the law of averages

disclaimer: this post is based on true facts that have been unimaginably exaggerated to resemble the truth and at the same time appear fictitious to protect the legal rights of the author. any resemblance to any person living or dead should not be used to sue the author for slander of reputation.

School was ordinarily a blissful state of mind until of course the report cards were send home. My dad would ask me “who is the topper in that subject?”, “and this one?”, “and this…?”, “ why can’t u even score 90% while the topper can score 95…”… I don’t know what happened to that poor guy (let us call him X to preserve anonymity) who was at the bottom of the class… what would his dad have told him?

He normally used to be around the 50-70 range (when normally the topper would be in the 90-100 range). It would have been difficult for him to have that quantum leap to catch up with the topper, unless he did some Business Process Reengineering… (but I guess he was too young for that kind of complex and abstract thoughts). So our X plods on through school barely managing to scrape into the next level, having developed a rhino hide from his dad’s charades rendering him impervious to the empty threats of his school teachers… while let us say I manage to put in that little extra effort (also called sacrifice) by squeezing time from my leisure activities into that bottomless pit called study time and somehow manage to close in on the topper by the time I finish school…

Now that hardwork really seemed to have paid off because I finished my engineering and am now a zombie software engineer earning enough money to give back to the government through the other routes of paying tax (after exhausting my income tax limit), with movie halls, restaurants, bike shops, music systems, cablewallas, booze and so on… the guy called X on the other hand, went to study in some college that not many had heard of and into a course that even fewer had heard of… he comes out and starts a creative agency, handling advertising and media planning for big corporates… intellectually challenged everyday as he has to have a plan to earn everyday, he is not a zombie, has better ways of staying energized and motivated than by just paying tax… and his paycheck is normally proportional to the amount of work he does. Now, there are a few zombies that are not completely zombified and so they tend to look at people like X and have mixed feelings – ranging from raving jealousy to unconditional sympathy depending if you are in the early stages of zombiehood or really advanced into it.

It is not just the money I am cribbing about here… it is something more. Let us say that there are people who enjoy what they are doing and people who don’t. It is not just about the money making part… it is something that they feel good that they are doing what they want to do, just because they want to do it.

It is a general observation that everyone is born with some sort of differentiating factor that is slightly more intangible than the finger-print-pattern or the dna. For a lack of better word let us call it “talent”… most people have the privilege of discovering it during their short lifetime, but a vast majority in this category tend to ignore it or play-down these urges to exhibit their natural skills… (now skills is a different meaning in which it can be acquired through years of practice, hence the word natural here). The tendency normally arises from what is normally the peer pressure or even sheer pressure… blame it on parents, teachers, society, friends, media, money, Gandhi, Hitler, tobacco, alcohol, GOD, destiny, Disney… wotever… the fact remains that playing it down has helped it become a vestigial organ like the appendix, which when can take it no longer causes the greatest pain when leaving you…

Sometime back I saw an ad with the caption “the doctor who killed the photographer”… just because the guy went on to become a doc by giving up on his passion for photography, it does not mean that he is a bad doc or a quack. He is a good one, but he probably lacks the zeal in his work… maybe he comes home irritated at having to do something that he does not want to do… or maybe he feels that he is not able to do something that he wants to do… or maybe just a little nagging thought that he keeps feeling that he would have been happier as a photographer…

There are a lot of success stories that I have seen among my friends… almost all that have come about with a great deal of sacrifice, with just a handful that took the path shown by their heart… there was this passionate cricket captain who could score centuries and bowl faster than anyone with deadly aim with dreams of making it to the Indian team… but he had to give it all up for a traditional parents wished engineering and MS abroad… then there is this athlete who wanted to make it to the Olympics, but was made to sit in the same year twice because his teacher felt he was not ready to move yet unless he focused on his studies too… then there was this guitar player who would call himself a rock-star… now everyone else calls him a doctor… then this singer, who is now a highly paid banker, just because her dad was one… then there was this guy amazing at dramatics, but who cares… he now sells soap and the only dramatics he can ever practice is to tell the ugly housewife, how much she would glow like aishwarya rai with a straight and honest face… not even the son of the engineering college director was spared of the software bug – he who could actually make ARR awe at the ability with which he could reproduce his magical music… and I can just go on… most of them in the software business as that is the booming sector for the Indian economy right now… maybe they are all true Indians, putting the nation before the self…

Not that all are sob stories… many of them are happy… though maybe it is an illusion created by their heartless brain that puts a monetary value to it all… quantifying the benefits… and then there were those that followed their brainless hearts (or were forced into following it because they didn’t have the necessary scores), into teaching, into movies, into some computer assembly business, creative art, starting an NGO, research (now this guy really had a talent for studying and he did it because he was passionate about it), law, sports commentary etc… and it can go on, but the list is very short… I don’t want to embarrass myself by letting it end abruptly…

Maybe I should have worked myself in the opposite direction to catch up with the guy at the bottom of the class… maybe I should have ignored my parent’s ambitions for me… maybe I should have stubbornly refused the amazing salary offered to me upon my graduation… but maybe I am not in a bad situation after all… the world probably needs my skills more than my talent… maybe my skills would give me a better standard of living that my talent can only give in my dreams… maybe my brain is right and my heart is being stupid…

The generalization here is not that mediocre performers normally end up being the greatest achievers… statistics do tend to prove that, and more and more such kind of misfits are proving the society wrong…if it hadn’t been for them we would not be having stuff from windows to relativity theories… there are some high achievers who do make it big… the point here is how many of these high achievers tend to fall prey to social pressures to do what others expect them to do or just follow the herd… they should realize that it pays to unbelong and these mavericks are the actual change makers…

To all who have missed the train of opportunity and are lost in the own quagmire of disappointment at what they have become… there maybe justifiable reasons to what has happened and probably have no regrets… maybe just that small itch that we can scratch away… or hire some one to scratch it away…

the sixth day

When I began my odyssey 6 days back, people told me I had lost it… “me of all the peoples wants to go on this regime??? that was crazy!!!”… I was asked not to take an emotional decision and urged to use my sense of reasoning – commonly called the sixth sense which is a USP of the humans… (it is because of this that we are so intellectually superior to animals… much ahead of our closest competitors with dolphins and chimps at positions 2 and 3. Have you ever seen a dolphin play NFS underground with even half the dexterity I display?)

And frankly after the first session I really did feel that way… never guessed I would survive to see this day. But I am alive and taking each day at the pre-dawn time.

Ok, to break the great suspense… I am off into a self generated fitness plan to build up my stamina… so am jogging early in the morning (thanks for the applause and I am deaf to sneers)… for this I have entered into strategic partnerships to make this plan a success. I have found a couple of guys who are more dedicated to the cause than I am, and would passionately wake up at 6 am everyday and go for it; so passionate that despite my early morning reluctance to leave my bed, they would still come back the next day… that is the secret of successful partnerships.

The coaxing out of bed was the toughest to start with. My heart with its stupid conscience telling me “you promised” and my evil mind talking me out of it “it is just verbal”… finally I did make the move and man was it cold. You cannot expect much warmth from the pre-dawn haze just on the horizon (never seen it for a long time, in fact I don’t remember seeing it). On the first day it was a modest beginning – just 3 rounds, almost breathless at the end, just about to drop dead. But pure grit brought me back to my room.

My body initially didn’t take it seriously (as most others). It probably assumed that I was trying to spend some excess steam or maybe just a one day misadventure. The next day when I managed to land at the jogging track again, the truth hit it bad and it didn’t take it well. My body used to being pampered with a diet that is filthy rich in cholesterol and the luxury of just lazing around at any time of the day without having to expend too much of the energy just could not accept this change of plan. Rebellion was in the air and in my calf muscles – I could not walk for the entire day without using my facial muscles every time a shockwave went up. But I managed to pull on and the next day I was back… though this time I really needed to be kicked out. I could hear my partners contemplating a cold water shower right above my head… and that sounded an alarm in my head to open my eyes.

Day 4 and day 5 went on just as the others, and things were settling into the normal routine – my jogging partner would come to my room and wake me up, I would reluctantly trudge along to the track, do about 5 rounds and be back in the room in 20 mins.

Day 6, was when I realized the pact that my body and mind had signed up for the betterment of both. I was up at 630 and realized that my partners in crime had not yet come. So I waited and decided to spring a surprise on them and got into my running shoes and waited… and it was a long wait…

For about 15 minutes I kept my excitement contained and waited… but still no sign of the others. So I trotted upstairs, half expecting that they have gone off earlier and I had not been able to hear their threats of cold water too… the dreadful thought seemed proved rite when I opened the door of their room and found only one bed occupied… I decided to sprint to the track, just to keep the routine unbroken… the sun was already spraying its hue on the horizon and I was getting paranoid and I felt heartbroken that it is already over… then I realized I was in the wrong room…

I went over to my partner’s and knocked… out comes my groggy partner and with a surprised look… REVENGE is SWEET…

PS. I can’t take too much happiness as my heart is beating too fast already. I am back to the old regime of my partner waking me up.

D:2

dhoom2

starring suzuki GSK-R1000K6, GSX-R600K6 and GSR600K6, great locales, great babes, putting-latest-bond-to-shame gadgetry, stupid police, muscular men, and of course abhishek, ash, bips, hrithik and that chopra dude whose dad made the movie...

movie tkt - 180 bucks
auto - 30 bucks
coffee - 36 bucks
bunking class and bird watching before and during the movie - priceless...

yup i am excited... it is that way when u expect something and the movie actually lives upto your expectations, however low they might be. this movie is probably the return of the adulthood for hrithik... he really looks as good as a sexy hunk should... damn sexy and smart... ash (if u watch closely) actually drools for him in a couple of scenes (it might be mistaken for wet look lipstick). he is that smart sophisticated intelligent muscular athletic thief who steals for the challenge of it and not for the money... yeah yeah so wot is different from D1's John Abraham... well nothing actually hrithik has great abs too... but then i don't like the john abraham... and hrithik dances well too...

abhishek bacchan is his usual grumpy exterior soft interior self... and his nagging wife is comfortably pregnant at home so that he can romance bips... even if it means only for half the movie... adn in the second half he tries to bash ash, but hrithik does not allow it coming to the defense of his girl... wait i am day-dreaming... sorry...

the chopra guy is his usual funny stuff... but this time he has a pistol in his hand... man that is dangerous... there was once a joke about what is dangerous and swings from tree to tree... it was a chimp with a machine gun... this guy handling pistols is not safe... he was shooting aimlessly... now bips was shooting too... and that is what i call a touch-a-woman-can-only-give kind... she shoots a design into the practice bullseye...that is sharpshooting...

coming to the girls, they both like dolls and think like it too... bips is reduced from a sexy looking police officer with a special talent for shooting great designs in dummies, to a bikini totting beach babe who falls for the chimp, oops sorry the chopra dude... and ash plays the negative role, where she doublecrosses and triplecrosses hrithik and finally succumbs in the end to love...

now the music score is awesome too... the screeeeeeeeeeeeeeamm of the bikes and the banging of the drums (seems like they copied from southie gana-song) is just too good... what with hrithik and ash and bips and the chimp dancing away - truly their hips don't lie... and man can hrithik dance - his solo parts are truly mind blowing...

starting from namibia deserts and shot in different scenic spots across the world like brazil and mumbai, the pic is a treat for the eyes... but the way they use these truly blows your mind off... the sands are used for surfing and the mountains for bungee jumping... and the last scene when hrithik's bike jumps to its watery grave (oops, but i hate tragedies and don't want people to see them too). There are amazing stunts here that would put bond to shame... and the disguises that they come in are also truly magnificent - i dint know that adults could disguise themselves as kids... now that calls form some serious make-up...

some of the bloopers i wish to turn a blind eye to are the silly looking stunts that are attempted hollywood style, but remain bollywood isshhtyil... and the absurd stupidity of the policemen... those are like really irritating... i do agree hrithik's disguises were too good, but his gadgets are there for everyone to see... and people don't even notice that whatever they were guarding is missing... the star studded cast had to have that many songs and they are all there complete with all the disco music adnd lights and dancing girls in shorty shorts and guys with sparkling hairgels... in fact the whole movie gave an impression of a 2 and half hour item number.

overall i just loved this movie... though it is a tragic end, it has a neat twist at the end... no, the bike is not saved sorry (what else do you think could be a bigger tragedy than a hayabusa plunging to its watery grave... there is no justice in this world)...

warning:
this is only a personal prejudiced opinion. for the true picture, i advice you watch the movie. i do recommend the red lounge. my friend complains of a stiff neck in the economy class because of the uncomfortable position in which he slept.

DHOOM MACHALE (once again, if possible at a cheaper rate)

irrational opulence

Recently I had been to Tiruppur – the knitting capital of India. It would be heartening and disheartening to note that the cloth and often the garment itself for major brands like reebok, nike, adidas and many many more have their origins here for a fraction of the price at which it is bought off the shelves. This town (yeah it is still a town), and its surrounding towns and villages have a predominant occupation as either the textile industry or farming.

I could not digest the information I gathered on this town, based on a lot of hearsay and eye-seens. The people here are hard core business men… the business is flourishing as this was an outsourced business long before the word outsourcing became a common household utterance in our country… some of the finest cotton yarn is produced here and the worldwide brands pay a premium for these yarns and the cloth manufactured… actually the only contribution from these brands is the brand name… so truly a brand is a brand is a brand…

The people make huge profits and own big houses whenever there is a windfall of profits, but in case there is a bad luck and one consignment of the company results in a loss then the very same guys are reduced to poverty – but without loss in spirit. Earlier he might have been traveling in a merc E-class and now maybe a tvs-50 (yeah these mopeds are still sold here alongside the 100 color option scooty peps…) but he still travels…

On the flip side, the city is totally polluted and the ground water is colored from all the dyes. Traffic is bad on these roads with smoking trucks and buses plying these roads with overloaded cargoes of those expensive brands. The basic necessities are either expensive for those who can afford it or carcinogenic for those who cannot.

It is funny that such a rich town is so undeveloped in terms of attitude. This town has had a favorable economy for decades as Indian cotton and yarn is supposed to be of the best quality. At this kind of money exchanged, the town should have become a huge financial capital of Tamilnadu eating up Chennai in fame… really what is there in Chennai except for the government? This is maybe one of the richest zones of Tamilnadu but the people here have not come out of their cocoons…

The city still has open drains and many houses still manure their farms directly… they use tractors and heavy farm equipment, but still spend very little for their own travel convenience. The transports used mostly are 30-40 year old breaking down trucks and buses spewing smoke all over the roads… sometimes it makes me wonder if the black roads are actually due to the tar or the smoke settled over the ages… I really could not believe my ears when people said that the premium and pure petrol actually screwed up the engines and reduced the life of the vehicles.

The people who drive the vehicles are excited to own the steering wheel for the moment… in spite of the reality that they don’t have a valid license to drive, let alone kill, they own the roads and consider it a sin to adhere to the speed limits, or even twice that. One-way signs if at all they still exist are ignored and the roads are just barely wide enough to support traffic on opposite directions to cross each other and most often the outside of the vehicle is out of the asphalt… many of them don’t even have the asphalt and use the swampy mud that soaks up the rain water and moves deeper into the earth… the roads are often neglected and there are potholes at blindspots on the long but unnecessarily winding stretches…but still these are the roads that has produced the heritage of the Narain Karthikeyan… not the straight broad stretch called the “Mount road of Chennai”.

The kind of facilities that are normally accepted with even half this kind of wealth is conspicuously missing… I cannot find any coffee-days or shopping malls, the theaters are the old weather beaten moth eaten proud 70MMs… the food in the restaurants are good, though the hygiene factor is nowhere to be seen. If anybody has been following the personal hygiene rules taught in primary school, they would give out twice of whatever they have eaten. The romantic-time-spending-under-soft-lights fancy restaurants are missing… however the normal restaurants pamper you with whatever food they have… the reason usually being the importance attached to food rather than the customer-is-king concept.

Even though these extravagances are missing, the extravagance is not totally missing. People own mercs, lexuses and land cruisers. To quote my close friend from a nearby town – there were only 3 mercs at the time of their introduction in India – one owned by some business tycoon in the north (probably the ambanis, I don’t remember) and 2 in his town!!! Similarly after the major metros, the famous international standards icici bank opened a branch in this area even before visiting many major cities. People do get those jazzy bikes and cars and trucks… but you can still find that this has affected only a very small part of the population. The majority still relies on the bullet for the mirazdars and the tvs-50s and the bajaj m80s for the middle class transport.

Gold is something that the people here are usually decked in after their dazzling silk and polyester saris and dhotis. Of course the fact that Indians still revere gold above their husbands may be one of the principle reasons for their spending in gold. But the opulence is displayed only in the metal and the material and not in the quality. I doubt that anil ambani or azim premji would invite any of these business families to their dinner parties even if these businesses were richer than them – actually it could be true, the richer than the popular business houses part, that is.

Despite so many popular engineering colleges around the towns, they still lack the basic primary education infrastructure… and some industries do proudly sport the board “No Child Labor” (yeah right it is only some). The broadbands and the internet is still beyond the reach of even those who can afford and appreciate them… oops did I jump the gun, before talking about the black and green screen boxes also known as computers… some houses use perfect lan-cords with brand new connectors to hang clothes to dry… communication still usually happens through the government post offices and at the other end of the spectrum the all pervading cellular networks. No, no GPRS and stuff… just plain voice mail…

I am not cribbing about the lack of infrastructure at this place. Nor am I saying that the bigger cities that have adopted the western culture are better off just because they satisfy some of the above requirements. What surprises me is the attitude of the people here. They are earners and not spenders. Whatever they spend on is usually not the priority number 1 of the city dwelling people of similar income levels.

This town is a classic case of money can’t buy everything. For everything else they still don’t accept mastercard.

Finding the right call

Get up at 530 am… not that we had slept well the night before… the time was mainly spent cramming some facts… and mostly studying the fin theory… it is time to move now… the huge waiting room is calling… it is a mad rush to beat the crowd at the common bathrooms… shaving hurriedly and finishing off the other chores… dressing up in the best possible clothes… deos, perfumes, moisturizers and hair gels and what not…

Reach the venue at 630 well a little later actually but in time to wait… we find that some of the comfy corners are already gone… taken by early risers and enterprising people who had the foresight to see what was coming… small sacrifice to beat the long waiting times… good thinking…

Somehow I find a place near a friend who does not normally say no and shamelessly sit in the chair next to him and plug into the network and power sockets… and begin the endless wait for my name to be called… it is not an unknown waiting time wait… I know that my turn will not come for some time… but it is agony waiting like this…

One by one my friends move out of the room when their name is called and come back smiling… they also have finished the race even before it even began for me… frustrating… I look at the watch… oh man it can’t be… just half an hour… I have been waiting for only half an hour… and already I find a battalion moving out of the race… so what if they are people who are not in the same league as you… so what if you knew that your turn will anyways come only later… but the subconscious frustration starts getting on your nerves… another 1 hour later the watch has only moved another 15 minutes…

Then one by one, your group’s turn comes… but still there is a guy called Murphy blocking your way… you are probably the last one… the queue moves painfully slow… this time you actually wait a real 2 hours before the name is called… and you meet your nemesis…

The formidable force meets the unprepared fear… the duel lasts for a torturous time… you don’t know whether you are at an advantage or not… no clear strategy no game plan… and nowhere to run and nowhere to hide… you just parry the blows as and when they are showered upon you… you make an occasional feeble attack but then mostly it is a defensive… then you are returned, an exhausted and tired warrior, breathlessly recounting the nightmarish experience to the next gladiator about to enter the circus…

Now the wait is even more agonizing… I don’t know whether there is another fight scheduled or when I would meet my doom… you don’t know how much longer… I just wait… a couple of more fights and I let caution to the winds… I don’t care what happens or how I fight, my only aim is to get out of the fight alive… no strategy seems to be working and I am just glad to walk out alive…

Then there is the long period of lull… you cannot move out of the race… and there are other warriors to give you company… but then you grow impatient at being unoccupied… there is still another half day to pass… and you know that you have signed up for no more encounters unlike many who just about are participating in all the jousts… but still you find the wait irritating… you cannot quit the race yet, unless the results are declared officially after the dope tests etc… but that is actually the work of Mr. Murphy again… he is holding up the declaration of independence for some silly reason like proof reading…

Finally, I can hear my name being called as the winner of some tournament… I cannot recall the events, so don’t ask me for the strategy I adopted… I don’t have any… and I am in the full mood to quit the race then and there… but then I want that one fight that would actually give me glory… you may call that committing suicide, but I would say that I am human too and want to have my shot at fame…

PS. But somehow better sense and Murphy prevailed and I did not waste my energy fighting another losing battle. I quit early the second day.

PPS. For those who did not understand what the above post means, I am sorry you have missed one of the greatest b-school life's experiences.

Lage rahoji…

Another +ve point about missing the train… a great movie… and what is to be appreciated is the originality of the script (it is claimed to be original and I have accepted it at face value).

Circuit and Lucky (arshad warsi and boman irani) two real good characters in the movie… impossible timing and till the end… VVC begins the movie well and ends it well and in between throughout it is in the same well… Amazing humor sustained throughout the movie and the senti scenes actually bring tears to your eyes… though a bit exaggerated as in the whole of Mumbai crying and all that stuff… Arshad warsi’s drunken expressions and the dry humor can never be replicated anywhere else… and Boman is the man – right from his punju ringtones to his photographic passion…

Vidya Balan is a gorgeous fresh face, brings in that homely and modern blend that most guys today crave for… funny she is not on many desktops and screensavers yet… but as she claims, maybe people do think she would be out of reach even on their screens. But credit given for the choice of the actress, though she does nothing much but form the main cause of the movie…

Sanjay Dutt is unbelievable in his role and it is quite difficult to replace him from that position… if this movie is gonna be repeated the prequel way and made into a multitude of indian languages with the regional actors, they may as well do justice by putting in a little effort in identifying the fit…

A full time time pass with a great message – don’t study too much and don’t put too much night outs… I don’t actually want some dead guy influencing my life… what happens if you are stuck like the guy with the beautiful mind but actually have lost it… anyways it was so convincing that Gandhi almost seemed to move into my good books… but that is another story…

On a scale of 1 to 5, I rate it a 7… it is too good and certainly worth the money… just can’t wait for the vcd/dvd release…

It is a full time lage raho with the movie…

Vettaiyadu…

Finally I guess tamil cinema moves into the shoes of bollywood shooting a major part of the movie in the US of A… but apart from this if at all a fault, the movie is an amazing amalgamation of music, songs and editing… throw in the right cast then you get a super duper block buster…

From the first scene the pace is extremely fast and you get to adjust your sitting posture only during the interval… even then you are cursing the break… kamal plays the role of the super cop with ease… the package is perfect… he is the right portrayal of an experienced confident intelligent super cool cop…

The plot is good, though could have been lifted from any bloody crime novel, and what actually helps it is the delivery… the shots are very fast and the camera does not delve on irrelevant details like the scenery and the buildings… even though it is New York I don’t remember seeing any important locales… even Jyotika somehow seems to blend in instead of acting as a separate mandatory but useless fixture…

The 2 villain boys are great too, playing the psychotic duo with casual panache… cold blood personified… but they are still kids… the precision with which they go about their revenges, even the minor ones, is spine chilling… and the best part is that no reason is given for this hobby of theirs… they just want to kill… scary thoughts…

Kaakka Kaakka and now Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu makes me jealous of police officers… I want to become an IPS officer whenever I see this movie (funny I never wanted to be a superhero though I did watch krissh and superman…) they seem to have all the fun bashing gangsters and shooting them down… and the respect they generate from the people around them… the aura that surrounds them …

I think my sister made the right decision by watching it twice… a great positively silver lining in the grey cloud… really made us feel better for missing the train…

PS. When you want to say something nice about something the words are so less, whereas when there is something nasty, there is a flood of adjectives.

Picnic @ Andheri

I have a new found hobby… watching local trains while eating burgers. I will tell u how to have a great picnic in pursuing this interesting past time… and it really helps as a stress reliever especially after a grueling placement session and you are in the mood to make a hurried rush home to get back that lost energy…

First choose the right city… it has to be a great city like Mumbai where you have a lot of narrow roads to convert into one ways for the light vehicles like autos and bikes, but you can let the buses pass through them… make sure that all these roads are generously sprinkled with potholes… ideal setting is heavy rains and all the potholes filled with slush and other yuck… but a post rain road will also do…

And the station should be miles away like Dadar for example and you should be catching the local at a place like the Andheri station… and since you are not willing to waste 4 hours traveling in the comfort of the cab, you leave enough time to catch the train to your home; say about 1 hour… hostel to local train station should take about 20minutes, and from their to the outbound trains station some 20 minutes… so we actually have a contingency planning for about 20minutes when you leave with the luxury of 1 hour ahead of the departure time…

Make sure you have some loose cash… this helps make some rash decisions… like jumping out of the rick hoping that your other ticket mates would be in a position to carry the luggage… it also helps to follow blind and stupid instructions like buying the dinner while waiting for the rest of the ticket’s shareholders to arrive… also helps to find a “very” helpful water conserving vada pav vendor to help wash the slush on the trousers…

Another helpful factor is to carry a lot of luggage… and also heavy ones at that… this helps in generating that appetite for the dinner bought in the previous paragraph, by lugging it up and down the foot over-bridges and dodging hurdles like mindless people who pop out of nowhere like in a video game… unfortunately you don’t have the laser ray gun to vaporize them… and they don’t just stop with an “ow”… a great speech follows…

Once you reach the platform on which you hope to board the train, stand at the place where there is the maximum probability of either first class coaches or the ladies only coaches come to a stop… actually this is not too much of a problem, because it is statistically proven by a great visionary called Murphy that it is going to happen that way wherever we stand… though I would like to assume that god loves me and wants me to travel either first class or with all those lovely ladies, I am not willing to take that risk and trust someone I have not seen all my life… to me Murphy is the known devil and god the unknown angel…

All said and done, you should find a place to sit… so wait until the crowd clears and empties itself into the local train… now you will find a good clean stone bench to sit on the platform… but the reaction should be fast and you must plonk onto it fast before the next batch of the crowd for the next train comes in…

So, now that you have got yourself a nice cozy location at the local station from where you can watch trains come in and go out, pile up the luggage in front of you and start eating the burgers (you have done the cost benefit analysis and found that by the time you reach Dadar, the train would have left anyway)… it is an amazing and exhilarating feeling – eating burgers with a lot of ketchup while the train towards your home is chugging along on its journey without you some 20 minutes away… you feel real light hearted because you are doing something really worthwhile instead of traveling home… and you actually observe the crowd thinning out in the subsequent trains (after your home train’s departure time).

PS. Some hypocrites may actually call this bad time management… but that is not true… we only say they don’t stop to appreciate the little pleasures of life…

The Art of Laziness

What the hell happened to me over the last few days that I never even logged into blogger? I will attribute it to blogger block… or the fact that I could find excuses to not write… I just wanted to do nothing… just lie around in bed and watch movies… when hungry order food… then continue watching movies… you understand that you don’t even have to move the fingers to type…

I would not call myself lazy… I will just call it extremely optimized mobility… I won’t move unless absolutely necessary… I will not move any part of my body unless absolutely necessary… for example if I am in a position where my eyes are watching my laptop, I would not move my head to talk to my neighbor sitting about a foot away from me… no I will chat… because I use only those muscles in my body that are already in the inertia of motion… the rest are in the inertia of rest… why expend energy unnecessarily…

Laziness as everyone calls it and EOM (Extremely Optimized Motion) as I call it, is a virtue… everyone should adopt it… it saves a lot of time and brings in great efficiency… Let me try to make some points here so that everyone can understand…

I don’t do more work than absolutely necessary… breeds mediocrity is the general verdict… no it does not according to the theory of EOM, you don’t want to do more than absolutely necessary… that includes avoiding rework… now any smart EOM guy would do the cost benefit analysis and realize that a little bit of extra effort today in doing that small piece of extra work saves a mighty huge load of effort in terms of harder rework… got it – a defect free delivery and great initiative in going beyond the specs (actually the specs were written by a lazy bum who left out this part where my initiative came in)

Sometimes I don’t speak out/up/to/beyond/on/etc just because I don’t want to open my mouth muscles and exercise my tongue muscles… I just listen… and man do people appreciate a good listener…

I go to classes early in the morning only because I have breakfast… you see the clever way in which I try to achieve optimized motion techniques to get 2-3 things done with one action… the prof is happy to see a sincere guy attending his classes… I am happy that I get to have my breakfast… a win-win situation for all.

I very rarely go out of my house… “great outdoors enjoy the fresh air”, everyone says… “you can’t even run this errand for me on your bike?” , says my mom… but don’t they realize all that petrol I am saving by not running my bike for simple errands…

Well coming back to the bloggers block, I attribute it to my EOM… I found a trigger on Friday… until then I thought a great thought leader needs to rest his most overused muscles sometimes…

Serendipity or Stupidity...

Before you start thinking I am gonna bash another movie again, I am sorry to disappoint you guys… I had watched the tamil remake of it too “JayJay” the only difference with the $5 bill replaced by a 100 rupee note and the flights with the Indian railways. I really liked that movie and it was a nice feel good movie which made me feel good… despite its predictability…

My discussion here is about fate… or rather the belief in it… or even better my disbelief in it.

For a background of the movie, it is about a guy and a girl who accidentally meet by some coincidence at the same point in space and time. And they spend the evening together enjoying each others company until things begin to get nasty. The girl, who believes in karma, (i.e., you will get whatever is predestined and all that crap), leaves him without her contact even though she likes him and the guy has been courageous or shameless enough to confess his liking for her. But they start a game, a dangerous one, leaving their fate in the hands of fate (somebody whom they don’t even know), hoping that someday each one would find the other person’s artifact and also actually get in touch.

Now though it appears to be a beautiful romantic adventurous thriller, it failed to appeal to me in that genre. I am an MBA and I do possess a very high self esteem quotient. I believe I control my destiny to a very large extent at least. And I live in the present never trusting the future… something called hedging I guess (if I am wrong, srk please correct me in private, not in the comments). So the best thing that they could have done was to spend the rest of their lives together from that moment on…

I don’t see any logic behind it but rather I see it as a shirking of a decision making responsibility… if by luck we are forced to meet again, then let us get married and let us call it a bad luck later. This technique is also called “passing the blame” and here “lady luck” will not talk back rite…

In today’s competitive environment I apply to some 20 companies for a job, even though my placement cell assures me of one. Now for a life partner, would I not attempt to apply to some 3-4 at least? Just think of the pure wastage of money – how many 100 rupee notes can I give away? I would rather spend 6 times that amount on two slices of cake for dessert in JW Marriott at midnight with the girl… where is the ROI immediate guys… I am not a VC and don’t intend becoming one to write off such wasteful investments.

A long time ago, when my dad wanted to cure me of my laziness, he used to say “God helps those who help themselves”. From that day on I stopped trusting God; I only expect help from humans, most often my mom. But here it really makes a significance. After a lot of years (though the movie says “few” years only) of seeing regular signs from the almighty, the 2 characters start realizing that they should have accepted the PPO than wait for the finals, as the profile was much better there (sorry for the jargon guys, but it is autumns time). So during those 2 days when they start the search, they both get the artifacts delivered into their hands at almost the same time. And they do some how manage to get in touch and finally live happily ever after… I looove happy endings…

But what really pisses me off – wastage… those years of wasted companionship… the wastage of another girl’s life and dreams when her wedding is called off… the wastage of another guy’s romance… the unnecessary violet suit that cost 700 dollars… the 95 dollar hideous looking purple tie…

So the next time u think of living by fate think again… it is ok to wait for someone whom you know will come for you, but it is stupid to rely only gut feel demand forecasting. It is better to take a wrong decision and make a mistake than be too stupid.