All this hullaballo over something legal

Are you kidding me!!

I braved the afternoon sun, in a traffic jam of 5 KMs.

Massive deployment of police forces since the past 3 days and why.

I now know, how it would feel if I get stuck in a scenario as depicted in "The Happening" by M Night Shyamalan were to come to life actually.

And all this over a piece of land, which I'm told is the holiest of the holy, but doesn't effect me at all in the least bit of sense.

For once, I admire the Indian legalese.

An order delivered right on the verge of it being invalidated by just one day on account of one of the judges on the bench reaching his retirement. A mammoth 10 thousand page document, delivered after 60 years and so very aptly underlining indecision.

Its admirable how we all have reacted.

But the judiciary trumped us all and has shown the smiley.

The planners got it all wrong. We all should have known, how it works.

Go on you devils in black coats, I ensure you another 60 years before it reaches any conclusion. And by that time I will be senile... I hope.

Peace!

So Apt :)

As if Superman had a choice

Who is to say, if given a chance, Superman would have chosen to take a break. Well Superman may not have given it another thought when Lex Luthor teased him, "you are a workaholic, playing the good guy 24x7", but I certainly did. After all he's the infallible man. Although to fulfill that destiny he had to loose everything near and dear.

Well, I don't intend to be all loopy and philosophical, but it just seems so ironical that our greatest hero is an alien, who started on his journey by loosing his entire planet. 

Perhaps, we have already agreed that us humans can never stand the test of our own moral standards.

Coming to the point of this post... I realized today that an essential part of being human is just admitting that no matter how noble your intentions may be, you do make mistakes.. and humongous ones at that.

Superman, would never make any mistakes. He'll never have to face a dilemma  of choosing between the right thing and what should be done to correct those mistakes. Superman never has a choice.

I am no superman. I'm no one to make no mistakes. And I have no authority to tell others what to do when, and how to do it. All I know is that its never too late to realize and own up to your mistakes. You may not be able to set everything alright immediately, but you may stop from getting it worse. Peace.

And then I woke up...

I was cruising down a smooth road, cool wind blowing in my face... and suddenly puffs of dust and dark smoke hit me. That's when I woke up.

I was enjoying the peace and quiet, listening to chirping birds, breathing in wafts of fresh orchids filling up the air, a feeling of content filling me up... and suddenly there were horns honking loudly. That's when I woke up. :-)

I was logged on to the net on a wireless  broadband network with a download speed of 2Gbps and then my browser just hanged. Reality  of 27kbps dawned on me and that's when I woke up. :-)

Well, my friends I wasn't expecting a cakewalk when I returned, but I was only gone for 2 years. And its not that I'm some firang who came to India as a tourist. :-)

Even after such a short time my first few days back home were filled with pleasant surprises, countless errors and multiple situations where I had to relearn to do things the old way, like driving on the wrong side of the road again. :-)

The first thing that brought a smile was to look at the hustle and bustle of the cities, people, cars, roads, goats and cows swarming the roads and the state of general disarray everywhere you look. All that was a sweet reminder for me that India will always take pride in its "Unity in Diversity" slogan in more ways than one.  :-)

The first day I was back home I saw elephants walking in the opposite direction to traffic earning livelihood for their mahouts, people not worrying about the speed of Toyotas, Hundaies and even BMWs and crossing roads at every point. A simple ride to my aunt's home took me about 1 hour, trying to negotiate turns when there were none. Back home the loudness of everything hit me hard... one whole day I had to bear the knocking of a power-drill hitting hard on the street outside to lay new underground cables. Such activities seem to continue all the time here. Its abundantly clear that India is progressing on all fronts and the pace is frantic. :-)

But as one says.. "Home is where the heart is" and my home will always be here. Jai Hind. :-)

Happy Birthday Bapu (Belated!)

I know it may appear as a blatant attempt to jump on the Shashi Tharoor Twitter tweet band wagon about Bapu's Birthday which has already kick-started the debate about the legitimacy of October 2nd being a holiday and the way we should be honouring the father of our nation while commemorating his birth anniversaries. I don't call it his birthday as I think Mahatma Gandhi would have followed the Hindu calendar to celebrate his true birthday. (I am not a Gandhi expert but I don't think people know his principles more from his autobiography taught as text books in schools than the movies like "Munnabhai MBBS and Gandhi").



Well I have been meaning to write it all of last week and this weekend, but seriously could not find enough time to take it up. The root of this post lies in the question I was asked on this October 2nd by one of my Belgian colleagues about how we celebrate October 2nd back home in India. I casually answered her, "Oh nothing much. There are official functions and sweets distribution in schools but basically its just a holiday on a day when sale of all liquor and alcoholic beverages is banned by state decree.  



To my credit this was before Mr. Tharoor tweeted about not having it as a holiday, because the man who said "work is worship" must have not liked it as a holiday himself and a day off from all work is basically tantamount to disrespecting his principles.


After answering this in such a playful almost irreverent way, I was contemplating about it myself. Is it correct to have a holiday just for the sake of it. Shouldn't there be some sort of "Egg-less Cake Cutting" on the birthday of the father of our nation? I mean like every holiday is associated with a special way of celebration shouldn't the birthday of the Saint from Sabarmati have its own too, which should be kind of standardised. I know I have been conditioned with my 4 years in the IT industry to look for standards and find them more comforting that the chaotic unease and lawlessness the absence of them pervades.  



Should we as Indians just take whatever comes our way as holidays and thank the heavens if they happen to coincide with the weekends? Dont we have a moral responsibility to Bapu's principles that led us being united in freedom and having the right to choose our own future. Well I don't know about others and I don't stand on any higher moral ground about being a fervent follower of his principles either to be all preachy about what to do and what not. But since I celebrate all religious festivals the way they are supposed to I have decided to make the rest of the October 2nds in my life about Gandhi and his principles.


May be I'd wear designer khadi jackets, or be a vegetarian for a day, but I'll do something to show my respect. I'll think of some way every year to pay my respect for the father of our nation. Jai Hind!

What's "My" Rashee

1989: It was the earliest days of television in India. Certainly in my small town the fist signals were broadcast over our black and white tubes around that time only. As a child after the evening news every day of the week used to be defined by the program that would follow on the prime time slot. Of course I was never aware of this term then. And one of the days it used to be the day of "Mr. Yogi". I dont remember which one it was, because every day back then was non-working for me. :-)

Television was such a novelty in those days. We had a wooden case, custom built for the one we had. Some people would even put blue plastic screens on their TV sets in an attempt to add a third colour!

We would have dinner while watching the NEWS. It used to be devoid of any videos and sound bites and composed entirely of the news reader in closeup reading at a uniform pace from government preapproved scripts. 

Yes! Television in the subcontinent has evolved from single channel half hour news bulletins to gigantic proportions now, but those were still "the" days. :-)

Mr. Yogi is not the cartoon series Yogi Bear as some of my friends here in Belgium would imagine. It was a television serial in which a freshly "USA returned" eligible bachelor attempts to find a wife by interviewing girls with different sun-signs one after the other.

"Hello! Y. I. Patel" in a subtle questioning tone with an awkward accent was the standard way that Mohan Gokhale would introduce himself to girls. (He played the typical NRI to the hilt. Indeed a very fine actor he was.) And all the girls would invariably answer "I don't know!!" to that. It was hilarious. And we eagerly used to anticipate that moment in every episode.

So sunsigns have been ubiquitously present in my life since the early days. In fact I ended up having an overdose of it. India is the land of the mystics in more ways than one. Everyone you meet, puts a new spin on everything. There are sun signs (based on the first letter of your birth name) and there are moon signs (based on the time and place of your birth and the position of the stars.. I think) and apart from the daily newspaper horoscope section there is Tarot, Feng-Shui, Vastushastra, Palmistry, Numerology etc. and then you have the Peer-Fakeers (mystics) that abound with their totally indigenous form of deriving at predictions without any external aids whatsoever. What's funnier is you don't even have to go looking for them. They would literally shout your future from across the street and if your unsuspecting grandma likes what he has to say and is reasonably believable about her young grandson, he'll earn a Rupee or two.

To top it off, I have been quite confused about what sign to follow while reading the horoscope sections in the newspaper, as for the first few years of my life I only used to be  "Pearl", which made me a Virgo. So I would happily read the Virgo section and try to decipher the code of the future. It was a different issue altogether that the horoscope for Virgo in the English newspaper was sometimes be in complete contrast with what "Kanya" had to offer in the Hindi one. Then I became "Feroz" in school along with staying as "Pearl" at home making me a Sagittarian. So I now had to read a set of four different predictions (2 each in Hindi and English).

I think the editors realized my plight so they tried to make a simplification and switched to the 'real' moon signs based on the date of birth. But alas! That was not to be. There are different ways of arriving at the moon signs. According to the Indian system, I ended up being a Scorpio and the English one made me an Aquarius. This added up two more. Aha... you would think that would be the end of it. No, it continues... With "Made in China" gaining significance we had Feng-Shui and then there were Tarot readings as well as the numerology ones. Some weeks I would draw "the clown" card in the Tarot reading making me impervious to any mishaps and my Aquarius prediction would be to "stay extremely cautious while driving" with my numerology prediction being out of tune with both and commenting about compatibility with people with a net sum of "4".

So to simplify it, out of all the choices present to me and all being 'statistically' proven, I would just pick a horoscope for myself for the day and then a sunsign (after having a quick glance over all of them. ;-) ) No denying they could be a great morale booster sometimes.

Never mind that all sunsign and moonsign calenders are atleast 350 years out of sync so if you think that you are a scorpio, if you were to correctly follow the lunar and stellar patterns you would end up being a libran. But we are not being scientific people while reading horoscopes, are we?

So, coming to the point now. The upcoming movie by famed Bollywood director Ashutosh Gowarikar who has given us movies like "Lagaan" and "Swades", "What's your Rashee" may end up having ridiculously oversimplified the feminine character and giving way to stereotypes in turn irking the "capricorn" feminists ;-) (They seem to be furious about how 'capricornians' are portrayed in the movie). But being based on a great TV serial it may finally end up having a good message and its heart in the right place. (No comments about the acting prowess of the guy playing Mr. Yogi)

These days my mom is worried about finding a suitable match for me and has all sorts of reservations about her name not starting with "S" or her not being born in April, (don't ask me the reasons.. I don't know either). Besides ignoring that for an Aquarian-Scorpio-Virgo-Sagittarian with a celestial number of  5.5 (yes there are different ways for calculating that too and mine come out to be 4 & 7) like me, it would be pretty hard to define the befitting criteria to finding a suitable match in the first place, she also seems to be ignoring something critical about the match-making process.


So, I may eventually use the movie in a tounge in cheek way to remind her that like Mr.Yogi finally fell for the thirteenth girl he interviewed who turned out to be an orphan whose rashi was indeterminate on account of her date of birth not being known, I too am oblivious to the stars and the signs. And most importantly its not about the name or the date of birth and the position of the stars or the looks or the money or religion or race or xyz. Its about that crazy thing called "Love". :-)

The "Workaholics" at No. 63

A workaholic: colloquially, is a person who is addicted to work (in normal parlance, a person who works for more than his/her stipulated working hours regularly).

4 Lierseestenweg: My office address in Mechelen which is a city in the province of Antwerp in Belgium.

0D, 1C, 1E: Sections within the office building where you can find people working at all sorts of odd hours.

No. 63: To be revealed later.

Well there are some nights when you just can't sleep and then there are some nights when something you experienced during the day stirs your thoughts so much that you just can't put them to rest. My father once told me that "worrying about it never solved any problem." As matter of fact as it sounds, it is quite a feat if you can put it to actual practice.

That said let me come to the source of the turmoil that has resulted in this insomnia. It was about 8 in the evening and I had come to the pantry to get a fresh cup of tea when I found that one of the call center executives who works in a rather special unit called "Customer Retention" was also there. During the wait for the kettle to boil the water we struck up a conversation. Now for my friends who are not very familiar with the European work culture and Belgian in particular, it would be prudent that I mention here that the office and especially my floor is almost completely empty by 6 in the evening and 8 is a "late hour". She mentioned that she has usually seen me still working almost every day when she is leaving after having finished her shift. I explained to her that I just stay back late finishing up pending tasks of the day.

That must have been quite strange for her as she asked how is it possible that there are pending tasks after working for 8 hours. It was quite difficult to explain all the reasons to her and there wasn't enough time either, but just as we were leaving the pantry to go back to our desk, she commented, "All of you are workaholics".

By 'all of you' she meant all people here from Infosys, as we are always the ones left behind after everybody else has gone and her impression of us being addicted to work isn't quite incorrect either. That ended just there and after duly finishing up my tasks I also headed back home.

Its usually my routine to take the long way back home from office as it gives me some peaceful extra time on my bicycle. It was around 10 and the streets were silent. I was riding my bike engrossed in some thoughts, when suddenly I was struck with some musical notes emanating from an unknown source. I slowed down to look or rather "hear" for the source. There weren't any pedestrians around neither were any cars so it couldn't have been some music system. It wasn't anyways the normal electronic beats you hear from the passing cars. As I heard more carefully I found that it was a piano playing with people singing in a choir. That's when it hit me that I was close to the church and it must be the choir group practicing. I slowed down a bit more and on the pretext of checking some stuff in the window next to house number 63 where they were reciting, I stole some more musical moments to savour.

10 PM in the night is quite late by all Belgian standards. Having taken time out from their jobs these people were practicing till so late. The reason as I would imagine must have been that in their pursuit to achieve that perfect harmony they lost the sense of time. None of them remembered how late it had gotten. "Workaholics!!" I thought.

This is the thought that has been stirring me tonight. How can I draw parallels to what some one does for charity and something which is officially one's job!! Not to say that I don't enjoy my work, but I still don't get called a workaholic just for doing something that engrosses me so much that I loose sense of time. When I think a bit more carefully I find that at the root of it is my worries! Yes. My worries about achieving too much too soon. I want to have everything twice as quickly by doing twice the amount of hard-work in half the time it actually requires. I remember now another little story. 

There was this ancient martial ats expert who was approached by a young man. The man asked the master, "How much time it will take me to be an expert in the martial arts?" The master replied "10 years". 

The man said, "But if I practice extra hard everyday putting in double the effort, how much time will it take me then?". The master replied calmly "20 years".

I never quite understood the significance of this story before today. In our relentless pursuits, we never relax and relish our achievements. We have to keep jumping from one feat to the next, discarding our own accomplishments for the sake of the next one in line. If we are just patient enough to let time take its course, everything else will follow suit.  Stop worrying and let time also play its part. I used to loathe the adage "Before time and more than your destiny, you will never get". But there is an aspect of it that you must not forget. Try as you might you can't beat the clock. No matter how many world records you break there is just no limit to where it ends. Even Usain Bolt will tell you that, but may be he's also just too young to understand that now.  If we try and rush to it, we will still only get their on time, and we will be twice as much tired.