2008 - Moral of the story

2008 is about to get over. In various ways, this year has made a dent; dent on my financial position and a dent on my sense of security. But there is a moral to the story. Let me explain.

2007 was a happy year for all who even remotely put money in the market. Sensex would just keep going up and up until offcourse this animal called gravity, woke up from sleep and realized this sensex thing seems to be defying it and needs to be put to task. So it did and the sensex after enjoying the view from top of Patronas towers in early Jan 2008, fell hard. So hard that it is now at a level where you can accidently step on it. And yes offcourse on its way down it burnt a hole into several pockets, one of which was mine. Moral of the story - If something appears to good to be real, chances are it isn't real. Exit before the reality bites.

Terror reached a place this year, which it had never reached before. Our Psyche. We are scared; scared of unattended bags, of political rags, of buses and trains, of parks and planes. Cheeku warns me against going out to Malls on weekends just to avoid crowds. Its a constraint on freedom, to curtail plans for such reasons; feels pathetic I know but even after doing so, one never knows if something would go wrong and when. Moral of the story - Live now, in today. Don't worry about the past, come over it. Don't worry about the future, it may not come over.

One of the good things to have happened to me this year though is that I did this basic course in Art of living on Anusha's Recommendation. Generally, the recommendations given to me take quite some time to translate into an action plan; nevertheless my turnaround time for this one was just 3 days. I don't know where the motivation came from for me to bike at 6 in the morning in freezing Gurgaon cold to attend the session consecutively for 6 days, especially when for the first 5 mins after waking up everyday, I debated with myself whether to go back to sleep. The course indeed is good and recommended to one and all. And yes offcourse, I am not getting paid to write this.

 

2009 is a kissing distance away now. In various ways it's going to be a life changing year for me. I am not jumping in with any resolutions; i will rather just be myself and i hope i will be up to it. Merry christmas and happy new year to all of you.  I will be in Mumbai for 31st and looking forward to it. Have fun. See you in 2009.

Random Ramblings

Yeah, I know. Long time, No see; Not busy, just lazy. So let me make this short,

• I have discovered youtube. Not that I just flew down from Solomon Islands after 20 years of isolation today, just that over the past few days I came across some nice videos on various subjects. To give you an example my search strings include "balance sheet" "CDO" "steve jobs" "bharti" "russell peters" etc. all returning pretty good results. (You can try "Monica Belluci" to find even better results)
  

Check this one Bharti Ad out - it gave me goosebumps

• I saw this video for the first time today, that too on youtube and not on TV. I am not watching much of TV. I used to love my morning tea with the news paper, not any more. Welcome, google reader. I read my cricket matches on cricbuzz. (this is one not out of choice, thats the best one can do in office). Though, I am still not eating fruits and vegetables in email attachments but yes Internet seems to have arrived in my life

• I saw Dostana. Liked it for lighthearted movie. Some genuine humor. Ironically, We were two guys (the second letter is 'u' not 'a') watching it. Junta around found that to be in the spirit of the movie and gave us those Oh-my-God-this-is-gurgaon-not-miami looks !

• Indian Cricket team is on a roll. After flushing the Kangaroos down, they are just wiping out English. They seem to be taking this colonization thing very personally. Good for the viewers though !

• Sensex is down, downer, downest, downester, downestest.... Everyone is loosing badly But then In a capitalistic economy, the gains are privatized and the losses are socialized. (Thats government bailout for you in a sentence.)

• I love Google Chrome, Fantastic browser, darned good speed. Minimum Hassle. Oh and Just that you know I dont work for google, I actually work for a Financial Services company and I am glad I am writing this in present tense.

I can't figure it out. I really can't.

I had a childhood. The one that I and so many boys like me wasted in growing up. I still remember how, in moments of deep thought and introspection just after watching a Stone Cold Steve Austin deliver the stunner to Brett – Hit Man - Hart and winning the match, we had decided WWF was it (now WWE). Yes, that's where we make our careers. It was high time there was an Indian in WWF. Preparation was on. We had already decided our entry music to the ring. It would be Tipu Sultan title song. I mean all we needed to do was drink lots of milk and go to gym and convince our family. Alternative careers weren't that much of option though, in those times. We would still try. But then…

Movies happened, I mean the day I saw Amitabh Bachchan in Don. I knew that IS it. That's where I should go. I mean WWF is fine but then if Undertaker beats me up then that is serious damage to national pride and my bones. (I did not know it then I was leaving the beating to be taken by Khali. But yes he is having his share of fun enjoying terrific popularity in some unique entertainment channels like Aaj tak, India tv etc.; Unique in the sense that they only entertain themselves.) No but I had to be in movies, I had to become an Indian Movie Star wearing white shirt, pant, socks, shoes and under…. like Jeetendra, leading a super cool life, swing around the garden with heroines which even with parents watching was fine. And yes even if I do get beaten up by the villain, it's only for a good cause and more importantly its fake so no damage to bones and I even have a sure-shot revenge in the end. So all was set. But then…

Cricket happened. In a few days I saw world cup 96 quarter-final, Ajay Jadeja smoking Waqar's bowling and Venkatesh Prasad & Amir Sohail telling things to each other the meaning of which I didn't used to understand then. Passion, Emotion and a billion people seeing you on screen. That was it man. That's what I wanted to do. I was sure when I could hit my friend Raja and Rinku for six… sometimes, I could even win matches. I knew I was born for it, born to open the batting for India and yes bowling as well. I was dreaming about it often and I was day-dreaming about it even more. But then…

Reality happened. It was my 10^th class exams. Trust me exams were the worst thing mankind could have done to itself. It drives a compulsive urge in your parents to get the TV cable disconnected and to throw you head-first on to your study table. I hated history. Why do I have to know when Raja Ram Mohan Roy was born? Is his birthday more important than mine? Did he know my birthday? When I grow up history gets prohibited. But then, Exams came then results came. There was limited damage done. But somehow parents got super serious. They gave a power bomb to my WWF career; hit Cricket out of my mind for six and my movies flopped even before they were made. Graduation became single point agenda.

Time would eventually tell me, that I would do engineering and even an MBA, will get a decent job which will make my parents reasonably happy. That I won't be swinging with heroines in the garden, but I would have a wife that I would really love. May be in the future, perhaps time would tell me that I have a decent carreer, a nice family, visits to nice places and a hopefully peaceful retirement. But then would time ever tell what I really want to do with life or would I, like so many in this world, would have lived my life not knowing what I really existed for. That's the question that is standing between me and a peaceful existence. But I can't figure it out, I really can't.

MBA is over: In the hindsight…

Convocation got over a few days ago. I got my degree. I am an MBA now. I wonder what that means. One thing it does mean is that I am going to be paid some more than I used to before I had this degree, which supposedly means I am much more intelligent now then I was ever before. Which sounds like a highly arguable assumption to make given the total lack of physical (or intellectual ?) evidence to support it. But hey !! Stop right there. Don't even start to think of comparing my IQ levels with those of chickens or even worse Ms R Sawant coz even the idea of it is extremely underwhelming and totally depressing. Like Air and God, there are somethings not to be seen but are believed to exist. So for my sake and for the sake of shareholders of my recruiter, believe my intelligence to exist.

Jokes apart, Two years of MBA have been totally worthwhile for reasons going much beyond a mere payraise (which is why people take to MBA but never admit though ;)). I gained friends for a lifetime, people whose absence in daily life I will surely miss. While keeping my text books in the refrigerator ensured, I only know full forms of NSE & BSE but not much beyond it. Classroom any way is the last place to learn in an MBA program. Going out and participating for some events especially to Bhubaneswar taught me things that no text books or faculty can teach. Things not to do with Porter, BCG, deferred tax or below- the-line but to do with integrity, healthy competition and other basic values of life.

Being married and doing MBA gave me a hands-on something technically called work-life (or work-wife?) balance. Though during MBA I tilted the balance towards my life and wife, I do now know that one needs to constantly prioritize between job & home. You see it's just about weighing the pros and cons. While in a fix, all you have to do really is to make a choice for a lesser punishment. It may be between a miserable multi-tab multi-colored excel sheet and a more-expensive-than-you-can-afford necklace, or between main-mummy-ke-ghar-jaa-rahi-hoon and Be-there-tomorrow-and-day-after told to you by your boss on Friday.

I think I now understand a few tenets that modern world corporate live with. For work purposes, you & your colleagues are a team but when it comes to bonus you are contestants of a zero sum game; To work is pain and to get work done is more pain etc. Post MBA I also feel I understand more things then I used to about people. I still can't fully understand myself though. Really.

Convocation

Of Minesweeper, Pac man and Rubic cubes

Right O ! Here is an almost 26 year old, BE and MBA guy about to rock the floors of the corporate world starting July. CEO's can fasten their seat belts or that plush leather chair could just disappear from underneath. Competition, just watch out. Quite a few of you would be out of business soon. Investors, hold your money tight for now. A right investment in July could be your sure fire way to millions…

Ding Dong. The bell rings. Its 8' o clock. And guess who is at the door to win a 3 day 2 nights trip to Mauritius, fully sponsored (by you that is). Yup it's the house maid. Its time for me and Cheeku to wake up, for her to spend another day at work and for me to fix the few remaining pieces of the picture which would finally read MBA.

While I sip my morning tea, I go back to the cerebrally conceived optical illusion I had before opening my eyes to the blaring door bell (for the idiomatically illiterate it's the dream I am referring to). Quite a dream, so much enthu and aspiration I think. The kind of 'hit-the-floor' energy that Tamil movie dancers exhibit. (They tend to do it quite literally though. In the latest flick down under, the item number performance measured 6.5 on the Richter scale.)

Warning : Heavy stuff ahead.

I had it all, the enthu and stuff. Had is the key word here. Whether I still have it as big a question mark as the US presidential election. So where did it all go, if at all it has. At least it's not as prominently present for me to be as sure of it as I am of the outcome of a Mayawati Vs Vishwanand Anand Chess match. So does it recede in others too? perhaps yes. May be with increasing education and age, the proximity to reality and real life issues increases. Perhaps, not the best thing to happen to an individual's aspirations. Not that it makes you any less skillful or equipped. No way. I can still make good timings in minesweeper and make at least one face of the Rubik cube as I did in times when the gas cylinders at home and other such stuff was outside my scope of work. But just that with time gas cylinders do become your responsibility and one is required to make all the six faces of the cube simultaneously. That's when it becomes so difficult to cross your best scores in pac man and you can't go beyond world 4 and 5 in super Mario. This is where the question marks of uncertainty play battle-city with your enthu and stuff.

But that's not it. Quite a few can make all 6 faces of the cube (even with eyes closed. You must check out Guinness prime time on AXN). I might do it as well, with some perseverance. Let's see, only time will tell. Wish me luck and don't blame for a heavy head please. I warned you.

(Apologies to those who are finding it difficult to figure all this out. In all probability you haven't played enuf video games. Quite something to have missed I tell you.)