Home

For the longest time I remember, home was simply the place where my mother lived. It was also the place where you didn't shout too loudly, didn't break things and certainly never wrote on the walls. It was the place where you returned to from school, the place you returned to from games, the place you returned to from the market… it was simply the place you returned to. Sometimes we'd have guests at home and during those days my Mom would discipline me much more often. She'd make me eat at the dining table and make sure I watch TV from a distance. So having guests at home was always a nuisance to me, especially when they'd stay too long. But I was always sure they would be gone soon, after all, they too had a home somewhere where they must return to.

The best part about home was this seemingly unquestionable permanence. I would return from school and it was always waiting for me in its neat and tidy form. I would have my room that would have my cupboard that would have my toys and my clothes. The drawing room would have our sofa facing our TV with our choice of channels. In the bathroom were my soap and my toothbrush. Basically, everywhere around was our stuff.

And there was always food. I knew food was my mother's forte. Her cooking could simply beat the shit out of other mothers' cooking. And she would mix and match the food so perfectly –the paranthas would accompany rajma in the afternoon and the same rajma would be floating in the evening only to team up with rice. Looking back I am amazed at how much she could make from what now appears to be only a handful of vegetables and pulses. Maybe it was never about the variety anyways, maybe there was something about being at home and she making it.

I remember changing houses a couple of times when I was young. That never used to change much for me though. Once it just changed my school bus stand and at the other time it changed my bus number. It meant making new friends on the way to my school and back and new friends in the street to play with. But as soon as I returned back home, I was back in the land where all stuff was clean and all stuff was mine. Where fridge bottles automatically filled themselves, dirty clothes - washed and ironed found their way to my cupboards. And there was always Mom around.

The first major change came when I joined under-grad. Luckily, my college too happened to be in Delhi. With more time and more freedom I could explore much more of the city and I understood how my home was connected to everything else. The college, the cinemas, the markets, the monuments, friend's houses and even the roads became familiar. Delhi became a place I shared with my friends and family. Delhi too became home.

The first time I moved out of my home was for Microsoft, in early 2008. It was also the first time I tried to come to terms with the reality that homes change. I guess the process of leaving home that started back in 2008 has now ended. I now don't miss home and Delhi in the same sense I once did. I guess I've learnt the art of putting together a home- at least the make-shift kind. Put in some cleanliness, some cupboard full of personal belongings, some books, some lights, and some photographs. Surround yourself with caring friends and get to know the places. The water bottles and clothes need slight more attention but it works out in the end. The only limitation is Mom can't be here and food can't be great, but that would be too much to ask from a make-shift home anyways.

In another few months, I'd have moved again. A new place to work at, a new city to belong to, a new home to create. A dear professor describes a home as the human attempt at pissing around the territory that belongs to him, just like a dog does. Despite the coarse language, I'd have to say he isn't too far from the truth. I guess home is just the place we call our own. It is a place that houses our stuff and stacks our kind of food. It is a place where you know the shortcuts around, on roads and otherwise. It is a place where strange isn't too strange and unfamiliar is still quite familiar. It is a place that is surrounded by friends. And most importantly it is a place where you are surrounded by your loved ones. Here's hoping we all build happy homes.

10 things they do teach you at IIMs

So I’ve finished a year of MBA, or in quantitative words “I am half a manager”. In hindsight, it wasn’t that bad after all. In-fact, I could go out on limb and confess that the last term was actually very good. The past year was one with a lot of learning, most of it involuntary. It just came about as a consequence of trying to survive in the new world order that exists inside these institutes.

I’ve read about so many articles about ‘list of things they do not teach you at IIMs’. That is of course a more interesting topic to write upon, because the things they do teach are mostly academics that tends to be inherently boring. However at a good b-school, what they teach and what you learn is not really the same. A b-school is designed like a system, and not just a student-teacher interaction. The lectures, projects, quizzes, assignments, committees, clubs, internship, events and everything else are part of the system. And the system manages to teach you much more than what you’d gain in a classroom. So how does the system work? I really have no idea. You just have to be a part of the system to reap its rewards.

Regardless of how they managed to put it across, there are a few learning that changed the way I think about things. I would like to share ten of them here. Are these ten the only takeaways from the first year? Nope. This is just my list. So will reading this list equate to a year at the institute? Not really. I can share these observations, but I can’t share the conviction I have in my mind about them being true. Their strengths, weaknesses, limitations and assumptions are all context driven. Does it justify investing a year in b-school to gain that conviction? I think so!

1. Diminishing marginal utility: The more of something you have, the less its demand and vice-versa. Explains why sleep during exams, time during projects and girls already committed are so much in demand.
2. Price: It is the cause and it is the effect. It is the truth. Getting the price right is priceless. In the words of one Mr. Druker, if you can measure it, you can manage it
3. Objective comes first: Aim and then shoot.
4. Sunk Cost: Same as the age old “don’t cry over spilled milk”. Every second is a fresh start.
5. Find the right word: Because there is one out there and only IIM grads know them
6. Know the audience: Understand the people who’ll evaluate your work
7. MECE: In all alternatives and options try to be Mutually Exclusive-Collectively Exhaustive. It just makes you look smarter and more manager like
8. Cite: Tell your sources. Only they show that you are a graduate from a well known management institute of Northern India.
9. Market yourself: Soap sells, coke sells and even work sells. Includes opinions, view points and criticisms. Customers include professors, committees and companies.
10. You’re the best: You are the culmination of millions of random events, circumstances and choices. You are unique. And as fate would have it, those events are just the perfect combination for being a future Fortune 500 CEO

Who am I?

Am I the place I was born,

Am I the name I was given,

Am I my voice, my face, my skin,

Am I what my mother taught me to be right,

Am I the people I grew up calling friends,

Am I the man my girl-friend always wanted,

Am I the God I believe in,

Am I my family’s dreams,

Am I the future I should want to see,

Am I the advice my friends give,

Am I the hero of my favorite film,

Am I the eccentricity I conquered, or

Am I the habit I couldn’t,

Am I the voice that sounds like mine in my head,

Am I just a blank slate splattered upon by millions of random dots?

Please tell me I am not.

Please tell me I exist. 

Forms of expression

"Leave an impression"

"Put your best foot forward"

"Imprint the memories"

"Shoecase your love"

All these are not guidelines towards living a life of happiness and virtues. These are often used euphemisms for invitations to a birthday bump party @ IIM Lucknow.

What is a birthday bump party you ask? I envy your ignorance. It is a party where the birthday boy (referred here as the victim) is picked up by a group of people (called perpetrators) and then given some highflying kicks on the a**. Apparently, many gifted students at IIML have discovered their love for football during this "high flying" interaction. And many not so gifted people continue to try and work towards a "kicking" future through these interactions.

Today I was the victim. Despite my best application of strategy (including bribes, divide-and-rule and the most effective, run-like-the-wind) I was not so lucky today. The principle element that undid my strategy was ‘the cake’. Since the SynapsE members had got a cake for me, it would have been rude (though infinitely prudent) to refuse to go. So there I was, with me staring at the cake and eleven Synapsians staring at my a**. It would not have been that bad if only they hadn’t stopped staring. First they picked me up... (The content here has been suppressed because it may seriously shatter the IIM dreams of budding aspirants) ... after which they let me fall to the floor.

You see, being a day scholar most my life, my a** is accustomed to a totally different kind of treatment. It has so far contacted more-or-less cushioned surfaces or even gentler elements of nature like air and water. This inadvertent meeting with leather shoe surfaces at high velocity has totally caught it off-guard. As it withers under the pain of friendship, the pain turns to a new found vengeance. I can already see how innocent victims like me are pulled into this racket of becoming perpetrators. I was an innocent bystander to all the birthday proceedings in the past. But not anymore. The following year shall see me kick my way to bumping glory. Lord save thy a**es !

Now I will stop writing. It is time again for a walk around the room.

The perfect love affair

I've often wondered what the perfect love story would be. What kind of a demi God would the hero be and how many ships would the heroine be able to set sailing for her. How would the cosmos conspire to make them meet and what would their destinies hold after this fateful meeting. Would they turn into a doting couple who live together and die together, or would they never meet and go down in history as a beautiful thing that couldn't be.

The few things that really come close to the perfect love story are fairy tales. The waiting for the right person to come into your life, knowing at a glance that your true love has arrived, and heroes and heroines who are as good as they look. And then they live happily ever after.
Real life however, tragically happens to be longer than a 10 page story book. And sadly most of it is spent in the "happily ever after". Soon the "happily" goes away. With time the "ever" seems longer than ever before. And all that is left is "after", a period not well documented in most books that authoritatively describe the events that led them there.
The perfect love story would, I guess, not really be a story, at least not in the kind of meaning the word is generally used. It would be a tidbit of life, another day, a lone journey. The perfect affair is what occurs between you and the pretty young girl on the platform as your train draws out of the station. It is perfect because it is impractical and practicality ruins it.In those few moments she can be everything you want and you don't even have to know what exactly you want her to be. And as she disappears into the milling crowd, you can think of the infinite possibilities for a love that could be. One that wasn't long enough to be tarnished by practicalities of making it real, of making it work. That is the closest we get to a perfect love affair. Most of the times, the hero would give in to the way things are, almost always out of control. But sometimes he may be brave enough to get down from the train.. he may be brave enough to chase the dream.. to call out to her in the busy crowd.. to run up to her.. grab her hand.. and make her turn...
But practicality ruins it.

(Disclaimer: Views expressed are solely of the author. Feel free to jump off moving trains or whatever it takes to chase your dream, at your own risk)

Youth

When you live for feeling the wind in your face,
When questions are more and answers are few,
When recklessness is not a decision but a way of life,
When friends are closer than family,
When late nights and indiscipline make you popular,
When responsibility is only about household chores,
When decisions are taken in milliseconds,
When a car and a girl is all you could dream of,
When you are happy to change yourself for people around,
When all unknown paths need to be travelled,
When having fun is the only objective,
When being unreasonable is quite reasonable,
When the only fear is being ordinary,
When music is loud,
When speeds are high,
When love is perfect,
When world is big,
And you are the best.

All that is youth. I know I will suddenly not cease to be youthful starting tomorrow. But I feel the right of being “young” that I’ve taken for granted since the time I can remember would be forsaken. A new phase of life beckons…

The concept of growing old…

I am scared of tomorrow. Tomorrow I turn 25. In case that didn’t register, that is Twenty-Five. By any measure of time, twenty five years is substantial. I mean it is more than a percent of time since Christ arrived and we started counting straight. What I also mean is that the ‘boyhood’ I have cherished for so long, would have to be foregone. The temporal island free of responsibilities, of not caring, of living in the moment, of pure indulgence would have to be left behind. A large number of unanswered questioned would need to be accepted as unanswerable. The dreams of limitless possibilities would need to be crystallized into a bracket of feasible options. No, I would not stop dreaming. Just the dreaminess behind the dreams would decrease.

The problem with birthdays is that they will come once every year whether you like it or not. Whether you are ready or not, come March 10th and you’d have grown up by a year. It is like each year you are running against time to grow as much as your body surely will. And what does it really mean to grow by one year? How do I judge whether I’ve over-performed, under-performed or just justified one year of temporal growth. Have my perspectives broadened enough for a year? Have I gained a yearful of responsibility, maturity and rationality? Have I made these years count in my overall existence? The concept of age doesn’t answer these questions.

I think a time dependent age is not the best idea. It is good for medical science but that is mostly it. It is the experiences that should add to your age because those are the ones that really add to your maturity. In such a world up till some age, say ten years the age would be the same as your biological age. From then on age would be purely based on your experiences. Getting into a real relationship would add a year to your age. Breaking off from one would add two. A selfless good deed would add a month. A first success would add half a year and a success after failures would add a whole year. Fighting a handicap would earn you years and standing by a closed one in his illness would also add years.

Imagine how useful the concept of age would be in this new world. A world in which age does signify maturity and being young is all about energy and passion. It would be much more meaningful in this world to let people above eighteen drive and people over twenty-one get married. The age becomes your guide, your motivator and measure of a way of life. Where the age of your death really tells you how you’ve lived.

And it would be fun as well. More so because this would require some people would actually get younger with time. I mean Britney Spears would certainly get a year knocked off her age the day she shaved her head. Careless drivers would become young enough to get their licenses revoked. And Bryan Adams for all his youthful exuberance and his undying belief in true love would finally remain eighteen till he dies. It also leaves you with a tantalizing fantasy- if we all forgot our ages would we still grow old?

So this is my idea. A ‘meritocratic’ concept of aging. It would not be practical I agree. Such an age would not be easy to discern and I know it is never going to be feasible. But it is one thing that would keep me from turning twenty-five. Till then I will try and find solace in the aphorism "You are as old as you think you are".

He stopped loving her today

He was in a hurry. He knew he had little time left. Five minutes at most. The bed sheet was already rife with blood and there was always the risk they might come back soon. Beside the bed was the lovely face of the only girl he'd ever loved. Too bad it had to end like this.
But there was no time for regrets. Infact, he really didn't feel any regrets. He was just surprised that there was all this time to kill. The waiting and the anticipation was really painful. He wanted some music to take the gloominess away. He went through the CD rack and smiled. She always stacked her music so well. He switched it on. Coldplay. Coldplay always meant Coldplay "yellow" to him. It was always their song. “Look at the stars, look how they shine for you”, it began. He looked at her face again. She really was beautiful. Even with the blood smeared all over, she looked heavenly to him. He wished he could go back in time and change things. No, not 15 minutes back. He wished he could go back in time to the point he stopped caring and she stopped loving. Like all hopeless romantics, he sincerely believed he could have controlled things. If only, he had talked sooner after their first fight. If only, he'd visited her more often at her mother's. If only he'd said more times how much she meant to him. If only,…
He went around her room. It had been almost 10 years since he was here. But it was strangely familiar. It was painted clearly on the page of his life he never turned. He remembered the little things. The peach and greens she loved on the walls. The chiming clock still stuck at the wall. The names of the teddy bears that now probably belonged to her son. Even the smell. That delicate mix of perfume, cream and herself, still filled the room. He didn’t like the mess he had created. He started stacking back the things on the shelves. He always made it a point not to let his love for her disturb her normal course of life. Well, always except today.
Suddenly his head was full of a buzzing sound. Loud and clear, killing the silence around him it went around the room. Round and round. Reverberating. Growing louder. And the floor started shaking. Thud. Thud. Thud. The room itself was shaking now. He realized it was time. He went to the other side of the bed and picked up her blood-sodden photograph. By now he had grown pale and fell down on the floor. He kissed the photograph with his white lips. The band was singing "for you I'll bleed myself dry". "for you I'll bleed myself...". And there was silence. Except for the footsteps of her returning from dinner.
He had finally moved on.

Disclaimer: Inspiration: The song lyrics of "He stopped loving her today" by George Jones

Of simple joys and sorrows

A word of thanks to Sudatta, a little known friend from Orkut who inspired me to key this down :)
Hidden behind all the macroscopic joys, achievements and losses is really a string of small small things that make up your day. Here are a few of those things in my life !

Likes:
sleeping, dreaming, typing lyrics of good songs, pizzas, planning my next purchase, being the center of attention, good jokes, witty quotes, smell of rains, driving on long empty roads, my ipod, travelling alone, thinking, night outs, perfectly blue sky, kids when they are not crying, home, mom's food, advertisements, hot water baths, honesty, speaking my mind out, Cadbury's 5-star, hot coffee, singing along with the songs, being funny, yellow light, sounds in a temple, learning something new, meeting old friends, laughing loudly, walking barefoot on cold floor, moments of dawning comprehension, creating, charging things, talking about myself, Hobbes, extra sugar 

Does not like:
bargaining, studying before exams, exams, being rushed, being told what to do, saying goodbyes, waking up early, being lonely, working very hard, missing some-one, failing, hot and humid days, pimples, pompous people, ipod with low battery, earphones that keep falling, being taken for a ride, being thought of as street smart, impression management, forgetting important things, my indecision, missing out on a good joke, puzzles i can't solve, memories of my mistakes, fights with mom, wet socks, told to switch off my laptop