now. Three humble lads, who took India on to the global stage through their talent, hard work and perseverance. To do justice to what they have done for themselves and for the country, I would certainly need to spend some time that I cannot afford right now. Hopefully I can come back to this later, pretty much like the 100 other things I have had to procrastinate, thanks to the lovely and challenging journey of entrepreneurship!

You don't have to always express

A few days back we found an injured pigeon on the road and gave her some space to recover in our garden. She didn't move an inch for three days. Hardly ate anything, just a little water now and then. This morning, we saw that she has flew away. While we felt a little disappointed that we probably won't see her again, we were obviously happy that she was able to fly again. Sometimes life is not about explicitly showing or taking gratitude, it's just about moving forward and doing what you can for others on the way.

5 things to learn before you are 30

Life may be different things to different people. To some, it is about playing, to some it is about learning, to some it is about suffering and to some it is about liberating. Whatever it is, life is all about growing, in whichever form you look at it. 

If the first decade of our life is about growing through playing, the second is the decade of growing through learning. The third decade of our life is possibly the period when we become ourselves, and this is the decade of growing through unlearning. How well we played in our first decade and how well we learned in our second decade will go a long way in establishing who we become in our third decade, and these together will probably carry us through our sufferings and possibly liberate us from them in our subsequent decades.

3 reasons to work out, 10 places to visit before you die, 20 things to do when bored - we always like to associate numbers with our lists. And everybody has his or her own set of lists. Here goes my list of 5 things to learn before you are 30.

1. Know to respect, but learn to challenge

It is extremely important in your formative years to listen to and respect what you are told. You have to learn the basics, you have to know the rules - and most people around you are good at teaching you those. It is only when you cross your teens that you start to notice people falling short of what you want to know from them. Suddenly you start to realize that there are multiple answers to the same question and different people have different answers. That is because post their individual 20s, they had started carving out their own selves and their size would obviously not fit you. You are now a fully grown adult with your own set of limits or no limits that define you. While it is very important to have known to respect the world till your 20s, it is important to learn to challenge as you reach your 30s.

2. Know to be patient, but learn to be impatient

Patience is a great quality that can win you almost anything in life, for nobody can win against time and if you learn to work with it, you have not only learnt the art of patience, but also the art of winning. While it is important to stay patient believing in your hard work, it is also important to learn the art of impatience, because only the impatience to know more, to achieve more, to know and achieve more in quick time will get you to where you want to get to. You got to say "A for Apple" when you are 3, not when you are 30!

3. Know to say yes, but learn to say no

As much as it is absurd to imagine at 10 or 15 that you know the world, it is absurd to assume that you do not know the world when you reach your 30s. While it makes sense till you reach your adulthood, to say yes to most things thrown at you, it becomes critical to have figured out the principles that you want to stand for, as you reach 30s. In the process, you need to realize that yes is not always a great answer. People around you are not always right, they have compromised in life and will probably urge you to compromise. You have compromised many times in your life too. But this is the time to stand for yourself, for what you think is right. In the process, if you are proved wrong, so be it, you already know how to say yes anyway, don't you?

4. Know to follow, but learn to lead

You have followed enough. You know what your strengths and weaknesses are. You know when to follow and when not to. You probably know that you are good at leading where others fail to. Come the 30s, you better be prepared to lead, for your leadership can change something in this world, small or big. Leadership does not mean you need to have 100 people following you, you can even lead a one-man army and make a difference to this world, the world from which you have so far just consumed. Many times you have to follow, for contribution is critical, but some times, leading is the contribution.

5. Know to be attached, but learn to get detached

It is important to be attached to the results during your childhood, for only that can help you understand the pleasure and pain of winning and losing. But it is important during your adulthood to free yourself from all of it, because you will no longer have the time to exalt over wins or rue over losses. Life is bigger that any of those. Life is calling on you continuously, and you cannot afford to dwell on a particular deed too much. Do, not to achieve a result, but do because it is your responsibility. If you have still not learnt how to derive happiness out of catering to your responsibilities without attaching yourself to the results, you have some serious thinking to do.

You may challenge me in any of the above, you may say no to many of the above - it just means you are doing the right thing. You better find out what you need to have known and learnt by the time you are 30. My list is, and will certainly not be your list!

Are we our own celebrities?

As a boy, even more than I am now, I was remarkably silent. I liked to listen more than I liked to talk. Not that it was an unusual character to find, but you can find traces of that disposition in me even now. Advices from my father used to be my favourite classes then, and I can still listen to his advice all night. Moral stories from my mother used to be my favourite movies then, and I can still be caught in rapt attention when she tells stories to kids around.

As I saw the boy in me transition into a young man, I had to realign myself over and over, for my perennial thinking and life’s learnings provided enough contradictions. For everything that I saw and everything that I heard, there were three people inside me – one arguing for, another arguing against, and the third trying to arbitrate the two. I was constantly trying hard to find the middle ground, and evidently I was trying to push people towards that middle ground too.

When someone argued for God, I argued against and when someone argued against, I argued for. When someone opposed reservations, I supported and when someone supported, I opposed. I did not spare even love and marriage. I would have given my parents the worst nightmare of their lives when I took them on during arguments on why marriage was such a selfish invention by mankind. Vegetarianism, animal rights activism, terrorism – I had my own views on everything.

It was some time in 2006, eight years back, that I first took on to blogging to capture all those contradictions inside me. Not that I had a fan following, but my silent disposition did not allow me to vent out my contradictions elsewhere. The accumulated contradictions had me vigorously blogging until I found that it was not just me that suffered from these contradictions, but that everybody in this world underwent the same too, just that they had different ways of dealing with them. With that realization, I found my blog redundant and I lost the motivation to continue it further.

Everything had to be contradicted, and so was this realization too. As I continued navigating on the boat of life, the belief that the entire human civilization suffered from contradictions got reinforced. But this time I felt if I had the patience to pen them down, I should, if not to capture my thoughts, at least to capture the thoughts of fellow humans. So I decided to start writing again.

But then with a gap comes rusting, a hesitation, an uncertainty of how to continue, a doubt about where to restart. It was then that I decided to go through my blog again – one by one, post by post. As I am going through my posts, memories are sailing past years. What was written in the posts was just filtered best of what I thought were my contradictions. As I am reading through them all over again, the thoughts are ruffling through my memories so much more than what was written.

I will come back to writing again when I am fully convinced that I should be writing. It is going to take some time, I am no celebrity and I do not have buffs waiting for me to restart my writing. But if I do return, the return will be dedicated to all those for whom they are their own celebrities.

The baggage of mediocrity

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

I am not exactly sure under what circumstances Marilyn Monroe said this, but these charming words have kind of become the magic wand of the modern generation, a wand that they have chosen to use without restraint to wave against anything that questions their mediocrity. While Monroe had the magnanimity to confess about her imperfections before expecting some magnanimity in return, the modern Monroes often like to think that magnanimity is one way, and that is towards them.

Even before we can discuss whether mediocrity and imperfection are avoidable, we must understand the difference between the two. If you are a mother taking care of your family in every possible way but not able to avoid throwing tantrums at home in spite of trying your best, you are just being imperfect, not mediocre. Attaining perfection itself would depend on many factors most of which may not be under your control, but the attempt towards attaining perfection is surely under your control and that pulls you out from the crowd that is content with staying mediocre.

Yes, even if you're the moon, this world is going to debate about your grey craters asking whether that's flaw or beauty, so while the debate can go on about the frame of reference in the argument on perfection, the argument on mediocrity is fairly objective. There may be enough room in this world for all our imperfections, but I am not sure how much does exist for our mediocrities. It may be alright to be imperfect, but I don't think it is, to be mediocre!

The traveller, the wanderer and the nomad

It was a whirlwind, not exactly all over the country, but at least in all the directions of the country. The last three months had been packed with travel - most of it for business and a little for leisure. A bit of Gujarat and a bit of Goa, a bit of Delhi and a bit of Rajasthan, a bit of Bengal and a bit of Jharkhand, a bit of Andhra and there was even a trip to Bangalore. The last leg to Chennai and around is still pending and I may do that sometime in October or may postpone to some other time. But the good thing about the entire whirlwind was that I didn't have to do it alone.

I was kind of exhausted after every trip, because it was almost like traveling for the entire week, coming back in the weekend, packing and getting ready for the next trip. I would almost struggle to recollect immediately when I wake up in the morning, which city I was in. Logging in from the airport, attending calls from the railway station, making presentation decks in the taxi, sleeping in the bus stand - would have been a good short film to make out of.

Evidently I was not able to write anything here, and I don't expect to write anything for some more time, because there is a lot to catch up everywhere. And how much will I be able to write after that - I will leave it to life, its responsibilities and commitments to decide for themselves.

The Celebrity loop of Movies, Sports, Corporate and Politics

How many sportspersons have dated movie stars! How many movie stars have married industrialists! How many industrialists have family alliances with politicians!

Sachin Tendulkar is nominated to the Parliament, his century is felicitated by the Ambanis, and his family wedding will be attended by the Bachhans. When Sharukh Khan is stopped at the US airport, when he has a brawl at the cricket stadium, when he plays loud music on his birthday - they're all headlines. Don’t get me started about Aishwarya Rai’s motherhood or Manisha Koirala’s bibulous appearance. I’m not talking just about the greats here. Our celebrityhood obsession pervades the entire spectrum - from Rahul Gandhi to Rahul Sharma, from Anil Ambani to Anil Kapoor, from Pranab Mukherjee to Rani Mukherjee. How did all of this start? Why are we so obsessed with celebrities?

When the erstwhile East India Company first explored conquering India, they had sent a noted statesman to qualify the exploration. The statesman wrote back to the British Parliament saying he travelled across the length and breadth of the nation and only found high moral people of great caliber, and that if the British need to have any opportunity to make inroads, they first have to hit our self esteem. And thence was created the strategy that they will make anything foreign sound superior to the Indians, including the English language. Voila, they managed to do that so successfully that even after more than half a century of their exit, we are still obsessed with anything that is not our own. Nothing specific about Indians here, this is just natural human behaviour. Do celebrities personify that very same behaviour in us?

We want to be a hero, and our movie stars epitomize that. We want to knock any opponent out, and our sports persons typify that. We want to be able to make money, and our industrialists lead the way. We want to rule the world, and our politicians do that so well. Why wouldn’t we be obsessed with them? Distance does lend enchantment, whatever it be on the other side. Doesn’t necessarily have to be a movie star who attracts us, it can even be our neighbour. Anyone other than our spouse. Doesn’t necessarily have to be an industrialist, even our uncle who buys an expensive car can do the job. Anyone other than our father. It just takes a little bit of introspection to find out that if we believe in ourselves, if we are motivated from within, if we stand for what we’re, no force in this world can stop us from becoming what we want to.

All I want to say is, keep growing yourself, be attracted to yourself, fall in love with yourself, this world will follow you. You're the master of your own destiny. You're as as unique, as special, and as great as everyone else is. Stop looking at this world to find yourself, you’re what you’re. Look into yourself, and you never will have to look outside.

Are we passing the buck of responsibility?

Interesting things keep happening around to motivate me to write something, don't they? While I totally accept that the Members of the State Assembly better perform their duties well and not watch dirty videos during a working session, especially in a country where supposedly no one watches them, I am not sure how to differentiate watching in the Assembly, a dirty video from a normal movie or from reading a magazine or from reading a novel. Shouldn't all of these deserve the same punishment?

Unfortunately the people and the media don't think so. "When you're in power you better be responsible." I surely agree with this point. "People look up to you for inspiration, so you better behave inspiringly." I agree with this point too. In fact, it was the same line of argument that the Indian Government brought up when it tried to ban smoking scenes in movies. Interestingly, the same people and media did not like that idea. "If someone is going to smoke, he will smoke regardless of what the hero does." "A Don character cannot go without puffing smoke on screen." I agree with both the reasons.

But how is the inspiration logic different here? People's justification is that a real life inspiration is different from a reel life one. This is an extremely difficult supposition for me to support, but if people think that there are more teenagers looking up to our politicians for inspiration than to our movie stars, fine, I will take the point, I have not conducted market surveys. The moral of the story so far is that you can't expect the entire population to be responsible, do as much as you can to prevent bad inspirations and wrong motivations. With power comes responsibility. Perfect.

Now look at the picture on the left. The protestors are asking the entire population to be responsible while they want to have the freedom of their choices. This is perfectly fine too, people better be given the freedom to do what they want to, without harming others. The eyes that look at an art should be blamed and not the art itself. Ah, did I rake up an MF Hussain controversy here?

Don't get me wrong, there is surely nothing like telling the rapists, they ought to be punished, brutally. But do you see a blame game in all this? When others fall down, it's their clumsiness, while when we fall down, it's the misplaced stone. When others succeed, it's chance, while when we succeed, it's our effort. When it comes to others, they have to be responsible, while when it comes to us, still others have to be responsible. And leaders have no choice. Is it time we rose above the mediocrity of passing the buck? Absolutely no doubt that a leader has to be more responsible, but I think everyone has some power to be responsible and while it is fine to expect others to be responsible, it is finer to be responsible ourselves too.

My name is Ozymandias

I’ve come down for a wedding and I’ve a few more hours to check out of the hotel. There were a few other weddings too happening in the hotel, but looks like I’m the last one remaining to leave, everyone else seems to have left. As my heart was wishing happiness to all those newly wedded souls, I went around, only to see all the structures that were so lively till a few hours back sport a deserted appearance. Old structures were getting dismantled and new ones were coming up in their places.

I went through this during my own wedding as I saw those sets getting dismantled the next day. And that was not the first time a "dismantling" had created this feeling in me. Is this weekend a culmination of all those past weekends spent thinking about attachment and detachment, about emotions and reason, about shallowness and depth, about enjoying life at the moment and enjoying living itself, about being useful to oneself and being useful to others?

As I was thinking of all this, my eyes fell on the lovely ashtray in my room. I can already imagine all that it would’ve seen in its years of existence. A happy couple loving each other? A routine family with its usual fights? A group of friends partying? A loner having a sad cup of coffee? A businessman with a drink? But what is it all about? All the decoration and all the proclamation, all the music and all the dance, all the happiness and all the excitement, all the people and all the life:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

May be living for oneself is like breathing, but I think true living has to be about living for others. Sure, we didn’t carry anything when we were born and we won’t carry anything when we’re gone, but I think, we can die as someone who thought beyond himself, we can die as someone who was useful to this world, we can die as someone who made a difference to the lives of a few creatures around him. As we continue to breathe, let us not forget - we've to live too!

Is it all worth?

"Priyanka Chopra was in a translucent sari strewn with zardozi trinkets and a border to match, providing the winter-struck Berliners a warm glimpse of her well-chiseled physical assets."

This struck me like a lightning. I felt ashamed. For some time now, I've been puzzling myself about how have the women of the society been sadly made to become objects. Is it just nature that women were made to attract and men were made to fall? May be it's no longer about attracting or falling, or may be it still is, but let us dissect this a bit with a childhood incident of mine.

In buses in India, when the conductor doesn't have sufficient change to return, he signs behind the ticket and asks you to collect the change later. If you forget, you miss the change, and the money is his. I used to get down at the last stop, so I see the conductor tally his records every day. One such day, as the conductor was holding a conversation with the driver, I heard him say, "Let us see how many fools have left their money, we can use it for our drinks today". Oops! That was all enough. A realization dawned on me - "I am not going to give away anything to anyone for free. Let him deserve it. Else, neither does he know how to handle it responsibly nor does he know how to make the best use of it."

Coming back to our men-women discussion, when did it all start? Why is it that women wear lesser clothes compared to their men counterparts? If you'd any doubts, try observing the pictures above. But wait, it's not about less or more, it's about looking smart, right? Sure, women look smarter in these clothes, I will buy that argument. But that is my point. Read on.

Have you seen these young college going guys rip off in their motorcycles with a loud noise? Have you seen them with tight shirts and coloured hair, trying to behave like film heroes? Girls, what have you thought about them? "Ah these morons!" Right? There are some real morons who try to misbehave, but let us leave them aside. I am talking about these harmless kids whose motive is just to show off and attract attention through their smartness. Guys may not remark, "Ah these moronesses!", but I assume you know there is a comment coming out of their radio scanning.

Now, why will you have to tune your living for these morons? Absolutely, please don't. I know you're just dressing the way you want to, not necessarily to look smart or to attract. If the eyes looking at you are improper, that is not your problem. If girls dressing sexily is bad, men shaving is bad too. Combing your hair is bad, ironing your clothes is bad. So where do we draw the line?

I wish we never had to draw any line. But as much as I wish I could leave my house doors open when I leave for work, I also wish the security was foolproof in every nook and corner of the world. Between my ideal wish of the former and the practical impossibility of the latter, I think it's fine that we find a middle ground and lock our doors when we leave our house. I really admire art in every form and for that matter I respect Vidya Balan and The Dirty Picture. But is it all worth? I am not sure, this world has gone too far from deserving any free lunch.

East or West, Heart is the Best

The picture on the left, that looks more like some coastal place in India is actually a picture clicked in the US by a friend of mine. The one on the right, that appears more like a National Park in the US, is actually something another friend clicked in India. The one in the middle is what I clicked a few years back when I was probably flying somewhere in the middle of these two countries. You will understand towards the end the correlation between these pictures and the post.

I've had numerous discussions with people about the Western and the Eastern world. Obviously, confirmation bias in me always put East ahead of West, only to change later towards neutrality.

Before I first went to the US, I warned myself about the shooting incidents there. But when I did my research, I realized the absurdity of my assumption. How many such incidents happen in the US? Compare it against 30,000 murders that happen in India every year, 100,000 thefts and 50,000 riots. Absolute numbers can be misleading, I agree, but India's per capita crime rate is not very pleasant either. And these are only the reported numbers. You and I know how much of information is "reported" in India. My information weapon was thence vociferously destroyed!

Once, I was talking to a friend against the US and told him - "I hate this place because I feel it's all about brain and no heart here. I am happier living amidst my loving people, even if it means it's a sub-standard place". He replied - "I think that is an extremely biased statement. How is it that you feel politicians and gundas occupying your piece of land, that you so dearly earned with all your savings of life only to be threatened for life when approached, is all heart and no brain?" Voila, my socialism weapon was destroyed too!

To another friend I said, "I like being in India where I can knock my neighbour's door if I need some help in the night, I can stop my car on the highway and ask for directions, I can give my house keys to a nearby shop when I'm going out, than being in the US only to find out that even if my house is on fire, I've to call 911 for help." The friend replied, "Yes, but I'm not exactly sure how everyone has an opinion about your life, seeming to know so much about how you've to live than you know it for yourself?" Ah, my community weapon was also destroyed!

To friend three, I said "I like living in India where I can stay with my parents and relatives, sleep between them, grow among them, and be bounded by love and affection than by comfort and quality of life, without the togetherness". The friend replied - "I don't know how you can say this when all of you leave for office before eight, reach only after eight, spend three hours on the road daily, and don't even have time to spend with your children, forget about having time to spend with parents and relatives." The last of my weapons, the family weapon was also destroyed!

With all my weapons destroyed, I realized I was just biased - listening to everyone around me, many of whom have not stepped out of their town, many of whom still think North Indians are dangerous or South Indians are cunning, many of whom don't even know how many states exist in the North East, many of whom still don't let the so called lower castes into their houses, many of whom think India is so close to nature when you can't even breathe fresh air.

If living in the US is wrong, then all of us Indians living in the city should probably be living in the villages that gave our grandparents to this world. If loving the US is wrong or marrying some other country is wrong, then none of us should love or marry until our parents have left this world. If asking a superficial "How are you?" is wrong, then asking a heartfelt "How are you?" is also wrong, if you can't do anything about it if the other person replies "No, I'm not fine".

US-India is a combination I've evidently discussed a lot about, so I just stuck to it, but this is largely true about any West-East discourse. I think it's all about perceptions. Not all of what the East thinks about the West is right and not all of what the West thinks about the East is right. The truth is, every place is unique, every person is special. Whatever does exist superficially, as long as the trace of love exists in everyone, this planet will continue to survive. Be it the "Everyone together" philosophy of the East or the "First You" attitude of the West, I think it's not Home, but the Heart that is the Best!

Should you really cover up?

I have long been wanting to write about this monster called ego, that stands between human growth and stagnation. I partly touched upon this in my "change" post, but wanted to unwrap it in a harsher way.

Facebook fell prey to hackers recently, and claimed that it was a browser issue. I do not deny the genuineness of the claim, but I was very surprised to see stereotypical messages posted by my friends working in Facebook - "There have been inaccurate reports of Facebook accounts being hacked. This is not true, and no accounts have been compromised." And this was at a time when there were a dozen newspapers reporting about many thousands of Facebook accounts being hacked worldwide.

There was a post I wrote a couple of years back, when Mr. Chidambaram, as Home Minister claimed that India is a completely safe country, safer than many other countries of the world. And this was at a time when India was bombarded with bomb attacks every two weeks. How does being safer than many countries qualify India to be a safe country?

I don't deny that a company or a country should talk responsibly, but is this just responsibility? Yes, we are used to hearing the CEO say "We are looking forward to the strongest results in our history", just a week before the company would fall overnight. Yes, we are used to hearing the Central Bank say "Our economics are fundamentally strong and rationally sound", just a day before the stock market would witness its sharpest fall. But the letdown is, we are so used to these cover-ups that we've internalized this vice within ourselves too. Let us take this head to head.

There was an article recently that slammed the idea of giving Bharat Ratna to Sachin Tendulkar. The rationale was that any country's highest award is supposed to be given to someone who has made a difference to the lives of people. I do not want to talk here about the article itself, but about a comment that disagreed with the author, noting that India is a young nation and that we need to pat ourselves even for small achievements. I didn't quite understand the logic here because, I thought we were one of the oldest nations, claiming to have built marvelous cities when the rest of the world didn't know what civilization was.

Why talk about unrelated people? Try criticizing a good friend of yours, you will know. And when you lie down on bed that night after being surprised by the way your friend reacted, just introspect and find out how you had behaved all your life for any criticism you had faced.

Is this just normal human behaviour? Or is this self-righteousness? Or is this pride? Or is this ego? If even after tens of thousands of years of existence, mankind has not got egos out of their way, I'm afraid this can be called normal. If we can't even conquer ourselves, what are we trying to prove with our existence? If shame is the first step towards accomplishment, it's high time we took shame on ourselves and started accomplishing.

Let us stop covering up, let us start uncovering the beauties that exist within this wonderful creation called mankind!

May have been for business, but a trip nevertheless

It was a business trip to meet industrial customers of Western India. Cement, Textiles, Chemicals, Fertilizers, Pharma, Rubber, Power, Metals - you name and I can now smell them all even from a distance.

I flew down to Jaipur and the trip started from there. Joining different team members on the way, I had to cover ten cities in two weeks, so I didn't stay in one city for more than a day. Except for a couple of train journeys, I mostly took the road, travelling through some of the most rustic parts of rural India.

It was of course a huge learning opportunity for me to understand the business, interacting directly with customers. But this post is not about that. I seem to have discovered the child back in me during this trip and this post is about that. I may not do anything about it for some more time, because I still haven't solved the riddle of how or why I should retain things in me that I feel are not of any use to this world, but at least I was happy that the child in me was still alive.

Almost all of these factories had huge lawns covering a wide landscape, and I felt like playing in those lawns; I don't remember when I last felt that. We visited Nirma factory, and I wanted to sing the Nirma song, but you know, I was on a business trip. We visited Chittorgarh, and I wanted to visit the fort, but no one seemed to be interested. There were these cooling towers in the plants that had water dripping down like a waterfall, but no one was playing even in those. Oh yes, this was a business visit, I was not supposed to play in those either.

Ah, am I talking about being a child and such things too often now? Am I beginning to lose track? Am I starting to feel individual happiness is the way to collective harmony? Come on, it can't be.

Ok, we will leave that for now. The most wonderful part of this trip was interacting with the rural people of Rajasthan. So naive, so unsophisticated. We stopped at many roadside shops and had authentic Rajasthani food. I may have liked the food even better if I was not running temperature, but I surely enjoyed the food getting served by them. Wish I could just become one of them! But wait, I still haven't figured out how to be useful to this world by being one of them.

May have been for business, but this was a great trip nevertheless!

There will be another day

"On a train from Shimla to Delhi, there was a halt in one of the stations. Sachin was nearing century, batting on 98. The passengers, railway officials, everyone on the train waited for Sachin to complete the century. This genius can stop time in India!"

There will be a myriad of articles felicitating Sachin Tendulkar's 100th international century when he eventually gets it, but I felt like writing one today, not to praise his mastery of the game, for which there are enough, but about the person that I see in him.

Yes, I was also one of those who couldn't see his guilty face when he walked back to the pavilion after making just 18 runs in the World Cup final. But the guilt on his face today was not any batsman in the world would've had to endure. He walked back after making 94 and the disappointment in the crowd was still the same. It wouldn't have been hugely different even if these were not the occasions of the World Cup or his 100th century. The truth is we just can't see him make anything less than a 100, every match. Such is the expectation that he has been shouldering for two decades now.

What makes him the person that he is? "Excellence is not impossible, if you marry a phenomenal work ethic to the talent that you are born with. Combine that with perseverance, and you've Tendulkar". True! But I would say he is probably one of the most praised as well as criticized.

He has heard a billion comments from a million people who never in their life have played a game of cricket. Yet he listens to them modestly. In fact, his disposition to listen to everyone did not make him a good captain. But that is not his fault, that is his character. You may not find him talk inspiringly on the mike, but that is not his fault again, he is just shy and reserved. He may not be the person who excels in pressure the most. Still, that is not his fault, that is his personality.

He is the best when he is his natural self, and that is to be the child that he is. He runs between the wickets as if just that one run was needed to win the match. He is elated taking a catch as if that one wicket was needed to gain the match. He doesn't take guard without a match practice the previous day. He doesn't face a ball without his helmet on. Because to him every match is his first. Because he knows he can't take things for granted. Because he knows he still has so much to learn. But more interestingly, because he knows he has to go on. And on. And on.

There will surely be another day for Sachin, but time we took lessons not just from his bat, but from his heart too.

Just another, not lemon but, lonely tree

"Never regret anything that once made you smile" - I read this somewhere and my emotional and rational personalities had to fight again. It could be "anything" or "anyone", but "anyone" is easier to debate about. Its direct meaning is obvious - if someone made you smile some day, do not regret when the relationship turns sour some other day.

Yes, it is difficult to connect back with the same closeness after either some tartness or a natural separation, but I feel earnestness can win anything. While I feel no void created by one thing can ever be filled by some other thing, if only everyone makes that effort to understand the truth rather than the externality, I think the voids themselves may cease to get created.

But if I've to analyze this crookedly, I'm not sure if this world was meant to be loved so much that you let a void be created in you. Even if it does get created, only you're responsible for it, because you let that happen. However the void itself may not be a bad choice compared to not having had that relationship at all. If the void happens, the only regret should be for having strained the relationship itself and surely not for having had it. Or maybe it is, if you're prepared to wage a lone battle.

The hurling questions and the warning replies

Shane Warne proposes to Elizabeth Hurley with a 30,000 pound diamond ring that very closely resembles what Prince Charles gave Princess Diana. This is the top headline on any news channel you would've tuned into, yesterday. I've never liked poking nose into the private lives of unrelated people, but there are a few general questions here that are a little uneasy to answer.

The simpler ones first. Are diamonds really so precious considering that the diamond cartel artificially keeps the prices of diamonds high by ridiculously reducing their supply, is question one. Are diamonds really human-safe considering that scores of humans are tortured and beat to death in the fields of Africa, is question two. If you have answer to the first question, you almost have figured out your way to happiness. If you have answer to the second question, you almost have figured out what is right and what is not. But considering that none of us could've immaculately figured those out, we will leave them free.

Let us create a better question. Are sports and entertainment two fields that do not contribute to human progress but celebrated the most? Though the fact about celebrity status may be true, the fact about contribution to human progress may not be. In a way, everything contributes to everything, isn't it? Anyway, human progress cannot be the only motivation behind something. And it's really individual preference and discretion to choose who should be made a star. Hence the question three about whether it is a great idea to create celebrities out of movie stars and sports heroes, and not out of space scientists and social workers is also difficult to answer.

All these are so subjective questions that can be extrapolated to most things, if not everything. So before we can create one more question, let us batter these a little more. If diamond is artificially over-valued, almost every other thing is too. If diamonds are not human-safe, almost every other thing is not life-safe in some way. If sports and entertainment do not contribute to human progress, almost everything else can be argued against in the same way. So let us ask a more practical final question. Are these disparities in earnings and rewards right? Is it not an irony that a porter has to whistle and applaud a film hero cast as porter in a movie? Shouldn't it be the other way around? What is skill and what is not? Who are we to decide?

If a restaurant's business is counted in a country's GDP, so should a mother's cooking be. If a school's business is counted in the GDP, so should a father's teaching be. But should we really attach money value to things invaluable? Maybe it's a better idea to just leave them noble?

Is it then a better idea to leave the real heroes of the world materially uncelebrated? I would say yes.

Whose happiness is it anyway

A little long ago, I used to think that people should do what makes them happy, and that when everyone does the same, the world is going to be a happy place. But when I later realized the inherent flaw in this logic, I felt timid. How ignorant was it to assume that the world will have the maximum happiness if everyone does everything that gives him or her the maximum happiness!

With due respect to the concepts of free will, I will have to acknowledge that they are so alluring that you will be enticed to believe that individual happiness is the way to collective harmony. But then, it takes a little bit of extrospection, if I may be allowed to construct that word, to realize that the other way around may perhaps be a possibility, but pure individual happiness may not lead to collective harmony.

So, does everyone have to sacrifice own happiness for the bigger harmony? In some cases, they may be sacrifices that are worth making, but in most cases they may not be sacrifices in the first place. I can give you a few examples. If you think stopping on a red light is making you unhappy, then there is some problem with you, not with the system. If you think not coaching a junior is the best way to ensure your own safety, you've got the fundamentals of ecosystem wrong, the ecosystem itself is not wrong. If you think blocking imports is the best way to grow trade inside the country, it's again a problem with your understanding of economics, not with economics itself.

Before the examples get more complex, if you have still not learnt to derive self-happiness out of keeping the system happy, then I think it's you who has to grow before the system can start growing again. If you believed individual happiness comes before collective harmony, think again, you might be cutting off the branch on which you're sitting. There might be many ways to not have individual happiness while upholding collective harmony, but there may be at least one way for each one of us to ensure both. After all, the system comprises of all of us. The question is not about whose happiness it is, the question is, whose happiness is it anyway?

The balance, the poise and the equilibrium

My blog is essentially "my take on life", as a friend of mine used to describe. Many of my posts are born out of some lateral thinking spun from an agreement or a disagreement I would have with worldly affairs, or just sprouted out of an experience, an observation or a discussion. But there are some posts that are all of these. This is one such post. I seem to suddenly be relating this to everything, everywhere. In fact this entire post is taken out of what I wrote somewhere else. 

 

Contrary to the popular adage that claims you cannot both have the cake and eat it, there is a balance you can mostly strike with everything in life. This balance is not exactly like eating half and having half, but this is almost like having as well as eating. For example, you can be patient for success as well as be impatient for progress, you can be responsible with age as well as be sparkling with childhood, you can be serious at your job as well as be playful with your people. And you can apply this to your integration with the society too - you can very well be adhering to the societal norms as well as be protesting them in your thoughts, you can follow a rule as well as break it, you can be very similar to the rest of the people as well as be very different. 

 

Maybe there are hundred ways to not be all of these together, but I feel there is at least one way for each of us to be all of these and still be ourselves. We do strike this balance with most things in life, just that we don't notice, and consequently fail to extend it to the rest of the things. Think about the clothes we wear. Do we wear it for the world or for ourselves? Both - we cover ourselves up, but we wear what we like. 

 

Imagining it poetically, I feel each of us lives in two worlds - one inside and the other outside. The inside world is for us, we can include only the things and people we want to. And then there is the real world where we have to operate within the reigns. But once we realize the freedom within ourselves and the harmony we need to create outside, it's only a matter of time before we can expand this inner space and accept that the inside world is just part of the outside world. The acceptance already means that we're happy both being ourselves in our world and being like how others want us to be in the outside world. 

 

It may look like a trade off, but it's actually a balance, a balance on limits that keep expanding as we know more, learn more and grow more. It is this balance and poise that, I feel, could give us the equilibrium that we would not want to miss.

To Plus or Not to

I'm a huge fan of the idea of social networking, after all man is a social animal, but I decided to play the devil's advocate in this. If you find animals more social than humans are, I'll concur with you in a different post, but this post is only about humans.

When I created my Orkut account many years back, I looked at it with awe as well as with fear. With awe because it let me connect with my oldest school friends with whom I would've never got a chance to connect otherwise. With fear because it was making more of private information, public. But evidently not being able to meet the needs of gen-Next, Orkut began to rust. People slowly bid adieu to Orkut and started embracing Facebook, with the hope that everyone would migrate to Facebook someday.

Facebook inspired more awe as well as more fear and clearly went on to become the social networking leader. But I'm hearing about Ice Age again. Is it time for one more migration? Is it time to ditch all our old friends once more and continue with the hope that there will be light at the end of the tunnel? Oh yes, if change is for good, let it happen.

I clicked on a Google+ invite, but thanks to my office network that blocks all social networking sites, I was not able to proceed. If my office thinks that these sites will make me less productive and less useful, have I made myself less productive and less useful over the last few years? If the little time I'd to do anything else was gone on the internet doing the so called less productive and less useful things, did I make less out of my existence these years? If I just did what gave me momentary happiness without thinking all of this, did I really make worth of my Creation these years?

To Plus to not to? I'll postpone the decision till I get more enlightenment.

If change is for good, let it happen

Pre-Darwinists or post-Darwinists, evolutionists or intellectualists, capitalists or socialists, change has always been a sought after phenomenon among everyone. I'll restrict myself to the intellectual change and also to the change that happens for good, because I can't really have my freedom writing about the other changes. But whatever the change is, it's a fact that if we don't cope up with it, we're only exposing ourselves to some tough time ahead.

I think I've seen four kinds of people with regards to their willingness to change. While I've broadly tried to categorize people here, which in the first place is a wrong attempt by itself, it is fair to note that all of us traverse among these different categories during different confrontations and phases of life.

1. The proud and immutable: These are the people who are partially self-righteous and are very difficult to induce change into. For example, if they believe in something, they're probably going to feel superior about their belief and silly about any other belief that they might reject other beliefs. These are the people who don't seek to rationally evaluate the confrontation.

2. The proud and hungry: These are also the proud people, however they're open to change. For example, if they believe in something, they may or may not feel superior about it but will surely accommodate any other belief, at the least. Sometimes however, these people are a little stuck on not losing what they're that they fail to look at change in an unbiased open manner.

3. The humble and hungry: The crave in these people to know more and grow more is so very evident because they do not let their pride interfere with knowledge. For example, if they have a belief, they know why they believe in it and so will be able to figure out the rationale behind any other belief too. They don't just accommodate other beliefs, they appreciate and accept too.

4. The humble and mutable: These are people who dangerously tread at the border. For example, today they might believe in something while tomorrow it could be something else. They just go far beyond accepting to actually embrace. They may not make popular leaders, but they surely create conducive confrontations.

Trying to find out which category is better is like trying to find out whether the tiger is better or the deer is, in the ecosystem. Everyone has to exist to complete the ecosystem. For the sake of the concluding paragraph of this post, let me try to differentiate personality from character. Personality, I feel, is something with which people try to identify us and is unique to us. Character, I feel, can usually be classified as either a virtue or a vice and is something we imbibe as we go.

I think as long as we save our personality and change our character for good, we're in the right direction. I'm not sure how much it's possible though to disintegrate personality from character, but life is not that simple anyway - sometimes we've to change our personality too. If change is for good, let it happen.

The relative necessity and the absolute luxury

I think it was when news about Ambani's luxurious home in Mumbai penetrated the Indian media, I thought about this again. People had all kinds of abuses about this act of his, which in the first place was very much his personal choice. If you questioned Ambani's choice of building a luxurious home, you're probably not too far from questioning Ambani's choice of getting married, which he obviously made many decades back without anyone's frown.

Let us leave the discussion of evaluating what is personal and what is not to a different post, right now let us focus back on luxury and necessity. I think while we're a little generous talking about necessity in relative terms, we're very scrimpy when it comes to evaluating luxury. This evaluation is even more skewed in a country like India, where the disparity between the rich and the poor is huge. For example, when you buy a small car, there is always someone, who can't afford a motorbike, who thinks you're spending on luxury. When you buy your big car, there are even more people who think so. And when you buy a luxury car, almost the entire country is going to be thinking so.

The value chain of abuses is so complete that it starts right from the slippers and clothes you wear to the cars and houses you own. I think before we start questioning people about the lavish slippers they wear, the pricey clothes they own, the expensive cars they drive, or the luxurious homes they stay in, we should just look behind us for a moment. Before we preach them altruism, we should evaluate if we would sell our car and donate it to the poor. Before we preach them detachment, we should examine if we can stay in a house that is as much cheaper.

If necessity is relative, please let luxury also be relative.

The damn love and the goddamn marriage

My mom still talks in wonder, how as a kid, I climbed a fragile tree and was sitting directly above a well when she saw me. Sparks of childhood, perhaps. I'm sure every mom has numerous such things to tell about her kid.

However the sparks don't continue for long, maybe because we grow out of those or because life's responsibilities creep over us. And as we realize those responsibilities, we start to stay away from adventures that could cause liabilities to ourselves or to people around us. We self-impose restrictions on our own freedom that can otherwise hinder us from catering to those responsibilities. Some of those responsibilities are true, and are probably related to our life's purpose if there was any, but many of those are false, and are probably related to our attachments.

As we grow even older, we may also develop what I would like to call the "detachmental indifference", that helps us reach a more mature, more stable state, from where, doing or not doing something, or having or not having something, does not make a significant difference to us. We may not perfect this for a long time, so we may try to combine the partial indifference with our conscience, to guide us during uncertain moments till then.

When I was possibly at this stage, I found myself in many interesting dilemmas. While I didn't want to leave existing false responsibilities unfulfilled, I was so bent on not creating new such ones. While I didn't want to withdraw from existing attachments, I was so bent on not forming new ones. But then there are some things you can't resist beyond a point, especially when you don't know how to. Voila, I've now decided to fall prey to the very unit called the family, that so much bothered me, that I believed primarily upheld human selfishness, that I believed even makes love selfish, and I'm sorry to say so again, that I believed even makes love impure.

The one question on this I want to ask God continues to be the same for years - "Did You create man so he can love everyone equally or did You create man so he can love the world in tiers?" Not having got the chance to meet God so far, and evidently not having found the answer to this question so far, I had no other option but to yield.

But what is all that the society trying to do with marriage?

Don't we want someone for ourselves?
Sure, but if there was no family and everybody was there for everyone else, why do we need someone for ourselves at all?
Don't we want to bequeath our own genes?
Exactly, that is the selfishness I'm talking about.
Won't human species go extinct otherwise?
If we really thought so, we should be saving the millions of children dying in Africa and Asia, before trying to create and save our own.
Don't you think a family is bringing some order in the chaos?
Yes, agreed, and I guess there stops all the reasons for marriage. I think any other reason to falsely sanctify marriage is ill-founded.

This is just my opinion. It can be as right or as wrong as yours is.

A wrong topic ends with a wrong conclusion because it had a wrong analysis, let me come back to this with a better analysis after finding out why marriage has survived for so long to create the order we so dearly need in our system.

The damn love and the goddamn marriage

I need a couple of hours to write this down ... let me see when I can do that.

The disremembered invisible reign

It was a while back when I had a discussion with a friend about whether humans are born bad and then imbibe good qualities or are born good and then acquire bad qualities. I’ve read articles that talk either way, so maybe it is not a clearly known fact. Today I got the time to reflect on it again.

If we’re supposed to learn moral ways of doing things from others, it means we were born bad and then try to grow good. But if you ever watched a kid grow, you would’ve been intrigued by the way the kid started to tell lies. It would've become obvious to you that nature’s adaptation process has touched the kid too. So, are we born bad and then we become good or are we born good and then we become bad?

One argument can be that if something comes naturally and easily to us, that’s probably our original self. Vices come naturally, but virtues have to be practised. If you’re someone who loses temper at the drop of a hat or someone who loses patience for every small botheration or someone who tries to procrastinate as much as possible or for that matter someone with any vice (I assume this includes all of us without exception), you’ll know what I’m talking about. But then you might not have had the vice to begin with, you would have acquired it as you grew. So, the question still remains unanswered.

Another argument can be related to chaos theory. One thing that I both admonish and admire about nature is its chaos. Though every single thing in nature tries to live in anarchy, there is a beautiful control that exists – the invisible reign of nature. As much as renowned philosophers might want to call this anarchy the free will of nature, self-proclaimed philosophers of the modern era (I think this again includes all of us) would want to call vices in people as free will too, especially in an attempt to support the existence of vices in themselves. But I think we willfully or ignorantly forget to correlate the invisible reign of nature to the invisible reign of conscience. Or maybe we tune our consciences on the fly, heavily biased for ephemeral gains, satisfaction and happiness.

Whatever may be the argument, most of the above accusals can be sanctified if we just take a moment to step back and perceive our own invisible reign of conscience. But where is the time to perceive conscience in an era where we don’t have time to even sleep well. I’m sorry, I think I asked for too much.

Top three learnings?

A friend asked me what my top three learnings from MBA were. I said I need to think about it, and now I got the time to think. Leaving the technical part that includes finance, accounting, statistics, economics, operations, etc., the remaining part of MBA, as is rightly rumoured, is more or less a training in common sense, with a scientific structure to it. Depending on your experience, exposure and education, this remaining part might fall under one of these in different proportions:

1. Things you already knew that get proved
2. Things you thought you knew but get disproved
   
3. Things you never knew
   

Maybe a couple of the technical learnings will be in my top three, but I'll just focus on the "remaining" part that is non-technical. My top three out of those would be the ones below.

1. Null hypothesis: I mentioned this in an earlier post too. If you’ve to prove something, assume the opposite and disprove it rather than assuming what you want and looking for the first opportunity to prove yourself. Interestingly, most of us will appreciate this but would hardly practise.

2. Sunk cost fallacy: When you’ve to make a decision, do not consider all the prior investments, but consider only the future investments. Of course, you can’t ignore all that have gone into something and can't just focus on all that need to go in. So, you won’t accept this if you wrongly interpret, but there is truth in this. Think about it, else reach out to the internet.

3. Game theory: Game theory mostly talks about making your move depending on how you expect your opponent to move, which also means the opponent is doing the same, and so the theory advises you about making a win-win decision. But there is a subtle corollary to this. Make your first move keeping your last move in mind. Rather, take your first step thinking about how you want your last step to be.

As I was thinking these, flashes of classroom scenes and the one year journey lit through my memory. The registration day, the orientation week, the first class, the first quiz, the first assignment, the first exam, to the last class, the last exam, graduation, friends, music, fun … what nonsense, let me stop the emotional rubbish!

The complexes that won't die

I'm not a psychologist to talk about human complexes, but I want to store here what I've understood so far about one such pair - inferiority and superiority complexes. Because I don't have a formal education in these, I will just call them mediocrity and meliority complexes. Meliority may not be the right word to use, but it sounds rhyming, so I will just continue. I'll try to keep this equivocal, because I'm still finding it ambiguous myself, as is true with most of the topics that I write here anyway.

A villager looking at the city life can get two kinds of feelings, either a 'wow' or a 'yikes', that can keep internally transitioning, in different magnitudes. Somewhere during one of those transitions, he might convince himself with a "No, this is not for me" feeling, and when posted with arguments from the other side, he could get defensive. On the other hand, a person from the city could have an opposite feeling during one his transitions between 'wow' and 'yikes' about village life. He slowly starts to convince himself saying "My God, I can't live here", and when posted with an argument from the other side, he could get snobbish.

While the apparently mediocre person in the first example, during his defensive conduct could appear to be having a meliority complex and while the apparently meliorative person in the second example, during his snobbish conduct could appear to be having a mediocrity complex, those might not be the right interpretations. Combine these with human emotions and cursory feelings, you have an intriguing case study to analyze. As long as mediocrity brings in strength and meliority brings in humility, we're in control of our emotions. But the moment it swings the other way, we're inviting trouble, not just for ourselves, but for people around us too.

Given the fact that we live in a world that is far from ideal, it is difficult for anyone to be devoid of such feelings. When we've a mediocre feeling about something, it's so difficult to get rid of it unless we can substitute the feeling with a sense of achievement over either the same thing or a different thing. And when we've a meliorative feeling about something, it's so difficult to get rid of it unless we become empathetic and believe that we could have very easily been on the other side. Even if nothing of that is possible, I think if we take the pain to listen to others as well as spend some time being introspective, we may be able to put these complexes to rest over time.

Won't complexes die? I don't think so. But you can think!

It is during these moments that ...

Nature always awes us. The night sky looks so beautiful when you just look up lying down on grass, but you're left breathless the moment you start imagining that our own sun is a star and that every other star could be hosting a set of planets too. Maybe there are million other earths? Maybe there are humans in each of them? Maybe they're not humans at all?

I was just watching the videos from Japan and started wondering about nature, again. Houses floated, cars washed away, thousands killed. How good is our house in a storm? How good is our car in water? How good is our life in death? Yes, our prayers are with the Japanese, but I've no clue how prayers help someone in suffering. Maybe they do, I don't know how God operates. Wait, I think I don't even know how I operate.

In a team meeting a couple of years back, as my manager announced the demise of one of my team mates in the US who had died of stroke, he said "It's during these moments that you realize work is just one part of your life. The company will run the same way without you, but your family may not. Spend time with your family. Go, enjoy with your friends. Do things that you always wanted to do." As he was saying this, his eyes started becoming wet. Yes, he was telling this to himself too.

True, it's during these moments that you realize that you're just a small part of something big you never can imagine. It's during these moments that you understand that all the races that we've created for ourselves are so untrue. It's during these moments that you question yourself if you were ever useful to anyone. It's during these moments that you wonder how many people you have made happy. It's during these moments that you start believing that life is for living.

Whose love is it anyway?

India could've been the land of sages and serpents, but the serpents have now transformed into cell phones. On the face of it, India might appear to be the domicile of the poor and the needy, but inside this mysterious place is the thirst and hunger to beat the world and be number one. You step inside and the vibrancy will touch you. This is a nation that is transforming.

But one thing has long stood the tide of transformation, the Indian wedding. Neither has the money spent in nor has the prestige associated with weddings changed for centuries. Statistics say ten years of savings are wiped out during every Indian wedding. And this trickles down all the way to the bottom. Banks say most farmer loan defaults happen because the borrowed money is not spent on agriculture but on weddings instead.

But all of this is not to celebrate the union of two souls that were in love for many years. In fact love in most Indian marriages starts only after the wedding, for the couple had just got introduced to each other a few weeks earlier, through their parents, and couldn't have managed to fall in love yet. If the introduction happened the other way around, well, you'll not find too many like that, but if any, such marriages will not happen without frown from the parents or scorn from the society.

But then, is one kind of marriage progressive and the other, regressive? To answer this question we need to know if one marriage is happier than the other. Again, statistics don't say so. You talk with couples, they don't say so either. Well, then there is no logic in arguing about which one is better. Probably the one that better upholds love, will and hope is better. But whose love are we talking about here? Whose will? Whose hope? Wait, do we even care about these four-letter words anymore? I'm not sure. I hear a few other four-letter words much more often these days.

Whose marriage is it anyway? No, I think the question should be whose love is it anyway!

Humans belong to the most civilized species?

Bangladeshi fans hurl stones at the bus carrying West Indian players who were on their way back to their hotel. That's because Bangladesh were bundled out for 58, possibly the lowest total in Cricket World Cup. Police say the fans mistook it for the bus carrying the Bangladeshi players. Whatever it is, I don't think this demonstrates any kind of civilizational act. I remember Dravid's house in Bangalore being guarded for a few days after India's first round exit in the previous world cup. The terrorists are not far behind either. The cricketing world cannot forget the free shooting attacks on the bus carrying Sri Lankan players in Pakistan a couple of years back.

Not very long ago, I remember there were bomb blasts happening every other week, in different parts of India. I think Australia or New Zealand refused to come to India for a cricket series during that time. And Indian newspapers blasted them saying they're chickening out. How irrational was that! If we risk our lives everyday, why do we've to expect others to risk their lives too? If we are fools, why do we've to expect others to be fools too? When last did India play a game in Pakistan? So, aren't we chickens too?

Maybe a good moment to relate this with our growth process. I still remember when our home minister rubbished away the rationale behind the US travel advisory to Americans in India post the Taj-attack, when he said "India is a completely safe country, safer than many other countries in the world". Didn't India issue a travel advisory to Indians in Egypt? Aren't we evacuating our people from Libya right now? Don't we make fun of the security situation in Pakistan? Come on, if we're bad at something, let us accept it, only then can we grow. By desperately resisting and defending, we're only losing an opportunity to grow. And by ridiculing, we're only becoming worse.

As I'm saying this, I'm thinking for myself, occasions in my life when I've desperately resisted or defended, or ridiculed. But I'll save myself for some self-blasting till some other time. Impatience, Greed, Wrath! And we call ourselves humans? Revenge, War, Blood! And we call ourselves civilized?

The trip is about to be over, the journey will continue

Management, as cliched as it can get, is we all know, both an art and a science. The truth about such things, that are both art and science, is that how much ever scientific you get, you can never substitute an artistic skill. But then science will give you the analytical toolkit that will help you sail through uncertain situations easier than if you believed just in art. An MBA will surely get you one such toolkit, not just for career, even for life. But then I can't vouch for this right now. I don't know if I can vouch for this ever, because life is a complex piece of heavily interrelated connections, that you can't really pin-point the cause-effect relationships so clearly.

The last one year was surely exhausting, but never did I've to think if it was all worth, because one, such questions are exclusively patented by the travails of the construct called marriage, and two, the learning more than compensated for any reason that could've made me feel so. It might not be the most politically correct statement to say that this was easily the best way I could've spent this one year, but I think that's almost true.

Every good thing comes to an end and so does every bad thing too. Whatever it is, it's all about to be over. Or is it? With every ending comes a new beginning, isn't it? Before I can find the answer to whether management is an art or a science, I need to find out if life is an art or a science.

The trip is about to be over, but the journey will continue.