thinking and writing

 Someone talked recently about the project we were working on and how my contributions were leading the very core of the ideas.

I was named a deep thinker and driver of thoughts. I remember that I actually felt uncomfortable at what could be a normal reaction to praise. But when I reflected on it, I could see much more inside that event.

While I could see where the deep thinking is visible, I also could acknowledge that it is just a single minded activity that I can get myself into it. It of course has a lot of implications on my ability to do a lot of other things at that time, and even much later. I attribute my ability to think deeply to a lot of things, but more recently I can attribute it to an significant reduction of social media distractions, involving in non fictional and abstract topics requiring my full brain activation and a bit of intellectual interactions with like and unlike minded colleagues and relatives.

Some years ago, my mental model of myself had very little space for other people and the nitty gritties of their needs and contributions to my own thoughts and actions. At some time ( possibly around the time my son was born ), I started realizing how much a network can boost one's productivity, creativity, effectiveness and resilience.

Over the years, I have found many content on such lines very appealing and I have even managed to bring some interesting books like "Man's search for meaning" and "Anti-fragile" into my re-reading list. I couldn't have imagined of doing this in my past form. 

Of course, one's mental model doesn't change as a whole so quickly. I now am in a special place, where I know that I have changed  my preferences, reactions and beliefs and aware of the continuing changes. Currently I see many of the abstract patterns converge into more concrete actions and events, with surprising results at times. These are really interesting time, filled with possibilities for me to use.

Feeling grateful for being part of this huge machinery of life.

Monologue on leadership

 Pardon the unedited monologue

Q: What is transformational leadership?

A: Before we talk about transformational leader, "who is a leader?", your 5 year old asks. 

First answer : A leader is who inspires to take initiative, to be brave and forget pains/obstacles for time being to help focus on achieving a goal.

Often, in tough or uncertain situations,  a leader has to encourage to just take a positive action and trust the people to keep finding short and long term goals to pursue.

Many a times people just need that nudge to come out of comfort zones, and mental plateaus to be able to see the need to increase or redirect their energies and tactics to get to a goal.

Sometimes leaders are just good listeners who help employees recharge and rejuvenate on a long and arduous journey.

In military environment, leaders at the lowest ranks, NCOs etc are exceptional role models for the larger group of fighting men/women around them. They are expected to not hesitate and show case examples of initiative, bravery, perseverance and ferocity. Top commanders, on the other hand are expected to be visionary, flexible with decisions, and inspiring confidence and trust of sub-ordinates.

In a corporate environment, a leader at the top is mainly expected to display and communicate a clarity of purpose of the organization or an initiative. But all levels are expected to showcase fairness, openness to feedback and always gunning for victory. Sometimes leaders are personally relatable, and that bonds the team closer to them. This is not always feasible due to personality differences across cultures and geographies. In such cases, appealing to a common set of values is enough and the remaining is site-specific bonus.

It is also important to communicate the why part of any decision, process or policy at the top level. This reflects onto middle managers, without which they tend to close themselves to feedback from their sub-ordinates, creating a low trust environment. More often, it is the lower layer managers who have to face the feedback of the technical team which often doesn't align to the top management visions. This can be mitigated by direct access to leader's voice and forums, plus careful communications with expected resistance planned into it. Some of these expected resistance or pushback can be read from carefully crafted and regular centralized surveys. But often it is the lower layer leaders who need to be aware of the team pulse and key developments, and communicate a gist of it regularly up the management channel.

Such a channel should exist for managers to communicate to their managers about informal matters. It builds trust and encourages low level managers to be creative with their team's specific situation instead of losing out on need for homogenization.

Also, with all this rambling, I realize that leadership is not something that can be 100% perfect all the time. And I think I can see some factors that influence it, and that explains why there are so many different materials, forums, thoughts on this through centuries of civilization, and we still see a need to keep working on this.  Leadership is a fully human concept. It is not exactly defined, and the leadership qualities expected change based on the leader, the organization, the business, the times. 

Sometimes, everything is going fine. Then either the leader is changed or has a change of mind, employees change or have a change of mind, business changes or the entire world changes. It is in this vortex that we find a need for a shining beacon of leadership at all levels of an organization. While there are timeless principles and qualities of leadership that can be trained, coached and practiced by organization, the highly valued leadership skills are based on self-reflection and talking to people at a given moment. Leadership served for one instance shouldn't be forced to be used in all situations.

Negotiation and communicating fairly is a key skill to be learnt as a leader. Placing all facts for perusal allows opening up the trust, and you have avenues for negotiating to overcome mental blocks, and resistance to change. But this flexibility is also required of the manager when the blocks are factual or technical, requiring to rethink the whole approach and redirect the many pieces to fall in place.

Oh yes, another point in that is that leadership and administration are two different things. A leader can be a pioneer or a manager. Both require different skill sets and shouldn't be swapped freely unless the person involved is mentally ready for this. Pioneers hack through harsh jungles, seek new paths, lead the team, but their work isn't often neat or orderly or sustainable. But without them, we are lost. Managers on the other hand are good at organizing and administering multiple complicated pieces and sustaining an efficient operation. It might consist of challenges as well as repetitive actions and consultations, which might disillusion the pioneering leader. We also should accept the fact is that at times, a leader has to showcase both abilities, and so aspiring leaders would do well to observe both styles, identify the stronger side, enforce it and also work on strengthening the weaker one.

Another thought is about trying to classify your intended target for a change communication. There might be supporters, indifferent ones, cynics and open rebellious ones. Here is a strategy for each of those:

a) Supporters -> Talk to them privately and learn their reasons for supporting. If they align, use them as ambassadors if it helps within the team. Sometimes, their involvement polarizes the others for certain topics. You might also discover amazing reasons for support which you wouldn't have anticipated.

b) Indifferent -> Talk to them to identify their concerns. Often it is reluctance to change, stemming from past injustices. If possible address or correct those. If not feasible, offer them the benefits of moving on and encourage regularly to come over to your side.

c) Cynic -> This can be quite tough as usually cynics are well prepared. One can engage in an intellectual debate, inflate/deflate their egos and get them on your side, or go through the process for indifferents with an open mind to show that you care, and you should genuinely do so, if they have a weird and different opinion on how things should be. You might find some rare gems there.

d) Rebellious/Scared -> These are the folks who often expect the change to be damaging to their career, reputation or more. Care must be taken to calm their mind with active listening and genuine interest in resolving their problems. If issue is imagined, careful explanation is important without pushing on behalf of management or promising punishment. It might work in short term, but will fire back in the long term.

Leaders in tech

In tech, we value good approachability, ability to convince, negotiate and motivate. Ability to accept mistakes, reduce conflicts and maintain a positive outlook is also key skills for a leader. And not to forget, ability to motivate people to take calculated risks without fear of being judged harshly, and enabling a culture that inspires technical studies and using that input for leading the product and organization.

Managers shouldn't or needn't be always in a position to guide or coach technical experts. They need to collaborate more. This allows both of them to operate in a win-win model. This raises a question of whether technical folks can also lead, with the full spectrum of a manager, by providing leadership to other non-technical departments like HR, finance, quality and meeting legal criterion. That’s quite interesting to find where that boundary or overlap of skills, wide knowledge and attitude of allowing multiple opposing ideas to co-exist and shape the final decision exists.

Most importantly, in such environments, the key thing to note is when/how the individual experts/departments are able to come out of their limited role and perspective, and discard their feeling of self-importance to make some truly remarkable decisions for the organization. Can this be done without a central hinge point of a leader? That is, can a decentralized team of leaders pull this off, and sustainably so as an extended question?

Wow, this entire exercise is a challenge to the mind, science and philosophy.

Inspirations for this monologue written in a single sitting

a) Man's search for meaning Victor Frankl

b) Prince by Machiavelli

c) Built to last

        d) 7 effective habits Stephen Covey

walking through a bramble bush

 some sort of impasse seems to be built when things don't exactly go at the same pace as I wish them to.

The resulting frustration is sometimes responsible for leading me into various other paths. Of course I am not trying to absolve my own thinking, feeling and aware brain of its responsibilities in finding meaning, keeping up the tempo and trying to enjoy life.

But quite often, the multiple paths or intentions tend to get muddled up. Specifically, if you look at the simple goal of trying to be happy, comfortable and trying to be super productive, or even perfect. These are kind of built to conflict at various stages, as trying to do something or achieve something, often makes us move from a particular state of mind to another. And all movement requires a bit of stress, attention and focus to get it right. This is in contrast with the staple amounts of peace or comfort at staying in one point.

The feeling gets stronger and stronger that we are not going to be the perfect <anything> , as per any criteria of perfection defined without touching my very specific needs and persona. If anything, in order to get a fine balance between my own definition of perfections and the external triggers for action, there is a complex interplay between these two forces. It is not easy to state the importance of any one, or to predict how in a particular moment, a decision may be taken.

But the external practical world craves stability and predictability, and being actors on this stage, I too have developed a few skills in providing these to others, and am capable of judging the same of others, to some extent. To claim mastery on these, is akin to accepting the folly of accepting the need and the resulting abilities in living with those rules. It also gives and internally thumbs up to continue boosting those attributes. 

Let us be clear that I am in no way already favouring one side of things. I might be just going a circuitous way to say that these things require a fine and delicate hand to let each side take turns winning, or sometimes generate completely unique and wild things by combining with each other in various proportions and manners.

That unpredictability and the bound in the stride that it provides is afterall the elixir of life.

Am I too good for myself

Well, here I am, opening this Blogger interface after long long breaks and gaps.

The question in the title is the one I always find myself asking, when I am back here.

I end up browsing through my past articles and give up on writing anything.

I think I am holding up my past work to myself as the heights of my achievement. Some parts of me wants to believe that it is indeed the best I was. But I am now questioning that notion, because..well.. you know..I think I am the best in the current state always.

After all, I am here in the current state only after being in the past state, which naturally makes my current state a superset of my past states too. So why shouldn't it be better than the past state, which doesn't have the benefit of hindsight that my current state of mind has?

So here is to a new beginning..

a thought in the bottle

Savouring the past glory is not the best thing to do.

So get on with the writing, ok?

Ok boss.

But what do I write?

Who wants to see?

Earlier, I used to imagine readers waiting for some content which has elements of travel and adventure, of intrigue, or simple stories.

Now we are too tied up in our lives, and loads of entertainment options at our fingertips.

Who would want to read all this stuff?

Now, does that mean we are back to the old days of the internet ( famed, but never experienced myself ) where most people largely ignore small blogs. And if there are people coming up to read/comment etc on your blog, then you have an equally lost soul or someone coming out of complete boredom.

I mean how many people could be reading all these boring stuff when they have their own lives to deal with?

Such are my thoughts that I hereby commit to the note in the bottle and set adrift on the vast vast digital ocean.

It starts with a crushing feeling

Edit: I put a stupid title as I couldn't find anything more truthful

Considering the enormous pressure of tasks, responsibilities ,and things in general that I get to deal with of late, I thought I should write about them.

The key events are : the Crushing feeling, the sinking feeling,... (more to be added whenever I realize it )

A crushing feeling of sorts is what exhibits itself at these points in life at first.
And that crushing tons of forces turns into a sinking feeling only when one's ground isn't hard enough to hold it up.

So, at the crushing stage, you know that you have mismanaged either schedules, promises or priorities to let that happen. But then, that is the point to re-align priorities, find spare willpower and exert all forces against the crushing forces. This action, when done well at this stage with focus, gives tremendous boost to productivity, and results too are generally good. The reason for talking about results too early is because it is an observation. An observation which has a confirmation bias that when shit happens and you manage to get out without falling into the pit, you generally would have done better than the average lot who avoid shit altogether.

So there it is;how to handle a crushing feeling. If not handled, what could happen, you ask?

Well, some of them lead to a sinking feeling if the crushing lasts for a while and you haven't really done anything to alleviate it. I would first be concerned why you didn't do anything. Are you incapacitated due to multiple crushing issues, or is the sheer intensity of some of them so high as to blow your defensive fuses, or did some of them trick you using a bias and made you fall quicker than usual?

There are specific solutions to each of these types, and more to be found for any new types that do come up. Anyway, we are only concerned with the ones you can't handle at this stage.

This brings us to the sinking feeling. Now if this is in spite of all your efforts at the early stage, then boy, you have something to deal with. If not, go back to those steps (I know, I didn't write any steps) and try all of them until you get over the sinking feeling. Well, for trying well you might even cut down the sinking feeling to a crushing one, which you already know how to deal with. Voila.

Now for the ones that haven't reduced significantly, or haven't at all. I would now apply all cognitive tricks rather than try to face it emotionally, as most of the emotional tricks would already have failed. Now cognitive tricks are neat little lies that you tell yourself( quite like those you tell yourself everyday anyway), to deal with nasty truths( or lies that are hard to disprove ). I won't be able to give a generic trick here until I figure out how to write about them in that fashion.

Tips? Be smart, think wacky. Question the improbable and impossible ones, without worrying about consequences of unraveling even the most closely held beliefs. After all, most of the pain comes from closely held beliefs on ideas, people, things, and sometimes yourselves. Just be careful on what you are unraveling. So how to be careful without worrying about what it leads to? Well, in my software mindset, I can ask you to keep a separate namespace, or virtual environment to do the experiments with the hazardous material. If it doesn't work, you should have rollback stacks which allow you to forget what you saw inside. What is said,seen and done inside your namespace, remains there. You commit it to main DB..ahem neurological system only after a period of trials,contemplation and building enough checkpoints and identifying potential symptoms of early disasters.

Now, some of you might think: "I get the problem, but what did you say did for it?" or "Damn, how do I do that mumbo-jumbo?". Some of you may not even catch what is being talked about all through out. If you are in the first group with questions, which I assume might be the case with most of you who have read it till this point, I can help. For the others, well, not time yet for you to grasp this. Skip.

How to build yourself a nice HAZMAT(exciting term) area or sandbox(meh) environment?
Well, you do that simply by allowing generally toxic ideas to be formulated in your mind without judgement, and extract useful, positive information/messages out from it. Now, if you haven't tried it before, or have a fragile and emotional mind, I would tread carefully with these suggestions. What works for me may not work for someone else. Same way, what works for a serial killer's mind doesn't work for me. So take my advice with that in mind. I am not asking you to think of murdering someone you dislike, or doing something nasty beyond your normal range of aggression (God save me, if my reader turns out to be a psychopath, and doesn't read beyond this step).
Now, in order do that activity without damaging your own conscience( though I do admit that I haven't been able to make 100% leak-proof HAZMAT area, often poisoning my mind for a short period at times with that activity ), you need tools and belief systems adaptations.

In terms of tools, I can throw some terms like meditation, deep visualization, keenly observing own responses, reactions of people around, and general changes in mood/tone of yourself and people you interact with. Also being able to visualize your mind as being outside yourself helps you see yourself objectively and then on questioning provide subjective inputs which help you in diagnosis. It helps if you are generally suspicious or curious about anything in the nature, people, yourself, and all mumbo jumbo without judgement on sensibilities and external validation. Just play cool.

Belief system adaptations would be a major one if you have beliefs which disallow such practices. Moral codes, fear of judgement, believing in external validations, stereotypes etc. obstruct your ability to lift heavy mental weights with different and opposing ideas. So I have observed that people who are shunned from certain sections of society due to whatever conditions of non-compliance often have a very high mental resiliency, and if applied correctly they usually have a huge mileage in life.
But, don't try to force it. It is the non-compliance part that is important, not the getting kicked out part. If you are willing to not force a compliance just to stay put, then it also means you believe in your own methods, without which there is no way for you to go ahead. These paths seldom have guides or gurus to lead you.

Of late, I have felt that the path of certain religious orders, mystical sects and a multitude of non-compliant groups that defy definitions are similar in that sense. The availability of a teacher/guide is a boon as well as a bane. If not chosen or acquainted with the right person with the right level of independence given to the individual, its all a waste. Most of the frauds happen because people choose for compliance even in the exotic wings of life which are meant for non-compliance.

What a comedy. hu ha ha

Reflections and Refractions - Part 2

With the ink flowing, one must quickly commit the thoughts to paper.
Otherwise the ability to think and judge would catch up with those words and dry up the ink as well.

1st June 2019:

In movies, before we jump into the new frame, new location and start the action, we need a break.
So did I and my family. So we set out to the very old frame, my hometown.

One might imagine a visit to ones hometown as a regular affair. But if the house is locked for almost a year, and visits are only 2-3 days long every year, one generates quite a lot of yearning for the old, dusted and capped memories and emotions.

Boooring...

Anyway, to not lose the focus of the story, I will just cut short by adding that it was a welcome break for my family. For me it was nothing but pure oxygen after surfacing from a deep dive. I needed it badly because I knew I had to go for another deep dive soon after.

With the razor sharp schedules of professional commitments and the house shifting, I didn't waste whatever time I got to recreate my life, one day at a time.

Once back to Bangalore, it took a couple of days filled with 12hrs of meetings at office, followed by packing to actually shift out. It actually took another month for some sort of relaxation and sense of settlement to arrive at our new doorsteps. In spite of such fluctuations, the new house gave a lot of joy due to the cleaner locality, better safety, conveniences, and presence of lots of open soil to work upon.

Maybe it is in the genes, but there is nothing like a walk among greenery to climb over any adversities in life. What else could one ask, if there was also a piece of soil to give life to? We all enjoyed the activities involved in cleaning up the yard and setting up a working garden in a matter of couple of months. Most hard at work was my father who saw this as a replacement for our now neglected garden back home, which he severely missed while being at Bangalore.

Before

 

Once the new schedules, routines and rigours were set in place, accompanied by crazy timings at the office, .. short pause.. there was still no time to relax. It was time to take life to the next level, and preparations were afoot at office and home on the professional and personal fronts respectively.

Soon with the crab having its tummy filled with one victim and having decided to let go of another for the time being, we started having more bright days. This was in spite of the wet and bone-chilling season. We too having been hardened by the events, decided to move on. Some very old support roles were withdrawn and it was time for the real responsibles to take over without dependencies. It was time to grow up, spread the wings and jump out of the tall tree nest.

So far, so good. That's what I can say about things which are in progress, and can take years to get a proper hind sight. Rays are still in the process getting bounced around like crazy, creating reflections,refraction, mirages and sometimes even hallucinations. One shouldn't take a judgemental view at this stage of life.

I badly want to squeeze some more events in here, but the paragraph above filters out most of the content. But let me cryptically add my appreciation for myself for taking some right decisions based on some random whims, and keeping those habits alive to date.

Now I should be allowed to shift my focus to more abstract expectations for the upcoming year based on reflections of this year.

First of all, the hard events have hardened the expectations and one only needs to guide the mind into accepting new responsibilities. So those should be relatively easy to accept if pushed upon.

The next thing is that events have shown that whatever happens, there are certain things in my primary responsibility. I cannot hold any one or any event accountable for not doing what I myself expect of me. So clearly, I need to spare quite a lot of time, passion, efforts and attention to do my best in the upcoming year.

There might be some boomerangs for short cuts taken this year, but as long as the mind is ready to accept it and walk over, there is no use crying over a swollen temple.

Gonna be a fun year ahead.
15th Dec 2019

Have a couple of weeks ahead, but for me the year is actually over for some weird reason :)

Reflections and Refractions - Part 1

Even though hind sight is perfect, all sight is based on reflected rays.

Some are reflections of what happened, but most of them are refracted at multiple surfaces before it gets reflected back to the eye.

There is no real way to know which is the case.

2019- The year that began just like 2014; With a broken leg, bedridden, dependent on others, biting down the pain and humiliation.

Anyway, as months passed, the pain of lying down gave way to pain of attempting to learn to walk, whereas the humiliation of depending on others just reduced as self sufficiency crept in slowly. It was a mix of self-sufficiency, self-pity, new hope, forgiveness and gratitude.

Through the year, as life always promises, events weren't simply monotonous or predictable. They weren't even in shades of white,grey or black. Each revisit and reinterpretation could give new colours, hence making the activity useless if one is only interested in painting them statically. As mentioned in the Kannada movie "Lifu Ishtene", those are DVDs worth watching again and again, giving various aromas & tastes at various stages of life.

One judgemental aspect is that those days give me a good idea of people around me and how the relationships are structured. On the other side, it also cut me off social connections & activities, isolated me from the buzz of work place & sent me into a personal disarray.

I even managed to catch up on my reading with some crazy reading schedule, having nothing else to do for couple of months. I was able to squeeze in a couple of months worth of reading into a couple of days.

But overall, I could say that my pain subsided and limited itself to some weird set of nerves, strength regained, dignity rebuilt & overall outlook towards myself & people around me transformed. This feat required the constant support and patience of my parents, my wife, my son, the household help, my physiotherapist, my books, the doctor, some friends and my physical trainers later on at the gym. Anyway, with me able to do mundane activities without support, 'officially' I had recovered, though I knew there were miles to go before I really recovered or made up for the incident.

But,  short pause.. ,( there is a always a but and a short pause ) before the pain reduced and recovery started, whatever hopes I had that things could only get better, were shown to be misplaced. This was done by a series of inroads the great crab made into my family, coming uninvited as it always does. With my own flesh throbbing with pain each day, I could really not accept the full physical and mental agony of those whose flesh was being bitten off daily, bit by bit. Even more difficult to deal with was the inability to extend a helping hand or leg for that matter.

My family, who had accepted the task of patiently taking care of me while dealing with my absence from key responsibilities, were dealt a double and triple blow with these culinary habits of the crustacean. Those were tough times when the days looked gloomy, but most importantly that was also a reminder for me to speed up the recovery cycles and stand up to face the new invader.

Needless to say, weakened already by physical and mental agony, the new invasion led to many sleepless nights sunk in gloomy thoughts and dealing with apprehensions. It took quite a bit of distractions by office work, physical exercises, and social visits to break out of this labyrinth. Those were one of those moments where only action can generate enough break the chains that can restrict even a mighty elephant.

Looking back, one can always paint even the smallest of struggles with glorious adverbs and comparisons to give a self satisfaction. So I might be giving myself too much credit where undeserved, but maybe some credit is due, I let such statements be.

It was in this condition that I turned my focus to the minor yet irritating affairs of the rented house in which we were living. I could easily make a list of problems like dirty water, cockroach infestation, crowded & dusty surroundings, absence of clean parking space, regular spikes in maintenance costs, arguments between residents, a case of theft etc. These are just regular matters in life in affordable rented apartments in Bangalore, and I would have let it be. But given the many problems we were facing, this was one that was under my control to address. So I jumped at the opportunity to make a difference.

So we quickly, without much preparation set up a plan to shift the house to somewhere 'ideal'. It was stressful to negotiate with the owner who didn't like the idea of a breaking of the agreement along with with neighbours who had tentatively agreed to take over for a relative, and finding the ideal home in the ideal location with 10s of filters. But I must admit, those involved planning activities with my family were rewarding distractions from the otherwise gloomy days. We really enjoyed the activity with even my parents who built networks with elderly people in the locality were able to identify lots of key properties and localities.

Needless to say, within a month, under a hectic set of negotiations, we were able to make a withdrawal with minimal losses. What awaited us was a refreshing new location and a new way of life. I was and am still thankful for the decision to move from that muck ( actual & imagined being merged here for creative purposes ) at that critical point of time.

30th May 2019

*INTERMISSION*

Living under a rock

It is when you are involved in a task that usually your mind conjures up strange stuff, the shower thoughts being immensely popular already.

It was during one such moment that I thought of someone who might have been living under a rock for the last one year. If that person( here its myself ) comes out and gets back into civilized life,certain aspects would need a detailed explanation by those around.

Credits:http://activerain.com

I would definitely be surprised by the lowered rates at which I'd be getting mobile internet in India, thanks to Jio whose weird-one-year free packs would take me equally long to understand.

Thinking of getting cleaned up and buy a few groceries if I head to the nearest shopping mall, I would have the surprise of my life when they wouldn't accept the currency notes from my wallet. I would even have a terrible time if I were to be incarcerated for owning money!!

Supposing I didn't get arrested and managed to buy from my card ( whose pin I surprisingly remembered ) and head to the petrol pump with my vehicle, I'd be surprised to face the pink notes and the daily changing rates concept.

Faced with a currency shortage, I would walk to my bank's nearest ATM and find that all ATMs in the vicinity are either super crowded or out of cash. After half an hour of waiting in the queue for another bank's ATM when I manage to get in and swipe my card, I would be horrified to see it complaining that I need to visit my bank before I can do this.

Infuriated I walk into my bank's crowded branch, wait the queue out and finally talk to the personnel, who informs me that I can't get any cash out without my Aadhar card being linked. Drat!

I visit a friend, beg him to withdraw cash from his account and he informs me that the bank now charges withdrawals too. Having seen so much, I find it surprisingly easy to digest and get my purchases done and go into a deep sleep.

Within a week, I stumble upon these significant and complex changes:-
a) The cow has replaced the tiger as the national animal and it is easier to kill a tiger claiming that it is a threat to the cattle population.

b) Secularism has become sickularism and the thought of being equal is highly despicable in society
c) There is a clown leading America into disaster

d) Trolls are the best source of online humour
e) A monopolistic power rules over entire India, almost
f) All news is fake

g) The newborn state of Telangana has taken flight, and there are many more in gestation and conception stages
h) People are talking about metros, highspeed trains, hyperloop and what not..
i) There are more things being banned than being invented
j) Exchange deals seem to look like a thing of the past as GST( its the Indian Area-55) kicks in
k) America isn't everyone's blue-eyed boy anymore
l) Europe has turned into a refugee camp
m) Britain is no longer part of Europe!

n) Govt jobs are the fad now
o) We have more entrepreneurs and religious zealots per sq.km to compensate for the decline in large private enterprise

 p) Yo-yo Honey Singh isn't composing anymore, but his inspired versions do!

q) There are more really innovative new Indian startups and individuals making a difference out there
r) More people have become sensitive to balancing development with ecological health
s) The railways have become much neater but long long distances to go

What I am glad (or not so ) hasn't changed:-
a) Prices of things are still increasing

b) The crowd and heat of the cities keep increasing
c) More farmers keep sacrificing their lives and livelihood
d) Number of super rich Indians keep rising
e) Super rich and powerful criminals stay out of reach of law and stay in vogue

Phew!

I think I should return to my rock and shut this mad world out before it floods me with the idiosyncrasies and paradoxes.

lost passion

What is that one passion which you would love to restart in your life again? #lostpassion

The passion to challenge limits.
The passion to define my own rules.
The passion to kick away at the gates of pain.
To not give up in the face of overwhelming odds, and to not take No for an answer.
To just live life, loving all, hating none, holding no grudges.

I wish to bring myself back on the paths which almost always passed through the beautiful jungle streams, and vast green meadows. The paths which also went through steep rocky inclines which kill every muscle on your limbs and squeeze your lungs. The very same paths also stung you with the harshest sun, and made you shiver at the coldest night and often stung with insects, thorns and what not.

I wish to bring back the passion for action on the spur with the wind on my face, blood pumping, and vision clear.

To take off, get lost, get stamped out, defeated and to rise again and touch the sky. Just to get back home, and enjoy life all over again

However content one might want to be with all the good graces in life, one who has tasted the life on the edge, finds it particularly hard to find the green meadows juicy. Weaknesses allow for temporary shift in everything, but fire within just refuses to die. Just like a tiger in the wild which doesn't waste its time on someone else's kills, and takes pride in its own ability to hunt, such people still stoke the fires of this dangerous passion which unfortunately the current society isn't ready to accommodate so well. And of course, to point at others alone is pure hypocrisy.

Ultimately, like the infinite circle of the yin-yang, the conflict between the creators and the preservers will go on forever, and we all perform minute roles to complete the much much larger circle of life, as it goes on revealing its true nature as and when ordained.

And of course - Freedom. In my opinion, one of most hyped, least understood and most misquoted concept of modern humanity.

May you be free enough to free yourself from the misconceptions of freedom which has kept the very concept of freedom lacking in its pure essence, if there might be one such.

Story of a wooden log

Once upon a time there was this fine log of wood. It belonged to a mammoth tree, deep in the western jungles. After being cut down by the woodcutter, it had travelled through dense jungles, various wood mills, on several bullock carts and ships to reach its current place with this carpenter.

It was not a very nice shaped log of wood, and naturally its brethren were all made into exquisite pieces of furniture or sent up to the royal carpenter. At least that is what it heard from the other logs present around it. It, on the other hand was left with this poor carpenter without even being polished once. It held its breath and expected to be picked up, each time the carpenter came up to the storage to find logs for his next piece. Each time it had to be content with watching some other log being taken away.

Due to this nature of events, the log often faced a lot of ridicule from the other pieces. As days went by, the carpenter went on adding the pieces to various pieces of furniture he was making. But this log never got picked even once by mistake.

As the number of pieces started diminishing in the workshop, the peculiar piece often worried whether it will be left alone in the dinghy workshop. It often lamented its fate that when all the others went to large mansions and served their purpose well, it could do nothing but wait in the dark store room for an eternity.

Many months went by thus, and the piece had begun to wonder if it should try rotting itself out so that carpenter would be forced to put it out of its misery. It was on one such dull morning that the carpenter strode into the workshop and instead of picking up the usual square blocks, his hand reached for this one and picked it up. Quite taken off guard, the log started quivering with fear. It thought that the carpenter was planning to throw it away or even worse, turn it into saw dust!

It continued to shiver as the carpenter went to work on it with his tools. It was then that the carpenter picked up his sharp saw and gripped the wood hard, his eyes glowing like fire. Terrified, the wood piece knew its life was ending, and shut its eyes.

A faint knocking and vibration woke it up. It tried to figure out its own form, and was glad to find itself in one piece. But it hurt where the saw had left its marks and some parts of him were now shaped differently. It found itself staring at darkness, but could hear faint murmurs of wooden pieces and after listening intently, it caught conversations that it recognized. Those were its former companions from the same tree. "Where am I? What could these logs be doing here?" - though the log to itself.

It decided to find the answer and shouted out loudly to its kin. When they responded, it put forth its questions to them and to its greatest amazement it discovered that it was now present in the royal court of the Maharaja. It couldn't hold its tears of joy. But yet again kept on asking further, and could only get to know that it now adorned a royal piece of furniture and the other pieces didn't know anything as it had come late in the night covered with satin. So they advised to wait till daybreak to figure out things.

The piece of wood couldn't sleep that night and impatiently waited for daylight. It must have dozed off in the tiredness of all the excitement and woke up with the sound of conch and drums. It could make out hundreds of gold plated men holding weapons standing in two neat files on its two sides, and behind them stood several men and women dressed in beautifully colourful attires. It could make out lines of trumpeters and drummers playing their instruments with vigour as various colourful flags fluttered in the breeze.

Its eyes immediately rested on a cushion seating adorned with gold and satin, and recognized one its kin among the pieces of wood that held the cushion. Quite happy to find a familiar face, it wanted to ask it hundreds of questions about the strange place it was in. But then it saw all the other pieces set in similar pieces of furniture, now lying vacant behind the beautifully attired men. They all seemed to have their gaze fixed on him, and with respect. He was puzzled. Only until the fully decorated and marvelously glittering king came forth and walked towards him, did he realize what has become of him.

Such is the story of that peculiar piece of wood, who had a twist of fate and found its place in the society. And what position would have suited someone as peculiar and unique as it was, other than the supreme ruler's jade crested throne? This story underlines the learning that not everyone is made to serve the mundane everyday purposes of life. There are some who are destined for special roles that call for special skills as well as pains. That is what makes life beautiful.

Adios and have a nice end to the wonderful year :)

a lil sad note from far about my countrymen

I saw three social media bombardments in last one week of having to come back to Facebook, because my real life became a bit boring, not being on my home soil.

first there was the ultra comedy bullshit "boycott kerala" bullshit, and its equally bullshit responses from keralites putting up statuses, sharing punch dialogues and what not.

then the undeniably sad demise of one person who did things right, but the internet was just too happy to forward,share and put up messages of truly motivation value, some bullshit and just as they thought they need to find another "topic", the controversial hanging.  I deeply regret even talking about the two topics in the same paragraph, but social media has found a way to think these are things on opposite scales. Someone to love, someone to hate.

While no one clearly wants to degrade a man we all love, we all have our own rights to do so if we wish to. In the same manner, all have the right to takes sides about someone the public wants dead.
I had my own thoughts, but it ain't so straight to just bluntly to make a binary out of it. Emotions are high, arguments are valid in both sides about various things, but none of them make full sense, as all just want to put their bullshit opinions out there. I have my opinions and doubts and questions too on the procedure as per what I read in the media, but I also am aware that more than me who is just another fellow writing something on the internet, not even remotely affected by the acts of the person, there are people who want closure. Closure is important. All said and done, can we question the law that can be stepped up and down by political sidings and populist needs, rather than by law itself? I am not worried about one hung terrorist. I am worried about the millions of loopholes we have in our system and each public exposure of them should make lawmakers worry of the other hidden ones. That is, if they are even bothered about it!

Now, off late, I have realized that opinions are a very destructive thing when it comes to certain type of decisions. While it might sound oppressing( as it did to me initially), I find this article perfectly making sense. We in our hostel have this one dialogue - "C'mon you were asked to give an opinion, not some bullshit you wanted to say." when someone gives a random crazy opinion when asked about one. That can be excused as amusement in a gang of friends. With the crazy internet and even crazier news rooms, people have taken awesome liberties with use of opinions in place of facts and judgement based on merits that follow certain guidelines. In short, civilization! its like you giving me an "opinion" that 2+2=48 and frigging justify extreme measures to enforce the same and and make a tom foolery about it!

as a country so diverse, so emotional and so prone to being led into things, I find it not very surprising that we keep doing this. many guys write intelligent stuff, good points, mature people. there are also the usual shouters,sharers, booers, haters( thank god, haven't seen any of those in my timeline yet). but with the luxury of being able to read almost all news from the comfort of our lazy beds and chairs, we form so much opinions and are free to throw them anywhere, the shit is almost always hitting the fan!

I personally try to not respond to such things, take things head on and worsen things. I believe my good friends who frequent the social media also have the good sense to realize the damage they do to themselves. coz lives are lived on the ground, out in the open, often in market places and court rooms with their own rules and constraints. you pick up so much negativity and predefined mentality with a few hours of being on social media that can only give you more enemies and get you nowhere closer to solving even the tiniest of problems you tend to crib about.

and while I started typing a small note of protest on FB, i think this no longer qualifies, because I would be putting up the same bullshit that others are. Hence I am moving it here, my personal space for spitting out stuff. Please bear with me, and join my ramblings or give your enlightened advices or throw your stuff at me in the comments. You could even close the page without saying a word. I am grateful :)

how we are part of the system that expects us to spend carelessly

Please read the following article first.

http://www.filmsforaction.org/news/your_lifestyle_has_already_been_designed/

I must admit, I am blown away completely by this guy's revelations. They make a lot of sense. Its fun to think if we all had jobs that were of shorter period or different time, how would the world around reflect it? Think of it like residing in an area with everyone working in same industry. All the industries around would adjust their offerings accordingly. Similar is this person's realization that after his long break from routine profession, he finds many old habits which seemed normal to be quite abnormal.

But what caught my interest is the possibility that the "life" that we live outside our office, is also just a by-product of it. And probably we are constantly involved in buying things we don't really need. And it might just to keep in line with others, or rather basically keep the dissatisfaction at bay. The same dissatisfaction brought about by the huge span of our time taken away by our professions. Its all connected! But still why do we want to buy stuff we know we don't need?

I see that in the past, there were the rich or the poor. The rich had too much wealth and too little to do, ending up doing exotic stuff or throwing their power around buying stuff, taking over , fighting wars etc. The poor had hardly any time to think beyond basic amenities and surviving the hurdles put up by the wealthy. Dissatisfaction was an entirely different ball game back then.

But the modern middle class person who earns enough, still finds himself truly in the middle of new problems. He earns well enough to pay off debts and serve his future generations. Duh, sounds stupid. Doesn't it? Which middle class person can claim he can serve future generations. Well, actually that is kind of true. If you change the perception what is needed for future generation, that is. We always tend to compare our goals to that of super wealthy fellows who end up saving empires for their generations. If only we knew and were assured that we have now is just great, we could stop the craving. Well, knowing what one really wants is an elusive treasure, ain't it? So we just would have to live with not knowing that, and occasionally pursuing things that attract our heart and mind.

We know we like the money we earn(admit it), but we aren't quite always happy with it. Ah, buying that expensive gadget/dress/vacation made life so fulfilling, but again we need to keep buying the seemingly unnecessary goods we see at the market, because the money will grow back, and what good do we do by stacking it up anyway? Isn't it? Add credit cards on top of this to make an excellent argument for spending unnecessarily. :)

I find our lives going around approximately in this cycle, with only slight variations.

While its perfectly ok for human beings to wander and lose track of what they want, I feel petrified by the thought of a huge industry, backed by our governments and people including us, who feed and survive on our inability to find what we want and stick to it. That means not only is our hunt for our satisfaction incredibly tough, we are also fighting a system that involves almost the entire humanity, that can keep evolving to make you stick to your negatives. Make the ads more colorful, mix those sensitive content, talk about stuff that makes you keep turning your hear, every single time. So each time I am fighting my laziness or craving for junk food, I am actually fighting millions of intelligent salesmen, scientists, business tycoons, corporate executives, engineers, and so on who have engineered perfect products that human beings, owing partially to genetic makeup, and partially to effective cultural and economic constraints , can never stop paying for it.

While all that sounds scary, none of these mean that you have to get pissed at things and walk away. Its more about realizing how macro economies rely intensely on our bad habits of laziness, procrastination and unhealthy choices of spending and consumption. Knowing that you are being taken for a ride with flashy advertisements, one should be keen to avoid stepping into this vicious circle when a choice falls through. Taking informed decisions is always better than ignoring the risks and stepping in, and lamenting later.  And in return for not stepping into this vicious circle of dissatisfaction, what you gain is more confident and resilient perspective of you own needs.

If you feel your life sucks, stop yourself the next time you are tempted to buy something you don't really need. You are just feeding your dissatisfied soul with foul fuel to just keep it burning. If it helps, take a break. Don't buy stuff. Create new things. Write about something, talk to people, take time to create new ideas, help people with things you are good with. These are real concrete things that help you solve problems with lack of time, not knowing what you want, being under pressure etc etc. Buying is just buying more trouble if not done with the right intent :)

Sunny Nights

Today is 12th June 2015, and I am writing this from my apartment in Leppavaara, Espoo, part of Greater Helsinki at 10PM local time. The beautiful summer in Finland has a horrible face at night. This I realized now.

I haven't written in a while, and I have grown fatter and lazier. Downsides of 'settling down', one could easily point out, but nevertheless one of the many new challenges I have to find my way around.

While thinking makes life dull at times, and leading it by heart is easier, meditating upon one's conditions help make dramatic changes in life, this I firmly believe in. Writing is a way of doing the same.

Stuck is the word I prefer to use to describe my condition of being on this long business trip to a land which is by far in its most beautiful form. Beautiful is a word I can use only with a fair amount of sarcasm as the long and untimely separation from loved ones and the land, makes me cringe from within.

No man can exist as an island, said some wise fellow. I realized I had been resisting the same, and probably now feel the need to lay bridges and invite generous boats to ply regularly.

This strange condition though currently places me like a Pacific island, albeit like one with titanic waves crashing on all beaches scattering and scaring all patrons to the farthest distance.

Watching the sun that never sets up here North shine brightly off the window panes till midnight can do terrible things to the mind.  The recurring dull drum beats can be a formidable foe to fight against. The mid-day heat at midnight keeps the mind twirling in memories, ideas and strange thoughts.

Having had enough with the Finnish TV programmes, and nothing else to do, I must force myself to sleep by meditation to escape the cruel games of the sun god.

suspended reality

while its not so easy to comprehend or reflect well on a life that's hardly taken its baby steps, one does feel the increasing gap between one's perspective of life, and its priorities from what one has learnt in life.

Some moments feel suffocating, a few liberating and most take the middle path.  While the agility seem to be sacrificed, niceties seem to be new guests. But niceties have a bad character of not being as stable as adversities and tend to draw more of the latter, leading to one's alarms going off now and then.

The trick is to decide whether to snooze or to wake up.

Its a challenge, its a trick, its a mystery, its a trap, its redemption, its punishment, its a blessing, its destiny, its a mistake, its a dream, its an adventure, its a poem, its a reality, its a myth - its life :)

crajjjyyy people

crazy people attract more crazy people, thats the way it is.

Craze is a vicious circle, or rather a spiral of sweet intoxicating ride through the maddening the drums of one's passion. Some get high for a moment while it might last for an entire life time for others.

Enjoy your craze, take chances, make mistakes, but be ready to pay for them and walk away when the time is ripe and seek new adventures and keep your craze and your soul alive along with it.

Better to burn away taking chances than fade away waiting for everything to fall into place by itself..

hella..

hella folks.. just wanna say hi.

I haven't gone anywhere, but I am yet to find the much required feathers for the missiles in my quiver.

Feel short of volleys, but the blades swish past and generate the needed spark once in a while.

Right now, sleepless head wants to rest :)

gnite folks

back to the school

I have been taking some distance courses and recently our exams were conducted in the Delhi Public School.

During one such exam, I managed to finish a couple of hours ahead of schedule and had to wait for my friends. Without enough battery backup on my phone, I had nothing else to do than roam around.

The school has 3 or 4 buildings each consisting of 3-4 floors for the classrooms and other specialized activities. Having nothing else to do, I decided to poke my nose into anything and everything around.
And so I kept going on rounds, clockwise and anti-clockwise, up and down various stairs for a good part of a couple of hours. I read all the tiny articles, class posters and charts made by the students of primary school, stuck on bulletin boards, blackboards and there were also these pieces of art stored in some rooms.

Needless to say, most of the contents were regular and the kind you get from net. But most of the small articles were cutely decorated, written in squiggly handwriting of a new writer. I wondered how many of them enjoyed it and how many just wanted to get over with it.

There are couple of these articles that really got my attention. One was a poem written by a sixth grader on bullying (that was the theme in the entire building). I wish I could share it here, but even kids have copyrights, so I am not. But it had an innate sense of pride in rejecting bullies and standing up for oneself. I wished someone had written such stuff in my school days. It was such a strong spirit. I hope the tiny hands had written her own words and if so she would definitely write more.

There were couple of articles on festivals by even younger kids which reflected their love for playful Krishna or their traditional rituals which put in simple language of kids sounds very cute.

And there were some which shocked me. No student of 4th Std would be able to write articles using words like "sunkissed beaches", "Rugby is good for cardiovascular health" and all. This was clearly the work of parents, elder siblings etc that is so proudly posted there. This upset me because not only were the parents creating an unnatural balance among peers, they were also doing a disservice to their own wards.

In my school days, taking credit for work done by parents or even asking them do such a thing would almost always result in scolding and a round of beating. :) Memories of running around the house to avoid being beaten always accompany a bitter-sweet feeling.

Anyway schools are fun. With or without exam :)

End of a year

Its with such pace that the year 2014 has passed, and I must say passed over me.

I feel like being hit by a truck when I think back. I have been overwhelmed and beaten hands-down in my games this year. Well.. at least a couple of rounds.

But what saddens me is the tiny Blog Archive dropdown in the right side of this post. I was proudly watching the every growing number of articles and sending those as feedback to myself. The number has unfortunately, very unfortunately slumped by more than 50%.

In place of the 57 I wrote in 2013, I wrote only 20 so far in 2014. A year of less writing seems like a year of distraction and unhappiness. Well, after all shouldn't I have reasons to write? If not, then things are not ok. But I am not so sure now. Anyway, that is matter for another day.

Another year with a slump is 2009 and rightly so. That too was a year of big changes, and exposure to new difficulties. I gripped back slowly and definitely 2013 was a marvellous year. But was it the flicker of the dying lamp? Sigh..

Well, the sadness definitely let me overcome my inertia and let the words fly through the tips of my fingers into the slimy office keyboard and weave some of those wordy fabric that I so often loved to do.

:-)

hope someone still keeps an eye open for my ramblings, because I am taking your invisible presence as my blessing and encouragement to train the narrator in me to walk again.

bloggers blah

I have been finding myself thinking on and off about something.

Who are we bloggers?  What is our role in all the noise of stuff that you see all around you. I hope we need not argue on the fact that there really is all the noise of opinions, judgements, facts and portrayals and  frankly lack of truth or relevance is the last reason for someone to stop reading an article.

We stop reading for various myriad reasons, and in our busy lives with hardly any time to spare for actual reflection on someone's opinions to form one for ourselves, it has become so norm that only the better 'decorated' content stays in limelight and can impact opinion making.

Hence I personally like to keep the opinions to a crowd of limited eager readers that can actually reflect the content and make opinions for myself.

But off late I have been unable to produce written stuff, and I have been giving myself lots of reasons and excuses. While I know I don't have to give myself an excuse for what I started on my own choice, sometime the thought that the innocent and sometimes erudite pleasure of writing blogs would be forgotten by disuse.

But I saw some videos and Vlogs( Video blogging ) on many social issues and could only smile because most of them were just about stating the person's views, however poorly placed they might be or appropriately timed to ride the wave of popular events in social media. If such content can make its rounds deep into the social network, I said I should just go ahead with whatever I have in my mind. Though this new unseen kind of gnawing or rather sudden reordering of priorities make it imperative to find new strategies to keep afloat and cut down the sword arm itself in a grand swish once the veil is lifted :)

Mood quotient: Exam morning. Jaane kya hoga. Playing "Banjare" from Fugly. "Donno which way to go, aage hoga kya" mixed with clarity of Design Patterns images, clubbed with images of departing memories and curiosity of events ahead :)