Intonation

Reminiscing

2008-02-25T14:02:00.000+05:30

Kuch woh din bhi the jab life mein purpose the par kaam nahin.
Aaj kaam to bahut hai, purpose jaane kidhar chalagaya.
Shaam ke 5 baje, Hudson Lines mein Friends ki woh chai
Wills Navycut aur badi badi baatein
3k per month ki pocket money
Aur laakhon ke sapne
Un sapnon ki bhi ek apni duniya thi
purpose the par kaam nahin
Aaj lakh to hain, sapnein jaane kahaan kho gaye
tab ek girlfriend ko taraste the
aaj anek ke baad bhi pyaar nahin
tab dost aur dosti hi duniya thi
mohabbat ki ek kasak raat bhar ke gupp-shupp ka fodder tha
aaj kal to raat agle din ki majdoori ke beech ka ek gap hai
Kabhi paise hon to dost ko rikshe mein life dena
jab gareebi to khud paidal chal lena
smile fir bhi colgate ka ad bani rehti thi
aaj jaane kidhar to kho gayi hai
kabhi kabhi aati hai
dost ke orkut account ki photograph se nikal kar
sadak pe pillon se jhagadte bachchon ko dekhkar
then like everything ephemeral
gone
tab ek junoon tha nayi bhaashayein seekhne ka
aaj bhaashaaon mein jubaan ghum ho gayi hai
tab ek chaahat thi kuch paane ki
aaj chaahaton mein khud ko kho diya hai
haan woh photograph mein mudi hui bike ki handle
time machine ki tereh le jaati hai wapas
development ke naam pe humne backdrop badal diya
umra ne badal diye patra
sawaal ye hai
kya hum un bhaawnaaon ko bhi badal paayenge jinke beech humne is jeevan ki neev rakhi thi
bahut kuch khoya, bahut kuch paaya
gham bhi nahin hain, na koi malaal,
sirf ek void hai
aur ek nayi chaahat, usko bharne ki

Strolling Down The Park Street.

2008-02-04T14:32:00.000+05:30

Here is something I penned down way back in 2003 and stubled across again while sorting an old mailbox.

It has been a happy day,
Strolling down the Park Street.

On a Sunday,
When everyone stays back home in Calcutta
(They changed the name, to uphold the CULTURE,
Whatever that means)
I spare my Newspaper office,
To live the romanticism of the city.

The streets are empty,
Barring the few cars passing by.
Trincas' looks weary, after a reverberating saturday night.
And amongst the calm flows the rippling happiness,
Lost amongst her thoughts.

The Oxford Book Gallery is closed,
Shutters down with a few titles in the window,
Promising an opening tomorrow.
I can wait for that.

Because right now, my legs are on their own,
Wading their way through the lovely Norwester breeze.
And my thoughts are lost mulling on her smile.
Those beautiful assurances of comfort,
Pouring out of her eyes.

We have a Barista now,
Opposite the Park Hotel.
Its open.
The aroma of coffee sneaking out of the glass doors.
Tempting to simulate the literary buds in your mind.
I will go back to that,
But right now,
I am strolling down the Park Street.

I do not belong to this city.
But I am not a stranger to her,
I have met her a lot in my thoughts.
And today thoughts of Her meet this city.

My legs are taking me to the Maidan,
Years back Pete Seeger sung there,
His songs of Hope.

Today I sing my song of love,
For Her. Of Her
Breaking into smile,
Momentarily embarrased for no reason and not caring afterwards.
Who cares when I have her
And its Her thoughts that make me smile.

I don't know why do I feel good.
Does it matter?

Maybe love does such things to you,
Or maybe its the city,

But I love being here now,
Strolling down the Park Street.

Show me the money

2006-08-25T18:11:00.000+05:30

I know many of you must have seen it way back and have been there in the discussion about it and this is either a nostalgic trip or yet another discussion.
I remember watching Jerry Maguire long back. I watched it on one of the 24 hour movie channels and it was interrupted all the way through by commercials. Moreover, I used to be college kid (though I barely went to the college).
Last evening I saw the CD at Crossword and picked it up. This time it was a different movie. I loved the, "I am going to get my clients and yours" part of it. I could relate to the frustrations of working solo and running against stronger guys. Above all, I could relate to the concept of business by heart.
The movie speaks of Mr Jerry Maguire, a sportsperson's agent who is out on the streets, all alone, roughing it against the biggies with just one football player to go by. It speaks of connecting humanely to the clients and establishing a human touch. Now all of you, who are in the madhouse of Indian corporates would agree that the heart is not the best organ to use for business. There are people who are known for doing it. Some became Richard Branson, well there are many you wouldn't know about.
Jerry happens to find success and his moment comes when his client makes a splash and reiterates on the human connection between them. It speaks of friendship.
In all honesty, this is the stuff dreams are made of and not many of them come true. Where I loved the movie and lived the catharsis it offered, the first thing I ended up reiterating this morning with one of my clients was, "Show me the money and I will show you the numbers." Sadly he hasn't watched Jerry Maguire and am not sure whether he would after my advise.
I have been in the business by heart category and made a smooth transition to the cold, dead calculations of figures on the balance sheets and the curves on that graph sheet I avoided as a school kid. There are times when I venture out with heart and make another transition to the category of dead. I hope, someday, in my dream of becoming a serial enterpreneur, I can chase a few hearty ventures.
Till then, lets just get the lessons right.

"Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think Ill buy me a football team"
PINK FLOYD

Of Dante, Roth, Accent, Skeleton, Freedom, A New Friend and I

2006-05-18T10:50:00.000+05:30

I am writing this for and to a new friend. He might not think the same about me. I, however, am indebted to him for the release.

Today, happens to be an important day in my life for many reasons. It has its own business ventures to talk of, the entire number crunching game. This post, though, is not about that.

My day started with a call from the past. I had indeed called upon it and at times wishes do come true. Since I had somehow pushed myself out of the slumber, it took me a while to figure out the content of it. And then I could hear some desperate threats. Ideally I was supposed to get angered and match blood with blood. But I guess I have gone far away. (As a matter of fact, one of the online tests I took to satiate my momentary masochistic bouts tells me that I am at the Seveth Level of Hell.) To cut the digression short, I went on with the conversation. In between all the words, I could hear something that told me to hold on. After all I am the one who teaches and trains people on the importance of tone in communication.
I do not know if my friend knows this or not, but the tone of the voice tells a lot about the human being. It takes you right inside the mind of that person.
We went on talking with going off the tangents so many times and in between popped a name that I love. Dante.
The next he popped up was in a conversation that I had been pining for and which always looked elusive. And that spoke of purging sins. My last post speaks of Sin. My friends out there maybe missed the point. Or maybe they chose to. Whatever it is, is something which will always stay a guess for me. The point that I want to drive is that the Sin I was talking of is what makes me human and I do not want to let go of it. The common sense might beget that you should not love if you do not have the capacity to love and the Sin I spoke was of loving without that capacity. Where does the question of purging it arise? And that has to be my choice. Not a response to some self proclaimed righteousness between a confused student and her caring teacher.

My friend, I am a mortal human being. I might have survived the 100 diazepalm pills, but am under no impression that I will survive anything similar again. As a matter of fact, it is Chateaubriand I would like to pick here and say that I actually started living my life after I lost everything.

"You could have purged your sins in your silent way, you need not tell that to me. You are as fake as your accent"...

I do not want to purge my sins. I will live with them. I do not have to wait for an afterlife to be in the seventh level of hell.
Yes, I need not tell you. I was stupid to do that. Maybe because I strongly believed in those words of love, till today. I had a small toy of belief, that maybe in between all that hatred and disgust for me, there still must be a glimmer of love. From where I saw, love is not something that can die. Well, you were right. Maybe it was not there at the first place. Maybe it was my life of illusions. (Hey, but I do love Auster) To cut the long story short, I wanted to share and not tell. I did not want anything in return. Beyond all what I am, there is a weaker side to me as well. That was dangling on the hopes of my undying love. And in no way I was trying to show something off. You alleged me of audacity. What about your audacity to tell me how to live my life and measuring me as per your conventions? If there was love, today there wouldn't have been any malice, if there is malice, where was the love.

You see the logic my friend, if there is no love, why should I bother to get back to it. Am beyond illusions. You helped me get rid of the last remanants. See, why I call you a friend. Despite a hostile conversation, I could not sense malice. And that is why I write this for you.

As far as my accent is concerned, I learnt it and have been teaching it for a while and have got paid for it. Fake is a perception. All of us are entitled to ours.

Thank you my friend for being the catalyst to my freedom. You helped me break the last thread. I do not want to grow up. What do we get of growing up. A false sense of pride. And the right to call names and the AUDACITY to allege people of 'pseudo-ego', a cliche I liked once, and the right to spin a miasma in other people's life just because they loved you once.

There are some of us who want to look at life from a 44 mm view and think of it as the world. We live inside our houses, ensconced in the shade of silver spoon we were born with and find catharsis in self praise and bashing others. We think that the ones who serve our emotional needs are right and the others wrong. You might be right, but the other might not be necessarily wrong.

No offence my friend, but I feel great today for erasing some memories off my mind. At the end of it, the entire morning drill was such a facade. I did not want to talk to her to be subjected to the malice. I wanted to part with a smile on my face. Not like the last time, crying. Well, I indeed had a smile on my face.

I remember reading Roth's letting go. All the while I was reading it, I felt very uncomfirtable of that invisible stupid hold that was there on this guy of what we gloriously and at times abusively call emotions. His catharsis was my momentary joy. Today, I can experience the orgasm of catharsis. I can Let Go.

"Heavy thunder breaks the deep lethargy within your head....

...causing you to upstart suddenly, like a person who by force is awakened."
--- Dante, Divine Comedy

My Sin

2006-05-17T15:05:00.000+05:30

I made a mistake,
Of loving outside the peripheries of convention,
Without the capacity for love.

Yes, its true I never compromised with my desire to love,
I never had my moments of doubt,
I always knew it comes with a cost.

What I did deny was my inability to sustain it,
I knew I was not strong enough,
I knew I had nothing to back my love with,
No money, no stature, no substance.

They say thou ought not defy the conventional wisdom,
Of life, of love, of ...

I did.

So what I loved you,
So what I did that with all my energies,
I left none to build that world I had to,
For you.

No, I do not seek forgiveness,
Punish me, with you indifference,
With your perception of me that you are living with today.

Am sure, someday the life will come full circle,
It will get me all that I needed,
To stand as a man in this world of matter.

What I will not have,
Is the opportunity for penance.

I will live with my sin.

Month 1 in the Office

2006-04-29T18:16:00.000+05:30

In all honesty, it was not even half a month. We managed a number of 28 this month excluding the dropouts and have saved nine for the next. The target for the next month is 94.

Well, I had to let my emotions flow. The transition between being a corporate employee shit worried about ensuring the welfare of next day and being a risk infested, market uncertainties influenced entrepreneur has not even been able to register in my mind because of the non-stop drives. As a matter of fact we were working last sunday, so its the end of two weeks really. Monday being an off, my employees are relatively happier for the fact that we barely get two days off together in our industry. All that you might get for working Sunday is overtime. As a matter of fact, I had a difficult time convincing my partner of getting the kids overtime because no one else in the market does that.

I do.

In all these days of work, I could understand the value of people. The team that you have. I had walked off BPOZITIONS with a learning. Of never to take your people for granted. Here, it has gone one step ahead. Always care for your people. The zeal these guys have shown in all these days is amazing. Something that has pushed me beyond limits as well. Is something that I used to do for others. This time pushing myself for myself has proved an amazing experience.

My friends have been calling me entrepreneur and all, but it never really registered. It was more of, 'man, have just started'. The other day when I was waiting with Prashant (He happens to be the elder partner in my business venture)at a college, he made me realize a very important thing. He said that whenever you hire someone, you make a commitment for a lifetime. It might not turn out so, but you have to be ready for that. So never hire someone whom you are not sure about. That was where I realized the importance of thinking one step ahead.

Month 1 wasn't what I can call great. I would have been happier if there were some 10-12 more numbers. Nonetheless, it was good. It was god because it comes with realistic promises of being better. It was good because it comes with the hope of some good work the coming month. In fact, the last day of the month was the best. We had a strike rate of 75%, which is good by any standards.

Today I am going to sit back. Maybe sip a beer and eat a lot. The next month promises a lot of action. It comes with outdoor drives as well and public speeches. I know I am going to love it. You give me a stage, a mike and some four to five hundered people sitting in front of me and you have me. So I am going to make speeches, throw a lot of accent around and hope for increasing numbers.

Cheers till then.

This is the end, my friend
Of mundane predictable rigmarole,
Of being told what to do,
Of apprehensions
Of being a puppet in the mammoth corporate.

It marks the begining,
Of freedom
Anything for it.

Grapes of Wrath

2005-12-02T23:39:00.000+05:30

In my first post I had mentioned books. There are so many of them and even after reading thousands of them, I feel that there is a big world to explore. Here is one that has found a relatively longer span of attention for me despite the addition of several that I read after them. Steinbeck is essentially an author who believes in putting all the focus and merit to the story itself without making a conscious effort to make writing look like an art. And I guess that is what makes writing an art in itself. "Grapes of Wrath" is a writing that has the strength to make you forget that someone actually wrote it. Some time back I had taken some of my pieces to the author I like the most and what he had to say was that it made for a 'good diary writing'.. To be honest, it did not make a lot of sense to me. I looked at it as a diplomatic way of telling me that it is bad writing. (I guess it was and that is the reason I will think a million times before posting it here.) After reading Steinbeck, I simply couldn't try and put a face to the author. I could not even put a face to the characters. They appeared to be on a stage (something thats charecteristic of 1980s bollywood potboilers) changing clothes and faces and backdrop and even the events.. But they managed to keep the story same. One has to agree that that is the art and mastery of writing.
I have been reading and re-reading this book for last couple of weeks and haven't been able to get over it. The backdrop, the politics, the facts behind the fiction, are all a different world to me. Separated by several decades. Yet, there are factors that connect you straight to the book. Tom is a man who reminds you of someone you wanted to be in school after being expelled. Ma stands for strength in adversity. Pa for being an understanding human being. Amidst everything, the characters Steinbeck has created are ephemeral yet so touchingly representative of human strength and dignity. The language of the characters is also communicative of the understanding of the lot Steinbeck has wanted to portray. The Scriptures' discussion between Tom and Ma when she comes to ask him to go (and her understanding the fact that children, especially adoloscents are likely to make mistakes in the heat of the moment) has a stark resemblance to the discussion of Indian scriptures I have overheard travelling to my village. It makes you wonder about the irony that when you are engrossed in reading such stories in fiction, you get appalled. But when you are just skipping through the newspapers, you miss the stories. There are quite a few Joads living out there, but we do not have the time to read through the stories in between the lines of the news columns. To sum it up, Grapes of Wrath is like a huge picture on a very large canvass that portrays the human life with a perspective that is way larger than we choose to adopt towards life. A must read.

PS: So is East of Eden and many other Steinbecks......

A Secular Rethink

2005-11-22T20:11:00.000+05:30

In school, secularism was a sort of synonym for India. A component that defined this country. We knew it such because that is how we dealt the school essays. But then childhood is not a terribly enlightened period of life and what with the education system we have had. I had my mouth watering when I saw this topic in such bold print and with great enthusiasm got my friends to share their views. I got only one response, an educated one from the corridors of Delhi University. For the rest, some shouted minority, some personal space, some religion, but no one would give me 50 real words. In all that was there, I took solace in the fact that all these men in consideration are themselves seculars, sometimes without even realizing it.
I was conveniently ignorant of this grand political tool, before they demolished a mosque. Without realizing my political alienation, I felt I have no stomach for the fundamentalist Right Wing. It was a shock indeed, Right had gone wrong. But the secular antidote has proved a slow and understated prophylactic to my weak stomach. And this day I am offering a 2000-word tribute to the phenomenon, which we might have done without, if only we realized that humanity takes precedence to politics.
Lets go back in time and try tracing the evolution of Religion. Religion in itself was the ‘way of the society’, the guidelines to prevent humans succumbing to the animalistic inhumanity. It was more about providing a semblance to the society that was just developing, than it was about God or Spiritualism. It wouldn't be a far-fetched imagination to interpolate Prophet as a leader who just wanted a peaceful society and outlined some principles with the order of the day in mind. The orders have changed. The society has changed. The religions are no more inflexible absolutes. And that is where secularism pitches in. In a society where there are people of different origin, religion, race, secularism has to play an important role. More so, when the same people are working together. Think of an Infosys divided along religious lines. Think of what it can do to the Sensex. If we are secular enough to work together, we would need to spare just one more thought and get that secularism as a way of life. In India, the same will apply to the difference in Caste.
And we have been practicing secularism of conveniences. I am secular not because I uphold the spirit of secularism, but because it helps me serve my own ends. I might be religiously secular, but am positively `Right' when it suits my needs. I do not mind snuggling up with a Muslim girl, but a Mullah is a no-no. I will condemn a post-Godhra pogrom, but I find catharsis in movies bashing Pakistan. I will shout my throats sore for the US Marine oppression in Basra, but I will rather keep away from the Jewish colonies. All along the history, we have used and abused secularism, not the idea, but the word itself as a plank to serve political needs.
Unfortunately, the education system across the globe has been unable to outline the importance of secularism. In a bid to attain Technological and Economic advancement, the societies world over customized the education-system to the extent where something as vital as secularism has transformed into a political word: a no-no. Have we ever realized, that secularism can be exploited as a solution to the global terrorism. After all it is either ethnic or religious catalyst that propagates the terrorist reactions. Amidst the barrage of repetitions and re-iterations, what I am endeavoring to establish is that secularism is not a mere antidote to weed out religious differences in a diverse society, but it is by and large a state of mind and alienation of thoughts that makes rational thinking a way of life and tolerance a habit. I know it doesn't sound terribly fashionable to speak of tolerance and spacecraft in the same paragraph, but hell, if I am living in a society where we celebrate nuclear weapons in the name of God then I can live the paradox my way. Fashion can take a back seat. Secularism was formulated during Italian renaissance as an attempt to separate church and politics. The idea of secularism was not to let one interfere into another. Given what has come out begs the question. From there on, secularism has been the mainstay of majority of the countries. Except for a handful of Islamic states and a few more other religious states, we can lay a fair claim that we are in a by and large secular global structure. Of late, for some funny reasons, secularism, Jinnah and Advani have all starred in a political drama of the year. We might never get to know the motives behind the speech Jinnah made, however, the points he did outline are very much how we would like secularism to smell. He said that the country would focus on the development irrespective of the religion of the individual. He said that no one would be stopped from trading or working in the country because he belongs to a different religion. Now, coming at the time when the very formation of the country was based on religious lines, it does sound strange. Nonetheless, you have to grant that the words in themselves were true. And so was Advani's interpretation. I personally would like to take secularism, one step ahead. At the beginning of it, secularism might have been primarily about religion, however, with the changing context of the world, it wouldn't be incorrect to think of secularism as the concept which allows to weed off any sort of conventional bias effecting the functioning of social or economic go around. It has metamorphosed with the society to a new ground. We need to replace the religion, rather add to the religion, a set of irrational biases we have grown to live with. We have to look forward to a global secularism. It will have its economic repercussions, but we have to free economy, society, art, science.. from the biases. When it comes to science and technology, we have been unknowingly secular right from the word go. Sadly, the rest of the realms haven't been that fortunate. What is a more terrible irony is that the same work-secular-intellectuals turn into Togadias when they step out of the laboratories. With Indian context, secularism is a necessity given the diversity of the culture, a wonder that it thrives despite being surrounded by religious states (Nepal, Burma, Pakistan, Bangladesh), a political tool which everyone uses to one's advantage and is an emotional topic for the Old School because some of us still have our faith intact in the phenomenon. The day the mosque was demolished, the day Gujrat pogroms triggered, I lived my own cycle of emotions. I will not drag you through the complete journey, but the conclusion was imbedded with hopes that the education and modernity will soon breathe sense into the people and what with televisions and 24 hour news channels. I was hopeful for rise of rationality and the kid I was I hoped that this might be the last act of religious persecution. Communalism and its manifestations exist with great glee even in the corridors of knowledge and commerce. The only way to nip this advent of new age communalism is a cumulative effort from the institutions of education, commerce (by and large the corporate sector) and media to highlight the basic concept of secularism beyond the version we have. Secularism, freed of political abuse. There is a definite rise in the cumulative social consciousness towards upholding the rational spirit. Some of it is even inadvertent. And some is fashionable, because being secular is also being politically correct (at least that is the argument of those who love to ridicule secularism and think of it as something synonymous to the non NDA parties). I tow the line of looking for the positives despite my innate cynicism and try to feel comfortable in the thought that Secularism stands a better chance despite the general perception that this word is soon going to join the ranks with Sanskrit. And, not the Secularism as we have known it till date, but the evolved secularism of mind and thought. So, we are poised at a new level of a game in which secularism is the leitmotif. There are players from fundamentalist Right wing to ridicule secularism to the extent that they are willing to modernize their own hard-line stance. There are players like the non-Right wing politicians (starring Laloo Yadav from the place I roughly relate to as home) who use the word Secularism as a prefix to ‘forces’, which help them keep their vote-banks brimming. And there are players (the Tendulkars of secularism) to play shots even out of the book in order to keep the spirit alive. We already have a million issues to deal. There are roads to be made, hospitals to be built, mouths to be fed, children to be educated; do we have to add pogroms to the list? Secularism might have been the divorce of church and politics, and it could still be seen along the same vein in Europe, but for us, it is a new word in a New World. It is a necessity in order to weed out the impediment biases bring to our lives. And if we managed to make it to moon, if the Bollywood made Black, if Indian team could win a Test in Australia, I would like to stand the risk of being called the Hopeful Man of the Century and keep pushing for my dear secularism. We will still be corrupt to fill our coffers, we are not going to be spared of Nepotism, IPC will still be useful, but least we will have a world that is not infested with the dragons of biased persecution and terrorists will cease to be freedom fighters for anyone. Call me politically incorrect, smash my balls, but I will not stop from saying that the heart of all this terrorism-freedom fight business is fed by bigots who are the self-proclaimed custodians of religion. If we are able to imbibe the larger secular design in our lives, we will be able to establish a society that will be advanced in true sense. And that will stop the rise in the prices of oil and the pipeline to Afghanistan will be a reality and Kashmiris can do without the Alprazolams and there will so many honeymooners who won't have to get a visa for the romantic sojourns. There is nothing political about teaching secularism to our kids, it is an investment to a safer and just world.

The Begining

2005-11-19T23:04:00.000+05:30

As a communications trainer, the biggest toll that your mind takes is self manipulation. You have to kill your individuality, or at least subdue it to make sense to people who want and need to learn to communicate. Guess this looks like a good place to make a venting ground and restore my individuality every night after the day's work.
There are a million things to say, but I would begin with the issue that is closest to my heart and mind i.e. books. The stories arriving from the training rooms are the ones, however, that are more far reaching vis-a-vis the entire phenomenon of blogging.
I lost a lot of time and energy today trying to figure out this means of communication and now no amount of self-training is making me ressurect my own thought process (I even train people to get them tight :C ). B Back