Mind in words…
A crack at understanding the meaning of what goes in my mindArchive for May, 2007
Love for Music…Ageless
Ever wondered what would happen to your love for music once life takes a toll on you?
Ever wondered where would the mindless escapades would vanish (which not – so – obviously came after 4 pegs down with music playing on ur mind) once corporate culture rips your selfish soul aprt?
Never thought about so much in the future as i did today. It was only after i met Pillai today that this thought crossed my mind. It kind of strengthened when i read Fauji’s first post or zuerst post (as he calls it) about 5 minutes back.
Coming back to the main point about which i started the post with. Music and the love for it . Me and my college (Grad coll) friend Antil were sitting in a pub in Connaught place today and drinking away not so merrily when he signalled , that the same elderly man whom we’d seen about a month ago was back again the same place.
But this time he wasn’t dancing to the tunes of rock music. He was sitting on his own , ‘lonely’ on his table , as it appeared to us – though it may not be actually true, drinking his blues away. I just walked up to him and spoke to him for a minute, mentioning our experience when we saw him dancing alone in front of the speakers in the corner of the pub. It was an amazing sight, true to the experience of hearing that beautiful song which was mellowing down the Bose speakers.
He acknowledged our gesture and came up and said these beautiful words ” I hope when you’re my age , you will replicate the love for music the same way i do now”
It struck me and will strike anyone who listened to Pillai today. Rock on PLay as he mentioned his name to us again.
Don’t go by the age…its by no way a comparison to what Pillai looks like but the energy is the same!
Power vs Style
Which one is better Power or Style?
Mukesh and Anil Ambani captured by renowned indian photographer Atul Kasbekar. While Mukesh commands power , Anil exudes style in the bw pic. The use of symbols of Tree and Gas can seem to depict a powerful Mukesh who has recently turned a Trillionaire (in Rs. terms though) and the Sun seems to hide behind him. Subtle but powerful use of symbolic photography.
Photographs are copyright of Atul Kasbekar.
A peek into the past – Places ive stayed @
I’ve not been to many places in this short life of around 25 years , but still places or in fact cities ive stayed for more than a month @ have left me a different person altogether.
I’ll start in a random order with one of my favs being -
Sana’a , Capital of Yemen – This country as i would describe to my mates in school – as the country which appears in the world map a lil below K SA , has given me the best time in my life till now. The formative years so to say , were spent here and i studied in a good institution run by Indians , for many nationalities – The Indian Embassy School. Through my father’s conversations (which i normally overheard) , i came to know that the people of this country were more favourable to the Pakistanis than Indians. Though i never got a chance to experience this bit. I would also remember this city for my first experience with socialising. The community here was very well close and we used to spend evenings catching a game of baddy with friends and i even managed to win 2 championships here. This was the first time i interacted with children from various countries , be it Ethiopia , Somalia , USA , France , Yemen , Saudi Arabia , India ( from various parts – Gujarat , TN , Maharashtra , etc etc..) .
Delhi – Capital of India - Another city which i would love to stay in. As soon as i enter Delhi , I feel a sense of homeliness , a city i can call my own.This is the city where most of my relatives stay and I’ve spent most of my life in. Majority of school life , undergrads , first corporate job….can’t count the years.Although the people here are much rougher to say the least as compared to Mumbai , but its got its share of niceties to beat mumbai. Green cover , Fresh air , Wide roads , Lutyens Delhi , India Gate , Chandni Chowk , Connaught Place , DU , Metro !!… This is also where i first fell in love. In-fact second time as well!
Mumbai – Financial Capital of India - 2 months on the trot @ chembur , Worli and Thane and working at service outlets and sales stations of Maruti. I won’t deny it was one hell of an experience but it wasn’t what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be an experience for getting to know the ground realities of sales and service but it turned out to be 40% S&M and rest 60% travel and enjoyment. I still remember the dance bar experience with 3 of my colleagues from Maruti ( One of them- Tanuj , had specially come down from Ahmedabad for this)….It turned out to be an embarrassing experience, We just wanted to see what happens inside. It was one cheap affair to remember , with Thakur and me , being asked by waiters whether we wanted a hooker from options who were dancing away on the floor in front of us. We gulped our beer as fast as we could and returned home. An experience of Services – “Customer is King” – Maruti has this policy – and service personnel have to bear the brunt of the customer’s ire again and again. The Service center Manager used to be treated like a peon by customers in the Worli area where , as was told by him , a Maruti is usually a second or third car for the residents. So , it used to start in the morning 10 a.m and till 10p.m in the night when the manager would step onto a train to Borivili ( in-fact till he would switch off his mobile phone for which he had 2 batteries!) , he would be constantly hounded by customers. “Meri gadi kab milegi”, “Struts main se awaaz abhi bhi aa rahi hai” , “Traffic main se jaati hai to band ho jaati hai gaadi”…”Kya karun …free service do mujhe”…..and what not!!!…To top it all that guy was a professional rally driver…a pint sized dynamo with immense sense of cars and bikes.
To be continued…
Mistakes and Rejection
I was suddenly reminded of ‘Rejection’ as a topic of discussion when i was seeing a reality contest on TV in which every week they eliminate a contestant. During one of these episodes , a contestant couldn’t handle the fact that he did not take full advantage of the opportunity given to him and succumbed to pressures of the situation. He obviously goofed up. Instead of accepting his fault , he started throwing fits , acting as if he was getting dizzy and telling it was lack of sleep and exhaustion which was making him nervous.
What was more appalling , was judges giving him a second chance. We’ll discuss more on reality TV judges in another post but you see these kind of cover ups , blame games , passing the buck kind of instances everywhere. Is there anyone ready to take blame for the wrong that they do, the mistakes they make?
We believe in the saying “Nobody’s perfect” and “Learn from your mistakes”…. Then why do we dread accepting our mistakes , our faults?
Its rare nowadays that you meet people, who accept mistakes and do not shirk responsibility attached to their actions. But that breed is getting extinct at a disturbing rate.
What could be the reasons behind this attitude?
I’m no researcher to identify them but some which i could think of are :
Firstly , there is so much of responsibility and risk attached to each decision of yours , that accepting blame for a wrong one may lead to immense opportunity lost.
Secondly , there is not enough transparency in systems to reveal the truth , so people hide it as far as they could.
Btw society doesn’t essentially reward people who accept responsibility for their wrong deeds/actions. So why accept ? huh…
Any more ideas??
Of Soap Operas , Camera Zoom ins , zips , zaps and Kkkkk….
This post is intended to apprise the camera team in daily Indian soaps , of the ill effects that their poorly conceived and executed ’special effects’ , can have on the audience. In addition to that , i just wanted to give a vent to my frustration at the so called Queen of Indian Soaps.
Tune into any of the prime channels of India (I can only claim about Hindi channel soaps) be it Sony , Zee , Star or their siblings , …the state is the same. All hell breaks loose when the director , inorder to increase the time of the soap , hands over complete control of the soap to the so called ‘ Special effects ‘ team every now and then.
If any one dies , or there is even a hint of conspiracy in the soap , the camera zooms in and out so frequently in a matter of seconds . It happens not once , not twice but as many times as there are characters / actors in that particular scene. Reasons??? The mystifying turn of events shocked everyone present in the scene…so the anguish , anxiety , anger , sadness and every possible hint of emotion is tried to be captured in that scene from every actors face.
Effects – Dizzines , Loss of memory , hallucination , sudden fear of God or even Love for God , etc etc…
and then i am fortunate enough to see some American soaps as well or to give due respect to them ill call them American series – of the likes of “24″ , “Heroes” which not only keep you glued to your seats but also make you want more.
Where will we Indians find creativity ? The so called Queen of Indian Soaps – Ms. Ekta Kapoor ( Forgive me if i got one ‘o’ or ‘r’ more / less in your name …Its a numerology fad in this part of the world you see..) , give us something else to be proud of you. Yes i agree Indians are happy seeing this dose of crap as well but they deserve better. If CID is any barometer of success , then i can proudly say , we Indians do give credit for professionalism and quality entertaining programs. So, please Ms. Kapoor spare us and deliver something better for us to be proud of you ( If that matters to you…else its been easy for you earlier and will be now as well…anybody listening..kkkk 
)
Craving for work
Ive been sitting idle at home for 2 months now…infact 3 days more than 2 months
and its been quite a difficult jorney to say the least. Reasons??
For 2 long years , ive been in a Business School where the Stress is religion , Booze is ambrosia , Friends are Angels and Teachers are Demons waiting to give you mental and physical pain. Everytime we used to get a break ( by a break i would mean rest from acads and other related stuff for more than 24 hours), mind used to clink and try to clamour for work and stress just to keep itself busy. It was a completion of a habituation which would now last a lifetime.
Its now been over 2 months now , and a stage of mental stagnation has finally arrived.
Ive come to believe that If the mind which is used to mental stimulation , is not excercised regularly , it may descend into an abyss of degradation. For the mental engine to be revved up , there has to be a dose of heavy duty work load or else its efficiency would reduce. This seems to be my case , and strangely it doesnt seem to follow any of laws which i know of.
Is it strange??
I seriously need a heavy dose of work to get this amazingly small yet powerful piece of mass to get up again ( i’m talking about my brainin case you wander somewhere else).
Is it the same with you??
Internet … Ideas abound!!
I saw this while i was surfing on the net, which happens to be one of my hobbies as i look for art and photography related sites.
You want a seal for yourself…get tis..
http://www.says-it.com/seal/circle.php
How does my blog seal look like huh??
Philosophy…my style
Stroke of luck you can say. It was just a small trip to a rest room when i got this thought in mind and i decided to pen i down coz it applied to me. Ill call it philosophy # 1 …
It basically states that a man has three states in his life.
State – 1 – This is the state where he has no idea what the world is all about and is still in the process of discovering what he is all about and in addition also tries to wonder what is the meaning and purpose of those around him. Once he gets a hang of things around him and a lil bit of sense of what he is …he transcends to state # 2
State-2 – Ill call it the stage of selfishness. This is where he gets a real hang of himself and does things that satisfy him. Mind it , he might think that a lot of work that hes doing is for the greater good. But essentially it is all driven by a need to satisfy his own inner being.Some people remain in this state and transcend to their abode in this very stage of life. But some go on and try to reach the third one.
State-3- This state ill call the state of contribution. It might seem to be interlinked , intertwined whatever you call it , with the state # 2 but its another state all together. Its the state where a person tris hard to life beyond his own self. Ive seen less of people who’ve seen this stage. People who go all out and think beyond their own self and live for others. I feel most of us human beings live and die in state # 2 . Never even put a foot in state # 3 . Although inside us we feel we’ve done enough for others and lived a part of our life for other , but the truth is , we’ve only tried to satisfy our selfish nature.
I’ve not had enough gray hair on my head or beard as yet to say which of the three stages is better w.r.t to the other. So take your pick or read some saintly , life leading books on such stuff!!
(Comments are not meant to be chauvinistic all because they are in a particular gender but are intended to apply to the other sex(es) as well)
Madhushala…
Madhushala , the famous poem by Dr. Harivansh Rai Bacchan is an amazing way to get the essence of life captured and presented in front of your eyes in the form of words.
Heres what i wrote in a forum about an year back…It was on the interpretation of the Poem.
Should the interpretation of Madhushala be taken as a metaphor for a bar or life is entirely upto the reader because in the poem bacchan never does explicitly mention this.
Why does one interpret it as life ? It could be that for an alcoholic the only solace he gets for whatever ill feelings towards life he has is through the mental journey he goes thru in a madhushaala.
It could also be that though Mr. Bacchan was a teetotaller he couldve written this from a perspective of an alcoholic totally dejected by life (wen in his senses) and that takin recourse to alcohol lets him live life with much more fun and peace than when he was in his senses.
Poem is available on:
Stories
mind races ahead and thinks of writing fascinating 2 para stories..Lets see how much of it would be down in this space ‘o’ mine. Night is descending fast and its raining outside. Whats going to happen next is just another guess waiting to be taken!
At night ull read me writing to u …writing a story for you to listen. Can’t say if you can read it to your children but yes u can read it?
ciao till then …3 hours to go before parents gooff to sleep and im upto my mischevious self
Delhi or is it Bangalore!
I was in bangalore last month and whenever mercury used to rise about 30 deg C, it used to rain. Its happening in Delhi for the last week or so and the weather is turning out to be great inthe evenings.
Hope it lasts long , long till its Monsoon time…ahhhh
I hope this time we wont be needing a rain dance in appu ghar atleast!
Delhi Blues
Its summer time in Delhi and everything outside home is burning. Only respite from this sweltering heat is a bottle of beer at one of the pubs in connaught place. Whenever i call one of my friends from engineering to hang out it usually ends up at this place called Blues. Its on the outer circle of CP and opposite Deutsche Bank…hmmm…yup sort of.
Its again just a beer to catch up…the place has good ol rock music to play in the evenings ( do not ever go to this place at noon or thereabouts especially if you dont like soft english songs ).
Amazing but true , i went to this place 2 times this summer and the first time i saw a 50 something man completely intoxicated by the music standing by the 3 feet long speakers and dancing his mind off.
It reminded me of the crazy parties we used to have at the institute. I will never ever forget those time.
CP or Connaught place or Rajiv Chowk (whoever named it Rajiv Chowk should be given lessons in heritage even if it means naming of places) for you :
Mindposts Start…
Its another day at home, getting up late and moving around like a zombie. Things get a headstart when i come to know that the job ill be joining will start next month and will take me to an unknown destination for an induction program. Last few days have been extremely painful , mind starts to wander in unknown territories , feel like a choked soul. I had a blog elsewhere but i want this to be anonymous. I want to clear my head by spilling it out in words. I know they’ll make a splash when they get out. But how huge , its anybody’s guess.
This blog would be , as the title suggest, mind on words.Its unrestricted flow of ambrosia , venom whatever comes to my mind in this space i can call mine.Unpredictable would be its nature , and i would be its master.
Life restricts you , this is the place to free yourself. Its a conquest to be in control and never ever give up.
