Gluttony

Common things are commonly misused. Be it the common man, common sense or commonwealth, they're all being messed with. Don't worry, this isn't another rant at India's expectedly abysmal preparation for one of the biggest events to ever happen to the country; instead, this is directed towards all those elitist middle class tweens with top-drawer brains who got into good B schools. I dedicate this rant to all my fellow IIMites who dared to dream, and now dare to dream beyond.

Look up and aim high. I totally get the ambitious nature, and I applaud your commitment. Maybe you were born with a gifted mind, or maybe you were gifted with a work ethic that would make Sasha Grey and Grandmaster Yoda wet their pants; either way, you had it in you, you went to school, and as your CV now undoubtedly reads, you consistently performed in the top 3 of your class till high school. Then, when you hit the nice rosy teen years, you were told, 'beta abhi padh lo, baad mein aish karne ka khoob mauka milega.' Ignorant and committed to competing, you study. You study really hard for engineering entrance exams. You don't hit on the opposite sex, you don't know what a party is or how to dance, heck, you stalk people online in order to get a chance to hopefully someday communicate with them in person. You study, and you study well. You make it to an IIT, an NIT, JU, VJTI, or whatever other ridiculous acronym you dreamt of. The problem, however, is that you don't really know why. The even bigger problem is that you don't really know there is a problem in the first place.

Now, you got into engineering. Your parents and your cousins are proud, peers are either proud or jealous, and you think you made it. But then you get to your new home. And you realize how meaninglessly small a fish you are in the sea. You are told, not for the first time, 'beta abhi padh lo, achhi job laga lo, phir zindagi set ho jaayegi.' They say ignorance is bliss, but I have my reservations. You put in a reasonable amount of effort interspersed with free-riding moments of uselessness, work your way through college, and then you suddenly decide, 'Hey, the money's in finance, let's do that.' So, you give your MBA entrances, you take up jobs at banks, not even realizing for one moment how you went from 'just wanting to get good grades in school' to 'becoming a genius of a techie' to 'deciding money is the ultimate satisfier' to 'I wanna be a banker'.

Then, you make it into the big time. You make it to an IIM. Once again, you are the big apple of every one's eyes, you are the blossoming cherry, you are the star shining all the way through from the end of the universe. You get there, and there's 300 more of you. You suddenly remember Mr. Darwin's celebrated words. You also discern, gradually, that you could get a lot more money out of this place than you previously understood.

Also, you are a 23 year old virgin now, and over the years you have understood the need for a partner; you have also understood that your panache, or lack thereof, means that the only way to get laid is to get mighty rich and perhaps eventually apply to some matrimony bureau.

The goal is MONEY. Not money when you are forty. Money now. What do you want to do with that money? Invest it, make more money. And then? Make some more. Ka ching.

So go, give it your best shot. Take up that I-Bank job. Make somebody poor, make somebody rich, but above all, take care of yourself.

25 years into this tunnel being led by malnourished carrots creating illusions of light fast approaching, you continue to dangle along behind the dangling vegetable. I am not trying to say it is wrong to aspire to be rich, I am just imploring you to aspire long term.

The Indian dream fundamentally is to stay in a perpetual haze, and to keep dreaming. The vertical tunnel keeps sucking you in like gravity, and you keep sucking up to it's projected glory. Wake up. As the adage goes, even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat. The rat that wants to eat, eat and eat, without knowing what it wants to eat for. The rat that wants to bite a lot more than it needs to chew. The glutton.

P.S.: To all those who thought up nice juicy wise ass RG comments, piss off and Rest In Peace.

In loving memory of a true visionary

“ April 8,2003So the latest volume of my spiritual recordings begins on this new kind of diary. What is it that has compelled me to repeat what I think I have stressed all along?I feel I am the centre of the whole universe. What are all the events of the past and present worth except that I feel cognisant of them and am affected or influenced by them. My past flashes before me in strong kaleidoscopic images. The memories of Dickensian childhood and youth clash with the romantic visions of my amorous experiences that have become the very stuff of life for me. How do I pass through alternate experiences- sometimes living the past totally and at others being able to look at it in the manner of a disinterested observer analysing the thoughts and feelings of some other person.The world-view has become radically different from what it used to be. It seems the Darwinian law of struggle for existence and survival of the fittest is the ultimate and final one and compassion, pity, recognition of the rights of others are concepts that are merely tolerated as a symbol of our advancement towards civilisation. It seems to me that there is never a conflict between justice and justice- it is always one between justice and injustice or one injustice against another. This is the conflict that rages eternally in the human soul and war is a large scale manifestation of it.How glibly do we pass from professing high moral ideals to the mundane task of doing all we can to protect and promote our self interest? With the bard I feel compelled to exclaim “ What a piece of work is man?” ”

Recently came across this scribble. No ordinary scribble this, but the last scribble of a great man a fortnight before he passed into the higher dimensions of the world above, the last scribble of my grandfather. A legend, albeit an unkown one. In my humble opinion, the greatest nobody who nobody knew. I wanted to give a tribute to this legend, but no tribute is tribute enough to be attributed to Sri O.P. Mittal. You may not been here anymore, but the legend shall live with me forever.

Codename Quotas

Yes, my ardent followers.. i have just obtained yet another nickname to add to the numerous glorious, and not so glorious ones i have donned in the past.. Quotas.
Weird name? Not my fault, i didnt give it to me. But i see a bit of sense, and quite a bit of vanity in it, so i decided to advertise it to the rest of the world.
Now, Quotas isnt supposed to show me as a person who has an immense array of quotes that he uses in his daily jibberish.. but its more about being a person who lives by an immense array of quotes.
The name of the person who initially suggested the name shall not be mentioned here, because i am sure some of you might want to murder her for giving my ego more feed. And anyway, this isn't about her.. as always, its about ME.
So then, what quotes do i live by? plenty. A lot of them are the commonest ones that everyone knows of, but noone pays heed to just because they are too cliched. I have learnt, though, that every so often, its the cliched things that end up to be the right ones. Anyway, i will leave the deciding of which quotes i live by to you, in the meantime, i shall fulfil my duty as Quotas - help the world see the quotes they may live by.
Basically, for ages now i have been trying to look for a way to be able to write consistent blogs, but was not able to find of a way i could maintain my interest and the readers'. The readers part may still not hold, but then, quoting some great person - you never know, till you know.
Now then, here's Quotas, giving you the quote of the day for today :



"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic".

Now, i know you have heard this quote before, and you liked it when you heard it and all, but then you just ignored it, and life went on as it had been going. Time to delve a little deeper into it this time..
Life, we all say, is all about success, happiness and respect. Happiness, we know, comes if you get respect and have success. Respect, comes from success. So basically, Life is all about success.
Now, what does this success mean? Success means, to be better off than other people in your department. Yes, it isnt just energy and mass that are relative to each other. Everything in the world, atleast in the human world, is relative. Whatever you do, is good if you do it better than the others do it. What i mean is, if you buy your first ever television set, a grand, brand new 21 inch Flatscreen Onida KY Thunder with a digital remote and all.. you would normally be very happy.. but then, if the very next day, 'Baaju waale sharma ji' buys a Sony 42 inch Plasma, it takes away the joy the new TV bought somewhat, doesnt it? "the grass is always greener on the other side" - pun intended. Thus, its all about what you do, with reference to what others do, that counts. So, if during our struggle for independence, our other leaders also wore weird dhotis, and no shirt to speak of, and rested their burdens on a crooked stick, maybe the Mahatma wouldnt have been the Mahatma, he would have been just another one of them. Thats the hindsight of the quote for today.. its all about doing it alone, and doint it differently from the rest. If everybody's dying, big deal.. but if you're the only one.. you ARE the only one.
So my suggestion, follow the quote.. 'cause if it werent worth following, it wouldnt be a cliched quote. And how do you follow the quote? Be different. Colour your hair a bright silver and gold colour, wear pants that are translucent at just the 'right' areas, use the language that you wouldnt expect anyone else to, do things in public that will make people notice. Afterall, thats what life's all about, being noticed. So go on, get noticed, and send me a thank you chocolate when your mission has been accomplished.
Hence our new journey begins.. to be continued shortly.
Till then folks, Wahey.

Where's Home

Wahey people.
I always have been a bit of a nomad. Dad's job makes sure i dont have my feet firmly rooted to constant ground for more than a couple of years at a stretch. I started off being on permanent national tour when i was just 2 months, when we moved to Lucknow from Delhi, and its been an evergoing movement process ever since.
One of my recent moves was not one induced by dad, but one i had to make for my own career (yeah, life finally seems to be forcing the 'growing up' on me) I moved, around July 28-29, 2005, to this big college in this small town. NIT Warangal, the institute is called. Ever since, i have been undergoing a major continuous process of drastic change, physical, mental, emotional, intellectual, and whatever else way in which a change can be made. I wouldnt say i love the place, but on-campus life is pretty decent. Its just the town and the food thats crap. Anyway, out there, there's a norm which makes you a part of the family of the state you come from. So, i am a part of Bengal. Which is quite fine, because as some people have mentioned, a large chunk of my heart and soul lies in the city of joy. I have spent 9 years over two stincts in the city, which makes it the closest place to home that i do have. So then, nowadays, i come back home only for a week or two, or a month at most before i return to beyond the edge of beyond : Warangal. So then, when i come back, i expect to spend a lot of time with my old school pals, or my new college pals, or my old building pals. But this time, when i came back, i found out, that my daddy dearest had bought up a lovely little new apartment which we were supposed to move into.
Now then, we are preparing to move into our 'new place'. So, we are moving out from this place i am supposed to call home, into this new place i will soon be supposed to call home. But really, where is home ? When i am down there in uni, i am supposed to call it home. You cant just ask me to call everywhere home.. home is supposed to be a place coincident with your heart right? I am getting a bit confused nowadays. Is this place home? is the new place home? is the room in uni home? or is my ancestral home in delhi home? It seems these days, everwhere's home.. as the czech expression goes : "Všude dobře, doma nejlíp."
Everywhere's home, and home's everywhere. It is a good thing, it is a bad thing, it is life.. so got to do just what i always do aye? get used to it, get on with it.

ok maybe im sounding a bit depressed in this blog or sommat... i aint actually, it just came out that way.
Comment away ppl.