Gaman

At the very outset, let me pay respect to the 1978 movie "Gaman", directed by Muzaffar Ali (his first movie), rarely has there ever been a movie which is summarized by a single song.... "Seene me jalan aankhon me toofan sa kyon hai.."

I spent 3.5 hrs waiting for a train the other day.... 3.5 eventful hours, if I might add.. It amazes me as to how much you can learn by way of observation... by merely blanking out all your frustrations about the Indian railway's lethargy, about the indifference of the platform announcers and the frustration of not being where you ought to be... If only we would see things the way they are, instead of the way we want them to be... we'd see so much more...

I saw that we are all hypocrites, by nature.... in the comfort of an armchair, we'd cry foul at the way our system is rotting through corruption... but on a platform in Surat station at 1 am, knowing that the train is "indefinitely" late, we wont blink twice before offering a Rs.100 bribe to the ticket checker for a ride on some other train...

I saw the importance of an onion... There was this old guy on the platform that night... Legs too frail to support him any more... by day, he might be a beggar pushing himself around on an improvised cart... by night, he was an inspiration... You see, he'd got hold of this onion from somewhere... and he was trying to keep it safe for the life left in him... in the half hour that I observed him, he must have twitched a dozen times, each time making sure that his treasure was safe in his torn pockets... I'd never know what he planned to do with that onion... but I will surely think about him, every time I waste food on my plate....

I realized a word that pretty much defines the state of this nation... "Adjustment".... I wait for this train (Avadh Express) for 3.5 hours... It finally comes to a different platform (unannounced by the platform announcers)....I cry foul... but I adjust... I board in to see that three guys have already squatted on my seat and enjoying a sleep that was supposed to have been bestowed to me... What do I do? Be a hero and wake them up... show them their place on the floor and climb on to my heavenly abode? Nah...I adjust... I find one more place, that was thankfully vacated at Surat station, and perch myself in.... I hear people talking around me, in dialects I've only heard in the movies... That night, a Tamilian felt as if he were in the middle of Uttar Pradesh, inside that train stationed in Gujarat... and he adjusted quite well, thank you...

I did not see many families that night in the S1 compartment of Avadh express... I saw men... band of brothers.... who had left their families back in the Hindi heartland and were going towards the unwelcoming city of Mumbai.... with a dream of being better than what they already were... with a dream of traveling back to their villages and towns, one day, on a confirmed ticket... Because, not all Tamilians are of adjusting nature inside Avadh express...

Last but not the least, I saw that you cannot stop the human spirit by installing a barricade of parochialism.. You can turn a tide, into a trickle... but a trickle shall remain, nonetheless.... No one can show a man, a promise of a better life... and then prevent him from trying to have it... I dearly hope that Mr. Thackeray reads this...

And after seeing all this.... I slept...

Blog and the City

A city is only as good as the people surrounding you... Your impressions about a city, are but only manifestation and exaggerations of the people around you... You move into a new city... Find some familiar faces, or better still, become friends with the unfamiliar faces and all of a sudden, the city is friendly... You have a comfortable life... The best city in the world... On the other hand, you come into a city and you find politically motivated pseudo-friends, back biters, a couple of bitter experiences... and viola! you have your very own personal nightmare.

But what happens when you live in the same city where you have always lived... the friendly city... the best city in the world... and the familiar faces change... the quality of experiences change??... What happens when your dream and nightmare start getting mixed up?

The familiar faces around me have started changing.... the rare faces that still remain, have started showing streaks of unfamiliarity... come to think of it, adjusting to the changes inside your home is more difficult than moving into a new home altogether... There is some ego inside you that rages on... How could this happen?! How could a gregarious person like me end up like this? It must be someone else's fault.... Then there there is some naivety inside you that questions on..... Did I do something wrong? Have I got left behind here just because I didn't get up when everybody else did?.....There is some spark of optimism which trudges on.... so what if they are gone? I'm still the same guy! I can make new friends! The dream shall prevail.... and finally, there is some darkness inside you that makes you write this blog...   

Winners, Losers, You and i

There are basically four kinds of people on this planet... Winners, Losers, people who write about them.. and the people who read about them...

The winners seldom know (or accept) that they are winner... Because they fear complacency... They fear contentment... They fear that one day they will lose that hunger... that mojo... They keep on doing that they do... and they pass away...

The loser seldom accept (or know) that they are losers.... For them, success is the shadow behind their tail... It is just around the corner.... It is tomorrow..... it was in a moment that destiny took away from them... it is any moment but now.... Life is not made up of milestones... when they are born, they were not given out KRAs or KPIs.... They dont have annual appraisals where the almighty gives them a run down on a job poorly done.... They keep on doing what they do... and they cease to exist a long long time before they pass away....

The writers... like me.... find great pleasure in looking at the world in black and white.... in terms of rich and poor.... the strong and the weak..... the have's and the have not's..... the winners and losers.... They set milestones which they deem to be targets of success... all who manage to go on the other side (irrespective of the means used) are "winners".... everyone else is a loser..... They comment about everything and everybody except.... except the people who read what they write.... They never know for sure if the reader is a winner... because the winner never knows if he is... and they dare not term the reader as a loser..... unless of course they want to end up being one as well....

And then there are the readers.... YOU..... no comments.....

A tale of two cities...

Mumbai never ceases to amaze me... The kind of variety, depth and confluence that I see here is unparalleled..

I saw two movies in Mumbai this weekend... on consecutive days... Wanted and Wake up Sid.... I saw Wanted at Maratha Mandir in the heart of Mumbai... Mumbai central... The balcony ticket cost me 75 bucks.... It was a nostalgic moment for me as it has been quite sometime since I bought a ticket @ 75 bucks... I go inside the auditorium and I see families... Which again is quite a rarity nowadays.... Before the movie, Jana Gana Mana.... everyone stands up, I can see a group of guys keeping one hand on the heart and the other put forwards in an oath... The national anthem ends with rapturous applause... The movie starts with whistles and howls.... There is a series of claps every time Salman (or Sallu bhai) mouths a dialogue (which, for the record, are straight out of Rajnikant movies).... Interval.... Samosa cost 15 bucks... coffee: 15 bucks... Popcorn: 10 bucks.... I've got tears in my eyes!!!... Shortly after interval, a brawl ensues in the stalls below.... apparently, some guy actually did a Munnabhai from Rangeela and kept his legs on the seat ahead of him.... Rukavat ke liye khed hai.... off we go again... the movie ends... and I see a collective murmur of the people as they stream through the narrow back alley of the movie hall... Paisa Vasool....

The second day I went to Fame at Inorbit mall..... Wake up sid.... Tickets: 220 bucks per head... Hot dog: *Inaugural offer of 100 bucks only*..... Tea (from tea bags, mind you): 25 bucks.... I have tears in my eyes again....I see couples streaming in.... strutting their stuff as if it were a fashion runway (I never understood the funda behind dressing up for a movie... isn't it dark in there?).... I can see people scrambling for their seats even as the National Anthem goes on... Movie starts in an eerie silence.... no clapping.... no whistles.... Just a nod of approval whenever a scene comes that reminds us of something real.... The movie ends... we better not talk about the value for money quotient here... From the theater, we enter the capitalistic capital of the Mall area... the food plaza and the game zone.... 150 gm of Pasta and 1 slice of 18 inch pizza: 220 bucks... *sigh*.... One round of dance karaoke: 60 bucks.... One portrait: 54 bucks (10% discount as my cousin has apparently been upgraded to a Platinum card)..... I come out of InOrbit with a heavy heart and an equally light wallet....

Two ends of a spectrum in two days... I love this city.... It makes me cry for so many reasons... :-)

what they taught me in college...

Psychology, as a subject of study, always intrigued me; but psychology as a subject of study in my graduation never interested me. Out of all the stimuli J that I was subjected to during the 3 yrs of my grads, I hardly have reminiscence of a handful. One such concept is that of Gestalt psychology. Gestalt is basically a school of thought in Psychology that believes that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. That the personality of a person is something greater than all the characteristic behavior that is shown by that person. I loved the inclusion of the ingredient X in this concoction of human behavior, which gave it the added flavor of mysticism and completed it.

The greatest test of education is when it is tested against reality. Education is only as good as its level of practicality in everyday life. Even the complex topic of Relativity is often explained using the example of a moving train and a stationary object on the platform. All our studies stem from some part of reality that surrounds us. But more often than not, we never see the concepts of a textbook in the conceptions that surround us. Sometimes we can’t, sometimes we choose not to.

Take for example, Gestalt psychology. As I work in an organization, do I know what my place in this organization is? The raw material for me, is the work done by somebody else and my work is a raw material for someone else. At the end of the day, what comes out of the organization is greater than the sum of all the efforts put by everyone in the organization. For that matter, what is Home? Is it just a collection of a family under a common roof? Doesn’t it include all the happiness, sorrows, experience and naivety? Isn’t there an ingredient X that transforms a house into a home?

Every successful person needs to have the inquisitiveness to question the environment, the courage to seek an answer, and the wisdom to accept the outcome. Wish you all the best.